Explosive news was nothing new at Peru's Channel 2. The station was blown up in a terrorist attack in 1992. And lately it had been lobbing bombshells of its own. On Sunday, September 14, Gonzalo Quijandria, the young host of Peru's most popular news show, Contrapunto (Counterpoint), let fly the latest: Peruvian security forces had launched a sophisticated operation called "Plan Emilio" involving electronic surveillance of opposition politicians and journalists.

Five days after that story aired, the Peruvian police raided Channel 2. They were enforcing a court order stripping Baruch Ivcher, the Israeli-born owner, of his Peruvian citizenship and turning control of his station, known as Frecuencia Latina, over to a pair of minority investors. Quijandria, along with the entire staff of Contrapunto, immediately resigned in protest. It was the last act in a naked power play by President Alberto Fujimori and his coterie of military advisers, and the latest example of their crackdown on Peru's aggressive press.

"We were doing the kind of investigative journalism that is normally carried out by the print media," said Fernando ViaÐa, Channel 2's news director, just before he handed in his own resignation. "That's not something the authorities have accepted." Indeed, the Peruvian government's already limited tolerance for the press began to wane after Fujimori dissolved the Congress in 1992, and turned into hostility after guerrillas from the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement took over the Japanese embassy in Lima in December. Military officials complained of negative and careless coverage.

Critics charge that Fujimori is trying to muzzle a sharp-toothed press in anticipation of his run for a third presidential term in 2000. Peruvian journalists complain of continual harassment, including phone tapping and surveillance. The campaign against Ivcher's Channel 2 marks a public escalation of hostilities.

 It began in August 1996, after Channel 2 aired a report linking a major drug trafficker to corrupt elements in the army. After the allegations were broadcast, the military withdrew the soldiers who had provided street security for Frecuencia Latina since Maoist Shining Path guerrillas sent a dynamite-packed truck crashing through its front gate in 1992. Military officials seemed particularly incensed by a shocking report broadcast on Channel 2 just after military commandos freed the seventy-one embassy hostages in April. In an on-air interview, a former military intelligence officer named Leonor La Rosa alleged that the army had tortured her and murdered a colleague to prevent them from revealing a secret military plan to assassinate journalists.

 After that report aired, Ivcher claims that army helicopters began to buzz his Lima mattress factory. On May 23, Peru's Joint Command took the unprecedented step of issuing a press release declaring that Ivcher had mounted "a campaign intended to damage the image and prestige of Peru's armed forces." Under Peru's constitution, the military is barred from publicly expressing opinions on political matters. Ivcher has fled Peru to Miami.

On July 13, Contrapunto broke yet another embarrassing story, airing conversations taped by government security forces who were spying on journalists. That same day the immigration office issued its decree invalidating Ivcher's Peruvian citizenship. Under Peruvian law, noncitizens may not own media outlets. The government maintains that Ivcher's naturalization as a Peruvian in 1984 is invalid because he did not properly renounce his Israeli citizenship.

Peruvians reacted with outrage at the decision, demonstrating their support for Contrapunto by marching in front of the station. Journalists at Channel 2 slept on the floors inside, vowing they would not leave unless the police came in and got them „ no small feat since the station is surrounded by twenty-foot-high cement walls with guard towers and three-inch-thick steel security doors.

But the end, when it came, was not particularly dramatic. A guard at the station, in cahoots with the police, opened the door for them. The journalists, after resigning, walked out peacefully.

 Government officials claim that the decision to transfer ownership of the station has nothing to do with press freedom. "This is an issue of national security," says Congressman Ricardo Marcenaro of the ruling Cambio 90 party. "I wish I could tell you more."

Statements like that have fueled rumors that have been swirling about why Ivcher „ whose uncritical support of the Fujimori government had made Channel 2 a target of the terrorist bombing in 1992 „ had suddenly changed his tune in late 1996. Privately there is much speculation that it was the result of a business deal (reputedly involving everything from mattresses to weapons) that went bad.

ViaÐa, the former news director, dismisses such stories, arguing that Ivcher had no ulterior motive in encouraging journalists to report aggressively on corruption. "He supported Fujimori because he had eliminated terrorism and controlled inflation," says ViaÐa. "Now he wanted to help the president fight corruption. He thought that Fujimori would thank him."

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