Kerry Went to Extreme Lengths to Back Communist Ortega and Undermine U.S.

Most of us old enough to have been reading newspapers and watching television in the mid-1980s remember when the Soviet-backed Marxist-Leninist junta “Sandinistas” were battling the anti-communist guerrilla army of “Contras” in Nicaragua.

And who could forget the overblown Iran-Contra affair, the attempt to arm the Contras through a deal to swap arms for hostages with the mullahs in Iran.

What might be hazy in the memory after 20 years, however, is the Keystone Kops, I-want-to-play-president role of the freshman senator from Massachusetts, John Forbes Kerry.

Still humming his “Give peace a chance” mantra from Vietnam days, Kerry jumped into the fray, pre-empting President Ronald Reagan, butting aside the State Department and wrecking havoc with U.S. Constitution, according to a recent timely look back at the fiasco by Michael Waller, writing for Insight on the News.

Waller poignantly reminds us that in those days before the rise of Osama bin Laden, the country’s front lines were drawn against the old Soviet Union and its dangerous inroads into the American hemisphere and elsewhere around the globe. The Evil Empire was hard at work sponsoring pro-communist guerrilla forces such as the Sandinistas.

Before his latest stab at 15 minutes of fame was over, the novice on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had accused his own government of sponsoring terrorism, worked hand in hand with the nation’s sworn ideological enemies, damaged an FBI operation against a Colombian cocaine cartel and co-wrote a sham "peace" proposal aimed at disarming the U.S.-backed forces fighting to oust the Soviet-backed Sandinistas.

President Ronald Reagan and a bipartisan majority in Congress were financing the Contras in Nicaragua in their fight against the Sandinista junta, which had been sponsoring communist guerrilla and terrorist groups from neighboring countries – lighting a powder keg that threatened the entire region.

Reagan was in the middle of a delicate balancing act - seeking the release of a $14 million appropriation for the Nicaraguan resistance. On the table: an offer to limit U.S. aid to the Contras to humanitarian assistance. The quid pro quo: the Sandinistas would agree to national reconciliation and free elections.

The scene was set for Kerry to bluster into the equation like a bull in a China shop.

Teaming with Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the pair - without portfolio - traveled to Managua to chat with Sandinista junta leader Daniel Ortega.

The result: a meaningless document that State Department experts considered little more than an offer to the Contras to surrender. The Sandinistas made no commitment to national reconciliation, and that was the heart of the matter.

Nonetheless, Kerry raced back to Washington with the document he touted as a “peace proposal.” Indeed, Ortega promises a cease-fire, as long as the United States cut off all assistance, including humanitarian aid, to the anti-communist forces and their families.

“Here,” Kerry boldly pronounced to the Senate, “is a guarantee of the security interest of the United States.”

But few bought the grandstanding. Overnight, Kerry found himself not the returning hero and peacemaker but a pariah.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., accused Kerry and Harkin of “transgressing” against the Constitution by holding unauthorized negotiations with a foreign leader.

A peeved Secretary of State George Shultz announced, “Those who assure us that these dire consequences are not in prospect [in Central America] are some of those who assured us of the same in Indochina before 1975. The litany of apology for communists, and condemnation for America and our friends, is beginning again.”

White House spokesman Larry Speakes rained more buckets on Kerry's parade: “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.” Ortega had, indeed, announced a trip to the U.S.S.R. to petition for $200 million more in Soviet support.

A frantic Kerry had his staff seek out anybody willing to praise his efforts. The only takers were Sens. Teddy Kennedy, D-Mass., and Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who styled the controversial mission to Managua as a masterstroke forcing a recalcitrant Reagan to parley with the commies.

Perhaps figuring that if he stood still, the unwelcome mantle of “soft on communism” would cloak his shoulders, Kerry decided that the best defense was a colorful and flamboyant offense.

The former prosecutor got busy in 1986, launching a full-scale “investigation” to discredit the Nicaraguan resistance and the Reagan administration. The aim: stitch together - by whatever means - an international criminal conspiracy.

Using the unlikely fodder of allegations in lawsuits, Kerry's probe predictably hit rough waters.

According to Insight's report, a British soldier of fortune, Peter Glibbery, swore that Kerry staffers bribed him to accuse Sandinista opponents of crimes, only to recant the next day. A former French soldier named Claude Chaffard claimed that Kerry staffers promised to help him with U.S. visa problems and paid him money while he cooperated.

