Letters

In "Show Us the Work" (The Last Word, July), Paul Light says, "Until the jobs get better, America's most talented college graduates are right to rate the federal government the career of last resort."

As a retired NASA research scientist, I'm afraid I must concur. Before leaving the NASA Ames Research Center in 1996, my colleagues at Stanford University were recommending that their students not go to work for Ames. In my current position teaching math, physics and aerospace engineering at a state university, my advice to my students is the same.

Larry L. Erickson
Pismo Beach, Calif.

The July "Editor's Notebook" (The Right Move) praised the proposal for a new Department of Homeland Security. And better security is certainly needed. Some of the information the FBI, CIA and INS received and should have acted on before Sept. 11 shows a real need for more timely information about terrorist threats. But I don't believe rolling some existing agencies into one huge agency will solve the problem.

The Bush administration has not faced up to the real problem-poor communication between law enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies. If an agency is ineffective, it is usually because of ineffective leadership.

Another big problem-one that the administration has recognized-is that it is difficult to fire federal employees. Because of civil service protections, federal managers take the easy way out, reorganizing and moving ineffective people to the side and giving them useless duties. This works, but it is very costly. It forces managers to give work to the effective people that the ineffective people cannot, or will not, do. This can lead to low morale because the good people are loaded down while the ineffective people waste time and money. Mainly it leads to poor performance by the agencies.

I hope Congress can see through this morass and realize a new super agency isn't the answer. With the right people in charge, there isn't any reason why the CIA and FBI cannot talk with each other and exchange timely information. As for the INS, it needs a complete reorganization and new leaders. We don't need another agency to analyze data from the CIA, FBI and INS.

Joseph Gardner
NASA Engineer
Houston

Raising the Ante (June 2002) misidentified Mark Lister, senior vice president for government operations of Sarnoff Corp. and managing director of Rosettex Technology and Ventures Group.