Gosselin: CIA stole my babies

Being in the communications business, I find it troubling that we can't work together to come up with a cohesive, cogent strategy for gathering intelligence and delivering our message to the rest of the world.

I'm speaking of The New York Times story about the CIA tattling on a Defense Department official for using private contractors in an intelligence gathering operation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. CIA's reason: "That's our job."

Then The Washington Post reported that computer experts at the Defense Department had shut down a CIA Web site that was spying on insurgents.

In response, Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week ordered Pentagon officials to find out if there were problems in our so-called information operations. Months earlier Gates announced he was trying to get a handle on who was spying on whom and how much it was costing.

Some say our information operations - getting good data to allies and spreading disinformation to enemies - have been a shambles since 1999 when the U.S. Information Agency was disbanded in a cost-cutting move, a "peace dividend."

Big mistake.

One could argue the insurgents and terrorists do a better job of public relations and disinformation than we do, despite the millions and possibly billions being spent across several agencies.

Like Dr. Doolittle's pushmi-pullyu - the llama with a head on each end of its body - anytime you have two or more bureaucracies doing the same job you're begging for inefficiency, confusion and failure.

In 2005, President George W. Bush and Congress created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to fade the heat focused on the intelligence community after Sept. 11, 2001, and the weapons of mass destruction fiasco.

Patrick C. Neary, deputy director of the relatively new agency, in an analysis of the current state of our global information operations, wrote: "The American people should know that the quiet they sense is not the peace of security assured by the best intelligence, but the deadly silence of the graveyard we are collectively whistling by."

That's pretty effective communication.

I just don't like the message.

Living in the land of the lost

Always eager to perform an act of public service, when I read in Monday's Reading Eagle that Berks County Controller Sandy Graffius was having trouble locating people the county owed money to, I sprang into action.

It didn't take long to locate a missing person.

Marie Ketty Antoine, 326 N. Fifth St., is the first name on the controller's list.

I checked court records and found that Antoine has more than 70 different citations for code violations and parking tickets dating back to 2002.

I asked District Judge Wally Scott if he recalled Antoine, and he said he had.

"Sure, I know her," Scott said. "She was in here last week. She's a very nice lady."

Scott said Antoine was in his court for a city codes hearing and that she has another hearing in his court on March 3.

"If the controller wants to come here on March 3, she can give money to Mrs. Antoine then," Scott said.

Other individuals and entities on the controller's list of the elusive include the Ott Funeral Home of Boyertown, the Neversink Fire Company and City Councilwoman Marcia Goodman-Hinnershitz.

The biggest puzzler on the controller's list of the lost was the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The only address the controller has for the Commonwealth is Harrisburg, PA 17120. I did a Google map search, but it dead-ended at the state Capitol.

Next, I located the Rev. John C. Studenroth, former pastor of the Kutztown Bible Fellowship Church, on his cell phone.

I asked Studenroth what country he was in.

"I'm retired, but I'm still right here on Main Street in Kutztown," Studenroth said. "I'm in the phone book."

Not everyone was as easy to find. Sue Ann Sterner's is the last name on the controller's memo on the missing. Actually it's retired Reading Constable Sue Ann Sterner. Up until Dec. 31, she was getting paid by the controller's office.

"My gosh, I can't imagine them not being able to find me," she said.

If the controller still can't find Sterner, here's a hint. She's the wife of City Councilman Dennis Sterner.

He can be found at City Hall on Monday nights around 5 p.m.

My father looked out the front window of our house in Delanco, N.J., and sighed.

There I was pushing my sister's baby carriage through the puddle at the end of our driveway. Over and over again, laughing hysterically.


"At least he has his boots on," my mother consoled. "He'll grow out of it."

Over the years I grew out of nearly everything, except the thing my father feared most.

In sixth grade Sister Helen Ann, tired of tardiness, ordered the class to write a theme entitled: "Punctuality: the Etiquette of Kings."

My friend Jimmy Cooley and I each penned papers feigning ignorance and wondering how having good punctuation had anything to do with being a king.

After that incident I got an F in Helen Ann's art class for continuously making a mockery of her assignments.

Dad had no choice but to shave my head.


When it came time to go to college, even though I had aced accounting classes in high school, I insisted on becoming an English major.

Dad knew he was losing control of his only boy.

"Where did I go wrong?" he thought. "I knew I shouldn't have worked night shift all those years."

Actually, even though dad and I didn't see much of each other during the week, he had an indelible impact on my life by way of the Bernie Herman Movie on Channel 48.