Such wrinkles certainly did not bolster Kerry’s insistent demands to the Republican majority's staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to crank up full hearings on his shadowy conspiracy theories.

In desperation to keep the raked muck churning, Kerry signed a letter used in a direct-mail appeal for an outside group to raise money. That outside group was Commission on United States-Central American Relations, which was reportedly a front of International Center for Development Policy and included as members open supporters of the Sandinistas, the communist Cuban dictatorship of Fidel Castro and the communist FMLN guerrillas of El Salvador, according to commission literature.

“It was a racket that was probably illegal at the time, and certainly would be illegal now,” a former Senate staffer with firsthand knowledge of the investigation revealed to Insight.

The work product of the “racket”: alleged widespread drug trafficking by the Nicaraguan resistance. It was enough to prod the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to create a subcommittee to investigate.

Kerry feverishly honed a theory that the Contras were nothing less than a major hub in an international cocaine-smuggling operation.

But by the summer of 1986, the Washington Times was reporting that aides to Kerry “severely damaged a federal drug investigation by interfering with a witness while pursuing allegations of drug smuggling by the Nicaraguan resistance.”

The Times later followed up with a report, citing federal law-enforcement officials. The revelation: The FBI repeatedly had warned Kerry's staffers to back off because they were endangering a federal anti-drug operation. According to the report, an FBI informant became “spooked” and stopped cooperating after Kerry’s staff interfered – going as far as to change her story to include the Contras as part of the plot.

As was the case earlier, Kerry's ploy began to unravel. Drug traffickers "are selling a story to Congress and to the media that they have concocted to have their sentences reduced or to have their cases dismissed,” a Drug Enforcement Administration agent told the New York Times.

Eventually the DEA and Justice Department dismissing the claims of one of Kerry’s star witnesses, accused cocaine trafficker Jorge Morales, that the CIA and Nicaraguan resistance forces were involved in large-scale drug trafficking.

Thickening the unsavory brew, the Washington Times then revealed that Kerry had concealed evidence of Sandinista drug trafficking and had deleted information from his staff report of the previous October to pin the blame on the Sandinistas’ U.S.-backed opponents.

The camera-hogging Kerry suddenly made himself scarce. He refused to speak to journalists seeking to question him.

“Sen. John Kerry is coming under increasing fire from federal law-enforcement officials,” the Associated Press reported. “The officials have said Kerry’s work was based largely on unsubstantiated allegations from informants, most of whom already have been interviewed by federal law-enforcement officials and some of whom have previously been found to be unreliable. A number of them are charged with various crimes or are in jail.”

Unrepentant, Kerry switched again to the attack mode for defense, trying to connect drug dealers to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, who was campaigning at the time to succeed Reagan as president of the United States.

In May 1988, Bush accused Kerry of leaking unsubstantiated allegations that his office approved drugs-for-weapons deals to arm the contras. No evidence ever surfaced to confirm the claims.

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the ranking Republican on Kerry’s subcommittee, publicly accused Kerry of abusing the subcommittee to damage Bush and to help the flagging presidential campaign of Kerry’s longtime friend, mentor and ally Michael Dukakis. McConnell charged that Kerry had given credibility to witnesses who were critical of President Reagan and Vice President Bush but failed to summon others to testify who would rebut the criticisms.

Concluded Insight's report: “The politicization of the current 9/11 commission, and the attempts by Democratic partisans to prove that the current president, George W. Bush, failed to prevent the 9/11 terrorist attacks when he could have stopped them, seems to be a repeat of the Kerry subcommittee’s modus operandi of 1987-88.”

McConnell perhaps summed things up best when he told the Boston Globe: “I think the integrity of the Senate investigative process and the objectivity, fairness and balance of this particular effort have been compromised for political purposes.”

Oh, Jessie...if you're still around... sorry your article was deleted, I wanted to have some fun with it while it was up but the mods beat me to it. The stuff tagged with the virginia.edu are sourced to another wingnut liberal's adoring notes on his hero - evidently supporting terrorism is a tradition of the Sandinista-loving left.

