"It isn't fair to Ambassador Reich -- who is leaving the private sector once again to serve his country -- to not even receive a hearing," says State Department spokesman Frederick Jones. The accusations against the appointee can be answered in a hearing, Jones says, and the Bush administration is confident that Reich's answers will clear up any of the charges.

As is customary for administration nominees, Reich has not responded to media inquiries about the controversy, including a request from Salon. Bosch could not be reached for comment.

Certainly, Reich has many critics. Wayne Smith, perhaps the State Department's leading Cuba expert from 1958 until 1982, through Democratic and Republican administrations, says Reich did indeed try to help Bosch, and that should disqualify him from service in the State Department today. Smith says there's evidence that after Bosch was released from a Venezuelan prison -- where he'd been for 11 years while the government tried him for his alleged role in the 1976 bombing -- then-U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela Reich tried to obtain a visa for Bosch to enter the U.S.

"He was clearly initiating the process of getting a visa for Orlando Bosch, and Orlando Bosch is a terrorist -- there's no question that he was responsible for downing that plane," says Smith, now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. "How can you be taken seriously in terms of a position against terrorism when you're appointing people like that?"

While the evidence against Reich is intriguing, it is so far inconclusive. Declassified State Department records showed the Venezuelan ambassador was actively interested in the Bosch case, taking steps that could allow Bosch into the United States, but never, on the record, advocating for that course. (Many more cables from Reich remain classified for security reasons.) In confidential questions and answers between the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Reich obtained by Salon, the embattled nominee defended his efforts in the Bosch case as "standard operating procedure" in a high-profile legal matter that was crucial to U.S.- Venezuelan relations.

Even assuming Reich did try to aid Bosch -- they certainly shared a fierce hatred of Castro and a desire to see him overthrown -- the Cuban exile turned American diplomat had only a bit part in the series of events that led the 75-year-old terrorist to be able to enjoy his golden years with other retirees in Miami. Whatever Reich's role in Bosch's life, the more troubling and perplexing question is why he is today essentially a free man. The short answer is that he owes his freedom to President George H.W. Bush, who apparently overruled his own Justice Department to let Bosch stay in the United States under house arrest, despite a clear history of terrorist activities -- activities that seem to continue today.

Now, in his stucco Miami home, Bosch brazenly tells the press about the myriad ways he violates his parole, including by providing arms for possible terrorist acts in Cuba. It is the grandest of hypocrisies, especially since it occurs right in our own hemisphere -- the one Reich would supervise were he to become assistant secretary of state. Still, Reich was just one small cog in the wheel that allows Bosch to continue his struggle against Castro in Miami; to blame Reich alone for having a double standard on terrorism would be unfair.

On the other hand, critics say, they have to start somewhere. And what better place than the appointment, at the height of a bloody war provoked by a vicious air terror attack on innocent civilians, of a man who supported the mastermind of another air terror attack on innocent civilians -- albeit ones who happened to live in a country ruled by a U.S. enemy.

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