Jim Wright and the Baltic rebellion - 26 May 1989

Well this was the week that never was.

So many – and astonishing and unpredictable – things happening that any one of them, at another time, would have been the inevitable topic A, if, that is, China and the sudden turmoil in Beijing, which was timed to erupt during Mr Gorbachev’s visit, had not swept off the front pages great and surprising changes in many places.

In what places? Well to begin with, in Moscow. Mr Gorbachev’s offer – immense offer – to reduce conventional forces and weapons. In Afghanistan, which by now we’ve more or less relegated to the history books, Kabul is welcoming every day a fleet of planes from the Soviet Union with food, fuel, weapons of all sorts including missiles, ten thousand tons of supplies every week for the Afghan government.

In a six-column despatch to the New York Times this morning its reporter in Kabul, who was allowed on one of the flights, wrote, “Not since the United States, Britain and France mounted the Berlin Airlift in 1948 has there been a comparable effort to keep a beleaguered outpost supplied.”

In Warsaw, which for 50 years has dutifully accepted the Soviet version of the 1939 Soviet-Nazi non-aggression pact, the Communist party itself put out on Wednesday a huge report on the origins of the second war in which it declares – we’d say admits – that a secret protocol in that treaty agreed to split Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union.

It confirms the deportation of millions of Poles deep into the Soviet Union and – what must be the first true confession on this matter from any Communist state – flatly upholds the allied version of the hideous massacre in the Katyn forest, that the 4,400 Polish officers were murdered there not, as Moscow has always claimed, by the Nazis, but on Stalin’s orders, by Russian troops.

Most startling, most unpredictable of all, I should say, is the news which is allied to the publication of that secret protocol, the news from two of the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. They were all taken over by Soviet troops in 1940 by permission of Adolf Hitler and have remained part of – puppets if you like – of the Soviet Union.

I don’t know about other western nations, but the United States has always refused to recognise that takeover. Representatives of the former independent governments still have legations here in the United States.

Well, now suddenly two of those Baltic states have rebelled against the yoke of Moscow. The rebels are not students yelling for an easing of Communist rule inside the system, the rebels are the parliaments of Estonia and Lithuania.

Six months ago Estonia passed a law asserting two rights – one, to overturn any decision relating to Estonia that was made in Moscow and two, to assert an absolute right of all Estonians to have and to hold private property.

This, to Estonians, must seem as historic a protest as the American colonies’ refusal to pay the Stamp Act imposed by London, but a week ago Lithuania took on the mantle of Adams and Jefferson and Patrick Henry. Its parliament went beyond economic defiance, it declared Lithuania to be a sovereign independent nation.

How would that have grabbed us if there’d been no China, no threatened rift in the NATO alliance? It’s an act of breathtaking audacity and if Mr Gorbachev had nothing else on this plate he would have here a heavy dose of forced feeding.

China, of course, has absorbed and overwhelmed the reporting of these great events and I had meant to talk about it but I’m not going to get caught with a comment on a still-shifting situation that a week or a few days from now would look brave but stupid.

You surely, in your country, must have heard, as we have, a whole posse of China experts. I’ve read and listened to some of the best. They were all as astounded as you and I by the millions in Beijing’s square, by the recoil of the army and, like us, they had to confess they had never dreamed of anything like it, they didn’t know what would happen and were not now disposed to say why.

So what about this country where a scene was played in Washington on Tuesday and watched over two national networks, a scene unique in American history. The speaker of the house, Mr Jim Wright, if not exactly being put on trial, was called to account before the ethics committee of the House of Representatives on charges that he had broken the rules of ethical behaviour in two ways, by evading the limit the house sets on fees for speaking engagements through taking a whacking royalty on bulk sales of a book of his speeches, and – probably the more serious charge – that he had set up a business with a real-estate developer, taken $145,000-worth of gifts from him, had his wife received an $18,000 a year salary, make free use of one of the developer's condominiums and a car.

All this would have been all right if Mrs Wright could be proved to have worked for her salary, if the gifts had been reported and stayed within the allowed limit – which is $100 – and if the real-estate developer could be proved to have no direct interest in legislation. That key phrase is taken from the rule book of the Congress.

Any congressman or senator must be very careful not to take presents from anyone who clearly could use him to influence the passage of bills that would be in the donor’s interest. The real-estate developer had a considerable interest in an oil well.

Well, after a long private investigation the house ethics committee voted 8 to 4 that the developer did have a direct interest in legislation which, therefore, made his gifts improper. That first vote of the ethics committee was the cue for a full open hearing of the committee on the charges at which Mr Wright and his lawyer and witnesses could confront the special lawyer-counsel hired by the committee.

The scene on Tuesday was a sort of preliminary hearing. It was called on the initiative of Speaker Wright and his lawyer to ask the committee to dismiss the charges. It was a one-day hearing and, from the tone and substance of the arguments, it seemed then unlikely that the committee would go back on its first decision.

The best Mr Wright’s lawyer could do was to quote approvingly from a 1930 judgment given in a Supreme Court case by Mr Justice Holmes, than whom to this day there is no more revered figured in the history of American jurisprudence.

This was that sentence, referring to the line between what is proper and what is illegal, “The very meaning of a line in the law is that you intentionally may go as close to it as you can if you do not pass it.” The speaker’s lawyer maintained that his client had gone up to the line but never tiptoed over it.

It appeared not much of a help as a guide to a committee which is not looking into improper, unethical behaviour. The speaker of the house is, remember, not only the man who, as in parliaments, presides over its deliberations – he’s the political leader in the house of the majority party and this Congress has, in all but four years of the past 56, the Democrats.

But also he’s named in the Constitution as the second, after the vice president, in line for the presidency. Never before has the conduct of a speaker been officially called to account, in this case through the house ethics committee, which has a most elaborate list of rules of conduct. Even on Tuesday evening the prospect looked bleak for Mr Wright.

Now I’d like to sketch out something of the ordeal that government servants have to survive in this country before they take on their jobs. I’m doing this because the... I’ve noticed the immediate reaction of foreigners, watching the speaker’s hearing, is to sigh or marvel yet again at the corruption that seems to be epidemic in Washington.

It may be, but what we ought to consider is if there is another country which sets up so many rules of behaviour for its government servants. I’ve wondered... for instance I don’t know, but if in Britain, in India, in France, in Australia, all presidents, prime ministers, all judges, Cabinet ministers, ambassadors, immediately on their appointment are required to put any stocks and shares they hold into a blind trust which must remain untouched, unseen by them for the term of their office.

It may be normal among democratic governments. I doubt it, but I don’t know. I’ve been looking over the ethical questions put up to applicants as contracting officials for the government, that’s to say people whose job will be to look over contractors’ bids and recommend an award.

A couple of examples of their examination. You meet Mr B at a church, you become friendly. He asks you to go sailing with him, then have dinner. He is an executive officer of a government contractor. May you accept his invitation? You may sail, but not take dinner, because the dinner has a specific value.

You’re invited to speak before a trade association meeting which will include a lot of potential contractors. You are to talk about how your agency works in general terms. You’re offered the invitation, a $50 honorarium, an airplane ticket to the meeting. Which may you accept? You may go to the meeting and talk, but not give out any information that’s not available to the general public. You may not accept the honorarium. You may not accept the airplane ticket, though possibly your agency might pay for it.

These are the very simplest ethical problems with which a government official has to learn to cope. Aren’t you glad you don’t work for the United States government? Aren’t you relieved not to be a congressman? Don’t you give thanks to the Lord that you are not the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives?

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