1943 : (PATRICK ARGUELLO BORN, GROWS UP IN NICARAGUA: HE WOULD LATER JOIN UP WITH PALESTINIAN PFLP TERRORISTS IN CARRYING OUT HIJACKINGS AGAINST ISRAELI CIVILIAN PLANES) Patrick Arguello's own life, albeit short, was eventful. He was the child of an American mother and a Nicaraguan father, and spent his childhood in Nicaragua. - http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/sixties-l/1544.html

1957 : (PATRICK ARGUELLO'S FAMILY SUSPECTED IN THE ASSASSINATION OF NICARAGUAN LEADER SOMOZA; THEY FLEE TO THE US : HE WOULD LATER JOIN UP WITH PALESTINIAN PFLP TERRORISTS IN CARRYING OUT HIJACKINGS AGAINST ISRAELI CIVILIAN PLANES ) Patrick Arguello's own life, albeit short, was eventful. He was the child of an American mother and a Nicaraguan father, and spent his childhood in Nicaragua. But in 1957, his family was wrongly suspected of involvement in the assassination of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, and forced to flee to the United States. Patrick spent his teenage and early adult years in Los Angeles, during a time of political changes such as the Cuban revolution and the U.S. civil rights movement. - http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/sixties-l/1544.html (bear in mind this is a lib source)

1967 - 1968 : (CHILE : PATRICK ARGUELLO GETS FULLBRIGHT SCHOLARSHIP TO STUDY IN CHILE : HE WOULD LATER JOIN UP WITH PALESTINIAN PFLP TERRORISTS IN CARRYING OUT HIJACKINGS AGAINST ISRAELI CIVILIAN PLANES) Patrick Patrick Arguello obtained a Fullbright scholarship to study in Chile in 1967-68. It was a time of great ferment in Chile, which culminated in the 1970 election of Leftist President Salvador Allende. When Patrick returned to Nicaragua, he worked with the Nicaraguan student movement. He hoped to join the Sandinista National Liberation Front. - http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/sixties-l/1544.html

AUGUST 1969 : (PATRICK ARGUELLO IS EXILED; HE GOES TO EUROPE AND JOINS UP WITH FSLN TERRORIST GROUP, WHICH COLLABORATED WITH THE PALESTINIAN FEDEYEEN IN ORDER TO GET MILITARY TRAINING FOR SANDINISTA RECRUITS; ARGUELLO TRAINS IN JORDAN AND THEN PARTICIPATES IN PLANNING SEPTEMBER HIJACKINGS) In August 1969, the Somoza government exiled Patrick for his political activities. He subsequently went to Europe and became involved with an FSLN cell there. The FSLN began to collaborate with various factions of the Palestinian guerrilla movement, known as Fedayeen,in order to receive military training for a group of Sandinista recruits. Patrick Arguello was part of a small group of Nicaraguans who trained in Jordan and participated in the planning of the September [1970] hijackings [which ultimately lead to his death.]. - http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/sixties-l/1544.html

1969 : (PALESTINIAN GEURRILLA LEILA KHALED PARTICIPATES IN HIJACKING) - http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/sixties-l/1544.html

1969 : (PALESTINIAN TERRORIST LEILA KHALED HIJACKS A TWA FLIGHT TO SYRIA) Leila Khaled had come to notoriety when she had successfully hijacked a TWA flight to Damascus in 1969. - "TERRORISTS, SPIES & ASSASSINS/TERRORISTS : CARLOS THE JACKAL: TRAIL OF TERROR : Black September, " CourtTV.com, April 12, 2003, http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/terrorists/jackal/6.html?sect=22.

1970s : (NICARAGUAN SANDINISTAS COLLABORATE WITH PALESTINIAN GUERRILLAS - THE PFLP) (* Note that the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq was, at least later, a supporter of the PFLP)

FEBRUARY 1970 : (JORDANIAN TROOPS CLASH WITH PALESTINIAN TERROR BACKERS IN A THREE DAY STREET FIGHT AFTER KING HUSSEIN OF JORDAN ISSUES A DECREE ORDERING PALESTINIANS TO SURRENDER THEIR GUNS AND EXPLOSIVES; DECREE LATER ABANDONED) Prior to the [Haddad's PFLP September] hijackings, King Hussein of Jordan had been mostly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and had allowed over fifty terrorist groups into his country. Tensions had been mounting however, since Palestinian attacks on Jewish targets had increased Jordan's vulnerability to retaliatory strikes from Israel. The tension increased in February 1970 when Jordanian troops, attempting to enforce a royal decree that ordered the Palestinians to surrender their guns and explosives, clashed with the "freedom fighters" in a street brawl that lasted three days. The decree was later abandoned. - "TERRORISTS, SPIES & ASSASSINS/TERRORISTS : CARLOS THE JACKAL: TRAIL OF TERROR : Black September, " CourtTV.com, April 12, 2003, http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/terrorists/jackal/6.html?sect=22.

