The Mail DAS-A RESPONSE

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The CRIMSON'S report on the Development Advisory Service in its Registration Issue is distinguished by factual accuracy as far as it goes. It does not, however, go far enough. Had the article included certain facts well known to your reporter, your readers would have been afforded a different and better basis for appraising some of the article's conclusions.

Let me cite as an example of such a conclusion the CRIMSON'S pronouncement that "each client nation [of the DAS] was headed by a non-Communist government which remained open and often friendly to American capital investment." The CRIMSON seems to be saying that the DAS is so interested in supporting American capital abroad that it gravitates toward countries that are "open" and "friendly" to the American investor.

How does the CRIMSON reconcile such a conclusion with the following facts which it neglected to mention?

The DAS terminated its project in Greece as a direct result of the colonels' 1968 coup amidst praise by the colonels and foreign investors of each other. The CRIMSON'S failure to mention this episode is particularly puzzling since its reporter specifically requested and obtained copies of correspondence between the DAS and the Greek military government terminating the project.

The DAS worked in Argentina while the government in power expropriated foreign petroleum properties and made other hostile noises about foreign investors. We halted this project in 1966 following a military coup which installed a government which has been among the most receptive in Latin American toward American capital.

The DAS plans during this academic year to starta project in Tanzania, a development which your reporter mentioned in another article in the Pre-Registration Issue. He could not have known, however, that the DAS is also discussing a possible project in Peru. Both countries have nationalized foreign investment and neither can be accused of being "open" or "friendly" to American investors.

As the foregoing examples suggest, we choose countries in which to work for reasons other than those the CRIMSON attributes to us. As students of the development process, we want to become involved in countries that will enable us to understand that process better. Consequently, we try to work in all three less developed continents: in countries with different income levels, of different size and at different stages of development; and in countries with different political systems, ideologies and apparent growth doctrines. If we fall, it is because we are limited in our choices to those countries which request our assistance, but as our present and immediately prospective project countries suggest, we are engaged in an increasingly diverse collection of poor countries.

[Mr. Gordon's Insinuations severely misrepresent my non-discussion of DAS involvement in Greece. In fact, the circumstances surrounding the DAS' not-too-hasty departure from Greece ten months after the April 1967 coup suggest that its involvement there is neither as simple nor as one-sidedly principled as Mr. Gordon's letter implies.

According to that correspondence which has allegedly been censored out of my account, the DAS left Greece, not for reasons of political idealism, but rather for more hard-headed considerations. From the DAS' letter to the Greek government, dated January 1968, nine months after the takeover:

"In our view, one of the fundamental requirements for scientific research, as well as for a helpful collaborative effort in the area of economic policy, is an atmosphere in which all necessary information is freely available and in which all ideas and facts can be disseminated without inhibition. We think these conditions do not now exist in Greece.

"Obviously, helping to build a competent institution takes many years and involves careful planning for overseas and domestic training as well as collaborative effort with the same local officials and staff members. We believe that the present situation in Greece makes it impossible to undertake the long-term planning and sustained effort that are required.

"Finally, we have found it impossible to interest economists of adequate quality to come to Greece and assist us in this effort."

The DAS field project in Greece had begun only in late 1966 (under a government which received large amounts of American aid and investment) and had never got properly launched by the time of the coup the following April. So there was the DAS in Greece, sitting on its hands in an Athens office. There were two reasons, according to DAS officials, for which their representative was told to wait it out: 1) until the abortive counter-coup by Constantine in December 1967, it was thought (and hoped) that the military government would be toppled; and 2) many of the economists with whom the DAS had begun to work under the Papandreou regime felt that the presence of the American team would forestall their own imminent arrest.

But there were others in the DAS who did not feel as complacent about the agency's actions. One such person was Alfred Conrad, who taught at the Harvard Business School and served for five years as an overseas economic consultant in the DAS. Conrad now holds an economics chair at the City University of New York.

Questioning the ability of a small DAS field team to deter the Greek regime from carrying out a few arrests, Conrad said last month, "I never understood the logic of that and I don't still. At the time, I didn't like the idea of Harvard showing either the Crimson or any other flag [in Greece]."

The role of the DAS in Greece is, to me, unclear. The limited involvement there is insignificant and not typical of the DAS' larger and more meaningful projects. For these reasons, I decided that an analysis of the Greek episode would have added nothing to my article except length.