Prosecution of Michael Milken

Stein’s article on Milken is dramatic evidence of what happens when the U.S. attorney panders to the press. Stein pays lip service to the presumption of innocence but then he goes on to indict, try, convict and sentence Milken. In so doing, Stein ignores crucial facts and misrepresents others and concludes that Milken did not “improve the lot of workers.” This is journalism at its worst.

Those who know Milken know that he is an honest, hard-working, charitable man. I believe in his integrity because I have known him for many years. What angers me is that people like Stein, who don’t know him, misunderstand and mischaracterize his accomplishments, and then condemn him for being intolerant of complacency and for effecting change for a better world.

Stein glibly discusses leveraged buyouts and then jumps to the incredible conclusion that Milken’s efforts resulted in workers being “fired, their benefits cut, their unions broken. . . .”

Stein attempts to lay at Milken’s feet the blame for all the economic ills of our country during the past 20 years. Nowhere does he give Milken credit, for instance, for any of the innovative techniques that he devised to secure long-term favorable financing for many of America’s smaller and medium-sized companies, thereby preserving and indeed creating millions of jobs. I commend to Stein the recent study by Dr. Glenn Yago on high yield debt which concluded that “high-yield firms accounted for more than 80% of the annual average job growth of all public companies reporting employment from 1980 to 1986.”

The indictment of the Milkens represents the latest debasement of the legal system in this country. The once fine office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York now subscribes to the fallacies espoused by its most recently-departed occupant that the ends justify the means and that the political expediency of the times demands that young, successful, hard-working and creative people must either face the threat of a racketeering prosecution and the freezing of all of their assets or else admit their guilt to crimes of which they feel they are innocent.

Surely no one’s conduct could withstand the microscopic scrutiny of the government and the press which Michael Milken and his family have been forced to endure for the past three years. One must wonder whether this raw abuse of power is calculated to tarnish further the reputation of honest, hard-working, charitable individuals who dare to be innovative and whose only “crime” is that they seek to make this a better world.

MARTIN L. KLEIN

New York