Diplomat Jim Patterson on Senator Dianne Feinstein's Letter on the Korean Nuclear Threat

Dear Mr. Patterson: Thank you for contacting me regarding North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.  I appreciate the time you took to write, and I sincerely apologize for the delay in my response. As you may know, on September 8, 2016, North Korea announced that it had conducted a test of a nuclear warhead designed to be mounted on ballistic missiles.  This is North Korea’s fifth nuclear test, and the second this year.  The earlier test, in January 2016, was followed-up with an unprecedented number of missile launches, including the test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile.  Please know that I share your deep concern regarding these and other recent North Korean provocations, and I strongly believe that North Korea should not be allowed to possess either nuclear weapons or intercontinental ballistic missiles.  I have supported multilateral and unilateral sanctions against North Korea in an effort to compel its government to uphold its international obligations and end its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.  In particular, I believe the United States should immediately seek stronger multilateral sanctions at the United Nations and pressure China to more vigorously enforce already-existing sanctions. In addition to sanctions, the United States has taken a number of steps to protect allies and U.S. service members stationed in the region.  For instance, the United States has sold advanced Patriot and Aegis missile defense systems to Japan and is currently co-developing advanced missile defense weapons. Additionally, on July 7, 2016, the United States and South Korea agreed to place America’s most advanced missile defense system, known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, in South Korea.  Of course, these defensive weapons systems are in addition to the tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that are either stationed or continuously rotated throughout the region. As the Ranking Member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, please be assured that I will continue to closely monitor developments in North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, and I will keep your thoughts in mind as the Senate discusses United States policy toward North Korea. Once again, thank you for writing.  I hope that you will continue to keep me informed about issues of importance to you.  Should you have any further comments or questions, please feel free to contact my Washington, D.C., office at (202) 224-3841 or visit my website at www.feinstein.senate.gov.  Best regards. Sincerely yours,   Dianne Feinstein          United States Senator Further information about my position on issues of concern to California and the nation are available at my website,feinstein.senate.gov. And please visit my YouTube, Facebook and Twitter for more ways to communicate with me.

Diplomat Jim Patterson on Ronald Reagan's 1976 Quest for a Moral Foreign Policy at the GOP national Convention in Kansas City

Diplomat Jim Patterson at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, MI 

Reagan's Moral Foreign Policy Amendment to the 1976 GOP Presidential Platform by Jim Patterson

JEPDiplomat@gmail.com Patterson worked for President Ford’s Convention Staff at the 1976 GOP Convention in Kansas City

Forty years has not for a moment dulled the excitement and political drama of the 1976 GOP National Convention in Kansas City. As a Young Republican at university, I joined the President Ford Campaign for a variety of reasons.

For a time in 1973 and 1974, Jerry Ford was like a Minuteman from the Revolutionary days. Perhaps 1976 being the Bicentennial brought such imagery. One minute Jerry Ford was a U.S. Congressman from Grand Rapids, Michigan. The next minute Ford was vice president of the United States. The next minute Jerry Ford was President of the United States. The next minute Ford was a presidential candidate. The next minute Ford was a former United States President.

Jerry Ford was Bicentennial Minuteman, an average citizen called to do extraordinary things during extraordinary, challenging and dangerous times. Mr. Ford, I realized when President Nixon resigned, was the president our country needed.  As a Young Republican I wanted to help him and First Lady Betty Ford win election to the White House.

Mr. Ford was challenged for the GOP presidential nomination by former California Governor Ronald Reagan, who made the Panama Canal and the immorality of détente with the Soviet Union his central points to highlight the weaknesses of Ford. The canal proved to be a potent issue for Reagan who wanted to project an image of strength.

Congress had negotiated a treaty to turn control of the canal, over a period of years, to Panama. The Canal Zone had become a controversial issue over decades and Congress had rightly, in my view, negotiated a deal to retain good relations between nations.

Reagan saw this as capitulation to communism. He claimed the U.S. had sovereignty over the Canal Zone and he would go to war to defend it from Castro’s communists.  Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater publicly told Reagan to stop this talk for fear it would ignite a guerilla war in Panama during the presidential election. Reagan gained votes on the canal issue by appearing strong in the face of Ford’s perceived weakness on “communism.”

Reagan and his political allies did not agree with the Ford policy of détente with the Soviet Union. They felt accommodation of Communism immoral and with it Ford and Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger, architects of the policy. Reagan and his ever-present conservative ally North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms began calling for a moral foreign policy and they drafted a 6-paragraph statement for such and demanded the GOP platform be amended to include it.

“The goal of a Republican foreign policy is the achievement of liberty under law and a just and lasting peace in the world,” Reagan and Helms wrote. “The principles by which we act to achieve peace and to protect the interests of the United States must merit the restored confidence of our people.”

Because Ford had not met with Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn in Washington, Reagan and Helms added this language: “We recognize and commend that great beacon of human courage and morality, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, for his compelling message that we must face the world with no illusions about the nature of tyranny. Ours will be a foreign policy that keeps this ever in mind.”  It was a swipe at Ford and Kissinger, our nation’s first Jewish secretary of state, who knew the complexity and importance of continued US-Soviet relations.

