To view this problem from yet another perspective: If one were to accept (as I do not) the most conservative and charitable estimate of Harvard's losses due to mismanagement of $1 billion during the last six years or so, this figure omits the consequential and cumulative subsequent losses. This $1 billion would have formed a new capital base, earning its own annual returns in perpetuity and subject to its own market value growth.

In fact, the losses already suffered by Harvard's endowment through gross mismanagement and incompetence are so monumental that they stagger the imagination. Try to imagine what a small fraction of assets so lost could have done for annual University budgets in terms of scholarships, salaries, new professorships, research projects.

There is one particular part of HMC which would require the special attention of the President and Fellows as well as of the Overseers--the handling of the $1.25 billion risk capital or private placement portfolio. Other factors beside sheer professional losses may be responsible for monumental losses.

This is a part that should bring the highest returns of all. The managers operate behind a veil of secrecy under the fallacious pretext of losing competitive financial advantage. This argument is nothing less than an insult to all Harvard's alumni intelligence inasmuch that they never had any such advantage in the first place and if they had, they had lost it many point ago by their own hand to the point that they already became the laughing stock of Wall Street.

It may well be that full disclosures of their investments will reveal the real reasons for their original secrecy, especially when the lists of their owners, stockholders and partners are scrutinized for other connections. Uncannily such secrecy of operations cannot help but invite comparisons with recent national scandals of S&Ls, for which results even our grandchildren will still have to pay the price of their wrongdoings. If HMC is to be considered as an integral part of the University, standing on its own bottom, then one cannot escape the conclusion that it is a very leaky bottom indeed--sinking into a quagmire of administrative inefficiency and professional imcompetance and dragging all of Harvard down with it.

There are other connected issues and problems facing our unsuspecting president, but at least some of them can be relegated to his newly appointed General Counsel, who I hope will introduce a breath of fresh air into the stale and musty Massachusetts Hall. Before the President can even focus his attention on other matters, he must first stop the bleeding on the financial side.

Immediately thereafter, if not simultaneously, he must perform a radical operation to remove the already advanced cancer on the body of Harvard--not with a scalpel, but with an ax. Only then will the entire Harvard family, loyal as it has been, will be able to help him clean the Harvard house instead of having it done by an outsider.

Surrounded as he is by already compromised advisors, Rudenstine will need all the help he can get to exercise his own healthy instincts. Being ethically clean and preserving his impeccable personal integrity may be necessary, but no longer a sufficient condition, for the Harvard presidency, otherwise Mother Theresa would be an ideal candidate for this position. Rudenstine needs the guts to ask penetrating questions of his top administrators and demand their full disclosure of their personal financial status and possible conflict of interest with respect to their positions.

Our president has a Herculean problem of cleaning his inherited Augean stables across the University. The only tools he will require are an ax, a broom and a shovel, and perhaps the prayers of all who truly care for Harvard.

This letter is not meant to be either negative or destructive to any person within the Harvard administration; on the contrary, it is meant to be positive and constructive by trying to identify and to remove once and for all the growing cancer on the body of Harvard. Henryk S. Ryniewicz