. Health_and_Healing
http://www.msnb
c.msn.com/id/10740935/
Homeland Security opening private mail
Retired professor confused, angered when letter from abroad
is opened
By Brock N. Meeks
Chief Washington correspondent
MSNBC
Updated: 5:55 p.m. ET Jan. 6, 2006
WASHINGTON - In the 50 years that Grant Goodman has known
and
corresponded with a colleague in the Philippines he never
had any
reason to suspect that their friendship was anything but
spectacularly
ordinary.
But now he believes that the relationship has somehow
sparked the
interest of the Department of Homeland Security and led the
agency to
place him under surveillance.
Last month Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of
Kansas
history professor, received a letter from his friend in the
Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip
of dark
green tape bearing the words "by Border
Protection" and carrying the
official Homeland Security seal.
"I had no idea (Homeland Security) would open personal
letters,"
Goodman told MSNBC.com in a phone interview. "That's
why I alerted the
media. I thought it should be known publicly that this is
going on,"
he said. Goodman originally showed the letter to his own
local
newspaper, the Kansas-based Lawrence Journal-World.
"I was shocked and there was a certain degree of
disbelief in the
beginning," Goodman said when he noticed the letter had
been tampered
with, adding that he felt his privacy had been invaded.
"I think I
must be under some kind of surveillance."
Goodman is no stranger to mail snooping; as an officer
during World
War II he was responsible for reading all outgoing mail of
the men in
his command and censoring any passages that might provide
clues as to
his unit's position. "But we didn't do it as clumsily
as they've done
it, I can tell you that," Goodman noted, with no small
amount of irony
in his voice. "Isn't it funny that this doesn't appear
to be any kind
of surreptitious effort here," he said.
The letter comes from a retired Filipino history professor;
Goodman
declined to identify her. And although the Philippines is on
the U.S.
government's radar screen as a potential spawning ground for
Muslim-related terrorism, Goodman said his friend is a
devout Catholic
and not given to supporting such causes.
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