[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 118 (Friday, August 19, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 19, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                        THE TRUTH IS ALWAYS BEST

                                 ______


                         HON. ROBERT K. DORNAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, August 18, 1994

  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, one of our former members, Mr. Lionel Van 
Deerlin, who served here for 18 years and was defeated by Duncan Hunter 
in the Reagan Landslide of 1980 was always the quintessential 
gentleman. He and I were always cordial to one another and when he was 
unfairly mentioned in the 1982 Capitol Hill cocaine scandal I defended 
Lionel. As a matter of fact, I defended him in a sworn court 
deposition. I supported his proper defense of his reputation and he was 
vindicated.
  Then, for a while, he functioned as a lobbyist here in Washington on 
important legislation, even lobbying me. He had some success I'm told. 
So, it was with much surprise and annoyance that I read an article in 
October 1992 by Lionel blaming me a wee bit for President Bush's 
defeat. Pathetic. Now to be sure, there were several statements about 
me, his friend, in his hit-piece article. But, the few kind words were 
lost in a plethora of historical inaccuracies and gross distortions, 
which I know for a fact were fed to Lionel Van Deerlin by the yuppie 
assassins at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. I vowed 
in those gloomy days of the meltdown of the Bush Presidency that 
someday hence I would rewrite the Van Deerlin article retaining the 
good vibes but correcting the very bad history. It's a pretty darn good 
profile now, and historically accurate. It will be in my press kit, and 
I'll save it as embryonic research for my autobiography which will be 
published in 2001 anno Domini. I trust Lionel as a gentleman will take 
counsel with the truth.
  So, Mr. Speaker, Here it is.

            Fighter Dornan's Latest Battle Too Late To Help

  (By former Congressman Lionel Van Deerlin as corrected for truth by 
              U.S. Congressman Robert K. Dornan (R-CA/46)

