Presswatch/At Sea on Foreign Policy
Cony, John
At Sea on Foreign Policy by John Corry n the end, one side made as much / sense as the other. Just after Secretary of State Warren Christopher told White House reporters with a straight face that...
...Sometimes Bradley helped him...
...Outside observers insisted it was the fairest ever held in Mexico, but it still left a member of the entrenched party as governor of Chiapas...
...Daniel Wattenberg's profiles of the real Hillary Clinton, Love and Hate in Arkansas...
...What we call in the United States life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," Bradley continued...
...Your time is up," Clinton had said to them in a White House speech...
...David Brock's investigation of Anita Hill and his "Living With the Clintons...
...Columnist Mark Shields mumbled something in an interview about Clinton's determination and resolve, but by then even the Times's Anna Quindlen was disenchanted...
...He said it had wrecked the Cuban economy, and that it was in the United States' own interest to lift it...
...The press took them at their word...
...It was a peculiar operation for a superpower, but Washington did not want to offend anyone's sensibilities by having the troops look threatening, and the networks all made sure to interview Jimmy Carter...
...All week long Bill Clinton and his people had pronounced anathema on General Cedras and his people, and talked about the "modality" of their leaving...
...Box 549, Arlington, VA 22216-0549 Yes, please send me: copies of James Ring Adams's "Beyond Whitewater" $ copies of James Ring Adams's "The Whitewater Obstructionists" copies of John Con's "The MIA Cover-Up" copies of Michael Fumento's "This Magic Moment" copies of Daniel Wattenberg's "Lady Macbeth of Little Rock" copies of Daniel Wattenberg's "Love and Hate in Arkansas" copies of Terry Eastland's "Rush Limbaugh: Talking Back" copies of "The Incredible Shrinking AIDS Epidemic" copies of Lisa Schiffren's "The Unauthorized Clinton Financial Audit" copies of David Brock's "Living With the Clintons" copies of David Brock's "The Real Anita Hill" copies of David Brock's "The Travelgate Cover-Up" Sub-Total VA residents add 4.5% sales tax Total Enclosed $ Name: Address: LCity: 52 • State: Zip Code: RP9411 . .----i J Herbert Matthews, the New York Times reporter, went searching for Castro in the Sierra Maestra in 1957, Castro turned up at night, a picturesque figure with his campesinos...
...Then he accused them of "rape, torture and mutilation," "raping women," and "raping the wives and daughters of suspected political dissidents...
...Days, months, years, entire decades will pass and the dying will continue...
...Meanwhile, most of the television reporting out of Havana during the crisis suggested that we might just as well lift the embargo...
...More or less, the White House says it agrees...
...She already had written that the only place to look for reasons to invade Haiti was "inside Bill Clinton's head...
...On the day the United States announced an agreement with Cuba on refugees, CBS, NBC, and ABC all devoted the first third of their evening news programs to the USAir jetliner that had crashed the night before...
...In the world of network news, though, that was more important than an accord with Fidel Castro—or what the accord meant...
...Will we do something now for Castro...
...The Incredible Shrinking AIDS Epidemic report...
...contributed, too...
...Impoverished Mexicans are turning to a new hero: Subcomandante Marcos," he reported, and confused his own feelings with those of the Mexicans...
...The next night she declared that Cuba once had been "a beacon of success for much of Latin America and the Third World," and that "Cuba's health care and education systems were touted as great achievements of the revolution...
...So are James Ring Adams's two reports on the Whitewater scandal, John Corry's "The MIA Cover-Up," Michael Fumento's report on Magic Johnson & AIDS...
...The encounter upheld a theatrical tradition, this time staged for television...
...The night after Alarcon talked to Koppel, Giselle Fernandez of CBS reported that the rafters thought the embargo was the "root cause of the problems...
...When The American Spectator November 1994 51 American Spectator Reprints Available David Brock's hot new exposé of Travelgate is available to TAS readers as a special report...
...Kinsley had a snit then, and said Eagleburger wanted to mount an "invasion...
