The Strange Rehabilitation of Elliott Abrams
JULY 21, 2023
BY MELVIN GOODMAN
Photograph Source: U.S. Department of State – Public Domain
Democratic presidents have a way of reaching out to undeserving Republicans to protect their domestic flanks on the right. Bill Clinton appointed James Woolsey to be the director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1993 in order to gain standing among national security conservatives. Barack Obama retained Robert Gates as secretary of defense in 2009 in order to appease Pentagon professionals. And now President Joe Biden has named Elliott Abrams to the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. Why in the world would anyone want to resurrect Elliott Abrams?
The Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy is hardly a well-known bureaucracy, not even to hard-core policy wonks. But it was created in 1948 to ensure that policy experts would provide honest assessments to improve U.S. public diplomacy. One should never use “honest” and “Elliott Abrams” in the same sentence. And the same could be said for Jim Woolsey, who was a bizarre choice, and Bob Gates, who was known for politicizing intelligence for the Reagan administration throughout the 1980s. It is particularly risible that Abrams would be appointed to a position charged with maintaining integrity in U.S. public diplomacy.
Abrams’ involvement in Iran-Contra is the obvious starting point for any discussion of his qualifications. He was convicted in 1991 of two misdemeanor counts of unlawfully withholding information from Congress, but received a pardon from President George H.W. Bush. Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel who investigated Iran-Contra, prepared multiple felony counts against Abrams, who eventually admitted that he knew more than he acknowledged in congressional testimony. Several years later, he was publicly sanctioned by the District of Columbia Bar for giving false testimony to Congress about Iran-Contra.
As Ronald Reagan’s assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs in the 1980s, Abrams regularly covered up atrocities committed by U.S.-backed military forces in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. He did the same for the Contras in Nicaragua, and, as a result, was heavily criticized by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The Lawyers Committee, Americas Watch, and Helsinki Watch collaborated on a report in the mid-1980s that charged Abrams with “undermining the purpose of the human rights bureau in the State Department.”
A cursory look at Abrams’ track record in Central America reveals an archetype Cold War functionary from a sad era. As an assistant secretary of state, he promoted aid to the Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt, who came to power via a coup and was found guilty of a campaign of mass murder and torture of indigenous people. Abrams defended the human rights record of the El Salvador government, even in the wake of the El Mozote massacre of hundreds of civilians by the CIA-backed El Salvador military. He dismissed reports of the massacre as left-wing propaganda and denounced U.S. investigative reports as misleading. As late as 2019, Abrams was still defending the human rights record of the Reagan administration in Central America.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/07/21/the-strange-rehabilitation-of-elliott-abrams/
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/07/21/the-strange-rehabilitation-of-elliott-abrams/
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