CENTER COMMENDS FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE REPUBLICANS FOR OPPOSING DISMAL CLINTON EMISSARIES

(Washington, D.C.): Republican members
of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, led by Sen. Hank Brown of
Colorado, took an important step today:
They served notice of their strong
opposition to President Clinton’s
selection of Sam Brown — a prominent
left-wing activist with no experience
in foreign affairs (apart from his
highly publicized sympathy for Hanoi
during the Vietnam war) — to become the
U.S. Ambassador to the Conference on
Cooperation and Security in Europe. The
nomination was nonetheless reported out
of Committee over their objections by a
straight party line vote, 10-9. As a
result, the Brown appointment will be in
serious trouble if and when it
reaches the Senate floor.

Even bigger trouble, however,
awaits a second Clinton appointee — U.S.
Ambassador to Finland-designate Derek
Shearer — whose nomination was
also supposed to be voted upon at today’s
Committee meeting. For the second time in
a week the vote on Shearer was postponed;
due to the Senate’s upcoming Easter
recess, the earliest opportunity for
consideration of this appointment now
will not occur until mid-April.

In addition to sharing with Brown a
record of radical political activity and
no discernable qualifying experience,
Shearer has a further, serious liability:
As documented in a Center for Security
Policy White Paper issued on 15
March 1994 and entitled ‘Contempt
of Congress’: Shearer’s Apparent Untruths
to Congress Bespeak Larger, Ominous
Problems With the Clinton Team ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=94-28″>No. 94-28), the
nominee for Embassy Helsinki has engaged
in myriad misrepresentations, misleading
statements and half-truths in his hearing
before the Foreign Relations Committee.
In light of Shearer’s background and
behavior, the White Paper
offered the following “bottom
line”:

The Center for Security Policy
believes that…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.

Dr. Shearer’s deplorable
conduct (both that of the past and
his present efforts to dissemble
about it) is an extraordinary
embarrassment to the Clinton
Administration given his longstanding
personal friendship with the
President and his relationship by
marriage to another controversial
F.O.B. — the new Deputy Secretary of
State, Strobe Talbott. The
costs of securing Senate approval for
his nomination have now been greatly
increased though, thanks to
Republican efforts to establish that
Brown and Shearer are birds of a
feather and thoroughly unsuitable
representatives for the United States
in foreign missions. href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾

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1. See in this
regard, the U.S. Senate Republican Policy
Committee’s Issue Alert
entitled, “Serious Questions Remain
for Two Ambassadorial Nominees; Derek
Shearer for Finland and Sam Brown for
CSCE,” 21 March 1993.