Otto-da-Fé

Otto-da-Fé

Castro and Dodd wage an inquisition against a Bush nominee

BY MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY

On March 30, Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon denounced the Bush administration's intention to nominate Otto Reich as assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, calling it an attempt "to impose a kind of Third Reich in Latin America." In fact, Mr. Reich's paternal grandparents were Austrian Jews who died in the Holocaust.

Mr. Alarcon's foot-in-mouth gaffe inadvertently underscored the double whammy that 20th-century jackboots served up to tens of thousands of Europe's Jews. Many European Jews fled Hitler's genocide for Russia, only to be trapped in Soviet persecution for decades. Mr. Reich's father emigrated to the West but unluckily landed in Cuba. He escaped from the island with his young family in 1960.

Mr. Alarcon also called Mr. Reich "a member of Miami's anti-Cuban Mafia" and "a notorious character throughout the Iran-contra operation." Translation: The Castro regime, which has struggled for decades to impose its own brand of repression on Latin America, still smarts from its defeat in Nicaragua. Fidel blames the likes of Mr. Reich because from 1983 to 1986 Mr. Reich ran the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy, which was designed to battle communist disinformation and misinformation campaigns.

With an endorsement like that from Cuba, Mr. Reich should be a shoo-in for Senate confirmation. But the trouble is that Fidel Castro isn't the only sore loser. Ever since Mr. Bush proposed Mr. Reich for the post, Washington has been buzzing about all the Senate Democrats--and one influential staffer--who still harbor bitter resentment about the defeat of their beloved Sandinista revolution. This, even though the defeat was less due to Reagan anticommunism than to the discovery by Nicaraguans that they had been made victim of a Cuban coup. "It's payback time," says one close observer of Washington's policy war over Central America in the 1980s. According to Jay Nordlinger, writing in the latest National Review, "A group of [Democrats] on the Hill is meeting regularly to plot Reich's defeat."

Having also served as the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela from 1986 through 1989, Mr. Reich is a highly qualified candidate whose expertise on Latin America is urgently needed at the State Department. U.S. leadership in the region was nearly nonexistent during the Clinton years. Today economic malaise, guerrilla insurgencies and drug trafficking all seriously threaten to undermine fragile stability.

When assessing Mr. Reich's chances, New England's left-leaning senatorial duo, John Kerry (D., Mass.) and Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.), loom large. Mr. Dodd is now chairman of the Subcommittee on Western Hemispheric Affairs and has always fancied himself a Latin American expert. He vociferously opposed Reagan policy in Central America.

It is a matter of record that Mr. Dodd, who comes from America's richest--and arguably most capitalist--state was remarkably sanguine about Sandinismo in Nicaragua, despite the well-known fact that a Castro-trained Sandinista junta had seized control of the government and was supporting an insurgency in neighboring El Salvador. In an Aug. 21, 1983, "Meet the Press" interview, Mr. Dodd refused to acknowledge that the Nicaraguan revolutionaries were Marxists or that Marxism was dangerous. "We shouldn't [assume] that [if] someone happens to be a Marxist, that immediately they're going to be antagonistic to our interests or going to threaten our security," he said. Asked about the Sandinista goal of "promoting revolution without frontiers" in Central America, Mr. Dodd said, "I don't necessarily believe because they use that kind of rhetoric that they're determined to overthrow every neighboring government in the Central American region." Soviet and Chilean documents released since then prove he was dead wrong about the Marxist threat to the region. Managuan newspaper editor Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Barrios told a Journal writer in 1980 about a visit he received from the Soviet ambassador soon after the junta takeover. The ambassador's message: "We're in charge here now."

According to people familiar with the situation, longtime Dodd staffer Janice O'Connell, who also slugged it out with Reaganites over Central America, has a key role in the "get Reich" effort. Asked about this, she wanted to know if she was off the record. When the reply was "no," she said: "I have no comment. I simply prepare the report and the members vote."

Ms. O'Connell's views are well known. On the TransAfrica Forum Web site, TransAfrica President Randall Robinson introduces Ms. O'Connell at a roundtable, noting her "opposition to Contra aid and military assistance to El Salvador" and support for "restoration of civilian rule in Haiti," which means she backed U.S. military intervention to return avowed Marxist Jean Bertrand Aristide to power.

Surely Mr. Reich reminds Mr. Dodd and his first lieutenant of Ronald Reagan's many triumphs. A special bonus to a Reich defeat would be the slap in the face of the Cuban-American exile community and, yes, even payback for the fact that Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega ultimately was forced to call an election in Nicaragua and lost. But the real problem for the Doddites is that a Reich posting would ensure that any future Democratic efforts on behalf of Latin America's armed left would face a barrier at the State Department. Mr. Dodd and his little group of powerful senators most likely hope that by knocking off Mr. Reich, they'll force Mr. Bush to put up a more pliable career bureaucrat.

Mr. Reich's supporters are confident that, given a hearing, he can be confirmed. But last week, Mr. Dodd postponed the hearing for another of his targets, President Bush's candidate for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, former U.S. Ambassador to Honduras John Negroponte. He can use the same tactic, for months on end, to deny Mr. Reich the chance to refute a barrage of false allegations.

The Bush administration is signaling staunch resolve to stand by its men. Insiders are betting that Mr. Negroponte, who has strong bipartisan support, will eventually get through, but the Dodd commitment to a Reich defeat may be a problem.

If Mr. Dodd wants to kill the nomination, Mr. Bush should make him do it outright, rather than allowing it to die as a result of perpetual hearing delays. Dropping the candidate would reek of Clintonianism, to say nothing of the abandonment of a public servant who remained loyal to American values despite the rigors of the Cold War.
Ms. O'Grady edits the Americas column, which appears Fridays in The Wall Street Journal.