Democrats are ready to get down and dirty if Republicans press Obama link to Ayres, writes Denis Staunton
AS REPUBLICANS continue to hammer at Barack Obama's association with former urban guerrilla William Ayres, Democrats want more scrutiny of John McCain's relationship with a shadowy group that was involved in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.
That scandal broke after it emerged that Ronald Reagan's White House had funded the right-wing Contra rebels trying to overthrow Nicaragua's Sandinista government by selling arms to Iran.
McCain has acknowledged that, as a freshman congressman in the early 1980s, he served on the board of the US Council for World Freedom, which helped the Contras.
The council was founded by retired general John Singlaub as the US branch of the World Anti-Communist League, an ultra-conservative body that billed itself as a supporter of "pro-Democratic resistance movements fighting communist totalitarianism" but was accused of harbouring right-wing extremists, racists and anti-Semites.
McCain says he resigned from the council in 1984 when he became aware of the allegations and asked to have his name removed from its letterhead two years later in the wake of the Iran-Contra scandal. In October 1986, McCain told Phoenix's New Times newspaper that he agreed to join the group's advisory board because "they're for freedom and they've got some good people involved", but he said he only attended one meeting.
Singlaub says he doesn't recall the Arizona senator resigning but said that McCain never played an important role in the group.
"I don't ever remember hearing about his resigning, but I really wasn't worried about that part of our activities, a housekeeping thing. If he didn't want to be on the board that's OK. It wasn't as if he had been an active participant and we were going to miss his help. He had no active interest. He certainly supported us," Singlaub told the Associated Press.
"I think I met him in the Washington area when he was just a new congressman. We had McCain on the board to make him feel like he wasn't left out. It looks good to have names on a letterhead who are well-known and appreciated."
Singlaub, who later became chairman of the international World Anti-Communist League, claims he purged the body of extremists and when it emerged that its Latin American affiliate was funding right-wing death squads, the affiliate was expelled.
A few months before Congress cut off funding to the Contras in 1984, the White House devised a covert scheme to keep supplying the rebels until Congress could be persuaded to change its mind.
Headed by national security advisers Robert McFarlane and John Poindexter, the operation's day-to-day activities were directed by National Security Council aide Oliver North and implemented by retired air force general Richard Secord.
While the White House operation supported the Contras covertly, Singlaub's group publicly sought funds for the Nicaraguan rebels.
"It was noted that they were trying to act as suppliers. It was pretty good cover for us," Secord recalled this week.
US support for the Contras became public after an American aircraft was shot down over Nicaragua in October 1986. The White House initially claimed that the plane had no connection with the US government and had been sent by Singlaub's group.
"I resented it that reporters thought it was my plane. I don't run a sloppy operation," Singlaub said.
The exposure of the Iran-Contra affair spelt the end of Singlaub's group, which lost its tax-free status the following year.
McCain's involvement in the group was both tenuous and long ago, but former Clinton adviser Paul Begala said this week that if Republicans want to talk about Obama's links to Ayres, Democrats shouldn't remain silent about McCain's past associations.
"This guilt by association path is going to be trouble ultimately for the McCain campaign," he said.
The McCain campaign appears confident that the story will not damage their candidate and a spokesman said this week that the fact that McCain left Singlaub's group "in no way diminishes his leadership role in ensuring that the forces of democracy and freedom prevailed in Central America".
Some Republicans doubt that McCain's focus on Ayres will have much impact on a presidential race that is moving swiftly in Obama's direction, but McCain's closest advisers believe that their best hope of an upset victory next month lies in raising doubts about the Democrat's character.