what a revolution looks like,

feast your eyes on Manila tonight.

Marcos's regime ended in 1986

when he was toppled by what is now known

as the People Power Revolution.

The Filipino government has estimated

that the amount the Marcos family pilfered

was between $5 billion and $10 billion.

So this is just graft

on an absolutely massive unheard of scale.

Marcos declared martial law in 1972,

closed newspapers, jailed political foes,

turned parliament into a rubber stamp.

The Marcos regime was very concerned about dissidence,

so the security forces are tasked

with arresting the dissidents,

torturing them for information.

Oftentimes, the victim would be summarily executed.

A nation took to the streets tonight

to celebrate its victory.

A dictator had fallen. The people conquered his palace.

Reagan, who was president at this time,

actually offered Marcos asylum in the U.S.

And so when Marcos did ultimately decide

to step down in February of 1986,

Reagan sent two planes to cart Marcos

and 90 members of his entourage,

along with millions of dollars worth of loot.

It is time to come to an understanding

with both the government and Marcoses

to compensate the human rights victims.

In 1992, after years of building the case,

the Marcos class action finally went to trial.

The jury in Hawaii ultimately held Marcos responsible.

The judgment in total was almost $2 billion,

which was astronomical.

It's been a long fight to this point,

but we're going to continue to fight to the end.

We knew at the outset that it

was gonna be a very risky litigation.

At that point, what they had was just a number

on a piece of paper and actually turning it into money

for the class was gonna be a much harder challenge.

My name is Haley Cohen Gilliland,

and I am an independent journalist based in Los Angeles.

We cannot succeed without the support of our people.

So Ferdinand Marcos ran the Philippines for 21 years,

and he first blazed into the presidency in 1965.

He was a remarkably charismatic figure.

He was a wonderful orator.

He had a beautiful wife who was very elegant

and had a gorgeous singing voice,

and she would regale crowds at his campaign rallies.

Now everybody seems to be involved

in the destiny not only of himself

but of the entire content of the entire nation,

and this is what we have been hoping and praying for.

His first term was really promising.

He invested really widely in infrastructure

and urban beautification and especially rural development,

and so his base of followers grew and grew.

Then in his second term,

he started to run into some problems,

allegations of corruption, growing poverty,

and simultaneously, some separatist guerrilla groups,

violent groups, started to pop up in the country.

Ferdinand Marcos at this point takes advantage

of the advent of these groups to declare martial law

and essentially rule the country by decree.

I have received hundreds and hundreds

of telegrams from all corners of the Philippines,

congratulating you and incidentally me

for the proclamation of martial law.

And all the while Filipino citizens

were being tortured and imprisoned,

the Marcoses would spend really brazenly and lavishly.

So they amassed dozens of luxury properties all

over the Philippines and around the world.

Then in 1986, Ferdinand Marcos decided to call an election.

Marcos! Marcos!

By all accounts, Marcos fixed that election,

and when that became clear,

that unleashed massive protests around the country.

Millions of Filipinos flooded into the streets,

demanding that Marcos step down.

And ultimately in that case,

the U.S. finally said, "Enough is enough,"

and encouraged Marcos to step down as well.

But they didn't completely cut support because Reagan,

who was president at this time,

actually offered Marcos asylum in the U.S.

And so when Marcos did ultimately decide

to step down in February of 1986,

Reagan sent two planes to cart Marcos

and 90 members of his entourage,

along with millions of dollars worth of loot,

diamonds and cash,

some of which they carried out in diaper boxes.

Reagan sent planes to cart those people and assets

to Honolulu where Marcos was welcomed with asylum.

My name's Robert Swift.

Most people call me Bob. I'm a litigator.

I do complex litigation,

and I've been doing that for almost 48 years.

At the time of the revolution in the Philippines,

there was a great deal of publicity as well

as information that various human rights groups

have collected about human rights abuses committed

by the Marcos regime.

And my initial intention was to bring individual cases,

but when I learned of the enormity of the abuses,

I decided that it was worthwhile

to try bringing a class action.

And the way that he did that

was using this very rarely used statute

called the Alien Tort Statute,

and that statute was first enacted in 1789.

It's only a couple of sentences,

but it essentially allows non-U.S. citizens to sue people

for violations of international law in U.S. court.

About 10,000 Filipino people signed on

to become a part of this class action,

which is absolutely a massive class.

It is time to compensate the human rights victims.

