The Press: Fair or Foul

Sir / Although a Nixon supporter, I can find no fault with your excellent cover story and essay on the American press [July 8].

HANS G. ENGEL, M.D.

San Fernando, Calif.

Sir / The defendant has sat in judgment on his case and found himself innocent. Now isn't that a surprise?

W. WENDELL HEILMAN

Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Sir / The silver lining in Watergate has been the demonstration of the necessity for an investigative, and yes, aggressive press.

JAMES LEY JR.

Green Bay, Wis.

Sir / I would gladly vote for repeal of the press's First Amendment rights.

ERIC LYSS

Bodega Bay, Calif.

Sir / You seem to be appalled by the apathy of the public, and even Congress, toward Watergate and seemingly feel it is, and was, your duty to beat and continue to beat it to death. You have not shown, and I doubt if you can ever show, anything more than what the public already feels: that Watergate was about as alarming as a group of small boys trying to steal green apples.

DALE M. UNDERWOOD

Santa Rosa, Calif.

Sir / If we people in the smaller cities had to rely on our (one only) morning paper, we would be skipping to the grocery store, wearing our rose-colored glasses, paying high prices on grain and dairy products without knowing why. Thanks to publications such as yours, the Washington Post, and national news coverage, we know why!

(MRS.) MARCELLA LAROCHE

Terre Haute, Ind.

Sir / The definition of "newsman" is changing from "one who reports the news" to "one who makes the news."

JIM HALAVIN

Amherst, N.Y.

Sir / A survivor of "the old George Seldes-A.J. Liebling school" wishes to say that your cover story and Essay make up one of the fairest reviews of the journalistic situation he has read in the past 60 years. It is also one of the most alarming. The press deserved the attacks and criticisms of Will Irwin (1910) and Upton Sinclair (1920) and the muckrakers who followed, and it needs today the watchdog and gadfly activities of the new critical weeklies, but all in all it is now a better medium of mass information. It therefore deserves more public confidence than the polls you quote indicate. The 1972 Watergate disclosures, it is true, were made by only a score of the members of the mass media, but I remember Teapot Dome when only one of our 1,750 dailies (the Albuquerque Morning Journal) dared to tell the truth about White House corruption. We have come a long way since.

GEORGE SELDES

Windsor, Vt.

The Real Prisoners

Sir / Since there was no script and I have no copy of TV's 2,251 Days, it is impossible for me to verify what you quote as my opinion of the North Vietnamese: "petty, vindictive, mean little people ... an armed group of paranoid children" [July 8].

The quotation as reported was accurate only in respect to the North Vietnamese Communists who held me captive. However, it would be a grave injustice to call this the national characteristic of millions of sensitive, creative and patriotic Vietnamese both North and South. My ire is directed toward an ideology. My empathy is for those enslaved by Communism.

The average North Vietnamese was more of a prisoner outside the walls of Hoa Lo than I was within. After all, my term was only for six years; they are lifers. May God give them strength.

RICHARD A. STRATTON

Commander, U.S.N. Sunnyvale, Calif.

Khatyn and Katyn

Sir / It is regrettable that in its coverage of President Nixon's visit to Khatyn, the village near Minsk where 149 Byelorussians perished at the hand of the Nazis, the press ignored another massacre not far away. In Katyn, near Smolensk, more than 4,000 Polish officers taken prisoner by the Russians at the outset of the war were executed by NKVD troops in April 1940.

The Russians blamed the Nazis for these atrocities, but as an officer in the Polish underground then, I received firsthand, from Red Cross investigators on-the-spot information--later corroborated by a U.S. congressional committee--that the massacre had in fact been perpetrated by the Soviets. It is noteworthy that in the Nuremberg trials, Nazi leaders, at Soviet insistence, were accused of the murders, and despite the presence of a Soviet judge on the tribunal, they were never convicted.

The similarity in the names of the two places may be a coincidence, but to Poles and others familiar with the event, it suggests that the President was used by Brezhnev to shroud in confusion the responsibility for one of the war's most vicious crimes.

STEFAN KORBONSKI

Chairman

Assembly of Captive Nations

Washington, D.C.

