Clinton Legacy Watch # 44: Pandering to Hispanic Vote at Expense of National Security

(Washington, D.C.): Evidence continues to mount on two sensitive matters that
President
Clinton is subordinating national security interests to a blatant appeal for the votes of
Hispanic Americans. Such behavior would hardly be a first for an Administration that
has
repeatedly shown a willingness to do whatever it takes to win elections with little regard to the
ominous implications for the Nation’s defense. ¹ The
implications of such steps are often hard to
quantify with precision and, in any event, are likely to bear their bitter fruit on someone else’s
watch. This may not be the case, however, with respect to his recent decisions to grant
clemency for sixteen Puerto Rican terrorists and to acquiesce to the
trespassing by
separatists that has resulted in a multi-month hiatus in the Navy and Marine Corps’ live-fire
training at their range on Vieques, a small island adjacent to Puerto Rico.

In these instances, the President has acted — apparently to endear himself and his friends
running
in 2000 to Puerto Rican and other Hispanic voters — in the face of direct warnings by his
Administration’s relevant experts that by so doing, he is unnecessarily risking American lives.

Giving a New Lease on Life to the FALN

Today’s New York Times gives front-page, above-the-fold treatment to an article
detailing some
of the extraordinary — and in some cases, odious — developments that have led to and
accompanied President Clinton’s decision to grant the Puerto Rican terrorists their freedom.
These include the following (emphasis in quotes added throughout):

• In July 1997, the Clinton Justice Department, represented by its then-Pardon
  Attorney,
  Margaret Love, formally recommended against a grant of clemency for the Puerto
  Rican
  nationalists serving time in connection with their roles in the planning and orchestrating of as
  many as 130 violent acts. Her opinion tracked with the adamant opposition to these releases
  expressed then and subsequently by the FBI, prison system authorities and relevant federal
  prosecutors in Illinois and Connecticut.

• In November 1997, Roger Adams, Ms. Love’s successor, ² and Deputy Attorney General
  Eric Holder met with Members of Congress who had taken an interest in securing the release of
  these felons. According to the Times, these senior Justice Department officials
  advised the
  legislators that, “because the prisoners had not applied themselves for clemency, this could be
  taken that they were not repentant” — an obvious appeal that they be encouraged to do so, in
  order to facilitate the President’s desire to grant clemency.

• On 9 April 1998, Adams contacted a staff member for one of these Congressman, Luis
  Gutierrez (D-IL), and — as the Times put it: “counseled the staff aide as to how the
  statement
  should be worded for maximum effect. In the end, the prisoners provided a long ambiguous
  statement, with no explicit statement of regret.”

• Instead of giving President Clinton a recommendation against releasing the Puerto Rican
  terrorists — as Ms. Love had done — Adams sent him this year a report that the “contained no
  explicit recommendation, but instead offered Mr. Clinton a range of options.”

• The Times also reports that, at a hearing yesterday, Senate Judiciary
  Committee Chairman
  Orrin Hatch (R-UT) noted in a hearing yesterday that “just a month after Mr. Clinton’s
  clemency offer, Attorney General Janet Reno said in a report that the nationalist groups that
  the prisoners had been aligned with posed an ‘ongoing threat’ to national security….Factors
  that increase the threat from such groups include ‘the impending release from prisons of
  members of these groups jailed for prior violence.'”

It appears that, eventually, one of the most politicized Justice Departments in American
history became an agent of the Clinton-Gore Administration’s determined effort to secure the
release of felons who are judged by the law enforcement community to continue to constitute a
serious menace to the public safety and national security.

Rewarding Civil Disobedience While Potentially Sacrificing the Lives of
Americans in
Uniform

The other front the Clinton Administration has opened against U.S. national interests in its
campaign to endear itself to Puerto Rican (and perhaps other Hispanic-American) voters involves
the live-fire training facility on the island of Vieques, near Puerto Rico. A Senate Armed
Services Committee hearing on Tuesday powerfully underscored what is at stake in the current
stand-off over the Navy and Marines’ use of this, the only such facility suitable for combined
arms landings in the Atlantic: If trespassers currently occupying the bombing range — with the
tacit, if not explicit, support of Governor Pedro Rossello, are not promptly removed and joint
amphibious training allowed to resume on Vieques, the USS Eisenhower carrier battle
group
will deploy in February with three of its six ships not fully certified for combat
operations.

As two out of the last three such battle groups to deploy went directly from Vieques to
combat
operations, this lack of training could not only put American personnel in harm’s way
without the training they expect and deserve. It could also unnecessarily risk their
lives.

In testimony before the Armed Services Committee, the top Navy and Marine Corps officers
—
Admiral Jay Johnson and General Jim Jones, respectively — put it this way:

It is important to understand the vital contribution that Vieques Island makes to our
national security. Hydrography, geography, and surrounding airspace make Vieques
unique. It lies outside heavily used commercial air corridors and sea routes, providing
uniquely un-encroached sea and air space for training. It is a superior site for
rehearsing amphibious operations, the only site for aerial mine warfare training, and is
the only place on the East Coast where aircraft, naval surface ships, and ground
forces can employ combined arms training with live ammunition expenditure
under realistic conditions. Integral to that, it is the only range on the East Coast that
allows sailors and Marines to conduct naval gunfire training, one of our most
important missions….

