The Cubans are not the only foreigners to interfere with Senate confirmation. Oscar Arias, former Costa Rican president and Nobel peace laureate, delivered an assault on Reich in a Los Angeles Times article ("A Nominee Who Stands for War"). This appointment, Arias contended, exalts "hard-line ideology over flexibility and bipartisanship." He brazenly demanded that Bush "find another candidate for the job."
Arias's bill of particulars against Reich is a watered-down version of wild attacks by The Nation magazine and other left-wing sources that are circulating on Capitol Hill. Republican senators see the hand of Janice O'Connell, longtime foreign relations aide to Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd (who simultaneously is launching a campaign for better United States relations with Castro).
Such disparate anti-Reich sources as Castro, Arias and O'Connell share a common animosity. They cannot forgive Reich for his persistent Reagan administration role in keeping the Contras alive, assuring the ultimate fall of Nicaragua's Marxist dictatorship. Arias specifically bemoans Reich's "allegiance to the Reagan administration's hard-line policies toward Central America."
The assault by the Cuban Communists is particularly noxious in its fascist and Nazi name-calling. Reich's father, an Austrian Jew, fled Hitler's Anschluss in 1938 for Cuba, where Otto was born. His grandparents, left behind in Austria, perished in the Holocaust. [End Excerpt]