Mae Brussell's World Watchers International
Bibliography sheet for tape #787 January 5, 1987 Side 1NOW IS THE TIME FOR A PUBLIC FINGERPRINTING OF LT. GUSTAV ANTON FRITZ KRAEMER. LET US DECIDE IF LT. FRITZ KRAEMER, POSSIBLY THE MOST IMPORTANT INDIVIDUAL IN THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT POLICIES, IS NOT ADOLF HITLER'S BRIGADEFUEHRER der WAFFEN SS FRITZ KRAEMER. New staff selections
from the Houston Post, Dec. 24, 1986
by Rowland Evans & Robert Novak
WASHINGTON — The glimmer of the first silver lining in the cloud darkening President Reagan's presidency is discernible in the new staff at the NSC, the original source of his troubles, where an unexpectedly rich transfusion of blood is raising hopes for preserving Reaganite national security policies.
The new staff selections by incoming national security adviser Frank Carlucci have stunned the bureaucracy. Nobody expected him to hire Jose S. Sorzano, a Jeane Kirkpatrick protege, and the CIA's Fritz W. Ermarth, privately described by William Casey as "the strongest Soviet specialist in town." On top of that, hard-line arms control specialist Fritz Kramer unexpectedly is being retained.
That foretells career civil servant Carlucci's intention to halt policy power filtering from the Reagan White House to the State Department, as Secretary of State George Shultz has planned since the Iran arms scandal began in early November. It guarantees tough, down-the-line competition with Shultz, not obeisance from a disgraced NSC staff as feared by conservatives.
The top of the line for salvaging the president's national security policies is the Reagan Doctrine. It was left bleeding and half dead when arms deals engineered by Lt. Col. Oliver North were discovered. Congressional Democrats, never happy with the Reagan Doctrines's aspirations of forcing back communism at the fringes, are using the scandal to undermine the doctrine not only in Nicaragua but Angola as well.
This environment was shaken up by Carlucci's decision to go for and get Sorzano, who fled FidelCastro's Cuba and after serving as Kirkpatrick's U.N. deputy became president of the Cuban American Foundation. It is no mere atmospheric change.
It shifts the NSC's Latin America policy chief from a highly regarded Foreign Service officer dependent on long-term relations with the State Department to a tough intellectual with impeccable Reaganite credentials who is accountable to no one in the bureaucracy. "Frank is looking for the best, strongest people he can find, with a pro-Reagan orientation," Kirkpatrick told us, "and he has found one in Sorzano."
A similar orientation pervades Ermarth. He replaces Jack Matlock, a senior State Department specialist in U.S. Soviet relations suspected by the right of detentism. Ermarth's work in U.S.-Soviet strategic evaluation during Zbigniew Brzezinski's tenure as Jimmy Carter's national security adviser impressed Casey. Casey brought him back to the CIA in 1984 as his top intelligence officer on Soviet affairs.
With futures wholly independent of the State Department, Sorzano and Ermarth will be tougher players in defense of the president's policies, less susceptible to bureaucratic pressures from Shultz. In dealing with the new, far more anti-Reagan Congress, such independence suggests more boldness and imagination in selling the president's foreign policy. Sorzano, one White House insider said privately, "can and will go toe-to-toe with George Shultz."
Reshaping the entire NSC staff in the middle of an administration has never been tried before, particularly one that is now on its record fifth national security adviser.Carlucci's original plan was to fire all staffers with at least four years in the Reagan White House. He quickly gave that up because it would have sacrificed some high talent, including strategic arms specialist Kramer.
This shakeup was preordained when Attorney General Edwin Meese quietly put his hand on Adm. John Poindexter's shoulder after discovering the Iran-Contra link. "The president will never ask you to resign," he said, "but, John, you ought to."
Meese demanded that Poindexter's successor abolish the office out of which North ran his super-secret operations in the basement of the White House. But he feared that no Poindexter successor — Carlucci or anyone else — would be able to build a new NSC staff capable of performing the coordinating function needed to put policy back on track in the midst of Reagan's worst presidential crises.
On the contrary, Carlucci is proving to be an adept and calculating housekeeper, just what the president needs. Not content with hiring a new staff capable of "coordinating" the president's national security policies, he is picking aides who would not sign on without a strong policymaking role. And instead of just abolishing North's operation, Carlucci abolished its parent Political-Military Office headed by Howard Teicher, and fired Teicher.
The signal is clear. The first of Reagan's five national security advisors with a clear track to the Oval Office, not through Donald T. Regan or any other chief of staff, is going to cut a swath of his own to heighten the president's control of his presidency. It is a sign of hope, the first in weeks.News America Syndicate