If we cannot train under this realism, sailors and Marines, when placed in a
combat situation, will not only face the certain chaos that comes with combat but
will also face the uncertainty which comes from handling and expending live
ordnance for the first time in a highly complex, time synchronized combat
operation….Failing to provide for adequate live-fire training prior to combat will
place our Nation in the position of risking needless casualties through
unpreparedness.

‘Rush’ to Judgment

The hearing took place in the immediate aftermath of the release of a report on the future
status
of military operations on Vieques, a small island near Puerto Rico. This panel was chaired by
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Francis Rush and
comprised of a former senior Marine
(General Richard Neal), a former senior naval officer (Vice Admiral Diego Hernandez) and
retired Representative Lee Hamilton. The panel’s key recommendations included (emphasis
added):

• “The Department of the Navy should immediately conduct a priority assessment of the
  training requirements at Vieques with the objective of ceasing all training activities at
  Vieques within five years. The Navy should take necessary programming actions to
  ensure
  that adequate resources are available to facilitate the identification and preparation of
  alternative locations, to institute necessary training methods and to provide for
  restoration
  and transfer to Puerto Rico of the Eastern Maneuver Area.”

• “Effective immediately, the Navy [should] reduce the expenditure of live fire
  (bombs,
  naval gunfire and artillery) [at Vieques] by 50 percent from 1998 activity levels and
  reduce the availability of the impact area from 365 days per year to 130 days per
  year.”

Unfortunately, the Rush panel was not able to identify alternatives — either in terms of
locations elsewhere in the United States where such training could be undertaken or with respect
to simulation technology that might end the need for live-fire exercises on Vieques. Its three
members present made clear in their testimony, moreover, that in the absence of such
alternatives, the Navy and Marine Corps would have to continue to make use of that
facility on at least a limited basis.

The problem lies, as Sen. Bob Smith (I-NH) observed at the hearing, with
suggesting that the
Navy will be able, in President Clinton’s words, ³ to “work
around” the use of Vieques in five
years’ time when there is no firm basis for believing the current need can be satisfied otherwise.
The Clinton Administration is employing a similar approach — with potentially debilitating
consequences for U.S. security — with respect to landmines ⁴ and nuclear testing. ⁵

Although members of the Rush panel claimed that politics was not a factor in their
Solomonic
recommendation, the environment in which they were deliberating is clearly politically
supercharged. Vice President Gore has expressed his solidarity with those
who oppose the
continued use of the Vieques range. Governor Pedro Rossello, who serves as
the Gore
campaign’s finance co-chairman in Puerto Rico, has actively encouraged the trespassers to
continue their illegal occupation of the range and vowed to do everything in his power to prevent
a resumption of that facility’s operations. For his part, President Clinton has let his National
Security Advisor know of his desire to halt live-fire exercises on the island. And the day the
Rush panel’s report was published, Senate candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton
issued a
statement calling for “an immediate and permanent end to the bombing.”

The Bottom Line

President Clinton’s decision to free unrepentant Puerto Rican terrorists should not appeal to
loyal
Hispanic-Americans any more than it does to others who might be victimized in the event they
resume their old, violent ways. Similarly, that ethnic minority should be no less appalled by the
prospect of sending U.S. military personnel — some 6,000 of whom are Puerto Ricans in the
Navy and Marines — into harm’s way without the training they require, training currently
available only at Vieques.

A more responsible, not to mention more respectful, approach to cultivating
Hispanic-American
voters than pandering to them as President Clinton has done on these two Puerto Rico-related
issues would be to foster an appreciation of their shared interest with the rest of the Nation in
promoting, not imperiling, the “common defense.”

¹To name but one, notorious example, the President’s authorization
of the sale of
supercomputers and other advanced, militarily relevant technologies to Communist China at a
time when he was soliciting illegal campaign funds from sources with ties to the People’s
Liberation Army and Chinese intelligence. For more on this subject, see the new book by
best-selling authors William Triplett and Ed Timperlake, entitled Red Dragon Rising:
Communist
China’s Military Threat to America (Washington, D.C. Regnery Press, 1999).

² An interesting question arises: In light of the high level of White
House interest in
accommodating Puerto Rican pressure groups, was Mr. Adams’ willingness to accede to the
release of these terrorists a factor in his selection for the position of Pardon Attorney at the
Justice Department?

³ See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
The ‘Smoking Gun’: Sen. Inhofe Secures Proof of
Sandy Berger’s Involvement in Clinton’s Pandering to Puerto Rican Separatists
(No. 99-D
104, 23 September 1999).

⁴ See Some Memorial Day: Clinton Forgets The
Military in Embracing Landmine Ban That
Will Put Them at Risk (No. 98-D 89, 23
May 1998).

⁵ See C.T.B.T. Truth or Consequences #7: Realistic
Explosive Testing is Required to
‘Remanufacture’ Existing Nuclear Weapons (No. 99-D
113, 12 October 1999).