U.S. Route 50
The Interstate Highway System with US 50 in red
Route information
Length:	3,008 mi[2] (4,841 km)
Existed:	1926[1] – present
Major junctions
West end:	I-80 in West Sacramento, CA
	US 395 in Carson City, NV I-15 near Fillmore, UT I-25 in Pueblo, CO I-35 in Overland Park, KS US 71 in Kansas City, MO I-55 near St. Louis, MO I-65 in Seymour, IN I-71 / I-75 in Cincinnati, OH I-81 in Winchester, VA I-95 / I-495 near Washington, DC
East end:	MD 528 in Ocean City, MD
Highway system
United States Numbered Highways List • Bannered • Divided • Replaced

U.S. Route 50 is a major east–west route of the U.S. Highway system, stretching just over 3,000 miles (4,800 km) from Ocean City, Maryland on the Atlantic Ocean to West Sacramento, California. Until 1972, when it was replaced by Interstate Highways west of the Sacramento area,^[3] it extended to San Francisco, near the Pacific Ocean. The route mostly remains separate from Interstates. It generally serves a corridor south of Interstates 70 and 80 and north of Interstates 64 and 40. The route runs through mostly rural desert and mountains in the Western United States, with the section through Nevada known as "The Loneliest Road in America". In the Midwest, US 50 continues through mostly rural areas of farms as well as a few large cities including Kansas City, Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri; and Cincinnati, Ohio. The route continues into the Eastern United States, where it passes through the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia before heading through Washington, D.C. From there, US 50 continues through Maryland as a high-speed road to Ocean City. Signs at each end give the length as 3,073 miles (4,946 km), but the actual distance is slightly less,^[2] due to realignments since the former figure was measured. US 50 passes through a total of 12 states (California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland) as well as the District of Columbia.

US 50 was created in 1926 as part of the original U.S. Highway system. The original route planned in 1925 ran from Wadsworth, Nevada east to Annapolis, Maryland along several auto trails including the Lincoln Highway, Midland Trail, and the National Old Trails Road. The final 1926 plan had US 50 running from Sacramento, California east to Annapolis with a gap in west Utah that was bridged by running the route north via Salt Lake City before rerouting it to U.S. Route 6 in the 1950s. US 50 was extended west from Sacramento to San Francisco in the 1930s, replacing U.S. Route 48; this was reversed in 1964 when Interstate 580 replaced much of the route between the two cities. In addition, US 50 was extended east from Annapolis to Ocean City prior to 1952, replacing a portion of U.S. Route 213. US 50 had two split configurations into U.S. Route 50N and U.S. Route 50S, one in Kansas and another in Ohio and West Virginia; both of these instances have been removed.

Route description[link]

Mileage sign at the western terminus of U.S. 50

Western U.S.[link]

US 50 in the Nevada desert

US 50 begins as a major freeway at its junction with Interstate 80 in West Sacramento and continues into Sacramento. The portion of US 50 west of and including its interchange with California's State Highway 99 in Sacramento is also designated, but not signed as, Interstate 305. The signage along this portion of the highway indicates Business Loop I-80 and a portion of the way (2 miles/3.33 km) as California State Highway 99. From Sacramento, the highway heads eastward as the William Alexander Leidesdorff, Jr. Memorial Highway, continuing as a freeway to the Gold Country foothills, then following the American River up the Sierra Nevada as a conventional highway, until cresting the Sierras at Echo Summit and descending to Lake Tahoe, where the highway enters Nevada. In Nevada, the highway crosses a series of north–south running mountain ranges that break up the Nevada desert which are called Basin and Range. East of Carson City, the road enters the heart of the Great Basin, passing by few communities and minimal services, giving it the name "Loneliest Road in America" until reaching Utah.^[2]

In Utah, US 50 also passes through desolate, remote areas with few inhabitants. After crossing the Confusion Range via Kings Canyon and the House Range, the road traverses the north shore of the endorheic Sevier Lake. In Holden, US 50 shortly overlaps Interstate 15 to cross the Pavant Range. The road begins a much longer overlap with Interstate 70 in Salina crossing the Wasatch Plateau and San Rafael Swell into Colorado. US 50 leaves I-70 upon entering the state and heads southeast through Grand Junction and into the southern part of Colorado. Once there, the road climbs to its highest elevation of 11,312 feet (3,448 m)^[4] over the Rocky Mountains and in Monarch Pass where it crosses the Continental Divide. After descending from the Rockies, US 50 passes by Royal Gorge near Cañon City then joins U.S. Route 400 in Granada and follows the Arkansas River through Pueblo and into Kansas.^[2]

