New Morning at the Ministry of Justice

To say that we are living in another McCarthy era may be exaggeration. But once again, the government's political opponents are coming in for extraordinarily harsh treatment. Officials in the government are conjuring up plots which they say vitally threaten the national security. And, as in the McCarthy era, there are many willing to accept the argument that the government's "enemies" do not merit the civil liberties traditionally assured to American citizens.

Today, and in the next few days, the CRIMSON will analyze some of the Justice Department's actions against white radicals since the Chicago trail. It was in Chicago that the Justice Department began its present policy of prosecute-and-persecute. Chicago represented a new morning for Justice.

Radicals frequently assume that they know the Justice Department's purpose in prosecuting a given case-the government is trying to intimidate the Left, or discredit the Left with the Middle, or satisfy the Right. No one can know for sure what the government's purpose is. But it pretty clearly is not the pursuit of justice.

During the sixties, cases against anti-war activists and draft resisters were handled by the Justice Department's Criminal Division. Mitchell transferred these cases to the Internal Security Division, which has been largely inactive since its heyday during the fifties. All the cases which will be described during the next three days were initiated by, or in consultation with, the Internal Security Division.

The Seattle Eight

Last April, a Federal Grand Jury indicted seven men and one woman in Seattle for conspiracy, in connection with a TDA demonstration which caused several thousand dollars of damage to the Federal Court House there.

All eight were charged with conspiracy to destroy federal property; four were charged with conspiracy to cross state lines with intent to incite a riot: and one was charged with using an interstate facility-a telephone-to incite a riot. J. Edgar Hoover announced the indictments and the immediate arrest of seven of the accused from Washington.

The Seattle trial began last November 23 and lasted eight days. On the ninth day, the defendants delayed their entrance into the courtroom by about 15 minutes. District Judge George E. Boldt responded by finding them all in contempt and declaring a mistrial: he said that the defendant's contempt had prejudiced the jury to the point that they could not receive a fair trial. He made the contempt and mistrial decisions summarily, with out holding hearings.

The trail's untimely end does not allow us to draw any definite conclusions about the evidence which either side would ultimately have presented. It seems quite possible, however, that the prosecution did not in fact have any concrete evidence that a conspiracy existed.

The elaborate indictment listed eighteen "overt acts" of conspiracy, such as "On February 11, Defendant Marshall spoke at a meeting at the University of Washington." In his opening statement to the jury, U.S. Attorney Stan Pitkin of Seattle added some detail to the indictment's description of the overt acts.

This, it appears, was the evidence he would produce against the defendants: between January 11 and February 13, 1970, the defendants were present at a number of public meetings; at some of these meetings, the TDA demonstration was discussed; some of the defendants made some militant, but unspecific, statements there.

More evidence: four of the defendants moved to Seattle from Ithaca, N.Y., three months before the demonstration took place. One of the defendants called Rennie Davis in Chicago to get a statement to promote the TDA demonstration (officially, the demonstrators planned to "stop the courts" nonviolently by entering the courtrooms and confronting the judges).

There is further evidence-disputed by the defense-that a few of the defendants led the trashing of the federal court. Two of the defendants were not in Seattle at all during the demonstration, however.

Even taken together, these overt acts do not substantiate a charge of conspiracy. While it is possible that the government was just not able to get the evidence it needed to expose the conspiracy, it is also quite possible that there were no grounds for indictment in the first place.

The Justice Department had nothing to lose in bringing the false charges; at worst, it could lose the case. But indictments are in themselves incriminating in the public mind. Standing trial and providing money for a defense is a tremendous burden for the defendants. And there is always the possibility that the jury will find the defendants guilty.

It may be significant that Guy Goodwin, a special assistant in the Internal Security Division, flew to Seattle to handle the Grand Jury investigation there, for it is reported that Pitkin was opposed at first to bringing charges against the defendants. He later said in court that his office had been involved in the case from the outset, however.

Goodwin also handled the Grand Jury which indicted eight Seattle radicals last August in connection with a ROTC demonstration at the University of Washington in May, during which type writers, projectors, and other classroom equipment were destroyed. This second group-which included two of the Seattle 8-was charged with "aiding and abetting, counseling and procuring, inciting and inducing each other and others to damage federal property." Their trial is scheduled for this May.

At the trial, Pitkin portrayed the defendants as violent revolutionaries who had duped "a lot of good faith demonstrators." He played heavily on the theme of the defendants as outside agitators.

According to Pitkin, one of the defendants told a group in Seattle that, after seeing a television news account of a demonstration in Seattle, "we decided this was the place to make things happen, so we jumped in the car and headed for Seattle."

Pitkin emphasized that the defendants had become involved in the formation of the Seattle Liberation Front-a coalition of radicals living in collectives in Seattle-very soon after their arrival in Seattle.

The SLF set up free stores for laid-off Boeing workers' and provided coffee and donuts, as well as literature, for people in line at Seattle's unemployment offices. And the group was circulating a petition in Seattle calling for a tax reform which would eliminate taxes for working people and shift them to corporations.

Several of the defendants charged that they were being prosecuted mainly because of the active role they played in the SLF.

At the trial, Pitkin read the entire Fourteen Point program of the SLF to the jury. The program includes directives to "create revolutionary culture everywhere, fight American imperialism through continual actions that disrupt the business-as-usual fabric of American life, destroy the university unless it serves the people, protect and expand the drug culture." Nothing in the program proved that the defendants were conspiring to destroy federal property or incite a riot, but these four points might very well frighten the jury.

