Mitt and Blood Money?

I’m not favorably inclined to Mitt Romney’s politics, of course. A bit too silver spoon, laissez faire, country club, and prize horse for my tastes. Like many Americans, I’m not sure he has much of a clue when it comes to how the proverbial other half lives. I’m also not terrifically thrilled with his gunboat politicking and cloak and tax return game. However, allegations in a Huffington Post story this last week have got me worried.

I’m certainly no fan of Bain Capital’s alleged history of layoffs and outsourcing jobs overseas or up north in the case of Canada, but the Huffington Post reports that Bain, under Romney’s steering may taken start up money from families linked to right-wing death squads operating in El Salvador during the eighties. The article refers to additional stories in the LA Times and on Salon.com, as well as the Boston Globe and Salt Lake Tribune. The Times article highlights the fact that Bain Capital was started up with overseas investors, some of whom worked through possibly shady shill companies in Latin America, one of whom, an Englishman, was convicted of pretty extensive fraud violations several years later.

It also begins to sketch out the possibility that some of the money from several El Salvadoran investors came from families that helped finance the paramilitary death squads that may have caused as much as 85% of the violent attacks during the country’s twelve-year civil war, which cost the lives of 75,000 people, according to a United Nations truth commission (see the Huffington Post piece). These groups were backed by the Regan administration (see the Salon.com piece).

Justin Elliot’s piece for Salon.com details the El Salvadoran connection in more detail, looking at ties between the families who contributed to Bain and the right-wing extremists who killed, tortured, and disappeared leftists and unsympathetic peasants. Elliot even notes a possible connection between a member of one of the investing families and the martyr of El Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, a passionate and charismatic spokesman for the poor and needy.

The Romney campaign has answered the allegations of taking blood money by saying they investigated the potential investors, as per due diligence, but not their extended family. A Bain colleague suggested in his memoirs said that Romney was concerned about Latin American funds being linked to “illegal drugs, right-wing death squads, or left-wing terrorism” (qtd. in the Huffington Post piece). However, funds were tight and the El Salvadoran investors eventually put up 20% of the capital for the venture. A 1999 Salt Lake Tribune article reports, though, that Bain’s investigation found no “unsavory links to drugs or other illegal activities.”

Ryan Grim and Cole Stangler, the authors of the Huffington Post article, shine a light on their attempts to further investigate this story. Many of the key players, including Bain Capital and the Romney campaign, have not been forthcoming. In response to their query, the Romney campaign, simply forwarded a copy of the Tribune article. Grim and Stangler, contrary to the “official story,” find that their research turned up “no shortage of unsavory links” between the investing families and the death squads.

As a Latter-Day Saint, I am profoundly disturbed by these articles, which are from fairly reputable sources. I am bothered that the Romney camp seems to feel that the issue deserves little more than a reprint of a twelve-year old article. Of course, this fits into a rather disconcerting pattern of secretiveness and evasiveness. Friends of mine who are Romney supporters keep insisting that the candidate has “nothing to hide” or that he has “already answered allegations,” but that is far from satisfying to a non-supporter who would naturally expect a bit more evidence.

Let us start with Romney’s equivocation with his tax returns. He is clearly operating outside of precedent by releasing only one year of returns, even, as critics point out, with his own father who released twelve years’ worth of tax information. Romney and his staff’s attitude, and to a degree his supporters’, has been “How dare you question me/him!” A rather haughty stance. He has never, so far as I know, acknowledged that his behavior is out of step with his colleagues and he has offered only a feeble explanation for his decision—in essence, I have nothing to hide and you should take my word.

The problem, of course, is that Romney’s silence/defiance feeds doubts about his claims about his employment status after 1999, fueling concerns about purgery, if not fraud. Rank and file Mormons defend Romney, either out of some sense of loyalty or out of support of his pro-business stance and policies, and likely both. On Facebook, I was practically called to repentance by a man I grew up with. “Romney’s clean and you know it!” he wrote. My reply was that I do not in fact “know” he is clean: I have never met him; I have never been in his ward or stake; I do not natively agree with his policies. Thus, I have no natural reason to assume he has done no wrong. I further reminded him that Mormons of high position are not immune to corruption—remember the Salt Lake City Olympic Planning Committee debacle? On a more personal level, I once worked for a stake president whose business practices were questionable enough that he was investigated for ethics violations. (I left his employ before the investigation was completed, so I do not know whether he was censured or not.) Romney’s weak defense of himself on the issue of his taxes in no way allays fears or doubts about his guilt or innocence.

There is, however, a rather qualitative difference between whether he misrepresented his employment status and perjured himself and whether he took money from right-wing terrorists. If Bain Capital’s start up money did in fact come from people who supported and helped finance the death squads, then he becomes an accessory (at least after the fact) to torture and murder, a violation of the ten commandments and one of the greatest “abomination[s] in the sight of the Lord” (Alma 39:5). I have a hard time believing someone in his position would not fall over himself trying to prove his innocence. I have an even harder time understanding how someone who has taken on temple covenants would not strive to clear his name.

These allegations about the foundations of his business are serious enough that they could easily destroy confidence in his virtue. This is an especially important point since we Mormons have been counseled over and over again to support and vote for “good men” to govern us. Grim and Stangler’s article clearly documents an evasiveness on behalf of the Romney campaign and Bain Capital in answering charges that the company under Romney’s care took blood money; both refuse to release the investigation documents on the Salvadoran investors. Such documents could very easily clear up the question of how much Bain knew or how thorough the investigation was—if it was shoddy or incomplete that would reflect badly on his leadership abilities.

There are are several possible concerns stemming from Romney’s relative silence on these allegations. First, perhaps he is, in actuality, guilty. If that is the case then his status as a “good man” is destroyed and he should not be supported by anybody, least of all Mormons. Second, his team did a rather poor job of investigating or purposefully did not ask the tough questions to simply give the appearance of “due diligence.” If this is the case then his reputation of being thorough and thoughtful would be called into question, weakening his claim on the Office. Third, if it were shown that the investigation was “thrown” then it would imply that ideology or business interests are more important to him than is doing the proverbial right thing, which would naturally call his virtue into question and expose him as a simple puppet.

There is, of course, the possibility that he may in fact be entirely innocent, that his company acted in good faith as far as possible, that his investigator’s were deceived or manipulated, that the individual investors were indeed clean. If that is actually the case, why then would he not be anxious to demonstrate his innocence, to strengthen his position, to prove his critics wrong and win over reasonable voters? His insistence with limited evidence either sanely encourages speculation about his guilt or shows a rather disconcerting arrogance…or both. It might be more comforting for all of us to see Romney putting up more of a fight on the allegations leveled against him. Even though I disagree with his politics, I sure hope he is innocent of these allegations.