Betrayal / Distorting Defense

...The "fit" hypothesis just doesn't hold up...

...And the data in the study show that these benefits are, if anything, perceived as greater by more recent graduates (those in the '89 entering cohorts) than by those who attended these schools in the late 197o's...

...By early 1997, however, U.S...

...Military people everywhere read it, and it is appropriate to note now that many of them look for anything written by Gertz...

...But then Lt...

...Madame Secretary," he said politely, "that is incorrect...

...and, as Gertz notes, there would be evidence later that 10,000 tons of the fuel oil had been diverted to Communist China...

...The Mellon Foundation is sponsoring a study of the role of HBCUs in American higher education that will, we believe, complement River...

...it suppressed information about the construction at Kumchangni, and practiced a deception of its own...

...In addition, North Korea would receive 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil to make up for the electric power it presumably would lose by agreeing to switch reactors...

...When North Korea began to develop nuclear weapons in the early 1990's, for example, the White House proposed a deal: If North Korea agreed to halt, or "freeze," its nuclear weapons program, the U.S...

...When such data as Bowen & Bok use are released not only to those who favor the policy that these data are meant to test but are also made as freely available to Charles Murray, the Thernstroms, or other critics of racial quotas as to defenders like Bowen & Bok, then we can have more confidence...

...Still on the subject of statistics, we are puzzled by Sowell's continued reference to a black graduation rate at Berkeley of 3o percent...

...Meanwhile the White House ignored its legal obligation to inform Congress about any new developments related to nuclear proliferation...

...Thus each morning the Pentagon publishes some 6,000 copies of the Early Bird, and also puts it on the Internet...

...they also showed increased activity by personnel and vehicles...

...However much Messieurs Bowen & Bok proclaim that race is just one of many factors taken into account in the admissions process, we must nevertheless ask: How is it that these other factors, whatever they are, always work out in such a way that they counter-balance wide differences in such objectively observable criteria as test scores and grades...

...On the other hand, satellite photographs taken just before the inspection team arrived showed that construction at Kumchangni was continuing...

...But fair is fair, and issues are complex...

...How can these other factors repeatedly and consistently—year in and year out, for decades on end, in colleges, universities, engineering schools, and military academies, all across the length and breadth of this country—always turn out to favor those with lower test scores and grades...

...She made the same claim before a Senate committee in July...

...Supposedly they would be less helpful in building nuclear weapons, and would be used instead to produce nuclear energy for electric power...

...Assurances by Bowen & Bok of what their unpublished statistical analyses show might be more convincing if so many institutions of higher education had not kept such data under lock and key for years, while issuing similar assurances which later turned out to be grossly misleading or untrue when actual institutional data leaked out...

...B ut based on the evidence Gertz has amassed in Betrayal, the current administration is not likely to do this...

...The question, then, was why...

...WILLIAM G. BOWEN -DEREK Box The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation New York, New York Thomas Sowell replies: No serious discussion of "affirmative action" policies will be possible so long as its proponents insist on making a distinction without a difference between racial quotas and such euphemisms as "race-sensitive admissions...

...It is based not on ideology, politics or self-interest, but on a decade of conscientious reporting...

...o4Correspondence (Continued from page II) pattern of results holds: students at every SAT level, including those with SATs in the noo range, were more likely to graduate, to earn more money, to be more satisfied with college, and so on, if they went to a SEL- 1 school than if they went to a SEL-2 school...

...We have steadfastly opposed quotas, set-asides, and separate admissions tracks...

...But there was no immediate answer, of course, and the only safe conclusion was that Kumchangni, and indeed all of North Korea, still needed watching...

...Nonetheless, in a formal declaration in 1997, President Clinton said North Korea was "complying" with the Agreed Framework...

...As Gertz has reported in the Washington Times, U.S...

...The White House demonstrated an unwillingness, or inability, to deal with difficult issues...

...Rather than telling the public about the continuing arms buildups by China and Russia, it would pretend the buildups did not exist...

...North Korea apparently had suspended, or frozen, the plutonium facility at one installation, Yongbyon, while it built another facility at Kumchangni, only 25 miles away...

