Varant Hagopian, M.D.
300 Mount Auburn Street
Cambridge, Mass. 02238
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Dear Varant,
.PP
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On January 14, 1992, at about 4:15 p.m.,
while I was examining a patient, my secretary interrupted me
with the message that you wished to speak to me on the telephone.
Assuming that it was about a minor administrative matter,
I picked up the telephone in the examining room. Both
my patient and my secretary are witnesses to our conversation.
.PP
In the ensuing telephone discussion
you told me that my application for laser privileges
had been received by the committee, had been found in order, and 
that the committee required only one additional document, namely a copy
of the letter from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary confirming
my appointment to the staff of that hospital. I stated that I considered
your demand to be unauthorized and abusive of your authority,
that I believed you to be acting not upon the instructions of the committee
but on your own initiative,
and I stated that I would not comply with the demand.
You assured me several
times that the demand was not personal to you, that you were "only
the messenger" relaying to me the demand of the committee. I requested
then that you make your request in writing and our conversation ended
with your assurances that I would receive a letter
from the department of surgery confirming your request.
.PP
That letter has not arrived. Instead I received a letter from 
the President of Mount Auburn Hospital,
Mr. Francis P. Lynch, dated January 6, 1992,
advising me that I had been reappointed to the Active Medical Staff.
Relying on Mr. Lynch's letter, I infer that I had been
reappointed on or before January 6,
and that you lied
when you stated on January 14, that the committee required
further information to make the appointment,
since the appointment had already been made.
.PP
On June 30, 1991, I mailed to Mount Auburn Hospital,
as part of my application for reappointment,
an authorization to the Massachusetts
Eye and Ear Infirmary to release to Mount Auburn Hospital any
information relevant to my competence to practice medicine.
It was the duty of Mount Auburn Hospital to apply to the Infirmary
directly for all such information,
and it was the duty of the Infirmary to furnish all such information
directly to Mount Auburn Hospital.
If the information furnished by the Infirmary
included the document in question,
and it was already in your possession,
then your withholding my appointment until I had
surrendered a copy of the document was clearly improper.
If on the other hand,
the document in question was excluded from
the information furnished by the Infirmary,
then you must have known that such exclusion meant
that the Infirmary deemed the document in question
to contain no information
relevant to my competence to practice medicine. I agree.
Subsequent efforts on your part to obtain the document
seem to me to be evidence prima facie of malice and bad faith.
You demanded under color of your office of Chief of Ophthalmology 
a confidential document to which Mount Auburn Hospital
has no legal right.
You represented compliance with your demand as a condition
precedent to the granting to me of staff privileges 
when in fact you knew that those staff
privileges had already been adjudicated.
On the basis of the information available to me,
I have no alternative but to conclude that
your telephone call to me on January 14,
was an act of attempted extortion. 
I am no lawyer, but as I understand the law,
unless there are facts of which I am unaware,
you have committed a very serious offense,
which casts serious doubts on your
fitness to serve as Chief of Ophthalmology,
if not indeed your fitness to practice medicine.
.PP
I am writing to ask you to help me to understand
what you have done in a more favorable light.
What was the committee that required the 
Eye and Ear Infirmary letter of appointment,
who was its chairman, who were its members,
when did it meet, and which members were present?
Is there a reference in its minutes authorizing
you to obtain the document from me?
Who introduced the motion
that the document should be demanded?
Did any member of the committee,
or for that matter, any one else at all,
give the committee or give you
any reason to think that my letter
of appointment to the Infirmary contained any
relevant information which had not already been transmitted
by the Infirmary to Mount Auburn Hospital?
I should be grateful to you
if you would provide me with answers to these questions
and with any other exculpatory arguments or facts
you may wish to offer.