Right Man for the Rights Job?

By KURT ANDERSEN

A Reaganite who may not pass Senate muster

Conservative Professor Ernest Lefever, 61, went to work at the State Department just two weeks after the President's Inauguration. His posting: Assistant Secretary-designate for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. Not everyone was ecstatic about the choice; his detractors included human rights activists, religious groups, liberal politicians and newspaper editorialists. New and popular Presidents, however, tend to be permitted the nominees they want, and Lefever, in testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, airily dismissed his opponents as "Communist-inspired." Yet after two rancorous days of hearings last week, Lefever appeared to have a good chance of becoming the first Reagan appointee rejected by Congress. Still, vows a top Reagan aide: "We're hanging with it."

From his resume, Lefever would seem qualified for the job. He holds a Yale doctorate in ethics, worked on prisoner resettlement in Europe after World War II, wrote an influential 1957 book called Ethics and United States Foreign Policy, and has taught politics at three universities. He was for 37 years a minister of the pacifist Church of the Brethren. He worked as a speechwriter for Hubert Humphrey in 1960, and was on the staff of the liberal Brookings Institution for twelve years. Since 1976 Lefever has headed his own conservative think tank in Washington, the Ethics and Public Policy Center. "I'm a confirmed do-gooder," said Lefever at his Senate hearing. "My whole life has been oriented around human rights and humanitarian concerns."

True enough. Yet the central tenet of Lefever's orientation is that human rights should not be a major concern of U.S. foreign policy. Beyond "serving as a good example" and providing military aid to allies, Lefever wrote, "there is little the U.S. Government can or should do to advance human rights." Two years ago, Lefever recommended to a congressional committee that it remove from U.S. law "all clauses that establish a human rights standard or condition that must be met by another sovereign government." He said last week of that pronouncement: "I goofed."

Lefever's opponents believe the White House goofed in nominating him for the job. They are afraid that his confirmation would signal an official American indifference to human rights violations abroad, thus maybe even encouraging such offenses. Some committee members are troubled that Lefever's think tank accepted at least $25,000 from the Nestle company after commissioning a study that turned out to support Nestle's marketing of infant formula in developing countries (see following story). When Lefever told the committee he thought the human rights job offered only "an occasional opportunity to nudge history," Chairman Charles Percy of Illinois angrily lectured him: "It's important to do more than nudge history. We want an advocate, a spokesman who is looked to as a leader in the fight for rights."

California Democrat Alan Cranston complained that Lefever "seems to have a blind eye to human rights violations by right-wing military dictatorships." Indeed, Lefever has been an apologist for governmental repression in South Africa, South Korea and Chile--governments he defends as merely "authoritarian"--on the unsure ground that these allies are relatively more free than fully "totalitarian" Communist societies. Lefever said he deplored the Carter Administration's tendency to chide certain U.S. allies publicly about their human rights violations. "I don't regard myself as a one-man Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval," he told the committee. "The channels of quiet diplomacy provide a more effective way to encourage greater respect for human rights." When asked by Cranston about his attitude toward official brutality in nations friendly to the U.S., Lefever bristled: "I don't name countries. That's not my style." Lefever reminded Cranston that the Soviet Union is "the greatest violator of human rights and the greatest disturber of world peace." To that, Cranston shouted, "The symbolic and substantive duties of the Assistant Secretary for Human Rights are too important to allow the position to be warped into becoming simply a bully pulpit for Red baiting!"

A stern espousal of anti-Communism does conform with the Administration's foreign policy generally. Still, Lefever was not the first choice of either the State Department or the White House. His appointment was one of many made in deference to the extreme views of Republican Jesse Helms of North Carolina. Helms, alarmed by the growing anti-Lefever fever, dropped in during the second day of testimony, and finally could not contain himself. He snarled at a witness from the National Council of Churches: "You came here as an expert on human rights, and you attack a man of fine character."

Secretary of State Alexander Haig evidently does not share the enthusiasm of Helms for Lefever: Haig told the nominee that he would not put up much of a fight for confirmation. Around Foggy Bottom the Assistant Secretary-designate has been isolated and ignored since the day he moved in. Still, the President has no plans to abandon the appointment. "Just because Lefever's philosophy is not compatible with Chuck Percy's," asserts a Reagan aide, "doesn't mean you yank the nomination." Percy reportedly called the White House after the hearings to recommend just that course. Cranston and his fellow Democrats on the committee publicly suggested that Lefever withdraw himself from consideration--and threatened to further probe his links with Nestle.

If the committee rejects Lefever, the nomination could still be brought before the full Senate for a vote. But the Administration may well reckon the political costs of such an unorthodox move--and the inevitable, even more acrimonious public battle that would ensue--as not worth the effort. --By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Johanna McGeary/Washington

With reporting by Johanna McGeary

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