A Soviet Immigrant’s Views on the Hearings

I came to United States eight years ago from Soviet Union. I had lived in the Communist country most of my life. Last year I became the naturalized citizen of the United States and I am very proud of it. I used the opportunities that this country provides for every individual whether it’s a legal immigrant or an American citizen to achieve my goals. It was not easy.

Without knowledge of the English language and professional skills applicable to this country, I grew to a position of systems analyst and work now in one of the biggest company in the world--Xerox. As a Russian-born citizen, I could tell you that no matter how hard I worked, I would not be able to achieve what I’ve achieved in my new home as an immigrant.

And the first obstacle to it would be my religion (Jewish). In the country which declares everybody equal before the law in its constitution, the minority, including Jews, are constantly being discriminated against. They get less chances be selected to colleges, hold positions which are high in rank or be paid better salaries.

Living in the Soviet Union for 25 years made me an anti-Communist for the rest of my life. I am grateful to United States for giving me and my family the opportunity to live in this country.

The last few weeks I’ve followed the Iran- contra hearings with maximum attention.

My personal impression after listening to the key witnesses is that a lot of American people underestimate the danger of spreading communism all over the world. And one of the problems is that they are being disinformed by Soviet propaganda. No matter who the general secretary of the Soviet Union is, politics in major issues stays the same. And one of their objectives is the spread of communism to other countries.

I am not suggesting the United States government use the methods of Communist countries, but there is a danger, and we have to be aware of it.

In my opinion the foreign policy of United States is being damaged a lot by the inconsistency in congressional decisions. If it were not for the National Security Council staff, which was involved in the whole initiative, the Nicaraguan resistance would most likely be defeated. And as a result, we would have to face a problem that in my opinion is much more serious than the one we have right now. We would have another Communist country in Central America and the danger of spreading it to another country in the Central America. As Lt. Col. Oliver North testified, “We live in a dangerous world” and we can’t use the same policy in dealing with a foreign country that we use inside the U.S. In order to be successful in foreign operations, we have to conduct secret operations. The leaking of secret information could very badly damage an operation itself and jeopardize lives of people involved in it.

Members of Congress understand freedom literally without realizing that by disclosing information to the American people, they disclose it as well to their enemies, which has an enormously damaging effect for operations that the Administration is involved in.

The foreign policy of the U.S. can’t be conducted the same way we do politics internally. Outside of the U.S., we are dealing with people of different cultures, attitudes, religions and points of view. And this has to be taken in consideration. Some people that the NSC staff deals with are not to be trusted but the U.S. must still deal with them in order to achieve our goals. It’s hard to be right when you deal with this kind of people and I understand the difficulty. If I were threatened by terrorist Abu Nidal, I would do the same thing that North did--install the security system to protect my family. And the government officials are the ones to blame for failing to secure their employees.

And I agree with Rear Adm. John Poindexter that the President of U.S. gave him a clear order to keep the contras alive and he did the best he could to carry out the order. He obviously risked his position and his well-being for the sake of the country. And I admire him and North for that. These people put U.S. interests higher than their positions, well-being and ultimately their lives. And I call them patriots.

MILA EYZEROVICH

Rolling Hills