Letters
Guilty Until Proven Innocent The last two paragraphs of "Just a Trace of Poison" (Comment, March issue) correctly identify what is probably the Government's most fundamental policy problem in the...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...
...Moral preaching about the evils of U.S...
...The overwhelming cruelty that is the major characteristic of war makes heroes of many of its victims...
...Fred A. Glienna South Pasadena, California The author replies: If I had said what Fred Glienna thinks I said, I would have written a very angry letter to myself...
...To say the least, it is not my view...
...Ralph Nader's organizations have published various alternative career guides, and successful conferences on alternative careers have been held recently even on elite campuses...
...If Hentoff didn't mean this, I wish he would clarify his position, and if he did mean this, then he finally has managed to get me to disagree with him...
...Although this is still a legitimate point for concern, it will probably be a long time before CIA influence is rooted out of the George-towns of the world...
...Though I do not doubt that SAIS attracts right-wing students, I am surprised to see it described as an institution that discourages progressive thought...
...I enjoyed the article thoroughly...
...Only fifteen others have been indicted, all in what the Government admits was an attempt to prosecute only the "most vocal" opponents of registration...
...Whether in economics, civics, American history, or almost any other subject, the dozen or so books we would review were generally so homogenized that I once suggested they be placed in a receptacle and one drawn out at random as the committee's selection...
...Further, the SAIS curriculum, as presented in the catalog, emphasizes a political economy/sociological approach...
...Guilty Until Proven Innocent The last two paragraphs of "Just a Trace of Poison" (Comment, March issue) correctly identify what is probably the Government's most fundamental policy problem in the area of protection against toxic chemicals...
...Mary Engelberg North Bergen, New Jersey When Milton Mayer writes his best, I wonder why so few others can do as he does...
...Government institutions will not be relevant unless the critics have something to offer...
...Though ideological labels are avoided, according to the catalog, radical perspectives on dependency theory, modernization, and the North/ South dialogue are seriously addressed...
...It is true that draft registration has been so widely (if quietly) resisted as to be unenforceable...
...The fruits are not all that sweet...
...When that kind of learning doesn't take place in a college, the fault is with the professors and the textbook publishers, not the students...
...Interestingly, most of Rothschild's interviewees were either ignorant of the CIA's history of illegal covert operations or tried to rationalize away their misgivings...
...Edward John Hasbrouck Federal Prison Camp Lewisburg, Pennsylvania Sunset in the East While painting a gray picture of life in Czechoslovakia in "Sunset in the East" (February issue), Milton Mayer suddenly changes the color to rose...
...Such information could be aggressively distributed to university career-placement offices, and could lead to the formation of alternative alumni networks...
...could galvanize effective student opposition to 'imperial ventures' by threatening to disrupt their lives directly...
...We believe it is in the best interest of other university students to hear about our activities, to realize that campus activism is not a thing of the past, and to organize similar protests...
...I believe that the utter horror of nuclear war has so far been the true deterrent, that this has been so despite rather than because of official policy, and that the balance between horror and deterrence will determine whether a nuclear war is fought...
...But I have faith in the Reagan Administration...
...It should not be too surprising that in times of tight job markets, the CIA is making a comeback at such places...
...To this day, my files bulge with material Hentoff could have used to good advantage...
...From time to time, when it is expedient, he projects an image of moderation...
...But for most nations, rigid repression is the price that must be paid for economic security...
...Most remarkably, across the years he is a dogged right-wing ideologue at the same time that he is a compromiser and a politician with many faces...
...Ronnie Dugger New York, New York The True Deterrent Sidney Lens need not cite the forty-three-year peaceful interlude before World War I to reject the thirty-eight-year nuclear peace as proof that deterrence works ("The Deterrence Myth," Reflections, February issue...
...This is Nossiter's opinion, but it is contrary to mine...
...According to my Information Please Almanac, the Czech suicide rate in 1977 was 21.3 per 100,000 compared to 12.5 for the United States...
...He was presenting himself to the country as a moderate, but these transcripts showed beyond a doubt that deep down he was a hard-line right-wing ideologue with fully formed and recently expressed prejudices on all of the outstanding issues of the times...
...It is also true that most recent anti-draft organizing has been prompted by the loyalty-oath-style Declaration of Registration Compliance now required of student-aid applicants...
...The desire for a job upon graduation is a legitimate student concern...
...It is unfortunate that politicians of the warmongering nations always choose to emphasize war's heroics and not its cruelty...
...I am the only person imprisoned for draft resistance, and that is because I chose not to cooperate with the court by presenting a "defense...
...Joseph A. Kleefuss Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...This suggests two strategies for trying to check the growth of the "Central Employment Agency...
