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In Memoriam

This article appeared in the November 1999 issue of The American Spectator.

THE RULES ARE KNOWN, the stakes are high, and one of Washington's great contests is played out accordingly. Jesse Helms will thrust, and the White House will parry. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Helms will demand straight answers, but the administration will not want to provide them. "I did not expect Bill Clinton to be a conservative," Helms says, "but I did expect him to be a litle more constant -- every breath he takes is political." Helms, even his critics must agree, is not like that. His views are consistent, and his principles firm, and in a city where lesser men live and die by the press and elite opinion, he cares not at all what others may say about him. It is just as well. The Economist has described him as "the most brutal curmudgeon in Congress," while the New York Times has insisted he has a "despotic streak," and Newsweek once quoted an unidentified Senate staffer who called him "a mad mongrel dog of the right." What offended them was Helms's audacity in imposing his views, and not theirs, on foreign policy.

"We do what we think is right," Helms says. He is indifferent to his critics, and sometimes even amused by them. An aide, Mark Thiessen, remembers how he found out about the essential Jesse. When he was new to Helms's staff, he proposed writing a letter to the Times rebutting an anti-Helms editorial. "The senator put his arm around me," Thiessen recalls, "and said, 'Son, I don't care what the New York Times says about me, and no one I know does, either.'" At 77, Helms is the lion in winter, secure in himself, and determined to protect what he unashamedly calls "our country's" interests.

So here is a committee hearing on corruption in Russia and U.S. policy. As the Times would report the next day, it held the promise of a "dramatic confrontation." Helms, "the toughest critic in the Senate about accusations of Russian corruption and American complicity," would question "President Clinton's top Russia expert," Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. The hearing room was packed, the press table filled, and two rows of chairs were occupied by unsmiling State Department officials. They knew what Helms would ask: What did the administration know about the corruption, and when did it know it? In 1995, the CIA sent a memo to Al Gore warning him that foreign-aid money was being diverted to crooked Russian officials. Gore reportedly sent it back after scrawling "Bulls--t" on it.

Moreover, only days before the hearing the Washington Post had reported that Hugh and Tony Rodham, Hillary Clinton's strange brothers, had been in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. They had discussed a $118-million investment in hazelnut production with a local political boss. The local boss, a sworn enemy of the Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, a U.S. ally, then put out a statement suggesting he had the "political support" of Bill Clinton. On the face of it that was absurd, but this is the Clinton administration so how could you know? The local boss was also a business partner of Grigori Loutchansky, a Latvian widely known as an international gangster, and Loutchansky once had his picture taken while he shook hands with Clinton at a fundraiser.

"Our purpose today is not to debate the wisdom of supporting or engaging Russia," Helms said solemnly as the hearing began. "We are here to discuss how the Clinton-Gore administration managed, or mismanaged, the U.S. relationship with the Russian government, and what happened to the $5.2 billion in grants and $12.8 billion in loans that was entrusted to the U.S. government by the American taxpayers to support our Russia policies."

Then Helms welcomed Strobe Talbott, and said he was pleased to see him. "And I just recognized your lovely wife," he added gallantly. "I'll just wave at her."

Brooke Shearer Talbott, seated with the State Department officials, waved back, but with only a thin smile as she did. It is widely believed that Helms did not want her husband to succeed Warren Christopher as secretary of state. Madeleine Albright later wore a T-shirt with "I love Jesse Helms" on it.

AFTER HELMS MADE his opening statement, Joe Biden, the ranking Democrat, made his. He said that no matter how deep and pervasive Russian corruption, it still would be wrong to ask, "Who lost Russia?" To do so, he said, would be to neglect the big picture. Later John Kerry, another Democratic member of the committee, would call a "debate about losing Russia entirely inappropriate." Talbott would then agree. Indeed he would say he had vowed never to say "who lost Russia."

But in fact it was only the Democrats who were saying it; the Republicans were leaving it alone. "Who lost Russia?" sounded like "Who lost China?" The Democrats were summoning the ghost of Joe McCarthy, and piously warning against a witch hunt. But there was no witch hunt, of course. There was only Helms, asking direct questions as usual, and as usual finding it hard to get answers.

Helms asked Talbott if the CIA had written a memo about corruption in Russia, and, if it had, did Gore read it, and then dismiss it. Talbott said he must "respectfully decline" to answer; it would be inappropriate for him to comment on intelligence matters.

Helms asked if Russian officials had diverted loans the International Monetary Fund made to Russia's Central Bank to private banks. Talbott said he was unaware of any evidence loans had been diverted.

Helms asked if it were possible, as another State Department official once suggested, that some of the IMF money might have ended up in Swiss banks. Talbott said "capital flight" was a problem in the international economy.

Helms asked Talbott if he thought any of the IMF money might have been stolen. Talbott once again talked about capital flight. "It's all right to say, 'I don't know,'" Helms said, "but don't give me a convoluted answer."

And indeed when Helms then asked why Boris Yeltsin had dismissed the prosecutor who had been looking into what had happened to the IMF loans, Talbott did not give a convoluted answer. He said he did not know.

topics:
Foreign Policy, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Business, Russia, NATO