Furor Over GOP Memo on Foley

I agree with your editorial “Politics and Guttersnipes” (June 8) that if you’re to throw mud at all, you should make it stick. Have you noticed, however, how much of the mud has been slung in the direction of Democrats lately?

(Former House Speaker) Jim Wright has resigned, probably with good reason; then there was (former Democratic Whip) Tony Coehlo too. And attacks have started on Bill Gray of Philadelphia. One begins to wonder if Republicans are such bastions of virtue that they are above such reproach. But when the Republican National Committee in a memo by Mark Goodin sought to impugn the impeccable credentials of the new Speaker, Thomas Foley, with innuendoes of homosexuality, I began to take notice.

By coincidence, I was reading a passage from “The Nightmare Years: 1930 to 1940” by William Shirer when the story about Goodin’s calumny broke in the news. Shirer wrote about the demise of German Gen. Werner von Fritsch, the commander-in-chief of the army, in 1938. Heinrich Himmler with the aid of Reinhard Heydrich had sent Hitler “documentary proof” that Von Fritsch was guilty of “homosexual offenses.” Von Fritsch was fired but was later exonerated by a military court even though he was never restored to his office nor Himmler nor Heydrich ever reprimanded.

The disanalogy is that Goodin was forced to resign, Foley seems to be vindicated and policy-maker Lee Atwater appears to have survived the fray.

Should one worry about an upcoming fire in the Reichstag?

ROBERT J. RAFALKO

Bakersfield