...The Wall Street Journal editorial page says the best way to weaken Communist regimes is to open them to the outside world, and that the United States should lift the em50 The American Spectator November 1994 bargo...
...military action...
...Actually, no one knew...
...The night before the recent Mexican elections, "60 Minutes" re-ran "Subcomandante Marcos," an interview with the leader of the Chiapas rebellion that Ed Bradley had conducted earlier this year...
...Eagleburger said that if we wanted to we could "slap Castro around...
...In fact, the Cuban economy collapsed when Soviet subsidies ended, and ending the embargo may not be in the interest of anyone except the Havana nomenklatura...
...More than 61 planes were ready to bombard Haiti," he told them, while "two carriers were ready to wipe us out...
...And, as it happens, eight days after the U.S...
...When Tarnoff worked in the Carter administration, he had taken part in secret talks in Havana aimed at normalizing relations with Cuba...
...It announced that it would allow farmers to sell part of their produce in an open market...
...There was nothing new to say about the crash except that no one knew why it had happened, and nothing at all to say about the strike except that it was still going on...
...and Cuba reached the agreement on refugees, Havana moved away slightly from a centralized economy...
...He and General Raoul Cedras just "couldn't let the annihilation of Haiti happen," and so they had agreed to terms...
...Newsweek reported that a recent Rand Corporation study found that Havana was "drifting toward increased repression and even uncontrolled violence," and that "Washington should prepare for a major crisis and possible U.S...
...Tom Brokaw would turn up in Port-au-Prince—Dan Rather was already there—although only to report on American troops leaping from helicopters and hitting the ground in defensive positions while Haitians stood around and gawked...
...Television has reported this way before, although probably it wants to forget it...
...We may not know much more about Cuba, however, than we did before they arrived...
...Matthews was smitten, and wrote that Castro was "the rebel leader of Cuba's youth" and "a flaming symbol...
...Castro supporters mailed thousands of reprints of Matthews's articles all over Cuba...
...Marcos's next move is unknown, although recently he issued a statement: "If the war"—meaning the rebellion—"is started again, this time it won't stop...
...Bradley was still the bemused sophisticate, and not a reporter...
...Before that the Cuban rafters had provoked a crisis, and reporters and correspondents had converged on Havana...
...T he whimsy is always with us...
...Then CBS reported on Cuba, while NBC and ABC went on to cover the baseball strike...
...Tape cassettes presumably were mailed all over Mexico...
...Just after Secretary of State Warren Christopher told White House reporters with a straight face that "we achieved the goals of our policy," CNN broadcast a speech by Emile Jonassaint, the president of Haiti, who was giving Haitians his own fix on what happened...
...She was wearing a military uniform with what appeared to be an officer's star on the collar, and when Rabel interviewed her she was driving a car...
...Yes," Marcos said again, presumably realizing he had no need to amplify his case if "60 Minutes" would do it for him...
...Bradley, like Matthews, was swept away...
...On CNN's "Crossfire" a few weeks later, Lawrence Eagleburger, deputy secretary of state, and then secretary of state in the Bush administration, had a testy exchange with Michael Kinsley...
...Curly-headed Joe Kennedy, Jr...
...When Bradley searched for Marcos, his men also turned up unexpectedly at night, waving their AKs for the "60 Minutes" cameras...
...Eagleburger had not said that, of course, but he had made an interesting point...
...He used the word "bombing...
...If they wanted to, they could even remain in Haiti...
...But then, of course, the Haitian leaders were granted amnesty, and merely told they should sin no more...
...The invasion was off, although the John Corry, a former New York Times media critic, is the author of My Times: Adventures in the News Trade (Grosset / G.P...
...He denied he had guns, ammunition, or communications equipment except for inexpensive CBs, while speaking in terse sound bites...
...occupation was still on, and the media seemed nonplused...
...Terry Eastland's dissection of Rush Limbaugh's Revolution...
...In a way, she was right...
...Now a president had asked another dictator to raise one and keep people in...
...When foreign policy is so ambiguous, the media are uncertain about what makes news...
