Presswatch / Throwaway Countries in Throwaway Times

...Cord Meyer reported it in the Washington Star, and Ambassador White himself told journalists in El Salvador that "approximately 100 men landed from Nicaragua" to bring weapons to the guerrillas...

...The point is that not one editorial writer in the country chose to blast Zbig for this nonsense, whereas he had been regularly lambasted whenever he chose to call attention to the unpleasant aspects of Russian imperialism...

...Boeing sued, arguing that the release would Michael Ledeen is Executive Editor of the Washington Quarterly...

...In an article apparently from Washington on January 10, De Young said that "those in favor of the (military) aid have maintained that U.S...

...Ed I Salvador: Coverage of the war in El Salvador shifted abruptly in late December and early January, and students of the press will want to have this phenomenon explained...

...Last of all on this dreary subject, a bouquet to Mr...

...evolution rather than revolution in other regions...

...Still, by mid-January it was evident that the Communist bloc was indeed pouring arms into El Salvador...

...The Washington Post has had two people on the story: Karen De Young, who frequently questions the government's actions but reports favorably on the guerrillas, and Christopher Dickey, who also regards the pronunciamenti from the "revolutionaries" as more reliable than handouts from the junta...

...Both seemed highly skeptical about claims made in early January by American officials that the Salvadoran guerrillas were receiving massive aid from foreign countries...

...Like all civil wars, the one in El Salvador is hard to analyze from day to day, and good reportage is in desperately short supply...

...It is this sort of thing that gives security-minded government officials gray hair and active ulcers...

...s request for a restraining order barring the Defense Department from disclosing Boeing procedures for modifications of KC135 tanker aircraft, a company spokesman said...

...Thus it came as a considerable shock when American Ambassador White- himself the object of the wrath of the center-right for the past six months- began to say that the Salvadoran "revolutionaries" were being supplied directly from Cuba and Nicaragua with Russian, Cuban, and Chinese weapons...

...And the Post's editorialists took a position quite different from that of their own reporters...

...I suppose it shows how contagious the sickness in Carter's White House had finally become...

...Most encouragingly, he sees the Russians, despite their power, as the frustrated custodians of a failed ideology and economic system...

...Military aid is no substitute for the reforms that alone offer the prospect of enduring legitimate rule...

...Continuing in this vein, the then-national security adviser added "it is very difficult to argue that the Soviet Union should restrain itself when a trade union movement manifests itself which doesn't challenge formally party supremacy . . . and at the same time say that we're going to support regimes which oppose land reform and social changes in an area in which we have been dominant.'' This sort of nonsense is hard to explain in the mouth of the Carter administration's vaunted hawk...

...here described Nicaragua's situation...

...On January 17, the Post endorsed American military aid to El Salvador (suspended since 1977, when the human rights crowd started its rampage through the State Department's china shop) in a remarkable editorial: It is suggestive, though perhaps not conclusive, that the "final offensive" was set in motion during a period in which the United States had suspended military aid to the government...

...If the workers of Gdansk have the right to demand a decent wage and decent weekly hours, the peasants of El Salvador and Nicaragua have a right to demand their land...

...On January 13, the editorial column came out for the endorsement of Alexander M. Haig, Jr...

...But just two days earlier Scotty Reston had written in the same newspaper that "it was hard to believe that (Haig) was being considered as Secretary of State, rather than as Secretary of Defense or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff...

...a vigorous West...

...And slightly more than a week later, Dickey wrote: U.S...

...He therefore thinks American policy depends as much on economic as military prowess...

...It began, "a federal judge in Wichita, Kans, granted Boeing Co...

...Juan M. Vasquez, the Los Angeles Times's man in El Salvador, for his excellent reportage on January 23...

...And none too soon at that, for the Times is showing distinct signs of delirium...

...He quotes acting archbishop Rivera y Damas: "The Salvadoran people are not convinced that the consequences of an insurrection of a socialist nature would be better than what the present government is trying to achieve...

