The Time to Rise

Sir / Bull's-eye! The crisis in Congress is indeed the issue for the decade [Jan. 15]. America's survival as a democracy will. I believe, largely depend on the strength of the pressure applied by the media, and direct citizen action toward correcting congressional impotence. The federal legislature has too long been on its knees to the Chief Executive.

It is high time for some real eyeball to eyeball contact.

RICHARD A. W ATKINS

New York City

Sir / Although I enjoyed your story on Congress. I found Correspondent Neil Mac Neil's contention that what Congress needs is "some of the arrogance of past taskmasters who ran Congress with heavy hands." a little hard to swallow.

In my reading of presidential history, it seems past Chief Executives such as Lincoln, both Roosevelts and Truman used strong Executive action to save the Union, restore our economy and defeat tyranny abroad.

Each of these Presidents had to take action where Congress, in all of its deliberative glory, would not.

WESLEY GENE BEVERLIN

Los Angeles

Sir / Unfortunately we have elected ourselves four more years of war, favoritism to the few, administrative stranglehold on our Judicial Branch and dictatorial leadership. If Congress is to balance the lopsided Government, it will be done only when some future President exercises insight and humility enough to give Congress back its power.

I fail to believe that Congress has the discipline or courage to carry out the task on its own behalf.

LEONARD;. RIZZO

Green Bay, Wis.

Sir / Impounding appropriated funds is a well-established and legitimate power of the President, not a tactic invented by Richard Nixon to perpetuate pollution.

It is necessary to have a Chief Executive who determines with his management and budget people a cohesive and coherent pattern of spending, given the enormously increased complexity of the budgetary process today.

To return to the era of "Uncle Joe" Cannon, the apex of House rule, is a reckless and ridiculous idea.

WILLIAM BARRETT

Cambridge, Mass.

Sir / In "A Cast of Characters for the 93rd Congress" you mentioned that Senator Sam Ervin is ". . .a Democratic battler for individual rights with a blind spot for blacks." As one who lobbied for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, let me add from experience that the Senator has another blind spot when it comes to individual rights --women.

DEBORAH WALTER

Washington, D.C.

Sir / Here is a footnote to illustrate how in the 19th century the power of the Speaker of the House of Representatives extended into the President's bedroom. During the Administration of President Benjamin Harrison, the Speaker of the House. "Czar" Tom Reed, refused congressional authority for Mrs. Harrison's plan to expand the living quarters in the White House because the

President had refused to appoint Czar Reed's candidate for collector of customs in Portland, Maine.

ELLEN ROBINSON EPSTEIN DAVID EPSTEIN

Washington. D.C.

Shake-Up in the FBI

Sir / "Tattletale Gray" [Jan. 15] levels unjust criticism at acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray.

I have had close social relationships with numerous FBI agents over the years who now collectively believe that the hardline disciplinary measures of Mr. Hoover have either been rescinded or, when necessary, are being applied with compassion and common sense.

Gray has, in rotating headquarters staffers to field assignments, accomplished what should have been done years ago. The special agents in the field offices, where the job of the FBI is obviously accomplished, have long regarded bureau headquarters as an oppressing force.

The shake-up of this "palace guard" is welcomed by the men who are doing the actual work of the FBI.

PETER M. RUSS

Eggertsville. N.Y.

Sir / As a former agent of the FBI. I have viewed with extreme trepidation the moves by the Nixon Administration to politicize the bureau.

The danger to the Republic from a national investigative and law-enforcement organization that is used for political purposes should be comprehended even by men of the caliber of Nixon and Gray.

(THE REV.) EDWARD j. BYINGTON

Taunton, Mass.

What Dilemma?

Sir/What "Cuban Dilemma" [Jan. 15]? Let our Swiss intermediaries cool it on the negotiations to return hijackers. America should definitely continue the time-and morality-honored custom of protecting refugees. American hijackers can stay in Fidel's sugar fields with overseers with whips and guns.

It might be a little more just than an expensive trial and a vacation in one of our luxury prison resorts.

WILLIAM TRACY

Bloomington, Ind.

