Stop the Confirmation of Leon E. Panetta for Secretary of Defense

On Thursday, April 28, 2011 President Obama announced changes to his National Security team, which included the announcement that he would appoint former California U.S. Congressman and current CIA Director Leon E. Panetta to replace Bush-appointee Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense.

The appointment of Panetta for such a critical leadership position of our nation’s national security and armed forces is all too reminiscent of past nefarious appointments to strategic positions such as the elevation to positions of trust of Alger Hiss by the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. The President and Congress then, like the current Panetta hearings conducted on Thursday, June 9, ignored the nominee’s past record concerning national security.

Upon careful observation of former Rep. Panetta’s record in the U.S. House of Representatives, it becomes evident that he is not only unfit for the nomination of Secretary of Defense but that his appointment carries the possibility of severely debilitating and compromising U.S. national defense.

As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Panetta voted in the following manner on Defense issues:

• NAY on the reaffirmation of the Mutual Defense Treaty with Taiwan
• YES on continuing foreign aid to the Sandinista government of Communist Nicaragua
• YES on extending most favored nation status to the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact states
• YES on ceding control of the Panama Canal to the pro-Soviet Panamanian government

In addition to his voting record, in 1986, Rep. Panetta publically opposed President Ronald Reagan’s “illegal and extraordinary vicious wars against the poor of Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala.” This Panetta said, as he pledged his support for the Soviet satellite government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua as well as other KGB and DGI (Cuban intelligence) backed Marxist paramilitary groups throughout the Western Hemisphere in Latin America.

Panetta’s solidarity with international communism may have been in part due to his intimate affiliations with the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a Marxist think-tank in Washington D.C. that served as one of the premier outlets for KGB operations in the United States, founded in the late 1960s to shift the American political spectrum of the Left closer to that of the Soviet orbit, essentially bridging the gap between the extreme Left and the mainstream Left. The IPS has consistently served as the primary defender of foreign Marxist governments and communist terror organizations within public policy circles.

In an article published in the November 1983 issue of the American Opinion magazine, entitled “Moscow’s Friends at The Institute for Policy Studies,” the author writes that:

The congressional supporters for the Institute for Policy Studies included many of those who biennially commission I.P.S. to produce an “Alternative” Budget that dramatically cuts defense spending while increasing the spending for social welfare to levels only dreamed of by Karl Marx. In this pact of I.P.S. intimates such luminaries as: …. Leon Panetta (D.-California), Chairman of the Budget Process Task Force...

Earlier that year, on June 5, 1983, the IPS gave a video presentation of a film entitled “Target Nicaragua,” accusing the CIA and American-backed anti-Sandinista freedom fighters, or “Contras,” of committing atrocities against innocent Nicaraguan citizens. The one-sided propaganda film omitted any mentions of the atrocities committed by the communist Sandinista government and neglected to inform the viewer of the government’s role as a Soviet proxy in the Western Hemisphere receiving the full backing of Moscow and Havana. The film was presented to the IPS liberal allies in Congress.

The following month, on July 19, 1983, on the floor of the House, Rep. Panetta condemned the “U.S.-sponsored covert action against Nicaragua,” stating that it was “among the most dangerous aspects of the [Reagan] administration’s policy in Central America.” Panetta complained that “the U.S.-backed anti-Sandinista guerrillas now outnumber the Communist rebels in El Salvador by almost 2-to-1.”

Saying nothing of the Soviet Union’s imperialist interventions to communize Latin America, Rep. Panetta went on to urge his colleagues to join him in supporting H.R. 2760, the Boland-Zablocki bill, which would terminate U.S. efforts to resist communism in Nicaragua. It should be noted that the Boland-Zablocki bill was also supported by the IPS.

Panetta was also a key supporter of the IPS. According to pages 249-250 of the book Covert Cadre: Inside the Institute for Policy Studies (1987), written by S. Steven Powell, it is stated that on “April 5, 1983, IPS threw a large twentieth-anniversary celebration to raise funds.” On the fundraising committee for the event were fourteen then-current members of the U.S. House of Representatives, among which included “Leon E. Panetta (D-Calif.), chairman of Budget Process Task Force of the House Committee on Budget (chairman of Subcommittee on Police and Personnel, Ninety-ninth Congress).”

In addition to the IPS, in 1984, Panetta inserted into the Congressional Record a statement of praise for Lucy Haessler, a veteran member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), which along with the IPS was another Soviet front organization, which unsurprisingly defended the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and was opposed to installation of U.S. intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Western Europe to counteract the imbalance of Soviet missile strength in Eastern Europe.

The State Department has cited the WILPF as a Soviet “front,” which it describes as a “nominally independent organization controlled by the Soviets, usually through the International Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union].” When asked by Human Events about his praise for a leading member of this organization Panetta said that although he had not “done a check on that league [WILPF]” that Haessler’s activism in it was of no consequence in his decision to praise her and mention her involvement in the organization.

Lacking knowledge or discernment on the nature of subversive organizations, such as the WILPF or IPS, may be of little or no importance to Panetta, but it is of grave importance when it comes to being the Secretary of Defense.

An individual with a consistent record of siding with Soviet-backed elements is unfit for the responsibilities expected of a Secretary of Defense and his nomination may have grave implications with regards to the defense of our country and the very policies that affect the brave men and women of our nation’s armed forces serving in the military.

Contact your U.S. Senators and urge them to vote No on the appointment of Leon Panetta as Secretary of Defense.

Thanks.

From Your Friends at The John Birch Society