Heritage Foundation

As one familiar with the extremist Heritage Foundation, I can verify that Christopher Knight does not exaggerate in accusing Heritage of “distor(tion) for effect . . . intellectual fraud” in the way it attacks the National Endowment for the Arts (“The Heritage Foundation Takes the Fight Over the Arts to Ignorant New Levels,” Opinion Section, Feb. 24).

I was a local officer of the United Nations Assn. of the U.S.A. during the 1980s when the Heritage Foundation began a campaign--as against NEA--to get the United States out of the United Nations and wreck the world organization.

As against the NEA, Heritage’s U.N. attacks were “peppered with inflammatory errors of fact” (over 40 in a single attack on U.S. peacekeeping operations alone!).

The Heritage Foundation’s power rests on aggressive fund-raising, public relations and lobbying. The bottom line in judging a think tank should be the accuracy and quality of its research and scholarship; by that standard the Heritage Foundation belongs on the bottom.

JOHN W. OSBORN JR.

Santa Ana