Politicizing the Government

...There is no question that media preoccupation with what a politician considers irrelevancy at best and defamation at worst can be quite infuriating...

...Ask Gary Hart...

...But terrorist bombs, by definition, do not yield to multilateral treaties, so governments work on what governments can control...

...Because political cronies are suited to spotting political disloyalty in long-serving employees...

...The search for scapegoats is a sure indicator of a nation in danger of losing its bearings...

...In 1979, SALT II made a start on reducing nuclear weapons in the Soviet and American arsenals...

...Talking Terrorism ON JULY 9, Defense Secretary William Perry delivered to the Senate Armed Services Committee approximately the same message Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was almost simultaneously delivering to President Clinton: Terrorists, operating from safe havens in outlaw states, have reached a level of organization that cannot be adequately dealt with by taking protective measures and pursuing individual perpetrators...

...Why does a new administration need to create new files on holdover employees...

...Now they must pray that Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr will not explode any bombshells before the election...

...But they also stand, respectively, for Weapons of Mass Destruction—Nuclear, Biological and Chemical, or Atomic, Bacterial and Chemical...

...In 1972 there was SALT I, the initial agreement to limit strategic arms, along with a ban on the development of antiballistic missiles...

...In 1992, when the Bush Administration went through Bill Clinton's passport files, vice presidential candidate Al Gore charged "a blatant attempt to politicize the entire bureaucracy...

...Why did the FBI allow itself to be "victimized," in the imperishable word of Director Louis J. Freeh (later amended...

...That was quite bizarre, a proposal to curb the press that ran against the tide of a predominantly conservative Supreme Court...

...I said he would have to make sure he has the backing of moderate centrist Republicans who support affirmative action and abortion rights...

...And I chose the radio talk show of David Din-kins, New York's former black Mayor, to fire a shot across Dole's bow...

...If the Republicans really believe Dole can't win without me on the ticket, they are in sadder shape than I thought...

...That's your money, you know...

...A provision of the law calls for a ban on financial dealings with states designated as "terrorist...

...A Failed Quest HEARING the abbreviations WMD, NBC and ABC, you may think they merely refer to radio or TV stations...

...government...

...So the contracting system was dropped in favor of buying socks on the commercial market—at $1.49 a pair, and they don't fall down...

...So, on my book tour, I made a point of going back to the South Bronx...

...As for Whitewater and associated matters, the Clintons appear to have weathered the initial legal proceedings in Little Rock and the Congressional investigations...

...For a moment there it looked as though Dole was responding...

...they are there because, after the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, the Bush Administration induced him to accept them...

...Richard G. Lugar (R.-Ind...

...The Clintons, besieged from here to Romania by rumors of scandal, might have difficulty detecting the media "sticking up" for them...

...The First Lady could have told him how exasperating it is to be on a book tour and confront questions on almost everything except your book...

...Written bids for such an educational campaign could run 2,000 pages each, and the process would take six months...

...Did President Reagan expose the Marines to a bomb attack in Beirut...

...In a word, people like me...

...Dole needs to learn that whom the gods would destroy they first make lose their cool...

...In addition, there is the Hatch Act, which puts limits on political activities by Federal employees...

...Netanyahu painted for the President a picture of terrorism that might go beyond explosives to chemical, biological and nuclear devices...

...American forces are not in Saudi Arabia because King Fahd asked for them...

...But I'm not interested unless Dole takes some more moderate positions and sticks to them for more than five minutes at a time...

...Whatever happens on Syria, attention to the states promoting terrorism is increasing...

...Does he have any idea what it means to be an immigrant's kid and not be able to go to school...

...The fact that the two officials in the Clinton security office were veteran Democratic campaign workers creates the suspicion that their motive in requisitioning FBI personnel files was more than routine security clearance...

...Since the partial test ban a generation ago, nations have pursued a total ban on nuclear testing—in effect, a ban on all nuclear explosions...

...With the end of the Cold War, however, momentum for further progress appears to have been lost...

...What laws could the White House have broken...

...But he faces a decision about whether to impose a trade embargo on Syria under the terms of the Anti-Terrorism Act he signed in April...

...Instead, OMB had Treasury call for oral presentations and the contract was awarded in 78 days...

...I loved the headline in the New York Post, "It ain't me, Bob.') "Soon Newt Gingrich started making nice to me again, saying I really had to have some role...

...The Treasury considers American currency in circulation as a kind of interest-free loan to the U.S...

...I'm not sure how I got to be a Republican...

...Did the CIA help train the Afghan war veterans who blew up the World Trade Center...

...This, he said, would almost be a prerequisite for successful peace negotiations with Syria...