Every day I'd race home from school, drop my book bag on the floor, and Dad would be sitting down with a giant bowl of oyster stew. He'd toss me a couple of those dense oyster crackers and start explaining the day's movie to me.

"This may be one of the greatest movies ever made," he would invariably begin.

His all-time favorite was "Gunga Din" featuring Victor McLaglen, Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

"Though I've belted you and flayed you, by the livin' Gawd that made you, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!" Rudyard Kipling wrote in his famous poem by the same name.

Despite all his efforts, when I moved to Berks County in February 1995, and joined the Reading Eagle staff, I also made a trip to the courthouse.

It was there that I was true to myself and registered independent.

Did dad's hopes for son go up in smoke?

The first memory I have of my father, Dan Sr., was when he sat me in front of the television to watch news coverage of the Kennedy assassination.

I remember him telling me it was important, but the more he tried to get me to focus the more my mind wandered. All I really remember is him trying to sit me down and what looked like a big parade on our black and white TV.

I had just turned 5 years old, and we were living in a small ranch home at 410 Larchmont Drive, in Delanco, N.J.

It was just across the river from the Mayfair and Tacony sections of Philadelphia, where my mom and dad grew up, but it was a heck of a commute to dad's job at the former Western Electric plant on Allendale Road in King of Prussia.

We moved to Norristown in the summer of '65.

The next thing I remember was Dad and I walking to Sunday Mass through a blizzard.

We walked down the center of North Hills Drive with me right behind my father, grasping the hem of his coat so I didn't get blown down by the wind and snow.

Then there are times in every father and son relationship when the son does something that leads the father to ask: 'Where did I go wrong?'

In our case they are too numerous to mention here, but the "Star Trek" incident is a fitting example.

One night after dinner I was downstairs in the rec room watching my favorite program, "Star Trek."

A few minutes later Dad yelled down, "Is something burning down there?"


"No," I replied.

Ten minutes later, Dad came to the top of the stairs.

"Are you sure nothing is burning down there?" he asked.

"Yeah, I don't smell anything," I said.

Five minutes after that, Dad came down the stairs to see for himself.

I was lying on the floor in front of the television. My head was propped up on one of those pillows with arms on it. Thick clouds of acrid smoke were pouring out of the back of the television.

Dad pulled the plug on the TV and pushed open the sliding glass door to the back porch.

He chased me up the stairs wondering aloud how I had failed to notice that the TV was on fire.

What Dad failed to see was that in the roughly five years since the Kennedy assassination, I had learned to focus.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Brother and sister meet at Cabela's

Stan Stine looked like a little lost boy Wednesday morning standing outside the entrance to the cavernous Cabelas store in Tilden Township.

The burly, 45-year-old mill worker held a bunch of flowers in his left hand, balloons in his right.

His stomach had been churning since 9 a.m. when he and his wife, Susan, left home in Tamaqua.

"He's never had family of his own," Susan said.

Stan had agreed to go halfway to meet his half sister, Tammy Cavalier, 35, of Birdsboro, for the first time in their lives.

Unlike Stan, Tammy had no trouble putting her feelings into words when the two embraced at the appointed hour.

"Oh my God, this is a great day," Tammy said as she threw her arms around Stan's neck. "I wish mom were here to see this."

Tammy said their mother, the late Nancy Cavalier of Reading, always talked about finding Tammy's three older brothers.

The mother and daughter located one of Tammy's half brothers in Reading when Tammy was just 6 years old.

But time had taken its toll.

"He didn't want to have anything to do with me or mom," Tammy said.


Undaunted, the two women continued to look for Tammy's two oldest brothers, Stanley and Jesse.

"Mom knew that you had been adopted by a family in Schuylkill County," Tammy said.

Stan and his older brother, Jesse, had been adopted by Paul and Pat Stine and grew up in Tamaqua. Stan said he hasn't spoken to Jesse in ages.

For years Berks County Children and Youth Services officials told Nancy Cavalier they could not help her find her sons.

Nancy Cavalier died May 25, 2008.

"She made me promise that whatever I did I had to find my brothers," Tammy said.

The county youth agency in January bought a computer program that located Stan.

"I got a letter from the agency on Friday asking if it was OK if Tammy contacted me," Stan said. "She called me Monday evening and we agreed to meet."

Tammy said she felt like the circle of her life had finally been closed.

Stan said he can't describe how he feels about the day.

But that's OK.

From now on he can let his little sister explain.