The Contra gang is back
Bush packs gov't with criminals
By Heather Cottin
President George W. Bush has appointed Elliot Abrams to be
the White House director of Middle Eastern affairs. This type
of handpicked assignment bypasses the need for congressional
approval, yet few pundits or journalists expressed
consternation.
Abrams will rejoin his old friend John Poindexter, just
appointed to be the national cyberspy--director of the
Pentagon's Information Awareness Office, which gathers
intelligence on people in the United States electronically.
Poindexter was convicted in 1990 of five felony counts of
conspiracy, lying to Congress, defrauding the government and
destroying evidence in the Iran-Contra scandal during the
Reagan-Bush administration. He was even implicated in selling
cocaine for guns for the Contras, a terrorist military force
funded and trained by the United States to oust the Sandinista
government in Nicaragua during the 1980s. (The Guardian
[Britain], Feb. 18)
This retired Navy admiral lost his job as national security
adviser under President Ronald Reagan. But the first George
Bush pardoned Poindexter and several other malefactors during
his last days as president.
Abrams will be a confederate of John D. Negroponte,
ambassador to the United Nations. Negroponte was Reagan's
ambassador to Honduras when Reagan's men were supporting the
Contras in defiance of the Boland Amendment, a law barring such
aid. Negroponte was instrumental in supporting death squads in
Honduras from 1981 to 1985. He funded the CIA-trained Battalion
316, which was responsible for killings of hundreds of Honduran
union leaders and civil-rights workers. (The Guardian
[Australia], Oct. 31, 2001)
Abrams will also serve with Otto Reich, part of the network
of Cuban exiles responsible for the Oct. 6, 1976, bombing of
Cubana Flight 455, which killed 73 people. Reich ran a covert
domestic propaganda campaign against the Nicaraguan government
during the Reagan era. (Salon.com, Jan. 11)
Abrams: his history speaks for itself
Reaganites admired Elliot Abrams as an intellectual and a
strategist. His thinking was at the core of the Reagan
Doctrine. Abrams was a "hemispherist," a code word for those
who opposed Marxism in the Western Hemisphere. The United
States government declared war on those who dared to struggle
for housing, health care, education and a decent life for their
families. It was a battle against socialism.
Elliot Abrams was Reagan's assistant secretary of state for
human rights and humanitarian affairs. When Reagan said that
apartheid South Africa was this country's best friend in
Africa, Abrams was arranging for "humanitarian" shipments of
electric shock batons to the racist government there. (Human
Rights Action Center)
Abrams led the State Department's Inter-American Affairs
division in the 1980s. He covered up massacres in El Salvador
in the 1980s. He called the report of the massacre at El
Mozote, where more than 1,000 peasants were slaughtered by
U.S.-trained Salvadoran troops, "commie propaganda."
Abrams lied about cables that told the State Department that
Roberto D'Aubuisson, the U.S.-backed death-squad president of
El Salvador, was planning to kill Archbishop Oscar Romero.
Abrams called Washington's policy in El Salvador a "fabulous
achievement."(The Nation, June 2, 2001)
In the 1980s, Elliot Abrams defended U.S. aid for the
government in Guatemala, which killed an estimated 200,000
Indigenous people struggling for their lives in a desperate
guerrilla war.
During the Contras' rampage in Nicaragua, Abrams worked
directly under Lt. Col. Oliver North. (Observer, April 21)
North was running the operation against the Sandinistas out of
his office in the White House basement. North illegally sold
arms to Iran and used the profits to fund the Contras.
Abrams was convicted of withholding information from
Congress about the Reagan administration's cover-up of support
for the Contras. But President George Bush pardoned Abrams on
Christmas Eve in 1992, a lame-duck holiday gift.
When George W. Bush was selected president, Abrams was back
in business.
In May 2001, Bush appointed Abrams senior director of the
National Security Council Office of Democracy, Human Rights and
International Operations. This past spring Abrams was a key
figure organizing the coup that attempted to overthrow
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. (The Observer, April
21)
So now Elliot Abrams is Bush's director of Middle East
affairs.
Abrams opposed the Oslo peace negotiations between Israel
and Yasser Arafat. Abrams has said U.S. policy in Israel should
face the Palestinians "with force." (New Jersey Jewish
News)
Elliot Abrams's ideology toward the Middle East today is
consistent with his earlier support of the bloody right-wing
governments in Central America that killed an estimated 350,000
peasants in a decade of U.S.-financed destruction.
The Bush administration is deepening its line in the sand in
the Middle East. But at a time when the political character of
the U.S. government--of, by and for the rich--is becoming
clearer to masses of people in this country and around the
world, the movement opposing it is also growing in
strength.
Reprinted from the Dec. 19, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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