Letters to the Editors

Security breach is typical for this administration

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 16, 2000

Re: Nuclear arms data is missing from lab.

The hard drives missing from a vault at Los Alamos National Laboratories contained information on U.S. nuclear warheads, bombs and other critical data. With the missing hard drives, an enemy has the plans for the Nuclear Emergency Security Team and knows exactly how the United States would respond to any nuclear terrorist event. Ergo, the enemy could circumvent our queen and checkmate our security response in a globally lethal game of chess.

After Wen Ho Lee copied classified nuclear weapons data at the lab (for which he's currently jailed and awaiting trial on 59 felony counts), further loss of atomic secrets at this facility is almost beyond comprehension. However, it is part of the pattern of the Clinton administration's disregard for national security.

The United States has spent an unfathomable amount of money since the advent of the atom bomb to design a national security system to protect this country and its citizens. It boggles the mind to believe that all of this material and planning may be passe because of the missing hard drives.

Fortunately, Bill Richardson, the energy secretary, has attacked this security breach with his usual intensity. He says that he is "outraged" and that there will be "accountability and disciplinary action." (I know that will help me sleep much better.)
-- Kathryn L. van Heyningen, Palm Harbor

Inept and incompetent

Re: Nuclear arms data is missing from lab, June 13.

Now we have one more in a long line of security breaches during the Clinton/Gore administration. The liberal press did little to cover the "hidden listening device" found in the State Department offices. Then we had a stolen laptop computer in Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's offices, and again there was little said except that new and stronger security was being put in place to safeguard America's top secrets. What a joke that security has turned out to be.

The highly classified nuclear secrets contained on the missing hard drives at Los Alamos could seriously damaged our national security, and the press is not calling them stolen, but saying that they are "missing." At what point do we admit that the Clinton/Gore administration has been the most inept and incompetent administration with our national security in history?

When will the press and the majority of American citizens wake up and say "enough"!
-- Sam Lasley, Clearwater

Put the NSA in charge of secrets

It seems that many of our nation's superior technological secrets are being compromised by an administration that just doesn't seem to give a care. Simply laying off a few laboratory workers just doesn't cut through the truly serious lack off security and the absence of any responsibility shown in the loss of many of our most highly classified atomic secrets in the past few months.

The success of Operation Desert Storm was a direct result of having superior technology that was well-guarded until it was used in battle. Now all of a sudden, our nuclear security is no more.

Unsecured personnel are losing what should be the most highly guarded secrets on the planet and placing blame everywhere but where it belongs.

I think that the National Security Agency should be put in charge of all of what this country has left that might remain classified, immediately by an act of Congress. Let the chips fall were they may if the NSA can find intentional or irresponsible behavior by those in charge of guarding our nuclear arsenal secrets.
-- Guy Nash, St. Petersburg

Ancestry is a poor measure

Re: Clinton should use restraint in Russia, by Zbigniew Brzezinski, June 2.

Apparently Brzezinski feels well qualified to lecture President Clinton how he should be dealing with President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation on Clinton's visit to Moscow. Brzezinski is willing to give some credit to the president in dealing with Russia. On the whole however, the policy of "engagement" with Russia was a "colossal disappointment" to Brzezinski. Therefore, he warns against continuing this policy. He puts his reasons squarely at the very beginning of his article when he describes Putin as "a former colonel in the KGB, the son of a party apparatchik as well as the grandson of a trusted member of Lenin's and then Stalin's personal detail."

Are we to understand that one has to choose his or her ancestry very carefully so as to avoid being disqualified by Brzezinski from participation in the international political arena? One wonders how many successful and prominent individuals in all walks of life would not have made it if their ancestors did not meet with Brzezinski approval.

Brzezinski's not-so-subtle suggestion that we judge the individual by who his grandparents were and what they did is irresponsible at best. The issues that need be resolved in the still evolving and undefined relationship between the United States and the Russian Federation are complex enough. Let's concentrate on the relevant ones without clouding the discourse with personal animosities. There is too much at stake in this for the United States as well as for the rest of the =world.
-- B. Maximow, St. Pete Beach

Don't treat Brazill as a juvenile

Re: Rushing to complete misjudgment carelessly blunders proper justice, by William Raspberry, June 15.

Was the killing of teacher Barry Grunow a childish prank? The column talks about a possible eight year sentence if the accused, Nathaniel Brazill, is treated as a juvenile. Why not? He is, after all, only a "child."

