B6 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, JUNE 7 , 2022
obituariesrepeated in statements to Con-
gress and the public, appeared to
be little more than a pretext for
backing the contras and pursuing
regime change in Managua, the
capital.
After Dr. MacMichael’s two-
year contract with the CIA was
not renewed, he traveled to Nica-
ragua on his own expense to
examine the situation on the
ground. He then met with mem-
bers of Congress and began work-
ing with a lawyer, trying to make
sure he didn’t run afoul of a
secrecy agreement he had signed
when he joined the CIA. Fearing
that Reagan was moving toward
“a major military intervention” in
Central America, he began speak-
ing out in 1984.
“The whole picture that the
administration has presented of
Salvadoran insurgent operations
being planned, directed and sup-
plied from Nicaragua is simply
not true,” he told the New York
Times. At a news conference, he
went further, saying: “There is a
point where exaggeration be-
comes impossible to distinguish
from prevarication. If ever a ma-jor public policy of the United
States has been justified on such
flimsy grounds, such patently un-
provable claims, I cannot recall
it.”
Those claims were repudiated
by senior officials including CIA
Director William J. Casey and
Secretary of State George P.
Shultz, who suggested Dr. Mac-
Michael “must be living in some
other world” to deny the transfer
of arms from Nicaragua to El
Salvador. But his disclosures in-
tensified a debate over whether
the U.S. government should sup-
port the contras, who were ac-
cused of widespread human
rights violations, including kid-
napping, torturing and executing
civilians.
Later that year, Congress voted
to cut off funding to the rebels
and, effectively, to bar the use of
federal money for the contras.
Senior officials in the Reagan
administration continued to sup-
port the group, developing a co-
vert scheme in which arms were
sold to Iran in exchange for the
release of American hostages
held in Lebanon, with some of theproceeds diverted to the Nicara-
guan rebels.
When the operation came to
light in 1986, it erupted into one
of the biggest political scandals in
recent decades, leading to more
than a dozen indictments and
tarnishing the administration’s
public image.
Dr. MacMichael said he had
initially hoped he wouldn’t have
to challenge the official U.S. posi-
tion on the contras, believing that
“the lack of evidence for the ad-
ministration’s case” and “the wild
and overstated pronouncements”
of the president and other top
officials would undercut support
for the group. He changed his
mind, he added, “when I realized
that people were dying brutally
and in large numbers in Nicara-
gua on the basis of these un-
truths.”
“You find yourself in this situa-
tion maybe once in a lifetime,” he
later told author Richard Thieme.
“You only come to the plate once
and had better take your swings. I
took my swings. That was my one
ethical plus in a lifetime of uneth-
ical behavior.”David Charles MacMichael was
born in Albany, N.Y., on June 5,
1928, and grew up in Leonia, N.J.
His mother was a homemaker,
and his father was a concert
pianist who later worked for the
Heinz food processing company.
After graduating from high
school, Dr. MacMichael served in
the Marine Corps and studied
history at Hampden-Sydney Col-
lege in Virginia, receiving a bach-
elor’s degree in 1952. Returning to
the Corps as an officer, he was
sent to Korea and severely
wounded during an artillery at-
tack in 1953. He spent 19 months
recovering at a naval hospital,
according to a daughter, Alicia
Williamson.
Dr. MacMichael resigned his
commission in 1959 and returned
to school, receiving a doctorate in
history from the University of
Oregon and teaching at Domini-
can College of San Rafael, now the
Dominican University of Califor-
nia.
In the mid-1960s he was re-
cruited to the Stanford Research
Institute, which had connections
to the Defense Department, andBY HARRISON SMITHDavid C. MacMichael, a disillu-
sioned CIA analyst who accused
the Reagan administration of
misrepresenting intelligence as
part of an effort to overthrow the
left-wing government of Nicara-
gua, claims that foreshadowed
the political scandal known as
Iran-contra, died May 16 at his
home in Linden, Va. He was 93.
The cause was pneumonia,
said his wife, Barbara Jentzsch.
A former U.S. Marine Corps
captain with counterinsurgency
expertise and a PhD in history, Dr.
MacMichael joined the CIA in
1981 as a contract employee, ana-
lyzing military and political de-
velopments in Central America at
a time when the region was con-
sidered a key Cold War battle-
ground, home to the leftist Sandi-
nista government in Nicaragua
and a growing left-wing insur-
gency in El Salvador.
