Presswatch/Jackson's Victory Tour

...Nor have the NATO allies--whose number include Turkey and Norway as well as, now, Spain and Portugal--had any difficulty in understanding one another for a generation...

...For thirty-five years the peace in Europe has been kept by the armed might and the grim watchfulness of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the readiness of NATO has been sustained throughout its life by the United States...

...Patrick Cosgrave is a free-lance journalist living in London...

...Me, in a fit of naivet$,, I went to Protocol House...

...Not that the schedule is classified or anything like that...

...He was near-giddy...

...And he was in rare form...

...That is not true in the case of the contras...

...The Sandinistas, he declared, have "put Nicaragua back on the road to democracy, peace and reconciliat i o n . . . The moral offensive that we 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1984 have launched has found many friends and supporters...

...There was an elderly woman billed as the head of an American residents' g r o u p - - p r o - Sandinista and anti-U.S., naturally...

...Joseph Kraft referred to Jackson as "a scoundrel...

...And most clever of all, he left reporters with the silly notion that he was reading the stories they filed from Cuba...

...Miss Belofg is one of those Britons who believes that, not accommodation merely, but understanding, is possible between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Western European powers...

...And there was nothing Castro could do to take away the sting of that...

...musical comedy and opera aren't the country's strength...

...After all, he twice vetoed our membership in the European Economic Community, perhaps unwittingly seeking thus to do us a favor which we spurned...

...M. Couve denies that there was any such difference...

...The balance of power in Europe may well be precarious, but the EEC is doing nothing to make it less so...

...Scads of Cuban functionaries were assigned to the contingent of reporters with Jackson...

...Actually, these theses were so palpably true that Jackson, for all his eagerness to please his Marxist hosts, repeated one of them as simple fact when he called the Sandinista-versus-Contra struggle a civil war...

...In her book The General Says No, Nora Beloff says that M. Couve added "I am no longer Foreign Minister of France...

...I guessed fight, as did three or four other reporters, but only because the Sandinistas had lied again...

...And this time, rumor had it that we'd encounter Jackson at the next stop, the breakfast place...

...It would be hard to imagine a more ridiculous piece of effrontery, or a more ludicrous affront to the truth of recent history...

...Even if the translators are given their favorite new toy--a computer called "Eurotra"--I fancy we shall have to get accustomed to a singular lack of comprehension, l~t alone a singular lack of mutual understanding...

...A Sandinista functionary, a moderately attractive young woman, came to the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel and announced the offer of breakfast...

...Fresh from two days in Cuba, Jackson was bubbling with enthusiasm for anything left-wing or Marxist or Communist...

...They don't know how...

...So I got on the bus provided by the Sandinista lady and went to the next stop...

...Before Greece it was 6 x 5 = 30...

...Heads turn to see if someone passes the sign...

...CA 94706 Now, General de Gaulle was tiresome, and he was difficult to deal with...

...As always, Ronald Reagan did it...

...Jackson was off pandering to one Sandinista group or another--you'd have thought they were potential delegates to the Democratic national convention--and Fred Barnes is National Political Reporter f o r the Baltimore Sun...

...As you might suspect, this is not the sort of thing that normally happens to American reporters when traveling overseas with a prominent American political figure...

...Just over 2,000 people are employed at the business and--wait for it, dear reader-The entry of Greece into the Community significantly increased the possible number of language combinations...

...Nonetheless, I feel it is high time we British made up to his ghost for Churchill's remark...

...Castro, perhaps alone among Communist dictators, could make it in an elective system...

...Finally, Mary McGrory of the Washington Post, a holdout in the condemnation of Jackson, turned on him...

...All this was quite enough for Jackson to bestow "moral offensive" status on Castro...

...Only one thing could make you glad to be getting on the plane for Cuba: the o p p o r t u n i t y to get out o f Nicaragua...

...Those who want to listen, he said, can stay...

...A crisis with no foreseeable end" was how she characterized him...

