CubaDebatte: Otto Reich: A Career in Disservice

. A master at deconstructing U.S.-Latin American relations . Greed, chicanery and raw ideology add up to the vulgarization of hemispheric issues. . Reich's secret formula: promote skewed pseudo-democracy by utilizing thuggish tactics . He accuses his leftist adversaries, like Aristide, of lying; but no one in public life has so persistently manipulated the truth than Otto Reich. Having just resigned on June 16th from his position as a controversial White House adviser on Latin American issues, Otto Reich's highly visible career has spanned three decades during which he has held a series of senior public positions. During this period he has worked as a highly paid lobbyist for a number of corporations and controversy has never been far from his door. During this entire period, the profoundly extremist Cuban-American exile has been the proponent of an abrasive U.S. foreign policy aimed at the heart of Latin American dignity, targeting any of its leaders who did not share his Zoroastrian world view of absolute darkness versus absolute light. Until his resignation took effect in late June, Reich was an indefatigable warrior against whatever he decided was a leftwing cause. During his years of ostensible public service to the U.S., he routinely violated domestic laws by working behind the scenes to overthrow the radical but democratically-elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua. In El Salvador, he was an assiduous apologist for the death squads, at a total cost of 85,000 lives (mostly innocent civilians that included Catholic Priests), and condoned brutal human rights violations by the Contras, a U.S.-created force for which he later to broke the law to support. In so doing, Reich made the choice to protect drug traffickers to service the higher goal of putatively fighting communism. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Reich never met a liberal who he did not view a covert operator for Moscow, or an extreme rightwing cause that was not shrouded in rectitude. As head of the notorious Office of Public Diplomacy during the Iran-Contra era of the mid-1980s, Reich's skullduggery was so infamous that he was repeatedly reprimanded by federal authorities for violating proper financial procedures.