APRIL 23?, 1985 , 6 PM to 1:30 AM : (NICARAGUA : KERRY AND HARKIN MEET WITH SANDINISTA LEADERS) Around midnight, Sen. Tom Harkin got up from the cane-backed chair and stood on the veranda at the home of Foreign Minister Miguel D'Escoto. For a moment, the tropical breeze softened the harsh realities he and Sen. John Kerry were facing inside with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and D'Escoto.
Harkin (D-Iowa) and Kerry (D-Mass.) -- who came here trying to extract agreements for peaceful negotiations from Ortega before today's [April 23, 1985] congressional votes on "contra" aid -- say the echoes of Vietnam are everywhere.
For the first time, the Senate has three Vietnam-era veterans who returned deeply opposed to that war -- Kerry, Harkin and Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.). Kerry got three Purple Hearts and returned to lead Vietnam Veterans Against the War, stunning the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he now serves on by asking the question, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
Harkin flew planes in the Vietnam theater and, as a congressional aide in 1970, exposed the infamous tiger cages where prisoners were tortured by the South Vietnamese. Now, 15 years later, they were in Nicaragua...---------- "Harkin & Kerry, Back in a War Zone; Finding Parallel Lines in Nicaragua (Ortega/D'Escoto meeting!)," WaPo Archives | April 23, 1985 | Myra MacPherson
Reminds you of the Abu Ghraib / bleedingheart attacks of recent years.
...The scene was set for Kerry to bluster into the equation like a bull in a China shop. Teaming with Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the pair - without portfolio - traveled to Managua to chat with Sandinista junta leader Daniel Ortega. The result: a meaningless document that State Department experts considered little more than an offer to the Contras to surrender. The Sandinistas made no commitment to national reconciliation, and that was the heart of the matter.
Nonetheless, Kerry raced back to Washington with the document he touted as a “peace proposal.” Indeed, Ortega promises a cease-fire, as long as the United States cut off all assistance, including humanitarian aid, to the anti-communist forces and their families. “Here,” Kerry boldly pronounced to the Senate, “is a guarantee of the security interest of the United States.” ...
But few bought the grandstanding. Overnight, Kerry found himself not the returning hero and peacemaker but a pariah. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., accused Kerry and Harkin of “transgressing” against the Constitution by holding unauthorized negotiations with a foreign leader.
A peeved Secretary of State George Shultz announced, “Those who assure us that these dire consequences are not in prospect [in Central America] are some of those who assured us of the same in Indochina before 1975. The litany of apology for communists, and condemnation for America and our friends, is beginning again.”
White House spokesman Larry Speakes rained more buckets on Kerry's parade: “The very hour the House was rejecting the aid package [to the Nicaraguan resistance], President Ortega was going to Moscow to seek funds for his Marxist regime.” Ortega had, indeed, announced a trip to the U.S.S.R. to petition for $200 million more in Soviet support.
Teddy K. and 'KKK' Byrd to the Rescue
A frantic Kerry had his staff seek out anybody willing to praise his efforts. The only takers were Sens. Teddy Kennedy, D-Mass., and Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who styled the controversial mission to Managua as a masterstroke forcing a recalcitrant Reagan to parley with the commies. Perhaps figuring that if he stood still, the unwelcome mantle of “soft on communism” would cloak his shoulders, Kerry decided that the best defense was a colorful and flamboyant offense.
The former prosecutor got busy in 1986, launching a full-scale “investigation” to discredit the Nicaraguan resistance and the Reagan administration. The aim: stitch together - by whatever means - an international criminal conspiracy.
Using the unlikely fodder of allegations in lawsuits, Kerry's probe predictably hit rough waters.
...According to Insight's report, a British soldier of fortune, Peter Glibbery, swore that Kerry staffers bribed him to accuse Sandinista opponents of crimes, only to recant the next day. A former French soldier named Claude Chaffard claimed that Kerry staffers promised to help him with U.S. visa problems and paid him money while he cooperated.
Such wrinkles certainly did not bolster Kerry’s insistent demands to the Republican majority's staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to crank up full hearings on his shadowy conspiracy theories.
In desperation to keep the raked muck churning, Kerry signed a letter used in a direct-mail appeal for an outside group to raise money. That outside group was Commission on United States-Central American Relations, which was reportedly a front of International Center for Development Policy and included as members open supporters of the Sandinistas, the communist Cuban dictatorship of Fidel Castro and the communist FMLN guerrillas of El Salvador, according to commission literature.
“It was a racket that was probably illegal at the time, and certainly would be illegal now,” a former Senate staffer with firsthand knowledge of the investigation revealed to Insight. The work product of the “racket”: alleged widespread drug trafficking by the Nicaraguan resistance. It was enough to prod the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to create a subcommittee to investigate. Kerry feverishly honed a theory that the Contras were nothing less than a major hub in an international cocaine-smuggling operation.
Underlings Damage Federal Investigation But by the summer of 1986, the Washington Times was reporting that aides to Kerry “severely damaged a federal drug investigation by interfering with a witness while pursuing allegations of drug smuggling by the Nicaraguan resistance.”
The Times later followed up with a report, citing federal law-enforcement officials. The revelation: The FBI repeatedly had warned Kerry's staffers to back off because they were endangering a federal anti-drug operation.
According to the report, an FBI informant became “spooked” and stopped cooperating after Kerry’s staff interfered – going as far as to change her story to include the Contras as part of the plot.
As was the case earlier, Kerry's ploy began to unravel. Drug traffickers "are selling a story to Congress and to the media that they have concocted to have their sentences reduced or to have their cases dismissed,” a Drug Enforcement Administration agent told the New York Times. Eventually the DEA and Justice Department dismissing the claims of one of Kerry’s star witnesses, accused cocaine trafficker Jorge Morales, that the CIA and Nicaraguan resistance forces were involved in large-scale drug trafficking....
Thickening the unsavory brew, the Washington Times then revealed that Kerry had concealed evidence of Sandinista drug trafficking and had deleted information from his staff report of the previous October to pin the blame on the Sandinistas’ U.S.-backed opponents. The camera-hogging Kerry suddenly made himself scarce. He refused to speak to journalists seeking to question him. “Sen. John Kerry is coming under increasing fire from federal law-enforcement officials,” the Associated Press reported. “The officials have said Kerry’s work was based largely on unsubstantiated allegations from informants, most of whom already have been interviewed by federal law-enforcement officials and some of whom have previously been found to be unreliable. A number of them are charged with various crimes or are in jail.”
Unrepentant, Kerry switched again to the attack mode (excerpt)... ---------------------- "Kerry Went to Extreme Lengths to Back Communist Ortega and Undermine U.S.,"
by Dave Eberhart, NewsMax, 5/20/04
Ping!!