The Secret Team

The Secret Team

Legal Accountability our Hope

The nation might have to pay a heavy price for this latest and most serious blow to the credibility and competence of U.S. foreign policy. The prestige of the President has been seriously weakened by the basic facts of an illegal operation that contradicts Mr. Reagan's public principles. Western allies and other world leaders are incensed over the seeming duplicity of an administration that says one thing publicly and does the opposite in secret.

But those who stand to suffer most are the people of Central America. In supplying weapons to the CIA Contra army, the Reagan Administration has put itself in opposition to the legitímate aspirations of deeply oppressed people in the region who have for too long been the victims of U. S. sponsored repression. The strength of the nation, not its weakness, comes from the fact that it has a government of laws run by officials who can be held accountable.This moral principie, more than even its arsenal of nuclear missiles, accounts for the fundamental strength the U.S. exerts in its dealings with people around the worid. That is why any operation - whether it be political assassination, the covert shipment of arms to Iran or the secret diversion of funds to the Contras - that is run in a manner designed to skirt legal accountability, represents such a deep danger that it ultimately could threaten our own freedom.

The President and those who carry out his policies should not forget the words of Richard Henry Lee as he stood before the First Continental Congress in 1776: "Let this happy day give birth to a new republic. Let her rise not to devastate and to conquer, but to re-establish the reign of peace and of law, one set in a new standard of freedom for all the peoples of the earth."

Alfonso Hernández Lozano ANN ARBOR, MI