Freedom House: an exchange.(Letter to the editor)

While preparing his article about Freedom House ("Freedom House, Rocked," April 2), John J. Miller contacted a Cuban-American organization that partners with Freedom House to promote democracy in Cuba. In an infelicitously worded e-mail, Miller inquired as to whether Freedom House had "gone soft" on Fidel Castro. He was informed that Freedom House remains stalwart in the cause of Cuban freedom. Yet this detail never made it into the article. Presumably, testimony to Freedom House's continuing commitment to Cuban freedom interfered with Miller's narrative of an organization that has lost its political clarity.

This is not the only example of Miller's simply casting aside crucial details about what Freedom House actually is and does. He writes at length, and with obvious disapproval, about Freedom House's use of American-government grants to promote democracy abroad. Nowhere, unfortunately, does he explain how this (and other) money is put to use. He does not mention our global campaign for human rights in North Korea; a bilingual Farsi-English Internet democracy journal that is read by many thousands of Iranians; a project to assist the democratic opposition in Zimbabwe; assistance to democracy ...