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Stalked by the Special Prosecutor
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20039 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1992 |
3,730 Words |
| Author
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Russ Braley
Russ Braley was a U.S. Navy mine disposal officer in the
Mediterranean and Pacific theaters in World War II. For
twenty years he was a foreign correspondent for the New York
Daily News. He is the author of Bad News: the Foreign Policy
of the New York Times (Regnery Gateway, 1984). |
UNDUE PROCESS
A Story of How Political Differences Are Turned
into Crimes
Elliott Abrams
New York: The Free Press, 1992
243 pp., $22.95
In 1985 Elliott Abrams took over a demanding job superivising twenty-two U.S. embassies in guerrilla-plagued Latin America, and he was sitting on top of the world. A foreign policy buff in his midthirties, he was an assistant secretary of state in a key post, and the sky was the limit to his political future.
He was also assertive and a bit cocky, so when the Iran-Contra scandal broke, he was a natural target of the envious or vindictive among the Democrat-controlled Congress. At Harvard Law School, Abrams had been a Scoop Jackson Democrat. He rang doorbells in Boston for Jackson's 1972 presidential campaign, then went to Washington in 1975 to work for the Washington State senator before becoming chief of staff for Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, New York Democrat--like Jackson a domestic liberal and an anti-communist hawk in foreign affairs.
By the end of President Jimmy Carter's administration in 1980, Abrams had given up on the Democratic Party, which was "wedded to a foreign policy I could not accept," and he joined Ronald Reagan's campaign for president. His reward was a dream assignment at the State Department: developing a Reaganite human rights policy as head of the small Human Rights Bureau, a neglected outpost when he arrived. Human rights had been the centerpiece of President Carter's foreign policy, and some Democrats would not forgive Abrams for switching.
Secretary of State George Shultz asked Abrams to become assistant secretary for inter-American affairs, a hot seat, in July 1985. He became point man in the U.S. liaison with the Contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, which was supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union and which, in turn, passed on weapons to the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (RMNL) in El Salvador.
President Carter had given the Sandinistas $100 million in aid after they routed dictator Anastasio Somoza to seize power, then cut off aid when their allegiance to the Soviet Union became obvious. The Sandinistas retained protectors in Congress, though, ranging from Rep. David Bonior of Michigan to Senator
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