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“OTTO REICH IS ON THE JOB” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S1927-S1928 on March 14, 2002.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
OTTO REICH IS ON THE JOB
Mr. HELMS. Madam President, this past Monday, March 11, I was among the hundreds of Otto Reich's friends and supporters when he was sworn in by Secretary of State Colin Powell to serve as Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs.
His nomination had been delayed, to a frivolous extent, by a few Senators who held a grudge against Mr. Reich because he so ably served President Reagan in the 1980s as head of the U.S. Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America.
Now, on this past Monday, March 11, surrounded by his family, his two daughters held the Holy Bible on which Otto placed his hand while taking the oath of office by Secretary Powell. There followed a thunderous and prolonged applause when the oath was concluded and Secretary Powell turned over the podium to Secretary Reich.
Madam President, it occurs to me that many will find Otto Reich's remarks on that occasion of special interest. Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that the text of those remarks be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Remarks by Otto J. Reich Upon His Swearing-In as Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, in the Benjamin Franklin Room, U.S.
Department of State, March 11, 2002
Mr. REICH. As President Bush would say, ``Basta.''
Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary, for those very kind words and for your presence here. I know how busy your schedule is and I very much appreciate your officiating at this ceremony.
Excellencies, Senator Helms--Chairman Helms, Secretary Martinez, colleagues from many years of service in the U.S. Government, Army buddies, un-indicted co-conspirators, friends, family, and special guests:
I know many of you have traveled many hours to be here, and I want to thank you all for sharing this important occasion with me and with my family. I believe, however, the delegation from Panama holds the record for the longest distance traveled. If anybody else has traveled longer, we have a prize for you afterwards.
As much as I appreciate your presence, my first words of gratitude, on behelf of myself and my brother, my family and my fellow Cuban-Americans, must go to this most generous of countries, the United States of America.
As most of you know, my country of birth, Cuba, lost its liberty to a totalitarian dictatorship forty-three years ago. My family, like so many other nonpolitical families, was in danger simply because of our love of liberty, which ran counter to the communist ideology being imposed by force on that island.
The United States of America opened its doors to us, as it has done for millions yearning to breathe free. It did not ask anything in return, except allegiance and respect for the laws. It protected our lives, gave us liberty and the opportunity to pursue our happiness.
The Greek philosopher Thucydides said that Justice is the right of any person to do those things which God gave him the ability to do. By that or any other definition, this is a just country. Our nation is not perfect, but it allows its citizens to do that for which God gave them the ability. To say that I am proud to be an American is the height of understatement.
I want you to reflect for a minute on what you have just witnessed: where else but in the United States of America could the son of Jamaican immigrants rise to be the National Security Advisor to the President, then become the highest ranking officer in the most powerful Armed Forces in the world and then the Secretary of State.
Where else could he administer the oath of office to another son of the Caribbean--half-Cuban, half-Austrian, half-Catholic, half-Jewish--and charge him with directing our country's relations with the 34 nations of our home hemisphere. But I don't want you White Anglo Saxon Protestants out there to despair. There is room in our society for you, too.
I wish all of you had the opportunity I now have to work with Secretary Powell and President Bush. I have been in meetings with them and with heads of state or foreign ministers of other nations. And in private, in staff meetings, I can tell you that you would sleep better at night knowing how calm, competent, strong and dedicated they are.
I would sleep better at night also, except for Deputy Secretary Armitage calling me to ask where is the memo that was supposed to be upstairs by close of business!
I am proud today not just because I am being sworn in to this office. I was proud when I was given the opportunity by this country to be the first one in my family to graduate from college, and then to obtain a graduate degree; to be an officer in the U.S. Army; and to be sworn-in three previous times to Presidential appointments. I am proud of every single job I have performed in service to our country.
Much has been written in the so-called ``prestige press'' about my previous work. Some of it even true! There were charges of ``covert propaganda'' by the office I headed in the 1980's: the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean. Well, Mr. Secretary, today I have a confession to make about the work of that office. Now that the Statute of Limitations has expired, I think it is safe for me to confirm what so many on the other side suspected: Yes, the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean was single-handedly responsible for the downfall of the Soviet Union!
There are so many things for which I am grateful today. Like two beautiful and intelligent young ladies who held the Bible. The person responsible for their being smart and pretty is here, their mother--Connie--my friend and former wife, and someone who made many sacrifices to help get me to where I am today. I don't think anyone has a more supportive ex-spouse than I do. Thank you, Connie.
And also here is another very special lady, Lourdes Ramos, who this past weekend accepted my proposal of marriage. Thank you, Lourdes. I look forward to our life together. It's a busy weekend.
Standing up here, I stand figuratively on the shoulders of all of you. Each of you is here because you had something to do with my being here, some more than others. As George Orwell said in Animal Farm, ``All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.''
I am not going to start naming the names of those who are more equal than others, but you know who you are. Since I can't possibly name each one, please consider yourselves properly singled out.
I do want to thank President Bush and Secretary Powell not only for selecting me to this incredibly exciting post, but for sticking with me in the face of unfair, anonymous or just plain false charges. I want to thank those who kept encouraging me to ``Hang In There.''
Believe me, I hung in there and I have the rope burns around my neck to prove it!
But how could I not persevere? I am an American. When the Founding Fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to create this experiment in democracy in 1776, they did not qualify their words. They didn't say they were going to reconsider if they ran into some resistance from the British. Well, I was not going to reconsider either.
