Citizens' Group Releases New Packet of FBI Files

RESIST. a Cambridge based national draft-resistance group, released last night the fourth packet of stolen FBI documents taken from the Bureau's Media; Pa., office March 6.

The documents-which are being distributed to newspapers all over the country-represent further results of a raid carried out by an undercover group calling itself the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI.

The four documents in the latest packet concern themselves with the FBI's investigation of Union for National Draft Opposition (UNDO), another national draft-resistance organization which staged draft card turnins at many colleges across the country-including Harvard-last May, and other draft-related organizations.

American Exiles

The packet also includes a letter to an FBI agent attached to the U. S. Embassy in Ontario from an official of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police about an organization of American exiles, and a report on the formation of a Black Student Union at Pennsylvania Military College in Chester, Pa.

The names of informants and persons being investigated have been deleted from the documents.

The first document in the packet is a memorandum dated June 23, 1970 from the FBI's Philadelphia office to a Special Agent named Brinkley. The memo directed him to contact Selective Service Headquarters in Harrisburg, Pa. -the site of the upcoming trial of the Rev. Philip Berrigan and five other defendants indicted for allegedly conspiring to kidnap Henry A. Kissinger '50-to determine if UNDO had engaged in either of the following illegal practices:

Encouraging women to write to draft boards and claim to be men who plan to refuse induction into the army:

Counseling draft registrants to file "spurious material" at draft boards.

The next document, a four-pagememorandum dated Nov. 11, 1970, contains detailed case histories of several young Philadelphia men who applied for conscientious objector status or were involved in draft resistance. Also in the memorandum are references to faculty members at the University of Pennsylvania and at Temple University in Philadelphia who made speeches or signed statements about the draft.

One case history includes the dates a registrant registered for the draft, applied for CO status, and was granted his request. Also included are his college club affiliations and the fact that he volunteered for a hazardous experiment at the hospital at which he served his alternative service.

The file includes interviews with his former employer and the psychiatrist who supervised the experiment, and ends by nothing that the man was "associated with the American Friends Service Committee."

More Tidbits

Also included in the memo are such tidbits as names of Philadelphia area college faculty members which appeared on the letterhead of SANE, a nationwide peace group, and a letter from a woman apologizing to the FBI for having told her neighbors information that the FBI had asked her to keep confidential (she had talked, she said, because she thought the information was "inconsequential and of a trivial nature.")

The final document is a two-page memorandum dated Feb. 26, 1971 on "Black Festival Week" at Pennsylvania Military College in 1970 and the subsequent formation of a Black Student Union there. The memo includes information from three "confidential informants who are in a position to know of black militant activity in the Chester, Pa.. area." as well as the names of leaders of the BSU.

The first packet of documents released after the Media, Pa., raid included a memo from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover which urged "immediate" and "discreet" investigations of black student groups, terming them "a definite threat to the nation's stability and security."

Last week the Harvard Business School Afro-American Student Union announced that FBI agents had approached a member of the group and asked him to serve as an informer for the FBI.

The Citizens' Commission apparently plans further releases of documents seized in the Media raid. This week's issue of the Phoenix reported that FBI agents were gathering samples from Xerox machines in the area to determine where the documents were being copied.