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Suspension of Doonesbury Strips

Your apprehensions about the comic strip Doonesbury and the reliability of Garry Trudeau’s rather tedious litany of officials who have left federal employment allegedly “amidst charges of unethical behavior or criminal wrongdoing” seems dramatically justified in at least one instance. In one panel he mentions “John Horton.”

The circumstances of John Horton’s departure from government were reported on Page 1 of the New York Times on Sept. 28, 1984, a day or so before Trudeau returned to work following his extended layoff--so he may have missed it:

“The senior Latin American analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency resigned in May after William J. Casey, the director of Central Intelligence, insisted that he revise a report on Mexico so that it would support Reagan Administration policy. . . . The analyst, John R. Horton, refused to revise the report on the ground that intelligence data did not support such an alarmist conclusion. . . .”

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Some may conclude that Trudeau draws conclusions about the integrity of others with considerably less care than he draws his cartoons.

JAMES McTIGHE

Boulder, Colo.

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