Bad Actors? Pelosi and McGovern
UPDATE: Rep. Jim McGovern’s Press Secretary Michael Mershon responded to my requests for additional information. View his statement in its entirety HERE.
Are Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) bad actors in a tragedy about the Separation of Powers?
In Spring 2007, Speaker Pelosi visited Syria, where she met with President Bashar Assad in a highly publicized, and much criticized trip. She was the poster child for Obama-esque ‘without pre-condition’ foreign policy. But this year, the Speaker chose to avoid the limelight, allegedly preferring to task loyal foot soldier Rep. Jim McGovern with chatting up leftist guerillas closely affiliated with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) - a group identified by the US State Department as terrorists. Not to mention the talks with Columbian Senator Piedad Cordoba, who remainsunder investigation by the Columbian Attorney General - and who is closely aligned with Venezuelan dictator/President Hugo Chavez.
Much of the main stream media seems content to ignore the Pelosi-McGovern-FARC story. Too much of a political hot potato. Brings to mind Pelosi’s own language regarding Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s repeated attempts to impeach President Bush. Remember? She told us all that was ‘off the table.’ Until yesterday, when Pelosi indicated that Kucinich’s latest attempt might get hearings.
Insert the uncomfortable pause here. All is fair in love and politricks.
So I placed a few calls. Speaker Pelosi’s press staff: delightful but refused to provide on-the-record comments each of the several times we spoke. I’m still waiting to hear back from McGovern’s office. Somehow, I am unsurprised by the lack of candor.
In multiple conversations with sources close to Speaker Pelosi, I was told the assertions made in the Wall Street Journal reports are “categorically false” and “without merit.” (This wins the prize for least original evasive answer)
Gee, I suppose if a Republican stood accused of colluding with a terrorist to undermine the democratically elected government of a US ally that it would be a non-story. Oh wait… the entire country would be enraged. And demanding answers. Hearings. Accountability.
This is where the average American should step in. Call Speaker Pelosi. 202.225.0100. The role of Speaker of the House is supposed to transcend partisan politics. She is a public servant. Our tax dollars may have funded these misadventures.
Never ask permission to engage in our national dialogue. Your tax dollars matter. And Speaker Pelosi should address this Obama-esque policy directly. Was she engaging with an agent of a foreign government to undermine our ally, the democratically elected government in Columbia? Did Speaker Pelosi direct Rep. McGovern to tell FARC that all military aid from the US to Columbia would be suspended under an Obama presidency?
If Speaker Pelosi was a pawn in McGovern’s game, where he invoked her name to play-up his own street-cred and power - then Pelosi should promptly throw him from the Democratic train. Give him a little partisan spanking. Go public. Offer a little straight-talk to the American people.
From the Wall Street Journal… House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may well have committed a felony in traveling to Damascus this week, against the wishes of the president, to communicate on foreign-policy issues with Syrian President Bashar Assad. The administration isn’t going to want to touch this political hot potato, nor should it become a partisan issue. Maybe special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, whose aggressive prosecution of Lewis Libby establishes his independence from White House influence, should be called back.
The Logan Act makes it a felony and provides for a prison sentence of up to three years for any American, “without authority of the United States,” to communicate with a foreign government in an effort to influence that government’s behavior on any “disputes or controversies with the United States.”
A hard drive recovered from the computer of a killed Colombian guerrilla has offered more insights into the opposition of House Democrats to the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
A military strike three weeks ago killed Raúl Reyes, No. 2 in command of the FARC, Colombia’s most notorious terrorist group. The Reyes hard drive reveals an ardent effort to do business directly with the FARC by Congressman James McGovern (D., Mass.), a leading opponent of the free-trade deal. Mr. McGovern has been working with an American go-between, who has been offering the rebels help in undermining Colombia’s elected and popular government.
Mr. McGovern’s press office says the Congressman is merely working at the behest of families whose relatives are held as FARC kidnap hostages. However, his go-between’s letters reveal more than routine intervention. The intervenor with the FARC is James C. Jones, who the Congressman’s office says is a “development expert and a former consultant to the United Nations.” Accounts of Mr. Jones’s exchanges with the FARC appeared in Colombia’s Semana magazine on March 15. This Mr. Jones should not be confused with the former Congressman and ambassador to Mexico of the same name from Oklahoma.
