SPOOKED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504100024-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 24
• Publication Date: July 23, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504100024-9
A
ARTICLE
09 PAGE
WASHINGTON POST
23 July 1985
NARY McGRORY
vuoked
Lately, the House has-been at some
pains to show how red-blooded it
is. Last week, however, it was
bluenose time. The House stood up and
forbade the library of Congress to use
taxpayers' money for a Braille edition of
Playboy.
Rep. Chalmers P. Wylie (R-Ohio) led
the crusade to save the blind from what
he called "talk about wanton idleness or
wanton and illicit an and so forth."
Those who of censor~dp, kw speed and common
sense pointed out that the centerfolds
and raunchy cartoons-which they all
rushed forward to see when Wylie made
copies available on the floor-could not
possibly oocrc>pt the sightless, since
they can harms be rendered into
Braille. But they said wanly that they
realised that a vote against WyBe might
be hard to explain beck home. So the
tally went 206 to 103, for keeping the
library from bringing to the sightless
Playboy's reflections, including the
occasional muslop of such fight wing
gods as William R
Buckley Jr. and the
Rev. It was pretty siiy, but it really isn't
half a daffy as some of the things the
House has donelatey. And
interestingly, it was the one thing the
House did that Rambo, Its new role
model, might not have approved of.
In the flim by the same name, Rambo
is so busy wasting Commies and wiping
out bridges and jails that he doesn't
have much time for reading. But it .
seems safe to say that he's the hind
who might pick up Playboy in one of
those rare moments when he didn't
have a grenade in his hand.
The House is trying to tell us that it
doesn't like the way the work! is going.
President Reagan, after the Flight 847
hostages were home from Beirut,
jocosely expressed the legislators'
mood: "After seeing Rambo last night,
IT know how to do it next time."
The House once had a mind of its
own and stood up against nerve gas, aid
to the Nicaraguan contras, military
intervention in Nicaragua and other
dubious ideas from the White House.
But in the interest of being macho, they
have surrendered.
Now the House is haunted. The
members jump when a leaf drops. They
aft ghosts of future opponents pointing
a bony finger and shrieking, *Wimp,"
"PInko" or, it seems, in the Playboy
case, "porn-freak."
They can't storm Red prison camps
as Rambo does, but they are going to
help anyone, anywhere, who can. And
so they have voted to help the
resistance in Cambodia, even though
they can't be Pure the money won't fall
into the hands of Pol Pot, the
Hitler-class butcher who for present
purposes
Of all the daffy things the Howe has
done lately, none matches lifting the
ban on covert aid to the rebels in
Angola. It was no surprise that Rep.
Robert K. Dorman (R-CalIf.) was leading
the charge. But by his side was, of all
people, Rep. Claude Pepper (D-Fla.), an
~i ~y who
for
recipients. The
presence of Cuban troops in Angola is
said to have fired him up.
Dorman cried out that a vote to end
-Lp-r ton- has m
sce mace 1977 when then-Sen.
Clark o210wa) put over an amendment
to am UA tricks-would
that we have bciwd -M Vietnam
t normal
to get into wars against
' t governments in
countries.
Me . Roward E. Wolpe (D-Mich.)
noted that Jonas Savimbi, leader of the
antigovernment forces in Angola, isn't
the genuine article as a warrior for
democracy, since he told Wolpe that he
is not at home with Soviet
Communism-he prefers the stricter
Chinese model.
But the House meekly went along.
Never mind that they torpedoed the
one set of faintly promising diplomatic
negotiations being conducted by the
Reagan administration. Angola has
promised to send the Cubans home it South Africa withdraws from Namibia.
Two days after the House vote, Angola
walked out of the talks.
Never mind that the House gave a
pat on the back to the government of
South Africa. an ally of Savimbi.
The funny thing about the members'
panic, says Rep. Patrick Williams
(D-Mont.), is that it is not shared by the
public. The country is in a composed
frame of mind and doesn't want to get
into a war, even?against Playboy in
Braille. "There's a political full moon
out there someplace," muses William,
"but only we in the House see it. We
are certainly the only ones out there
howling."
Williams thinks there's an unusual
role reversal: The frantic members go
home and are calmed by their
constituents. "When that tide starts to
roll, whether liberal or conservative, it
washes members in front of it," he
says-about the best explanation be can
give of the current madness.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504100024-9