Letters.

Lilly Acres

That Mitch Daniels is dangerous is beyond doubt ("The Third Man," July/August 2001). But if his career at Eli Lilly offers insight to his smarts, his competence is questionable. Daniels was one of the principal architects of Lilly's $4 billion cash acquisition of PCS Healthcare, a leading prescription benefits manager, from McKesson Corp. I was vice president of corporate communications at McKesson at the time, and it was apparent that the Lilly people didn't have a clue as to the nature of the business. Within a couple of years, they sold PCS for $2 billion, and since then, PCS has been sold again for $1 billion. The transaction helped drive McKesson's stock to record levels; I retired shortly after the deal closed and was sorely tempted to name my Sonoma retreat "Lilly Acres," in honor of the folks in Indianapolis who made it all possible.

MARVIN KRASNANSKY Sonoma, Calif.

Fan-less

Loch Johnson's reference to George H.W. Bush as the "most popular man ever to serve as CIA director" is outrageously wrong ("The CIA's Weakest Link," July/August 2001). Johnson failed to cite any of Bush's accomplishments at the CIA because there were none. Many CIA veterans, including myself, remember that Bush was solely responsible in 1976 for introducing a group of outside experts, the so-called Team B, to critique CIA national intelligence estimates on Soviet strategic capabilities and objectives and thus present a more alarmist alternative view of the Soviet threat. Bush's predecessor, William Colby, blocked efforts to establish a Team B the previous year because he knew that it would lead to the politicization of intelligence. The report of Team B, which was chaired by Harvard Professor Richard Pipes, was declassified and released in 1992, and it was wrong on almost all of its conclusions. The more recent naming of the CIA headquarters building after Bush was a political act, which unintentionally serves to remind us of the dangers of politicization within the intelligence community.

MELVIN A. GOODMAN SENIOR FELLOW Center for Intelligence Policy Bethesda, Md.

Socialists and Socialites

I find it implausible that you would attribute the Humphrey loss to Nixon to the union of Jackie Kennedy to Aristotle Onassis ("Tilting at Windmills," July/August 2001). Humphrey was a whimpering Midwest socialist who turned his back on the American Dream just as McGovern did.

LOUIS DABNEY, Brookline, Mass.

We've Got Mail

I wanted to give feedback on Brendan Koerner's July/August 2001 article "Click Here for Britney!" I just bought a new computer which is "bundled" with AOL. It's mine to use for six months, free. So I am using it, while I wait for my DSL to arrive. I do not even consider it "the Internet," a feeling akin perhaps to not thinking of Wonder Bread as bread but rather as a distinct baked good. I do not look much at the front page and in fact did so at length only when prompted by Koerner's article. I think perhaps some of the people who are AOL subscribers are like myself--they got it with the computer--or are people who would otherwise find the Internet very difficult to negotiate.

In addition, one cannot expect The New York Times to have 29 million subscribers; it is not a general variety paper (I say this as a daily subscriber and devoted groupie of the Times). I do not think AOL is targeting me as a typical customer. The typical customer is someone else. In sum, I do not think AOL is even in the journalism game. I enjoyed the column, and I like the scrutiny of large media enterprises such as AOL.

JEANNE BONNER Greenville, S.C.

Thinking Metrics

Brendan Koerner hit the bull's-eye with his commentary on the rise of AOL and the demise of journalism ("Click Here for Britney!" July/August 2001). As a former Amazon.com employee and a born-again journalist, I can attest that the future is even scarier than Koerner thinks. He fails to mention the gazigabits of data collected by companies like AOL, eBay, and Amazon on "consumer" browsing patterns. It's even more frightening to consider that TiVo's service is capable of monitoring subscribers' viewing habits. Combine the two into an interactive browser and you have customizable content, search agents, direct sales, and brain-dead citizens who don't know the difference between news and propaganda. Great article!