...R icardo Alarcon, the chief Cuban negotiator, made that clear...
...Not long ago, an American president asked a Communist dictator to tear a wall down and let people out...
...Marcos, who apparently is an old Sandinista, is threatening to do more killing...
...Send for your copies today...
...Moreover, the Rand study said, "America can force change only by maintaining the trade ban...
...They're ideal for distribution to your friends, colleagues, teachers, and political representatives...
...Koppel was skeptical, but Alarcon was indefatigable, and repeated himself in interviews all week...
...Marcos, who wore a ski mask and smoked a pipe, beguiled him...
...The American Spectator, P.O...
...News stories from El Salvador, not to mention PBS documentaries, once suggested that leftist rebels there enjoyed considerable popular support...
...In August, or about the time the Cuban rafters were beginning to arrive, the columnist Georgie Anne Geyer wrote in the Washington Times that George Bush's people once told her that "early on they had informed Mr...
...171 The American Spectator November 1994...
...Castro that another Mariel exodus, orchestrated by Cuba, would be considered an act of war...
...Cuba was a beacon, although its beams shined mostly on terrorist camps and African battlefields, while its achievements, although never actually proven, certainly were touted...
...He said in the Boston Globe that the Haitian leaders made up "one of the most brutal regimes in history...
...and Lisa Schiffren's exposé of the Clintons' Tax Returns...
...Fernandez concluded her report breathy with deep meaning: "Some say the trade embargo has never given Cuba a chance to see whether or not Castro's socialism might work...
...Thus the Haitian crisis was resolved, even if nothing had been quite what it seemed...
...The Cuban economy is a disaster, and discontent is rising, but we knew that before the crisis...
...When Nicaraguans declined to tell pollsters and correspondents how much they disliked their Marxist-Leninist government, Rabel and his colleagues on the Central American beat reported that the Sandinistas were sure to win Nicaragua's first free elections...
...You may go to sleep," Jonassaint concluded, "knowing no planes will bombard us...
...It was not very good the first time around, and it got no better with age...
...Nonetheless, a respectable argument may also be made that as Cuban misery grows, the chance to overthrow Castro rises...
...Putnam's Sons...
...Conservatives may disagree here...
...What you're asking for," Bradley said, "are basic individual rights...
...On the night the talks with the United States began, he told Ted Koppel on "Nightline" that the "fundamental issue" was the embargo...
...On television, at least, no one wants to flee Cuba to get away from Fidel Castro...
...One: $5 Twenty-five: $75 Five: $20 Fifty: $130 Ten: $35 One hundred: $250 (Quantity discounts apply only to orders for the same report...
...How should the story be covered...
...The principal point of which we now must be aware is that Cuba wants the United States to lift its embargo...
...No network interrupted its regular programming to do a special on the night the agreement was announced...
...Fernandez did not identify any of the "some" who say that, although Ed Rabel apparently found one of them that same night for NBC...
...The people, she said, all blame the embargo...
...Marcos has been unhappy over the results of the recent election...
...S hafts of light do come through, although you must pay close attention to spot them...
...When the rebels laid down their arms and took part in elections, however, they won only a quarter of the seats in the legislature...
...Yes," Marcos replied...
...Consequently, Geyer wrote, "Castro made no threats the whole four years...
...Television—print is a different ball game—said that Cubans blamed the embargo and not Castro for their troubles...
...Still, it was permissible to wonder if Cuba had been given a wink or a nod, or a suggestion that if Castro lightened up the White House would do something nice...
...Halfway around the world a few years before that, Russians registered their discontent with Mikhail Gorbachev in unmistakable ways, but Time magazine in its wisdom chose him "Man of the Decade...
...Madeleine Albright, also hyperventilating on television, said the Haitian leaders "shoot orphans for sport...
...Bradley's portrait of a romantic, impoverished revolutionary was defaced...
...Ricardo Alarcon and Peter Tarnoff, who represented the State Department in the negotiations with the Cubans, both insisted there had been no discussion or private agreement about normalizing relations or lifting the embargo...
Vol. 27 • November 1994 • No. 11
