Peruvian reformers are getting U.S. assistance. Ambassador John Hamilton said U.S. agencies are aiding the investigations and the international manhunt.
"Every agency is involved," Hamilton said in an interview. "They are following up leads in the United States, answering specific questions, providing tips where he might be. There is full engagement. We have provided the Peruvians with information that they certainly thought was worth looking into."
Asked if the U.S. agencies include the CIA, which has been criticized for maintaining close ties to Montesinos despite his sinister reputation, U.S. officials declined comment except to repeat the ambassador's statement that "every agency" was involved.
Peruvian investigators used a new anti-corruption law to arrest Montesinos' daughter, who is studying to be an English teacher and, according to her mother, was surrounded on the street by four police cars Saturday. Authorities say Silvana Montesinos should have known that her shopping sprees were funded by ill-gotten cash.
Those are ruthless tactics intended to pressure the fugitive spy chief and flush him out of hiding, according to Nancy Chiabra, the family lawyer.
"They are trying to break him," Chiabra said. "They want him to show his face."
Montesinos hasn't been seen in public since October, when he was photographed in exile in Panama. He returned to Peru on Oct. 23. While Fujimori led a futile search for his onetime advisor--Becerra displayed a shattered door Wednesday that she said was knocked down by the president's raiders--Montesinos fled Peru on a yacht Oct. 29, officials say.
Accompanied by three military bodyguards, the spymaster made his way to the Galapagos Islands, Costa Rica, Aruba and Venezuela, according to investigators and the subsequent testimony of the bodyguards.
The last unconfirmed sighting of Montesinos came in December. He reportedly stayed at a hotel in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, between Dec. 7 and Dec. 13. According to Peruvian officials and press reports, doctors at a clinic in Caracas identified him as a man with a Venezuelan passport who underwent plastic surgery on his face--then skipped out on the bill as Peruvian police closed in.