Amid fears that the Soviet
Union was trying to stir up a
communist revolution on the
doorstep of the United States, the
Reagan administration began
funding right-wing Nicaraguan
rebels known as the contras, justi-
fying the effort by citing a flood of
Soviet weapons that the Nicara-
guan government was purported-
ly providing to Salvadoran guer-
rillas.
But as Dr. MacMichael began
studying the situation, he found
that the flow of weapons into El
Salvador appeared to have
stopped in early 1981, soon after
Reagan took office. When he
questioned his superiors about
the lack of intelligence backing
the White House’s claims, he was
given vague answers. “They kept
saying we have it,” he told the
Guardian, “but they never
showed it to me, even though I
was cleared for everything except
nuclear matters.”
Over time, Dr. MacMichael
said, he learned that Reagan had
approved a CIA plan to create a
covert force of 1,500 fighters in an
effort to destabilize the Nicara-
guan government. The claim that
Nicaragua was arming Salvador-
an rebels, which the White House
DAVID C. MACMICHAEL, 93
CIA analyst accused Reagan before Iran-contra scandal
U.S. MARINE CORPS/FAMILY PHOTO
TOP: David C. MacMichael as
an officer in the U.S. Marine
Corps. LEFT: Dr. MacMichael
testifies in 2005 on Capitol
Hill. He joined the CIA in 1981
as a contract employee t o
analyze developments in
Central America, then seen as a
CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES key Cold War battleground.was assigned to work on counter-
insurgency projects in Thailand.
Dr. MacMichael later testified
about his CIA work at an Interna-
tional Court of Justice hearing,
after the Nicaraguan government
accused the United States of vio-
lating international law through
its support for the contras. The
Reagan administration boycotted
the proceedings, saying the court
lacked jurisdiction, and the court
ruled in favor of Nicaragua,
which later withdrew its com-
plaint under a post-Sandinista
government.
After Dr. MacMichael left the
CIA, he worked for the Council on
Hemispheric Affairs, a Washing-
ton-based research organization
focused on Latin America, and
co-founded Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity, a group
of former intelligence officials
that protested the U.S.-led inva-
sion of Iraq in 2003.
He also maintained a devotion
to physical fitness that he traced
back to his years in the Marine
Corps. At 65, he walked across the
country, starting at Point Reyes in
California and finishing near
Washington. He later completed
the Appalachian Trail and, as
recently as last year, chopped
firewood for exercise.
His marriage to Martha Os-
trander ended in divorce. In 2003,
he married Barbara Jentzsch, a
German journalist. In addition to
his wife, of Linden, survivors in-
clude three children from his first
marriage, John Francis MacMi-
chael of Portland, Ore., William-
son, of Gaston, Ore., and Stepha-
nie Kolkka of Redwood City,
Calif.; a brother; and a sister.
Dr. MacMichael told the
Guardian that even after he left
the CIA, his connection to the
agency shadowed his advocacy
efforts in Nicaragua, where he
sought to volunteer with Witness
for Peace, a grass-roots organiza-
tion, by picking coffee in conflict
zones as an expression of solidari-
ty with Nicaraguan workers.
“But I couldn’t get on any team.
Every time they heard who I had
worked for,” he said, “they wanted
me to ring a little bell as I came
down the road like a leper.”BY EMILY LANGERJulie Beckett, who as the deter-
mined mother of a disabled child
fought the federal bureaucracy
for coverage of her daughter’s
in-home medical costs, a victory
that has helped hundreds of thou-
sands of children grow up with
their families rather than in hos-
pitals and institutions, died
May 13 at her home in Cedar
Rapids, Iowa. She was 72.
The cause was a heart attack,
said her brother John O’Connell.
“There sometimes comes a mo-
ment in parenting,” Ms. Beckett
once said, when “you discover
strength you didn’t know you had
— all because your child needs
you.”
That moment came for Ms.
Beckett, she observed in an essay
published by the American Civil
Liberties Union, just four months
into her life as a mother, when her
infant daughter, Katie, contract-
ed viral encephalitis. The disease,
a life-threatening inflammation
of the brain, left Katie in a coma
for days. When she awoke, she
was partially paralyzed and re-
quired a ventilator to breathe.
Physicians predicted that she
would not live past age 10.
But Katie’s condition eventual-
ly improved, enough that Ms.
Beckett became convinced that
her child could safely be taken to
home to grow up there with prop-
er medical care. By age 3^1 / 2 , Katie
had scarcely known any home but
her hospital room.
