Part 24 (2/2)

”Behavioral scientists, they don't know what people are like. You and I are in a bad state of mental health.”

The same Time Time magazine that celebrated abortion and Woodstock and called drug-taking ”Eucharistic” didn't judge any of this backlash much of a happening (indeed the most reliable way to get an ovation at the conference was to denounce a bright pink volume ent.i.tled magazine that celebrated abortion and Woodstock and called drug-taking ”Eucharistic” didn't judge any of this backlash much of a happening (indeed the most reliable way to get an ovation at the conference was to denounce a bright pink volume ent.i.tled How Babies Are Made How Babies Are Made-published by Time-Life Books). But the war that Time Time wasn't reporting on was helping realign American politics. One angry Anaheim anti-s.e.x-ed housewife told a reporter, ”I'm still a registered Democrat and I thought I was liberal, but I really don't understand the meaning of the word.” Another told a long-haired graduate student interviewing partic.i.p.ants at the Chicago conference, ”Boy, if you think you all are fighting the Establishment, you oughtta try fighting the NEA!” wasn't reporting on was helping realign American politics. One angry Anaheim anti-s.e.x-ed housewife told a reporter, ”I'm still a registered Democrat and I thought I was liberal, but I really don't understand the meaning of the word.” Another told a long-haired graduate student interviewing partic.i.p.ants at the Chicago conference, ”Boy, if you think you all are fighting the Establishment, you oughtta try fighting the NEA!”

But Richard Nixon didn't miss this new cultural war. As he prepared for his next big Vietnam speech, set for November, he made ready to turn the divide between ”normal” Americans and the immoral Establishment that pretended to speak for them into his next political advance.

The liberal inhabitants of the best circles: they weren't like you and me.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

The Presidential Offensive RONALD R REAGAN'S ADMINISTRATION PREPARED FOR THE 196970 196970 school year by asking the FBI to help in its ”psychological warfare campaign” against campus radicals. J. Edgar Hoover responded enthusiastically-”this has been done in the past and has worked quite successfully”-and dispatched his number two man, Clyde Tolson, to help. A Reagan aide said they wanted to shut down radical bookstores for building code violations and hoped the Justice Department would charge ”those elements which disrupted the peaceful pursuit of studies by right-thinking students” with civil rights violations. He said he'd heard people in the Pentagon could help with intelligence. Tolson a.s.sured him, ”We are well aware of such potentials.” school year by asking the FBI to help in its ”psychological warfare campaign” against campus radicals. J. Edgar Hoover responded enthusiastically-”this has been done in the past and has worked quite successfully”-and dispatched his number two man, Clyde Tolson, to help. A Reagan aide said they wanted to shut down radical bookstores for building code violations and hoped the Justice Department would charge ”those elements which disrupted the peaceful pursuit of studies by right-thinking students” with civil rights violations. He said he'd heard people in the Pentagon could help with intelligence. Tolson a.s.sured him, ”We are well aware of such potentials.”

The federal government was developing many such ”potentials.” Senator Sam Ervin, the North Carolina conservative and civil libertarian, learned that Treasury Department officials checked library lists to see what books certain suspicious Americans read, that HEW kept a blacklist of antiwar scientists, that the Secret Service was asking government employees to report anyone with an interest in ”embarra.s.sing” the president.

Ervin had only glimpsed the tip of the iceberg. Since 1966 army intelligence had been keeping an eye on protesters who might specifically represent a threat to the army. The Nixon administration tapped an attorney in the Justice Department, William Rehnquist, to write a memo justifying expanding the program to spy on any antiwar activity. Soon, one thousand undercover agents in three hundred offices nationwide were compiling dossiers on such groups as the NAACP, ACLU, Southern Christian Leaders.h.i.+p Conference, and Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam.

On May 14, the attorney general had met with the director of central intelligence for a briefing on the apparatus the CIA had set up in 1967-Operation CHAOS-to determine which protesters were getting support from America's enemies abroad. Four separate reports to LBJ had a.s.sured him that none were. The Nixon White House now learned the same thing. Nonetheless, Mitch.e.l.l arranged for CHAOS to expand-and to no longer bother with honoring the CIA's charter to spy only on non-Americans. In October, it began infiltrating the antiwar movement. ”Our insider information has caused SDS to get more conspiratorial in a lot of places,” an agent remarked. It ”makes it harder for them to draw the kinds of crowds they used to get at their rallies.”

