Editing Jacobo Timerman (section)

=== Lefever nomination and Kirkpatrick Doctrine ===
In 1981, Timerman publicly opposed U.S. President [[Ronald Reagan]]'s nomination of [[Ernest W. Lefever|Ernest Lefever]] as [[Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs]].<ref>Daniel Southerland, ”[http://www.csmonitor.com/1981/0520/052044.html Ex-Argentine torture victim decries Lefever nomination]”, ''Christian Science Monitor'', 20 May 1981.</ref> When Timerman attended a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee pertaining to Lefever, his presence brought additional attention to the issue of human rights in Argentina. Timerman had praised [[Patricia M. Derian|Patt Derian]], who had held the Human Rights position during his imprisonment. During the hearing, Senator [[Claiborne Pell]] asked if Lefever would speak against "disappearances" as Derian had done; Lefever responded, "I believe my job is to help sensitize the entire foreign policy establishment to the concern for human rights rather than play a [[Sir Galahad]] role going around the world on personal missions".<ref>Guest, ''Behind the Disappearances'' (1990), p. 285.</ref>

As a foreigner, Timerman was not allowed to testify at the hearing. He spoke to reporters in the hall outside, commenting that "a quiet diplomacy is a silent diplomacy […] Nations maintained a silent diplomacy with Hitler, and you see what happened".<ref name=Williams>Christian Williams, "The Torture of Jacobo Timerman; Witness to Torture; The Agony & the Witness of the Journalist & the Jew", ''Washington Post'', 22 May 1981; accessed via Lexis Nexis Academic, 30 May 2013.</ref> He continued, discussing human rights and US foreign policy:<ref name=Williams />
<blockquote>Do you expect to change a government with a policy? No, if you want to change the government you have to send in the Marines. What a human rights foreign policy does is save lives. And Jimmy Carter's policy did. How many? I don't know. Two thousand? Is that enough? But that policy is even more important to you than to us. It builds up a democratic consciousness in the United States. It is more important for the United States that Lefever be defeated than for Argentina.

I am very disappointed in President Reagan. A new administration is entitled to change an approach, to change a strategy, but not to change a policy. The policy of human rights belongs to United States history. This administration is not changing a strategy, but an ideology.</blockquote>Timerman's opposition is credited with ensuring the failure of the Lefever nomination.<ref>Guest, ''Behind the Disappearances'' (1990), p. 285. "It also put the final nail in Lefever's coffin and to this day Lefever remains bitterly angry".</ref><ref>[[Rowland Evans]] and [[Robert Novak]], ”Timerman Sealed Lefever's Fate", ''Press-Courier'', 15 June 1981.</ref>
 
Conservative US critics, such as [[William F. Buckley, Jr.|William Buckley]], [[Norman Podhoretz]], and [[Irving Kristol]], criticized Timerman's comments and noted that he had a relationship with the indicted, late banker [[David Graiver]], accused of laundering funds for leftist guerrillas.<ref>Guest, ''Behind the Disappearances'' (1990), p. 286. "Now the gloves came off. On 29 May, during a recess in the Lefever hearings, Irving Kristol wrote a long column in the ''Wall Street Journal'' which accused Timerman of covering up his connection with Graiver. Two days later Buckley himself reported that [[Simon Weisenthal]], the Nazi-hunter, had questioned Timerman's integrity during an 26 April interview with a Uruguayan journalist. Weisenthal was quoted as saying that Timerman was a 'leftist' who had exaggerated the extent and nature of anti-Semitism in Argentina and had hindered Weisenthal's hunt for [[Josef Mengele]], the Nazi camp doctor, with premature disclosures".</ref><ref>Martin Schram, "Timerman's Charges Angers Jews in Argentina, U.S.; Neo-Conservative Figures Attack His Positions on Human Rights; Neo-Conservatives in U.S. Attack Timerman; U.S. Group Including Jews Campaigns to Discredit Former Editor", ''Washington Post'', 22 June 1981, p. A1; accessed via Lexis Nexis Academic, 30 May 2013. "The neo-conservatives set their ideological sights on Timerman after he appeared in the audience of a Senate hearing on the nomination of Earnest Lefever, then President Reagan's choice to be assistant secretary of state for human rights, and received a rare ovation from committee members and spectators".</ref> Kristol used the Graiver connection to explain the inaction of the Jewish community in Argentina, suggesting that it had "implicitly vindicat[ed] the Reagan administration's prudent policy on human rights".<ref name=Lipsky2009 />

On the other hand, Timerman's experiences were used as good reason by some to oppose the [[Kirkpatrick Doctrine]]—a key concept under the [[Reagan Administration]] for maintaining diplomatic relations with regimes that were classified as "authoritarian", not "totalitarian".<ref name=Lewis1981>{{cite news |last1=Cox |first1=Robert |title=TIMMERMAN SHOWS THAT 'AUTHORITARIAN GENERALS' ARE KEEPERS, CAPTIVES OF |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/09/opinion/timmerman-shows-that-authoritarian-generals-are-keepers-captives-of.html |work=The New York Times |date=9 June 1981 }}</ref>

The failure of the Lefever nomination disappointed the Argentine government. Aja Espil, the Argentine ambassador in Washington, wrote to his government that "it must be analyzed not as an isolated incident, but in conjunction with a resurgence in the campaign against the Argentinian government, exacerbated by the publicity over Timerman and his book".<ref>Guest, ''Behind the Disappearances'' (1990), p. 287.</ref> Timerman became the object of increasing political controversy in the US. As his high-profile alarmed the Argentine military government, it responded by releasing interrogation transcripts suggesting a connection between Timerman and the discredited Graiver.<ref>Guest, ''Behind the Disappearances'' (1990), pp. 288–289.</ref>