LETTERS

...If Glastris’s contention-that the inability of American corporations to compete globally is caused by labor-were correct, we would have seen vigorous growth in that ability during this period of declining labor power...

...But, in fact, as could be easily determined with a five-minute phone call to a reference librarian, in 1990-91 the average salary of all college teachers in the United States was $43,720...

...The yuppies didn’t cause the collapse of the American labor movement...

...We will be like any other third-world country where people make their living by waiting on the tables of rich foreign tourists...

...SANFORD THIER Irvine...

...My point was not that all academics make such salaries-I know Professor Goldstein is far from being alone-but that there is an elite class of public officials, journalists, and academics who are now earning salaries that tend to make them identify with the rich rather than with the average man...

...The “information” printed by Peters could have been checked easily...

...anyone who writes so well should...

...And in both Germany and Japan, the countries that are beating our brains out in the world markets, union membership is stronger and more universal than it is in this country...

...On that question, Glastris is even further from the truth than Geoghegan is...

...California . Dollars for scholars In the July/August issue [“Tilting at Windmills”], Charles Peters claims that “academics” have salaries that “range from $75,000 to $200,000...

...If I may add a personal example: I am a full professor at Oakland University who has taught for more than 15 years and authored four books...

...ROBERT J. GOLDSTEIN Rochester, Michigan The editor replies: At Yale the average professor gets $32,300...

...ANDREW G. WEBB San Diego, California...

...The defense and promotion of our country’s interests will require an expert, aggressive foreign service...

...And that hardly builds the self-respect that Crosby says he finds lacking in the ranks of his colleagues...

...If it doesn’t hurt those economies to protect their workers and it hasn’t helped our economy to savage ours, how does he reach the conclusion that competing globally can only be achieved at the expense of the working man’s paycheck...

...MK Horan is president of the American Foreign Service Association...

...HUME HORAN Washington, D.C...

...In addition to being in on investigations of the Beirut Marine barracks bombing and the KAL Flight 007 destruction, I was involved in the Grenada invasion intelligence effort and remember reporting that there was no evidence to support the invasion, yet hearing the president lie about the threat to Americans and our national security...

...Finally, when Glastris claims, “What labor needs is a new justifcation, a persuasive argument that strong unions will benefit not just a slice of the working class but the country as a whole,” he fails to realize that the working class is the country as a whole...

...NSA was meticulously fair in analyzing foreign intelligence...

...WILLIAM E. ODOM Washington, D.C...

...I subscribe to his view that consular work, too often belittled, is superb training for diplomacy...

...I worked as an intelligence analyst at the National Security Agency from November 1982 until June 1984...

...My salary last year was $42,000...

...My conclusion about Crosby’s article, however, is not so much that I disagree with it but that I am saddened by it...

...As a result of the Bremer Commission (of which I was a member), junior officers should now be processed from exam to recruitment in about an academic year...

...You owe me and your readers an apology...

...at Harvard, $89,600...

...I was astounded to see that your journal has printed an outrageous and groundless lie about my relations with William Casey while I was a serving military officer on the National Security Council staff during the Carter administration [“Who’s Who,” September...

...This data is printed yearly in Academe, a publication of the American Association of University Professors, based on data supplied by college administrators...

...After I left, I kept in touch with friends still at the agency who told me how it had undergone subtle changes under Odom...

...But wiping out labor has only made the American economy worse...

...Does The Washington Monthly just- print whatever comes to mind...

...We will not be a stronger nation when we are all working for the minimum wage...

...Appointing Odom was a way to remedy that “problem...

...After Odom assumed command, I was told, agency reports began to tell the administration more and more of what it wanted to hear...

...If one really wants to locate the reasons for the failure of American corporations, he would do better to look not on the factory floors, but in the corporate board rooms and in our esteemed business schools...

...I have read similar comments in The Washington Monthly before...

...You cite unnamed sources who suggest that I profited from President Carter’s defeat and that, therefore, I might have been Casey’s informant during the Carter administration...

...It boggles the mind that after American managers have led us into 40 years of failure, we still ask their advice on anything...

...Labor pains Paul Glastris is right [“Labor’s Love Lost,” September] when he points out the shortcomings in Thomas Geoghegan’s book, Which Side Are You On...

...Perhaps with time he will find, as I did, that on balance it still serves America with distinction-most recently in the ranks of those on the front lines in places like Kuwait, Riyadh, Tel Aviv, and Liberia...

...And no one can dispute his charge that the service remains deficient in foreign language capability despite credible improvement in recent years...

...But what was the real cause...

...My guess is that Reagan’s advisers were rankled by NSA’s refusal to back up the desire to invade with phony “intelligence...

...But on the other hand, we haven’t stood completely still...

...Tilt...

...But the problem with articles such as Crosby’s is that the result is to malign the entire foreign service and lessen public respect and understanding for what it does...

...They will receive their career sub-specialty (“cone”) assignments only after four years and thus can look the service over before requesting a specialty...

...While working at NSA, I greatly admired the integrity I found everywhere I went in the agency...

...I had never met, seen, or even heard of Casey until he was appointed as director of the Central Intelligence Agency during the Reagan administration...

...LETTERS Solid State In 38 years in the foreign service, I saw a lot of the shortcomings that Harry Crosby [“Too At Home Abroad,” September] describes...

...In fact, of 2,530 colleges in the United States, the average salary at only one, California Institute of Technology, exceeds $75,000...

...above all, I wish he had met (as I did) colleagues and bosses whom he profoundly admired and who could serve as examples of what he wanted to be when he grew up: a senior officer, too...

...I hope he stays with the service...

...With the end of the Cold War, the purely military and intelligence role in our foreign policy will decline...

...The foreign service has all the demerits of a hierarchical and highly competitive federal or, for that matter, private, organization: instances of foolish pretension, risk-aversion, and a lack of self-assertion in the face of power...

...Mz Laingen is president of the American Academy of Diplomacy...

...Crosby is also right when he calls for more initiative, more cultural outreach, more professionalism...

...Crosby has it partly right...

...Odom was probably “mysteriously selected” to be NSA director because those who selected him knew he could be counted on to change the agency’s staunch neutral focus to one more in keeping with the administration’s biases...

...Not only do I flatly deny every aspect of such slanderous speculation, but I am appalled that you, a man who lived through the McCarthy era, would allow your journal to engage in such a McCarthyite practice today...

...I wish he would have more fun in his assignments...

...And, yes, in the visa mill at Nuevo Laredo...

...BRUCE LAINGEN Washington, D.C...

...Senior officers, starting in 1993, will have to speak at least one world language to be promoted to the senior foreign service...