Licit Lovers' Guide?

Sir / Lovers' Guide to America [July 1] really got to me. I was all set to make reservations at any of the romantic rendezvous for lovers you described.

Then it struck me! Would we have to fake our credentials? Would they let us register? Are we out of it all? We're married!

ELLIE WEGENER

Philadelphia

Dallas-Fort Worth

Sir / Your article "Airport: Impossible" [June 24] was hardly fair. You completely failed to mention the excellent Surtran bus service from downtown Fort Worth and Dallas areas to the airport for only $2.50. You are taken to the door of your airline, only a few steps from the boarding gate.

MRS. TED KLEIN JR.

Fort Worth

Sir / The American Airlines terminal is not the airport's busiest. Braniff's is. American does not have a security checkpoint at each gate. Braniff and Texas International did not send some of their flights back to Love Field as a result of the snafus at Dallas-Fort Worth, but to compete with Southwest Airlines, which remains at Love.

KENNETH W. WIELAND

Lewisville, Texas

The Death of Danielou

Sir / Re your report on the death of Jean Cardinal Danielou who died while visiting the apartment of a young Parisienne [July 1]: Isn't it lucky, though, that Christ died on that Cross instead of in Mary Magdalene's home?

JOSEPH T. MCGLOIN, S.J.

Tacoma, Wash.

Only the Facts

Sir / In your account of the Kalb brothers' book called Kissinger [July 1] it is reported that after the U.S. Government had decided to order a military alert during the Middle East war, Secretary Kissinger "called then British Ambassador Lord Cromer, who responded snippily: 'Why tell us, Henry? Tell your friends--the Russians.' " I can confirm that no such remark was made by me to Mr. Kissinger. Our conversation was entirely factual, and I thanked Secretary Kissinger for putting me in a position to inform the British government of the decision of the U.S. Government.

CROMER

London

Jesus' First Snowflake

Sir / In my opinion, anyone who asserts, as Delores Wegner does in "The New Counter-Reformation" [July 8], that the first snowflake of compromise was the first time we said "Holy Spirit" instead of Holy Ghost or the first hamburger we ate on Friday deserves to have her faith shook up to make room for real faith. Jesus' "first snowflake" was when he picked the heads of wheat on a Sabbath day, saying: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:28).

(THE REV.) ALEXIS MORRIS, O.F.M.

Paterson, N.J.

Sir / As a young liberal, I remain confident that the renewal and reforms will continue. For besides the ecclesiastical domino theory, we young radical clergy also have the "dinosaur theory" on our side, i.e., we are going to outlive the ecclesiastical oldtimers who, by failing to adapt to their new environment, will likewise fail to survive.

(THE REV.) SPENCER STOPA

Albuquerque

Sir / Yes, the Latin Tridentine Mass is alive and well, existing in many small Mass centers throughout the U.S. However, many of us who are traditionalists do not advocate abolishment of the new rites and liturgies. Instead, we wonder why a single Latin Mass could not be offered in every Roman Catholic church every Sunday and holy day? With the great number of Sunday Masses in the average parish, would the use of one Latin Mass be such a problem?

(THE REV.) JOSEPH F. ROSE

San Jose, Calif.

Sir / At last, someone to tell me what is going on in the Roman Catholic Church. Consider my dilemma. Born the grandson of a circuit-riding Methodist minister, I, at 39, like John Henry Newman, finally became convinced or was led by the Holy Spirit to the imperative of an ultramontane church and communion with and obedience to the Bishop of Rome.

But not only do I find that the church, whose breviary has proclaimed for 1,900 years that mysticism and obedience to a teaching church were the narrow road back to heaven, no longer practices a liturgical mysticism; I cannot even find one priest in this archdiocese who wants to confirm me simply for my salvation rather than dwell interminably on a Protestant-style pseudo-psychological introspection.

I am convinced that all the traditional Catholic values are still in force, that it is those who make the church's image today who are Christologically false. But my dilemma remains: Who will, who can, truly establish the communion with the Vatican that I must have? And others like me?

DELWYN R. AMERINE

Philadelphia

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