I beg to differ. The 13-year-olds of today are not the same as those of times past. All of them, black or white, have been exposed to all sorts of violence in real life and on TV. Any teenager, especially an honor student, realizes what it means to point a gun and kill someone in cold blood. Don't tell me it was an accident.

The worst part of Raspberry's commentary is the dismissal, in one line, of the victim. "Grunow, a popular teacher, was killed."

Brazill stole the gun, flashed it in school and, if reports are correct, almost shot another teacher.

To have him serve only eight years on a murder charge would be a miscarriage of justice.
Joseph King, Hudson

Boy's supporters behaved shamefully

Let me get this straight: 13-year-old Nathaniel Brazill went to the door of Barry Grunow's classroom and asked to see two girls. Grunow asked him to go away. Then, according to police, Brazill pulled out a pistol and shot the teacher in the face, thereby leaving Grunow's young wife a widow and his two babies fatherless.

Robert Udell, Brazill's attorney, said the gun went off "accidentally." Is he aware that his client confessed to detectives? Brazill's friends, relatives and supporters sang the civil rights anthem We Shall Overcome outside the courthouse. What an absolute slap in the face of those unfortunate souls who have indeed been victimized by discrimination. Don't Brazill's supporters have any sense of shame?

Brazill's mother, Polly Powell, reacted to her son's being charged as an adult by saying, "I kind of figured this was going to happen because the grand jury gets only one side of the story." She then went on to profess her belief in God. Perhaps Mrs. Powell would be better off remembering the fifth commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Powell should have taught their son to have some respect for human life.
-- Thomas W. Cunningham, Jr.,St. Petersburg

People must be held accountable

Re: Nathaniel Brazill.

Anybody who believes 13-year-olds do not know that pointing a gun in someone's face and pulling the trigger will not result in the gun firing and killing the victim is truly stupid. I said stupid. Not ignorant. There is a difference.

Nowadays these kids are subjected to a lifetime (theirs) of violence on television and in video games. What do we expect when parents allow this?

I'm tired of hearing about how nice Nathaniel Brazill was, how smart he was, what dreams he had. According to police, he deliberately got a gun and he killed. What about Barry Grunow, the teacher who was killed? How nice was he? What dreams did he have? What's Barry Grunow's family doing now?

Where is the outcry of remorse from Brazill's family for the grief and agony their son caused? Where's the outpouring of grief for Grunow's family from the grandfather whose gun Nathaniel Brazill took?

It's about time we start making people responsible for their actions. Life in prison without parole? Nathaniel Brazill should consider himself lucky.
-- Vilmar Tavares, Spring Hill

Getting acquainted with ancestors

Re: Hatfields, McCoys joined by feud, June 12.

As my family's resident genealogist, it has been a joy to research my West Virginia roots. While I have not found any Hatfields or McCoys in the family tree yet, I have been amazed at the rich heritage our family enjoys.

I have found Irish lawyers, a sixth great-grandmother who might have been a member of one of the first families of Virginia, Revolutionary War soldiers, a fifth great-grandfather who was at Valley Forge with George Washington, several Civil War Confederate soldiers (two of whom were at the infamous Helmira Prison in New York), a collateral line that included the Supreme Court justice who swore in President Dwight Eisenhower and a line that appears to go back to the lord mayor of London in the 1500s. Some of the land that used to be in the family in West Virginia was surveyed by George Washington, as was a creek that bordered it.

It has been an education in history to do the research of "meeting" my ancestors, illustrious or plain as they have been. And believe it or not, I have found no cases of intermarrying in the families, with the exception of one couple, first cousins, four generations ago. So much for the Deliverance jokes.

While I love my adopted state of Florida, I am proud to be from West Virginia. I hope, in some small way, this letter will educate those who feel it is necessary to ridicule and demean my home state with rude remarks and preconceived notions.
-- Karen Phifer, St. Petersburg

A compatible cartoonist

On June 9 during my breakfast ritual, I read news on the front page of the St. Petersburg Times that saddened me ("Shoe" cartoonist MacNelly dies). Jeff MacNelly was one of my favorites. I enjoyed his comic strip as much as his editorial cartoons.

During the real-life soap opera about Elian Gonzales, MacNelly drew two editorial cartoons that I made copies of and kept in my personal archive. The news media were demonizing the Gonzales family from Miami and the public opinion polls were in favor of Janet Reno and Elian's father. However, MacNelly drew these two genial editorial cartoons criticizing Bill Clinton, Janet Reno and Fidel Castro.

The point of view of this great cartoonist was congenial with the majority of us "Latinos."

May Jeff MacNelly rest in peace.
-- Luis R. Cuadra, Pinellas Park

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