Midwestern U.S.[link]

The Jefferson Barracks Bridge over the Mississippi River

Upon entering Kansas, US 50, concurrent with US 400, run along the Arkansas River to Dodge City where US 50 splits from US 400 and takes a more northerly course. US 50 continues to traverse the farmlands and small towns of the Great Plains mostly as a straight two-lane road until Emporia where it joins Interstate 35 and splits onto Interstate 435 to bypass the center of the Kansas City Area. In Missouri, US 50 leaves I-435 for Interstate 470 splitting at Lee's Summit. US 50 runs as a four-lane divided highway across the Western Plain to Sedalia where it continues as a two-lane road until reaching the shores of the Missouri River in Jefferson City. The road then traverses the northern sections of the Ozark Highlands east to Union where it begins an overlap with Interstate 44 which goes through Pacific. The routes separate in Sunset Hills where US 50 migrates southeast bypassing St Louis by joining Interstate 255 to cross Mississippi River into Illinois.^[2]

In that state, US 50 switches to Interstate 64 before splitting onto its own alignment in eastern O'Fallon. It heads east through Salem, Flora and Lawrenceville to the Wabash River along a corridor between Interstates 64 and 70. US 50 enters Indiana at the Wabash River, bypassing Vincennes and Washington and passing through Bedford, Seymour, and Versailles. It meets the Ohio River at Aurora, and soon crosses into Ohio, running through downtown Cincinnati via Fort Washington Way (Interstate 71). The route crosses southern Ohio via Hillsboro, Chillicothe, and Athens, joining the four-lane divided Corridor D (State Route 32) west of Athens. It meets the Ohio River, from which it split at Cincinnati, at Belpre, and crosses the Blennerhassett Island Bridge (previously crossing the Parkersburg-Belpre Bridge) into Parkersburg, West Virginia.^[2]

Mid-Atlantic states[link]

Westbound view on US 50, Ocean Gateway, leaving Ocean City, MD. Sign over Eastbound lane displays distance to Sacramento, CA, 3073 Miles.

US 50 shield on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C.

The portion of US 50 from Parkersburg, West Virginia to Winchester, Virginia follows the historic Northwestern Turnpike, which crosses the southern tip of Garrett County, Maryland. From Parkersburg to Interstate 79 east of Clarksburg, US 50 has been upgraded as part of the four-lane divided Corridor D. US 50 is a curving two-lane mountain road, east of Clarksburg through Grafton, a bit of Maryland, and Romney to Winchester. This portion of the road is so curvy that locals claim "you can meet yourself coming". The land flattens out after it crosses the Shenandoah Mountains east of Winchester, and it follows the old Little River Turnpike from Aldie to Fairfax and the newer Arlington Boulevard to Rosslyn, where it crosses the District of Columbia line on the west shore of the Potomac River and joins Interstate 66 on the Roosevelt Bridge.^[2]

Within the District, US 50 immediately exits the freeway onto Constitution Avenue along the north side of the National Mall. After turning north on 6th Street Northwest, it exits the city to the northeast on New York Avenue. Upon crossing into Maryland, it passes the south end of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and becomes the John Hanson Highway, a freeway to Annapolis. The portion of this highway east of the Capital Beltway (I-95/I-495) is also designated, but not signed as, Interstate 595, and U.S. Route 301 joins from the south at Bowie. The freeway continues beyond Annapolis as the Blue Star Memorial Highway which crosses Chesapeake Bay on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and continues to Queenstown. There the Blue Star Highway continues northeast as US 301, while US 50 turns south, passing through Easton to Cambridge, and then east through Salisbury to Ocean City on the four-lane divided Ocean Gateway. US 50 ends near the Atlantic Ocean shore at Baltimore Avenue (Maryland Route 528 northbound); its westbound beginning is one block to the west, at Philadelphia Avenue (MD 528 southbound).^[2]

History[link]