...And they denote the 70-year quest, right up to Geneva this past June, to bring under control the ingenious methods we have devised to exterminate one another and ourselves...

...In the Oval Office, he also pointed to Syria as being at least a transmission belt for international terrorists...

...they were well-organized, used high-quality military explosives, and had "extensive support from an experienced and well-financed terrorist organization...

...I didn't care much for Bill Clinton—a little too devious for my taste, and trying to get me to pull his gays-in-the-military chestnuts out of the fire...

...Basically, I guess I joined the party because Ronald Reagan treated me like a gentleman, and George Bush like a comrade-in-arms...

...I share with Powell, as he reminds me when we meet occasionally, a South Bronx origin and a City College diploma...

...Or did he mean the FCC (Federal Communications Commission...

...And after 12 years of Republican administrations, the Clintons felt surrounded by nonadmirers...

...As Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Specter should know better than most how delicate relations are with a Saudi government under constant pressure from Islamic zealots for harboring "infidels," and how vital it is to American interests to avoid rocking that boat...

...Senate...

...joined the scapegoaters by suggesting Secretary Perry bears some personal responsibility for the Dhahran bombing and should resign...

...The other was the air raid on Baghdad ordered by Clinton in 1993, in reprisal for an assassination plot against ex-President Bush during his visit to Kuwait...

...It helps, of course, to have an inept campaigner as adversary...

...Although Syria is so designated, regulations concerning the provision's implementation are still being drafted...

...It's amazing to see how much influence one black man has...

...In its latest term the Court four times ruled in favor of greater latitude for free speech—in cases involving political spending, cable television, liquor advertising, and criticism of the government by government contractors...

...Nevertheless, one would expect that a veteran politician would be prepared to accept this as part of the ordeal of the race for the Oval Office...

...Senate defeated a measure renewing the President's power to order testing...

...Reading Powells Mind BOOK TOURS, incidentally, have developed into a political arena of their own, and no one knows that better than General Colin L. Powell (Ret...

...Some politicians have an unfortunate tendency to turn our reverses inward...

...Twice in recent history military measures have been taken against states held responsible for terrorist acts...

...The first international treaty was the Geneva Protocol of 1926, banning poison gas—a reaction to the use of mustard gas in World War I. Then along came the atomic bomb, and, in 1963, the first effort to control it with a treaty banning testing in the atmosphere...

...At the insistence of Attorney General Janet Reno, Starr has reluctantly added the FBI file investigation to his lengthy agenda...

...He referred to Saudi Arabia's refusal to permit American interrogation of four Saudi citizens beheaded for a previous attack on Americans, and the rejection of a request to expand the American security perimeter in Dhahran...

...My dad wouldn't have believed it...

...It appears that politicization did not end with the Bush Administration...

...Imagine my surprise, therefore, when a bureaucrat in the Office of Management and Budget, Steven Kelman...

...Not only did Dole say that former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop had been "brainwashed," a word he later retracted—he came up with a novel idea: The liberal media, by "sticking up for the Democrats," as he put it, might be "violating the FEC regulations...

...Perry said the bombers were not simply Saudi dissidents...

...But what was it that Dole had in mind about the FEC (Federal Election Commission...

...And then he turned down the invitation to speak at the N A ACP convention...

...But few could have predicted how ex-Senator Dole would react when the normally amiable Katie Couric, on the normally bland NBC Today Show, needled him about tobacco industry campaign contributions and his statements that cigarettes were not necessarily addictive...

...And, as John Martin says on ABC...

...Clinton was reportedly noncommittal...

...Should the FBI have been more vigilant about home-grown terrorists who destroyed the Federal building in Oklahoma City...

...That sounded like an oxymoron, but I ended up spending an hour in his office in the White House annex...

...its chief Senate proponent, told me that despite its having been reported out of the Foreign Relations Committee after satisfying Chairman Jesse Helms(R.-N.C), it might not get to the Senate floor this session...

...We have come to believe that as soon as a bureaucrat buys something, from a bolt to a bomber, the cost skyrockets...

...In order not to impede the negotiations, the U.S...

...President Richard M. Nixon endorsed, saying, "Privacy is the most basic of all individual rights...

...But what's it for if I can't use my influence to vindicate my roots...

...Oral presentations are now widely used throughout the government...

...the tenacious noncandidate who has been hawking the paperback version of his memoirs...

...Shopping for Uncle Sam TO ME, as I guess to many Americans, the $640 airplane toilet seat is emblematic of government procurement...

...Legality aside, it would seem that at the root of Filegate lies the increasing politicization of government...

...Kelman, a Harvard professor (and longtime NL contributor), wrote a book called Procurement and Public Management and was invited to join the Clinton Administration as the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Administrator of Federal Procurement Policy...

