Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D. Colo.) called today upon Treasury Secretary James Baker to investigate the activities of a self-described Christian activist in his department who wrote a California attorney that “the U.S. is a ‘Christian nation’ as more than 85 percent of adult Americans consider themselves ‘Christians’ .”
The activities of the Treasury employe, Christopher Sundseth, came to light when a postcard sent by Gerald Leib of Mountain View, California, to the Education Department received a reply from Sundseth which Schroeder described as “of a threatening nature.”
Sundseth subsequently told news media that he “and a small network of friends in government jobs” are involved in a letter-writing campaign to “anti-religious zealots.” Schroeder asked Baker to look into Sundseth’s activities to check if his “pen pal club meets on government time, uses government facilities or is the unauthorized recipient of government documents.”
POSTCARD TO TANCREDO SETS OFF CONTROVERSY
The case began when Leib wrote to Tom Tancredo, the Education Department’s regional representative in Denver. His postcard protested Tancredo’s mailing to Christian schools in his area, earlier this year, a speech saying godlessness had taken over “this Christian nation.” The speech had been written five years earlier by former Moral Majority leader Robert Billings, then an Education Department official.
Leib wrote Tancredo that “the U.S. is not now and never has been a Christian nation, as Billings claims” and that as a “non-Christian” he was “upset at his (Billings) blatant preference for the Christian religion.” Leib is reportedly Jewish.
Tancredo never replied to the postcard, but Leib did receive a letter from Sundseth, a political appointee of the Reagan Administration who works as a GS-13 special assistant at the Inter-American Development Bank at the Treasury Department. He wrote:
“This country was founded by Christians who were escaping the same kind of small minded tripe you espouse. The framers of the constitution attempted specifically to anticipate those of your ilk who would try and abridge the very rights of freedom to worship guaranteed us by that document.”
Calling Leib “a truly amazing but pathetic creature” whose “knowledge of this country’s history and structure of government is minimal at best, ” Sundseth concluded in his P.S.: “When you die, you will be giving account to Jesus Christ, your creator, who happens himself to be a Christian. I hope you are prepared …”
Sundseth, who wrote the letter to Leib on his personal stationary from an address in Alexandria, Virginia, is a former director of the Adolph Coors Company’s political action committee. He was a fundraiser, vice chairman for finance for President Reagan’s 1980 campaign in Colorado, and received the appointment to his Treasury position last year. His mother, Carolyn Sundseth, is a White House public liaison officer with evangelical and fundamentalist Christians and conservative women.
In various interviews with the press last week, Sundseth said that “in my free time I’m a Christian activist … I didn’t give up my right to express my opinion when I came to government. “He said he had written 120 to 150 letters in the past few years, mostly criticizing editorials. “I don’t think what I said in my letter conflicted with the essence of Mr. Reagan’s beliefs. “It’s a Biblical injunction to warn people” about eventually facing Jesus Christ, “so I warned the guy. I’m saying nothing different from what is in the Bible.”
‘COUPLE OF CHRISTIAN GUYS WRITING LETTERS’
Sundseth also told reporters that he and a small network of friends in government jobs “write a lot of letters ….” He and his activist friends, he said, use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) “to find letters of anti-religious zealots … anybody that says anything about Christians is automatically filed by these people. It’s knee-jerk reaction, it’s not a big conspiracy — it’s a couple of Christian guys writing letters.”
Sundseth told reporters he believes the postcard was obtained from one of four Christian activists who regularly file FOI requests with federal agencies for correspondence dealing with Christian issues. He said these friends, whom he refused to identify, send such letters to him and he often replies to their writers.
In another press interview, Sundseth described Tancredo as an “aquaintance,” part of the small group of appointees from Colorado. He said he had not seen him since Reagan’s inauguration.
ACCESS TO POSTCARD QUESTIONED
Leib, in a letter to Tancredo following his receipt of the letter from Sundseth, asked how Sundseth, if he is not an Education Department employe, “gained access to my citizen’s postcard to you …?” He also asked Tancredo where the postcard is now, adding that an officer in the Education Department had written him that “the postcard is not a part of the departmental files.”
Schroeder, originally asked by Leib to look into how Sundseth got a hold of his postcard to Tancredo, wrote twice to the Education Department with this question. In a written response in July, George Youstra, acting director of the department’s regional liaison unit, said Tancredo had told him that his office received earlier this year a large number of public inquiries and requests for information in regard to its mailing of Billings’ speech.
COMPLETE FILE ON BILLINGS’ SPEECH
Tancredo’s practice, he said, “was to respond to such requests by sending out copies of the complete file, including all correspondece on this subject. Mr. Leib’s postcard, which was part of the files, appears to have been sent to Mr. Sundreth in response to such a request for information. ” Youstra added that Tancredo ” has no control over how individuals may subsequently utilize the public documents that are obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.”
Last week, an Education Department spokesperson, Lou Mathis, apparently dismissed Youstra’s FOIA theory as an explanation of how the postcard got to Sundseth when he told reporters that had there been a request under the FOIA there would have been a written request in the department’s files. The department, he said, did not know how Sundseth got the postcard, nor did Tancredo himself know how it got out “and there was no record kept of it.”
Schroeder, in her letter to Baker today, pointed out that Sundseth’s letter to Leib in California was sent within two weeks of Leib’s having mailed the postcard to Denver. “There is some indication that the names and addresses of the people” to whom “threatening letters” such as this were sent “had been obtained by the unauthorized removal of the correspondence from the Department of Education.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
