Marcos Hints He May Return Home : Also Claims U.S. Officials Took Part in His Overthrow

MANILA —  Ferdinand E. Marcos today denied charges of corruption, said U.S. officials may have taken part in his ouster and indicated for the first time he may return from exile.

“We must war again against the monster who imposes slavery,” the deposed president said in a telephone call taped today in Manila and released to the Associated Press.

“Remain united so that we will see each other again,” Marcos also told supporters in his home region in a handwritten postscript to an eight-page letter dated March 21 and addressed to “my beloved Filipino countrymen.”

Both the tape of the telephone conversation and the letter were given to the AP’s Manila bureau by a source close to Marcos.

The 68-year-old Marcos, from his exile home in Hawaii, accused President Corazon Aquino of striving for wealth and power, imposing a dictatorship, and allowing her followers to loot his palace and wear his wife Imelda’s dresses.

“Cry, my beloved people. . . . There is trouble abroad in the land, trouble that reaches into every corner,” Marcos said in his telephone message.

The letter and telephone call were the first lengthy public statements from Marcos since he fled the country Feb. 26. He told reporters in Honolulu on Easter Sunday that he still considers himself the Philippine president. (Story on Page 5.)

In the telephone message, Marcos said the “coup d’etat” that toppled him “was apparently helped by some of the elements of the American government,” but he did not mention names.

“In one message from the U.S. Embassy to the Office of Media Affairs, the duty officer in the U.S. Embassy threatened the use of Marines, United States Marines, against Marcos to prevent President Marcos from utilizing his superior military power against the rebels,” the ousted ruler said on the tape.

Marcos, who ruled the Philippines for 20 years, had claimed in a previous statement that he could have crushed the rebellion but did not want to shed Filipinos’ blood.

In the taped message, he hinted that he was misled into leaving the Philippines, saying he had insisted on being taken from the palace to his home province of Ilocos Norte. Instead, he said, he was flown to Clark Air Base and later to Guam, and his private belongings were ransacked.

U.S. officials said Marcos had 300 crates of jewels, cash and other items when he arrived in Hawaii on a U.S. plane, including $1.2 million in Philippine pesos. Marcos said the pesos were part of his campaign fund and personal money to be taken with him to his home province.

Philippine officials maintain that Marcos and his associates may have plundered $5 billion to $10 billion from the government.

Marcos insisted that he won the Feb. 7 presidential election. Charges that he cheated and terrorized voters triggered the revolt that toppled him.

“Today, you see the spectacle of looting by all kinds of groups, some wearing uniforms and the others in civilian clothes, . . .” Marcos said in the taped message. “There was looting not only by the poor but by the rich and powerful. . . . The more outstanding ladies in the opposition started fitting and using the dresses of the First Lady.”

He said on the tape that Aquino was “looting the government for power, looting the government for vindictiveness, and certainly the No. 1 looter protects her tribe.”