THE ARUBA MYSTERY

Readers weigh in on all things Natalee; helping the children of Uganda; Judith Miller, the scapegoat; tracking Osama's popularity; and more

Bryan Burroughs article "Missing White Female" [January] offers a refreshing look at a story that has gripped America's cable-news networks for months. Mr. Burrough details the story behind the story as well as the story seemingly missed everywhere else.

Too often, members of the American media get caught up in the art of speculation, and in reporting theories as though they were facts. This is about as far away from the craft of journalism as one can get. Countless hours of television to fill with no new news have done more harm than good to American media and those involved in the stories being covered.

The continuous speculation on the disappearance of Natalee Holloway has been a disservice not only to the American public but also to the Twittys, who still have no answers concerning their daughter's whereabouts.

Mr. Burrough isn't afraid to shatter the elements of the perfect-crime story if it means bringing some semblance of truth to Natalee's tragic story.

CAROLINE GRECH Richmond Hill, Ontario

HOW NICE of Vanity Fair to help the Aruban authorities trash Natalee Holloway. What difference does it make whether she was intoxicated or not? The article reads as though she asked for it. In case you have forgotten, Natalee was only 18 when she disappeared. Please have a little respect for the victim, as she is unable to defend herself.

MICHAEL SMITH Chula Vista, California

I WAS QUITE PLEASED to read "Missing White Female" because it gave the reader a fair and balanced view of the search for Natalee Holloway, the police investigation, and the actions of her family. Like many people, I have followed this case from the outset, but unlike others, I grew tired of Beth Twitty's use of her frequent appearances on television to spread rumors and innuendo. The shows themselves were no better, as they seemed to give her free rein to speak her uninformed mind and answer questions about subjects in which she has no expertise.

While I do feel sorry for Ms. Twitty and her family, it is not appropriate for her, members of her family, or a cable channel to arbitrarily trash the chief suspects or the justice system of a foreign territory.

JAN DASH Brooklyn, New York

AFTER READING "Missing White Female," I probably would have been left with somewhat negative views of Beth Twitty and Natalee Holloway. Luckily, I know better. Two years ago I graduated from Natalee's high school. I, like Natalee, decided to travel to Aruba—with many of the same chaperones—to celebrate the end of high school and to reward myself for the hard work I had devoted to getting into college.

Claims made by Aruba's deputy police chief, Gerold Dompig, that the students from Natalee's group were involved in "wild partying, a lot of drinking, lots of room switching every night," and that "Natalee drank all day every day" are almost laughable. The community of Mountain Brook, the Twitty family's hometown, is a place where virginal naivete is genuine and "cool," and drug use, sex, and wild partying are unheard of.

It is detrimental to Natalee's family and to our community when a magazine of the caliber of Vanity Fair seems to support the Aruban officials' claims and portray the Twittys, Mountain Brook students, and Natalee Holloway in such a negative light. If Natalee is gone forever, at least let her dignity live.

ANNA DEAN Athens, Georgia

1 ENJOYED READING your unbiased account of Natalee Holloway's disappearance. I was born on Aruba and still have family there, so I have been following the developments in the case as best I can.

I have been incensed by most of the onesided versions put out by the American media. The call by Alabama governor Bob Riley for a travel boycott of Aruba made me especially furious. His and the Twitty family's attack on this small island, so dependent on tourism, is very damaging.

I totally acknowledge that what has happened to the family is horrible. I probably would have moved heaven and earth, too, if something similar had happened to my own daughter. However, a whole island cannot be blamed for one individual's disappearance. The majority of Arubans are friendly people who do not deserve the media witch hunt that they have had to endure.

NAHLIN BUCKLE London, England

ANYONE with a heart must feel for a parent going through the agony of a missing child, and whatever their alleged faults or personality quirks, the Twitty family deserves consoling. You also have to sympathize with the people of Aruba, who, virtually overnight, have been thrust into the spotlight and into the maw of the "justice" shows.

But I'm just plain puzzled by Vanity Fair. With "Missing White Female," you have a story with a cast of characters, an exotic locale, and the fascinating yet urgent purpose of Finding out what happened to this missing girl, and Bryan Burrough has constructed it around not one but several gaping holes. In the article's opening paragraphs, Burrough mentions Jody Bearman and the six other adults who accompanied these teenagers to Aruba. Except for a later mention of one other escort, that's the last we hear about any of them. In a frustratingly fuzzy reference further into the story, we learn that Beth Twitty had "asked investigators to refrain from debriefing the Alabama students." We never learn why. You can't keep one teenager quiet, let alone 123; what are they saying? We learn that Natalee has a brother, Matt, and a stepcousin Thomas, who was also in Aruba at the time. So we have seven chaperones, 122 students, and two relatives—surely one of these people can shed light on the virgin/tramp, good-girl/party-animal characterizations. Additionally, the chaperones and students must have some insight into Natalee's behavior during the four days she was in Aruba before her disappearance.