The first named plaintiff was a college-age girl

by the name of Lilioso Hilao.

She had written some articles in the student press

which were not flattering to the Marcoses

or the Marcos regime.

She was arrested by military,

taken to a military detention center

where she was interrogated.

When she was uncooperative,

the military poured muriatic acid down her throat,

and she died from asphyxiation.

Another example is an individual

by the name of Mariano Pimentel.

Pimentel had been a political leader in Mindanao.

He'd been arrested several times.

He was finally released from detention

after more than six months,

and on his way back to his province,

military members in a Jeep stopped him,

took him to a sugarcane field, had him dig a grave.

They then buried him up to his neck,

and before they filled in the soil,

they broke a leg and broke an arm

so that he wouldn't be able to dig himself out.

They then put the soil back in and buried him up to his neck

and they figured they would let the ants do the rest.

He survived because there were several children

who had been hiding in the sugarcane field

who saw him and dug him out, and he later emigrated

to the United States where I met him.

In addition, the present state has the duty

to uphold the need to recompense its own victims.

In 1992, after years of building the case,

the Marcos class action finally went to trial in Hawaii,

and the jury in Hawaii ultimately held Marcos responsible

for the abuses and torture

that had occurred under his regime.

So in 1994, Swift asked the jury for $1 billion,

which represented $100,000 per victim,

which he felt was appropriate amount.

Well, I don't know that no other lawyer

had ever asked a jury for a billion dollars.

However, our case is unique

in that we really supported that number

through the enormity of the abuses that had occurred.

And the amount that the jury ultimately awarded

to the Marcos class totaled almost two billion.

That was astronomical figure,

an absolutely unheard of figure.

It was the largest ever personal injury judgment in history.

So immediately upon receiving the monetary judgements

in 1994 and 1995, Swift got to work

and started assessing what things they could try to claim.

This was very challenging in part

because the Philippines' courts

did not recognize the U.S. judgment,

and so they couldn't go after any assets in the Philippines.

They had to go after assets elsewhere.

In effect, I was limited to executing

on whatever Marcos' assets were in the United States,

and of course, the Marcoses weren't willing

to testify as to that.

I took their depositions several times,

and they claimed they didn't know anything.

Of course, that was false.

So the turning point as it relates

to collections was between 2000 and 2010.

And essentially, what happened was there

was an oil investor in Texas by the name of Alan Meeker,

and he found some attractive parcels of land

that he was interested in purchasing.

But for the life of him, the way that he describes it

was he couldn't find the darn owner.

And as he was doing due diligence on this land,

he remembered a rumor that he had heard when he was younger

that Ferdinand Marcos had actually purchased a bunch

of oil producing lands in Texas.

These lands proved to be very valuable

and ultimately was able to settle that litigation

for $10 million.

So Swift was absolutely overjoyed

at the prospect of finally having enough money

to distribute to the class members

who had waited for so many decades

to see anything after the judgements came.

But the challenges were still very great in terms

of how the money would actually get distributed.

So while I had 10,000 checks with names on them,

many of the people had died.

By that, I mean more than 20%.

So the process was laborious and much slower

than I would've liked, but it was very effective,

and it was also gratifying.

The faces of the people expressing their gratitude

were enough of a reward that I felt good

about what we were doing,

and I knew that it was gonna benefit them.

I would often ask people frequently through an interpreter,

"How are you going to use the money?"

And I was told that they would use it

to put a cemetery stone by the church for their loved one,

or they would send their children to school,

or they would simply buy food.

The older people would use the money

to buy prescription drugs

that they couldn't otherwise afford.

10 years, I'm starting to rise again.

Now like a phoenix, hopefully, the truth will come

from the ashes of what was done to us.

Ferdinand Marcos and his family were exiled

from the Philippines in the 1980s,

but subsequent to his death, they were allowed to return.

And since then, they have managed

to really regain the popularity

that they enjoyed during his term.

Congratulations, Senator Imee Marcos.

Well, it's outrageous

that the nation allows this to happen.

Will I say sorry for the power generation?

Will I say sorry for the highest literacy rate in Asia?

What am I to say sorry about?

In the Philippines, as in other countries,

elections are frequently won by those

who can more readily distribute money

during the election process.

The Marcoses have had access to the monies acquired

and hidden by Ferdinand Marcos.

The richest

is Senator Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.,

who declared a net worth of more than 400 million pesos.