A "Loneliest Road in America" sign outside Austin, NV

Before the creation of the Interstate Highway System, US 50 was a major east–west route. Numbered highways in the United States follow a pattern of odd numbers for north–south routes and even numbers for east–west routes, hence the designation of "50" for this route. In the preliminary report, approved by the Joint Board on Interstate Highways in late 1925, US 50 ran from Wadsworth, Nevada to Annapolis, Maryland, passing through Pueblo, Colorado, Kansas City, Missouri, Tipton, Missouri, St. Louis, Missouri, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Washington, D.C.^[5] The route did not directly replace any auto trail, instead combining portions of many into one continuous route. Major auto trails followed, included the Lincoln Highway in Nevada, the Midland Trail in parts of Utah and Colorado and again in Missouri, Illinois, and part of Indiana, and the National Old Trails Road (Old Santa Fe Trail) in eastern Colorado and Kansas. It also followed the historic Northwestern Turnpike across West Virginia.^[6] In most states that had numbered their state highways, US 50 followed only one or two numbers across the state.^[7]

One major controversy erupted in relation to the preliminary route of US 50. The through route had been assigned to the Old Sante Fe Trail, while the spur U.S. Route 250 followed the competing New Santa Fe Trail to the south. As a compromise, the Joint Board on Interstate Highways approved a split configuration — U.S. Route 50N and U.S. Route 50S — in January.^[8] Another problem was in western Utah, where no improved road existed for US 50 to use. The final numbering plan, approved in November 1926, left a gap in US 50 between Ely, Nevada and Thistle, Utah. Finally, rather than ending US 50 at Wadsworth, where the Lincoln and Victory Highways merged, it was sent over the Lincoln Highway's Pioneer Branch, past the south side of Lake Tahoe, to Sacramento, California.^[1][9]

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge

The gap in Utah was soon bypassed by taking US 50 to the north, crossing the Great Salt Lake Desert with U.S. Route 40 to Salt Lake City, and using long portions of U.S. Route 93 in Nevada and U.S. Route 89 in Utah.^[10] U.S. Route 6 was marked along the direct, but still partially unimproved, route in 1937; it was finally paved in 1952,^[11] and US 50 was moved to it within a few years.^[12] Another straightening was made in 1976, when US 50 in central Utah was moved south onto the new extension of Interstate 70 at the request of the National Highway 50 Federation,^[13][14] a group dedicated to promoting US 50.^[15] Among other things, the group has unsuccessfully pushed for an extension of Interstate 70 west along US 50 to California.^[16]

The north–south split in Kansas was eliminated in the late 1950s, with the south route — which was to be US 250 — becoming part of US 50, and most of US 50N becoming part of a new U.S. Route 56.^[17] Another split was located between Athens, Ohio and Ellenboro, West Virginia from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s, when US 50 went back to its original south route; that U.S. Route 50N is now Ohio State Route 550 and part of West Virginia Route 16.^[18]

At its west end, US 50 was extended south from Sacramento along U.S. Route 99 to Stockton and west to the San Francisco Bay Area, replacing U.S. Route 48, by the early 1930s.^[19] US 50 was officially cut back to Sacramento in the 1964 renumbering, replaced by Interstate 580,^[20] but remained on maps and signs for several more years.^[21][22] US 50 was extended east from Annapolis to Ocean City, Maryland several years prior to the opening of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in 1952;^[23] this extension replaced much of U.S. Route 213.

See also[link]

Related U.S. Routes[link]

• U.S. Route 150
• U.S. Route 250
• U.S. Route 350
• U.S. Route 450
• U.S. Route 550
• U.S. Route 650

Bannered routes[link]

• U.S. Route 50 Alternate in Nevada
• U.S. Route 50 Business in Pueblo, Colorado
• U.S. Route 50 Business in Garden City, Kansas
• U.S. Route 50 Business in Lawrenceville, Illinois
• U.S. Route 50 Business in Belpre, Ohio
• U.S. Route 50 Business in Salisbury, Maryland

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: U.S. Route 50

v t e United States Numbered Highways 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 87 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 101 163 400 412 425 All Bannered Divided Bypasses Routes in italics are no longer a part of the system. Highlighted routes are considered main routes of the system.

Vladimiro Ilyich Montesinos Torres (born May 20, 1945) was the long-standing head of Peru's intelligence service, Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional (SIN), under President Alberto Fujimori. In 2000, secret videos, which he had recorded, were televised that showed his bribing an elected congressman to leave the opposition and join the Fujimorist side of Congress. The ensuing scandal caused Montesinos to flee the country and hastened the resignation of Fujimori.