The Nixon administration set up an apparatus to haunt dissidents via their tax returns. When Nixon learned that the IRS had audited John Wayne and Billy Graham-as Nixon himself had been audited in 1961 and '62-he growled, ”Get the word out, down to the IRS, that I want them to conduct field audits of those who are our opponents if they're going to do our friends.” He suggested the IRS start with the new Democratic National Committee chairman, Larry O'Brien, who, like Nixon's brother, had possibly shady dealings with the Howard Hughes organization. The IRS's Activist Organizations Committee went online in July-then they changed the name to the Special Services Staff, the better to keep its purpose secret. Their target list included over a thousand groups and four thousand individuals-stored in a locked, soundproof room in the IRS bas.e.m.e.nt. ”What we cannot do in a courtroom via criminal prosecutions to curtail the activities of some of these groups,” a White House memo explained, ”IRS could do by administrative action.”

Meanwhile the Justice Department worked to do things in the courtroom-especially the one belonging to Judge Julius J. Hoffman in Chicago, who was to preside over the trial of Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, Bobby Seale, and the rest of the alleged ”Chicago 8” convention conspirators. The government possessed wiretaps on five of them. The Supreme Court had ruled heretofore that wiretap logs must be submitted to the defense. Then, in July, three months after the indictment and two months before the trial was set to begin, Attorney General Mitch.e.l.l made an extraordinary announcement: since the executive branch had the power ”to gather intelligence information concerning those organizations which are committed to the use of illegal methods to bring about changes in our form of government and which may be seeking to foment violent disorders,” it would violate the national interest for the defense to review the logs. Lawyers howled that the chief law enforcement officer of the United States had just violated his oath of office. The chief law enforcement officer thought precisely the opposite: if ever he was upholding his duty to ”preserve and defend the Const.i.tution against all enemies foreign and domestic,” this was it. The FBI had been saying it since March of 1968: the Chicago organizers were ”a substantial threat to national security.”

They believed they were doing their duty: protecting the national security. And perhaps they were.

Students for a Democratic Society held the last national convention of its inst.i.tutional life in June in the shabby and underlit Chicago Coliseum. One faction, the Progressive Labor Party, a severe, crew-cutted Maoist cell that banned the use of drugs, had stealthily taken over the SDS bureaucracy. Another faction-for Byzantine reasons of factional history, they called themselves Revolutionary Youth Movement II-joined in tactical alliance with a group that called themselves Weathermen to try to win the organization back. They labeled Progressive Labor false Maoists and ersatz revolutionaries and had attempted to prove their revolutionary superiority by recruiting angry white working-cla.s.s high school students, who were supposed to serve as foot soldiers under the vanguard leaders.h.i.+p of the Black Panther Party. The Weathermen were, meanwhile, working to harden themselves as urban guerrilla warriors and had brought black and Latino street toughs into the meeting as ringers. When an entirely separate faction, the Women's Liberation Caucus, offered a motion against male chauvinism, the street toughs roared back in mockery, chanting, ”p.u.s.s.y power! p.u.s.s.y power!” The floor disintegrated into a cacophony of contending chants: ”Fight male chauvinism! Fight male chauvinism!” ”Read Mao! Read Mao! Read Mao!” The Weathermen and Revolutionary Youth Movement II withdrew to reconst.i.tute the meeting, expelling Progressive Labor from SDS as ”objectively anticommunist” and ”counterrevolutionary.” Upon which, declaring victory, a Revolutionary Youth Movement II leader called a press conference to read the telegram he had just sent to Mao Tse-tung describing their ”great victory” over the false Maoists of the Progressive Labor Party.

Such was the burlesque that New Left politics had become. The Weathermen withdrew, put out a clotted manifesto studded with quotes from Lin Biao's Long Live the Victory of People's War!, Long Live the Victory of People's War!, and undertook frightening rituals to temper themselves against their ”bourgeois” disinclination to violence. In August some met with representatives of the National Liberation Front in Cuba, who advised them to ”stop the airplanes.” So they traveled to California air bases and haplessly attempted some sabotage. and undertook frightening rituals to temper themselves against their ”bourgeois” disinclination to violence. In August some met with representatives of the National Liberation Front in Cuba, who advised them to ”stop the airplanes.” So they traveled to California air bases and haplessly attempted some sabotage.

They were hardly one big happy family. But what united them vindicated Attorney General Mitch.e.l.l. All, after their different fas.h.i.+ons, wished to see the existing society gone. That any two given New Leftists were more likely to break into fisticuffs than join in any effective conspiracy did nothing to dissuade the forces of law and order that they must be destroyed.

