The Washington Post, August 31, 1997

By Mary McGrory

Sunday, August 31, 1997

Frank Wolf, the Republican congressman from Northern Virginia, has a conscience. He assumes that his fellow Americans do too, and that if he tells them how bad things are in countries they seldom hear about, they will do something about it. He is inevitably considered naive. He doesn't mind. His faith in his fellow man comes from his faith in God. He is a devout Presbyterian who believes passionately in good works and has raised his five children to volunteer on behalf of the unfortunate.

Wolf is just back from another of his trips to difficult, dangerous places. This time it was Tibet, which has been groaning under the Chinese yoke. He slipped in on an ordinary tourist visa, which did not identify him as a member of Congress. Tibetans risked their lives to tell him about the oppression and religious persecution they are suffering. His press conference afterwards at the National Press Club was packed perhaps because it is August, and the news drought is severe. He told an international audience that "China is squeezing the life out of Tibet. . . . It is unspeakably brutal."

Wolf's success in rousing the American people is still to be seen, but he got China's attention. The New China News Agency issued a statement of outrage from a Tibetan official who accused Wolf of being a troublemaker and a bad reporter: There is no religious persecution and all is well with happy Tibetans. Wolf was, of course, delighted with additional notice to his cause.

Some reporters may have been goaded into attendance at the press conference by one of Wolf's typically reproachful, guilt-producing letters calling on the recipient to fulfill a moral obligation by spreading the word about whatever ghastly situation he has just observed. Last January, Wolf went to East Timor in Indonesia and brought back an account of killing that he thought President Clinton should do something about. He later wrote to him in terms that show he has heeded the counsel of the 15th-century German mystic Thomas a Kempis: "Fawn not upon the great." In Wolf's letter of May 29, he told the president that he better shape up on East Timor because people are making connections between U.S. inaction in that wretched land and the campaign scandal of the White House raking in millions from Asians with axes to grind.

"Respectfully but with candor, Mr. President, many believe your administration has adopted or changed its policy with regard to Indonesia and East Timor because of influence exerted by the Riadys and as a result of the for profit relationship which developed between the Lippo Group and Mr. Web Hubble (sic). Press reports of Mr. Hubble's personal visit to East Timor have only fueled this belief. I do not know if this is true. . . . I do know, however, that we have no effective policy . . . in East Timor."

Wolf gives himself a missionary's license to speak truth to the mighty. The appalling conditions he describes vindicate his frankness and his importunities. His Northern Virginia constituency may not relate to his anguish over such places as El Salvador, Burma, Sudan, Bosnia, Chechnya and Ethiopia. But Wolf keeps both feet on the ground or rather on the highway at all times. He is chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on transportation, a post that gives him great power. And his constituent service watching over the rights of the many federal workers who live in Virginia's 10th District is famous.

His evolution from "pothole politician" to watchman on the ramparts of world freedom happened gradually. First, he went to Ethiopia in 1984 with Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio), a crusader against hunger who is Wolf's best friend in Congress and a fellow member of a House Bible study group. They went to Romania together and saw misery that made them come home and promote a bill against Most Favored Nation (MFN) treatment for the Ceausescu government. Since then, Wolf has never looked back or lost hope.

At his press conference, he urged Americans to write letters to Tibetan political prisoners. Based on the experience with Soviet prisoners of conscience, he says the Tibetans might not get the letters, but wardens made conscious of outside observation might give better treatment. He wants more congressional delegations in Tibet so that Chinese overlords will know the world has not forgotten. And he can see the day when MFN will be denied to China. The American people are way ahead of Congress, their president and the business community, according to polls. One showed overwhelming opposition to MFN for China, 67 percent to 18 percent.

Wolf's inspiration is William Wilberforce, a prominent 19th-century British politician who spent his life working to abolish the slave trade. It took 34 years for Parliament to outlaw it, a month after Wilberforce's death.

"It just takes time," says Wolf.