Subsequent investigations revealed Montesinos to be at the centre of a vast web of illegal activities, including embezzlement, graft, gunrunning, and drug trafficking. He has been tried, convicted and sentenced for numerous charges. Montesinos had strong connections with the CIA, the United States international intelligence Agency, and was said to have received some $10 million from the agency for his government's anti-terrorist activities.^[1]

Early years and education[link]

Vladimiros Montesinos was born in the city of Arequipa, the capital of the Arequipa Region in southern Peru. His parents, who were of Greek descent and communists, named him after Vladimir Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union.

In 1965, Montesinos graduated as a military cadet at the US Army's School of the Americas in Panama. A year later, he graduated from the Military School of Chorrillos, in Lima, Peru.

Career[link]

By the early 1970s, during the leftist military junta of General Juan Velasco, Montesinos became a captain in the Peruvian army. By 1973, he had been appointed to the role of aide to General Edgardo Mercado Jarrín, who served as both Prime Minister and Chief of the Armed Forces, .

1976 spying scandal[link]

In 1976, Major Jose Fernandez Salvatteci of the Military Intelligence Service (Spanish: Servicio de Inteligencia del Ejército (SIE) charged Montesinos with the crimes of spying and treason, accusing him of delivering military documents to the United States embassy in Lima. The documents included a list of weapons which Peru had purchased from the Soviet Union. Jarrin ordered the charges dropped.

That same year, Montesinos went on a two-week trip to Washington, D.C., paid for by the United States (US) government. Upon returning to Lima, he was arrested for having failed to obtain formal government permission to make the trip. The subsequent investigation revealed that top-secret documents had been found in his possession, and that he had photographed them and taken copies to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Montesinos had travelled to the U.S. without authorization from army command, and had forged military documents to allow him to complete the trip without being detained. He visited several foreign institutions as an official representative of the Peruvian army, also without authorization. Montesinos was dishonorably discharged from the military and sentenced to a year in military prison. This was a far less severe sentence than the customary death penalty that was the punishment for traitors during the military regime.

Years later, declassified US State Department documents revealed the reason for the CIA's interest in Montesinos. In the 1970s, Peru was governed by the only left-wing regime in South America, a continent dominated by right-wing governments. Locked in the Cold War with the Soviet Union and fearing its influence in the region, as well as that of the Communist government of Cuba, the US was seeking information about activities in Peru. Montesinos knew about a potential attack against Peru's southern long-time rival, Chile, then ruled by dictator Augusto Pinochet, an ally of the U.S. The operation, to be backed by the Cuban military, had the objective of recovering the territory Peru had lost after the War of the Pacific.^[2]

After military life[link]

In February 1978, Montesinos was freed after two years in jail. He was given work by his cousin Sergio Cardenal Montesinos, a lawyer who persuaded him to pursue a degree in law. In April of the same year, Montesinos applied to the National University of San Marcos in Lima. He received his law diploma only three months later, through fraudulent means. Book No. 24 of the University of San Marcos Office of Records, where Montesino's graduation would be noted, has disappeared from the Office.^{[citation needed]} Montesino's undergraduate thesis and other materials related to his academic record have never been produced.^{[citation needed]}

On August 15, 1978, Montesinos used his degree to register as a lawyer with the Superior Court of Lima. Ten days later, on August 25, 1978, he became a member of the Lima bar association. He became notorious for representing a number of Colombian and Peruvian members of the illegal drug trade, as well as police officers accused of being involved in drug trafficking. Between 1978 and 1979, he represented Colombian drug lords Evaristo "Papá Doc" Porras Ardila and Jaime Tamayo. In addition, he acted as guarantor on Tamayo's lease of several offices and warehouses used to manufacture cocaine.

Between 1980 and 1983, Montesinos revealed sensitive information related to military wiretapping and assassinations to the newspaper Kausachum, run by Augusto Zimmerman, ex-spokesperson of deposed president Juan Velasco Alvarado. General Carlos Briceño, the Commander of the Peruvian Army, re-opened the investigation into Montesino's alleged treason.