How could I? My late parents were not quitters, and they are proud of my service to their adopted country. My mother was a poet and a free spirit. She was also practical and hard-working, a telephone operator and a union member.
I like to remind my Democrat friends that I come from a labor union family and am proud to have served the only U.S. President to have been president of a labor union: Ronald Reagan, the man who with his foreign policy vision and courage laid the groundwork for the end of the Evil Empire. And by the way, with the help of a lot of people who are in this room, such as Ambassador Kirkpatrick, Secretary Powell, and many others.
How could I quit? The memory of my father would not have let me. He left his home in Vienna in August of 1938, after being beaten up numerous times by Nazi thugs because of his Jewish religion. He rode 700 kilometers on a motorcycle, driven by his best friend, a Catholic, to the Swiss border, and crossed the Alps on foot into Switzerland.
He made his way to France and joined the French Foreign Legion so he could fight the Nazis who had taken over his beloved Austria. The same Nazis who would later kill his parents, my grandparents, along with millions of other innocent victims.
More than a year after the French Army surrendered, he boarded a Portuguese freighter in Casablanca, headed for Jamaica and Cuba, and in 1942 he landed in Havana, where he found work, met my mother, started a family and hoped he could finally live in peace.
I would not be deterred, also because of the memory of my maternal grandfather, Juan Fleites. At the age of fifteen, exactly one hundred and seven years ago, in 1895, he joined the Cuban insurgents who were fighting for Cuba's independence from the Spanish. He was too young to serve as a warrior, so he became a medic's assistant and a stretcher-bearer, helping to carry the casualties off the battlefield and cleaning their wounds as best he could.
Secretary Powell is rightfully proud of his heritage and his accomplishments as a military officer and a civilian. But I am also proud, Mr. Secretary, that my grandfather served in Cuba's liberation army under a general named Antonio Maceo.
Maceo was the equivalent of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Cuba's insurrection. He was a black man and the descendant of slaves. Today we would call him Afro-Cuban. Over one hundred years ago, Cubans of all races willingly fought and died for their independence under the general they called ``El Titan de Bronze,'' the Titan of Bronze, in honor of the color of his skin.
Antonio Maceo was the highest-ranking military officer of African heritage in this hemisphere until Colin Powell came along. And today I am proud to serve under another ``Titan de Bronze.''
Much has been made of my Cuban-American heritage. One group said that I couldn't possibly handle our relations with this hemisphere because I don't have the right temperament, by virtue of my ethnic background. They actually put that in writing. They said that I can't make rational decisions because of my ideology! Well, they are not saying that anymore, because I had them all arrested this morning!
Seriously, I think it is time that Cuban Americans cease to be the one ethnic group which the media still finds acceptable to denigrate. How could I not persevere to be appointed into what I think is the best job in the government? Where else can you work twice the number of hours as in the private sector, make half the money, and get public abuse in the process? As my father would have said: ``Such a deal!''
I am part of a great team of professionals, both career and non-career. I am both excited and apprehensive about this assignment, because seldom have we faced as many challenges and opportunities simultaneously in the Americans as we do today.
This is a continent of contrasts: incredible wealth and unbearable poverty; freedom and repression; world class literature and high illiteracy; abundance and injustice. It is a continent where peasants and workers and laborers work from dawn to dusk, but reach the end of their lives in misery. What is the reason for that? It is not for lack of resources.
This continent has all the natural and human resources necessary to achieve levels of development like those of Europe or North America.
The creative forces of all the population must be allowed to flourish. Governing elites must encourage, not discourage, individual initiative. People must be given the freedom to produce and then to enjoy the fruits of their work.
There is too much false nationalism and not enough commitment to national advancement. Those who keep the masses of the people from climbing the social and economic ladder are condemning their nations to perpetual underdevelopment.
We must battle a number of threats all at once: terrorism, drug trafficking, common crime, disease, ignorance, illiteracy, poverty, apathy, racism, despotism, selfishness. As Secretary Powell mentioned--corruption. Corruption is the single largest obstacle to development in the developing world. Those who steal from the public purse are doing as much harm to their country as a foreign invader would.
Whether it is the policeman who takes a $2 bribe to tear up a traffic ticket or the Cabinet official who takes $2 million to rig a government contract, they are doing untold damage to their countries.
But in adversity there is opportunity. For each financial collapse there is the possibility of recovery. For every war there is the prospect of peace. The Mexican patriot, Benito Juarez, said ``El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz.'' Peace, he said, is achieved through respect for the rights of others. And when governments and persons follow Juarez's advice and respect the civil, political and economic rights of others, we will have peace.
The U.S. cannot solve all the problems of this Hemisphere. But we can help those who help themselves.
Finally, as I said earlier, questions were raised about my ideology. If you want to know what my ideology is, you need not go far. Just drive a few blocks from here to the Jefferson Memorial.
Inscribed in the largest letters at the highest point of the inside of the monument is a quotation from that great Virginian and first Secretary of State: ``I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.'' That is where my American ideology is founded.
As Thomas Jefferson's words remind us, our struggle against tyranny is not finished. Since September 11, exactly six months ago today, we are more determined and indivisible than at any time since World War II. Whether they are terrorists in Afghanistan or Colombia, or despots in Baghdad or Havana, anyone trying to impose tyranny over the mind of man has earned our eternal hostility.
Thank you all for sharing this very important day with me and my family.
God Bless you and God Bless this great country of ours.
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