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Wednesday, March 29, 1978
University Daily Kansan
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Ununged editorials represent the opinion of the Kansas editorial staff. Stored columns represent the views of only the writers.
Postal rivalry barred
Build a better mousetrap and the courts probably will find a way to declare it illegal.
That conclusion is inescapable in the case of the U.S. Postal Service, which brooks no competition in Kansas, regardless of whether that competition is innovative and less bureaucratically bloated than its own operations.
Specifically, Robert Eugene Black of Pittsburgh formed a first-class mail delivery company in March 1976. The company, Alternate Systems Inc., delivered mail in Pittsburgh and Frontenac for as little as 5 cents a letter.
In a nation and state noted for paying lip-service homage to the virtues of capitalistic competition, one might suppose that Black's efforts would have paid off handsomely. One might suppose that the Postal Service would have streamlined its own, often cumbersome, delivery service. But a federal judge in Kansas City, Kan., thought otherwise and forced Black out of business in June 1976.
THE JUDGE asserted that both Black and Alternate Systems Inc. had violated Postal Service regulations; each was fined $500 and socked with court costs. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the conviction, although the fine against Alternate Systems later was suspended so long as the firm agreed to stop delivering mail.
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a final appeal by Black. He estimates that he is now $20,000 poorer for his unsuccessful court fights—money 'I don't have.' The high court rejected Black's argument that the Postal Service's monopoly is unconstitutional.
The legal precedent used by the court was, somewhat unbelievably, an 1877 precedent that focuses on lotteries.
people are getting fed up with increasing postal rates and decreasing postal service. Before the government cracks down on private enterprise, perhaps entrepreneurs like Black should have the opportunity to show what they can do.
CIA secrecy agreement used as legal intimidation
By FRANK SNEPP NIH Trust Funding
ARLINGTON, Va.-The secrecy agreement all Central Intelligence Agency officials sign when they join the agency's fight to get those rubber bands sinceince rubber bands. Last fall, the former director of the CIA, Richard Helms, stretched to cover a lie he had taken from an investigator in Congress. He explained to a judge that he had been unable to tell the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the truth about CIA involvement in Chile in 2012 and said " sources and methods."
Now the Carter administration and the CIA are bending the secrecy agreement between them, and are using it to try to tie me up legally and financially because I dared to tell the truth, though no secrets, about a CIA batch of bombs last days of the Vietnam War.
When I returned to Washington in the summer of 1975, after the fall of Saigon, I went to the CIA's inspector general and asked to be allowed to do an after-action report.
I WANTED to help the CIA learn from its mistakes and to try to answer the agonizing question of why so many of our Vietnamese employees and civilians were behind I thought it was my duty to prompt such an appraisal, and my right as well, because the secrecy agreement I had signed years before not only obliged me to keep the nation's secrets but also specified that the inspector general stood ready to help resolve any complaints.
This time, however, the inspector general did not stand ready. His representative did not want to hear about the evacuation, which he dismissed as "too complicated." Meanwhile, the board number of administration officials—including the therader of central intelligence, William Colby, who likewise had signed a secrecy agreement—were quietly press the press their own self-serving of Saigon's collapse.
Shortly afterward, I resigned from the CIA in protest and vowed to write a book about the Iranian-backed Scooter truth out. But I also resolved not to betray any secrets that had not been blown already. The last thing I wanted to do was to meet with the Vietnamese we left behind.
INITILY, I had intended to submit the galleys of my book to the CIA for review, to prove that I had honored the spirit of the secrecy agreement. But last week a new director, Adin. Stansfield M. Turner, I decided definitely not to do so. I had asked for the interview to find out whether I was under FBI surveillance, as one of my CIA friends had reported, and to request release of a highly classified document that was also under scrutiny, that one of Colby's deputies had shown to journalists a year and a half before.
Turner, embarrassed by that leak, ordered the document
declasified and turned over to me—"no journalist gets preferential treatment on my watch!" he exclaimed—but he refused to give him permission to the FBI. After the meeting, a lawyer from his office demanded that I sign a second secrecy agreement, as if the first were not binding, though he would be necessary. I refused and made up my mind not to deal any further with the CIA. Turn seemed to be trying to trick me into a new legal entanglement could not, or could not, explain.
My book was published last November without CIA clearance. Turner was furious and promptly leaked all sorts of stories to the press, many of which intended to impugm my integrity and competence. He said that I had signed a second secrecy agreement and that he had given me the classified sources to return for a personal “promise” that I would submit my manuscript for approval. Both statements were false—there was never any suspicion in it publicly challenged his story about the second oath, he publicly backdown.
NOW THE U.S. Justice Department is bringing a civil suit against me, in federal court, in Alexandria, Va. It assets that I have broken a contract, my secrecy agreement with the agency, by publishing without approval.
There is a vague legal precedent for the government's action. Several years ago, the CIA discovered that a former employee, Victor Marchetti, was preparing to publish a book containing classified information, and action forcing him to turn over his manuscript—and anything else he might ever write or say about his experiences in the agency—for review.
