Why Roberts must be defeated

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/politics/politicsspecial1/04roberts.html

Old Memo From Roberts the Young Lawyer Shows a Caustic Side
NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: September 4, 2005

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 - When he was a young lawyer in the Justice Department in 1982, John G. Roberts Jr. wrote a memorandum that contained an unusually caustic assessment of a prominent black lobbying group called TransAfrica, according to documents released Saturday.

The documents written by Mr. Roberts, who now serves on a federal appeals court and has been nominated to the Supreme Court by President Bush, were released by the National Archives and Records Administration.

The memorandum was written in response to a letter to the Justice Department in which TransAfrica's president at the time, Randall Robinson, said he would be providing a free subscription of the organization's policy journal.

TransAfrica was set up to lobby the government on behalf of American blacks on issues relating to Africa and the Caribbean. It had organized a series of successful demonstrations outside the South African Embassy before that country abandoned apartheid.

Mr. Roberts's superior, Kenneth W. Starr, asked him in a memorandum to draft a thank-you note to TransAfrica. Instead, Mr. Roberts wrote on Feb. 16, 1982, that no thank-you note should be sent. "Sometimes silence is golden," he wrote. "TransAfrica is the American lobby group supporting various Marxist takeover attempts in Africa, particularly Namibia."

At the time, the Reagan administration had adopted a policy of what it called "constructive engagement" with the white regime in South Africa, which also ruled Namibia, then known as South-West Africa.

Sylvia Hill, a professor at the University of the District of Columbia and the vice chairwoman of TransAfrica Forum, the current incarnation of the organization, said the remarks were troubling. "One has to be concerned that he essentially used the argument that our support for struggling people in countries who had oppressive legal and racist regimes meant support for Marxism, Communism or the Soviet Union," she said in an interview.

Professor Hill added that the significance of his comments "in today's context is that, despite the international and domestic documentation that the South African and Namibian regimes were committing horrific violations of human rights against their peoples, he viewed this as an ideologue opposed to Communism."

South African rule in Namibia was opposed by the South West Africa People's Organization, known as Swapo, which was avowedly Marxist. Since taking power, it has not put a Marxist regime in place. South Africa's main opposition group, the African National Congress, had ties to the Soviet Union, but since gaining power has not put a Marxist regime in place.

Mr. Roberts added in his note that the fact that Mr. Robinson was the brother of Max Robinson, then the anchor of ABC's evening news program, "does not legitimate the organization."