[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 65 (Friday, April 7, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E864-E865]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


    FRANK R. BARNETT: A FIGHTER AGAINST TYRANNY THROUGHOUT THE WORLD

                                 ______


                          HON. STENY H. HOYER

                              of maryland

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 6, 1995
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Mr. Frank R. 
Barnett, a former member, cofounder and director of the American Bar 
Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security.
  As a member of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 
known as the Helsinki Commission, I, like Frank Barnett, have been 
outspoken in our opposition to human rights violations throughout the 
world. Frank Barnett not only opposed tyranny throughout the world, but 
he was a strong advocate in promoting freedom and democracy around the 
globe.
  Mr. R. Daniel McMichael, of the Scaife Foundation in Pittsburgh, who 
joined in helping Frank Barnett create the Standing Committee on Law 
and National Security, provided a fitting tribute last year to Frank 
Barnett, which was printed in the January 1995 American Bar Association 
National Security Law Report. I am pleased to submit for my colleagues 
the 
[[Page E865]] story of Frank Barnett's struggle against tyranny and 
repression around the world, as well as his efforts in creating the 
Standing Committee on Law and National Security. I urge my colleagues 
to read this fitting tribute.
   [From the American Bar Association National Security Law Report, 
                             January 1995]

        Dan McMichael Salutes Frank Barnett at Conference Dinner

       Simply put, Frank Rockwell Barnett hated tyranny. As 
     unusually modest and low key as he was about himself and in 
     his work with other people, whenever the subject of brutality 
     came up, his voice would take a steely edge and his eyes 
     would grow cold with a controlled kind of fury.
       This was the dynamic that drove him through most of his 
     professional life, that gave him the tireless energy and 
     unfaltering will to help shape and build in this country new 
     institutions and new cadres of young people who understood 
     and were able to articulate the emerging role of the United 
     States in a troubled and turbulent world.
       He did not come by this naturally. Such awareness of 
     tyranny and all that it stands for doesn't come naturally to 
     an of us (would that it did). We have to learn it either 
     directly or vicariously, and Frank learned it in a fairly 
     direct manner.
       As an Elizabethan scholar and teacher-turned-machine-gunner 
     for the 69th Infantry Division that swept through Europe in 
     1945, Frank saw the dying embers--the legacy, if you will--of 
     fascism, a pretty good lesson in itself as regards tyranny. 
     But when his unit became the first to link up with the Red 
     Army at the Elbe River--where Frank served as the interpreter 
     between the forces and became involved in subsequent 
     logistical matters--an even more stark lesson in tyranny 
     emerged.
       To quote The London Daily Telegraph of August 23 of last 
     year [1993]:
       ``There [at the Elba River, Barnett] witnessed the 
     negotiations over the repatriation of Red Army POWs captured 
     by the Nazis, and was shocked to see weeping Russians hug the 
     ground and beg to remain with the Americans. Barnett's worse 
     fears were confirmed when the repatriated men were 
     immediately placed before a firing squad. The experience 
     marked him for life.''
       Indeed it did. Shakespeare became a hobby--beloved, but 
     hobby all the same. Following the war there was, first, 
     serving on the staff of General Lucius Clay in the Military 
     Government of Berlin, and then off to Oxford as a Rhodes 
     Scholar to read philosophy, politics, geopolitics and 
     economics. Then back to Wabash College for a brief time--and 
     with the specter of weeping Russian soldiers still hovering 
     over him, Frank Barnett joined forces with former OSS 
     Director ``Wild Bill'' Donovan and William J. Casey in a 
     committee to assist anti-communist Russian escapees from 
     Berlin and Vienna.
       It was also then that Mr. Smith Richardson, Sr., found 
     Frank and asked him to direct the programs of the then 
     Richardson Foundation, which enabled Frank to begin the 
     process of institutionalizing means to help raise the 
     literacy rate of lay, political and intellectual leaders of 
     the nation to understand better not only the issues of the 
     Cold War, but to become more familiar with the imperatives 
     for strong, consistent and rational leadership that had 
     fallen upon the United States in the aftermath of World War 
     II.
       This was not an easy task, I can tell you, during the 
     1950's especially--given the McCarthy hearings and other too-
     shrill voices that overreached in their zeal to ``protect 
     America.'' Not that they weren't--most of them--sincere. They 
     were for the most part. But they didn't have the hang of 
     things, and more harm was being done than good. Polarization 
     was occurring when consensus should have been taking place 
     between Democrats, Republicans, liberals and conservatives 
     about the realities of tyranny and oppression and how the 
     United States should handle itself globally with its vital 
     interests.
       Nobody understood this dilemma better than Frank. By now it 
     is late 1956--and the two of us had met and had had long 
     talks in Chicago about these matters. By this time, Frank was 
     well along in trying to find ways to build the kind of 
     consensus the Nation needed if it was to upgrade the literacy 
     of its leaders--lay and professional alike--in understanding 
     more clearly the dynamics of geostrategic affairs in an 
     increasingly more complex and dangerous world (a factor which 
     still plagues us today in this post-Cold War era and for 
     which this conference is particularly well tailored).
       By the early 1960s, Frank had established an impressive, 
     informed, ad hoc group of talented leaders--of respectable 
     diversity, especially for those days--who shared the same 
     concerns as did he. Among them; a patrician Richmond lawyer, 
     name of Lewis F. Powell, Jr., an up-and-coming Northern 
     Virginia lawyer, name of John O. Marsh, a brusque Navy JAG, 
     name of William Mott, and an indescribably gifted Chicago 
     lawyer, name of Morris I. Leibman.
       There were, of course, quite a few others. But for 
     tonight's purpose, I'll just stick with these extraordinary 
     individuals, because they are the genesis of this Standing 
     Committee.
       It was Justice-to-be Powell's idea, you see, in answer to 
     the critical question all of us had raised. How can we begin 
     to institutionalize the increasing of geopolitical literacy 
     in the United States in ways that are credible and have high 
     leverage?
       The law.
       An understanding of the rule of law has to be the 
     cornerstone if we are trying to frame geopolitical issues 
     that delineate tyranny and political freedom.
       So--supplied by Frank Barnett's conceptual guidance--Lewis 
     Powell, with Morry at his side, took the matter to the ABA's 
     House of Delegates in 1963, as I remember. And after a bit of 
     spilled blood, what is now known as the ABA Standing 
     Committee on Law and National Security was founded, with 
     Frank as its first director. Frank subsequently founded the 
     National Strategy Information Center, but he remained active 
     with the Standing Committee until his death last year.
       Those of you who follow the Committee's activities are well 
     aware of this continuing impact of its work across the land, 
     from high school classrooms and college campuses to 
     boardrooms and the halls of government--and on distant 
     battlefields. The Committee's leadership and composition have 
     been consistently high in integrity and sense of mission, 
     with people like John Norton, Moore, John Shenefield. Bob 
     Turner and really all members of the Committee.
       Frank Barnett was a man of extraordinary courage and 
     vision, so that he was naturally attracted to others of 
     courage and vision and they to him--which is what has given 
     this Committee a life and vitality seldom seen elsewhere in 
     volunteer activities.
       And courage and vision are here tonight, not just a 
     reference in paying tribute to Frank Barnett, but in the very 
     people you have selected and the issues they are addressing. 
     You have a tough, no fooling program. You have courageous and 
     highly talented people to lay it out.
       It is the kind of fare that Frank Barnett would have 
     relished!
     

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