FOREVER AUGUST

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504100022-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 22
• Publication Date: August 13, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504100022-1
ARTICLE AP D
ON PAGE 18 -
niASH_TNOTON POST
13 August 1985
MARY McGRORY
Forever August
T he news that there is a
commandante in the White House
a staf member who ex ites the'
contra war against t fie Nicaraguan
government, has caused not a ripple in
the pond of u ilic opinion.
He is Marine Col. Oliver L. North an
Annapolis graduate and Vietnam
veteran. His job on t e National
curet Council staff is to keep the
contras mora a high and private funds
owin into their war chest.
President Rea anwhen questioned
about this astonishing development,
ned airily that no law was being
re Ti
5ro en. The chairman of the Senate
e ect Committee on Intelligence.
avi Durenberger (R-Minn.). was
equally detached.
it could be, you might think, a matter
of more than passing interest that
someone at the right hand of the
president is promoting hostilities
against a government with which we
have diplomatic relations.
Not two months ago, the president
protested that he did not seek the
military overthrow of the Sandinista
regime. In order to bring down the
House, which for three years had
resisted his secret war, he promised to
resume talks with the Sandinistas.
Obviously, he had no intention of
doing so. Thanks in part to North's
helping hand, as we now know, the
contras are raking in money and raiding
deeper into Nicaragua. Stories of contra
atrocities are recounted. Nobody seems
to mind. Twenty-nine U.S. religious
protesters who gathered to pray at the
Nicaraguan-Honduran border were
kidnaped by contras and held for 24
hours. So what?
Now, you will say it is August and
Congress is out of town.
But for the Democrats, it is always
August; and Congress, at least in terms
of opposition, is permanently out of
town. Except on the odd budget matter,
Reagan does not have to consider them
in his calculations. On questions of
national security, Democrats are told,
absolute acquiescence to the president
is the road to salvation.
As a source of political opposition,
the Democratic House has flopped.
House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill
Jr. (D-Mass.) has strong feelings about
Central America, but he is busy with his
memoirs, and his colleagues are
scheming about his successor, so
concerted action is unknown.
The House sold out on Nicaragua on
June 26,wen it voted million in
humanitarian aid for the contras.
Members a thered the tatters their
integrity about them and insisted that
the Central Intelligence 7gency not
administer the funds. But it neglected
to say that the-National Security
Council should not take a hand in
running the war, and now eve is
at the beach or on a junket, so no fuss is
hear d.
The possibility of sliding or sneaking
into a general war in Central America is
not on the national agenda. Nor is the
arms race, which once was. A recent
Soviet offer of a test ban was summarily
dismissed by the president as a cheap
propaganda ploy, and no prominent
Democrat rose to suggest the matter
be explored, and it has vanished.
The attorney general and the
secretary of education fulminate against
the Supreme Court over the place of
religion in American society. The
uncomeliness of two Cabinet members,
who might be better concerned with the
fate of the public school system, is
scarcely remarked. The same attorney
general further calls the civil rights
organizations "a pernicious lobby," and,
for all the response, he might as well
have been talking about the weather.
Only two events have counted lately.
One was the baseball strike, which
caused no end of angst and many
pompous pronouncements about the
statesmanship of Baseball
Commissioner Peter Ueberroth. The
other was the capital concert of Bruce
Springsteen.
Some argue that the national torpor
on the deficit, nerve gas, Star Wars and
other matters that will determine the
future of the planet merely ratifies last
November's election. The public wants
to be entertained and diverted and
leave larger questions to Reagan.
The problem may be, however, that
the evaporation of serious political
opposition makes dissenters feel
eccentric or isolated. And, of course,
only the official view is amplified. There
is no Democratic spokesman. The
opinion of Jimmy Carter is less solicited
than that of Richard M. Nixon. Walter
F. Mondale, who as the last nominee is
at least the titular leader of the
Democratic Party, has disappeared
from public view, the loss of 49 states
having relegated him to irrelevancy.
Theodore Roosevelt called the White
House "a bully pulpit." It's now the only
pulpit, and that's why it's August all
year 'round, politically speaking, in the
world's greatest democracy.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504100022-1