“Receive my warm greetings, as always, from Washington,” Mr. Jones began in a letter to the rebels last fall. “The big news is that I spoke for several hours with the Democratic Congressman James McGovern. In the meeting we had the opportunity to exchange some ideas that will be, I believe, of interest to the FARC-EP [popular army].”
Last fall, Mr. Chávez and the FARC hatched an audacious plan whereby the Venezuelan would take “proof of life” of Ms. Betancourt to French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, where the plight of Ms. Betancourt was a cause célèbre. The rebels wrote that Mr. Chávez was sure French pressure for negotiations would cause President Bush to “order Uribe to allow the meeting” between Mr. Chávez and the rebels on Colombian soil, something Mr. Uribe had refused to do. The rebels reported that Mr. Chávez was “super-motivated,” because he viewed the rendezvous as a public-relations coup that would give him and the FARC “continental and world renown.”
That plan flopped, but Mr. Chavez had other cards up his sleeve. One involved Ms. Cordoba, who is currently under investigation by the Colombian attorney general for ties to the FARC. She figures prominently in the captured rebel documents, and is notoriously close to Mr. Chávez.
She met at the Venezuelan presidential palace with FARC leaders last fall. From that meeting the rebels reported that “Piedad says that Chávez has Uribe going crazy. He doesn’t know what to do. That Nancy Pelosi helps and is ready to help in the swap [hostages in exchange for captured guerrillas]. That she has designated [U.S. Congressman Jim] McGovern for this.”
If the speaker of the House was working with Ms. Cordoba in this scheme, her judgment was more than a little misguided. The rebels write that on a trip to Argentina Ms. Cordoba told them, “It doesn’t matter to me the proposal that Sarkozy has made to free Ingrid. Above all, do not liberate Ingrid.” In short, why give up such a useful pawn?
Here is the text of the Logan Act:
Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply himself, or his agent, to any foreign government, or the agents thereof, for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects.
STATEMENT FROM REP. JIM MCGOVERN’S PRESS SECRETARY MICHAEL MERSHON:
It’s important to remember that what INTERPOL determined is that there was no evidence of any tampering of the FARC computers by the Colombian military once the military took possession of those computers. Which is very good news. What INTERPOL did NOT determine, of course, was whether any of the statements in those computers were somehow empirically true. Which, of course, they could not, as we made very clear in our letter to the Wall Street Journal.
As to the Journal column in question which attacked Colombian-based human rights groups for their alleged ties to the FARC (therefore suggesting that the FARC would easily be convinced to turn the hostages over to these groups), we were disappointed to see that one of the Colombian military members involved in the hostage rescue was wearing the insignia of the International Committee of the Red Cross during the mission, in apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions. We were pleased to see that President Uribe has apologized for that error.
As to the specific questions you have asked:
Rep. McGovern met with Sen. Cordoba during the time she was the official mediator (appointed by President Uribe) for a potential humanitarian exchange of the hostages. She also met with high-level U.S. State Department officials during this period.
Rep. McGovern never said that Sen. Obama would win the election. At the time, he was a strong supporter of Sen. Clinton.
Rep. McGovern never ‘ensured’ the end of military aid to Colombia. He doesn’t believe that would be a proper policy position to take. He has argued, and will continue to argue, that a higher percentage of our aid should be used for the building of civilian and judicial institutions in Colombia; for economic redevelopment; and for assistance to the hundreds of thousands of Colombians who have been internally displaced by the conflict.
I have attached a copy of Rep. McGovern’s floor statement from yesterday’s debate on an amendment offered by House Republican Whip Roy Blunt to the intelligence authorization bill. It lays out a lot of his thinking about the way forward, and I hope you find it useful.
I’d be happy to respond by e-mail to any other specific questions you may have.
Regards,
Michael Mershon, Press Secretary
U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA)