...In "Sunset in the East," he was at his best...
...There may be a few countries that can take "open-system" democracy in stride when confronted with economic crisis...
...And yes, everybody should have a shot at college...
...Actually, the system practiced in the "Socialist Bloc" is not socialist at all but something like an extreme form of monopoly capitalism...
...It has no more humane potential than our own system...
...Jeremy Karpatkin Democratic Socialists of America New York, New York The CIA is coming to recruit at Cornell University on March 13, and students are organizing a rally and march in protest...
...I have been upset for many years over the dismal plunge of our education standards, which have fallen so much that ignorance now appears as almost a virtue...
...Indeed, if we take deterrence to mean a rough equivalency of forces (and we are told that nuclear inferiority is no deterrent), then something besides deterrence preserved the peace for at least half of the postwar period, as the Soviet Union struggled for equality...
...Nicaraguan Council of State Member Magda En-riquez recently gave two speeches at Cornell to enthusiastic, standing-room-only crowds...
...Lenny Bruce once said of the Soviet Union, "It's like one big telephone company over there...
...As far back as 1937, while in graduate school, I was persuaded of the failure of American textbooks to encourage or explain democracy...
...Frank Smyth Ridgewood, New Jersey Matthew Rothschild's description of the growing popularity of the CIA as an employer of young people is sadly accurate...
...However, what I wrote was that this dumb rationale for lazy professors and venal textbook publishers was "the current conventional wisdom" among representatives of both fields...
...I guess it's all in the eyes of the beholder...
...Mayer feels the communist system is in some way morally superior to the Western capitalist system...
...The bomber was a Lancaster, not a B-17, and it was hit by fire from a German ARNOLD ROTH fighter plane, not by anti-aircraft fire...
...This may be less satisfying than the face-to-face confrontations of the 1960s, but it is probably more effective, given the cautious campus mood of the 1980s...
...Nat Hentoff New York, New York Ihave been a member of several textbook selection committees in thirty-three years of service as social studies teacher and department head in a Detroit senior high school...
...The accepted principle, innocent until proven guilty, appropriate as it is in criminal law, must not be applied to questions of public safety and possible risks to the survival of all life...
...Mynarski was killed, but the tail gunner was thrown clear when the plane crashed, and survived to tell the story of Mynarski's heroics...
...It might be more fruitful to concentrate on such campuses as Ohio State and Berkeley...
...Rothschild's closing point, though, is well taken—most of his interviewees are from elite schools that are traditional breeding grounds of CIA operatives...
...I was told by scholars in the field that SAIS is the most liberal of the policy-oriented schools...
...Permit me to quote briefly from my introduction to On Reagan to this point: "In 1980 the Reagan campaign staff deliberately and successfully withheld from the national press the complete sets of the transcripts of his revelatory radio broadcasts between 1975 and 1979...
...What Nat Hentoff reveals was well known to those of us who took the assignment seriously...
...First, basic nonpolemical education about the role of the CIA in world politics is needed...
...Richard Embs Columbus, Ohio cannot accept Milton Mayer's holier-than-thou attitude toward Soviet communism...
...Free press...
...Educational events, such as films and talks, regularly draw several hundred students...
...Higher education for gas pumpers and telephone line workers may cause them to question processes and practices they might otherwise ignore...
...When safety is at stake, the principle must be guilty until proven innocent...
...The system profits greatly and runs untroubled when populated by a work force that can make the machines run and never question whether the machines should be running...
...If there is a nuclear war, those who remain will assure us that only deterrence prevented it for so long...
...The Dumbing of America" (February issue) was of particular worth, since it revealed the decline and erosion of our educational standards from a perspective of which I was unaware...
...Am H. Pearson Ithaca, New York The Dumbing of America Nat Hentoffs First Amendment writings are among the most important The Progressive publishes, and I always turn to them with anticipation and interest...
...The American press is not willing to say, "The emperor has no clothes...
...The unmistakable implication is that a menial, mundane job disqualifies someone who may not be too bright, or too ambitious, or too lucky, from a shot at any improvement or enrichment from higher education...
...These strategies probably stand a better chance of counteracting CIA influence on campus than polemics or confrontation...
...Ongoing actions at the Seneca Army Depot have stimulated local peace organizations, and protests against recruitment by defense contractors have nearly doubled in size since last year...
...Even at elite universities like Georgetown, Princeton, and Johns Hopkins, where the prevailing ethos favors a "nonideologi-cal, functional" orientation, it is possible to draw large crowds to hear accredited experts describe what the CIA has done in Guatemala, Chile, Iran, and Cuba, not to mention what it is doing in Nicaragua today...