POSTSCRIPT

When editor-at-large Matt Tyrnauer profiled Robert Evans for the magazine nearly 12 years ago ("Evans Gate," September 1994), the former production chief of Paramount Pictures and producer of The Godfather was about to publish his memoir The Kid Stays in the Picture. At the time, Evans was down-and-out at his Beverly Hills estate, which he could barely afford to maintain. "I went from legend to leper," Evans told Tyrnauer, giving a neat summary of his book's story line. In the years since, Evans has recaptured his status as a legend. The Kid Stays in the Picture became a best-seller. The book inspired a new generation in Hollywood, as did the documentary version (produced by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and became an international hit.

Now Evans, aged 75, is putting the final touches on a second memoir. The Fat Lady Sang. The inspiration for the final chapter, titled "The Miracle," came last year, when he was married for the seventh time, in Cabo San Lucas, to his neighbor Lady Victoria White, who, it so happens, figured in a September 2004 V.F. article about a financial dispute related to the death of her stepdaughter Sita White ("White Mischief," by Vicky Ward). White, now 43, gained a substantial fortune after the death of her first husband, Lord Gordon White, in 1995. "For once, 1 married up," says Evans, whose marriage to actress Catherine Oxenberg lasted less than two weeks in 1998, and whose longest union was with Ali MacGraw (1969 to 1972). Married six months already, Evans says, "[Victoria] has kept her house. But since we married we have not spent one night apart."

Evans, who is almost obsessively attached to his own home, a 1941 John Woolf-designed villa, hosts his year-old, weekly Sirius radio show. In Bed with Robert Evans, literally from bed. He is also focused on rebuilding his once famous screening room (and pool house), which burned down in 2004. "It will be finished by this summer," he says. "As close as it was as we can get it ... I made The Godfather in that room. Everyone in Hollywood had been in that room. So I want it back." With luck, it will be up and running in time for watching the dailies of what may be the next Evans-produced film: a fictionalized biography of Sidney Korshak, the late Chicago Mob lawyer, who was a mentor to Evans, and who got the Mafia to stand aside during the making of The Godfather. The movie is based on another V.F. article, "The Man Who Kept the Secrets," by contributing editor Nick Tosches, from April 1997.

Absence of any input from these obvious potential witnesses, or an explanation for their unavailability, cripples whatever investigation there is in this investigative report.

MIKE DAVITT Saline, Michigan

UGANDA'S ENDLESS NIGHTMARE

FIRST, I want to commend Vanity Fair for printing an article discussing the nightmarish situation in northern Uganda ["Childhood's End," by Christopher Hitchens, January], I'm confident that your readers will be moved and will want to get involved. However, the article did not supply any information on how to help. To that end, I would like to direct your readers to a project called Invisible Children (invisiblechildren.com), which a group of college students from Southern California have started. I am very proud to say that one of my students will be traveling with Invisible Children to Uganda this summer to work with the children; I know they can use more support.

CRYSTAL COUCH Orange, California

FOR SOME REASON, perhaps because these children do not have a voice, we have missed this madman, who is committing gross crimes against humanity. The entire world should rise up, remove Joseph Kony, and bring some peace and justice to this tormented land. Thank you, Christopher Hitchens, for shining a light on a very dark period in our humanity.

MICHAEL Me CARTHY Miami Beach, Florida

I READ WITH GREAT INTEREST Mr. Hitchens's article on the night commuters in northern Uganda. I lived in Entebbe from 1996 until 2003, doing H.I.V. research. My two-year contract turned into seven years simply because I fell in love with the country and its people. What Joseph Kony is doing to Uganda needs to be shouted from the rooftops, and I thank Mr. Hitchens for bringing this story to the people of the U.S. Kony is a terrorist and an overall vile human being. It has always seemed to me that it would not be difficult to remove him—his whereabouts are not unknown! However, the Ugandan government does not seem interested in doing this, as the "rebels" of northern Uganda keep the public eye off the corruption in Kampala. The U.S. is not interested in getting rid of Kony, either, because there's no oil in Uganda.

For 19 years, governments have turned a blind eye and allowed this "rebellion" to continuously murder, kidnap, rape, and savagely attack countless Ugandans. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

MARY SULLIVAN Monkton, Maryland

THANK YOU very much for your article on the horrific plight of Uganda's children at the hands of Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army. It is embarrassing and dangerous how ignorant we are to the atrocities happening outside our tiny personal circle of concern. But can you ask Christopher Hitchens to please leave out his editorializing? The facts speak for themselves without Mr. Hitchens's demonstrating to the reader his interpretive prowess with his smug, witty commentary.

