SPREADING THE WORD IN A NEW WAY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605320001-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 2, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: May 18, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/02 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605320001-8
ARTICLE A-FEAR D WASHINGTON TIMES
ON PAGE 3- 18 May 1987
DOR - .-RABINO Z
t e
Spreading a new way
wor in
k
h
t
as been more than a week
since the Hart campaign en-
tered the shredder, and still no
sign of any end to the wisdom
spilling forth daily on press ethics,
adultery, the plight of wives. Nor is
this anything but welcome, com-
pared to a number of other news sto-
ries falling into what you might call
the Important Issues department.
Such, anyway, is the frame of ref-
erence of a number of those arguing
that the media have concentrated in
the Hart story on things that were
interesting rather than important -
things such as the deficit.
True, we have not heard much
from the media about the deficit of
late: perhaps because they and ev-
eryone else around for the '84 pres-
idential campaign recall too well the
torpor produced by any mention of
the subject.
Then, as now, the concerns which
first and foremost moved the elec-
torate were character, values, spirit.
Did they like the candidate - trust
him - or did they not?
Then, as now, it was precisely the
things that were interesting to peo-
ple that were the important ones.
The debate - if that is the word
- over what is important and what
is not is nothing new in political life.
What does seem to be new and dif-
ferent these days are the means em-
ployed to transmit political ideas, the
sort of thing evident in the
aforementioned Important Issues
stories.
We saw, of course, the most spec-
tacular example at work at William
Casey's Long Island funeral recently
- a ceremony attended by the pres-
ident and not a few high administra-
tion officials.
This was an opportunity not lost
on Bishop John McGann - friend of
the Casey family- if also one whose
higher loyalties had apparently been
reserved to the political cause for
which he had now become a
spo
esman: the war against the Con-
tras and their supporters.
Bishop McGann, invited to deliver
the homily, proceeded, as the world
by now knows, to include in it an
assault on the Contras, whose cause
Mr. Casey had so long and ardently
supported.
The bishop went on to expatiate on
the high moral principles (disap-
proval of violence and such) to
which he and his fellow bishops were
themselves devoted but which the
former CIA director had, his homily
explained, altogether failed to com-
prehend.
All this Bishop McGann (not one
to stand on ceremony) was
thoughtful enough to have distrib-
uted to the assembled press in ad-
vance, which must have confused
somewhat those few among them so
innocent as to have supposed that the
bishop had come to honor William
Casey, a lifelong and devoted servant
of this country.
In the meantime, in the nation's
capital, yet another official last week
took an opportunity to stress an is-
sue of importance of his own.
This notable, who seized the day
while serving as guest lecturer in an
eighth-grade science class, was
none other than Marion Barry,
mayor of Washington, D.C.
Mr. Barry, who according to a
Washington Post story has training
in the field of chemistry, neverthe-
less turned in the course of his lec-
ture from scientific wisdom to other
thoughts.
"This government," the mayor of
Washington informed the eighth-
graders, "has an Army, Navy, Air
Force and Marines who are killing
people and they shouldn't be doing
that."
The nation's servicemen did this
killing, the mayor explained, in Viet-
nam. And in Lebanon.
This is a fine lesson for officials to
be imparting to schoolchildren
about the nation's armed services.
Mr. Barry, it is clear, is yet another
of that illustrious cadre devoted to
political instruction, to whom no oc-
casion seems inappropriate for the
dissemination of wisdom of this sort.
The burdens of office must weigh
heavily on all such men. Perhaps
Mayor Barry and Bishop McGann
would do well to divest themselves of
other responsibilities and simply
team up, free to continue pro-
pounding the grotesque view of a
nation and its policies which they
share. In company, it should be said,
with a goodly number of others now-
adays presuming to speak for
America's conscience.
Dorothy Rabinowitz is a nation-
ally syndicated columnist.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/02 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605320001-8