Manhunt: Vladimiro Montesinos has been pursued for four months. Top officials still fear him.

              By SEBASTIAN ROTELLA, Times Staff Writer

                   LIMA, Peru--Imagine the ideal fugitive.
                   He has millions of dollars stashed around the globe. He honed his spy skills as chief of one of Latin America's best espionage
              services. His international contacts include gunrunners, drug lords, bankers, lawyers, guerrillas, politicians and military officers in the
              United States, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East.
                   That sketch of Vladimiro Montesinos, Peru's former spy chief, helps explain how he has eluded capture for four months. The hunt
              for him obsesses Peruvians and intrigues observers across Latin America. The region has a history of odysseys by fugitives, including
              disgraced political bosses and fallen gangsters: Montesinos' story combines elements of both kinds.
                   His pursuers are a secretive team of about 80 investigators led by Interior Minister Antonio Ketin Vidal, a hero of Peru's fight
              against terrorism. The pursuit is a personal duel between old enemies. And it is more than just a cloak-and-dagger epilogue to this
              nation's year of living dangerously.
                   As long as Montesinos remains at large, Peruvian leaders worry that he menaces their recuperating democracy. The danger is
              concrete as well as psychological, according to Jose Ugaz, the special prosecutor investigating allegations that Montesinos built a
              criminal network as chief of the National Intelligence Service, or SIN.
                   "There is no doubt that active Montesinos people remain in the system: There are judges, prosecutors, police," Ugaz said in an
              interview last week. "I have information that people here have been in touch with him as recently as two weeks ago. I think he is
              absolutely informed about what is going on. And I even think he is still making some decisions."
                   Investigators believe that Montesinos, who was last spotted about two months ago in Venezuela, has ordered counterattacks.
              Last month, pro-Montesinos legislators temporarily dissolved a congressional commission investigating him. A witness was
              threatened after talking to Ugaz by phone, indicating that wiretapping--omnipresent during Montesinos' reign at the SIN--persists.
              Videotape evidence was stolen from a courthouse.
                   Most disturbing, many Peruvians believe that Montesinos was behind an accusatory report about interim President Valentin
              Paniagua broadcast Jan. 28 by a television station tied to the SIN. The allegation of corruption against the president by a former
              intelligence agent appears to be groundless; Paniagua denounced it as a plot to destabilize his government ahead of an April
              presidential election.