       Congressman Robert K. Dornan was not a ``spin doctor'' at 
     the first presidential debate on October 12, 1992, because he 
     was representing President Bush with the oldest of the nine 
     Dornan grandchildren on the island of San Salvador in the 
     Bahamas to commemorate the 500th Anniversary of the first 
     landfall in the New World by Christopher Columbus. But Bush 
     needed Dornan in Richmond, Virginia that October night 
     because there was virtually no other real fighter in the 
     President's reelection team corner except for Mary Matalin.
       Dornan is the outspoken congressman from Garden Grove, 
     California, who represents the only democrat seat in Orange 
     County. Dornan's dedication to truth has often catapulted him 
     into the national scene. For example, on October 6, 1992, he 
     lead to the While House three congressman (a Navy ace, an Air 
     Force seven-year POW hero and a former Army paratrooper 
     officer--all Vietnam War decorated combat veterans) to advise 
     bady-trailing-the-polls George Bush on a campaign strategy 
     that recommended aggressive public discussion of Bill 
     Clinton's lack of character and his lying about not using 
     drugs and not dodging the selective service draft during 
     wartime three, that's three, times. They also begged the 
     president to go after Clinton for an explanation of a solo 
     trip he made in January 1970 to Moscow, heart of the then 
     communist world. (That month Moscow was 27 degrees below zero 
     and under 10 inches of snow cover). Bill was then a 23 years-
     old Rhodes scholar who apparently was also dodging his 
     classes at Oxford. (He never took his any of his 1970 exams 
     so was denied an Oxford degree.) Only four of Clinton's class 
     of 32 American students failed as he did to justify the two 
     years of very generous scholarship money advanced to Rhodes 
     students from the United States.
       With everything else going badly, Bush should have heeded 
     the counsel of Dornan and the three decorated Vietnam vet 
     congressmen. In retrospect, it is apparent that voters would 
     have been willing to revisit the Vietnam war issue in 
     deciding the November 3 presidential election if they had 
     been given the truth by the media regarding Clinton's 
     disloyal overseas conduct as an organizer of demonstrations 
     against the United States--conduct that blocked him for life 
     from ever even getting a security clearance except by 
     election to federal office. This was and is a valid and 
     crucial national security issue.
       One must wonder about Bush's advisers on political matters 
     in general since there seems to have been no solid response 
     to attacks or any fighting strategy in his campaign 
     whatsoever.
       Dornam is a man who may wish he had lived in more stirring 
     times--during the medieval Crusades, perhaps, or circa King 
     Arthur's Camelot. He would gladly have been with Davy 
     Crockett at the Alamo, with Clive in India, the 300 Spartans 
     at the Thermopylae pass, scaling Pointe du Hoc cliffs on D-
     Day, or have flown against Hitler's Luftwaffe with the Eagle 
     Squadrons or against Tojo with the Flying Tigers in China, 
     and certainly Dornan would have been with Horatio at the 
     bridge.
       Dornan joined up at age 19 in October 1952 and spent 23\1/
     2\ years as an Air Force enlisted man, cadet and officer, 
     active and reserve. During his active duty years he was a 
     fighter pilot flying F-86 and F-100 Sabers. Only God sets 
     birth dates, and Bob got his wings too late for service in 
     Sabre jets over the Yalu River in North Korea. After leaving 
     active duty, he worked his way to Vietnam eight times to 
     report for his own ``Robert K. Dornan'' television show on 
     what he called ``the Washington ordained no-victory-non-
     strategy in Southeast Asia, with the inevitable result--
     killing fields and boat people.'' He filmed combat as close 
     as any journalist who ever covered the war, including 
     scrounging combat flights on helicopter gunships and in two-
     seat jet fighters.
       Dornan considers himself blessed that he has never had to 
     fire at other young men misled by aggressors. He prays that 
     all our military forces will be as fortunate under Clinton as 
     he was serving during peacetime under a decisive President 
     Eisenhower.
       Dornan could have been one of the most colorful military 
     figures since George Patton had he been born in 1903 or 1913 
     instead of 1933. Republicans think him their best and 
     toughest debater. Democrats call him irrepressible. Some 
     Democrats view his with intense frustration but not with 
     dislike. The man is lively company. High-spirited and with 
     easy command of the language, Dornan always draws attention 
     on the House floor, and he loves the competitive exchange of 
     ideas and the political give and take.
       His flair for a bold and fearless approach to most problems 
     was made apparent shortly after his arrival on the Washington 
     scene; elected from a Santa Monica centered coastal district 
     in L.A. County in 1976. A domestic terrorist band, the Hanafi 
     Muslims, had taken more than 200 hostages at three 
     Washington, D.C., locations, one of them the downtown 
     headquarters of the B'nai B'rith. During a siege lasting 
     days, with several shotgun murders at point blank range, 
     Dornan, following his former investigative reporter 
     instincts, appeared at police lines outside the occupied 
     District Building where a police captain named Callahan 
     described to him a desperate standoff. Several hostages 
     already had been wounded and Dornan could hear them calling 
     out to police, ``food'' and ``water, please.'' A newsman had 
     been murdered by a shotgun blast to his chest on the fifth 
     floor. Dornan, without hesitation, offered himself in 
     exchange for all the hostages in order to give the terrorists 
     at least one hostage to ensure their safe passage to Dulles 
     airport where they had demanded a waiting, fully fueled 747 
     jumbo jet. Dornan's offer was under consideration when the 
     terrorists unexpectedly surrendered.
       And if we don't yet have the truth about Chappaquiddick, 