JULY 1970 : (PALESTINIAN TERRORIST LEILA KHALED ESCAPES SERIOUS INJURY WHEN REMOTE-CONTROLLED ROCKETS WERE FIRED INTO HADDAD'S HOUSE DURING A TERRORIST PLANNING SESSION; HADDAD BLAMED MOSSAD) In July 1970, Khaled had escaped serious injury when remote controlled rockets were fired into Haddad's house during a meeting. Incredibly, two of the four rockets failed to explode but Haddad's wife and eight-year-old son, who were in another room, received cuts and burns. Haddad blamed Mossad, Israel's secret service, for the attack.- "TERRORISTS, SPIES & ASSASSINS/TERRORISTS : CARLOS THE JACKAL: TRAIL OF TERROR : Black September, " CourtTV.com, April 12, 2003, http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/terrorists/jackal/6.html?sect=22.

SEPTEMBER 6, 1970 : (JORDAN : PFLP HIJACKING OF THREE CIVILIAN AIRPLANES) On September 6, 1970, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked three airplanes to free captured members and bring attention to their cause. The hostage crisis on an abandoned airstrip in Jordan captured world attention. - http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/sixties-l/1544.html

SEPTEMBER 6, 1970 : (UK : FOURTH ATTEMPTED HIJACKING OF AN ISRAELI EL AL AIRLINER FAILS : ONE HIJACKER, NICARAGUAN SANDINISTA PATRICK ARGUELLO RYAN KILLED, THE OTHER, PALESTINIAN TERRORIST LEILA KHALED, IS CAPTURED WHEN PLANE MAKES EMERGENCY LANDING IN LONDON) On September 6, 1970, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked three airplanes to free captured members and bring attention to their cause. The hostage crisis on an abandoned airstrip in Jordan captured world attention. That same day, a fourth attempted hijack of an Israeli El Al flight failed. The male hijacker was killed, and the female hijacker was taken into custody by British authorities when the Israeli plane made an emergency landing in London. She was identified as Leila Khaled, a Palestinian guerrilla famous for a previous hijacking in 1969. The slain hijacker was later identified as Patrick Arguello Ryan, a 27-year-old man of Nicaraguan-American background. Questions abounded: Who was he and how did he come to be involved with the Palestinians? Many assumed he was merely a radical embracing a revolutionary cause, a leftist student like so many of that era. Some called him an internationalist hero like Che Guevara, while others called him a cold-blooded terrorist like Carlos the Jackal. The truth about Patrick Arguello is far more complex. Patrick was a member of Nicaragua's Sandinista National Liberation Front. He died in an obscure chapter of Sandinista history: their 1970 collaboration with Palestinian guerrillas. - http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/sixties-l/1544.html

SEPTEMBER 6, 1970 : (PFLP TERRORIST HADDAD ORDERS THE SIMULATANEOUS HIJACKING OF FOUR AIRLINERS BOUND FOR NY; PALESTINIAN TERRORIST LEILA KHALED & HER SANDINISTA ACCOMPLICE PATRICK ARGUELLO POSE AS MARRIED COUPLE AND KHALED LEADS THE FIRST ATTACK; PILOT PUTS THE PLANE IN A NOSEDIVE AND AN EL AL SKY MARSHALL SHOOTS ARGUELLO AFTER HE TOSSES A GRENADE DOWN THE AISLE BUT IT FAILS TO EXPLODE WHILE LIELLA KHALED IS BEATEN BY PASSENGERS AS SHE STRUGGLED TO PULL OUT HER GRENADES)