Although the CIA was not able to censor my book, it is seeking a similar injunction against me, one that would give it the right to censor my book. I pronouncements I might make about my CIA career for the rest of my life. Also, it is demanding all the profits from my book and a monetary award for my work in the "damage." I have supposedly done to the agency by telling the truth.
NEVER ONCE, however, has the Justice Department or the CIA that I have leaked any secrets. In other words, quite unlike Marchetti, I am being hauled into court simply for my knowledge of the board. The difference is highly significant, for if the CIA wins its case it will have established a precedent for punishing any past or present employee who merely speaks out without checking with the agency beforehand, regardless of whether it is guilty. The chilling effect on even the most responsible whistleblowers within the ranks, those who have no intention of spilling
classified information,would be devastating.
If some of them now run off to the new media to blow national secrets, it will be, in part, the sensors Turner generated.
As I suggested recently before a closed session of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, there are ways to ensure that past or present CIA men keep secrets without bludgeoning them legally. For one thing, the CIA should set up a "dissent channel" similar to the U.S. State Department so officers with complaints may easily air them with their superiors or even the White House without going public.
NO LESS important, firm rules should be established to govern "official leaks" by ranking CA officers, so they must obtain approval of the obligations that are supposed to bind everybody in the agency.
If Turner or his deputies consider it essential to talk to the press, they should do so only on the record, allowing the journalists to cite "CIA officials" as their sources, and the information should be declassified and made available to all.
Meager as such proposals are, some of my former CIA colleagues dismiss them as "idealistic." Perhaps they are. But until all top government officials, particularly those who sign secrecy agreements, are willing to accept a curb on their self-awareness right to leak at their own peril, they will seek to impose on the likes of me for merely following their example will remain a travesty on justice and the First Amendment.
Frank Sneep, who was the CIA's principal analyst of North Vietnamese political affairs and prepared the agency's intelligence estimates during the last years of the war, is being asked to provide his Insider's Account of Saligno's Indecent End Told by the CIA's Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam.
Concept of tests reasonable
The programs to introduce competency-based education in Kansas are facing questions worth much more than $64,000. Questions about the tests, questions about how much the tests will cost to admit to and test questions themselves are stumping the Kansas Legislature.
The question that the Legislature must consider most, though, is one that never occurs to quiz-show hosts: cost the state if the question are not answered correctly?
Competency-based education is a concept that seems reasonable enough. Students are to be tested before they graduate, to see whether they have attained basic skills in reading, coherent writing and arithmetic. If they cannot read, their will not be given full high-school diplomas.
THE CATCH is that they will not be kept in school, either. The school will send deficient 12h-graders out the door with a "certificate of attendance," attesting that the students have taken up space for a number of years
and still cannot do much reading, writing or mathematics. To deal with them, competency-based programs have set up schools after school—remedial programs—to help non-graduates come up with the competency levels of the tests.
John Mitchell Editorial writer
Uncertainty about the remedial programs and their costs has been the driving force behind a substantial cutback in the Kansas proposal for competency-based education. As passed by the House, the bill would have established a new system with testing at several levels in the elementary and high school career of the Kansas student.
The Senate Education Committee has cut that proposal drastically. State Dr. Braschols proposed an amendment to replace the statewide program with a pilot
program—an experimental project—in a few of the state's school. The Kansas Department of Education sets the standards for the test run. No mention of moving to a different program was kept in the bill.
THE BILL won committee approval Monday. A subcommittee had been formed to study the only State Sen. Charlie Angell, R-Plains, voted against the bill, asserting that a pilot program would do no more than waste time and energy.
The pilot plan is going to cause sparks to fly when the House and Senate get together in a conference committee. The bills that will come out of each house look now as if they would be different, and the differences may not be resolved easily.
The reluctance of the Senate to go to a statewide program is understandable. More than 30 percent of some form of competency-based education, and many of them report high costs. The Senate should state with the most publicized program, was having difficulties. He mentioned them as justification for a pilot program.
On the other hand, as Sen John Chandler, R-Holton, pointed out in committee debate, none of the states that has passed competency-based education has yet repealed it. That may be true simply because it has long enough for a fair trial, but it does show a fair degree of acceptance of the concept.
PERHAPS THE fears of high remedial costs are groundless. There is a chance that Mr. Harder will their Florida counterparts, will have a very low failure rate. State Sen. Joseph Harder, R-Mountdridge, said he thought that would be the case.
But it all depends on the tests themselves. Most states have different requirements for problems as balancing a checkbook, reading an advertising brochure, writing a letter to a potential or figuring simple interest.
The Kansas Board of Education, though, will be putting the test tests on the teachers and being rough with the past. Harder recently
uncovered a test used to determine eight-grade competency in 1901. The test included explanations of the instructions, and stated the instructions—and review of U.S. and Kansas history more difficult than before. It was presented at the University of Kansas.
THERE HAS been a decline in standardized test scores for several years, both in Kansas and the country. If eighth grade students are competent enough to pass some freshman-level courses KU teaches today, perhaps it is time to bring standards up. In full-credit diploma loses its value and the decline continues.