...As one veteran reporter on Latin America told me, the Sandinistas are pursuing the same totalitarian agenda as the Cubans...

...The brave anti-Sandinista archbishop of Managua, Miguel Manuel y Bravo, was not invited...

...Perhaps they finally got the signal...

...James Reston of the New York Times accused Jackson of "interfering with the constitutional rights of the President and Congress to conduct foreign policy...

...I did not complain, even when Jesse Jackson, Jr...

...Why should he agree to free 26 Cuban political prisoners at the last minute, in addition to the 22 American drug traffickers he had already promised to release...

...One feature that soured reporters was the condition of the Havana Libre Hotel...

...He found no enemies on the left, but plenty on the right...

...Why, "it is enough to have a minimum of common sense, enough to visit Nicaragua, to realize the extraordinary degree of popular support that our Revolution enjoys," the document said...

...We didn't...

...Guess what...

...Get back on the buses, they said, and you'll be taken to the hall where Jackson will deliver a speech...

...With them were leaders of the kept church...

...Soon he was mugged by reality in the form of press coverage and commentary...

...This is a very different situation [in El Salvador]," Jackson answered...

...It smells bad...

...The intellectual and material author of this invasion is the government of the United States...

...it's just that they don't know what Jackson might be planning over the next few hours let alone days...

...And if anyone wants to go to Protocol House, where Jackson is conferring with the Sandinista hierarchy, there will be a bus to transport you...

...In fatigues, Castro worked the press plane like a professional...

...But Cuba, I discovered, has one extraordinary natural resource--Fidel Castro...

...Red Sox fans in September have more zip...

...To fly with Jackson into Dulles International Airport outside Washington along with a cargo of prisoners was to see a man, Jackson, absolutely certain that he would be warmly welcomed home as a conquering hero...

...By this Miss Beloff meant to imply a difference between the president of France and his minister for foreign affairs...

...Freedom-lovers in the press corps, which meant most all the reporters, opted for the hotel, where they could at least slip from the tight clutches of the Sandinistas...

...I didn't say I like the place...

...m North Poznt Pres.s 850 Talbot At'e,lue Berkeley...

...Once more, Reagan did it...

...Sure, he cares about his coverage and he has minions, too, but they never cater to reporters...

...Jackson was nowhere in sight or earshot...

...Cuba may have great baseball players and boxers...

...One has to put it in context...

...Under armed guard, the small squad of reporters waited for nearly two hours before Jackson and the Sandinistas emerged...

...Please don't get me wrong on the subject of Cuba...

...He's a dictator, an imperialist, a persecutor of homosexuals and evangelical Christians and political opponents, the leading Communist ideologist extant, a man who regarded a ruthless schemer like Che Guevara as an idealistic dreamer...

...The guerrillas on the left "have standing in many parts of the world community and are legitimate political forces...

...It is in what used to pass for a nice neighborhood in Managua...

...And he impressed a bunch of reporters, which was harder because they thought his country awful...

...Most reporters do...

...We remained for an hour, during which time we were each given a Sandinista tract entitled "8 Mistaken Theses...

...When Ann Groer of the Orlando Sentinel offered him her baseball hat, he merrily handed her his olive-drab fatigue cap...

...The architects and planners were "deeply ashamed that the principle [sic] obstacle to the creation of a new society in Nicaragua is the hostile and aggressive policy of our own government...

...Time zinged him for "displaying little regard for the unfortunate consequences of attacking his own government in unfriendly countries" and for having "gratuitously injected himself into the flammable arena of Central American politics...

...Cuban bureaucrats have developed the habit of jerking their heads around to look for the fellow who's supposed to give the signal...

...These twenty guys--they actually signed their r e a l names to the statement--didn't have any enemies on the left, either...

...He's the guy with the affected, aging megeneration look--coiffured beard, jeans and beret--whom Pope John Paul II chastised during the papal visit to Nicaragua in 1982...

