Chilling Comment   

Thank you for Jane Kirtley's fine column (First Amendment Watch, June/July) opposing the FBI's heavy-handed effort to rummage through decades-old historical archives donated to my university by the late investigative columnist Jack Anderson.

As the person who persuaded Anderson to make his papers available to the public in Washington, I can tell you that he would have vigorously opposed the government's attempt to rifle through his files and censor them, as two FBI agents told me personally was their intent.

Amazingly, in a little-noted but chilling comment, FBI spokesman John Miller has even claimed that First Amendment protections afforded to the press do not equally apply to universities--suggesting that this administration thinks even less of academic freedom than it does of journalistic freedom.

Mark Feldstein
Associate Professor & Director of Journalism
School of Media and Public Affairs
George Washington University
Washington, D.C.