...There was no graphite reactor...

...Their words, not their deeds, were what counted, and realistic assessments of their potential military JOHN CORRY is TAS's senior correspondent and Presswatch columnist...

...Patrick Hughes, the director of the Defense Intelligence 74 July 1999 • The American Spectator Agency, who was in the hearing room with Albright, interrupted...

...In March 1998 Madeleine Albright told a House committee that the White House "has succeeded in freezing North Korea's dangerous nuclear program...

...As for the historically black colleges, no amount of obfuscation can cover up the plain fact that their large and continuing role in creating a black middle class undermines the Bowen-Bok thesis that it is imperative that blacks get into elite insti76 Ju y 19 99 • The American Spectator...

...threats were ignored so as not to endanger "constructive engagements" and "strategic partnerships...

...Satellite photographs showed a 3,000-volt, high-tension electrical wire constructed around an artificial lake with an artificial island...

...Several other clarifications are in order...

...Worse, it practiced outright deceit...

...James Woolsey, the former CIA director, says Betrayal will be the administration's least favorite book on its foreign policy, and he may very well be right...

...Aubin, who holds a doctorate in national security affairs, analyzes television coverage of defense issues and finds it uninformed...

...If Bowen, Bok, and others must insult our intelligence, must they do it so blatantly...

...Aubin also notes the ease with which the networks tend to label both persons and things as SARKES TARZIAN INC Sarkes Tarzian Television Sarkes Tarzian Radio Broadcasters Making a Difference The American Spectator • July 1999 75 "conservative," "right-wing," or "hardline," and their reluctance to call anyone "liberal" or "left wing...

...The Early Bird reprints news stories and analyses about defense issues, and in its way is one of the most influential publications in the country...

...North Korean defectors insisted that the Communist regime would never surrender its plan to be a nuclear power...

...Second, the exclusion of the HBCUs from the database used in River, was not, as Sowell asserts, because these institutions "did not have affirmative action policies," but rather because they did not enroll sufficient numbers of white students to permit comparisons of outcomes by race...

...he also said it was "not significantly diverting" the U.S.-supplied heavy fuel oil for purposes other than those specified in the agreement...

...And this grim prospect has come about, according to Gertz, primarily for two reasons...

...Distorting Defense: Network News and National Security, by Stephen P. Aubin,is a kind of companion book to Betrayal...

...One reason for this, he writes in his intelligent book, is that too often the White House, and not the Pentagon, provides the focus for coverage...

...would help to replace North Korea's graphite reactors with two light-water reactors...

...Military forces were deployed for security...

...After all, the issue is not whether any minority students should be admitted to selective colleges, but whether those admitted should meet the same standards met by others...

...In their letter, as in the book itself, Messieurs Bowen & Bok evade the central issue: Do those minority students admitted with lower objective qualifications (scores, grades) have lower performances and higher dropout rates than students admitted with the usual qualifications, whether these other students are minorities or not...

...The administration may be given credit for trying...

...As to the source of the data behind my statement that "the black graduation rate has been 3o percent" at Berkeley, it was page 125 of the Fall 1998 issue of the Public Interest...

...intelligence agencies decided last March that North Korea was working on uranium-enrichment techniques that would allow it to produce fuel for nuclear weapons...

...The NCAA study of graduation rates at all Division I schools shows that 61 percent of the black students who entered Berkeley in 1989 graduated within six years...

...The deal would be worth billions to North Korea—South Korea and Japan would help share the cost—and, knowing a good thing when it saw it, North Korea accepted...

...The administration's policies have endangered not only the United States, but the peace and security of the entire world...

...A country that was experiencing widespread famine and living off international handouts (along with the $i billion or a so a year it made from exporting missiles) was still devoting resources to building a complex of tunnels...

...The actual figure was 27 percent, but I trust that my modestly optimistic over-estimate will be forgiven...

...Finally, in commenting on the broad lessons to be learned from River, Sowell fails to mention one of the major findings that goes directly to the question of the benefits of race- sensitive admissions policies for all students...

...As one official says, "This building still goes by print...

