Kerry: Past Treason: Sandinista Nicaragua

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John Kerry: traitor then; traitor now


Part C: Aiding Communist Expansion in Our Own Hemisphere (1985)

In the mid-1980s, prior the the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire of captive nations, world communism continuedto be the major threat to to the United States and the Free World. At the time, the USSR posed a dual threat: (1) as the foremost strategic nuclear-missile threat, and (2) as the world's primary sponsor of international terrorism. By the 1960s, communist imperialism had been allowed to spread into the Western Hemisphere, expanding from its initial infection point in Cuba. Before the advent of the Reagan era, a Soviet-backed Marxist-Leninist junta had taken power in Nicaragua. That junta, known as the Sandinista National Liberation Front, had by now sponsored communist guerrilla and terrorist groups from neighboring countries and presented a threat to the entire region.

In order to counter this threat, Reagan, with the help of a bipartisan majority in Congress, financed an anticommunist guerrilla army in Nicaragua, made up mainly of peasants disenfranchised by the the Sandinista junta. To prevent the junta from consolidating power, Reagan strongly backed the resistance fighters, whom the Sandinistas dubbed "contras," in order to pressure the regime either to hold free and fair elections or be overthrown.

1

U.S. involvement in resisting the Soviet-backed revolutionary movements in Central America was a politically emotional issue at the time, and the highly charged atmosphere forced Reagan to tread carefully on Capitol Hill. Seeking the release of a $14 million appropriation from the previous year for the Nicaraguan resistance, and faced with public opposition, Reagan offered to limit U.S. aid to the "contras" to humanitarian assistance only, provided the Sandinistas agreed to national reconciliation and free elections that would have broken their total grip on power. The president told Congress that if the Sandinistas failed to comply by the deadline, he would use part of the $14 million to arm and militarily equip the growing insurgent army.

Reagan's compromise with Congress wasn't good enough for Kerry, the only freshman senator on the then-prestigious Foreign Relations Committee. For the new lawmaker, Central America was a cause -- and he was on the other side. In announcing his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, on Jan. 26, 1984, at Boston's Park Plaza Hotel, Kerry assailed Reagan's anticommunist, pro-democracy policy as barbaric, falsely accusing the administration of backing the most thuggish and undemocratic elements in Central America. In April, 1985, barely three months after being sworn as a senator, Kerry became one of the leading opponents of President Reagan's effort to defeat Soviet-sponsored revolutionaries in the American hemisphere. The junior senator stopped at nothing: working with America's sworn ideological enemies, making damaging, distorted and often baseless allegations about U.S. covert operations, accusing his own government of sponsoring terrorism, and even damaging an FBI operation against a Colombian cocaine cartel

Late on April 18, 1985 Kerry and other members of the Democratic Party's far left wing (such as Harkin) arrived in the Nicaraguan capital for two days of scheduled talks with Marxist officials. On the eve of his meeting with Ortega, Kerry told the Boston Globe correspondent in Managua that the talks would "provide them [Kerry and Harkin] with enough information to sway congressional votes on the issue of aid to antigovernment rebels." According to the New York Times, Harkin and Kerry said "that they were seeking commitments that could help defeat President Reagan's request."

The Globe reported from Managua, "After marathon meetings with the senators that spilled into the early-morning hours, Ortega reasserted Nicaragua's [alleged] commitment to Central America as a zone free of nuclear weapons and foreign military bases, including those of the Soviet Union and Cuba." Kerry foreign-policy aide Richard McCall and Sandinista officials collaborated on a working paper that Kerry said he would present to President Reagan. Reportedly, Ortega himself was at their side for the last three hours of the meeting. The final three-page product, which Kerry called a "peace proposal," included Sandinista promises of a cease-fire, as long as the United States cut off all assistance, including humanitarian aid, to the anticommunist forces and their families.. In other words, there would be no interference with communist expansion in the Western Hemisphere.

