There is a strong solidarity these days between the AFL-CIO and NATO. It has deep roots that were nurtured by the CIA in the Cold War. Currently, the AFL-CIO contributes campaign contributions to members of Congress who previously defended President Clinton against impeachment and now support NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia.  

In the early 1960s one member of Congress who fought both the AFL-CIO and the CIA was Rev. Adam Clayton Powell. Then the famous minister of Harlem's Abyssinia Church, Adam was the first person I ever heard use the term "AFL-CIA." He was also the first black congressman since reconstruction days. He and his wife, singer Hazel Scott, were likewise the first to integrate movies in the District of Columbia -- as well as congressional dining rooms.  

I first met Adam in the early 1960s, when he was Chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor. We had adjoining parking spaces in the Rayburn building garage. One Friday night I mentioned to him that I was driving to Front Royal, in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. He said: "Hey, that's where the AFL-CIA is located." I knew what he meant: it was a training camp where union leaders from foreign countries were taught how to deal with our communist enemies.  

Adam was then at loggerheads with AFL-CIO President George Meany, who came from New York City's plumbers union. Meany's plumbers and the "hard hat" construction workers were an anathema to Adam. Their unions were "Jim Crow." They refused to give apprenticeships to blacks and Hispanics.  

For years, Meany had been lobbying Congress for legislation to permit unions to picket construction sites where non-union workers were also employed. Adam told Meany: "Until you integrate your unions I will oppose your picketing bill." But Meany and the AFL-CIO were eventually successful in orchestrating Adam's downfall.  

The labor unions soon mustered enough votes to strip Adam of his chairmanship of the Committee on Education and Labor. They then demonized him. The mainstream media called him a "philanderer," and "anti-union." They claimed he spent most of his time on a yacht in Bimini partying with mistresses. When his Harlem constituents re-elected him, the House of Representatives refused to seat him. But today, one of Harlem's main streets continues to honor his name.  

In the 1980's I also heard Adam's term "AFL-CIA" used by William Wimpisinger, President of the International Association of Machinists. "Wimpy" was then at odds with a number of other unions regarding a policy that had been fostered by the CIA and NATO. Our Departments of Defense, State, and Commerce, were then beginning to give American companies incentives to sell weapon system to NATO nations, as well as such countries as South Korea, Israel, and Switzerland.  

At first, Wimpy was taken in by the Boeing Corporation, which employed large numbers of IAM members. Every time Boeing won a multi-million dollar contract to build planes for an allied country they announced it proudly to their cheering American machinists. But Wimpy soon learned that the more planes Boeing sold abroad the more it laid off members of Wimpy's union at home.  

It was true that NATO and our other Cold War allies were buying weapons from American companies. But most of those nations insisted on "offset" clauses in their procurement contracts. In short, the American company was required to "offset" the purchase price by agreeing to buy parts and components made in the purchasing country. To Wimpy's chagrin most offset were at 150 percent. Thus the effect was to export more and more American jobs to the countries of our allies.  

During that period some notable economists began to disagree with NATO, the CIA, and the offset arrangements. These included the Defense Department's Dr. Robert Costello and TRW's Pat Choate (who was later to become vice presidential candidate of Ross Perot's Reform Party). They gave congressional testimony warning of what they called "the erosion of the defense industrial base."  

Wimpy had a more picaresque description: "The road to hell is paved with offsets!"  

With modest financing from Wimpy and IAM, William G. Phillips founded the National Council for Industrial Defense -- for which I became pro bono counsel. Our now-defunct non-profit organization was committed to fighting NATO's offset arrangements. On Aug. 8, 1988 Bill Phillips made a prophetic speech on Capitol Hill that is timely today. He said:  

The best-kept secret in the nation's capital ... is never mentioned on TV interviews, radio talks, or in political polls. Yet it directly affects the lives of everyone.  

What is this super secret so carefully avoided by public officials and the nation's news media? It is the extent to which the ominous "military-industrial complex" described by President Eisenhower in the 1950s has mushroomed into a gargantuan multinational cartel with global sales of hundreds of billions of dollars annually. This cartel ... supplies weaponry to both sides in virtually every armed conflict around the world, from international and civil wars to domestic uprisings and military adventures. ...  

The Defense Department's increasing reliance on overseas manufacturers for key parts of our weapons system is endangering national security. ... The problem is so severe that, if a war occurred, the U.S. would be unable to sustain military action beyond a 30 to 60 day period. 

Today it would be presumptuous, if not profane, of me to try to speak for my three dead friends. But I now pray that our unions will soon shed themselves of their Washington-based leaders who defended Bill Clinton against impeachment and now support the war against Yugoslavia.  

Jerome Zeifman was the House Judiciary Committee's chief counsel during the Nixon impeachment proceedings. A lawyer turned author, he was formerly a Professor of Law at the University of Santa Clara.