‘Lax Teaching of Values’

What qualifies Jeane Kirkpatrick, who never served in a foreign post, to pontificate at such length on the security scandal in Moscow? Her observations seem to me largely superficial or irrelevant.

She seems to suggest that this was--or the media should have made it--a bigger event than Iranscam. No way! However regrettable and costly, it was essentially a housekeeping lapse, while Iranscam is a major foreign disaster of ever-widening dimensions.

In my own Foreign Service experience, I knew many Marine guards well and once supervised them while serving as post security officer. They were almost invariably well-motivated.

If security supervision in Moscow was indeed lax, this may well have been the outcome of a process that began in the 1950s when the State Department’s administrators discovered that, through the new concepts of Parkinson’s Law and “management,” they could rapidly scale the bureaucratic ladder. In short, the housekeeper became the landlady by learning to delegate.

It is unfair and inefficient, however, to give the Marines a job largely unrelated to their basic mission of combat. A smaller number of experienced security officers, using modern technology, should be able to safeguard the sensitive areas of our buildings, while locally hired guards could provide physical security at public entrances.

MARSHALL PHILLIPS

Long Beach