“In 36 years in the United States Senate, I cannot recall another instance” in which senators intervened in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy,” Vice President Joe Biden declared, outraged by the “open letter to the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” signed by 47 Republican senators.
But in fact, a number of U.S. senators, including then-Senator and now Secretary of State John Kerry, have contacted unfriendly governments, in opposition to the policies of the White House at the time.
Senator James Abourezk (D-South Dakota) secretly met with Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat in 1973, and arranged for Adlai Stevenson III (D-Illinois) to do likewise. This violated both American government policy and U.S. law, which prohibited such contacts because of the PLO’s involvement in terrorism and refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
In December 1979, Sen. Abourezk undertook a secret trip to Tehran, at the behest of his colleague Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts). The Iran hostage crisis was generating public sympathy for President Jimmy Carter, making it difficult for Kennedy to gain traction in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Kennedy hoped Abourezk, an Arab-American, could negotiate a release of the hostages, and thus deprive Carter of the political advantage.
The episode became public only in 1986, when congressional candidate Joseph (son of RFK) Kennedy rejected a $100 contribution from Abourezk, because of the latter’s extreme animus toward Israel. Abourezk took revenge by writing Kennedy a letter — and making it public — in which he announced, “I risked my life and my career” by going to Tehran in response to a request from Sen. Ted Kennedy. The request was conveyed by Kennedy aide Jan Kalicki, former JFK aide Theodore Sorensen, and Kennedy’s close colleague, Sen. John Culver (D-Iowa). Abourezk explained to the Los Angeles Times that he did not speak directly to Sen. Kennedy, in order “to give him an element of deniability.”
Sen. Kennedy himself was no stranger to the world of friendly contacts with hostile governments. In 1991, a London Times reporter combing through newly released Soviet archives found an internal KGB memorandum reporting a remarkable communication to the Soviet leadership from Kennedy, via his close friend ex-Sen. John Tunney, in May 1984.
According to the memo, Kennedy proposed to visit Moscow in order to help Soviet leaders craft more effective “explanations” to use against the Reagan administration concerning nuclear disarmament issues. He also offered to arrange U.S. television appearances for Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov to make a “direct appeal” to the American people that would undermine the administration. Kennedy evidently hoped these efforts would increase the Democrats’ chances of retaking the White House that year.
Senator Charles Percy (R-Illinois) had a Moscow connection of his own. In November 1980, he traveled to the USSR for private meetings with then-Premier Leonid Brezhnev, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, and Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov. During the talks, Percy advocated the creation of a Palestinian state headed by Soviet client Arafat — essentially taking the Soviet position, as against the position of both the outgoing Carter administration and the incoming Reagan administration.
Percy’s remarks were reported to Washington by the American ambassador in Moscow, Thomas Watson. What Percy said so alarmed U.S. officials that one of them leaked Watson’s classified cables to the New York Times.
“Arafat has a compelling desire to be a chief of state, no matter how small it is,” Percy said in Moscow, according to the cables. “He is a terrorist, he has done same dastardly things; but he is a fact of life, he exists.” His Soviet interlocutors must have been very pleased.
Each of these contacts was shrouded in secrecy, arguably a far more serious undermining of the executive branch than this week’s Iran letter, which was crafted as an open, public letter, not a private communication to any particular Iranian leader. At least nobody at the White House can accuse of the 47 GOP senators of going behind the president’s back.
And while the 47 Republicans merely issued a public statement, some other senators have gone the extra mile by visiting hostile capitals in opposition to U.S. policy.
In 1985, for example, then-freshman Senator John Kerry traveled to Nicaragua for a friendly get-together with the Sandinista president, Daniel Ortega. The position of the Reagan administration was to support the opposition Contras. Kerry wasn’t much interested in the administration’s position. Upon his return to the United States, Kerry met with President Reagan to convey a message from Ortega. Reagan “wasn’t thrilled,” Kerry later told the New York Times. This week, it’s Kerry’s turn to be less than thrilled.
In late 2006, Democratic senators Kerry, Chris Dodd (Connecticut), and Bill Nelson (Florida), as well as one Republican who later became a Democrat, Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania), traveled to Damascus. That is, at a time when the policy of the Bush administration was to isolate the Bashar Assad regime because of its aggression in Lebanon support for terrorism, the senators decided to show their support for renewed U.S. relations with Syria.
They also had nice things to say about Syria’s dictator. “I feel quite confident in saying this was a conversation worth having and that the administration ought to pursue it,” Kerry declared. Specter claimed to detect in Assad “an interest in negotiating with Israel to try to bring a peaceful settlement” in the Middle East. Nelson praised Assad’s supposed “willingness to cooperate with the Americans.”
The Florida senator was not impressed by White House press secretary Tony Snow’s unequivocal statement that “We don’t think that members of Congress ought to be going there.” The Associated Press reported that Nelson “shrugged off suggestions he was challenging Bush’s authority by sidestepping administration policy that the U.S. have no contact with Syrian officials. ‘I have a constitutional role as a member of Congress,’ Nelson said.”
Which is, in fact, almost exactly what the 47 Republican senators wrote this week about their constitutional responsibility regarding Iran — except, of course, that instead of pressing the U.S. government to make concessions to pro-terror regimes, as Kerry and others have done, these 47 senators are urging this administration to refrain from such concessions.
Vice President Biden and other defenders of the administration’s Iran policy may not recall such instances of senators taking such an active role in foreign policy matters, but they are numerous, including at least two involving the current secretary of state.
Rafael Medoff is the author of 15 books about Jewish history, including the Historical Dictionary of Zionism, coauthored with Chaim I. Waxman.
