Ted Bogosian And His Untruths About Monte Melkonian
By Ara Manoogian
hetq online
17.04.2 010
17 years following his martyrdom in Artsakh, Armenian national hero
Monte Melkonian is once again a victim of defamation. I came across a
very interesting interview on Radio Open Source with an Armenian
decorated filmmaker and documentarian Ted Bogosian. The subject of the
interview was Ted’s vocation – seeking the truth and telling it. Open
Source host Christopher Lydon introduced Ted Bogosian as a truth hound
and put the ‘what is truth’ question to him (see:
confessions-of-a-truth-hound/).
What I heard in response less than halfway through the interview led
me to think that Ted may have misheard Christopher, thinking he had
been asked ‘what is a lie’ or, for that matter, how to present a lie
as truth.
As someone committed to truth seeking, I was at first thrilled to
learn about an alternative experience from a prominent Armenian until
I heard the following statements made by him:
"In Armenian Journey there is a very important sequence which didn’t
make the cut. And that is that I started to pursue an interview with
a young man of my age and background named Monte Melkonian. And Monte
was born in about the same year, in the central valley of
California. And while I was at Duke, he was at Berkley, and when I
went to graduate school, he went to graduate school in Beirut. And he
was pursuing the truth about the Genocide in his own way and he became
radicalized and he went underground and started selling arms and
started selling drugs and started an Armenian terrorist movement. And
so while I was making Armenian Journey, he was in jail in France, for
having masterminded several bombings in Europe, at Orly Airport and at
Turkish embassies and other businesses, where many innocent people
were killed. And so, I went to see Monte in prison, and it was quite a
moment, because he thought that I was there to kill him since he
didn’t know who I was and wasn’t expecting a visitor that day. But I
came to start corresponding with him and came to understand his
manifesto, and I realized that what he was doing was similar to what I
was doing except in a different theater. And so, my battle was against
the media to try to tell the story one way, and his battle was more
traditional. So, that didn’t make the cut because I wouldn’t have been
able to get the film on television had I presented that manifesto. But
I mention it because I want to say that I think this sort of thing is
in the blood not only of Armenians but of people who want to tell the
truth and, that is, they’re willing to go there no matter where it
leads." (The audio fragment is at 09:16-11:36).
Having devoted over a decade of my life researching Monte Melkonian’s
brief and thorny path, it was especially saddening for me to hear such
irresponsible and defaming statements coming out of a fellow truth
seeker’s mouth. These statements manifest shoddiness of research,
sweeping generalizations and a self-indulgent distortion of recent
Armenian history. I would like to see one single piece of evidence
that supports Mr. Ted Bogosian’s claim that Monte Melkonian was a drug
dealer, arms dealer and a founder of a terrorist movement, who
masterminded the Orly operation. These are the three major things
against which Melkonian had been struggling with all his essence,
endangering his life in the process. It was the Orly operation that
catalyzed the split of Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of
Armenia (ASALA). To be more specific, below I have singled out each of
Ted Bogosian’s inaccurate claims. Let’s start from the most innocent
inaccuracies.
Ted Bogosian’s claim #1: `And Monte was born in about the same year.’
Ted Bogosian was born in 1951, whereas Monte Melkonian was born in
1957.
Ted Bogosian’s claim #2: `…and when I went to graduate school, he
[Monte Melkonian] went to graduate school in Beirut.’
Monte Melkonian was admitted to a graduate school at Oxford, but chose
to give up his academic career in favor of a trip to Beirut at the
onset of the second phase of the civil war and joined the defense of
Bourj Hammoud, the Armenian quarter of the city.
Ted Bogosian’s claim #3: `…and [Monte Melkonian] started selling
arms and started selling drugs…’
All the accounts of people who knew him, whether interviewed by me or
other researchers, including those who spoke up at their own
initiative, indicate that Monte was adamantly opposed to drugs, be it
for use or for sale. Throughout my research, I haven’t come across any
evidence of Monte being involved in arms or drug dealing. According to
one of Monte’s brothers-in-arms, once Monte, already a Commander of
Martuni Defense Region, refused Samvel Babayan, Commander of the
Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army, to promote an officer only because he
smoked marijuana. He had even banned his soldiers from using alcohol,
which was common practice in other detachments. More importantly,
Monte earned himself highly influential enemies after burning
lucrative cannabis fields in a noble attempt to shut down the local
drug trade. This deed was followed by a few attempts on his life. One
might assume that Monte could use the proceeds from supposed drug
sales to feed and equip the poorly armed fighters under his
command. All evidence indicates that he had ignored any such
compromise.