...Brent Mersey Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Working for the CIA As a candidate for admission to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, I was alarmed by Matthew Rothschild's "Central Employment Agency" (February issue...
...The Czechs, we are told, have child care and schooling "far better than ours," their schools being "uninfected by drugs," and moreover there is "much less alcoholism than we have, much less suicide, much less divorce, and child abuse and abandonment...
...These blessings, Mayer implies, are the fruits of communism...
...However, he wrote something so seemingly atypical of him that I can only hope that he did not mean what I am afraid he meant: "Furthermore, too many youngsters in college now have no business being there...
...James C. Murphy Victoria, British Columbia Heroics and Cruelty President Reagan's anecdote about the World War II bomber pilot (Editor's Memo, February issue) bears striking resemblance to a documented case involving a Canadian turret gunner from Winnipeg named Andrew Mynarski, who was posthumously awarded a Medal of Valour...
...Second, the student Left needs to take campus career-ism seriously...
...Your President does have a flair for melodrama and may borrow from unreliable sources (such as movies), but heroic acts are not uncommon in war...
...And no communist country provides schools that teach people to think...
...The Scandinavian countries may fall into that category...
...Everyone bailed out except Mynarski, who stayed and unsuccessfully attempted to free the trapped man...
...Despite the generally depressing level of student apathy, a substantial network of activist groups has developed in the Ithaca area...
...Just what the hell does he mean by that...
...This chilling effect on all student and youth movements goes a long way toward explaining the current low profile of those movements...
...It is clear that the kinds of confrontational protests mentioned by Rothschild are neither effective in rallying student support nor relevant to the needs of "today's college kids" who are seeking out the CIA as a good job opportunity...
...Philip S. Riggs Des Moines, Iowa Reagan as Ideologue Iwould not want your readers to draw an incorrect inference from the first two paragraphs of Bernard D. Nossiter's review of my book, On Reagan (February issue), in which Nossiter advances his opinion that Reagan "is not, as he is often described,, an ideologue," but is to the contrary "just another opportunistic politician...
...He is always willing to subscribe to the liberal verities, the general ideals, values, and purposes (treating everyone equally, the rights of the accused, helping the poor, the separation of church and state, protecting the environment, reducing nuclear arms), but he enters into battle against almost every practical attempt to make them real, plucking from his quiver whichever of his ample supply of conservative principles comes to hand and dispatching it on a high arc into the heart of the liberal enemy...
...Only after registration is repealed, however, will young men be free to raise their voices in the chorus for survival...
...Interest in Central American issues has also increased...
...twenty years ago, they would have been pumping gas or working for the telephone company after receiving a high school diploma...
...Most male potential student organizers did not register for the draft and are justifiably afraid to attract the attention of law enforcers by speaking out on other, related issues...
...One option is greater publicity about alternative careers—in community organizations, not-for-profit groups, international aid organizations like Oxfam, and others...
...Barry Bennett Scio, Oregon Chilling Effect off the Draft Unfortunately, Anne M. Rice is mistaken when she suggests (Letters, February issue) that "reinstituting the draft...
...The argument that the proof of deterrence lies in the avoidance of nuclear war violates one of the fundamental tenets of logical thought: relationship does not imply causality...
...Perhaps one of your readers could direct me to such a school...
...A strong educational system should always include the participation of those for whom college is not a requirement but a chance to add some depth and resonance to lives that through no fault of their own may be rich in neither...
...The CIA is experiencing a renaissance in university career development offices throughout the country, and campus activists are increasingly frustrated about how to deal with it...
...Electronic and print journalists give us half-truths and warmed-up cliches...
...Thanks to an uninformed public, the only societal changes in the United States are cosmetic ones...
...I agree that everybody ought to have a chance to learn how to question everything...
...a press so free that events in El Salvador and Honduras are being downplayed...
...The tail gunner was trapped in the burning plane...
...But one of the most insidious and least noticed effects of draft registration has been its success in suppressing student organizing on other issues...
...Many people in the peace movement lost interest in draft registration once it became clear that nonregistration had prevented reinstatement of the draft...
...It is well known that communism failed to stem alcoholism and divorce in the Soviet Union, and friends in Poland tell me that drug abuse is spreading in that country among the young people...
...As a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who does not intend to work for the CIA, I would like to find a graduate political science department or international studies program which allows for radical analysis and sincere debate...
...Janet Hansen Moses Lake, Washington Milton Mayer mentions the "free press" in the West—a press so free that reporters were not allowed into Grenada at the time of our "rescue mission...
Vol. 48 • April 1984 • No. 4
