The CIA's Place

To the Editors:

President Carter and certain Congressmen, obsessed by civil rights and aided by sensation-ridden media, have restricted the FBI and CIA [Feb. 6] so severely that these agencies are crippled in warning the U.S. of impending danger.

Louis R. Delmonico

Wichita, Kans.

Your confessional on the damage done to the CIA and our intelligence community is several years late. Where was this wisdom when the injuries were being inflicted?

Frank Powell

Florence, Ala.

In the world of intelligence, it is whether you win or lose and not how you play the game that counts.

Marie Sullivan

Los Angeles

Among agencies working to protect American lives and freedom, it seems that the CIA is the most vital.

Helen Vitikas

Youngstown, Ohio

The old adage, "The difference between men and boys is the cost of their toys," applies more to your CIA cover story than anything I've seen or read in a long time.

Robert M. Fineman

Salt Lake City

When an American agency uses the same tactics that you attribute to the KGB, it makes our protestations of freedom as empty as those of any dictatorship.

Mark H. Kernes

Philadelphia

If the spy plane SR-71 with its filming equipment can cover more than 150 sq. mi. so precisely as to locate a mailbox on a country road, I think the postal service should be given a chance to have a look or two.

Tony Guerra

Englewood, Ohio

Monkeys and Experiments

The article on rhesus monkeys being used in radiation experiments is appalling! India has decided to ban further shipment of rhesus monkeys to the U.S. [Feb. 6], but what of the fate of animals from other sources? God gave man a wonderful gift--the ability to feel compassion. Unfortunately, science is rapidly making man into a robot, devoid of feeling.

(Mrs.) Jane R. Lang

Baltimore

The question is not how long it will take the U.S. to produce an adequate supply of home-grown rhesus monkeys, but how long it will take the U.S. (and the rest of the world) to legislate and enforce controls concerning the humane use of animals with nervous systems capable of registering pain.

Karen Nelson

Berlin

The Black Vote

In your article "Wooing the Black Vote" [Jan. 30] you quote G.O.P. Chairman Brock as saying, "There's no alternative. To survive, we must do it."

This remark gives one the impression that if the G.O.P. had an alternative to courting the blacks in return for their votes, then they might continue on without "wooing" them.

Michael P. Hague

Pittsfield, Mass.

Naming Names

I can't believe men like Editor Herman Obermayer really exist! After the debasement of a rape attack itself, he wants to humiliate the woman even more by printing her name in the paper [Jan. 30]. Women are just beginning to talk about and deal with rape; he'll set us back 20 years.

Would he print it if his wife or daughter were raped?

Gloria Stripe

Waukegan, III.

It is a pity that people like Obermayer victimize others in the name of justice. If he is truly interested in protecting the accused in a rape case, Obermayer should omit both names from his articles.

Jeanne Arfanis

Ithaca, N. Y.

Are men any less embarrassed than women when their names are published in rape cases? Some of these men are innocent (and some women perjurers). Publish the names of both sexes. According to feminist rhetoric and my idea of justice, what's good for the gander is also good for the goose.

R.E. Johannes

Kaneohe, Hawaii

The Canal Debate

I hate to see all the Senators agonizing over how to vote on the Panama Canal treaty [Jan. 30]. A plebiscite would take the burden off their minds. If the Panamanian people are intelligent enough to decide for themselves, why can't we?

James Ruppenthal

North Olmsted, Ohio

In 1954 we effectively insisted that the British give up the Suez Canal. Are we about to ensure the enmity of the peoples of Central and South America--and have the entire world brand us as hypocrites--by opposing the Panama treaties? The treaties, perhaps slightly modified, will safeguard our interests adequately.

James d 'A. Clark

Bellingham, Wash.

President Carter's speech on behalf of the Panama Canal treaties made me sad. It reminded me of Neville Chamberlain's "'peace in our time" speech. Appeasement never settled anything but one's doom.

Our national interest, which includes the security of the Panama Canal, demands our refusal to fall for the Marxist rip-off these treaties represent.

Luis Arguello Paine

Salem, Ore.

India and Nuclear Inspection

It is not true that Prime Minister Desai refused to allow inspection of nuclear facilities making use of U.S. nuclear exports as your story on President Carter's visit to India says [Jan. 16]. What he has so far declined to do is to accept the condition--considered by the President to be essential to recover some of the ground loSt in recent years--that the U.S. will send nuclear exports to states that have no nuclear weapons only if they agree to international inspection of all their nuclear facilities. A big difference.

The other point to be noted is your suggestion that export of light-water reactors to Iran is somehow in conflict with Carter's policy. The Carter policy (as approved by the House) favors the expanded use of light-water reactors and provides that the U.S. should give assurances to its customers of a continued supply of fuel--thus, it is hoped, helping to deter other countries from going the dangerous breeder and plutonium route.

Jonathan B. Bingham, Congressman

Twenty-Second District, N. Y.

Washington, D.C.

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