Lantos the master storyteller, communicator

2007-01-01 04:00:00 PDT Washington -- Macko, "a most adorable" 5 1/2-year-old West Highlands terrier, snoozes serenely next to Rep. Tom Lantos as the House International Relations Committee's incoming chairman does what he does best -- tell a story.

Not just a story, but a mini- novel with a cast of characters and places, rich in the history and culture of whatever part of the world is under discussion. The storytelling style -- full of unlikely connections and wildly improbable assertions that can't possibly be true but mostly are -- is a metaphor for Lantos' life. After all, Lantos has gone from starving, penniless Holocaust survivor who arrived in America as a refugee to a top leader in a Congress where foreign policy will be a key issue.

So give a listen to Lantos, a veteran of 26 years on the committee who is finally ascending to the powerful chairmanship as a result of the Democrats' victory in the Nov. 7 elections, as he's asked if he thinks Iran will ever grant him the visa he has long sought to go to Tehran to tell the country's clerical leaders it's time for them to accept international norms and rejoin the world community.

First he asserted that President Bush should talk to Iran and Syria, for that matter, as he searches for a way out of the Iraq war. "I believe in talking with everyone. Sometimes it works," Lantos said.

But then there's a detour to how during the last decade of the Cold War, Lantos and Rhode Island's patrician Democratic Sen. Claiborne Pell were just about the only two Americans to apply every year for visas to visit Albania, one of the most closed communist nations. "We were turned down every year," said Lantos, pouring a strong cup of Budapest-style espresso for his guest.

And did you know that President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Pell's father as ambassador to Hungary during World War II, but Pell never got to serve because Hungary joined the Axis powers and went to war against America?

And about how 15 years ago, Lantos' office phone rang not long after the communist government of Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha was deposed. The Albanian ambassador to the United Nations was calling from New York, saying Lantos finally would be granted a visa and could we arrange the trip?

"It was a Tuesday. I said to him 'Friday looks good to me,' " Lantos recalled with a twinkle in his blue eyes. "I think he fainted dead away. There was a long pause while he was being resuscitated."

An hour or two later, the ambassador called back to say Friday would be OK, but that the Albanians wanted to know exactly when Lantos would by arriving at the Tirana airport so officials could pick him up.

Lantos said no, he and his wife, Annette, would be driving in from Yugoslavia. Another long silence before another call granting the request.

The Lantoses, a San Mateo couple who travel the world like some of their Peninsula constituents take Caltrain to work, flew to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, hired a car and driver and drove to the border and were taken into Albania.

Oh, yes, the question about Iran. "I have not gotten a visa," said Lantos, whose diplomacy in recent years has included sessions with Libya's Moammar Khadafy in a desert tent, and a few visits to North Korea.

When he does, "I will tell the Iranians the truth -- that it's a great country and they need to be reintegrated into the family of civilized nations and that they must give up their lunatic notions," said the 78-year-old congressman.

It's all vintage Lantos -- encyclopedic, often witty, knowing. What you'd expect from a man who in 1953 earned a UC Berkeley doctorate in economics.

And now Thomas Peter Lantos is going to take center stage.

"It would be only possible in America," he said in his charmingly accented English that younger generations on Capitol Hill swear sounds like Count von Count on "Sesame Street." "That accounts for my passionate patriotism. It says volumes about the country that a penniless immigrant can have a responsible position in an area like foreign policy.

"In a sense my whole life has been a preparation for this job," he said, readying for the new Congress to meet next week.

Lantos was born in Budapest in 1928 to a Jewish family and says he had a happy childhood until 1944, when the Jews of Hungary -- the last untouched big Jewish population in Central Europe -- were suddenly at the mercy of the Nazis and their Hungarian henchmen.

Lantos was caught in the Nazi sweeps for Jews and was sent to a labor camp. But he escaped and returned to Budapest, joined the resistance, and found shelter in a safe house established by the Swedish aristocrat and diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jews. Lantos' debt to Wallenberg would be repaid in future years.

Lantos and his childhood sweetheart, Annette Tillemann (who happens to be a cousin of Eva and Zsa Zsa Gabor), survived the war but lost virtually all their families. They came to America not long after the war, wed and settled in San Francisco, then moved to San Bruno and eventually San Mateo. They have two children and now 17 grandchildren.

Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in Congress, taught economics at San Francisco State University, became a local news commentator and served on a school board in Millbrae. His life took another strange twist after the events of Nov. 18, 1978, when Peninsula Democratic Rep. Leo Ryan was killed at an airstrip in Guyana, where he had gone to check up on constituents who lived at Jonestown, the doomed camp of the People's Temple cult.

Ryan, the only member of Congress ever killed in the line of duty, was succeeded in a special election by a Republican, but Lantos won a Democratic primary in 1980, beat the GOP incumbent and has never looked back.

In the House, Lantos' first major piece of successful legislation was a bill naming Wallenberg an honorary American citizen, an honor shared by only a few others, including Winston Churchill and the Marquis de Lafayette. And Lantos was able to get Wallenberg's bust enshrined in a niche in the Capitol.