BRUCE NACHBAR Los Angeles, California

IF MORE ARTICLES like Christopher Hitchens's were written, perhaps those of us in the Western, privileged world would care just a little bit more about those children who have lost their innocence, whether in Uganda or in other war-torn countries. Why are men like Joseph Kony allowed to terrorize whole populations?

Thanks, Mr. Hitchens, for bringing the plight of these lovely children to light. I pray that something will be done to stop the madness.

LORNA JEROME Waldorf, Maryland

GRAY LADY DOWN

SETH MNOOKIN'S article on Judith Miller ["Unreliable Sources," January], while illuminating about the inner workings of The New York Times, misses some important points.

First, to suggest that Miller's reporting about weapons of mass destruction prior to the invasion of Iraq somehow contributed to the unfortunate decision to go to war assigns to Miller and the press in general a power and authority they simply do not possess. George W. Bush is solely responsible for this decision—not Judy Miller, not the Times, and not other news outlets. The press should be clear about this and not let Bush off the hook. Turning the spotlight of criticism on Miller certainly did accomplish one objective of the Machiavellian Bush P.R. policy: when the administration commits an error, shift blame to someone else. Unfortunately, the Times and much of the U.S. press were accomplices in this ruse.

Finally, if the circumstances surrounding Miller's refusal to testify before the grand jury and her subsequent arrangement to do so did indeed require an "investigation," the Times was not the organization to conduct it.

Institutions such as the Times, or a presidential administration, are simply not capable of investigating themselves. I would have thought that the Times had learned this lesson from the Jayson Blair scandal. The better course for [Times publisher Arthur] Sulzberger and company would have been to get out from the middle of the whole Miller affair and let an independent body do the investigating. But the best course would have been for the newspaper to have stiffened its spine and not let the spotlight shift to Miller in the first place.

DAVID R. BROUSELL New York. New York

DOES ANYBODY other than journalism professors and television pundits really give a damn about the professional ethics of a New York Times reporter or the bad judgment of her publisher?

Will tens of thousands of Times readers switch en masse to the Post (Washington or New York)? Will the Los Angeles Times become "the paper of record" for liberals?

Though every Pulitzer may bring new readers to the Times, I'll bet it doesn't lose current ones to the sleaziness of a Jayson Blair scandal or the baroque (and somewhat opaque) insider maneuvering of a Judith Miller.

When the Times's circulation-trend line begins to point south, or when there are four consecutive quarters of declining advertising revenue, wake me up. Until then, what happens behind the scenes at the Old Gray Lady is as scintillating as the private life of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.

STEVE LEVINE Orlando. Florida

THE SAMPLE TRUTH

ALTHOUGH THE SHOW of support for Osama bin Laden in the Pew Global Attitudes Project cited in the excerpt of Peter Bergen's upcoming book certainly illustrates the vast chasm between public opinion and regime policies in the Middle East (the true hallmark of an authoritarian regime), these numbers tell only a small part of the story ["From the Shadows: An Oral History of Osama bin Laden," January].

First, in the Pew polls, approximately 40 percent of respondents in both Morocco and Jordan had an unfavorable opinion of bin Laden. I am currently working on a project with the University of Maryland and Zogby International which asks a similar question. However, instead of providing respondents with a list of names, we ask them to offer the names of leaders they admire. The name that tops the list in all six Arab countries surveyed is French president Jacques Chirac. Bin Laden gained a significant percentage (and then just 8 percent) only in the United Arab Emirates, and our survey also included Morocco and Jordan. Although any show of support for bin Laden is unsettling, I think the most shocking finding of the Pew polls is that nearly 10 percent of Americans don't know who either Tony Blair or Jacques Chirac is.

SI IANA MARSHALL Bethesda. Maryland

PERILS OF SI PAULS

I WAS OVERWHELMED with sympathy for the alumni of St. Paul's School after reading Alex Shoumatoff's article ["A Private-School Affair," January] detailing the appalling events that have been curdling the caviar at the exclusive institution. His account of financial malfeasance, staffing problems, hazing incidents, a drowning, sexual shenanigans, and just plain bad manners over the past few years reminded me of my own high-school days, except at my parochial school such events happened every day, along with stabbings, muggings, and a couple of drive-by shootings to round out the afternoon.

While the alumni of this prestigious institution gnash their teeth over never having graduated a U.S. president from its hallowed halls, my class is still trying to find someone who can qualify for the police force.