Montesinos fled to Ecuador, where in 1984 he revealed information to the Ecuadorian Army about Peru's military weapons purchases. The investigation was closed that year in order to "protect institutional image", and Montesinos was allowed to return to Peru.^{[citation needed]}

The Fujimori years[link]

Montesinos came to public notice again in 1990 when he defended Fujimori against accusations of fraudulent real estate dealings, during the presidential campaign, when Fujimori was an obscure candidate. The paperwork in the case disappeared and the charges were dropped. After Fujimori won the election on July 28, 1990, Montesinos became his chief advisor and the effective head of the intelligence service, whose acronym is SIN.^{[citation needed]}

Through his position, he came to have virtually unlimited power within Peru. By promoting his former classmates into top positions, Montesinos came to control the Peruvian Armed Forces. During the course of the decade, he established a network of corruption that permeated media, business, political parties, and government. Toward the end of the Fujimori years, it was reported that Montesinos' tax records indicated he was making $600,000 a year, even though his official salary was $18,000.^{[citation needed]}

Political repression[link]

Montesinos is widely accused of threatening or harassing Fujimori's political opponents. Evidence proves he supervised a death squad known as the Grupo Colina, part of the National Intelligence Service, which was thought to have been responsible for the Barrios Altos massacre and the La Cantuta massacre, actions intended to repress the Shining Path (Senderoso Luminoso), the major Communist insurgency that had been operating since the 1980s.

Four officers who were tortured during interrogation after plotting a coup d'état against Fujimori in November 1992 later stated that Montesinos took an active part in torturing them. On March 16, 1998, former Peruvian Army Intelligence Agent Luisa Zanatta accused Montesinos of ordering illegal wiretaps of leading politicians and journalists. Zanatta also said that army intelligence agents had killed fellow agent Mariella Barreto Riofano because she gave a magazine information about human rights violations, as well as the location of bodies from the La Cantuta massacre. Zanatta said that in early 1997, Barreto had told her that she was part of the Grupo Colina death squad responsible for the La Cantuta massacre. Barreto's body was found by a roadside on March 29, 1997 and showed evidence of torture before death and mutilation.

Control of the media[link]

During the Fujimori years, Montesinos gained extensive control of the media in Peru. By the end of 1999, Montesinos had editorial control over TV Channels 2, 4, 5, 9, and 13. TV Channel 7 was already state-owned. One of the country's two cable channels, Channel 10 had been secretly purchased by the armed forces. That left just one independent station in Peru: Channel N, a twenty-four-hour cable news outlet that reached barely 5% of the population.

In April 1997, Baruch Ivcher's Frecuencia Latina Channel 2 broadcast allegations by Peruvian Army Intelligence agent Leonor La Rosa that she was tortured by intelligence agents. (Her testimony was later brought into question or proved false.^[3][4])

On July 14, 1997, the government legally stripped Ivcher, a native Israeli, of his Peruvian nationality for supposed offenses against the government. In September control of Channel 2 was given to minority shareholders more sympathetic to the government. In response, former United Nations Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar said, "Peru is no longer a democracy. We are now a country headed by an authoritarian regime."^{[citation needed]}

2000 Elections[link]

The 2000 presidential election, following years of political violence, was controversial. A journalist claimed to have a videotape of Montesinos bribing election officials to fix the vote. The journalist claimed to have been kidnapped by secret police agents, who sawed his arm to the bone to get him to give up the tape. In view of such tactics, the Clinton administration threatened briefly not to recognize Fujimori's victory. It backed off from this threat, and pressured Fujimori's government to take action to root out abuses, including ousting Montesinos.

US policy was aimed at preserving the achievements of the Fujimori regime, while ending its excesses.^{[citation needed]} Continuing political unrest in Peru would have represented a serious problem as US operations against the FARC in Colombia got under way. Peru was needed as a base of operations and a defensive backstop against guerrillas based in Colombia's south, not far from the Peruvian border.^[5]

Drug traffic[link]

Allegations circulated that Montesinos and Gen. Nicolás Hermoza Ríos, the chairman of Peru's joint chiefs of staff, were taking protection money from drug traffickers. Documents declassified later by the US government showed that in 1996 the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was aware of the allegations.^[6] Despite evidence that Montesinos was in business with Colombian narco-traffickers, the CIA paid Montesinos's intelligence organization $1 million a year for 10 years to fight drug trafficking.