...What is beginning to be discussed now, at least by the Israelis, is not only retaliatory strikes against terrorist states, but possible preventive strikes against terrorist arsenals—like Israel's 1981 bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor...

...Because "career" FBI employees do not feel safe from political retaliation in today's intensely partisan climate...

...Spare parts for Boeing planes are now delivered in a few days, ending months of waiting for the same parts to be specially made...

...But then he began to waffle...

...Netanyahu reportedly urged the President to consider an escalating program of sanctions against Syria as a way of getting President Hafez al-Assad to renounce terrorism...

...In 1972, too, President Nixon signed a treaty banning the use of bacteria as weapons...

...Two days after meeting me in June during the fundraiser for Senator John Warner in Virginia, he came out for a declaration of tolerance on abortion in the platform...

...Once they are completed, it will no doubt be up to the President to determine whether he wants to invoke sanctions against a country the Administration has long been courting...

...These are junior versions of the great historic controversies about who should have expected the attack on Pearl Harbor, who lost China, who lost Vietnam...

...Bob Dole is plagued by problems mainly of his own making, such as his snappish behavior about tobacco on his book tour...

...Because it has become the custom for an outgoing President to take all the personnel files with him...

...But, it didn't help...

...June 28 had been set as the deadline for action among the 61 states participating in the Geneva Disarmament Conference...

...Agreement in Geneva foundered on the almost insurmountable obstacles of India's opposition and British, Russian and Chinese reservations about such matters as how intrusive inspection should be...

...Exposing waste has become the stuff of prize-winning journalism, and the television networks feature exposes like ABC's It's Your Money, Your Choice and NBC's The Fleecing of America...

...Oh, for the days of career officials, like the British permanent under-secretanes...

...But I'm not all that happy with the current direction of the Republicans either, and Dole can't have me campaigning for him without meeting my terms...

...For the first time, said Kelman, government procurement officers call themselves "customers" and buy that way...

...One was the bomb dropped in 1986 on Libya, determined by President Reagan to have been behind the bomb attack on a Berlin cafe frequented by American GIs...

...The quest goes on, even though our more immediate nightmares are "conventional" bombs, the kind terrorists used in Beirut, the World Trade Center, Oklahoma City, Manchester, and Dhahran...

...In California, he endorsed kicking the kids of illegal immigrants out of school...

...On no more authority than that, let me imagine what the most sought-after man in America has been thinking: "Okay, they finally seem convinced that I am not a candidate...

...who keep government functioning, whoever is in office, and who may occasionally say to a transitory boss, "You can't do that—it's illegal...

...But Congress seems less interested in the dangers ahead than the mistakes behind...

...For one, the 1974 Privacy Act—which, speaking of ironies...

...President Bill Clinton, at this writing, is managing to retain support from voters who say they don't trust him...

...It took a personal appeal from the President and a mission headed by then Defense Secretary Richard Cheney to explain to the King what danger he was in...

...In many cases, specifications are being scrapped in favor of buying off-the-shelf...

...The Treasury wanted to let a $35 million contract for an educational campaign on the new $100 bill—among other reasons, to convince people around the world the old ones were still good...

...As he did before Congress the next day, Netanyahu talked of Libya and Iran as sponsors of terrorism...

...He rattled on with infectious enthusiasm, tossing papers to me all the while...

...Here are some of his sample successes: Socks for the Army, made to rigid specifications, cost S1.99 a pair, were of rough texture, had no elastic in the tops, and soldiers wouldn't wear them...

...If you stop to think that Uncle Sam spends $200 billion a year on goods and services, you realize savings from common sense purchasing can add up to billions...

...The Clintons are plagued by a variety of "gates," from Whitewatergate to FBI Filegate, and a spasm of damaging books...

...Why was the security office not managed by trained security officers...

...asked me on the tennis court whether I'd like to hear of some recent government purchasing successes...

...The irony was that the testier Dole became the more headlines he made, and the more headlines he made the more he deflected attention from Clinton's problems...

...Under fire for misjudgments in the Dhahran bombing...

...A chemical weapons convention ratified by 53 states has been languishing in the U.S...

...His point was that when a news story comes off like a Clinton attack ad, the news organization is in effect contributing to the President's campaign...

...His press secretary, Nelson Warf ield, explained that Dole meant the FEC all right...

...The law puts restrictions on the collection and use of data about individuals...

...Senator Aden Specter (R.-Pa...

...When Dole asked me to speak at the convention and on the campaign trail, I said I needed to know more about his policy on issues that mattered to me—affirmative action, minorities, immigrants, and abortion rights...