USEFUL IDIOT WATCH (via John Resnick)

Pro-Marxist Slant Pushed at ABC, Retired Correspondent Claims (Marc Morano, May 01, 2003. CNSNews.com)

Having kept quiet for 14 years, a former ABC News correspondent has gone public for the first time with allegations that network anchorman Peter Jennings manipulated news scripts during the 1980s in order to praise the Marxist-backed Sandinista government in Nicaragua.Peter Collins, a newsman with over 30 years experience, including stints with Voice of America, the BBC, CBS News and CNN, recently walked away from the news industry and has "no compunction about telling [my story] now."

In an exclusive interview with CNSNews.com, Collins alleged that Jennings personally dictated changes in a Collins television script in order to praise the Sandinista government for its "new, unselfish society," for successfully reducing illiteracy and "launch[ing] the biggest land reform in Central America."

This might be more shocking if there weren't still elected leaders of the Democratic Party who were even more beguiled by Central American Communism, folks like John Kerry and Chris Dodd, Soft on Communism (Mona Charen, Jewish World Review):

Here is Sen. Chris Dodd (D., Conn.) recommending in an interview with Georgie Anne Geyer in 1983 that we negotiate with the Salvadoran communists.

Geyer: "Since these kinds of Marxists have never negotiated throughout history ... do you actually believe they would negotiate in good faith now? ...

Dodd: "I don't know the good faith -- no one knows that. You can only find that out by trying, sitting down and seeing if they're sincere, and testing it out. ... I don't know them. I know they're not all Marxists, any more than all the Sandinistas were Marxists. ... I don't believe that every person who opposes the government in El Salvador is a Marxist either. ... I don't believe Marxism is necessarily monolithic either ... We can have intelligent, thoughtful relations with these countries, and 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."

Gee, you wonder why the country doesn't trust them in time of war? Posted by Orrin Judd at May 2, 2003 3:48 PM