A retired University of Kansas professor was shocked to discover last month that the Department of Homeland Security had opened his mail.

Grant Goodman, 81, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, received a letter from someone described as a “devoutly Catholic Filipino history professor” in the Philippines. The letter had been sliced open from the bottom, and re-sealed with green tape bearing the seal of the Department of Homeland Security and a message saying it had been opened by “Border Protection.”

Customs and Border Protection is the agency within the Homeland Security department responsible for screening people and things entering the U.S. from other countries. A statement on its Web site says that the “Postal Service sends all foreign mail shipments to CBP for examination.”

It’s known that CBP inspects packages entering the U.S., but the item in question was a letter in a normal envelope.

Goodman’s revelation came the same day that President Bush defended his decision to authorize — without permission from Congress or the courts — a secret program to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism.

Goodman said the news about warrantless wiretaps prompted him to go public about his opened mail. He said he had last seen such intrusions during World War II, when as an Army lieutenant he was required to censor the mail of men under his command.

“I don’t know why they would censor this kind of mail,” he said. “It’s amazing.”

“They were very upset it (warrantless wiretaps) was made public,” he said of the government. “They might be upset with this.”

A spokesman for the agency, which is under the Homeland Security umbrella, said he couldn’t speak specifically about Goodman’s case.

John Mohan, the spokesman, said he didn’t know how often the agency opened mail from abroad. And he wouldn’t discuss the criteria for opening letters.

But he said such searches had helped the government protect American lives.

“Obviously,” Mohan said, “it’s a security thing.” — Lawrence Journal-World

TheJournal-World published a photograph of the opened letter, and the Department of Homeland Security seal is clearly visible on the green tape with which the letter was resealed.

Goodman worries that he “must be under surveillance for one reason or other.”

He won’t release the name of the former professor in the Philippines, but says she is in her mid-80s and hardly a security risk. “This is a very devout Catholic woman who goes to 6:00 mass every evening, and I don’t know what they would be interested in her for,” he says. “She hasn’t written about anything in years.”

Goodman, the editor of the textbook Asian History, spoke most recently at the “International Conference on the Japanese Occupation: Sixty Years after the End of the Asia-Pacific War.” The conference was held in Singapore in September 2005.

Goodman hopes that his disclosure of this mail tampering will encourage other people to expose similar invasions of privacy.

“I purposely gave the letter to the newspaper in hopes that others would come forward with their experiences,” he says, “but none have so far.”

Goodman is amazed at the crudeness of the Homeland Security. In his historical research, he saw many better examples.

“I know how the Japanese opened mail,” he says. “In the 1930s they were very good at it. The people whose mail they were reading didn’t even know they had opened it.” — The Progressive

Have you had your mail opened by the Department of Homeland Security? Or do you know why letters are being opened?