...The difficulty of understanding between ourselves and the Western continental countries is sufficiently illustrated by the fact that the EEC budget has to allow for s million a year simply to translate its various bits of paper into the languages of the member countries...

...At first, the Sandinista gendarmes wouldn't let us in the building...

...It is proposed, moreover, that Spain and Portugal should become members and that will mean a jump to 72 language combinations for the translators to wrestle with...

...Never have I seen a more joyless group of people...

...After all, I had achieved something that eluded most reporters on the Nicaraguan leg of the trip: I actually saw Jackson with my own eyes...

...The context is totally different...

...But Ernesto Cardenal, the Catholic priest who serves as the Sandinista Minister of Culture, was fobbed off as independent clergy...

...Alack, there are still many such Britons...

...In fact, they rarely even disclose Jackson's schedule of appearances...

...Since all the reporters, including me, came on the trip to cover Jackson, not to mingle wckh Sandinistas, this promise worked, too...

...Then, as they checked our equipment (including my hand-sized tape recorder) for weapons or explosives, they wouldn't let us out...

...Rowland Evans and Robert Novak called him "the first American presidential candidate to fully embrace the Third World political agenda: anticapitalist, anti-democratic, antiZionist, anti-Western, anti-American...

...He walked through Jackson's plane, shook hands with every reporter, and smiled at everyone...

...That information reaches reporters only by way of rumor...

...and twice at the airport...

...During the recent (June) campaigns for elections to the European Assembly (which usually sits in Strasbourg, but has occasionally sat in Luxembourg and may, one day, sit in Brussels) we were told (in the United Kingdom at any rate) that the EEC had helped to keep the peace in Western Europe, and had certainly prevented the French and the Germans from fighting one another yet again...

...the menu never changes...

...That was tough criticism...

...Further: During the whole period of the existence of NATO it has not been found necessary to establish the kind of enormous battery of experts and translators which the Community, evidently, requires...

...After Greece it has become 7 x 6 = 42...

...Upon leaving Cuba, I actually heard an American reporter say, "You know, I used to think of myself as very liberal, but after seeing C u b a . . . " Anyway, Castro gave Jackson the full treatment--constant attention, flattery, animated conversation...

...To what purpose is all this energy and treasure being expended...

...Not only has the EEC nothing to do with the security of Europe, but the very terms of the Treaty of Rome (its founding document) and of the Tr eaty of Brussels (by which the United Kingdom acceded to the Community) exclude all questions of defense frorfi its deliberations...

...Still I got no breakfast...

...EEC heads of government are fond of stressing the enormous economic potential of their alliance...

...He charmed the socks off Jackson, which wasn't too hard...

...Those who want to return to the hotel, a bus will take you there and later to the airport, where Jackson will hold a press conference upon departing Nicaragua...

...But nobody seemed to have any authority...

...On Jackson's first night in Havana, it took 20 minutes for a halfdozen foreign ministry subalterns to screw up the courage to dispatch a late press bus to the National Theater for reporters who missed the first bus...

...So he sweetened the pot to improve Jackson's press clips...

...But he's got charisma and a passel of other political skills...

...Should the press bus leave...

...This," said M. Maurice Couve de Murville of the EEC, at Brussels in 1962, "will become just a spectacle...

...On presidential trips there are White House minions everywhere, making sure that the President is being covered favorably...

...two days in Havana with Jackson prior to his visit to Nicaragua were enough to convince anyone that the revolution is a failure in everything but crushing the Cuban spirit, filling t h e prisons, and insuring that paint flakes from every building...

...But they've been at it only five years, compared to twenty-five for the Cubans, and are still mighty damn inefficient...

...And the hotel restaurant consists of a large, dimly lit room with a table of barely edible food...

...ordered reporters out of the front row of chairs at the press conference to provide seats for Cardenal and his colleagues...