Lantos' involvement with the cause of Wallenberg, who vanished into the Soviet gulag after the Russians occupied Budapest in early 1945, led him and Annette to become fast friends with the Swede's niece, Nane Lagergren. Her husband, Kofi Annan, was then a Ghanaian diplomat; he recently finished his tenure as U.N. secretary-general.

Lantos founded the congressional Human Rights Caucus, was an early member of the House Progressive Caucus, and built his seniority on the International Relations Committee.

He has also brought home big bucks to his district, which now includes San Mateo County and the southwest quarter of San Francisco. The biggest item has been several hundred million dollars to extend BART to San Francisco International Airport and to Millbrae.

Lantos has sparked opposition at home with his strong stand for Israel, which critics say is one-sided, and by his initial support for President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq. He has since become an outspoken critic of the administration's handling of the almost 4-year-old war and has co-signed letters to Bush with other congressional Democrats calling on the president to start withdrawing sizable numbers of troops.

As for Israel, he says his staunch support arises from his fierce support for democracies everywhere and his opposition to terrorism, not his Jewish heritage.

While he's attacked from the left and the right, it hasn't made much difference to the voters in California's 12th Congressional District, who have regularly returned Lantos to office with about 75 percent of the vote.

And for those Democratic politicians back home waiting for him to retire so they can run for his seat, Lantos has bad news. "I'm only at the midpoint of my political career," he said.

In Washington, his stature has only grown with the years.

"Lantos has served 13 terms and is widely respected on both sides of the aisle," the authoritative Congressional Quarterly's "Guide to the New Congress" put it.

"He's the last lion," said one of Lantos' committee juniors, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Glendale (Los Angeles County). "That's in the sense that he brings historical understanding, has earned immense respect and has a level of gravitas second to none.

"You are compelled to stop and listen when you hear his voice," Schiff said.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, who disagreed sharply with Lantos over the decision to allow Bush to go to war in Iraq, said that Lantos "is very fair, he is responsive to member concerns, and he is very supportive."

Like other incoming Democratic chairs, Lantos plans a busy schedule. In the first week of the new Congress, he expects to conduct oversight hearings on Iraq and Afghanistan. Both will put his old friend, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- one of many celebrities whose pictures with the Lantoses is featured in his cluttered office -- on the hot seat.

Lantos expresses disappointment with Rice. He said the Iraq war policy she has helped engineer has included "horrendous mistakes in execution that have created a 'no way to unscramble the omelet' situation."

Asked if the war has hurt Rice's reputation and possible political prospects, he answers with uncharacteristic terseness: "Yes, to both."

In addition to Iraq and Afghanistan, Lantos plans more oversight on how Bush's war on terrorism intersects with diplomacy and on issues like the continuing genocide in Sudan's Darfur region, and administration policy on AIDS in Africa.

China will also get more attention from Lantos, a consistent critic of Beijing's human rights record who this year also slammed Internet giants Google and Yahoo for removing information from their Chinese Web sites that the Chinese government found objectionable.

Macko, the napping pup, is stirring now, causing Lantos to pick him up and kiss him. "This is the most adorable creature," he coos.

The Westie, one of several small dogs and a kitten belonging to employees who spend the day in Lantos' suite of offices, prompts another story.

Macko is not the Lantoses' pet. The couple used to bring their poodle Gigi to work every day, but she died at age 17 in 2003. A neighbor on Capitol Hill had a little Westie named Max, who had taken a shine to the dog-loving congressman.

So instead of spending days at home, Max, whose Hungarian name Macko means "Teddy Bear," gets picked up every day, drives to work with the couple, spends the day snacking, snoozing and meeting and greeting visitors -- then gets driven home each evening to his other human family.

The Lantoses start each day early, opening the swimming pool at the Rayburn House Office Building at 5:30 a.m. Swimming miles of laps daily is a habit from Lantos' Budapest childhood. They then return home to get ready for work and pick up Macko.

One face appears in more pictures in the office than any other. It's Lantos' 22-year-old granddaughter, Charity Sunshine Tillemann-Dick, an accomplished operatic singer who is battling idiopathic pulmonary hypertension, an incurable lung disease that can lead to an enlarged heart and heart failure.

Lantos' world of high-level connections, his abiding concern for his granddaughter's health and his ability to raise public awareness of her disease came together at the Kennedy Center in June 2005 when she sang a solo recital of operatic and popular tunes before an invited audience. Her accompanist on piano: Condoleezza Rice. Guests of honor sitting right down in front: Kofi and Nane Annan, who flew down from New York just for the evening.

"I am a very lucky one," said Lantos. "The only cloud on our horizon is Charity's health," he said, picking up one of her framed pictures in his office and fixing his gaze on it.

---

Tom Lantos

Position: House member representing the 12th Congressional District in portions of San Mateo and San Francisco counties

Born: Feb. 1, 1928, Budapest, Hungary

Education: Bachelor's degree, University of Washington, 1949; master's degree, 1950, and doctorate, 1953, UC Berkeley

Career: Economist, television commentator, San Francisco State University professor

Political career: House member 1981-present

Family: Wife, Annette, two children, 17 grandchildren