Larry Lawrence

Re “No Room for a Real Horace Bushnell Survivor,” Commentary, Dec. 9: So some low-level staffer with 20 other things to do didn’t have the time to research M. Larry Lawrence’s background exhaustively at the Pentagon. Instead, he or she took the word of a well-heeled, well-appointed ambassadorial candidate. Because everyone knows members of the power elite don’t lie, right? I’m sure an Arianna Huffington would never tell a whopper--for instance, about a nanny who was an illegal alien.

I wonder how many times mistakes like this one are made in Washington every day. A hundred? A thousand? Meanwhile, people are dying from warfare, malnutrition and AIDS around the globe. Does Huffington have nothing better to write about? This “controversy” has been so hyped it doesn’t even merit one column, much less two.

ROBERT SCHMIDT

Culver City

* Huffington exemplifies the mean-spirited hypocrisy of most of her Republican cohorts with her latest vendetta against Lawrence. She smugly accuses him of buying a plot at Arlington cemetery; in her desperate attempt to embarrass the Clinton administration she forgot that she and her ex-husband tried to buy a Senate seat and failed.

To paraphrase Rep. Tom Lantos, President Clinton’s achievements will endure long after she and her crowd are relegated to the dustbin of history.

BOOKER T. DOUGLAS

Los Angeles

* Re “Ex-Envoy to Be Removed From Grave at Arlington,” Dec. 9: The weaknesses and vanity of a man hardly warrants a headline. We are all too well aware of the venality of the Clinton White House without trumpeting the further sorrows of Lawrence’s widow. This was not a story worthy of a great newspaper.

ROGER D. HOFF

El Segundo