Rice's only Senate opponents aided Marxist guerrillas

The only two members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who voted not to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State happen to have been among the few who helped Soviet-backed revolutionaries in the 1980s.

Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) assailed Rice for allegedly having poor judgment or worse, and both voted against her confirmation today.

A check of the record shows that both lawmakers provided crucial political support to the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), a Soviet-backed Marxist-Leninist gurrilla group that tried to overthrow the government of El Salvador, and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) regime of Nicaragua.

For details, see my book The Third Current of Revolution: Inside the North American Front of El Salvador's Guerrilla War (University Press of America, 1991).