CENTER CHARGES SHEARER WITH ‘CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS’: URGES FURTHER HEARING, REJECTION OF NOMINATION

(Washington, D.C.): On 2 March 1994,
members of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee began examining the nomination
of Dr. Derek Shearer to become U.S.
Ambassador to Finland. In the course of a
brief hearing on that date and written
responses to additional questions
submitted to the Committee on 11 March, the
nominee gave Senators ample justification
for disapproving his appointment — or,
at the very least, for requiring a
further hearing to examine the myriad
outright lies, obfuscating half-truths,
misleading statements, or worse, served
up by Dr. Shearer.

Of course, the fact that the
Ambassador to Finland-designate is a
long-time friend of President Clinton,
the brother-in-law of Deputy Secretary of
State Strobe Talbott and a man reputed to
be an influential advisor to the
Administration on economic and other
matters makes such Committee actions
politically super-charged. Still, these
same considerations also make it
absolutely imperative that the temptation
to give the nomination rubber-stamp
approval be resisted: The very
access and influence an Ambassador
Shearer would enjoy oblige the Senate to
hold him to an exacting standard of
truthfulness and integrity.

As it considers whether or not to
proceed, as presently scheduled, with a
17 March business meeting to vote on the
Shearer nomination, the Center for
Security Policy believes that the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee must give
particular consideration to at least
three sets of issues:

• Dr. Shearer has made egregious
  misrepresentations of his past
  record of advocacy of radical
  left-wing economic and political
  causes. Where he cannot disavow
  them altogether, he claims he has
  changed his mind — a contention
  which smacks of either expediency
  (a so-called “confirmation
  conversion”) or
  characteristic cynicism
  (“changing the name to mislead
  the innocent”).
• Dr. Shearer has dissembled about
  his long-standing relationship
  with the hard-left Institute for
  Policy Studies and a number of
  its “spin-offs.” As
  indicated in the attached letter
  to CIA Director James Woolsey,
  two members of the Foreign
  Relations Committee — its
  ranking Republican, Sens. Jesse
  Helms (R-NC), and Sen. Hank Brown
  (R-CO) — believe that IPS and
  its ties are “directly
  relevant” to the Committee’s
  review of this nominee’s
  qualifications.
• In light of these facts, Dr.
  Shearer would appear to be a
  singularly unsuitable candidate
  for a sensitive overseas post at
  a moment when the U.S. government
  is being rocked by revelations of
  serious breaches of security by
  the KGB and by a White House that
  is awash with Clinton staffers
  lacking requisite security
  clearances.

In a White
Paper entitled Contempt
of Congress: Shearer’s Apparent Untruths
to Senate Bespeak Larger, Ominous
Problems with Clinton Team
issued today, the Center for Security
Policy documents these findings in
considerable detail. On the basis of the facts,
the Center arrives at the following
conclusions and recommendations:

“The Center for Security
Policy believes that, in light of the
foregoing, the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee must reject Derek
Shearer’s nomination to become U.S.
Ambassador to Finland. Were the
Committee to do otherwise, it will
emplace in a sensitive post a man
whose predilection for radical
left-wing causes will likely
complicate bilateral relations with a
strategic nation and possibly
jeopardize important intelligence
operations under the purview of the
CIA station in Finland. At
the very least, it could create a
very undesirable precedent: that
lying to the Committee is not an
impediment to confirmation for
presidential appointees.

“The Center strongly
recommends that, at a minimum, the
Foreign Relations Committee hold a
further hearing on the Shearer
nomination in order to review what
appear to be the nominee’s untrue,
incomplete and misleading statements.
Under present circumstances, the
Senate will be unable to give its
informed advice on — let alone its
responsible consent to — this
appointment to Embassy Helsinki.

Copies of Contempt
of Congress may be obtained by
contacting the Center.