ISN'T SOMEONE WHO ALWAYS SIDES WITH YOUR ENEMIES AN ENEMY?:

Kerry's Disloyal Nicaraguan Journey (J. Michael Waller, May 17, 2004, Insight)

In his first major foreign-policy action as a U.S. senator nearly 20 years ago, John Kerry accused the United States of "funding terrorism." Fresh from a trip to the Far East, Kerry made his sensational allegation in Washington before flying to Nicaragua, then in the grip of a Marxist-Leninist junta, to coauthor a propagandistic peace proposal designed to disarm the U.S.-backed forces fighting to oust the Soviet-backed Sandinista regime.

Barely three months after being sworn as a senator, Kerry made his mark, and he made it big, as one of the leading opponents of President Ronald Reagan's effort to defeat Soviet-sponsored revolutionaries in the American hemisphere. The junior senator stopped at nothing: working with the nation'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.

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.

The enemy of the 1980s was not Osama bin Laden and his allies, but the Soviet Union and its proxy regimes and guerrilla forces around the world. In addition to the strategic nuclear-missile threat it posed to the survival of the United States, the U.S.S.R. at the time was also the world's primary sponsor of international terrorism. It was not without concern, then, that 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 Soviet-backed Marxist-Leninist junta that had taken power shortly before Reagan was elected to office. That junta had by now sponsored communist guerrilla and terrorist groups from neighboring countries and presented a threat to the entire region. But Kerry, ever the defender of the communist left, didn't buy it.

To prevent the junta, known as the Sandinista National Liberation Front, from consolidating power, Reagan strongly backed the resistance fighters, whom the Sandinistas dubbed "contras," to pressure the regime either to hold free and fair elections or be overthrown. 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.

The new senator already had placed himself among the intractable opposition to Reagan's national-security strategy. 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. "How can you teach liberty and justice and support death squads?" he demanded, falsely accusing the administration of backing the most thuggish and undemocratic elements in Central America.

Vietnam in Nicaragua: Once in office in 1985, Kerry acted on his words. He held a news conference accusing the U.S. government of financing terrorism. "Foreign policy should represent the democratic values that have made our country great, not subvert those values by funding terrorism to overthrow the governments of other countries," Kerry said in a statement. He announced he and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) would go to Managua, the Nicaraguan capital. The pair of Vietnam-era radicals held two days of secret talks with Sandinista junta leader Daniel Ortega, timing the visit just before a scheduled vote on release of the $14 million to the freedom fighters.

They arrived in the Nicaraguan capital late on April 18 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."

In an interview with the Globe, Harkin said that as Vietnam veterans he and Kerry "bring perspective to the situation here in Central America that perhaps others not involved in the Vietnam War might not have." 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 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 hammered out a working paper that Kerry said he would present to President Reagan. Ortega reportedly 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. Back in Washington, Harkin claimed that the Sandinistas "desire peace and not only normal but friendly relations with the United States. What we have is a new, bold and innovative approach. I am hopeful that we can pursue it."

"This is a wonderful opening" for peace, Kerry added of the Ortega plan, "without having to militarize the region." But the plan was phony. It was nothing more than a "restatement of old positions," a State Department official said at the time. "There is no mention of any dialogue with the unified democratic opposition, which we consider essential to internal reconciliation. Without such a dialogue, a cease-fire proposal is meaningless, essentially a call for the opposition to surrender." A White House spokesman dismissed the Kerry-Harkin-Ortega plan as nothing more than "propaganda."

Even the Sandinistas' own Washington lawyer, Paul S. Reichler, said the plan offered nothing new. "There is no offer of any kind from the government of Nicaragua today that is any different from what they've been saying all along," Reichler told the New York Times. [...]

White House spokesman Larry Speakes told reporters, "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.

Kerry's Political Allies Duck: Kerry scrambled for political cover. He asked Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, under whom he had served as lieutenant governor, to hold a news conference praising his Nicaragua initiative. Dukakis declined. Kerry asked the same of his predecessor, retired Sen. Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.). Tsongas did not do so. Kerry even approached former congressman James Shannon, whom he had defeated in the Senate primary the year before, asking for a written statement of support. No statement came, though Shannon, according to the Boston Herald, did give some radio interviews on Kerry's behalf. Kerry's staff asked other Massachusetts congressmen "to speak out in the House in praise of Kerry's trip and meeting with Ortega so that support could be seen on television through C-SPAN," according to the Herald. "All those contacted turned him down."

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." Said Kerry, "I think it was a silly and rather immature approach" on the part of Reagan. He was not surprised that Ortega would respond with a fund-raising trip to the Soviet Union, saying breathlessly, in the words of a Boston Globe story, that Reagan "forced Ortega to look to the Soviets for help."