Security flashback

To the editor:

It was a surprise today to see retired professor Grant Goodman’s picture on the front page of your newspaper. Not that professor Goodman doesn’t deserve the front page, but simply because of the United States government-opened letter he is holding. Obviously, professor Goodman’s 80-year-old Filipino friend, and over-80 professor Goodman himself, are considered threats to our national security! What nonsense!

I recall in the period of the 1970s and 1980s, during the Cold War, receiving mail that looked like professor Goodman’s letter from his Filipino friend. But my letters, with the same kind of tape essentially, came from friends in Communist Poland. They were letters opened and screened by the paranoid government in Poland (under the advisement of the Soviets). At that time, my mail was not screened by my own American government.

Obviously times have changed!

Robert Findlay,

Lawrence