Letters to the editor

Attacking HIV in Africa

Thank you for running a very important Commentary column by Michael Fumento (“African AIDS myths,” Sunday) on irresponsible assumptions regarding heterosexual HIV transmission in Africa and the overlooking of poor injection hygiene as a factor.

Three forms of political correctness — left (HIV is everyone’s disease), right (HIV is the price of sexual sin) and center (large well-intentioned public assistance is good for Africa) — have joined in an unwitting collaboration that has resulted in HIV, a blood-borne virus, rashly and mysteriously being regarded as simply just another (albeit deadlier) venereal disease. Such a conclusion has been made without serious scientific scrutiny of how heterosexual HIV transmission occurred and without any explanation or even serious examination of why this rashly assumed change in the nature of HIV’s spread seems to work on only one continent.

And all that was done without a serious set of systematic studies first to specifically discount well-known major transmission routes (unsafe injections and specific types of sexual intercourse).

It is time to no longer take international health organization statements and exculpatory self-designed studies on this subject at face value. If serious study is to be done, both the dissenting scientists and the international institutions should collaborate on a study design to trace the authentic roots, prevalence and transmission of this terrible scourge.

MATTHEW HOGAN

Silver Spring

A book, the CIA and the presidential election

I am always pleased when a newspaper prints an article — good or bad — about my book “Imperial Hubris.” Clifford May’s April 17 Commentary column, “Better with spies in the cold?” is decidedly the latter, but that’s his right, and I would welcome a debate with him on the substance of his points.

One issue I need to raise is Mr. May’s statement that my book was intended to undermine President Bush’s re-election campaign. This has been stated by the commentator Robert Novak and more recklessly by Sen. John McCain and others.

I believe these statements are inaccurate and damaging to the CIA — at a time when it is in the vanguard of the nation’s defense. Unfortunately, neither Mr. Novak nor Mr. McCain was privy to what I believe is the real reason the CIA allowed me to publish “Imperial Hubris.”

I have tried to provide information I believe is pertinent to this issue in a new chapter in the paperback edition of the book; the new chapter was reviewed and cleared by CIA.

To put this material succinctly, in June 1999, I wrote a memorandum to the 12 most senior officials of the CIA — including Director George Tenet — outlining about a dozen serious intra-intelligence-community problems that my officers had encountered in attacking Osama bin Laden.

Each of these could have been solved by senior CIA management, and the memo noted that the agency and innocent Americans would pay dearly and bloodily if the problems were not fixed.

Mr. Tenet, Jack Downing (then deputy director for operations) and James Pavitt (then Mr. Downing’s assistant and later his successor) ended my career after receiving and reading the memo. None of the problems, as far as I know, was fixed, and no one responsible for the problems was removed.

I spent part of the next year reading in the CIA library and the next four mostly in positions with titles only and without performance appraisal reports to allow me to compete for position or promotion. I became a nonperson.

When senior managers requested my assistance in debriefing captured al Qaeda fighters, Mr. Pavitt and others refused, even though they knew my first book, “Through Our Enemies’ Eyes,” had impressed al Qaeda leaders with its understanding of the group’s ideology, motivation and intent.

In my opinion, Messrs. Tenet, Pavitt, et. al let “Imperial Hubris” be published to cover their bureaucratic behinds. After deliberately breaking agency management and nondiscrimination rules vis-a-vis my career, and later finding the book they suppressed would have helped prepare America for war, they were afraid I would turn to legal redress to expose their discrimination and pettiness to the public. This I had no intention of doing until none of them stepped forward to refute the charges that the CIA used my book to interfere in the 2004 election.

Again, I welcome criticism of my book, but I will not stand by and continue to listen silently to the canard about the CIA’s trying to influence U.S. politics. As in the case of Mr. May’s criticisms, I would welcome a debate with any of the above-mentioned gentlemen about what I have said here.

For you see, they have put themselves in a corner. If they were not afraid of my seeking legal redress, they — and not the CIA as an institution — did indeed try to influence the presidential election with my book.

MICHAEL F. SCHEUER

Falls Church

Fond memories of Pan Am

Thank you very much for your welcome front-page article “Last flight from Saigon relived after 30 years” (Friday) and Wesley Pruden’s Friday column commemorating the 30th anniversary of Pan Am’s final flight from Vietnam and the airline’s distinguished service to our country and others in Southeast Asia (“The really friendly skies of Pan Am,” Nation).

Pan American World Airways was a great carrier and a foremost representative of the American way around the world. Its triumphs were one of the major reasons why English is the primary language spoken in air-traffic control towers throughout the globe.

Pan Am’s extraordinary service to our country was not confined to Southeast Asia, however. Rather, Pan Am assisted our government in many other places around the world by “bending the rules” to extricate American citizens and others who otherwise might not have escaped false incarceration and prosecution by foreign governments on trumped-up charges and by performing too many other good deeds to mention here.

I personally am aware of many of these events. Unfortunately, deregulation was not kind to Pan Am, and even the tons of good will that it had accumulated over time with various government agencies could not save it in the end. Its demise was and is America’s loss.

FRANKLYN J. SELZER

Fairfax

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What a trip down memory lane while reading Wesley Pruden’s column. For a few years, I was part of the R&R flights in and out of Saigon, Cameron Bay and Da Nang. What a pleasure it was to see our young men get to leave once in a while.

Now, Pan Am is gone and United Air Lines is not far behind. Twenty years with one and 17 with the other. Now both pensions are far less than we had planned on for years of work — but they can’t take away those memories. Thanks.

JEFF KANOD

Fort Collins, Colo.

A hidden agenda

Changes to the Whitehurst Freeway are not the only threat to the waterfront (“Save the freeway?” Editorial, Thursday).

Georgetown University wants a huge private boathouse in the C&O Canal National Historical Park that would severely impact the views from both sides of the river and national parkland. The proposal calls for a structure 23 feet higher than the canal towpath and almost the length of a football field, just upstream of Key Bridge. It would block river views from the towpath, the Capital Crescent Trail, and even from Canal Road. The National Park Service is considering the proposal without a comprehensive waterfront plan and without even a full environmental impact statement, both of which should be done to protect the public interest.

FRED MOPSIK

C&O Canal Association

Cabin John