‘Footnote to History’

Your editorial (March 29) “Footnote to History,” opines that the improper activities of the late Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter was lucky for the United States because it speeded up the end of public school segregation.

Justice Frankfurter disclosed the thinking of his brethren on the issue to Philip Elman, then a Justice Department attorney arguing the desegregation case of Brown vs. Board of Education before the court on behalf of the government. The disclosures were made so they could be be addressed by Elman in successfully writing his arguments to be submitted to the court.

By using the same logic, it was lucky that Abraham Lincoln broke the law by suspending the right of habeas corpus during the Civil War and locking up a dissenting congressman in the process. Also, it was lucky that President Roosevelt illegally furnished 50 destroyers to Great Britain at the outset of World War II. The results of those acts, and that of Frankfurter, even if wrong, made the United States a better place to live. I wonder.

It is just possible that President Lyndon Johnson was following the lead of his predecessors while he was bombing North Vietnam in 1965? By the same token, was Richard Nixon following them by covering up the Watergate mess?

The acts of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Frankfurter, now praised by history, might make it easier for President Reagan and his “cowboys” to illegally sell arms to Iran and further skirt the law to make war in Central America. After all, history is applauding the former leaders for being “right.” Why shouldn’t it do the same for Ronald W. Reagan?

There is danger when The Times, one of the nation’s leading newspapers, takes an editorial stand that vindicates such improper actions by our leaders when the end is, in its opinion and in that of the majority of the people, justified.

DANIEL HON

Newhall