I’M SURPRISED to see The Boston Globe give Elliott Abrams a prominent forum to criticize the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Massachusetts’ senior senator, John Kerry, without mentioning their history (“Kerry’s softer stance on Syria scrutinized,’’ Page A1, April 28).
As the Globe documented in a 2003 story, Kerry, as a freshman senator, investigated and exposed an illegal war in Central America and the Iran Contra scandal. Elliott Abrams lied about it to Congress and pled guilty. He was saved from jail by a last-minute presidential pardon.
I was Kerry’s chief investigator at the time, and I witnessed the senator’s tenacity in unearthing the truth despite relentless attacks from the administration. Kerry persisted, and the Globe reported that Kerry’s interrogation of Abrams, then assistant secretary of state, at an October 1986 hearing “would result in Abrams pleading guilty to charges of withholding information from Congress.’’
Abrams is a neoconservative who advocated for an illegal war in Central America, pushed for the war in Iraq, and once proposed military action against Syria. I think he has been consistently wrong. That is his privilege. But only amnesia would let anyone forget he has a score to settle with Kerry.
Jack A. Blum
Annapolis, Md.