“Ours will be a foreign policy which recognizes that in international negotiations we must make no undue concessions; that in pursuing détente we must not grant unilateral favors with only the hope of getting future favors in return.

“Agreements that are negotiated, such as the one signed in Helsinki, must not take from those who do not have freedom the hope of one day gaining it.

“Finally, we are firmly committed to a foreign policy in which secret agreements, hidden from our people, will have no part.

“Honesty, openly and with a firm conviction, we shall go forward as a united people to forge a lasting peace in the world based upon our deep belief in the rights of man, the rule of law,  and guidance by the hand of God.”

Generally, political party platforms use language highlighting failures and controversies of the other political party. The Reagan/Helms foreign policy amendment was such a repudiation of Dr. Kissinger, the secretary of state was seen as a political liability to President Ford. As a result, Dr. Kissinger’s arrival in Kansas City was delayed until Wednesday with the convention set to close, if it could, Thursday evening.

Reagan posed several political challenges (1) that Mr. Ford name his vice president before the first convention ballot (2) the foreign policy language to the platform (3) the fight for uncommitted Mississippi delegates and (4) convention controversies.

With emotions running high and many of the first-time delegates from the Deep South unaware of Convention rules, there were many controversies in Kansas City 40 years ago.  Conservative Reagan delegates taunted Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and came close to assaulting Rocky on the convention floor where he sat with his New York delegates.  

Reaganites reported Rocky lost his temper and tore a Reagan sign that a cowboy delegate pushed in this face while shouting insults. The vice president was helpless since he could not risk the bad press by having his Secret Service agents arrest the enraged and irrational Reagan cowboy delegate.    

There was a whisper campaign on the convention floor at Kemper Arena about First Lady Betty Ford’s health since Day One of the convention. It grew uglier and louder.

“America doesn’t want a First Lady who is a drunk,” one of the Reagan cowboy delegates said near me. As we were all wearing Convention credentials and campaign buttons it was clear whom we supported for the presidential nomination.  The guy’s efforts to convince me to switch to Reagan failed.

Reagan was not floating names of whom his secretary of state might be. His cowboy supporters did. One told me confidentially it would be the actor John Wayne.  Wayne did not attend the convention. 

One day on a shuttle bus to Crown Center Hotel, where the Fords were staying, I overheard Bill Moyers, then with CBS, telling another reporter of his conversation with a Reagan cowboy supporter. Moyers had asked the man why he supported Reagan. “The guy had no answer,” Moyers told his colleague. His colleague replied: “I doubt if any of them have an answer.”

About this same time, I saw an interview of author and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith in the Kansas City Star. The influential author of “The Affluent Society,” stated political conventions had become nothing more than publicity stunts. 

Political conventions are what their planners, delegates and candidates want them to be. The political shoot-out between two fine men, Jerry Ford and Ronald Reagan, at the Kansas City corral 40 years ago gave Republicans a presidential nominee who lost to a Democrat peanut farmer who later lost to a former California governor who rewrote foreign policy by overseeing the collapse of the immoral Soviet Union.

The 1976 GOP National convention was the most exciting political event I ever attended. It was politics and drama from start to finish. It was a political shoot-out of differing philosophies and personalities.

In some ways, the 2016 GOP convention in Cleveland was a political shoot-out if not about philosophies certainly among personalities.  Texas Senator Ted Cruz, for example, declined to ask delegates to vote for GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. In September, after negotiations between Cruz and Vice Presidential nominee and current Indiana Governor Mike Pence, Cruz announced his support for Donald Trump.  Despite controversies, tasteless and fabricated social media campaigns, and heated rhetoric and tempers, conventions are a way for parties, candidates and delegates to grow.

The GOP grew to be a majority political party after the 1976 national convention and the GOP will grow after Cleveland. Donald Trump and Mike Pence recognize the GOP must appeal to a more voters to be successful in defeating the vast corrupt political machine that supports Hillary Clinton. Trump and Pence have the leadership ability to defeat the machine and return the government to the people not the special interests of the Clintons and the Obamas.

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Jim Patterson is a life member of the American Foreign Service Association, life member of the Associates of Vietnam Veterans of American, and Associate Member of the Korean War Veteran’s Association, member of the U.S. Philippine Society, member DACOR, contributor Foreign Service Journal, and others.  

Diplomat Jim Patterson on California Congressman Ed Royce's Bill to Stop Government Ransom Payments.

Urging former Secretary of State George Shultz to write another book on National Security. 

 

Congratulations to Congressman Ed Royce for this column which led to passage of his important legislation to stop Other Supreme leaders from taking such shameful action. 

A SUPREME LEADER'S RANSOM

In January, a jet touched down in the Iranian capital of Tehran. Its mission was to pick up four American hostages. The Obama administration paid a heavy price for their freedom, releasing or closing cases against 21 Iranians convicted or accused of serious crimes from sanctions evasion to purchasing equipment for Iran’s illegal weapons programs. Unfortunately, the true cost to the United States is becoming clearer.

