Democrats Plot to Stop Anti-Castro Nominee

Human Events ^ | 9/7/01 | John Gizzi

[Jean S]

A fierce confirmation battle started in the Democrat-controlled Senate last week when President Bush officially nominated Otto J. Reich as assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs.

Reich, who fled Cuba with his parents in 1960, previously served in the Reagan State Department and as ambassador to Venezuela.

His Democratic opponents, obviously trying to re-fight a battle they lost 15 years ago, have criticized him for his efforts in opposing the spread of Soviet-backed communism in Latin America during the closing days of the Cold War.

Recalling that Reich’s job in the State Department was to generate public support for anti-Communist freedom fighters in Central America, for example, Sen. John Kerry (D.-Mass.) said that Reich’s nomination "raises a number of questions" because he "may have been the genesis of acts of propaganda . . . which reflect a kind of carelessness about the truth." (Translation: Reich opposed the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and supported the Contras.)

Sen. Christopher Dodd (D.-Conn.) was cagier, saying he is "deeply concerned with Mr. Reich’s ability to maintain bipartisan support and trust for U.S. policy with regard to Colombia and other important hemispheric issues."

Kerry and Dodd, both members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have put a "hold" on Reich’s nomination.

The liberals take the battle so seriously that they have even launched a "Stop Otto Reich" website. It is sponsored by a variety of left-wing foreign policy groups, including the Institute for Policy Studies and the Center for International Policy.

Even Fidel Castro has entered the fray, denouncing Reich as "sordid" and a "fascist."

"He violated laws and showed total lack of ethics," Castro said during a recent two-hour speech to the InterParliamentary Union meeting in Havana.

A onetime Reagan Administration colleague of Reich told Human Events, "They are all against Otto in part because he’s a Cuban-American who is anti-Castro and also because his views on Central America in the 1980s are galling to them."

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R.-Okla.) said, "It isn’t so much Otto Reich that the left wants to punish, but the entire Reagan policy of fighting communism in the hemisphere, which has been vindicated by history, and those who made it. In a sense, the upcoming hearings will be a case of a generation on trial."

Reich, a U.S. Army veteran, worked for the city of Miami and as an associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies before joining the Reagan Administration in 1981. Following a stint as assistant administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, he headed the now-defunct Office of Public Diplomacy in the State Department from 1983-86.

Reich’s chief assignment in that office was to promote the U.S. policy of supporting the anti-Communist Contras in Nicaragua against the Castro- and Soviet-backed Sandinista dictatorship. Much of the work of that office was denounced by liberals as "propaganda," although no one suggested it was illegal, or substantially different from a congressman’s generating favorable "letters to the editor" or suggesting positive news stories to friendly reporters.

The 1987 report on Iran-Contra released by a Democrat-controlled joint Senate-House committee called the activities of the Office of Public Diplomacy "public relations lobbying at taxpayers’ expense." The report cited a finding by the General Accounting Office that the office had engaged in "prohibited, covert propaganda." Although it identified Reich as head of the office, neither the congressional report nor the GAO study accused him of any lawbreaking. In 1986, with Iran-Contra beginning to become a major news story, Reich was confirmed as ambassador to Venezuela.

"And he did a good job as ambassador," recalled Tony Motley, who during the Reagan years held the office to which Reich is now being appointed and to whom Reich reported while he was head of the Public Diplomacy desk. "It appears to me that this all goes back to the issue of Central America. It was so charged in the 1980s and it still is. The [Democrats on the] Senate Foreign Relations Committee are casting about for someone to have a little fun with and Otto is their No. 1 target. And I have to believe that he will have a good long wait before his confirmation hearings because they have not forgotten what [Republican Sen.] Jesse Helms [N.C.] did when he would stop nominations by Bill Clinton through holds. And they particularly haven’t forgotten how he stopped Robert Pastor."

Pastor, who was President Carter’s National Security adviser on Latin American affairs and believed to be primarily responsible for drafting the Panama Canal treaties of 1977, was tapped by Clinton to be ambassador to Panama in 1994. Pastor saw his nomination languish for months under a hold by Helms. When it finally was voted out of committee by a 16-to-3 vote on October 4, the North Carolinian held up a vote by the full Senate until Congress adjourned. When the next Congress convened in January and Republicans won control, Clinton—clearly deciding that the Pastor fight was hopeless with Helms now chairing the Foreign Relations Committee—withdrew the nomination.

Now a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Pastor told Human Events, "I know Otto Reich pretty well and, while I may have some disagreements with him, I think the Senate should give him a fair shake and give him a fair, pretty expedited hearing—one that would explore his work at the Office of Public Diplomacy and the degree to which he responded to the congressional initiative banning U.S. support for the Contras. I’m opposed to committees’ stalling nominations and would hope that, with the Democrats now in the majority in the Senate, they adopt rules to end this procedure and permit the Senate to advise and consent, not delay and obstruct."

As the left gears up for combat in the coming Reich fight, friends and admirers of the former Reagan Administration official are lining up behind the nominee. Florida Republican Representatives Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, themselves Cuban-Americans, have issued strong statements in favor of Reich. Ros-Lehtinen denounced "Democrat liberal hacks [who] might have an ax to grind from the old Contra war and because of his strong position in favor of the U.S. embargo on Castro."

Florida’s Democratic Sen. Bob Graham has also weighed in on Reich’s behalf and is "very supportive of the Reich nomination," according to spokeswoman Caren Benjamin.

"As a supporter of the Nicaraguan Contras and a former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, Otto Reich has the credentials to implement President Bush’s policy in Latin America, where terrible difficulties abound for America, especially in Columbia and Venezuela," wrote Ralph J. Galliano, editor of the U.S. Cuba Policy Report, who strongly echoed Motley’s payback-for-Pastor opinion. "Recent events show that the post-Castro era is dawning. Reich, a Cuban-American, is capable of carrying out a policy of democracy and free markets on the Communist-run island that the left finds distasteful."

[GHCubana]

"Recent events show that the post-Castro era is dawning. Reich, a Cuban-American, is capable of carrying out a policy of democracy and free markets on the Communist-run island that the left finds distasteful."

Reich is a threat to the commie liberal's poster boy Fidel Castro, they will put up a good fight but I bet anything that Reich will get nominated. Cuba's freedom will come like a thief in the night....unexpected

[Nateman]

Screw the rats. Do a recess appointment and then delay the vote until republicans regain the Senate.

[Dqban22]

Castro's allies in the Senate, the Congress and the media are involved in a slanderous campaign to derail Reich’s nomination. Although he is an experienced and able diplomat and among the most suitable for the post, Castro's fellow travelers cannot forgive his pro- freedom and democracy stand in regards to Cuba. I hope President Bush exerts his leadership and fights for his nomination to the end.