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If Osama bin Laden's sense of geography were as mistaken as Bob Kerrey's in his review of James Bamford's The Shadow Factory (Book World, Oct. 12), we'd have little to worry about from either of them. Because both of them would be lost. Is this why Big Brother has problems?
As a native of Buffalo, I was startled to learn from the front page of Book World that the Peace Bridge crosses the Niagara River from Niagara Falls, Canada. Did someone move that bridge from its original perch 20 miles upstream between Ft. Erie, Ontario, and Buffalo, N.Y? It has been there since 1927 and was still there the last time I looked.
WILLIAM E. WEGENER
McLean, Va.
Bob Kerrey replies:
Mr. Wegener makes a good and useful catch. But the error was in General Hayden's original testimony, which the author and I merely repeated. Second and most important, the issue here should not be geography. The issue is whether the National Security Agency would have intercepted any of Osama bin Laden's communications were he to have crossed into the United States. Hayden's testimony -- which was given even as two of bin Laden's people were signing up for flight lessons in the United States (18 months before 9/11, but well after al Qaeda's attacks on our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya) -- was that the NSA would not have infringed on Osama bin Laden's rights. That is a lot more alarming than a mistake Hayden made -- and I repeated -- concerning the location of the Peace Bridge.
In her review of Mr. Playboy, Steven Watts's biography of Hugh Hefner (Book World, Style, Oct. 10), Carolyn See admits she never has been to the famed Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles. She then devotes almost 20 percent of her review to a discourse on a sad and sordid situation at someone else's home she had visited.
I have been to the Playboy Mansion many times, and it bears no resemblance to See's deliberately unflattering, unfounded reference.
TRACY LEVERTON
Vienna, Va.
As good as it was, Fergus M. Bordewich's review of Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses in Monticello (Book World, Sept. 14), missed a great opportunity. In this season of racial and racialist presidential election rancor, it's a fact well worth noting: The United States already has had an African American first lady in the White House. Her name was Sally Hemings.
CHARLES MURN
Washington, D.C.
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