We now know that a second aircraft landed in Tehran that night. Its mission was to airlift $400 million worth of cash to Iran, the first installment of a $1.7 billion payment. One press report described “wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies” being whisked across the tarmac. Foreign currency was used in order to side-step U.S. restrictions on Iran’s access to the dollar. While it sounds like a movie scene, no cameras rolled. The Obama administration hid this payment from Congress and the American people.

To hear the State Department tell it, this $1.7 billion is a settlement for an arms sale that was called off after the radicals that rule Iran seized power in 1979: Iran’s $400 million original payment plus $1.3 billion, a whole lot of interest. The dispute over this aborted sale had dragged on for over 35 years. That Iran received the initial payment – in cash – on the same day it released American hostages was a just coincidence, the White House would have us believe. I don’t think so.

We now know that senior Justice Department officials raised red flags, warning that Iran would see the payment as a ransom. After all, Iran had demanded cash during the negotiations over the four Americans. Giving in to this demand would only encourage this rogue regime to take more Americans hostage, they argued. That is why it has long been U.S. policy not to pay ransom.
The Obama administration’s decision to ignore this policy and the counsel of its own officials has put more American lives in jeopardy. Since that plane full of cash landed, Iran has detained at least two more Americans, as well as French, British and Canadian citizens. We certainly can expect demands of more cash for their release.

Putting hundreds of millions of dollars in the pockets of Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and top money launderer, means a more dangerous region. Crates of cash is the preferred payment method for Iran’s terrorist proxies, including Hezbollah, which has thousands of fighters on the front lines in Syria and tens of thousands of rockets pointed at Israel. Cash is also useful as Iran continues to buy parts for its illegal – and expanding – missile program on the black market.

The administration has a lot of explaining to do. After this so-called settlement was announced in January, I asked a number of questions about its connection to the hostages and how the money was sent. The administration refused to answer with any substance.

Now that it’s clear that this settlement served as a ransom – paid in cash – questions abound. Will the next $1.3 billion be delivered in cash too? In recent weeks, Iran has attacked a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that paves the way for nearly $2 billion in Iranian funds locked up in the United States to be used to pay American victims of Iranian terrorist attacks. Is the White House trying to even the ledger for Iran?

This ransom was paid the very weekend the president’s flawed nuclear agreement was implemented. That deal enshrines Iran as a dangerous nuclear power. The damage of doing so is now compounded by this $400 million cash payment, which emboldens Iran to ramp up its hostage-taking, support for terrorism, and illegal missile tests.

This episode is yet another extraordinary step the Obama administration has taken to accommodate Iran, as its supreme leader pushes for more sanctions relief and threatens to walk away from the nuclear deal. With their secret delivery exposed, President Obama and Secretary Kerry hopefully will stop flying cash to Iran. My worry is they are looking for a bigger plane.

Rep. Ed Royce, R-Fullerton, is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

f t # e

Jim Patterson Note: With the increasing terror threat in the Middle East, it is irresponsible for Barack Obama to supply Iran with $1.7 billion and it was done in exchange for American hostages. This puts a price on the head of every American businessperson, and US government officials. It greatly complicates security in the region and likely will lead Iran to finance other terror agents such as ISIS, Hezbollah, the PLO, al Qaeda, Taliban and others, possible North Korea. This is was a dreadful moment in US foreign relations and one that will further tarnish Barack Obama's and John Kerry's international reputations. 

Senator Dianne Feinstein and Jim Patterson on S. 2531 Combating BDS Act of 2016

Dear Mr. Patterson:

Thank you for writing regarding your thoughts on the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.  I appreciate the time you took to write, and I welcome the opportunity to respond. 

              

I understand you have concerns regarding the BDS movement and the United States’ relationship with Israel.  Please know that I share your support for strong U.S.-Israel relations.  Throughout my years of public service, I have had the opportunity to see firsthand the strength of the American-Israeli relationship, one based on shared values of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.

              

I understand that you support the “Combating BDS Act of 2016” (S. 2531), which was introduced by Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL).  As you may know, this bill would allow local and state governments to withdraw their assets from, or prohibit investment in, an entity that is boycotting, divesting, or sanctioning Israel.  S. 2531 is currently pending in the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, of which I am not a member. 

Please be assured that I have taken careful note of your views, and I will keep your concerns about the threat of economic boycotts targeting Israel in mind should S. 2531 or related legislation come before the Senate in the coming months.  

Once again, thank you for writing.  I hope that you will continue to keep me informed about issues of importance to you.  Should you have any further comments or questions, please feel free to contact my Washington, D.C., office at (202) 224-3841 or visit my website at www.feinstein.senate.gov.  Best regards.

Sincerely yours,


  Dianne Feinstein
         United States Senator
Further information about my position on issues of concern to California and the nation are available at my website,feinstein.senate.gov. And please visit my YouTube, Facebook and Twitter for more ways to communicate with me.

Jim Patterson Note: States, including New York, have taken a strong position regarding companies that participate in this economic terrorism against Israel. Please read the Combating BDS Act of 2016 and determine if you can support this legislation. It is an important complement to the US Israel defense program.