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Chapter 12 “It’s Not All Greek to Me” Bringing the Fight to the Homeland Published photographs of Steven Elias Psinakis show him looking fierce and unsmiling, with a bearded Ayatollah Khomeini–like face and piercing eyes. Apart from Manglapus, Psinakis was the most frequently pictured member of the U.S.-based opposition in both Philippine and American media throughout the martial law years. One early photo shows him “exhausted, wearing rumpled but stylish traveling clothes,” standing in a San Francisco federal court on July 6, 1987, charged with conspiracy and interstate transportation of explosive materials. He had landed at the San Francisco International Airport after a flight from Manila and was arrested upon arrival. Robert Lopez, a brother-in-law who came to the airport to meet him, was astounded: “It’s very strange because Steve has come in and out of the country without any problems over the past year.”1 At the arraignment, he pleaded not guilty and was returned to jail pending a bail hearing. He faced a sentence of up to fifteen years in prison and $20,000 in fines. He hadn’t “the slightest clue why they would move against me on a case this old,” he was quoted as saying in the San Francisco Examiner.2 The case was indeed five years old, but the indictment had been unsealed in secret only in December 1986, days before the statute of limitations would have run out. In 1981, said the indictment, bomb paraphernalia had been found in some garbage bags at his San Francisco home. In an affidavit, San Francisco FBI special agent Larry D. Terbush said that he “recovered approximately 600 feet of detonating cord with the explosive removed . . . that would weigh approximately ten pounds and could be used to manufacture explosive bombing devices.”3 92 . Chapter 12 Questions arose as soon as the indictment was unsealed. Why the five-year delay? And why at the very moment when a new democratic government was now in place? Strangest of all, four other people were originally charged in 1981, but only two had emerged as the main suspects. One was Psinakis; the other was a close associate, Charles Avila. To arrive at some answers, it is necessary to go back to the years before martial law was declared and Psinakis became involved with the U.S. exile groups. Born in Athens, Greece, in 1931, Psinakis arrived in the United States at the age of eighteen, having been awarded a college scholarship to study engineering. He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1955 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. Ten years later, he obtained U.S. citizenship. After ten years as an engineer in the United States, he worked in the Philippines for the next ten years as an operations manager for Meralco, an electric power company that served Metro Manila and was owned by Eugenio Lopez Sr. In 1969 he married Eugenio’s daughter Priscilla “Presy” Lopez, and they moved to Greece. While they were in Greece, Marcos declared martial law and imprisoned Eugenio “Geny” Lopez Jr. He then took over the Lopez business properties, which in addition to Meralco included the Manila Chronicle, the country’s second-largest newspaper, six TV and twenty-one radio stations, and all the other assets of Benpres, the holding company. Eugenio agreed to give them up in return for Geny’s release. Moreover, as long as Eugenio was in San Francisco, he agreed not to speak publicly against the martial law regime. In November 1974, with no prospect of his release, Geny decided to go on a hunger fast to draw attention to the plight of all political prisoners like himself. In a letter that he managed to secretly pass to his parents, he wrote in part: “By this act, I hope to end the humiliation and punishment that you have undergone for the past two years. Also, I hope to restore some of the dignity that rightfully belongs to any man and which you have been deprived of. You have demeaned yourself, you have been embarrassed , you have suffered enough.”4 When Marcos promised to release political prisoners, Geny and another cellmate, former president Sergio Osmena’s son Sergio III, broke their forty-day hunger fast. Marcos also broke his promise. On December 31, 1974, Eugenio Sr. reached his limit. He issued a statement to the press describing in detail how Marcos had extorted money from him for two years. “I have been...

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