Word: downplay
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Word leaked out almost as soon as the giant U.S. Air Force C-5A transport plane touched down in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz. As U.S. embassy spokesmen in the capital city of La Paz and Defense Department officials in Washington tried to downplay the matter, headlines in Bolivia and the U.S. were blaring the news: in the first use of a U.S. military operation on foreign soil to fight drugs, Army Black Hawk helicopters, armed with .30-cal. machine guns and escorted by about 160 U.S. soldiers, had been flown into the South American jungle to assist Bolivian...
...concentrators and faculty are quick to downplay such stereotypes. "I think diversity in general is a myth at Harvard, but pretty much true for VES," says Huidor. Abrams agrees, noting that "there is a very strong acceptance of individuality [in the department] and taking people for who they are rather than crunching them into molds...
Some Western analysts were inclined to downplay the shift. As one Washington official joked, "The puppeteer now has a new puppet." Certainly Najibullah, a loyal protege of Karmal's, seems unlikely to lead his country in any radically new directions. However, having built the secret police into a disciplined, KGB-style network of 60,000 agents, the major general may bring a new intensity to the civil war with the mujahedin rebels. Najibullah is, says a European diplomat in Islamabad, "an efficient killer...
...observers. He wanted to know if we could attend without having our group's presence categorized as an action in support of the protesters. My section leader admitted that by attending the meeting, we would at least be giving tacit support to the protesters. And although he attempted to downplay the possibility, he could give no assurances that our group would not be labeled as protesters by the media. He admitted that a picture of our group could wind up on the front page of The Crimson or Globe with a caption like, "Harvard students protesting the college's investment...
Opponents of contra aid tried, with little success, to downplay the aggression. Jim Sasser, the Tennessean who spearheaded the Democratic challenge, charged the White House with trying "to magnify the whole incident. The Administration went to great lengths to get news of this so- called invasion out as broadly as possible." Christopher Dodd of Connecticut added, "The incident is obviously being used very effectively for political purposes here...