Letters to the editor

Don’t let phone firms off the hook

Re “When the CIA comes calling,” Nov. 15

Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey makes several disingenuous arguments for giving telecom companies immunity from lawsuits resulting from their decisions to turn over customer call logs and phone conversations to the federal government.

The most flawed is that without a promise of “protective legislation,” companies won’t cooperate to keep our country safe.

Telecom companies don’t need a special deal because they already have immunity from lawsuits over exposing their customers to wiretapping. It’s called a warrant. If the government obtains one, then phone companies that turn over records are following the law.

AT&T, Verizon and other telecoms are facing lawsuits because they violated their customer agreements based on Bush administration assurances, rather than their 30 years of experience dealing with requests under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Yes, the government should be held accountable for spying on Americans without court oversight or congressional approval. But so should companies that decide to gamble with their customers’ trust, then hide behind the government’s promise of special protection.

Peter Eliasberg

American Civil Liberties

Union of Southern

California, Los Angeles

The author is co-lead counsel in a lawsuit against AT&T and Verizon by the ACLU’s three California affiliates.

Woolsey attempts to obfuscate the issues in the “telecom immunity” case. One of America’s finest principles since its founding has been the rule of law. The president is not a sovereign and does not have the authority to waive this principle. Yes, we are at war, solely because the sovereign says so. That doesn’t justify ignoring the rule of law.

The issue never was whether this administration could wiretap communications from overseas. The issue was whether this administration could ignore the law, which simply required permission to wiretap, even retroactively, from a compliant special court. And Congress, always compliant at that time, would have passed any amendments the administration requested.

Woolsey argues that corporations should be absolved from liability for the actions requested by this administration. I would agree that the shareholders of these corporations should not pay for the actions of these corporate executives, but these corporate executives should be prosecuted. In part, this legislation is designed to head off such prosecutions and the prosecution of those government officials who requested such illegal action.

Robert Balzhiser

New York

Woolsey gives the distinct impression that President Bush’s requests to eavesdrop are OK because of the events of 9/11. Bush did not begin his requests of telecommunication companies after 9/11; he allegedly began them in his second month in the White House -- seven months before 9/11.

According to former Qwest Communications CEO Joseph Nacchio, the administration requested Qwest’s participation in an eavesdropping program. The company said no. As a result, Nacchio alleges, that company lost a $200-million contract with a government agency. Woolsey would do well to complete his research before giving Bush a pass for just one of his many high crimes against this country.

Charles Fernandez

Los Angeles

The price we pay

Re “Fending off foreclosures,” Opinion, Nov. 16

Paul Leonard’s assertions are off-base. When someone loses in Las Vegas, are the losses reimbursed? Why should someone who signed his name on the dotted line be allowed to gratuitously renege on his mortgage promise?

The housing mess was caused by greed on the part of lenders, investors, politicians, state bodies, ratings agencies and home buyers.

Foreclosure is a painful but necessary process to rebalance the system. The faster that happens, the better off we’ll be.

Stephen M. Reznik

Westchester

Two days after The Times reported on the negative effect of declining school enrollment in coastal Southern California (“Cuts seen for coastal schools,” Nov. 14), a situation directly linked to the lack of affordable housing, Leonard brazenly argues that neighborhoods would be devastated by falling home prices.

Leonard confuses debt with wealth and does not understand that artificially inflated home values benefit nobody in the long term. From the Iraq war to state bond measures to the financed SUV in the driveway, Americans are addicted to spending money they have not earned and cannot repay. The home foreclosure crisis may well be the first of many inevitable and ultimately beneficial corrections as our society learns to live within its means.

Ken Cooper

La Canada Flintridge

They never learn

Re “A rocky freshman year,” editorial, Nov. 14

The Times discusses the relative lack of success achieved this last year by Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. David L. Brewer. Realistically, this is not unexpected. After all, how much experience with public education does a Navy admiral have? It seems that the Board of Education is more interested in prestigious individuals to head our schools than professional educators. The same can be said of former Supt. Roy Romer, who was a fine governor of Colorado.

It is time we began to select educators to head our school system, as was the practice in the past. But who selects the superintendent? The Board of Education. And who is on the board? Actually, anyone who can get elected; qualifications in the field of education are not a requirement to run. So where is our needed professional leadership?

Sanford Rothman

Los Angeles

Your editorial is right on target. Substantial change did not happen with Romer and will not happen with Brewer. You listed most of the reasons: school board politics, racial politics, entrenched bureaucrats and union intransigence. I would add a ratio of non-teaching to teaching employees much higher than any other developed country’s school system.

The disappointing part of the editorial is that you merely hope for change and wish Brewer more focus. Nobody is listening. LAUSD leaders don’t have to listen because they have a virtual monopoly. General Motors didn’t change until Toyota came along; the U.S. Postal Service didn’t change until FedEx came along. Your feeble hopes will leave another generation of students badly shortchanged.

Real change will happen when parents have choice. Imagine how the school board, bureaucrats and unions would listen if the state offered a refundable, means-tested tax credit for K-12 education. You would see more change in two years than would happen in the rest of my (and perhaps your) lifetime.

Steve Murray

Huntington Beach

Funding the war

Re “Gates warns of layoffs without war funding from Congress,” Nov. 16

In this article, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is cited as saying that the Defense Department has authority to transfer only $3.7 billion, which would only fund the Iraq war for a week. The secretary is being too clever. In addition to the general transfer authority to which he refers, the department has received $140 billion in funding for operations and maintenance.

Most of the cost of operating forces in Iraq consists of funds for operations and maintenance. Most of those funds are not covered by the limit on general transfer authority and can be moved from one activity to another without requiring notification to or approval of the Congress.

In fact, that is how the department has funded the Iraq war every year since the first year, while waiting for supplemental funding. The Department of Defense did it then; it can do it now. Gates has plenty of flexibility, especially at the beginning of a new fiscal year.

Gordon Adams

Professor of

international relations

American University

Washington

The writer was associate director for national security and international affairs at the White House Office of Management and Budget, 1993-97.

Torture can’t be more wrong

Re “Keeps on ticking,” editorial, Nov. 13

I agree with the proposition in your editorial that torture ought to be banned altogether, but it already is outlawed. When the United States became a party to the Geneva Convention, that treaty’s prohibition of torture, including waterboarding, became the law of the United States. For Congress now to pass a law outlawing waterboarding implies that current law does not already do that, and makes it easier for the administration to dance around other torture issues by inferring that only an exhaustive list of specific prohibitions by Congress can tie the administration’s hands.

Only a country in which the head of the executive branch feels free to ignore the law would be faced with this circumstance, and the solution is not to pass new legislation duplicating what we have in place. It’s to replace the administration with one that believes in the rule of law and to impeach officials who violate their oaths of office by flouting the Constitution.

Stuart Meiklejohn

Ojai