Posted on 07/10/2008 9:25:36 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
In 1985, his dear friend Ronald Reagan was preparing for his first summit with Mikhail Gorbachev when a Ukrainian sailor named Miroslav Medvid twice jumped off a Soviet ship into the Mississippi River seeking political asylum. The Soviets insisted that Medvid had accidentally fallen off -- twice. The State Department did not want an international incident on the eve of the summit. But Helms believed it was wrong to send a man back behind the Iron Curtain -- no matter the cost to superpower diplomacy. He tried to block the ship's departure by requiring the sailor to appear before the Senate Agriculture Committee, which he chaired then -- and he had the subpoena delivered to the ship's unwitting captain in a carton of North Carolina cigarettes.
Despite Helms's efforts, the ship was allowed to leave for the Soviet Union with the Ukrainian sailor aboard. Miroslav Medvid was not heard from again until 15 years later, when he came to Washington to visit the man who fought so hard for his freedom. ...
Yes, Medvid told Helms, he had been trying to escape -- that was why he joined the Merchant Marine in the first place. When he was returned to the Soviet Union, he said, he was incarcerated in a mental hospital for the criminally insane. The KGB tried to drug him, but a sympathetic nurse injected the drugs into his mattress. Eventually he was released; today he is a parish priest in his native village in Ukraine.
In the course of dozens of interrogations, he told Helms, "the KGB didn't fulfill its desire about what they wanted to do with me. They were afraid of something," he said, "and now I know what they were afraid of." They were afraid of Jesse Helms.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Priceless.
http://archives.cnn.com/1999/ALLPOLITICS/stories/12/23/helms.gonzalez/index.html
Helms says he aims to offer U.S. citizenship to Elian Gonzalez
Jesse Helms ...............Thank You Senator Helms.
Senator Helms is the kind of man that inspired my interest in politics. Those were the days.
A reminder of why the man was a giant.
Wonderful article. Thank you for posting it.
O to have more like him.
If we would do our best in all situtations ... what a difference it would make.
Jesse Helms was a great statesman and a man of principle. We need more like him.
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