Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
On Thursday, Democrats found their Oliver North.
North, we of a certain age will recall, was the U.S. Army colonel who apparently masterminded the Central Intelligence Agency’s Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s.
He acted on behalf of the Republican Reagan administration as he sat at the controls of this sad affair in which proceeds of shady dealings with a hostile Iraq were used to finance the Contras, a rebel band trying to oust the Communist Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.
When it was all over, North faced down a Democratic majority in Congressional hearings.
North answered tough questions with a grin and an easy-going style, and emerged to many, especially Republicans, a hero.
Now it’s 31 years later, and like the Democrats in 1987, the Republicans on Thursday trotted out FBI agent Peter Strzok (pronounced “strock”), to be incinerated by grilling from Republican-majority House Judiciary and Oversight Committee members.
With help from Democratic blockers, however, Strzok, like North, remained firm and calm and emerged as an eloquent, passionate defender of the FBI and himself after nine hours on a padded leather hot seat.
Democrats think he has given credence to their claim that, despite Strzok’s personal distaste for President Donald Trump, his opinions did not affect Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.
Strzok’s bias became known when emails between himself and an FBI attorney, Lisa Page, with whom he was having an extra-marital affair, were leaked. When Strzok’s feelings became known, he was kicked off Mueller’s team.
Strzok did admit Thursday those emails were dumb but eloquently defended the FBI and its investigations related to the 2016 campaign.
In one of the few extended statements allowed in a day of heated interruptions, Strzok said, “At every step, at every investigative decision, there were multiple layers of people above me … and multiple layers of people below me, … all of whom were involved in all of these decisions. They would not tolerate any improper behavior in me any more than I would tolerate it in them.”
The Democrats applauded.
When confronted with an email in which he stated, “We will stop him,” meaning Trump, Strzok said it was a late-night impulse.
What he meant, he said, was that voters would stop Trump.
He said he was responding to Trump’s criticism that day of a fallen soldier’s immigrant family.
“And my presumption, based on that horrible, disgusting behavior,” he said, “was that the American population would not elect somebody demonstrating that behavior to be president of the United States.”
Not everyone thought North was a hero, just as today, many think Strzok is the chief villain in the Russia-Trump campaign investigation issue.
Everyone has times when they must act against their own feelings.
Republicans should remember North’s example and take care that their response to what they want us to believe is a witch hunt, Mueller’s investigation, does not become a real one that backfires.
Steve Hansen writes about our life and times from his perspective of a retired Tucumcari journalist. Contact him at:
stevenmhansen
@plateautel.net