Sir / To try to compare the actions of criminal types to those of people trying to escape a tyrannical regime defies all logic. Cubans, unlike Americans, cannot leave their country at will and have to force their way out against heavy odds of ever reaching freedom.

A few years ago a young American President offered us shelter in his land from Communist oppression. Have the American people changed so much that they are willing to trade us off for the sake of appeasing Castro?

We sincerely hope not.

GABRIEL A. FALLA

West New York. N.J.

Wrong Defense

Sir / Your cover story on Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris [Jan. 22] conveys the false impression that in 1966 I suggested that Brando should quit acting; it includes the sentence "Pauline Kael's dismissal notwithstanding, Brando's colleagues by and large have defended him." My way of dismissing him was to write about him in 1966 as "the most exciting American actor on the screen." to vote for him as best actor of 1967 for Reflections in a Golden Eye. to review him in The New Yorker. Feb. 10. 1968. as "our greatest actor," and, again. March 8. 1969, as "our great original." and so on, up to the Oct. 28. 1972 issue (Last Tango): "His full art is realized." If the author of your cover story was trying to make a rhetorical point that required him to be the defender of Marlon Brando, he certainly picked the wrong person to defend Brando against.

PAULINE KAEI.

The New Yorker New York City

Natural Tendencies

Sir / Your story on "Biological Imperatives" [Jan. 8] presenting Medical Psychologist John Money's belief that hormones secreted before and after birth have less effect on brain and behavior in human beings than the "sex assignment" that takes place at birth fails to answer two questions. First. how did the present pattern evolve from caveman to present-day man without some "natural tendencies" influencing male-ver-sus-female roles? Second, why do animals tend toward the same male-versus-fcmale behavior as man?

ARNOLD S. TORGKRSON

Overland, Mo.

Sir / Leave it to a man to determine which orgasm in a female is superior, vaginal or clitoral [Jan. 15].

(MRS.) JUDITH SUTLIFF

Indianapolis

Sir / All this exuberance over sex, abortion. Women's Liberation, permissiveness, etc.. is nothing else than the belch and acid indigestion of an overfed, obese and hedonistic society. I understand varietas delectat and how swinging can give people some sexual gratification.

But how about the spirit, the soul? No man can serve two masters. I still prefer the old religious ethic and Goethe's Werther to Nabokov's Lolita.

STEPHEN PAUK

Upper Darby, Pa.

Words about Watergate

Sir / The Jan. 29 TIME report on the Watergate affair draws upon the rankest form of unsubstantiated hearsay to attempt to connect Mr. Mitchell and me to the incident. That connection is totally false. No TIME reporter attempted to contact me or Mr. Mitchell. Responsible journalists invariably try to verify the accuracy of an allegation--certainly one this serious--before publication. Had I had the opportunity, I would have most emphatically denied the implication of the story. Mr. Mitchell has also emphatically denied its allegations.

Your article failed to include the fact that I gave sworn testimony to the Department of Justice last summer and sworn testimony in the course of civil litigation that I had no knowledge or involvement in the Watergate incident directly or indirectly.

Finally and most importantly, the charge in your story relating to Mr. Mitchell and myself is based entirely on one statement which you carry as an apparent direct, first-hand quotation from Mr. Hunt. Hunt has publicly denied that he made such a statement. It is not a first-hand quotation and even if it were firsthand, the statement would be hearsay. It is perhaps second, third-or fourth-hand hearsay.

When a story like this is incorrect, the result is damaging to innocent individuals and, I would submit, damaging to public confidence in objective reporting by a free press.

CHARLES W. COLSON

Special Counsel to the President Washington. D.C.

-TIME is happy to publish Mr. Colson's statement that he and Mr. Mitchell were not in any way implicated in the Watergate wiretapping case and regrets that it did not publish his prior public denials in the story. It is true that TIME'S reporter did not speak to Mr. Colson or Mr. Mitchell prior to publication; however, in the past, he tried and failed numerous times to interview Mr. Colson about the Watergate affair. It is also true that Mr. Hunt was not personally quoted and that other sources were presumably quoting Mr. Hunt, as we believe was indicated in the context of the story.

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