The Chicago conspiracy trial opened September 24. A cabdriver shared his take with a visiting journalist: ”Those anarchists will be in jail by Christmas.” Things weren't quite so efficient. Bobby Seale, also under indictment in Connecticut for conspiracy to murder another Black Panther, had been driven out from California in chains by U.S. marshals. Since his lawyer, Charles Garry, had obtained a court order to keep him in California that the marshals had ignored, Seale claimed he'd been kidnapped. Garry was undergoing surgery in California, so Seale rose at the opening gavel on the third day to request a six-week continuance. The judge refused.

Seale shouted, ”If I am consistently denied this right of legal counsel of my choice...then I can only see the judge as a blatant racist of the United States court.”

Judge Hoffman was an excruciatingly proud man. One of the things he was most proud of was having presided over the North's first school integration case. ”Just a minute! Just a minute!” he barked, asking the clerk to read the words back. He turned to Seale: ”Watch what you say, sir.” They bickered on and on, then the jury finally entered. Defendant Tom Hayden raised his fist in salute. Prosecutor Richard Schultz angrily asked the judge to send out the jury. The judge chewed out Hayden for ”shaking his fist.” Hayden replied, ”It is my customary greeting, Your Honor.”

Prosecutor Schultz began his opening statement. He mentioned Abbie Hoffman, who rose with a flourish and blew a kiss at the jury.

The judge, sternly: ”The jury is directed to disregard the kiss from Mr. Hoffman.”

The long-haired defense lawyer Leonard Weingla.s.s started his his opening statement, reminding the jury that according to the common law, they were the courtroom's ”highest authority.” opening statement, reminding the jury that according to the common law, they were the courtroom's ”highest authority.”

Judge dismissed jury again and warned Weingla.s.s against further ”contumacious conduct.”

Every morning, a miniature trial-within-a-trial between Seale and Judge Hoffman unspooled; every afternoon, a generational civil war between defendants and judge. The second week of the trial began with two women on the jury getting letters at home reading, ”You are being watched-the Black Panthers.” One said she could no longer be impartial and was dismissed. The word flashed through the underground media covering the trial as the opening round of the government's conspiracy to jail all youthful dissenters: since these were the only jurors in their twenties, the prosecution had sent the letters to rid the jury of potential defense sympathizers.

The trial would not be over by Christmas.

Perhaps it would not be over by Easter.

On October 3, the Chicago police riddled Black Panther headquarters on the West Side with bullets (somehow no one died). Three days later, out in California, Angela Davis, a young professor at UCLA and disciple of Herbert Marcuse and an admitted Community Party member, completed the first lecture of Philosophy 99 (Recurring Philosophical Themes in Black Literature) to a standing ovation. The Reagan-dominated majority on the Board of Regents had already voted to fire her. So two thousand students showed up to take her cla.s.s.

Two days after that, on October 8, the Weathermen tried to jump-start the revolution.

Their a.n.a.lysis led them to the conclusion that thousands of young people would gather in Chicago in solidarity with the conspiracy defendants to tear down Pig City. One of their major organizing efforts had been among the toughs in working-cla.s.s high schools, alienated proletarians who, their dialectic concluded, would flock flock to radicals who didn't just talk. The revolution would finally have been made concrete. The war would be brought home. Youth would ”feel the Vietnamese to radicals who didn't just talk. The revolution would finally have been made concrete. The war would be brought home. Youth would ”feel the Vietnamese in ourselves in ourselves”-and the third world, witnessing their sacrifice, would rise up in revolutionary solidarity.

After dark, around a bonfire in Lincoln Park, the ”Days of Rage” began with a commemoration of the martyrdom of Che Guevara. The warriors cast nervous glances: there were only three hundred of them, and two thousand waiting police. They had already blown up a statue memorializing the policemen who died in the 1886 Haymarket riot. An officer told the Trib, Trib, ”We now feel it is kill or be killed.” ”We now feel it is kill or be killed.”

Tom Hayden, through a bullhorn, pledged the solidarity of the defendants (actually, the defendants were divided on the question).

An NBC producer felt something like a knife pressed up against his giblets: ”Pig newsman, just make sure to tell the story straight.”

A ringleader shouted, ”I am Marion Delgado!”-the signal. Delgado was a five-year-old boy who had, in 1947, derailed a pa.s.senger train with a chunk of concrete. This was whom the Weathermen had chosen for a folk hero.

The warriors shrieked down the streets of the Gold Coast armed with clubs, chains, pipes, and bats, smas.h.i.+ng windows of apartment buildings and cars. They charged police lines; the police shot six of them, and suffered twenty-eight injuries themselves.

