Dear Howard:
I waited 4 years to reply to your book about FPRI, to see what responses it would elicit, and now write this in private to you:
You are entitled to your opinions, but not to your facts. Your account of events in the 1980s contains major errors of fact. Here are three:
- Take a look at the masthead of Orbis. I was the editor from the moment I arrived in 1986 until I handed it over to Patrick Clawson in 1991. John Maurer was never the editor. He was my assistant. I was not taking over his job but doing my job. That you did not check this simple fact but relied on your faulty memory does not speak well for your research or your reliability.
- I decided of my own volition to step down as director in 1992; no one pushed me. I decided that, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the organization needed an American foreign policy specialist, as opposed to a regionalist.
- What you allege about my devoting disproportionate resources to the Middle East and being told to spend more on other topics never happened.
I had no idea that Marvin Wachman may have hinted to you about becoming director in my place, so your speculations of my actions in reaction to such a possibility is without basis.
Further, you overlook my accomplishment at FPRI giving all credit to Marvin: he was a part-timer who helped me but I carried the burden of reviving the organization. On my arrival its debt was the size of the annual budget. When I stepped down in 1993, the debt was paid up and the books balanced.
This meant that I was solidly the director. For example, after Marvin retired, he suggested to us an emeritus college president named Fred Binder, who we hired. But Binder did not work out for me and so was gone within weeks.
I hope you've finally learned how to type on a computer. And you'll be glad to know that Thelma Prosser works with me to this day, 26 years later; I gave her the excerpts of your book that concern her.
It is scandalous that a scholar such as yourself would write up gossipy, inaccurate notes and publish them as an ostensible study of a small think tank.
No reply necessary.
Yours sincerely,
Daniel Pipes
