Aida D. Fariscal, My Favorite Pinay

There are many beautiful women in the Philippines, and I can name a few myself. But the loveliest of all is a stout 78-year-old grandmother named Aida D. Fariscal. A humble housewife, she joined the Manila police force after her husband died in the line of duty. Fariscal was a tough cookie, once being shot in the arm and winning an award in 1983 for arresting three murder suspects on Mindoro Island. That, however, is not the source of her should-be fame. A dozen years later, she played a key role in foiling a Mohammedan terrorist plot called Operation Bojinka—code for “loud bang.” Had it been successful, Pope John Paul II (who visited the Philippines in mid-January 1995) would have been assassinated, 11 U.S.-bound airliners departing from Manila, Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul, Bangkok, Singapore and Tokyo would have been blown up over the Pacific Ocean, and a small plane packed with explosives would have been flown into CIA headquarters in Virginia. By dint of her gutsy police work, Fariscal may have saved 4,000 lives—including that of the Holy Father.

A city on edge

Manila was already on edge due to bombings at a shopping mall, at a theater and on Philippine Airlines Flight 434. These were the responsibility of Ramzi Yousef, a native of Kuwait. He, it would later be determined, had set a huge bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center in 1993. Financing had come from Osama bin Laden and an Indonesian bad boy named Riduan Isamuddin (nom de guerre of “Hambali”). Three months in the making, Operation Bojinka once included a plan to kill President Bill Clinton during his five-day visit to Asia in November 1994. That idea, however, was eventually abandoned.

Yousef, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abdul Hakim Murad, using aliases, rented room 603 of the Dona Josefa Apartments on December 8, 1994 and started hauling in chemicals from suppliers in Manila and Quezon City. They turned the place into a bomb-making factory. There was a cornucopia of explosive materials: nitroglycerin, sulfuric acid, picric acid, nitric acid, sodium trichloride, silver nitrate, nitrobenzoyl, ammonia, acetone and gasoline, plus timers (in the form of Casio watches), electrical wiring, batteries, switches and filaments. In one corner was a stack of phony passports, presumably to be distributed to the men who would carry out the attacks. Things progressed well until the night of Friday, January 6, 1995. Murad accidentally started a chemical fire in the kitchen sink. When the fire brigade arrived, he, Yousef and Mohammed assured them there was nothing amiss. We were just lighting firecrackers, they innocently proclaimed.

Can’t fool this lady

Fariscal, the watch commander, would have none of it. She was determined to see for herself. First, however, she needed a search warrant. Ten judges turned her down before she located one who would comply. She and the other officers quickly realized what the men were up to. They sought to escape; Yousef and Mohammed were successful, but Murad was chased down, put in improvised handcuffs and taken to the local police headquarters. On the way there, he offered Fariscal a bribe of $2,000—more than the average Philippine police officer makes in a year. This is a country with a reputation for corruption (traceable, in my opinion, to the colonial Spanish who ruled the islands for 250 years), but she told him to stick his 2K where the sun don’t shine or words to that effect.

Our story is not over. Inside the apartment, they found a computer and disks containing a treasure trove of data. The chilling three-part plan was revealed in detail. They had disrupted Operation Bojinka, and the plans and activities of bin Laden and his nefarious associates came into focus. Murad, treated rather roughly by the Philippine National Police, coughed up valuable information before being sent to the United States. He was tried and convicted of conspiring to bomb 12 planes and got a life sentence. Yousef, who had escaped to Islamabad, Pakistan, was nabbed after a shootout the next month. He, too, was convicted and put away forever and a day. Mohammed, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001 attacks, was captured 18 months later in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Turned over to the Americans as a “high-value detainee,” he is currently cooling his heels at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Hambali also calls Gitmo home. Bin Laden, as the world knows, was killed by American special forces at Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2, 2011.

No way to treat a heroine

Now back to Aida D. Fariscal, that stubborn and fearless policewoman. She was given a $700 reward and a trip to Taiwan, along with two bodyguards for five years (until just before 9/11). Others took credit for something she had done. Seldom promoted in a male-oriented police force, she retired in 2000 and today lives on a modest pension. Had the CIA, FBI, Immigration and Naturalization Service, National Security Agency and Bush administration been half as diligent, the Twin Towers might still be standing.