Demetrio Chávez Peñaherrera, known as "El Vaticano", testified that Montesinos was a protector of drug traffickers. In a drug trafficking trial on August 16, 1996, Chávez Peñaherrera stated that he had bribed members of the Peruvian Armed Forces and Montesinos, as the effective chief of the Peruvian Intelligence Service (SIN), to be able to operate freely in Campanilla, a jungle area of the Huallaga region. Recordings of radio communications presented during the trial showed that members of the army had let Chávez's organization operate freely in the Huallaga region in exchange for bribes. During certain appearances in the court, Chávez appeared drugged and maybe tortured.^{[citation needed]} After sentencing, while in prison, Chávez talked to the press and revealed that Montesinos said to him at one point that he "did some work" with Pablo Escobar, leader of the Medellín Cartel.

Montesinos was paid US$50,000 a month during 1991 and 1992. As proof, the government presented recordings during Chávez's trial of radio communications between his drug traffickers and members of the Armed Forces attesting to bribery of Montesinos.^[7] In addition, Chávez said that retired general Nicolás de Bari Hermoza, the ex-president of the Armed Forces Joint Command, and the ex-President Alberto Fujimori, both had complete knowledge of the illicit acts of Montesinos.

Downfall[link]

Frequently, Montesinos secretly made videotape of his bribing individuals in his office, incriminating politicians, officials and military officers. His downfall appears to have been precipitated by the discovery of a major illegal arms shipment. Arranged by guerrilla leader Tomás Medina Caracas, the arms were airlifted from Jordan via Peru, to the FARC insurgent guerrillas in southern Colombia .

Montesinos claimed the credit for uncovering the arms smuggling, which involved upwards of 10,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles. Jordan rejected the Peruvian version of events, insisting the shipments were legitimate government-to-government deals. Evidence emerged which pointed to Montesinos having orchestrated the gun-running operation rather than dismantling it. A senior Peruvian general was found to have participated in the deal, and another principal participant was a government contractor. He had signed at least eleven deals with the Fujimori regime, most to provide supplies to the Peruvian military.

According to one report, a group of military officers angered by Montesinos's apparent role in the arms deal broke into his offices and stole the video that was subsequently broadcast.^{[citation needed]} Because of the arms deal, Montesinos lost the support of the US, which attached high strategic importance to crushing the FARC.

[edit] The Vladi-videos

On 14 September 2000, Peruvian television broadcast a video of Montesinos giving a bribe to opposition congressman Alberto Kouri to support Fujimori's Perú 2000 party. The video caused Fujimori's remaining support to collapse, and immediately he announced the firing of Montesinos, dissolution of the intelligence service and new elections—in which he would not run. Shortly thereafter, Montesinos sought political asylum in Panama.^[8]

In following months, some of the most infamous "Vladi-videos" were released. In one, owners of Channel 2 are offered USD $500,000 a month to ban appearances of the political opposition on their channel. Another shows Channel 4 owners getting $1.5 million a month for similar cooperation. Others show Montesinos counting out $350,000 in cash to Channel 5's proprietor, and the owner of Channel 9's receiving $50,000 to cancel an investigative series called SIN censura (Uncensored). In June 2001, the Venezuelan government arrested Montesinos in Caracas and extradited him back to Peru. He is on trial.

Trial[link]

Montesinos is imprisoned at the Callao maximum-security prison naval base (which was built under his orders during the 1990s) and is facing sixty-three charges that range from drug trafficking to murder. The lengthy series of court cases in Lima in which he is being tried is revealing the scale of the corruption during the Fujimori administration.

In 1998 the government purchased three new MiG-29 fighter planes from Russia, for which it paid USD $300 million, although observers say the true cost of the planes is only around $100 million. Following subsequent international investigations of the sale, the government of Italy issued an arrest warrant for Yevgeny Ananyev, former general director of the government-owned company Rosvooruzhenie. Ananyev was accused of money laundering with Montesinos by diverting $18 million through Swiss and Italian banks after overseeing the sale of the jet fighters via Belarus.^[9]

Montesinos was convicted of embezzlement, illegal assumption of his post as intelligence chief, abuse of power, influence peddling and bribing TV stations. Those charges carried sentences of between five and fifteen years each, but Peruvian prison sentences are served concurrently, so prosecutors continued to pursue him on additional charges. He was acquitted of two specific charges of corruption and conspiracy related to the mayor of Callao, whom he was alleged to have helped evade drug-trafficking charges.

