To the Editor:
Re "Does the C.I.A. Have to Employ Torturers?" (letter, Aug. 26):
Anne Manuel's "solution" to the moral dilemma of the Central Intelligence Agency's collaboration with the unsavory is a simple answer to a complex question, but it is wrong. She urges an absolute blacklisting of all foreign spies or intelligence agencies implicated in a pattern of egregious human rights violations. But exceptions are needed.
In the aftermath of World War II, the Office of Strategic Services mounted Operation Paperclip to enable the recruitment of Nazi scientists into the United States space and defense establishments.
Dr. Arthur Louis Hugo Randolph, for instance, segued from building V-2 rockets with slave labor in the Harz Mountains to boosting the American space program, culminating in Apollo 11's epic voyage to the moon.
Wernher von Braun's career followed a similar curve.
Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega of Panama received C.I.A. payments in exchange for useful intelligence despite a reputation reeking more of malodor than perfume.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt fraternized with Joseph Stalin and President Nixon serenaded the Chinese leader Mao Zedong for reasons of national security, although both recipients of United States aid perpetrated human rights crimes rivaled only by Adolf Hitler.
Even the most parsonical are not demanding that Presidents be walled off from morally unsanitary foreign leaders. Why should the C.I.A. be held to a higher standard? BRUCE FEIN Executive Editor World Intelligence Review Great Falls, Va., Aug. 26, 1995
