M I C H A E L   D O N O V A N

Dear Madam:
Kind Sir:

You haven't heard it all. I will tell you things which are not new, but different. Different in that it will give you a small bit of the perspective reserved just for rulers. A perspective that you do not now have. After World War II the person best in military intelligence in the West, in this case Naval Intellegence, was not made head of the CIA. He was made the head of Time Magazine. He could not write and he couldn't edit, but that was not his job. Hedley Donovan's job was to have the "big picture". Later in life he quietly served on President Carter's cabinet, again with the job of watfching this "big picture". There were things that he taught my Father, Jeremiah Donovan, while at Time which I wish to pass on to you. (No, no relation; and no kin to Wild Bill either.)

So even if in assured privilege, without any excess baggage of pride, you still consider yourself among the elite; I insist again, you haven't heard it all. You will thank me. Do not read this if you are tired. But do read this. Don't lose this. This is very bad.

I had addressed this account. It was to be a letter. In mind I had others whom I would copy. Now, I can no longer vision a particular reader, for what is becoming the final product of many stammered starts and fear fraught fits in turning from explanation to warning. But yes, this had been addressed, at various times and with various shades of pique concerning our judicial system, to Pollard, a naval intelligence analyst convicted of talking to friends in Israel, and his wife – Henderson – who first tried to form an organization that would point to this injustice, but who later under pressures that I am sure many would not want to know, gave up, left for Israel and divorced her husband who will till this dying breath be in solitary confinement in our worst Federal Prison. You may remember that he was caught with some exactly recorded number of cartons of classified ink. Ink that was itself not important, but that confirmed large re-evaluation of naval preparedness already widely known: everywhere except to the public. It had been addressed also at one time to Morison, the grandson of our great naval historian, Samuel Elliot Morison, who agreed to lie and pretend with the Prosecution in a kangaroo charade that he was being tried for passing photographs which showed how NATO's satellite photography works where even an idiot with the information I will subsequently give you could reason that the issue was what the photographs were of, not how they were taken; that the implications of these photos were to be kept not from any enemy but the public, and that the press, waiting all through the indictment and trial, had the two-faced duplicity to write long editorials condemning this "injustice" AFTER the conviction: indicating that they, the press, were the spymasters disciplining their own. I had addressed this to Sergi Koslev, a Soviet mathematician, who was criminally assaulted by our Office of Naval Intelligence in a case of mistaken identity and left a mental basket case in Dullas airport.

But, I do not now address this to Pollard, or to his wife – Henderson, or to Morison, or to Koslov.

Freedom of Speech, the cornerstone of our Bill of Rights, came from an old seaman's expression: "Pass and Stow". At the birth of our nation seamen were here from all over the world. They spoke every language and signed on ships of every nationality. They were quick to reason that sovereigns and their navies often acted not in the interest of the sailor and in their nefarious ventures they lied. Wars were declared and seamen were often in the lamentable position of firing upon their own countrymen. Their only weapon against this was information, information passed around enough until a critical mass of knowledge was established underneath the "sovereigns". It was this growing group-mind of knowledge that, in time, rallied to name the troublemaker and work to "...Blow the man down." The code for information of this nature, critical information, was "Pass and Stow".