Dozens of veterans of the Reagan Administration convened at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., the evening of July 8 for a gala dinner in honor of conservative champion Faith Whittlesey. Whittlesey served as director of the Office of Public Liaison in President Reagan's White House and as Reagan's ambassador to Switzerland.
Whittlesey was always a strong voice of unapologetic anti-Communism within the Reagan Administration and created the White House Outreach Working Group on Central America.
Rene Le??³n, El Salvador's ambassador to the United States, attended the dinner and read a letter that had been sent to Whittlesey by Salvadoran President Francisco Flores.
Flores began by recalling Whittlesey's service in the Reagan Administration, "Each week you brought to the White House experts and eyewitnesses who could report on the true story of the struggle for freedom being waged by the people of El Salvador and expose the stark reality of the Communist aggression being conducted by the FMLN in collusion with the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and the Cuban dictatorship."
"The willingness of the people of El Salvador and Nicaragua to fight for their freedom, and the support for freedom in Central America that was sustained by the U.S. government with your help, prevented the FMLN and the Sandinistas from consolidating Communism in our region."
Flores warned that the FMLN Communists now could be on the verge of taking power in his country.
The FMLN, he wrote, "is now closer to power than ever before."
"The FMLN, still Communist, takes inspiration from the tragic example of Venezuela, where an electoral triumph has become a Marxist revolution," said Flores. "El Salvador will hold presidential elections in March of next year. The former guerrillas have mobilized their party and mounted a powerful and abundantly well-funded electoral force. They intend to win this election. If they succeed, then all that has been gained can be lost. They have said that Cuba, Vietnam, Libya, Syria, Venezuela and Communist China will be their models and their strategic allies.
"Today, as two decades ago," wrote Flores, "we once again need your help, Ambassador Whittlesey, and that of all friends and allies, to ensure that pro-democracy forces in the United States understand what is at stake in our hemisphere. Today, as always, we are confident that when the truth is known the forces of freedom will prevail."