Ms. Beckett discovered, howev-
er, that her daughter inhabited a
bureaucratic no man’s land: Ac-
cording to the terms of her Medic-
aid and Supplemental Security
Income benefits, Katie’s medical
costs would be covered only if she
remained in the hospital. Ms.
Beckett, a junior high school
teacher, and Katie’s father, who
worked in a lumberyard, could
not afford to pay out of pocket for
Katie's care if she came home.
“We’re not poor enough to be
eligible, but we’re not rich enough
to handle it,” Ms. Beckett told the
Associated Press in 1981. “No one
would be rich enough to handle
all the things she needs.”
The irony was that, by all ac-
counts, it cost far more to care for
Katie in the hospital than it did to
attend to her needs at home. Ms.
Beckett took her cause to an Iowa
congressman, Thomas J. Tauke
(R). He brought it to the attention
of Vice President George H.W.Bush, who in turn flagged it for
President Ronald Reagan. Rea-
gan, ever the champion of smaller
government, highlighted Katie’s
story as a case in point of the
“hidebound” federal bureaucra-
cy.
“By what sense,” Reagan re-
marked at a media conference in
November 1981, “do we have a
regulation in government that
says we’ll pay $6,000 a month to
keep someone in a hospital that
we believe would be better off at
home, but the family cannot af-
ford one-sixth of that amount to
keep them at home?”
In short order, Richard S. Sch-
weiker, Reagan’s health and hu-
man services secretary, issued a
waiver — later dubbed the Katie
Beckett waiver — that allowed
Katie to leave the hospital and
still receive government benefits.
She was home in time for Christ-
mas and received a doll from the
Reagans with the wish of “the
loveliest holiday ever.”
“It’s wonderful because we’re a
real family now,” her mother later
told United Press International.
“Going to the hospital three or
four times a day and never being
able to be a family was very
difficult for us,” Ms. Beckett re-
marked in another interview.
“You couldn’t be a family, you just
couldn’t. The door was always
open, someone was always peek-
ing in. If you wanted to tickle
Katie, or do anything that parents
do with their kids, you just
couldn’t do it.”
Ms. Beckett eventually left her
teaching job to care for her
daughter, who continued to re-
quire daily use of a ventilator, and
to devote herself to activism. She
became nationally known as an
advocate for children with dis-abilities and their families.
In an era before the protections
guaranteed in legislation such as
the 1990 Americans With Disabil-
ities Act, Ms. Beckett testified
before Congress, sometimes with
Katie in tow, speaking as her
daughter amused herself with
coloring books. Ms. Beckett
helped found Family Voices, an
organization that seeks to sup-
port families of children with
special needs. She continued her
work through recent years during
challenges to the Affordable Care
Act.
Because of her “tireless advo-cacy,” then-Health and Human
Services Secretary Kathleen Sebe-
lius said in 2012, “Medicaid policy
fundamentally shifted to allow
people with significant health-
care needs and disabilities to re-
ceive care at home.”
Julianne Ethel O’Connell was
born in Cedar Rapids on Nov. 9,- Her father owned a whole-
sale lumberyard, and her mother
was a homemaker.
Ms. Beckett received a bach-
elor’s degree in history from what
is now Clarke University in
Dubuque, Iowa, in 1971 and a
master’s degree, also in history,
from the University of Dayton in
Ohio in 1973.
Her marriage to Mark Beckett
ended in divorce. Survivors in-
clude five brothers and one sister.
Katie Beckett, who was Ms.
Beckett’s only child, ultimately
graduated from college and
joined her mother as an activist.
She died in 2012 at 34. By that
time, more than half a million
American children had received
the Katie Beckett waiver.
“Being a mother,” Ms. Beckett
wrote in her essay for the ACLU,
“has been one of the most gratify-
ing roles of my life.”JULIE BECKETT, 72
Fighting for her child, she became a champion of youths with disabilities
FAMILY PHOTO
Julie Beckett, seen in an undated
photo, won coverage of her
daughter’s in-home medical
costs in a v ictory that has helped
hundreds of thousands of
children grow up outside of
hospitals and institutions.
RONALD REAGAN LIBRARY
P resident Ronald Reagan, holding Ms. Beckett’s daughter, Katie, meets with the Beckett family on the
tarmac of the Cedar Rapids Municipal Airport in Iowa in 1984.Stay one step ahead of the weather with the Capital Weather Gangwashingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang • @capitalweatherumbrella or sunscreen?S0141 6x2