     it's not because Bob Dornan hasn't tried to uncover it. He 
     took the well of Congress one day in 1979 to assert that Ted 
     Kennedy had lied and still lies when he claims to have swum 
     that swift channel on that fateful July 18/19, 1969 night.
       ``Only one member of either the House or Senate has ever 
     made that swim,'' he announced. ``And it is Bob Dornan, not 
     Ted Kennedy!'' On July 26, 1969, Dornan had truly traced 
     every step of Kennedy's movements and filmed it all with 
     his own 16 mm Bolex camera, including a channel swim, for 
     an investigative report aired on his Emmy Award winning 
     ``Tempo'' television show.
       The parents of Mary Jo Kopechne, whose only child was left 
     to die at Chappaquiddick at age 29, said Dornan came to their 
     Pennsylvania home on November 6, 1979, seeking their side of 
     the tragic event. For seven hours, the Kopechnes related to 
     Dornan how they had been cruelly manipulated in 1969 by 
     Kennedy lawyers, a labor leader, Rose Kennedy (who had 
     beckoned them to visit her and a monsignor at the New York 
     City apartment) and even by a Catholic bishop. They all 
     coerced the Kopechnes into silence and extracted a promise 
     from them not to seek an independent investigation. Dornan 
     took their heart-breaking story to the public for the very 
     first time to stop Sen. Kennedy from taking the nomination 
     away from President Carter in the primaries of 1980. That 
     year was also a presidential election where ``lack of 
     character'' became a battle cry.
       Dornan's legislative efforts include a successful move to 
     deny Pentagon-funded abortions for military personnel or 
     their dependents whether overseas or in the U.S., thereby 
     saving diminishing security dollars for the defense of lives 
     instead of for the destruction of innocent preborn lives.
       Certainly, because of his stands on moral and social 
     issues, a few liberal reporters take great liberties in 
     conjuring up tales about Dornan that simply never happened. 
     For example, when he referred to Tom Downey (D-NY) as a 
     ``draft-dodging wimp'' during a March 1985 conservative 
     conference at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., the 
     press wrote and still write that it led to a shoving match 
     the next day on the House floor. It never happened. There 
     were strong words between them, but Dornan never 
     ``straightened Downey's tie!'' Here's another distortion: 
     during California's 1982 Senate primary, Dornan assailed Rep. 
     Barry Goldwater Jr. for attending a party at the Playboy 
     mansion. True enough. Goldwater admitted that, but liberal 
     press falsely added that Dornan claimed the revelers indulged 
     in bestiality. Wow. Ex-porno performer Linda Lovelace charged 
     that, not Dornan, and she never mentioned Goldwater Jr. 
     Sometimes the liberal press can really lose it!
       In 1985, Dornan also successfully fought to have the 
     California GOP deny recognition to ``Log Cabin Clubs'' formed 
     by homosexual and bisexual activists who register as 
     Republicans for political mischief. Dornan has prevailed to 
     this day in blocking their recognition by the Republican 
     Party.
       During Dornan's 1984 comeback, a radical Catholic priest 
     (since gone over the hill) lied that Dornan once ``stormed 
     into his church rectory'' to denounce a ``certain Catholic 
     bishop as communist,'' and, of course, the liberal press 
     reported the priest's tale without checking with Dornan on 
     the veracity of such a vicious charge. This political priest 
     was a constant traveler to Nicaragua where he schmoozed with 
     the Marxist Sandinistas, hence his animosity toward the pro-
     Contra Dornan.
       When Radio Moscow's communist propagandist Vladimir Posner, 
     who grew up Jewish in the United States, was featured on ABC 
     television for 7 uninterrupted minutes calling President 
     Reagan a liar, Dornan went after him on the House floor 
     exposing him as the liar and betrayer of his own Jewish 
     heritage in the measure. (Posner for years relentlessly lied 
     that there was absolutely no anti-semitism anywhere 
     throughout the Soviet Union, even though he had been kicked 
     out of Moscow University because of his Jewish heritage.) 
     Dornan had just returned from his 8th of 10 trips to the 
     Soviet Union to meet with the terribly abused and oppressed 
     Jewish ``refuseniks.'' Dornan, who created the POW/MIA 
     bracelet, had already resurrected the concept with dozens of 
     names of courageous Soviet Jews engraved on bracelets above 
     the date they had been arrested and imprisoned by the KGB.
       Dornan, in September 1992, described 23-year-old 
     ``student'' Clinton during his Oxford years and his 1970 
     USSR/Czechoslovakia trekking as ``a nerdy little flower-child 
     peacenik.'' Dornan, in a series of Sept./Oct. 1992 House 
     speeches, said Clinton was not a traitor, but nevertheless 
     did give ``aid and comfort to an enemy locked in very bloody 
     combat with over 500,000 brave American troops.'' (In 1992, 
     Clinton referred to himself in 1970 as a ``23-year-old boy.'' 
     The average age of the fighting men in Vietnam was only 19. 
     (When Dornan was 23, he was the father of two with another on 
     the way and flying supersonic F-100 fighters at George Air 
     Force Base in the Mojave desert.)
       It's hard to understand why President Bush never used 
     Dornan's fighting strategy to defend himself and the Bush 
     administration. George Bush would probably be serving out his 
     second term if he had heeded only three of Battling Bob's 
     impassioned pleas: first, pick Bob Dole or Colin Powell as 
     Veep; second, capture and bring to justice Saddam Hussein, 
     especially since Bush had called him ``an Adolph Hitler''; 
     and, three, most important of all, probably sufficient unto 
     itself to reelect Bush, Dornan begged ``Please, Mr. 
     President, don't unread your lips and break your no new taxes 
     pledge.'' Irish-American Robert K. Dornan obviously has a no-
     fear approach to life, and in politics he can strategize with 
     the very best.

                          ____________________