White House Counsel Greg Craig: Will He Defend Freedom as Tenaciously as He Has Its Opponents?

White House Counsel Greg Craig has received more than your typical share of the blessings, benefits, and privileges of being born in a free and wealthy nation. 

Craig grew up in a loving environment with an attentive mother and a father who was one of the most respected and influential academic administrators in the country.  As a young man, Craig attended the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy, then graduated from Harvard before receiving his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he mixed with the future leadership of the free world, including classmates Bill and Hillary Clinton.  After law school, he began practicing law with a prestigious and extremely comfortable law firm, Williams and Connolly.  In 2008, Craig received compensation of $1.7 million dollars for the year as a firm partner at Williams and Connolly.

That fairytale life is why it is surprising that when Mr. Craig opens his eyes in a dark room, they glow a bright Soviet Red.  That’s right, the White House Counsel is a man who has returned the extraordinary comforts his country has given him by dedicating much of his career to assisting or representing his country’s most dangerous, antagonistic, and usually communist enemies.  Take three examples:

1. As an aide to Senator Ted Kenney, Craig coordinated Kennedy’s investigation into the Contra Rebels fighting the Marxist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.  Craig worked with groups closely tied to the Sandanista regime to find witnesses for the hearing who would provide testimony favorable to the communists.  Even though the key witnesses at the hearing were later exposed for their connections to the Sandinistas, Craig’s hearings were an effective, national media push for the communists.

2. In 2000, while still representing Bill and Hillary Clinton, Craig reported that he was also representing Elian Gonzales’ father.  Payment for Craig’s retainer came from the National Council of Churches, an old liberal advocacy group with a reputation for being cozy with communist governments, which in turn received contribution in support of the effort from various groups aligned with the Cuban government through the United Methodist Church.  In the middle of the dispute, Craig flew to Cuba and had an extended private meeting in person with his real client, Fidel Castro.  Shortly thereafter, the Clinton Administration ordered armed troopers to break into a Cuban-American family’s house and seize the child at gunpoint.  Elian was then taken to Craig’s lush Virginia estate where the child was used to make propaganda videos for the Castro regime with boys from Castro’s Young Pioneer’s troop who had been flown in from Cuba for the occasion.

3. Greg Craig represented one of the most fervent and influential leftists in South America, Pedro Miguel Gonzalez, while he was the Head of the National Assembly in Panama.  Miguel-Gonzalez fled Panama for many years after multiple witnesses accused him of the murder of U.S. Army Sgt. Zak Hernandez Laporte and physical evidence backed up the claim.  A jury composed entirely of civil servants loyal to his family’s political party in Panama acquitted him of the crime many years later, but Miguel-Gonzalez may still be under U.S. federal indictment for the murder.

Craig’s client list also includes John Hinckley, Jr., the would-be assassin of President Ronald Reagan, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, the former leftist and murderous dictator of Bolivia… and now, President Barack Obama. 

We live in an era where generations have grown-up being instructed about the dangers of McCarthyism in public schools and taught to hear any claim of communist activity in the United States’ government as mere conspiracy theory and hysteria.  Nevertheless, we call on our compatriots in the conservative counter-revolution online and offline to investigate and monitor Mr. Craig’s relationships with anti-American and communist foreign governments to the extent it is legally permissible to do so. There is no need for a witch hunt and no need for fear-mongering, but as President Obama talks about radical foreign policy shifts and appears ready and willing to buddy-up to every murderous Latin-American communist dictator he can find, the scrutiny of a careful eye is warranted. 

Mr. Craig has seen and experienced the benefits of freedom, but it is unclear whether he will work to defend freedom as tenaciously as he has worked for its opponents.