News Nicaragua
Resolved Question: McCain Featured In Iran-Contra Group’s Newsletter?
A Newsletter from 1984 provides more embarrassing evidence of John McCain’s relationship with the U.S. Council on World Freedom, a group that was involved in funding militant anti-communists and espoused some anti-Semitic views.
McCain’s face graces the front page of the group’s “World Freedom Report,” published on Dec. 15, 1984, a copy of which was obtained from the research library at the University of Kansas. The front page also features a reprint of an article McCain penned that same month for Reader’s Digest.
McCain served on the advisory board of the Council on World Freedom, which funded and provided arms to what the Associated Press described as “ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America.” The group also “aided rebels trying to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua. That landed the group in the middle of the Iran-Contra affair and in legal trouble with the Internal Revenue Service, which revoked the charitable organization’s tax exemption.”
When McCain’s connection to the Council for World Freedom received its first blast of press attention earlier this month, his campaign suggested to the Politico that McCain “disassociated himself” from the group in 1984 “when questions were raised about its activities.”
But the group’s tax filing in 1985, covering the previous year, lists McCain as a member of the council’s advisory board. And in October 1985, a States News Service report placed McCain “at a Washington awards ceremony staged by the council.”
Moreover, in 1986, McCain himself told the Phoenix New Times that his reason for leaving the group merely had to do with a lack of time.
Asked by the AP this year about McCain’s alleged efforts to distance himself from the council in both 1984 and 1986 (when McCain had to ask to have his name removed from the group’s stationary), founder John Singlaub said: “That’s a surprise to me. … I don’t ever remember hearing about his resigning.”
Though the group’s founder also said it was possible that McCain had asked to resign and he hadn’t heard about the “housekeeping” details, the Council’s unearthed Newsletter from late 1984 would seem to support Singlaub’s — and not McCain’s — memory of the events.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/24/mccain-featured-in-iran-c_n_137626.html
* How can McCain continue to question the associations of anyone when he has some of the shadiest in the world?
Lyle G - what does that even mean? Do you even know anything about the Contras? They were death squads, led by fascist maniacs. They were fighting a “left-leaning” government. THat does not mean communist or socialist. I n fact they were democratically elected. And do you know how we funded them? By selling weapons to Iran!
So what the hell is wrong with you then?
Resolved Question: Is Yahoo correct when they link John MC Cain to terrorists?
Here is Yahoos article. Please answer the question. Do you believe John MC Cain is a terrorist supporter as this article suggests?
http://News.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081007/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_iran_contra;_ylt=AosG819hxEx8V1uBzyU9UARh24cA
WASHINGTON - GOP presidential nominee John McCain has past connections to a private group that supplied aid to guerrillas seeking to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua in the Iran-Contra affair.
McCain’s ties are facing renewed scrutiny after his campaign criticized Barack Obama for his link to a former radical who engaged in violent acts 40 years ago.
The U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. The group was dedicated to stamping out communism around the globe.
The council’s founder, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, said McCain became associated with the organization in the early 1980s as McCain was launching his political career in Arizona. Singlaub said McCain was a supporter but not an active member in the group.
“McCain was a new guy on the block learning the ropes,” Singlaub told The Associated Press in an interview. “I think I met him in the Washington area when he was just a new congressman. We had McCain on the board to make him feel like he wasn’t left out. It looks good to have names on a letterhead who are well-known and appreciated.
“I don’t recall talking to McCain at all on the work of the group,” Singlaub said.
The renewed attention over McCain’s association with Singlaub’s group comes as McCain’s campaign steps up criticism of Obama’s dealings with William Ayers, a college professor who co-founded the Weather Underground and years later worked on education reform in Chicago alongside Obama. Ayers held a meet-the-candidate event at his home when Obama first ran for public office in the mid-1990s.
Obama was roughly 8 years old when Ayers, now at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was working with the Weather Underground, which took responsibility for bombings that included nonfatal blasts at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol. McCain’s vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, has said that Obama “pals around with terrorists.”
In McCain’s case, Singlaub knew McCain’s father, a Navy admiral who had sought Singlaub’s counsel when McCain, a Navy pilot, became a prisoner of war and spent 5 1/2 years in North Vietnamese hands.
“John’s father asked me for advice about what he ought to do now that his son had been shot down and captured,” Singlaub recalled in one of two recent interviews. “I said, ‘As long as you don’t give any impression that you care more about him than you care about any of the other prisoners, he won’t be treated any differently.’”
Covert arms shipments to the rebels called Contras, financed in part by secret arms sales to Iran, became known as the Iran-Contra affair. They proved to be the undoing of Singlaub’s council.
In 1987, the Internal Revenue Service withdrew the tax-exempt status of Singlaub’s group because of its activities on behalf of the Contras.
Elected to the House in 1982 and at a time when he was on the board of Singlaub’s council, McCain was among Republicans on Capitol Hill expressing support for the Contras, a CIA-organized guerrilla force in Central America. In 1984, Congress cut off CIA funds for the Contras.
Months before the cutoff, top Reagan administration officials ramped up a secret White House-directed supply network and put National Security Council aide Oliver North in charge of running it. The goal was to keep the Contras operational until Congress could be persuaded to resume CIA funding.
Singlaub’s private group became the public cover for the White House operation.
Secretly, Singlaub worked with North in an effort to raise millions of dollars from foreign governments.
McCain has said previously he resigned from the council in 1984 and asked in 1986 to have his name removed from the group’s letterhead.
“I didn’t know whether (the group’s activity) was legal or illegal, but I didn’t think I wanted to be associated with them,” McCain said in a Newspaper interview in 1986.
Singlaub does not recall any McCain resignation in 1984 or May 1986. Nor does Joyce Downey, who oversaw the group’s day-to-day activities.
“That’s a surprise to me,” Singlaub said. “This is the first time I’ve ever heard that. There may have been someone in his office communicating with our office.”
“I don’t ever remember hearing about his resigning, but I really wasn’t worried about that part of our activities, a housekeeping thing,” said Singlaub. “If he didn’t want to be on the board that’s OK. It wasn’t as if he had been active participant and we were going to miss his help. He had no active interest. He certainly supported us.”
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