In August 2004, U.S. officials returned to Peru $20 million in funds embezzled by Montesinos; it had been deposited in U.S. banks by two men working for him. Prime Minister Carlos Ferrero and other prosecutors believed that the total amount embezzeled by Montesinos during his tenure at the National Intelligence Service surpassed one billion dollars, most of which was deposited in foreign banks.

In October 2004 Wilmer Yarleque Ordinola, 44, was apprehended in Virginia in the US and convicted of immigration fraud. He had been working as a construction laborer without papers. The Peruvian government sought his extradition as an alleged member of Montesino's Grupa Colina and responsible for 26-35 of the 7,260 deaths or "disappearances" which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Peru) attributed to the group. In October 2004 Yarleque was being held by the U.S. Marshals in Alexandria, Virginia.^[10] The suspect was initially granted a writ of habeas corpus, as he argued that he could not be extradited for political offenses committed for the government, but the US Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision in 2005, opening the way for his extradition.^[11]

Montesinos was sentenced in September 2006 to a 20-year prison term for his direct involvement in an illegal arms deal to provide 10,000 assault weapons to Colombian rebels. Tribunal judges made their ruling based on evidence that placed Montesinos at the center of an intricate web of negotiations designed to transport assault rifles from Jordan to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia FARC.^[12]

In 2007 Montesinos was on trial for allegedly ordering the extra-judicial killings of the MRTA hostage-takers during the 1997 Japanese embassy hostage crisis. The former chief of the armed forces, Nicolas de Bari Hermoza, and retired Colonel Roberto Huaman are also charged with ordering the extrajudicial execution of the 14 rebels. This action followed the government's commando raid in April to free the more than 70 diplomats who had been held hostage for more than four months in the Japanese embassy. The Peruvian special forces’ recapture resulted in the deaths of one hostage, two commandos and all of the MRTA rebels. The former Japanese political attaché Hidetaka Ogura, one of the hostages freed from the Embassy, stated that he saw at least three of the MRTA rebels captured alive. If convicted, Montesinos and the two former military officers face up to 20 years in prison.^[13]

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• "Army Played 'A Key Role' In Departure Of Fujimori, Intelligence Service Scandals Rankled Peruvian Military" (Washington Post September 18, 2000)
• "Bribes, Lies, and Videotape in Peru" (Business Week February 2, 2001)
• "CIA Gave $10 Million to Peru's Ex-Spymaster" (July 3, 2001)
• Declassified United States NSA documents about Montesinos
• Profile of Vladimiro Montesinos (desaparecidos.org)
• "How to Subvert Democracy: Montesinos in Peru" (by John McMillan and Pablo Zoido, March 2004)
• "Montesinos, Fujimori, Toledo and Peru's future"
• "Peru, the disintegration of the Fujimori regime" (World Socialist website)
• "The Betrayal of Peru's Democracy: Montesinos as Fujimori's Svengali" (Covert Action Quarterly, Summer 1994)
• "'The Doctor' Divided U.S. Officials, CIA Defended Peruvian Against Human-Rights Accusations" (Washington Post, September 22, 2000)
• Montesinos: The end of the road (BBC News, 24 June 2001)
• "The Meaning of Montesinos"
• "The Spy who would rule Peru"
• "Videomania" (the Economist, February 8, 2001)
• "Borron y Manchas Nuevas: Documentos de inteligencia norteamericanos sobre Montesinos" (Caretas) (in Spanish)
• "Montesinos's Web", PBS FRONTLINE/World October 2005. View streaming video of recordings secretly made by former Peruvian intelligence chief Vladimir Montesinos of the CIA station chief, a Peruvian Supreme Court judge and a high-ranking executive of a major U.S. mining company, the documentary itself, as well as Web exclusive features, interview transcripts, FOIA documents and a "gallery of players" involved in the protracted legal dispute over Yanacocha, one of the richest gold mines in the world.

Carlos Fernando Raffo Arce is a Peruvian politician and a Congressman representing Lima for the 2006-2011 term. Raffo belongs to the Alliance for the Future party. He's one of the main supporters of Alberto Fujimori.

External links[link]

• Official Congressional Site

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