Despite the fact that In the plan the Sandinistas made no commitment to national reconciliation, in an emotional April 23 speech in the Senate, Kerry presented the document as something new, that "will give peace a chance." He even characterized it as "a guarantee of the security interest of the United States," "without having to militarize the region." Nevertheless, acceptance of the plan took Ortega's word for everything. Without mentioning his own role in drafting the document, Kerry said, "I share with this body the aide-mémoire which was presented to us by President Ortega."

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., took the unusual step April 23 of rebuking his colleagues and accusing Kerry and Harkin of breaking the law and "transgressing" against the Constitution by holding unauthorized negotiations with a foreign leader.

A State Department official pointed out that the so-called "Ortega plan" was fraudulent and nothing more than a "restatement of old positions [without any] . . . mention of any dialogue with the unified democratic opposition, which we [the United States] consider essential to internal reconciliation. Without such a dialogue, a cease-fire proposal is meaningless, essentially a call for the [anticommunist] opposition to surrender."

A White House spokesman dismissed the Kerry-Harkin-Ortega plan as nothing more than "propaganda." White House spokesman Larry Speakes pointed out, "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." White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan went further, accusing congressional Democrats of "supporting communism" in Central America.

Secretary of State George Shultz referred to "the fate of the people of Cuba, South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos." He pointed out, "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." Just as the Vietnamese communists used progressive and nationalist slogans to conceal their intentions, the Nicaraguan communists employ the slogans of social reform, nationalism and democracy to obscure their totalitarian goals." The reality would be dictatorships, refugees, and broken promises. Here is your parallel between Vietnam and Central America. In addition, we would have "another Cuba in this hemisphere," together with "widened Soviet influence," but "this time near our very borders."

Most of Kerry's Senate colleagues ignored the plan and voted for aid to the Nicaraguan resistance. The House, however, voted against the aid. Kerry was thrilled. So was Ortega, who immediately announced a trip to the U.S.S.R. to petition for $200 million more in Soviet support. Kerry didn't blame the Sandinistas for going to Moscow, of course. Instead, he blasted the Reagan administration for rejecting his "peace offer."

That April 1985 journey to Nicaragua would become a trademark of the Kerry school of statecraft: making common cause with enemies of the United States -- and allowing himself to be used by them -- in order to win political battles at home.

(C-1.)

2

Fed by supportive journalists and Washington-based think tanks that supported the Sandinistas, Kerry put his experience as a former assistant county prosecutor to work in 1986, launching a full-scale "investigation" of his own to discredit the Nicaraguan resistance and the Reagan administration. Kerry's probe, alleging an international criminal conspiracy, coincided with lawsuits against retired Army Gen. John Singlaub and others in what was called a legal harassment campaign against American opponents of the Sandinista regime, alleging bizarre international plots.

In the summer of 1986 Kerry's treasonous collaboration with the Sandinistas took the tact of alleging that the contras were a major hub in an international cocaine-smuggling operation. In so doing, the senator damaged an FBI investigation of Colombia's Medellin cartel. According to federal law-enforcement officials, 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 Washington Times reported in January 1987. The FBI repeatedly had warned the staffers to back off, pointing out that they were endangering an ongoing federal antidrug operation. After Kerry's staff stepped in, an FBI informant became "spooked" by going to Massachusetts, and feeling she had to be protected. As a result of Kerry's intimidation, she stopped cooperating with the FBI, changing her story to include the contras as part of the plot.

By early 1987, even with the Iran-Contra scandal unfolding against the Reagan administration, Kerry's own drug-conspiracy allegations continued to crumble. One of Kerry's star witnesses, a cocaine trafficker (Jorge Morales) recanted and related that he had fabricated much of his story. Federal law-enforcement officials, "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." Kerry refused to let a former CIA operative (Felix Rodriguez, a Cuban-American), who had testified at a closed hearing of the senator's subcommittee, make his testimony public so he could clear his name. Finally, the Washington Times 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 cases collapsed under legal scrutiny but made sensational headlines that fueled Reagan opponents for years.

(C-2)

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Endnotes to Part C:

C-1: See "Kerry used enemy to win battle at home," by J. Michael Waller, Insight magazine, May 18, 2004.

C-2: See Ibid. ("Kerry used enemy to win battle at home," by Waller, Insight magazine, May 18, 2004.)


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