Mark Boal's article["FBI's Shutter Speed" (Machine Age, November 30) generated an unusual amount of mail. Boal's piece recounted how pressure from the FBI prompted filmmaker Mike Zieper's Internet service provider to drop his Web site after Zieper (under the name "Mike Z.") posted a video about a purported military plot to start a race riot in Times Square on New Year's Eve. When the case became a cause célèbre on the Web in the wake of Boal's article, the FBI dropped its investigation and Zieper's site was put back up. Following are some of the letters received.

'MOUSE'

My Dad escaped from Nazi Germany just in time. If he were alive today, he would feel right at home reading about what happened to Mike Zieper.

What's the ACLU going to do about this? This isn't yelling "Fire!" in a theater—it's more like gagging all the people so that no one can yell "Fire!" when there is one.

The FBI could have applied for a restraining order. That would have been due process. As it was, they acted as judge, jury, and executioner.

One has to ask, "Why are they worried?"

Albert Krause
Mesquite, Nevada

NATZO FAST

Regarding Mike Z.'s adventure with the Feds: Why would anybody be surprised that an organization that kept a file on Helen Keller would act like the Gestapo?

Alan Scully
Brewster, Massachusetts

MARS ATTACKS II

The FBI's convincing Mike Z.'s ISP to pull his site based on its Blair Witch style is akin to the bureau under J. Edgar Hoover pulling the plug on Orson Welles's War of the Worlds broadcast! Why can't the powers that be grasp the concept?

Jane Tate
Honolulu, Hawaii

KANGAROO COURTS

I read Mark Boal's article with amazement. I'm shocked that in a country that advocates freedom of speech, such an occurrence can take place. I find it appalling that double standards apply to some Western countries that condemn other nations over such issues, yet allow them to occur within their own borders.

Ronald Teo
Sydney, Australia

NOT A CLU

Thanks for putting out the word on the FBI's intimidation of independent filmmaker Mike Z. and his ISP for displaying a politically incorrect video. I'd like to see you guys run with this one. I'd also like to see the ACLU do something more substantive than wagging their tongues; but I'm not holding my breath.

Chris Fitzmaurice
Nowata, Oklahoma

SCAB LABOR

I found Mark Boal's piece on the FBI harassment of filmmaker Mike Z. for his video about an allegedly military-planned New York race riot very compelling. I suggest you sic a pack of shamelessly self-indulgent investigative reporters and bun-reaming First Amendment rights lawyers on this one as soon as possible.

I am particularly heartened that a liberal paper would print such a story. No one can say you are right-wing extremists.

Give us a glimpse of the ship of state's underbelly, will you? Warts and all. Let's see you start picking scabs.

Bill Brooks
Mankato, Minnesota

'WHY' TK

Why did the FBI desire to suppress Mike Zieper's Web site? I think you should dig deeper. The press should explore the "why" on such stories. Often, that can point to issues that may be larger than the story itself.

Paul Lukey
Bloomington, Indiana

WEBBED FEAT

The creators of the New World Order and their minions cannot tolerate free speech—and they feel especially threatened by the easy access to a "mass media" audience via the Internet. Filmmaker Mike Zieper's experience is unfortunately not unique. Of course the ambiguities of his "performance" work had to baffle their narrow thought process.

A.T. Allegro
Miami, Florida

LINES OF COMMUNICATION

Blurring the lines between reality and art, fiction and nonfiction, is all well and good, but when such "art" is tantamount to shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, that crosses the line into criminal activity.

Too few people in today's society are willing to take responsibility for the effect that their actions have on others. The FBI was correct in acting, although their methods were questionable. Mike Zieper's "right" to shout fire doesn't hold water when it violates the rights of the many.

Karen Dietz
San Diego, California

THREAT IZ RAEL

Mark Boal's story on Mike Z. was echoed recently here in Israel. A classified document containing the minutes of a Justice Ministry deliberation about whether to indict a TV reporter for allegedly faking a swearing-in ceremony which, it turned out, was led by an agent working for Israel's equivalent of the FBI, the Shabak, was put on the Web. Within a day, the participants' names were blacked out on some sites and others were tampered with. One server in the U.S reportedly was threatened with physical harm if he didn't remove the material.

Yisrael Medad, Director
Israel's Media Watch
Jerusalem

'LIFE,' LIMBO

What you had to say about Mike Z. and his Web site being shut down is sad but not unusual in this politically correct era. Being a pro-life Christian activist, I see assaults on civil liberties all the time of a similar and even worse magnitudes, and no one gets upset.