Ted Bogosian’s claim #4: `…he [Monte Melkonian] started a terrorist
movement.’
This is an outright false statement. ASALA, to which Ted Bogosian
refers, was founded in 1975 in Beirut, Lebanon during the first phase
of the Lebanese Civil War by Harutiun Takoshian, alias Hagop
Hagopian. This was 3 years before Monte arrived in Lebanon for the
first time. Monte was recruited by ASALA in 1980 after serving in an
Armenian militia group in the Beirut suburb of Bourj Hammoud helping
defend the Armenian population during the civil war. Furthermore,
based on the accounts of both supporters and opponents of ASALA, Monte
played a pivotal role in the violent split of the organization in 1983
into those who supported the despotic leader Hagop Hagopian and those
who disapproved his methods of struggle exactly because it took
innocent lives, as well as distracted the attention from the cause the
attacks were supposed to raise awareness of.
Ted Bogosian’s claim #5: `…he [Monte Melkonian] was in jail in
France, for having masterminded several bombings in Europe, at Orly
Airport and at Turkish embassies and other businesses, where many
innocent people were killed.’
A sweeping generalization. Monte Melkonian was arrested for possession
of a falsified passport and an illegal handgun in Paris on November
28, 1985. He was sentenced to six years but served only three and a
half. The Orly airport attack, which took place on July 15, 1983, and
did kill and wound many innocent people, was masterminded by his
already archenemy Hagop Hagopian and carried out by the latter’s
supporters in Paris. The only people tried for the Orly airport attack
were Varadjian Garbidjian (also spelled as Varoujan Garabedian life
sentence, released 17 years later), Soner Nayir (15 years), Ohannes
Semerci (10 years). Parallel to the preparation of the Orly operation,
inner turmoil was in progress within ASALA due to the widening gap
between the members of the organization over the despotic leadership
of Hagopian, the methods of struggle and, specifically, the
implementation of the Orly attack. Monte was in the opposition
wing. But despite his efforts to cancel the Orly operation, it was
implemented, accelerating the final split of ASALA.
Who knows, the Karabagh war could have been a lost cause, had Monte
Melkonian been the mastermind of the Orly airport attack and therefore
gotten a life sentence? Melkonian was arrested twice. In his court
documents there was neither evidence, nor allegations supporting
Mr. Bogosian’s announcement regarding his participation in the attack
in any form, as well as arms and/or drug dealing. It would have been
convenient for the French authorities and to Monte’s enemies to find
such evidence, but there was none. To support my claim, I suggest that
interested individuals read The Right to Struggle, My Brother’s Road,
Reality, A Self Criticism and a dozen other books.
Ted Bogosian’s claim #6: `I went to see Monte in prison, and it was
quite a moment, because he thought that I was there to kill him…’
Okay, let me try to get this straight. Monte thought that Mr. Bogosian
came to the prison to kill him? So, Mr. Bogosian is saying that Monte
thought an Armenian-American filmmaker was going to walk into a high
security prison, formerly a concentration camp, armed guards watching
his every move, and kill him? What about checking for weapons before
entering the highly guarded visiting room? Ted Bogosian makes it sound
like Monte was in a health spa in the South of France.
I provided my arguments as accurately as I could and am willing to
embrace supporting evidence that proves Mr. Bogosian’s
claims. Otherwise, as a friend of mine put it, Mr. Bogosian’s
interview is more like "Ted talking about Ted – not the truth." I
welcome facts, as they will enrich our knowledge about who Monte
really was. With that said, I invite Ted Bogosian to set the record
straight by exchanging his recollections with evidence and
facts. Otherwise a public apology from Ted Bogosian is in order.
Ara Manoogian is a human rights activist representing the Shahan
Natalie Family Foundation in Artsakh and Armenia, as well as a member
of the Washington-based Policy Forum Armenia (PFA)