December 13, 1986 $1.25; U.K.

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THE CORE OFTHE CRISIS

It is not enough that President Reagan slough or shuffle his
National Security Council staff. It is not enough that a U.S.
Court of Appealspanel appoint an independent counsel to
pursue evidence of criminal activity.It is not enough that Congressional committeesprobe the proliferating reports, rumors,
connections and discrepancies that constitute -the arms sale
scandal. For at its core the crisis that has already diverted and
may permanently derail the Reagan Administration concerns
the conduct of foreign policyand the democratic legitimacy of
presidential authority; and until those issues are met, the crisis
cannot be resolved honestly.
In less than six years the Reagan Administration developed
its system of covert operations, extended its string of secret
wars and refineditsschedule of shady deals to a level of
sophistication and a point of pre-eminence unknown in the
history of U.S. foreign relations. Apologists for Reagan will
surely claim-as William Safire did so doggedly for Nixonthat the pattern of secrecy and manipulation had been firmly establishedby Presidents longgone. And so it had: the
C.I.A.3 wide-rangingsubversionofforeign
and domestic
politics in the1950s, the disastrous involvement inIndochinese
(Continued on Page 659)

December 13, 1986

CONTENTS.

The Nation since lH65

659

Volume 243, Number 20

LETTERS

666 F.B.I. Files Protected:

FOIAbles of the New Drug Law
668 What the Boesky Case Means:
The Apple Falls Near the Tree

65 8

EDITORIALS
657 Secret Wars: The Core of the Crisis
661 Brothers Foner
662 Minority Report

The Small Time

Nabokov: The Enchanter
Art
The Workingmans
Bird (poem)
683 Films

ChristopherHitchens

-1

ARTICLES

663 Getting MADD in Vain:

Drunk Driving: .
What Not to D o

William Tabb

BOOKS & THE ARTS

675
676
679
682

COLUMNS
-,

Eve Pel1

H. Laurence Ross and

Graham Hughes

Stuart Klawans
Steven G. Kellman
Arthur C.Danto
Barbara NelfgottHyett
Terrence Raffero

Drawings by Terry Kurgan

Editor, Vlctor Navasky

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EDITORIALS.

The Crisis

(Continued From Front Cover)

affairs by Kennedys best and brightest imperial intellec:
tuals and the immortal escapades that came to be known as
Watergate make a sleazy and-shameful history that Reagan
seems to be following as if it were revealed writ.
But no President until now has so vastly replaced open
policies with covert ones, hasso cynically removed themajor
issues of his Administration from the possibility of public
debate, has so brazenly and hypocritically done one thing
with-a closed hand and the exact opposite with the other.
The arms deal-variously called Zranagua, Gippergate and,
by Reagan, our Iran policy-didenot take place on the
margins of policy but at its very heart. The ghoulish alliance

of reactionary, repressive and aggressive governments that

the White House forged to turnits tricks was the centerpiece
of its strategyin the Third World, the most active
and volatile
arena of global politics for the past quarter-century. The
same complex of deals that gave money to the contras at a
time when Congress- expressly forbade such aid was also
supporting the whole wretched networkof terrorists, mercenaries, rebels and death squads from Angola to Guatemala.
Reagan ordered the covert war against Nicaragua in
the first weeks of his Administration, and it has naturally
received the most publicity. It has neverbeen debated
straightforwardly because the Administration still does not
call it by its rightful name but insists on the fiction that a
genuine rebellion that seeks to gain leverage for negotiations withthe Nicaraguan government is in progress in the
remote regions of Central America. For some reason most

660

The Nation.

politicians and the major media have taken that fiction for
fact, or at least havenot conceded that the war to overthrow
the Sandinistas is headquartered in the White House.
But Americas waragainst Angola, fought in conjunction
with the white minority regime in South Africa, gets only a
footnote in current conversations. The U.S. effort in Afghanistan, which is presented to Americans as a selfless defense
of democratic struggle in the face of Soviet aggression, is in
, reality more a self-serving intervention that sponsors covertly the same kind of terror, torture and subversion that the
Russians are practkingovertly. It now turns out thatprofits
from the Iranian arms.deal also went to Unita in Angola and
the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, and perhaps freed up some
funds so that South Africa couldpour more into the Renamo
guerrilla operation in Mozambique.
C.1.A.-watchers estimate that there are at least fifty live
covert-ops aroundthe -world, from Algeria to Zambia.
Many of those involve terrorism on a scale so grand that
they make the odd Arab hijacking or kidnapping look like a
quiet day in Miami. The Administration managed the election of Jos6 Napole6n Duarte in El Salvador and then conceived of the tactic of terror-bombing civilian villagesin the
Salvadoran countryside, supplying the training, the technology and the money t,o do it. Reagan hasapproved money
and arms for his chosen guerrillas in Chad and in Gambodia. He has sanctioned training of troops in Guatemala,
and he has made Honduras into a permanent U.S. staging
base, on the order of Camranh Bay, in South Vietnam.
With the willing participation of the government in Tel
Aviv, the White Housestrategistshave hastened the process
by which Israel is becoming a mercenary state, bound to
serve Americas interests and support Americas interventions anywhere in the world. Just as Israel arranged the
Iranian deal and may have facilitated the financial transfers
to the contra war (Israeli and U.S. officials are blaming each
other), it has done dirty work in South Africa, in Guatemala
and in El Salvador when for various reasons the U.S. government would rather keep its white gloves on. IsraeI said
last month that it has no particular interests in Central
America, but ithas supplied right-wing forces
in that region
for years, and evennowIsraelis
are reportedly training