Bill Whatcott
Regina, Saskatchewan Canada

VILLAGE GLOBALS

Where's the Voice's FUCKING COJONES!?!? Instead of just WABBLE WOUSING, why didn't you clowns get off your collective asses and host the guy's site?! How come, since this was such a FREE SPEECH ISSUE, you didn't take a stand?!

The take I get is that you feel empowered to spam everybody by planting a piece that'll play real well on campus and in Soho, but won't take any meaningful action yourselves.

Tom Denman

Portsmouth, Rhode Island

NEUTRAL NO MORE

If you can put me in touch with Mike Z., I'll gladly host his site in this country—which hopefully is outside of FBI jurisdiction.

Fungai Smith
Switzerland

HOBSON'S CHOICE

Cynthia Cotts, in last week's Press Clips ["Sheehy's Choice"], charged that I "allegedly violated a confidentiality agreement [I] made with Hillary Clinton."

What confidentiality agreement? Who alleged this? Cotts simply quoted a spokesperson as calling it a "garbled version of a private conversation."

Hillary Clinton, in an on-the-record interview in 1992 with her press secretary present, which was recounted in Hillary's Choice, asked me: "Why does the press shy away from investigating rumors about George Bush's extramarital life? I had tea with Anne Cox Chambers," the chair of Cox Communications, "and [she said]' . . . everybody knows about George Bush.' And then she launches into this long description of, you know, Bush and his carrying on, all of which is apparently well known in Washington.' Hillary continued, 'I'm convinced part of it is that the establishment—regardless of party—stick together. They're going to circle the wagons on Jennifer" (a rumored Bush paramour) "and all these other people."

Immediately after that interview, I called Chambers to ask if she would verify a conversation with Hillary about "Bush's Jennifer." Her account matched Hillary's almost word-for-word. It was now neither garbled nor private— both parties to the conversation had given me verbatim accounts on the record.

Cotts also alleges that Hillary's Choice contains almost no new interviews with Hillary Clinton. False. I traveled extensively with Hillary in '92 and have had conversations with her at least once or twice every year since then, some of which are quoted and footnoted in my book. I talked with her as recently as New Year's Eve 1998 and last August.

I have not, like some journalists, attempted to initiate myself into Hillary's inner circle by violating my role as a journalist. The price was spelled out in my February 1999 profile of Hillary in Vanity Fair: "The sure way to be in Hillary's inner circle, says a former White House spokesperson, "is to show a balls-out, go-to-the mat mentality about taking on their enemies. Anybody who has a hang-up about fairness is cast out as part of the enemy camp."

Gail Sheehy
Manhattan

Cynthia Cotts replies: With regard to Sheehy's 1992 interview with Hillary Clinton: In 1992, I reviewed Sheehy's transcripts, and saw that Hillary went off the record before she discussed the Jennifer rumors with Sheehy. In a statement Sheehy faxed to me last week, she admitted as much, writing, "I never agreed to keeping that outburst off the record." The fax also recounts Sheehy's attempt to get Hillary to discuss the rumors on the record, which Hillary resisted, giving her "the glittery lizard eye blink." Sheehy may never have agreed to abide by her source's requests, but she broke Hillary's trust by publishing off the record comments, first in Vanity Fair and again in her new book.

ANTI-UNION LABEL

Re Jason Vest's article "Hillary's Anti-Union, Slumlord Pals" [December 21]: Hillary Clinton's anti-union pals are nothing new. Remember, she sat on Wal-Mart's board, and they're still not unionized. New York won't be the same if Hillary gets elected to the Senate. Maybe that's good? At least, it'll give Arkansas a break. We don't want her back!

Karen Long

Little Rock

E-TOYS ARE US

Thank you for Claire Barliant's fine article on the eToys/etoy dispute ["eToy Story," December 7].

The crass assumption by eToys that their trademark predisposes them to control certain domain names is a dangerous one. Sadly, it is also an assumption that seems to be gaining legal stature.

Mike Edwards
Jersey City, New Jersey

Thanks to Claire Barliant for her excellent piece on the eToys/etoy suit, which shows that e-commerce will not sit idly by as anticorporate art encroaches on its territory. The Internet, however, has a tradition of quick reaction to censorship. The first anti-eToys Web sites are already up.

Richard Zach
San Francisco, California

SING NOEL

Peter Noel is a gem. Who better combinescutting-edge reporting and pithy writing with incisive political analysis?

Hope you don't lose him to the mainstream press.

Paul Bass
New Haven, Connecticut

Tell us what you think. editor@villagevoice.com