Shoumatoff seems to imply that the decline at St. Paul's began, as it did for so many institutions, in the 60s, when a class staged a revolt not against the Vietnam War, not against a denial of civil rights, but against the dress code. These brave individuals threw off the shackles of their suit coats and ties and bravely embraced the sweatervest and jeans. After that it was anarchywomen and minorities were admitted, and the whole place went to hell in a handbasket, leading to the current spate of skulduggery and sacrilege, the most serious involving, of course, money.

It just goes to show that the rich, with all their wealth and education, are as clueless as the rest of us when it comes to their kids and not a whole lot smarter about whom and what they throw their money at. They just get to be stupid in better surroundings, with a better class of people.

TINA DEARING Fort Wayne, Indiana

SOMETHING ABOUT CINDY

NO IMAGE has driven home the cost to Americans of the current administration's illadvised and deceptive war more than Jonas Karlsson's photograph of Cindy Sheehan lying prone on the grave of her son ["The Best of the Best 2005," January], I'll read the rest of the issue as soon as I stop crying.

JILL COZZI Washington. New Jersey

YOUR PHOTOGRAPH of Cindy Sheehan relaxing on her son's grave was inappropriate and grotesque. In a time of war, when many young men and women are fighting for our freedom, Sheehan should not be recognized as "the best of the best" of anything—except, maybe, setting a bad example.

My stepson recently rejoined the Marine Corps, as part of the reserve, eight years after his four-year enlistment ended. He will be deployed to Iraq in March. He is a patriot, making his own choices. We support our son. Cindy Sheehan should uphold her son's memory by supporting his love of America and by remembering all the freedoms won for her, and for all of us.

SUE REED Reno, Nevada

CORRECTION: On page 155 of theJanuary issue ("The Road to Kong " by Krista Smith), we misstated actor Andy Serkis's nationality. He is English.

Letters to the editor should be sent electronically with the writer's name, address, and daytime phone number to letters@vf.com. Letters to the editor will also be accepted via fax at 212-2864324. All requests for back issues should be sent to subscriptions@vf.com. All other queries should be sent to vfmail@vf.com. The magazine reserves the right to edit submissions, which may be published or otherwise used in any medium. All submissions become the property of Vanity Fair.

MORE FROM THE V.F. MAILBAG

I f you haven't already done so, please cancel my subscription." There is an undeniably bizarre, downbeat charm to that sentence. Do we really come across as the sort of magazine that goes around pre-emptively canceling people's subscriptions? Cool.

The letter to the editor we printed in December from Shirley Jones (that Shirley Jones) has elicited a rebuttal from Marty Ingels (that Marty Ingels), her husband. That's right—pull up a chair. Ms. Jones wrote that she loves V.F. but objected to the magazine's having put a "porn star" on its October cover. (Don't bother rummaging for that issue: she meant Paris Hilton.) Now Mr. Ingels, also from Encino, California, writes, "I'm on your side, V.F. The issue I take is with my sweet wife's 'target.' It's already steamed up my waters at home some." Ingels's point: "Don't shoot the messenger. Aim, instead, at the culture we've made that forces periodicals to report to the planet what its own hot flavors of the week are." We like his point. We liked her letter. But we nevertheless want to discourage other spouses from thinking that it's now acceptable to communicate with each other via the Letters pages of glossy monthlies. Because To the Editor: Please CANCEL my subscription, and tell Fred to pick up a quart of skim milk on his way home. / DARE YOU TO PRINT THIS is but a short, depressing step away.

"I find it intriguing that V.F. continues to explore and uphold the ideas of bluebloodedness at the same time as you offer hard criticism of our president, a sure product of country-club upbringing," notes Jen Cowan, of Telluride, Colorado, referring to Alex Shoumatoff's piece on St. Paul's. "In fact, the idea of a 'legacy' ... is exactly the kind of antiquated, un-American idea that led a man of negligible intellect to gamer a presidential election." Negligible intellect? Have you seen him stride across that White House lawn?

Mail this month arrived not only from V.F. readers but also from V.F. listeners. "I've heard a lot about the story attacking Beth Holloway," goes one. Another: "I don't have to read your article to know how disappointed and angry I am with your 'story.'" Well, we don't have to read our magazine to know that they're talking about the Bryan Burrough investigation of Natalee Holloway's disappearance in Aruba. Some who actually read the story found it "disturbing." Still, another reader—Anonymous, from Washington, D.C.—said, "Great job sorting out fact from fiction. You can't slam the cable channels hard and long enough for the lack of dignity they bring to their profession."

Finally: "Has Vanity Fair ever published an issue that did not contain the word Zeitgeist?" Well, Gail Snyder of Woodstock, Georgia, this might have been the one—until you came along.