The Washington Post this morning published a letter to the editor from Bill 
Leonard, NARA's chief of the Information Security Oversight Office,  See
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/24/AR200608240139
5.html (registration required).  This responds to the Post's article on 
8/18/06 about Matthew Aid's past.  I posted to the article here on 8/18/06, noting 
that I am no fan of mud slinging in discussion of public policy issues.  
(While I have at times been very critical of people, including some of whom I have 
worked with at NARA, I try to focus on the underlying issues or approaches 
where we disagree.  And I've spent a lot of time trying to understand behavior 
and to get a handle on root causes.  And to look for ways in which the 
government can provide avenues for resolving serious concerns, including issues raised 
by whistleblowers inside and outside agencies.  My goal generally is to 
prevent subordinate archivists from being blindsided or hung out to dry in cases 
where power players are involved.  You may recall that I've even mentioned how I 
once wrote to the Attorney General about the Nixon tapes litigation on behalf 
of some of my former NARA colleagues.)

In his letter, "The Archives' Sleuth's Irrelevant 'Secret,'" Mr. Leonard 
notes that he is the government official who oversaw the NARA audit of records 
withdrawn for classification.  He notes that "I was disappointed to see The Post 
malign the background of Matthew M. Aid, a concerned citizen who was simply 
performing his civic duty ["The Archives Sleuth Had a Secret," news story, Aug 
18]."

Mr. Leonard states that the information in the story was irrelevant to the 
complaint which triggered the NARA audit.  In fact, he concludes, "Publishing it 
served no useful public purpose and could, in fact, discourage citizens who 
take seriously their civic responsibility to lodge complaints regarding the 
activities of their government."

Most government officials consider carefully the benefits of spending their 
professional capital in public forums.  You sometimes sense that they hoard 
this capital carefully.  At other times, when I read some such letters to the 
editor, they often sound as if they were written by the public affairs official 
instead of the person signing the letter.  Not so here.  As someone who has 
argued against mud slinging, having seen such tactics used in the litigation over 
the Nixon tapes, and who noted this week that I still bear scars from what I 
encountered during the Kutler litigation in the early 1990s, I found it 
refreshing to read Mr. Leonard's letter.  

Maarja

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