With your assistance, Voice of The Nation is off to a

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tell him or her to tape our next set of comentaries
when they are beamed over the public radio satellite on
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urge the station to broadcast the program. The voices
of dissent are heard on Voice of The Nation. Help
them ring aut.

1986

December 13,

Nicaraguan confrus based in Honduras. Israel promoted

and continues to feed the antiterrorism campaign that has
defined Reagansforeign policy in the pdblic sector. There is
evidence that Mossad, the Israeli secret service, obliges the
common effort by contriving acts of Arab terrorism when
there is not enough news to print,
Israel and Saudi Arabia do share a similarinterestin
destroying Arab radicalism-by bombs if necessary, by
more subtle means if possible. The United States throws
billions into that effort, which is a long-term objective of
U.S. policy as well. The Saudis get AWACS (arranged by
Lieut. Col. Oliver North and Maj. Gen. Richard Secord,
among others) and finance the Afghani mujahedeen. The
United States also rewards its various friends and alIies
with intelligence software as well as military hardware. Lost
among the subscandals of the past month was the poignant
item that in 1983 the C.I.A. fingered some 200 Iranian Ieftists to the government in Teheran, which promptly executed
them. Reagans gift of 200 lives was apparently part of the
same deal meant to woo moderates in Iran and free hostages in Lebanon.
The Saudi-Israeli-Iranian triad fits nicely into the world
anticommunist front that was set up by right-wing fanatics
but is an important element in the geopolitical project of
mainstream U.S. policy-makers. Nazi collaborators whom
the C.I.A. saved from prosecution after World War I1 are
put together with fugitive assassinsfrom the Somoza regime
in Nicaragua and black Africans acting on behalf of South
Africa in an International of the Right pledged to dobattle
against popular revolutions and socialist struggles wherever
they occur.At the same time, Washington has helped secure
a permanent funding network of foreign governments, politicalparties and private institutionsto support global counterrevolution without bebg subject to the vagaries of local
elections, changes of officials or the whims of public opinion in any one country. The West German government was
recently reported to have administered a fund for antileft
politics around the world. Among its recipients are El Salvadors Duarte and the South African Zulu strongman
Gatsha Buthelezi, who visitedPresident Reagan on November 25. The Bavarian arm of West Germanys rulingChristian Democratic Party participates in thesame effort. From
the United States, sever$ outfits tied to private foundations
and organized labor have traditionally done C.I.A. jobs in
Europe and the Third World, and during the Reagan Administration they have been especially activein Africa and
Latin America.
The low-intensity conflictin which the Administ2atisn
is engaged is directednot only against nationalist and leftist
forces abroad but against the progressive opposition in this
country. From the very beginningthe strategy was assumed
to be antithetical to democratic debate. An Army study that
lays out the d,octrine of low-intensity conflict declares:
As Americans, we consider democracy to be thebest form of

government, but it is not always the mostefficient. The

cumbersome decision-makingand consensus-buildingprocess
inherent in a demokacy can be too slow to respond to
dangers before they become critical.