A defendant allegedly called for "an attack on the American judicial system." The strongest statement Pitkin attributes to the defendants, before the day of the demonstration, is this: "We're not going to picket, we're going to shut that Court House down by any means necessary." The defendant he attributed it to denied making this statement on the grounds that he never says "by any means necessary."

It seems probable that no conspiracy existed. If the government knew this, then it can hardly argue that its motivation in seeking the indictments was is desire to see crime punished. Other possible motives exist: the government's desire to punish, or harass, or discredit those politically opposed to it. That it acted out of such motives does not seem implausible.

Sabotage in St. Louis

In St. Louis, there is less evidence that the government is acting in bad faith. Last May 4, several thousand demonstrators at Washington University in St. Louis marched to the Air Force ROTC building, which some of the demonstrators entered and lit on fire. When firemen came to put out the fire, the demonstrators, chanting "Kent State, Kent State," tried to push them back, even when the firemen came accompanied by the police.

The U.S. Attorney's office in St. Louis quickly convened a federal Grand Jury to investigate the May 4 incident because of the "myriad of possible offenses involved," Daniel Bartlett, Jr., U.S. Attorney in St. Louis, stated recently.

Bartlett said that it was his office's policy to prosecute any known criminal and that in this, as in every case, evidence that a crime had been committed led "automatically" to action by his office.

He did say that his office had consulted with the Justice Department during every phase of the grand jury proceedings-which is more than it consults with Washington usually. It had done so, he said, because of the Justice Department's interest in the laws that were involved. He noted that an Internal Security Division lawyer from Washington had observed the last part of the Grand Jury investigation.

The Grand Jury in St. Louis indicted four students on charges of sabotage or attempted sabotage during a time of National Emergency; one was also charged with destruction of federal property. Three other students were charged with violating an antiriot provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

The provision, known as the Civil Obedience Act of 1968, makes it a federal crime to obstruct law enforcement officers or firemen doing their lawful duty in connection with a civil disorder which obstructs a federally-protected function.

The Civil Obedience Act was proposed by Louisiana Senator Russell B. Long and supported by Senators Eastland and Thurmond. Long argued in Senate debate that the law was needed to supplement the other rider to the Civil Rights Act, Title I, which made conspiracy to cross state lines with intent to incite a riot a federal crime.

Both anti-riot acts have been challenged on constitutional grounds. Rioting which does not involve interstate travel is theoretically beyond Congress's control, though Congress sought to bring it within its control by making a connection between obstructing police officers and federally-protected functions which the police officers may be protecting.

The U.S. Attorney's office in St. Louis was the first to prosecute under the Civil Disobedience Act-which carries maximum penalties of five years in jail and a $10,000 fine. Two of the three charged under the act have been convicted so far. Both were charged with throwing a firecracker at a policeman and both received a five-year sentence, though the sentence in the second case will be reviewed after ninety days.

Sabotage in a time of National Emergency has never been used elsewhere against students involved in a campus disorder. It was used once before in St. Louis-in 1969, against a student who was caught trying to destroy the Army ROTC building at Washington University with a firebomb. It carries a maximum thirty-year sentence.

The National Emergency on which this law depends was declared in 1950 by President Truman, on the eye of the Korean War.

In his proclamation of National Emergency, Truman stated that "recent events in Korea and elsewhere constitute a grave threat to the peace of the world and imperil the efforts of this country and those of the United Nations to prevent aggression and armed conflict."

He apparently intended that the word "else-where" be interpreted quite broadly-the conflict in Korea, he said, represented just one part of the threat of "world conquest by communist imperialism."

No president since Truman has issued a National Emergency proclamation but none has repealed Truman's, which therefore still remains in effect.

At the time Truman declared a National Emergency, only acts of sabotage during a time of war carried a thirty-year maximum sentence; in 1954, Congress extended the sabotage law to times of National Emergency.

Though the political context in which the alleged crimes took place gives them political overtones, there may be no basis for charging that the U.S. Attorney's office in St. Louis acted irregularly. After all, Congress makes the laws and the Justice Department is sworn to carry them out. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth R. Heinemen's claim that "these cases are no more political than a case of bank robbery" is not entirely correct.

If someone robs a bank, in most cases it is quite clear what laws he has violated. In these cases, the government had a great deal of discretion in its choice of what charges to bring and could, in fact, have decided to let the cases remain at the state level.

It could have charged the four students indicted for sabotage with destruction of federal property instead. (It charged one student with both-the threat of a thirty-year sentence caused him to plead guilty to destruction of federal property, which carries a ten-year maximum.) Sabotage, after all, implies a threat to national security-and carries a commensurate penalty. The students in St. Louis did not constitute such a threat.

It could have left it to the state to charge them with arson, which has a two-to-five year sentence, or with destruction of federal property which, under Missouri law, has a maximum sentence of one year.

In fact, four of the defendants had already been sentenced to six months in jail by a Missouri district court judge, when they were indicted by the federal Grand Jury. Following their participation in the May 4 demonstration, the judge found them guilty of contempt of a restraining order against obstructive demonstrations, obtained earlier by Washington University. The two students who received five-year sentences for violating the Civil Obedience Act were convicted under the restraining order for the same action-throwing a fire cracker at a policeman.

The punishment hardly fit the crimes, which makes it harder to believe that the government's attorneys in St. Louis are as benign as they say they are.