GETTING STARTED ON MR. REAGAN S DEMOCRACY DRIVE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84B00049R000802030035-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Sequence Number: 35
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

r llt: ~~:A I,1 Approved For Release 2007/06/14: CIA-RDP84B00049R000802030035-6
Getting Started
On Mr. Reagan's
Democracy Drive
There stood Ronald Reagan before the
British Parliament this week, surrounded
by splendidly rostunied beefeaters acrd
parliamentary officials, delivering a ring-
ing call for a drive by democratic nations
to take the offense in fighting totalitarian-
isnt around the world. Near the end of his
speech he offered some specific sugges-
tions on how to start. The political parties
of Western Europe. he said, had a tradition
of aiding like-minded parties abroad. The
two U.S. parties, together with ;in or?gtini-
zation called the American Political Foun-
dation, were about to launch a study o
how the U.S. could best do the same kind
of thing.
It is always a curiosity when an obscure
group manages to get itself and its ideas
promoted and immortalized in a presiden-
tial speech. So I called on the American
Political Foundation and its president,
George Agree; to see how such a thing had
come to pass.
The headquarters of the organization is
about as stark a contrast as you can get to
the grandeur of Westminster. It consists of
a single cluttered room in the back of a
shabby townhouse on Capitol Hill. The foun-
dation currently runs on a small budget,
which It uses mainly to foster contacts be-
tween U.S. officials and their counterparts
in the democratic countries of Europe.
But the group has always had bigger
things in mind. It took as its model the ex-
ample of West Germany, where each politi-
Capital Chronicle
by Suzanne Garment
cal party runs a foundation to give sub-
stantial aid to like-minded political groups
abroad. And the APP managed to get ilut
heads of the Democratic and Republican
National Committees to serve as its chair-
man and vice chairman, thus establishing
its claim to respectability and bipartisan-
ship.
But the APF's entrepreneurship was not
the only driving force behind the idea in
Mr. Reagan's speech; the notion has been
floated in a number of places. The AFL-
CIO has repeatedly urged that we shore up
the American capacity for political action
abroad; William Colby wrote about the
subject recently in the Washington Post.
Moreover, the general climate has changed
radically since the days when talk of U.S.
political action abroad was derided as
Anuwr'ican neocolonhtlisnr. In fact, in this
instance the State Department. no hotbed
of aggressiveness, turned into a promoter
of the itra. A well-placed Foreign Service
officer named Mark Palmer developed the
;&,r! anii shepherded it through the process
;., i ic,anon by the rest of the tn~rrr
He did not meet with much opposition.
"It's something I've felt strongly about for
a long time," said Undersecretary for Po-
litical Affairs Lawrence Eagleburger, one
of those who approved the plan, "the idea
of our beginning to take the political offen-
sive. And once it got to the White House,
the President grabbed it very fast."
Not everyone was enthusiastic. Some
worried that the Communists would view
these activities as intrusive destabilization.
Some were suspicious because the idea
was being promoted by parts of the State
Department whose hawkish credentials
were suspect.
But in the end there was a fair degree
of consensus. "We used to do some of this
giving covertly," said one official. "But
when we stopped being able to keep our se-
crets in these matters, people became un-
willing to accept our money. The founda-
tion idea is a way of getting around the
problem."
What's due to happen now is that the
American Political Foundation is to be giv-
en $350,000 to $400,000 for a major study of
what form the American participation in
the ideological wars should take. No one
knows, of course, how good the study will
be or how well it will succeed in building
support for its conclusions. And no one
knows how aggressive an operation the
study will finally recommend. President
Reagan's speech spoke of the model of the
German political action units; the APF,
needless to say, also has ambitious plans.
In the State Department, though, there's
more caution: "We're only in the middle of
the process: it's not at fnrition." warned
an aide. "We don't know anything yet
about this organization that's being de-
signed. We're not even sure that money
will pass through it."
So there is a chance that the enterprise
will turn into a bctcntdoggle or a piece of
useless symbolism. That would be too bad.
President Reagan's speech came in the
middle of a week drenched in blood. The
British finally began their major confron-
tation with the Argentinians in the Falk-
lands: the Israelis finally moved against
the PIA) army feeding on the corpse of
1.c'b;mon. There were reminders every-
where of the breakdown of the tKrstwar or-
der and of whit that breakdown is going to
cost.
One sign of this breakdown is that in re-
cent years the U.S. has been so timid about
promoting its political interest abroad.
Twenty-five years ;ago many stirli artivi-
ties on our part were carried on covertly.
as if in recognition that they were a kind of
illegitimate interference in other countries'
affairs. Recently they have just about
ceased altogether. because we have lost
the nerve to carry out covert operations.
It would be helpful to have organiza-
tions--perhaps ran by our political parr
lies-that could take. government money
hot keep a large nnegree of anti nnnry ill de
riding how to dis'.i?rninate the rash to dent-
ocratic forces ;ia-o;td. That the transactions would be or,r?n might keep some po-
tential recipients 'runt acrepting our ntnn-
r?v. lm the other hand, we are likely to hen-
,.fit from the ''pi:r.,,:ned totter" advantage,
wilh our activate-; scorning less titillalur:;
!~rc:ue tho ;an -lore open.
Mr. Reagan's speech dealt only in possi-
bilities. But his proposal at least recog-
nized that what his foreign policy needs
are some concrete ways to recapture the
political offensive and begin reversing the
fortunes of democratic ideas.
Approved For Release 2007/06/14: CIA-RDP84B00049R000802030035-6