December 13, 1986

The Nation:

The enemy within is clearly targeted: a consensus on

Third World wars hasnot existed sincethe Vietnam era, and
no one in Washington overlooks the role that liberal and
radical antiwar and solidarity movements have played in
blocking or at least moderating the governments interventionist impulses sincethat time. Reagan was forced into the
covert mode of foreign policy by the legacy of Vietnam and
the history of democratic opposition to imperial adventure.
Nixon came a cropper of the peace movement ofthe 1960s;
it is wonderfully ironic that, after all this time, Reagan has
fallen victim to the same syndrome he has so often pronounced cured.
Not only the White House is engaged in damage control
lest the myriad connections and full extent of the Administrations secret foreign policyoperations be exposed. Congressional Republicans, of course, want to defuse the scandals as quickly as possible so that their own powerand prospects willnot be affected. But the Democratic leadership has
been trying to deepen the political wounds of the Administration while limiting the scope of the crisis. Senators Sam
Nunn and Daniel Patrick Moynihan want to save the policy
apparatus as much as Donald Regan and George Shultz do.
The press is elated, but its vision is circumscribed. Certain
reporters and news anchors nodoubt see that Gippergate could bring them fame and fortune, as others made
their careers from Watergate and Vietnam. Political scandals
(and wars) do for well-placed journalists what wars do for
field commanders. But the media is still stopping short of
connecting the unpopular and apparently illegal acts of the
arms deal with the rest of the policy apparatus-the failed
funding scheme in Nicaragua with the popular and successful bombardment of Libya or the invasion and occupation
of Grenada, for example.
Nor have strong voices of opposition to that policy been
broadcast. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts has been
investigating the contras for a year andhas more facts
and analyses than any other prominent political figure. He
has had the most to say about the wider political implications of the current foreign policy crisis,but he has been virtually shut out of the national media. One member ofathe
news staff at CBS said that the blackout was deliberate,that
Kerry was thought to be a problem case, too much associated with the protests against the Vietnam War and
too much on the margins ofthe Democratic mainstream. If
Congress takes Reagans advice and ccconsolidatesyall its
investigations in a single committee, you can bet that the
Nunns and the Moynihans, not the Kerrys(if there is
indeed more than one), willset the terms and the tone of
the hearings.
The cover-up that began with Attorney General Meeses
first pressconference last rhonth is continuing on many
levels. It seems that everyone in Washington has drawn a
line beyond which they do not want the investigation to go.
Reagan and Regan seethe line just below their noses. Many
Democratsdescribe a largercircle in which they hope to
score political points. But justice will not be served by narrow definitions of scandal. President Reagan has grievously
R

- .

661

wounded the democratic process in the formulation of foreign policy, just as he has conducted or sanctionedan unrelenting reign ofterror in manyparts of the world, and there is
a unique opportunity now to see his work for what it is.
-

Brothers Foner
n December

5 the National EmergencyCivil

Liberties Committee presented its Tom Paine
Award, given to outstanding champions of civil
liberties, to four brothers whose veryname evokes
the progressive movements of the past half-century. The
name is Foner, and the brothers-Philip, Jack, Moe and
Henry-are a remarkable quartet, whose life storiesform a
kind of collective biography of what a generation gave to
the labor movement, to New York City and to America.
The daily work of political opposition and the lifelong
chronicling of the labor andcivil rights movemenJs placethe
brothers Foner in the company of I.F. Stone and William 0.
Douglas, previous recipients ofthe Paine prize. The Foners
have persisted-through repression, Depression, hot, cold
and cultural wars-in the service of a shared social commitment. Their story stands in contrast to the values of the
Reagan era.
The Foners were the sons of Russian immigrants: Mary,
whonever learned to writeEnglish, and her husband,
Abraham, a seltzer man. Like so many other sons and
daughters of New York Cityspoor of their generation, they
were graduated from public colleges and were radicalizedby
the Depression and the Spanish Civil War-and, say the
Foners, The Nation. Three were victims of the inquisitors
of the New York State Legislature, who purged them from
positions at City College in 1940 and 1941, inan early rehearsal for the depredations of the 1950s.
For years the brothers got by on musical talent, playing the Borscht Belt in a swing band to pay the rent. Unintimidated by the difficultiesoflife after the blacklist,
they eventually became leading activists for civil rights and
against the war in Vietnam. Decades after those who persecuted them were forgotten, each Foner came to honor.
Philip is the most prolific labor historian in the United
States; hisworkpresaged the current renaissance in the
field. Jack is a professor emeritus at Colby College and,
like Philip, a pioneer in Afro-American history. Henry and
Moe, after playing key roles in organizing fur and hospital
workers, respectively, became the resident-consciencesof
the New York City labor movement and courageous critics
of A.F.L.-C.I.O. orthodoxy.
Unlike some other famous men and women whose lives
began in the same milieu, the Foners did not allow themselves the luxury of a more convenientconservatism.Although not without some of the faults of the o b left, they
also possess its virtues:they could not be silenced or
bought out. So the Foners, men of prodigious talent, did
not win wealth or the accolades of the powerful. They are,
all four, happy with a higher success.