Date: 1987-07-21
Speaker: DONALD E. LUKENS (republican)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. I rise today to comment on the IranContra hearings and the liberal lefts obsession with trying to destroy President Reagan. and in the process. abandon the freedom fighters in Central America and destroy American security. The IranContra Committees action this past week has revealed the liberal lefts intention to get Reagan and therein allow the Communists to consolidate power in Nicaragua by abandoning the freedom fighters. This scheme was revealed when members of the committee successfully blocked Lieutenant Colonel Norths slide show on Central America and the Soviet beachhead being established there. For 6 months Members of Congress have taken potshots at Lieutenant Colonel North. Why wont he talk? Why wont he tell the complete story? Why wont he tell the complete story so the American people can learn all the facts? But what happened when Lieutenant Colonel North offered to show his now famous slide show on the Communist takeover and build up in Nicaragua? The liberal left did not want them shown. Why? What were they afraid of? Where were all the liberals that have been demanding that the American people need to learn all the facts? What the liberal left did not want America to see was the billions of dollars of Soviet and Cuban military supplies in Nicaraguathe Soviet helicopters. guns. and ammunition and the thousands of Soviet. Cuban. Bulgarian. and East German Communist military advisers. What has been revealed is the liberal lefts attempt to keep the buildup of Soviet military power in Central America from being shown to the American people. and they dont like it. The liberal left has been exposed this past week and the American public is awakening to the threat of communism in Central America and the liberal lefts attempt to abandon the freedom fighters. It is unfortunate that the left would allow communism to consolidate its power in Central America in an effort to tear down President Reagan. but that is what it is trying to do. Why are they doing this? Its politics. plain and simple. They want to destroy President Reagan and gain a political advantage and an upper hand in the 1988 elections. However. this effort by the liberals is not without precedence. Former White House speechwriter. Ray Price. has written an article which outlines the lefts efforts in recent history to attempt to tear down a President. and therein threaten national security. in an attempt to gain political advantage. The article. which I am submitting for the RECORD. appeared In the New York Times on Sunday. July 12. This article goes to the heart of the IranContra hearings and the liberals efforts to undermine our national security. THE IRANCoNrRA HEARINes: NEEDLEss MucK (By Raymond Price) A visitor from Marsor from Europewho tuned in the Irancontra hearings might well wonder what on earth is going on here. Whats the purpose? Why is the nation being put through this particular ringer by all these sanctimonious and solemn members of the House and Senate. with their hundreds of staff aides and lawyers and investigators and pressrelease writers. not to mention the armies of Jostling reporters and cameramen and technicians and producers? Is it really to find out what went wrong in the botched Iran initiative and in the use of funds from it to keep Nicaraguas democratic resistance alive? If anyone really believes that. Ill quote him a terrific price on the Brooklyn Bridge. If Congresss real concern were to learn the facts. it would have had the inquiry conducted behind closed doors by a subcommittee. Thats what you do if youre serious about substance. But if your aim is political theater and you think you may have the makings of a hit daytime soap opera. then you stage a TV spectacular. There are two answers to the question of why opportunism and fear. Opportunism by the Presidents opponents in Congress. who see a vulnerability and are out to exploit it to the hilt. fear by the Administration itself and its Congressional supporters that if they show any less public enthusiasm than the Democrats for "getting at the truth" whatever the cost. they will be pilloried by the heavybreathing news media and die the political death of a thousand cameras. The business of Congress is politics. In a television age. politics is public theater. and anything that can lure the cameras of every network to a Congressional hearing room. preempt regular programming and dominate the evening news is box office boffo. Anyone who forgets these propositions risks missing the essence of the Irancontra hearings. Setting aside the entertainment value. what are we as a nation getting out if it? Were getting the compromise of intelligence sources and methods. Were getting an international spectacle of Americas characteristically obsessive capacity for selfimmolation. Were getting dismay among friends and allies. and an object lesson for anyone who might be tempted to cooperate with us on sensitive matters on why its lethally hazardous even to consider doing so. Were getting the distraction of already overburdened policy makers from their primary duties for months on end. Were also getting a sapping of the Presidentsand therefore the nationsability to deal with real and immediate crises from the Persian Gulf to the trade wars. and with issues as crucial to the longterm future of the West as the defense of Europe and arms negotiations with the Soviet Union. And if the left succeeds in torpedoing the Administrations efforts to keep the democratic resistance in Nicaragua alive. we risk the loss of Central America and an aggressively expanding Soviet foothold on the mainland of the Western Hemisphere. Its no coincidence that the Irancontra issue became a Congressional obsession almost the moment the Democrats regained control of the Senate in last years elections. Theatrical hearings designed to lay bare the sins of the executive branch occur when. and only when. one party controls Congress and another holds the White House. In recent decades. Congress has been essentially a Democratic flefdom. Thus. we have had such hearings in the Nixon and Ford Administrations (in the Ford years. a grandstanding Senate committee virtually destroyed the Central Intelligence Agency as an effective instrument of United States policy). and in the last two years of the Reagan Administration. but not in the Kennedy. Johnson or Carter Administrations. Nor did we have them in the six Reagan years when the Democrats controlled only one house of Congress and still feared his political clout. The purpose of the present exercise is to damage. and if possible destroy. another Republican President on the eve of a Presidential election. If this undermines the nation as well. thats the way the cookie crumbles. After all. politics is hardball. However. as Lieut. Col. Oliver I. North correctly put it. Ours is a nation at risk in a dangerous world. "Our adversaries do not play by Marquis of Queensberry rules. nor do they routinely have their guts ripped open and spilled out on the table by Congressional committees determined that nothing shall ever be done in secret. or in privateexcept of course by Congress. which allows no intrusion on its own privacy except by its own consent. In his statement summing up the first phase of the hearings. the chairman of the House Select Committee. Lee Hamilton. put as the first of his several questions and concerns that "our Government cannot function cloaked in secrecy." Wrong. and if the chairman of a committee dealing with covert activities really believes this. were in deep trouble. In sensitive foreign policy matters. secrecyanother word for privacyis the first essential. And unless covert actions can be carried on covertly. the United States will have one arm tied behind its back in a deadly serious struggle in that. nomansland between peace and war. With Congress behaving the way it does. we need more shredders. not fewer. Its not Just a matter of preventing "disclosure" of sensitive information. Its also a matter of preventing abuse and distortionwith armloads of documents whooshed up to Capitol Hill. sifted. sorted and then those tidbits that might be perfectly innocent in context but look appalling out of context selectively leaked to an eagerly waiting press. The process not only produces the intended political embarrassment. It also chills discussion. erodes trust. works immense personal hardship on innocent individuals and causes diplomatic havoc. The rape of privacy serves the interests of the news media and titillates the curious. but it cripples even the most upright government. The United States has got to learn to act like a great power. The worlds future depends on it. The nations safety depends on it. We cannot do this as a house divided and at war with itself. As long as Congress keeps dragging us down into the muck of its own ettifogging quest for political advantage. we cannot and will not be able to act as the times require. Its as simple as that. and as serious as that.