Mistake That is Lake

If Barack Obama wanted to dispel doubts about his national security credentials, he hasn’t done so with the announcement of a new “Senior Working Group on National Security” that includes Dr. Tony Lake, a former national security adviser to Bill Clinton. Lake became a laughingstock for expressing doubts as to whether Alger Hiss, the founder of the United Nations and a top State Department official, was a communist spy. Lake’s doubts led to a controversy that caused him to withdraw his nomination as Clinton’s CIA director.

Interestingly, Lake had expressed those doubts on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” during an interview conducted by the late Tim Russert. It went like this:

Russert: You’re a student of history. Do you believe Alger Hiss was a spy?

Lake: I’ve read a couple of books that have certainly offered a lot of evidence that he may have been. I don’t think it’s conclusive.

Hiss, as most people know, had been convicted of perjury for denying he was a communist agent and decoded Soviet transcripts later confirmed his guilt. What does Obama know about this case? Did he personally approve Lake’s addition to his prestigious foreign policy group? Lake could conceivably end up as nominee for CIA director again.

A CIA analysis notes that Lake was “unlikely to be the last casualty of the Hiss case.” How prophetic. It appears that Obama could be another. That is, if we have a media willing to hold him accountable for the atrocious pick of Lake.

At the same time, Lake’s appointment to Obama’s foreign policy team should generate more interest in Obama’s personal involvement in Marxist politics in Hawaii and Chicago and lead to questions about what lessons he learned from his childhood mentor, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Last year, when Lake’s role as a fundraiser for Obama came to our attention, we urged our members to send him a postcard saying:

Professor Anthony Lake
School of Foreign Service
Georgetown University
37th and O Streets, N.W.
Washington, DC 20057

Dear Professor:

It has been reported that you are now backing and raising money for Senator Barack Obama for president. Since that means you have an influence of some kind on his thinking, especially in foreign affairs, we would like to know the following:

(1) Do you still doubt that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy?
(2) What Is Senator Obama’s position on the question of Hiss’s guilt?

Thank you for your attention to these matters.

We are still waiting for answers to these questions. Perhaps you can have some luck. Lake’s email address is listed as lakea@georgetown.edu.

Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org. This column is excerpted from an article he wrote for AIM.

Cliff Kincaid