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The Pacifica Foundation is a leftist organization that supports a number of radio stations around the nation, the best known of which is WBAI in New York. One of its best known shows is “Democracy Now!”, hosted by Amy Goodman. In his infinite wisdom, a wisdom that appears to be more finite as his days in the White House are coming to an end, President Clinton chose last week to give an interview to this less-than-mainstream news source on the very touchy issue of Vieques, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico.
A small part of Vieques has been leased by decades by the U.S. Navy for bombing and amphibian-landing exercises, but lately there has been a movement in Puerto Rico to get the Navy out of the island, and protesters harassed the Navy base there.
On Jan. 31 Clinton reached an agreement with Puerto Rico’s governor Pedro Rossello by which the island would get $40 million in assistance from the federal government in exchange for an end to the protesters actions.
But in an interview with Amy Goodman, broadcast on Election Day, in an effort to help Democratic Party candidates in Puerto Rico (who eventually lost the governorship and other major offices), Clinton said he believed the U.S. Navy was not complying with the agreement he had worked out with the governor on Vieques and that the Navy should suspend its use as a training range immediately if he cannot return to Puerto Rico’s government the lands he had promised to give back. In addition, he said the U.S. Navy should give up using Isla Nena, a neighboring island, for training exercises because this is what the people of Vieques wanted.
Clinton blamed the Congress Republicans for having broken the agreement and that, instead of giving back to Puerto Rico the western part of Vieques, they gave it to the Interior Department to administrate. “I believe that the people of Puerto Rico have the right to say the federal government broke its word and the training exercises have to stop right now,” he said.
Naturally, the “Democracy Now!” interview was picked up by the Associated Press and got big play in Puerto Rico. Listening to it closely it is apparent that Clinton reacted when Goodman, who is a very aggressive interviewer, needled him with the charge that he was the one who had authorized the bombing exercises with live ammunition in Vieques. “Wait a minute! Wait a minute!”, says Clinton as he goes on to distance his own original agreement from the congressional action on Vieques. “I think it was a good agreement and I believe it should be honored”, he adds. “And I’m disappointed Congress didn’t honor it in its totality. But I believe I can find a way of maintaining the federal government’s pledge, anyway. And this is what I am trying to do.”
Whatever Clinton was trying to do, his words didn’t sit well with the U.S. Navy, who had not been advised by the president that he was going to go public with the judgement that it was failing in carrying out his directives—and immediately Brian Cullin, a Navy captain who is the spokesman for Navy secretary Richard Danzig, announced to the media that the U.S. Navy would continue to continue with the implementation of the directives regarding Vieques, as it had been doing, assuming the recently elected government headed by Sila Maria Calderon would honor the agreement.
“Here at the Department we are very clear that we will implement the presidential directives because we still believe they are the best way of allowing for the Navy presence in Vieques”, he tersely said.
As could be expected, Clinton’s words got big play in Puerto Rico as proof that the agreement on Vieques is not being honored by the U.S. Navy and reinforcing governor-elect Calderon’s known view that all Navy exercise should cease at the island, where she was backed by a solid majority in last week’s election.
In a bizarre turn of events, in its website the Navy Department has now devoted a section headlined “The U.S Navy and Vieques: Fact vs. Fiction” to indirectly confront President Clinton’s words.
“There have been a number of unfortunate misconceptions which have received widespread media attention and have ultimately led to the current tense situation on Vieques between the Navy and the civilian population. This section of the website is dedicated to ‘correcting the record’ on these allegations,” it says.
And a detailed exposition of what is happening in Vieques according to the Navy ends with these words: “As the Navy works to improve our relationship with the people of Vieques, the numerous allegations meant to discredit and often demonize the service have done a gross injustice to what is morally right. In repairing the Navy's relations with the community in Vieques and Puerto Rico, we need to start by correcting the record. Let's work together openly, fairly, honestly on a basis of mutual respect.”
President Clinton, meet Secretary of the Navy Danzig.
Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com