On Trashing Bill Moyers

Howard Rosenberg’s insidious trashing of Bill Moyers’ masterful “The Secret Government . . . The Constitution in Crisis” makes one wonder if perhaps Rosenberg is moonlighting for the CIA (“Moyers Measures Lies of the Land in ‘Secret Government,’ ” Nov. 4).

Moyers’ PBS special focused on our governmental iceberg--below the “coversion” line--of which Watergate and the Iran-contra scandal are only the tip. He covered 40 years of documented facts and key-player testimony, which he punctuated with the logical, objective and expert analysis he is renowned for.

The end result brilliantly clarified the CIA’s covert activities from its inception to present day. But apparently Rosenberg does not want this information known by the general public. He began his review misleadingly, by conglomerating a mess of unrelated lies and half truths, that compare Reagan’s blatant lies concerning the arms-for-hostages trade to canned TV laughter.

How glibly Rosenberg treats the idea of governmental corruption and subversion of our Constitution. The entire first half of his article reduced Moyers’ program to blase gossip.

Rosenberg’s assaults, his centering on the trivial instead of the significance of this shocking expose, and his strained insistence that this “Secret Government” was only a product of Moyers’ personal opinion, if not a vendetta, amounted to a blatant effort to disinform the viewing public and suppress consensus to an Information Age equivalent of the Dark Ages.

ROBERT P. CHRISTIAN

Burbank