First plane : On September 6 1970, Haddad ordered the simultaneous hijacking of four airliners bound for New York. Leila Khaled, one of Haddad's trusted lieutenants, led the first attack. Khaled had come to notoriety when she had successfully hijacked a TWA flight to Damascus in 1969. In July 1970, Khaled had escaped serious injury when remote controlled rockets were fired into Haddad's house during a meeting. Incredibly, two of the four rockets failed to explode but Haddad's wife and eight-year-old son, who were in another room, received cuts and burns. Haddad blamed Mossad, Israel's secret service, for the attack. Khaled's mission was to hijack an El Al flight, which was en-route to New York from Tel Aviv via Amsterdam. The plan was for Khaled and her accomplice, Patrick Arguello, to pose as a married couple and take control of the aircraft. As the plane approached the English coast, the pair rose from their seats and, brandishing guns, made their way to the cockpit. As they reached the flight deck the pilot thrust the aircraft into a steep nosedive throwing the terrorists off their feet. In the scuffle that followed, Arguello threw a hand grenade down the aisle of the plane and was shot dead shortly after by an El Al "sky marshal."
Fortunately the grenade failed to explode. Khaled was overpowered by male passengers and savagely beaten as she tried to retrieve her own grenades, which had been secreted inside her brassiere.
After an emergency landing at Heathrow Airport, Khaled became the subject of a heated argument as El Al security and British police fought over who had jurisdiction over the prisoner. Eventually the Israelis conceded defeat and Khaled was taken into British custody.
Second plane: The second attack also met with problems when the Pan Am 747 was found to be too big to land at the Jordanian airstrip that Haddad had selected. Instead it was flown to Cairo where the passengers and crew were ordered off before the plane was blown up.
Last two planes : The other two aircraft, a Swissair DC8 from Zurich and a TWA 707 from Frankfurt were successfully captured and flown to Zarqa airstrip in Jordan as planned. In honour of the event the Palestinians renamed Dawson's Field, a former British airstrip, "Revolution Airstrip." In a public announcement, the Popular Front described the attacks as the first strike in avenging "the American plot to liquidate the Palestinian cause by supplying arms to Israel." They further ordered the Swiss and West German governments to release several of their jailed comrades.
A further hijacking by a Popular Front sympathizer saw a BOAC flight from Bombay to London carrying 150 passengers taken hostage and held at Zarqa pending Khaled's release. After twenty-four hours of intense negotiations, 360 passengers and crews were released in exchange for Khaled and six other convicted terrorists. As a final act of revenge, terrorist bombers destroyed the aircraft. Carlos [the Jackal] , as a new recruit with no experience, was not used in the attacks but spent the time guarding a munitions depot far from the action.
Prior to the hijackings, King Hussein of Jordan had been mostly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and had allowed over fifty terrorist groups into his country. Tensions had been mounting however, since Palestinian attacks on Jewish targets had increased Jordan's vulnerability to retaliatory strikes from Israel. The tension increased in February 1970 when Jordanian troops, attempting to enforce a royal decree that ordered the Palestinians to surrender their guns and explosives, clashed with the "freedom fighters" in a street brawl that lasted three days. The decree was later abandoned.
Incensed that the Popular Front would have the audacity the carry out such an act on Jordanian soil without his consent, Hussein decreed marshal [should be "martial law"] law and raised his Bedu army to drive the Palestinians out of Jordan. The resulting conflict was dubbed "Black September" and was to become Carlos's [Carlos the Jackal's] first taste of real warfare.

- "TERRORISTS, SPIES & ASSASSINS/TERRORISTS : CARLOS THE JACKAL: TRAIL OF TERROR : Black September, " CourtTV.com, April 12, 2003, http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/terrorists/jackal/6.html?sect=22.

SEPTEMBER 1970 : (JORDAN : THE KING TIRES OF PFLP HIJACKINGS OCCURING ON JORDANIAN SOIL AND HAS THE PALESTINIANS DRIVEN OUT OF JORDAN. CARLOS THE JACKAL GOT HIS FIRST TASTE OF WARFARE AT THIS TIME) Incensed that the Popular Front would have the audacity the carry out such an act on Jordanian soil without his consent, Hussein decreed marshal [should be "martial law"] law and raised his Bedu army to drive the Palestinians out of Jordan. The resulting conflict was dubbed "Black September" and was to become Carlos's [Carlos the Jackal's] first taste of real warfare. - "TERRORISTS, SPIES & ASSASSINS/TERRORISTS : CARLOS THE JACKAL: TRAIL OF TERROR : Black September, " CourtTV.com, April 12, 2003, http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/terrorists/jackal/6.html?sect=22.

*****

* Carlos the Jackal : You know, of course, that Carlos the Jackal is a convert to Islam.- 4 posted on 10/02/2003 3:52 AM PDT by livius *

* No I didn't. Interesting, like the fact that Carlos the Jackel's brother runs Hugo Chavez's Venezuela Bolivarian "education" department. A little bird told me. - 5 posted on 10/02/2003 5:19 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife *

Carlos converted to Islam about 10 years ago in the Sudan. I gather he's quite the little Muslim activist in jail now, where he recently married his looney French ultra-left lawyer. Remember that one of the first official acts of Chavez (during a victory lap in France) was to attempt to visit Carlos in jail, even before meeting the French President. He has also written adoring letters to his terrorist idol. 10 posted on 10/02/2003 7:19 AM PDT by livius

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