...Ejrzezinski: On January 12, Zbig-niew Brzezinski gave a speech in Paris that sounded as if it had been written in part by Cy Vance's new peace consortium (which includes the Russian Arbatov and other free thinkers...

...Keep that in mind the next time an American priest stands up and denounces the United States for supporting the junta...

...their editorialists would-judging by the ominous last line quoted above- call for a new economic program...

...And watch the Libyan connection, in El Salvador as elsewhere, in the near future...

...officials . . . hint without providing evidence that the Soviet Union may be pressuring the leftist government of neighboring Nicaragua to supply more arms and become more involved in the Salvadoran conflict than its leaders would have wanted...

...as Secretary of State...

...No one bothered to point out that, once the information had been released to Hays, anyone else (or indeed the government of a foreign country) could have the same information...

...So, you see, the Times simply convinced itself that Haig is one of them...

...Haig presented quite a different picture...

...Nicaragua and Cuba, and somewhere behind them the Soviet Union, have left Mr...

...The tough day will come when there are choices to be made between the two...

...I have suggested in this space from time to time that the thing doesn't work this way at all, and there was a small article in the Wall Street Journal on January 19 that made the point nicely...

...have given Hays an unfair competitive advantage when the contract again came up for bid...

...Reagan no choice...

...This is a breakthrough for the Post, which has come to understand the Soviet role in the whole affair...

...Heretofore the coverage by the leading dailies had argued that the governmental junta was evil and repressive, and that the revolutionaries were fighting the righteous struggle on behalf of an oppressed populace...

...So was I, but when I read the justification, it all became clear: He is, in short, playing the hand that politics dealt him, but in pursuit of familiar goals: detente or East-West standoff by another name...

...That's the truth, folks...

...And while one might object to the notion that only a "reform" government can offer "enduring legitimate rule" (by this standard no Communist government offers such enduring legitimacy, and one could make an equally convincing case for the reverse proposition: that only a military regime can hope to quell the current assault), we can all applaud the Post editorialists' courage and forthright-ness...

...His worry was not so much that there might be a military confrontation but that the Soviet Union was expanding so rapidly in military power that Western policy might be paralyzed by this growth...

...Surprised...

...And we can only hope that he also knows there is quite a difference between the democratic Polish trade union movement and the totalitarian-supported guerrilla movements in Central America...

...intelligence reports show marked increases in both the quality and quantity of weapons flowing to El Salvador's leftist guerrillas recently from sources that included Nicaragua, Cuba, Vietnam, the Palestine Liberation Organization, Libya and Eastern Europe...

...Someone is playing throwaway with their little bulls--- country," is how one diplomat (sic...

...Brzezinski probably knows that there is a considerable difference between American "dominance" in Central America-where we ourselves guaranteed the success of the Sandinistas, and even offered aid to them-and Russian suzerainty over the satellites...

...But don't tell the Times about it...

...JL he New York Times: I am pleased to report that my call for a boycott of the New York Times is gathering support...

...Folks who suggested that El Salvador was simply the next step in an advance that started in Cuba and moved through Michael Man-ley's Jamaica to Sandinista Nicaragua, were written off as hysterics, and various priests, Friends, and spokesmen for Amnesty International were invoked against the junta...

...The case had to do with a competing firm, Hays International Corp., that had asked for the information under the FOIA (the vast majority of requests under FOIA are made by American corporations, by the way), and the DOD had decided to release the information...

...But neither is there any avoiding of the need for careful, adequate, effective military aid...

...But that is not the point here...

...And the excellent Bernard Gwertzman had put it very accurately: ' 'For those accustomed to previous secretaries of state talking about detente and the need to avoid nuclear war, Mr...

...PRESS SWATCH THROWAWAY COUNTRIES IN THROWAWAY TIMES by Michael Ledeen The Freedom of Information Act, continued: Most of those who cheered when the FOIA was passed undoubtedly expected that it would serve to unmask the evils of government and advance the cause of truth...