...Betrayal—its subtitle is "Howthe Clinton Administration Undermined American Security" — provides a long and carefully reported list of arms-control failures...

...We refer to the data presented in Chapter 8 that demonstrate that students of all races who attended these colleges and universities believe that the racial and ethnic diversity on their campuses contributed greatly to their ability to "work effectively and get along well with people from different races/cultures...

...Subsequently Clinton praised this as a great victory for arms control: One of the world's most dangerous countries had agreed to a nuclear weapons "freeze...

...As Justice Powell surmised in his Bakke opinion, enrolling a diverse student population confers educational benefits on white and black students alike...

...Aubin, though scrupulously nonpartisan, dryly notes that the "conservatives" are usually depicted as "bad guys...

...That means he can offer an informed opinion: President Clinton's most important legacy will not be his serio-comic sex scandals, but his dead serious disarmament of the United States and his self-serving appeasement of powerful and determined enemies...

...The freeze had been a ploy...

...Presumably this was an acknowledgment that at least some of the fuel oil had gone to the armed forces...

...Obviously North Korea is, and will continue to be, a dangerous, unpredictable nation...

...The DIA had reached its conclusions about the nuclear facility at Kumchangni some eighteen months before, and had passed them on to Albright's office...

...Moreover, very large majorities of white and black graduates of these schools believe that their colleges and universities should either maintain or strengthen the emphasis they place now on enrolling diverse student populations...

...for this reason, it is particularly distressing to see the title you have given to your article: "...on Racial Quotas" (our emphasis...

...intelligence analysts concluded that the site would be used to house a graphite reactor, possibly the same one that had been in use at Yongbyon...

...Meanwhile Aubin also finds that despite the pervasiveness of television, Pentagon policymakers turn elsewhere for serious news...

...Lies, Distortion, Betrayal and Tunnel Vision Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security Bill Gertz Regnery / 299 pages / $2795 Distorting Defense: Network News and National Security Stephen P. Aubin Praeger / 262 pages / $59.95 REVIEWED BY John Corry T oward the end of Betrayal, Bill Gertz makes a judgment, and because he is qualified to make it, we should pay attention...

...In late May of this year, however, an American inspection team visited Kumchangni, and found...empty tunnels...

...In short, there is overwhelming support for race-sensitive admissions among those students of all races who actually attended the schools where such policies were used...

...And as George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, told the Senate last February, the CIA was "deeply concerned" about the possibility of a "covert program...

...Gertz covers security and defense issues for the Washington Times, and, just as the blurbs on his book jacket say, he does it more knowledgeably than any other daily reporter...

...Indeed, one defector, the chief ideologist of the Korean Worker's Party, said North Korea already possessed nuclear weapons, but apparently had not conducted underground tests—the final stage in nuclear weapons development—because it did not want to arouse new suspicions about its secret weapons program...

...It should be treated accordingly...

...Meanwhile it put its faith in treaties, promises, and the supposed good intentions of others...

...By insisting on lumping all minority students together, they evade this question entirely...

...Policy was tailored not for the real world, but for a world of the administration's own choosing...

...At the same time, evidence mounted that even when it had agreed to the freeze, and the so-called Agreed Framework, in 1994, North Korea did not intend to abide by the rules...

...It was clear that Albright had either misunderstood or ignored the information—which would have meant she was unfit to be secretary of state —or else, and more likely, she had been caught in an outright lie...

...The State Depaitnient then issued a statement that said the inspection team had "credited" North Korea for its "cooperation" and for giving it "unhampered access" to the Kumchangni site...

...Rather than penalizing China or Russia, say, for violating international agreements, the administration would amend the agreements...

...The administration, suspicious of the military to begin with, placed economic gains ahead of security needs...

...intelligence agencies found that North Korea was building an underground complex in Kumchangni that could be used to make plutonium—the stuff of nuclear warheads for missiles...

...The following month, though, when senators questioned her about the intelligence reports on Kumchangni, Albright said she had not known about them in July...

...First, contrary to the language used in places by Sowell, we do not equate "race-sensitive admissions" (which means taking race into account as one factor among many) with quotas...