Barbara Lee's Background.

ITEM: Representative Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) cast the sole dissenting vote against a resolution authorizing the president to wage war on terrorism, reported the Washington Post, in a story entitled "Congresswoman Against Use of Force." Her vote, claimed the Post on September 19th, "is reminiscent of the first woman ever elected to Congress, Jeannette Rankin of Montana, who voted against the nation's entry into World War land World II."

Don Perata, a California state senator who represents Lee's district, told the Post: "California talk radio was abuzz with callers denouncing Lee as a communist. 'I was wincing,' he says, 'because that's not Barbara."'

CORRECTION: Barbara Lee makes lots of folks wince -- especially the ones who know her actual record. Herbert Romerstein, a former staff member of the House Intelligence Committee and a long-standing expert on Communist subversion, has pointed out that "Ms. Lee is not Rankin. The pacifist Rankin hated war, but did not love either the kaiser or Adolf Hitler. Ms. Lee is a long-practicing supporter of America's enemies -- from Fidel Castro on down."

Romerstein recalled, for example, that Lee and Representative Ron Dellums (D-Calif.) had written in favor of an airport being built on then communist-ruled Grenada, "which the U.S. government believed could be used by Soviet bombers aimed at us." (Lee was on Dellums' staff prior to her election to Congress.)

Writing in the Washington Times, Romerstein noted other Communist connections. After the American Communist Party split in 1991, one faction dubbed itself the Committees of Correspondence. The C of C, he said, were sometimes called "communists with a human mask" and they invited "other extreme leftists to join them." Barbara Lee was "elected to their National Coordinating Council (NCC), its ruling body" -- a fact she subsequently denied, then finally admitted.

The record shows that Lee and longtime Communist Angela Davis were colleagues in the above-cited Red splinter group. Lee also belonged to the Red front called the U.S.-Grenada Society, which supported dictator Maurice Bishop. She even attended a conference of "non-aligned nations" in Havana while on Dellums' congressional staff.