The Senate should pass the concept of competency-based education in some form. If it wants to begin with a pilot program, it might be waiting for more evidence that is there be some program established. If the Legislature does not do something to help stop declining education, its ministers should be considered eligible for examinations of their competency.
Strong Hall callous on Jimmy
To the editor:
KANSAN
Tel Melissa Thompson that my exact words were：“The time has come for spontaneous outrage.” However, I have no real illusions about how effective the Student Senate's righteous outburst will be in the face of the administrative sodomy of the students. Strong Hall. The administrators of the University have proved themselves yet again to be false custodians of the patrimony that is the heritage of the entire University. Like screaming children being sold by their teachers, less lords of Kansas, we are powerless to halt this degrading act.
The removal of the statue of James Green to the new law building outrages every civil sensibility. It is a direct afront to the students and faculty of the University, as well as a reminder of the memory of Daniel Chester French. Like a pandering father, our guardian in Strong Hall will believe that the money and
influence purchased by the ig-
nominious sale of his children
will justify the wretched act he
envisions.
So bend over students, you already know how it feels and make it easy for your father to tell you about the urge to secure that your silent compliance to his wishes obtains. How appropriate the move will occur on a hot summer night, be it playful or forcible rape. In all sincerity.
John P. Bonlax
Lawrence graduate student
John P. Lomax
Softball league defeats purpose To the editor
Having recently attended the manager's meeting of the intramural softball league, I feel that the scheduling situation warrants a closer inspection. The A and B sections of the
men's league, which are described as the most competitive, have been changed to a single elimination type of arrangement. In other words, when a team loses its first game, it has played out its season. I strongly feel that this revision (which would not halve the number of teams registered in the league), is an imposition and deserves examination.
The team I represent is interested in recreation and enjoyment and is not obsessed with winning. How are teams with this philosophy expected to maintain this viewpoint if the rule is: You don't win-you lose? Or, you don't play the game of the game? Of course, my course can always arrange its own competition, but this defeats the purpose of intramural sports.
The explanation for this modification is that construction has limited opportunities, but it should be possible to schedule more nights of play or to utilize other fields.
The arrangement now reminds me of the post-season Big Eight tournament. No matter what your regular season team performs well in four selected games, you can pack it on home. Therefore, if you find it reasonable that a team with a 4-10 conference should represent the Big Eight conference, then you could probably get a job at res-services. If you don't, then I believe some teams would forwarded to res-services to correct this problem.
Kenneth C. Kempf
St. Louis junior
Men's Coalition frowned upon
To the editor:
Has sexism an ally in your paper?
The ad on page two, March 9.
Besides that, the story itself is vague. Just what is this "social service" *goine to do?*
offended me because it objectifies and demeans women.
Secondly, the men's social service story, March 9, failed a seemly obligatory reporting of reactions of the group's proposed funding. No members of the men's Coalition were interviewed.
I attest, through past involvement, the existence of numerous men's groups that can be deemed men's liberation groups. These groups generally seek to promote their personal lives and society at large. There have even been such groups in Lawrence, and they held their fourth annual national conference on men and masculinity in L Louis last November. Mike Pendergast's group is also Pendergast's particular purpose, since he stated that he knew of no other groups like his.
Pendergast said his group would generate good conflict, since there were no voices at present to balance feminist criticism against ferninist positions. And if they do indeed challenge feminist rhetoric, it seems doubtful that the two organizations will be able to maintain a mutual project, as asserted.
Do others see the irony of helping men cope with the "stress caused by the women's movement?" The women's movement is a valid and important response to the inadequacies and injustice (or "stress") caused by men.
There is a need to discard preconceived ideas about people because of their sex or sexual preference, just as there is a need to discard racist ideals. We must respect common views in common in all people, and we must respect each person's individuality and not discriminate because of differences. We should reexamine our own attitudes if we really want peace, as we all tend to assert.
I urge the campus community not to support funding of the Pendergast group. I also urge them to reexamine its policies.
There is a need, therefore, for men's consciousness-raising, not for a stance defending the mind-set of present and past.
Steve Dzama
Steve Dzamina Kanas City, Kan., senior
Give law school Strong statue
To the editor:
There seems to be a need for a piece of sculpture at new Green Hall. In the interests of providing a symbol of continuity between the law school and old Mount Oured, and without destroying a site of history, we may in fact suggest that they may I suggest that the pterodactyl in front of Strong Hall be moved to new Green.
Kent M. Ervin Parsons junior
on the university of Kansas daily August 25, 1973. Subscriptions by mail are $1 or $12 for June and July except Saturday, Sunday and holiday subscriptions. Subscriptions by mail are $1 or $12 for June and July except Saturday, Sunday and holiday subscriptions. Subscriptions by mail are $1 or $12 for June and July except Saturday, Sunday and holiday subscriptions. Subscriptions by mail are $1 or $12 for June and July except Saturday, Sunday and holiday subscriptions. Subscriptions by mail are $1 or $12 for June and July except Saturday, Sunday and holiday subscriptions.
Editor Barbara Rosewicz
Publisher
David Dary