Letters.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: And editorial responses - Column

Behind Bars

I think that Charles Peters is confused when he refers to "our inefficiencies of the criminal justice system, not just because they are embarrassing, but they mean that too many dangerous criminals get away with it." What nation does he compare us to? The truth is that we convict and imprison more of our citizens than any other nation in the world. If he wants efficiency, the best way to get rid of dangerous criminals is not more prisons, it is sane gun laws. Criminals without guns are far less dangerous. It seems to me that, in a democracy, we should be more "embarrassed" about how many innocent people we send to prison than how many criminals "get away with it."

SANFORD THIER Los Angeles, Calif.

Charles Peters replies:

I agree we imprison too many people for too long, usually easy-to-catch minor dope offenders, but that doesn't change the fact that too many violent criminals get away with it because of sloppy police work and inept or overworked prosecutors.

What About The Facts?

I read with interest and amazement Nicholas Thompson's March article tided "This Ain't Your Momma's CIA"

I must admit that I am completely astounded by what either I draw as journalistic naivete or journalistic deceptiveness on matters of Military or National Intelligence and its internal structure and oversight.

To say that what the CIA did in Kosovo was just "centralize intelligence" is almost laughable. There are many more reports by both media outlets and by private commercial intelligence companies that provide an entire A-Z overview of how our intelligence apparatus worked with and on the Yugoslav democracy movement that is completely contrary to your article.

Additionally, it is total nonsense to believe that this movement was a grassroots campaign to oust Milosevic. Without Kostunica, this so-called democracy movement couldn't get itself elected to dogcatcher in Belgrade. The movement was so fractured that no one could get more than 50 percent of the vote. I find it hard to believe that a journalist like yourself reports on events such as these that are totally baseless in fact. It isn't whether it was the CIA or DIA, NSA, NRO, USAID (and more than likely all five combined), but the fact remains that the United States of America covertly or for that matter overtly overthrew a government.

What you should really be looking at is how the $50 million was spent or let's say how much went in the pockets of this so-called democracy movement and some...