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New York Times, March 10, 2015:

The White House has berated Senate Republicans for writing to Iran’s leaders warning them against a nuclear agreement with President Obama, saying their letter skirts the Constitution and sends a dangerous and conflicting message.

In a lengthy and harshly worded statement released late Monday, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Senate veteran of more than three decades and a former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he could recall no other instance in which senators had written to the leaders of another country, “much less a foreign adversary,” to say the president had no authority to strike a deal with them.

“This letter, in the guise of a constitutional lesson, ignores two centuries of precedent and threatens to undermine the ability of any future American president, whether Democrat or Republican, to negotiate with other nations on behalf of the United States,” Mr. Biden said. “Honorable people can disagree over policy. But this is no way to make America safer or stronger.”

New York Times, April 20, 1984:

Members of Congress are always writing ''Dear Colleague'' letters to other members, promoting a bill or noting an event. Now 10 Democratic lawmakers have written a ''Dear Comandante'' letter that is kicking up a fuss on Capitol Hill.

The letter is addressed to Daniel Ortega Saavedra, the coordinator of the junta that rules Nicaragua. In it, the lawmakers commend his Government ''for taking steps to open up the political process in your country'' and urge greater efforts toward freer and more open elections.
The 10 authors include Jim Wright of Texas, the majority leader; Edward P. Boland of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and other senior Democrats in the foreign policy field. The letter tells Mr. Ortega that it was written ''in a spirit of hopefulness and goodwill'' and voices regret that relations between Nicaragua and Washington are not better.

The writers stress that they all oppose further money for rebel campaigns against the Sandinista Government. In a veiled reference to the Reagan Administration, the letter says that if the Sandinistas do hold genuine elections, those who are ''supporting violence'' against the Nicaraguan leaders would have ''far greater difficulty winning support for their policies than they do today.''

Forbes, August 28, 2009:

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy.

“On 9-10 May of this year,” the May 14 memorandum explained, “Sen. Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow.” (Tunney was Kennedy’s law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) “The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov.”
Kennedy’s message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. “The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations,” the memorandum stated. “These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign.”

New York Times, April 4, 2007:

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, met here today with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and discussed a variety of Middle Eastern issues, including the situations in Iraq and Lebanon and the prospect of peace talks between Syria and Israel.

Ms. Pelosi, the third-ranking elected official in the United States after the president and the vice president, is the most senior American politician to visit the country since relations between the United States and Syria faltered in 2003. Her visit has been criticized by President Bush and other administration officials, who have sought to isolate Syria diplomatically.

The visit is being seen as a strong signal of reengagement with Syria by the United States, which in recent years has sought to isolate the country diplomatically, and appears to have raised the profile of Mr. Assad internationally. But it remains unclear how the development is being received by other countries in the Middle East that have uneasy relations with Syria.