Lay Off Popkin

THE GOVERNMENT'S harrassment of Samuel L. Popkin, assistant professor of Government, has reached absurdity. Last week, government attorneys served Popkin with a contempt citation for his failure to testify before a Boston grand jury investigating the Pentagon Papers leak. Popkin--whose only apparent connection with the case is his association with Dr. Daniel Ellsberg '52--now faces possible imprisonment.

The government's dogged pursuit of Popkin has caused him considerable anguish since October, when he was first called before the grand jury here. He has had to engage a lawyer full-time, and he has spent countless hours haggling out responses to the government's repeated attempts to force testimony from him. The resultant mental duress has no doubt affected Popkin's work as a professor and a scholar, and the delays the government investigation has caused him in completing a book could diminish his chances for tenure.

What is particularly grating about the conduct of the government--aside from its obvious political overtones--is that it is aimed at persons clearly outside the realm of the Papers investigation. A separate grand jury in Los Angeles is considering the main case against Ellsberg, who has admitted to leaking the Pentagon study. Yet the Boston grand jury continues to sit. It is becoming increasingly evident that it now sits only to intimidate persons like Popkin, Noam Chomsky, Neil Sheehan, Susan Sheehan, Richard Falk and those legislators--such as Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Ala.)--who see through the government's tactics. Not only does the government lack justification for a Boston investigation: it seeks to question witnesses behind closed doors and on its own terms.

Popkin's attorney, William P. Homans Jr. '41, has filed a motion asking that his client be told the subjects about which he will be questioned before he appears before the grand jury. The theory behind the motion is clear and fair: as Homans put it, "witnesses before the grand jury should have the same rights as witnesses before Congressional Committees who do not have to testify unless they are told what they are being asked about and its pertinence to that subject."

The nonsensical Boston grand jury investigation has gone on long enough. The government has proven its ability to act with total disregard for individual rights. The time has come for it to leave off its pursuit of Popkin and others not directly implicated in the Pentagon case, and get down to solving the more important issues with which the Pentagon Papers themselves deal.