In the future, however, I recommend placing the radio button for the Barnes & Noble link closer to the top [of your web site], since most online readers don't have the attention span to read all the way to the bottom. Whoops! I slipped. Gotta stop thinking metrics. Time to reread my AP bible: "Thou shalt not use `that' whenever possible; thou shalt not focus on conversion rates."

ERIC K. GILL Sutter Creek, Calif.

Expensive Taste

The article "Mean Cuisine" (July/August 2001) was very interesting. Why didn't the author ask what kinds of prices Alice Waters charges in her restaurant? She condemns evil, profiteering corporations for what they are doing to food, but I suspect that she isn't forgoing a profit in her restaurant--and a healthy one too, if what people who have eaten there tell me is correct!

GRAYDON FORRER Washington, D.C.

But Can He Cook?

Greg Critser's piece on the attitude of chefs ("Mean Cuisine," July/August 2001) reminds me of when I was in sales in the food service industry. When calling on a chef in a hospital setting it finally hit me: It is said doctors have egos so large they think they're God. Well, God's ego is so large he thinks he's a chef.

MARK T. SELLER Bessemer City, NC

Down on the Farm

I applaud your writer, Greg Critser, and his progressive stance against the domination of American farmers over the U.S. food supply ("Mean Cuisine," July/August 2001). Why should we grow our own food here when farming takes up valuable land that could be used more productively for shopping malls that sell imported food? Moreover, farming is messy and smelly, uses up topsoil, and encourages undesirable foreign workers to illegally invade our borders. It's not only much cheaper to import our food from Mexico, Chile, and Guatemala, but if we got rid of all the farms, then illegal aliens would just stay where they are. Even better, those snobby, self-involved chefs would have to import their food, just like the rest of us.

RACHEL DRESBECK Portland, Oregon

Oops!

Mr. Critser is in error lumping Julia Child and Betty Crocker into the same group ("Mean Cuisine," July/August 2001). Julia Child is a living, breathing human being who has had a profound effect on the quality Americans now expect from their food. Betty Crocker is a fictional character used by General Mills as an advertising tool.

PAMELA TAYLOR Huntington Beach, Calif.

Fried Green Tomatoes

The jury, as you wrote, is still out on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) ("Mean Cuisine," July/August 2001). Physicians used to appear in ads for tobacco products. I doubt you could get one doctor to endorse those same products today. We learned that they pose a profound risk to a consumer's health. The cigarette industry knew of and lied about those dangers. I don't accuse companies such as Monsanto of repeating big tobacco's crimes. I do, however, see them battling tooth and nail to keep their product from being labeled. If GMOs are safe food sources, the companies that produce them should have no problems letting the public know what they're eating. These companies contend that the public is simply too scared and ignorant to accept GMOs. It's ironic how this attitude mirrors the same Marie-Antoinette-inspired attitude that you tag chefs and "foodies" with. It seems that GMO growers don't want us to have a choice.

F.Y.I. Bouchon is in Yountville, not Napa.

BRANDON NELSON Napa, Calif.

Peking Ducks

Neither Jacob Heilbrunn's review of Gordon Chang's The Coming Collapse of China ("Slouching Tiger" July/August 2001) nor Mr. Chang mentioned what appear to me to be the two most important harbingers of Chinas future. One is the history of China. For centuries, China has experienced a periodic cycle in which a centralized autocratic government fails to assure its own succession and is overthrown by its own bureaucratic weight. The country then falls apart into separate provinces, each of which hatches a warlord. The warlords undertake to expand their territories by interprovincial wars, and in an elimination sequence, one warlord winds up in control of the whole country, which is then reunited until the new dynasty falls of its own weight.

This cycle has probably been accelerated by the second characteristic of today's China. The Communist leadership has essentially wiped out two generations of potential new leaders. The Long March destroyed the first generation under Communist rule. The Cultural Revolution not only wiped out the second generation, but by closing the colleges and universities, insured that only the children of the current dynastic leadership got any kind of higher education. As the present leadership dies off, there will not be enough educated successors to man this tightly managed state, and we can fully expect it to fall apart yet again.

IRVING LAZAR Nashville, Tenn.