Out-of-towners not arrested slept in the bas.e.m.e.nts of Movement-friendly churches and seminaries. The next night a ”women's militia” of seventy gathered in Grant Park to raid a draft board, but were overpowered before they could hit the streets (the Trib: Trib: ”5 Cops and City Aide Beaten and Bitten by Women Rioters”). The next day's scheduled ”jailbreak” of area high schools was called off when Governor Ogilvie announced he was calling out twenty-five hundred National Guardsmen. Meanwhile the city's a.s.sistant corporation counsel Richard Elrod leapt to tackle a Weatherman, slammed into a concrete wall, and ended up paralyzed for life. Brian Flanagan was charged with attempted murder. The Weatherman's mother told the press, ”I don't blame the Chicago police. They should have knocked the heads off every one of them.” ”5 Cops and City Aide Beaten and Bitten by Women Rioters”). The next day's scheduled ”jailbreak” of area high schools was called off when Governor Ogilvie announced he was calling out twenty-five hundred National Guardsmen. Meanwhile the city's a.s.sistant corporation counsel Richard Elrod leapt to tackle a Weatherman, slammed into a concrete wall, and ended up paralyzed for life. Brian Flanagan was charged with attempted murder. The Weatherman's mother told the press, ”I don't blame the Chicago police. They should have knocked the heads off every one of them.”

The Weathermen declared dialectical victory. As one pointed out, ”We're not trying to end wars. We're starting to fight war.” Defendant Jerry Rubin told reporters in the federal courthouse cloakroom, ”They brought the movement a qualitative step forward.” His Yippie colleague Stewart Albert elaborated, ”What if you picked up a history book and read that in 1938 a thousand University of Berlin students ran through the streets on behalf of the Jews in the camps, breaking car windows, knocking over fat, old German ladies, and beating up the Gestapo?...On a moral level, they're perfect.”

Nixon, Mitch.e.l.l, Reagan, and J. Edgar Hoover could declare dialectical victory as well: their theory was confirmed that these antiwarriors, from the street fighters on down to the fellow travelers who sheltered them in their churches, were essentially about ending our const.i.tutional republic.

The self-fulfilling polarization of presidents and the revolutionaries intensified, even as, by the ninth month of Richard Nixon's presidency, antiwar conviction was more mainstream than ever. In June, 47 percent of America backed Nixon's handling of the war and 45 percent opposed it. By September, 35 percent backed it and 57 percent opposed it. It seemed to many that Nixon's secret plan to end the war was to escalate it. And an astounding number of people, even those who had voted for him, were willing to fight to stop it.

In March the ministers, priests, and rabbis of Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam (CALCAV) sent out sixty thousand posters listing the number of Americans and Vietnamese killed in the war. Pastors led Eastertide marches: thirty thousand people in the rain in Chicago, forty thousand in San Francisco, one hundred thousand in New York. Quakers read out the names of the thirty thousand American war dead in front of draft boards, then on the Capitol steps-then, after they were threatened with arrest, arm in arm with congressmen. When CALCAV held its convention in Michigan, the president of Dow Chemical, Gil Doan, a devoted Episcopalian, invited them to his home. In 1967, in response to student riots over napalm, which was manufactured by Dow, Doan had responded, ”As long as the U.S. is involved in Vietnam, we believe in fulfilling our responsibility to this national commitment of a democratic society.” Now he told the divines that if they could demonstrate that napalm was primarily affecting civilians, he would try to get the company out of the contract. Soon after, Dow reportedly intentionally overbid for the Department of Defense napalm procurement contract and stopped producing the weapon because it was hurting their recruitment efforts among students.

The news from Southeast Asia helped spread the alienation. In late August the army announced that eight Green Berets, including the commander of Special Forces in Vietnam, Colonel Robert B. Rheault-the ”Nha Trang 8”-would be charged with the murder of a Vietnamese civilian. The victim was a suspected enemy agent. Shadow upon shadow upon shadow: somehow, the trial got canceled. One of the men's lawyers p.r.o.nounced darkly, ”People in high places made a mistake and are refusing to admit it.” (He was right: the high place that had fixed the trial was the Oval Office.) In its June 27 issue, Life Life ran the portraits of the men who'd died in Vietnam the week after Memorial Day. They looked like children. The next week the Senate pa.s.sed the first small rea.s.sertion of a congressional role in war-making since the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Women Strike for Peace picketed the White House in black veils. A book called ran the portraits of the men who'd died in Vietnam the week after Memorial Day.

<script>