...We have come to Nicaragua to learn first hand about the efforts of the Nicaraguan people to reconstruct their society after fifty years of autocratic rule by the Somoza family, after the devastation of the earthquake in 1972, and in the face of the economic boycott and counterrevolutionary activity initiated and sponsored by the Reagan government...

...That works out to s per thousand words translated...

...I was surprised they didn't blame him for the absence of breakfast...

...Food, she said, was just one stop away...

...With that, any pretense that Jackson was an honest broker on what he characterized as his peace-making mission to Latin America disappeared...

...He made himself available to reporters at one formal press conference (this happened at one a.m...

...Yep, you guessed it...

...The press conference wasn't at the airport...

...Oh, he won't be here, a Sandinista flunky announced, but we've got the next best thing, a top official to brief you on the revolution...

...And that is how I became a prisoner of the Marxist junta...

...That, the tract insisted, is "a scandalous lie...

...I ignored her, only to be accosted by a smarmy fellow with a two-page press release labeled "Statement by Delegation of U.S...

...They didn't seem like the steak-and-eggs type, there are no Denny's or IHOP's in Managua, and I don't really care for gruel...

...it was held right there at Protocol House, a VIP residence that closely resembles a suburban rambler, complete with patio and pool...

...Not so with Jackson...

...Wait a minute, a reporter said...

...How come you told President Jose Napoleon Duarte of El Salvador to begin immediate negotiations with the Marxist guerrillas in his country, but you didn't advise the Sandinistas to open talks with their opponents...

...She blocked the path of reporters as they moved to leave...

...At any rate, the song-and-dance show put on for Jackson was lousy...

...He must have discovered that reporters had written that a mere 22 Americans represented a failed mission for Jackson...

...Architects and Planners...

...the so-called Jackson press corps was carted across Managua in two buses to a shabby building with a corrugated iron roof...

...Yet, along with a few dozen allegedly skeptical reporters covering Jesse L. Jackson on his tour of Central America and the Caribbean last June, I fell for the ploy...

...Being a Sandinista means you don't have to say you're sorry, at least when you renege on a promise of breakfast.' Instead of apologizing, the platoon of Sandinista officials assigned to the Yankee reporters merely switched the bait...

...We--that is, the Anglo-Saxon powers--had a better friend than we knew at the time...

...To believe that Castro handed over the 26 Cubans in response to the press, you've got to have a highly inflated concept of your role in the world...

...Unlike Miss Beloff I believe that M. Couve said what he meant to say, that the European Community would become a spectacle, in the derisory sense of that word...

...What, then, is the origin of the war...

...The anti-Sandinista , , _9 , , , forces-- counterrevolutlonanes, he called them--should lay down their arms for the sake of "reconciliation and healing...

...Off we went, through Managua, a city whose downtown has not been restored after the earthquake that devastated it, and to another one-story government building...

...On the contrary, the standard procedure consists of, well, pampering...

...g l. he rr~ heaviest cross 1 have to bear," wrote Winston Churchill at the height of the Second World War, "is the Cross of Lorraine...

...But when American politicians--Senator Nunn 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1984...

...He was referring to the chosen symbol of the Free French, selected by its notoriously tiresome leader, Charles Marie Andrd de Gaulle, who had consigned the tricoleur to the broom cupboard for the duration of the fight with Hitler...

...Jackson was not the only American trotted out at Protocol House to extol the Sandinistas...

...He showed up at Jose Marti Airport to greet Jackson on his two arrivals (the second was a brief stop to pick up 48 freed prisoners), he dropped by for dinner at Jackson's guest quarters and listened attentively to a Jackson monologue on normalization of relations between Cuba and the United States, he devoted ten hours to private talks with Jackson, he attended Jackson's speeches, he discussed the Bible and his own religious upbringing--what more could Jackson have wanted...

...Americans, who in general saw only the prickliness of de Gaulle, should be reminded of the fact that he alone among European leaders offered unconditional support to the United States when President Kennedy imposed his naval blockade on Cuba...