By Steve Duin, The Oregonian – January 30, 2009
As so often happens when you move in the wake of a gifted reporter, there’s not much to add to Maxine Bernstein‘s Saturday story about the exile of Portland police Officer Thomas Brennan.
Brennan made the mistake of speaking up about the conduct of Sgt. Kyle Nice, one of the sweethearts at the center of James Chasse case. When his precinct commander, Mike Reese, exonerated Nice — who “acted completely and absolutely professionally” — without interviewing the three primary witnesses to Nice’s professionalism, Brennan went public with his complaint.
Solzhenitsyn wrote an excellent study of Stalin’s KGB titled WE NEVER MAKE MISTAKES- always show an authoritative, stone face, respond to no one, show no expression, bury your mistakes.