                   Capture Would Boost Confidence of Public
                   In a society recovering from the distrust and fear that the strongman regime of former President Alberto Fujimori left behind, the
              capture of Montesinos would bring a jolt of confidence similar to the euphoria after the landmark 1992 arrest of Abimael Guzman,
              the feared warlord of Peru's leftist Sendero Luminoso guerrillas. That victory worsened a feud between Montesinos and Ketin, who
              was promoted but soon pushed out of the government.
                   "Ketin is very meticulous. He's a very good investigator," said a former U.S. Embassy official. "He hated Montesinos with a
              passion, but he would never express it. You could tell there was a very deep feeling there. Montesinos just hated that he didn't get to
              share in the glory."
                   Ketin, a retired police general who shuns interviews, is the spymaster's antithesis as well as his nemesis. The interior minister is
              shy, rumpled and bookish, according to the former U.S. official, who asked to remain anonymous to protect his safety and career.
              Ketin had a reputation for humane, legalistic treatment of captured terrorists, even the reviled Guzman.
                   Interviews about Montesinos and SIN videotapes of his private conversations convey a very different image: The former spy
              chief comes off as smooth, imperious and, in the words of a former U.S. diplomat, "physically reptilian." He collected diamond
              watches, sharp Italian shoes and flashy young girlfriends. And he is accused of major acts of criminality as well as human rights
              abuses.
                   The hunt for Montesinos may be the ultimate test of Ketin's detective skills. Despite Guzman's terrorist legions in Peru, the rebel
              leader could not match Montesinos' resources and allies around the globe.
                   "This man, who has so much money and, because of his specialty in intelligence, has the capacity to construct networks of
              protection, has many diverse possibilities for hiding places, including Peru itself," said Justice Minister Diego Garcia Sayan.
                   More than $80 million linked to Montesinos has been found in banks in Europe, the United States and Latin America. But he
              withdrew money from accounts in Switzerland before his assets there were frozen in November, according to Ugaz. Investigators
              believe he has hundreds of millions more.
                   Montesinos had prepared for an escape in the classic manner of drug lords and other desperadoes, according to Peruvian and
              U.S. officials and media reports. He has several passports and has legal resident status in countries including Panama and Argentina.
              He knows the techniques of life on the run: disguises, safe houses, encrypted satellite phones to thwart eavesdroppers.
                   "He has the facility to go anyplace, to be smuggled into places where he can bribe people," said the former embassy official.
              "Latin America has very fluid borders."
                   There have been reports of Montesinos in various countries in recent weeks. On one day, U.S. officials received tips that he was
              in two countries.
                   The primary focus of the search, however, remains Venezuela. Peruvian investigators suspect that the government of President
              Hugo Chavez protected Montesinos and prevented Peruvian police from catching him in December when the former spy chief is
              believed to have undergone plastic surgery at a clinic in the capital, Caracas. Montesinos may still be holed up in Venezuela, officials
              say.
                   "It appears that Venezuela is giving him cover," Ugaz said. "I understand that the Venezuelan police and authorities are doing little
              to cooperate in this matter. I have the impression that he may still be in Venezuela."
                   Peruvian officials believe that Montesinos' ties to the Chavez regime date back to 1992. At that time, Peru's military sheltered 50
              Venezuelan officers who had backed a failed coup by Chavez, then a lieutenant colonel.
                   Montesinos was key to that decision. Venezuelan officials may now be "repaying the favor," Ugaz said.
                   Venezuelan diplomats deny their government is hiding Montesinos. Two prosecutors have been assigned to investigate whether
              he entered the country using a forged or stolen Venezuelan passport in the name of Manuel Antonio Rodriguez Perez.
                   "We do not protect human rights violators or drug traffickers," an indignant Foreign Minister Jose Vicente Rangel said in
              December. Police found no trace of Montesinos, he added, but "illegally, on a private plane, clandestinely or with another name, he
              could have entered Venezuela, as do many people."
                   The former spy chief's objective apparently was Venezuela from the moment he fled Lima, Peru's capital, on Oct. 29 aboard a
              friend's yacht, one step ahead of troops loyal to Fujimori, who resigned in November.
                   The fugitive was accompanied by three trusted military bodyguards, the yacht's owner and a Peruvian starlet. They met up with
              Emma Aurora Mejia, described in media reports as a public relations expert, in the Galapagos Islands.
                   During the voyage, Montesinos talked by satellite telephone with a "Venezuelan friend" who offered to send a private jet for him,
              according to subsequent testimony by the bodyguards. The fugitive spymaster decided it was safer to travel by sea. He parted
              company with the starlet and bodyguards and, accompanied by three Venezuelans on another boat, continued to Costa Rica, Aruba
              and Venezuela.
                   Montesinos and Mejia holed up Dec. 7 to 13 in the fading, once-fashionable El Avila Hotel in Caracas, according to Peruvian
              authorities. Investigators are convinced that Montesinos, whose balding, bespectacled visage has become notorious, underwent an
              operation Dec. 14 at the San Bernardino Diagnostic Institute. The clinic's director confirmed to reporters that a plastic surgeon had
              operated on the nose and eyelids of a man calling himself Rodriguez. The surgeon refused to comment.
                   Peruvian police got word of Montesinos' presence from Mejia, who turned herself in at the Peruvian Embassy in the Venezuelan
              capital on the day of the operation. Peruvian police rushed to Caracas on Dec. 16 but were delayed by uncooperative Venezuelan
              agents, according to Peruvian investigators.
                   By the time the pursuers reached the clinic, their quarry was gone, authorities say.

                   Help From FBI, CIA Could Prove Decisive
                   As the hunt continues, the role of U.S. agencies could be crucial. The FBI, CIA and Drug Enforcement Administration have the
              global resources necessary to track down a formidable fugitive.
                   And previous experiences could offer lessons. Cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar, for example, eluded the combined might of U.S.
              and Colombian law enforcement until he made the fatal mistake of phoning his family once too often in 1993. Colombian police
              traced the call and shot him dead on a rooftop.
                   Another factor will be Montesinos' personality. Accustomed to absolute power, he has shown a brazen and impetuous side: He
              filmed himself paying apparent bribes. In October, he defied the hemisphere's governments with his risky return to Peru from exile in
              Panama.
                   The recent arrests of several Montesinos family members could be part of a strategy to put pressure on him. If he insists on
              contacting allies and striking back at enemies in Peru, he could expose himself to capture.
                   "What's going to do him in is his own personality," the former embassy official said. "He'll surface someplace."

              Copyright 2000