Perdue: A Gainesville Defendant Changes Tactics

'We really beat the government. It's like the ninth wonder of the world that people with our diverse backgrounds could come together and beat the government. But we did.'

WITH HIS wiry build and unfashionably short hair, Donald Perdue looks more like an ironworker than a political radical. In fact, he worked in a South Florida steelyard until July when he traveled 250 miles north to Gainesville to stand trial on charges that he conspired to violently disrupt the 1972 Republican Convention.

The U.S. District Court in Gainesville acquitted Perdue and his seven co-defendants of all charges late in August after the government presented 28 witnesses and the defense had called just one.

"We really beat the government," Perdue said after his acquittal. "It's like the ninth wonder of the world that people with our diverse backgrounds could come together and beat the government. But we did."

When the 24-year-old Perdue returned to his home in Hallandale, Fla., all but three members of Perdue's American Legion post showed up to celebrate the acquittal of their most popular young popular young member.

"That," Perdue told The Crimson last week, "demonstrates exactly why the government spent a million dollars the government spent a million dollars trying to convict us: The Vietnam Veterans Against the War was undoubtedly the most credible anti-war, movement-type organization."

"We were more acceptable to Middle America," Perdue said. "The public believed that we had a right to say what we wanted because we had all been in Vietnam and had put our lives on the line. Middle Americans would listen to us and that scared the government."

Perdue said that after news about the indictment of eight VVAW organizers spread around the country over the summer of 1972, these wellsprings of VVAW support within Nixon's silent majority evaporated.

He said that most Americans tend to pre-judge and accept what they read in the newspapers all too easily, and he cited an Atlanta paper which portrayed the Viet Vets as "mad bombers" and "hoodlums" in front-page headlines. "That type of publicity didn't help our cause very much," he said.

"Although the average American turned against us with closed minds." Perdue added, "college students were usually worse. They were so apathetic that they didn't even bother to listen to us."

Perdue said that the Gainesville Eight argued bitterly among themselves over what strategy the defense should take.

There were three problems, he said. First of all, many of the defendants had never met their co-defendants or were only acquaintances before the original indictments. Second, the political views of the group were diverse and devotion to ideals varied greatly. Several of the eight wanted the get the trial over with the forget the nightmare of the indictment and trial. Most significant, however, was the problem of government infiltration within the VVAW ranks.

"We were infiltrated so heavily that they knew everything we were doing and considering. They knew our opinions as soon as we figured them out with our lawyers. To this day we still don't know all the informers but we know that information is leaked by someone in our group," Perdue explained.

When the majority of the defendants and VVAW executives decided on a passive defense. Perdue said that he and VVAW Florida coordinator Scott Camil were leery about a defense in which they could only attack what the government brought up. Camil and Perdue wanted to attempt to disprove all the testimony of the government witnesses, even though the contradictions were obvious, Perdue said.

Perdue said that he and Camil thought "an active defense would be a good chance to bring out some political lessons for the American people, to show them why we were on trial and what the reasons really were."

THEIR PLANS for an "active defense" would have called for at least six weeks of testimony from "hundreds of witnesses." Perdue and Camil wanted to discuss the role of the government as a conspiracy that relied on paid agent-provacateurs, the parts of their case which overlapped with the Watergate scandals, and the military's inadequacy in dealing with debilitating Post-Vietnam Syndrome (PVS).

Perdue condemned the government's use of agent-provacateurs in creating conspiracy cases. He said, "the government wanted to use these tactics against all movement organizations but chose the VVAW as the final Guinea pigs.

"Agent-provacateurs almost have to be psychologically abnormal to develop close and confidential relationships with people for one or two years and then go and testify against them for a salary," Perdue said.

"Most of these agents cooperate with the government for easy money and to live a secret-agent lifestyle," he said. "They live comfortably and end up with new cars, nice homes and lots of nice clothes without having to work. But they can't be very happy. Some openly told us that they were out to get even with us as if the trial was a personal vendetta."

Perdue charged that the VVAW frame-up was another part of a comprehensive attack on liberals and radicals of which Watergate was only another fragment.

He said several intimate friends of Watergate defendant Bernard Barker tried to sell the VVAW weapons "of any kind" for cash or dope: "They were trying to set us up to buy weapons so they could make the conspiracy case fit. They didn't have any other concrete evidence against us."

The Florida VVAW know that a former CIA agent was paid $1000 a week to "infiltrate, disrupt and discredit the VVAW," Perdue added. He said that there are a lot of suspicious bits and pieces that the group had not yet put together--car break-ins, missing mail and lots of tapped phones.

The "active defense" would have brought the controversial Post-Vietnam Syndrome to the attention of many more Americans than those who know about it through personal experience.

Perdue explained that many Vietnam veterans experienced traumatic changes in their attitudes toward themselves and other people when they realized that they were not fighting for democracy as had soldiers in World War II. PVS manifests itself when veterans are unable to relate these new attitudes to families and friends who in turn fail to comprehend the sense of futility the soldiers have experienced.

The military and society at large also have failed to recognize, understand and treat these problems, Perdue said, so PVS often leads to depression and other psychological crises.

BUT THE Gainesville Eight collectively decided not to employ an active defense. "Many of the defendants were too scared to fight the government because the laws all seemed geared to the government's said," Perdue said.

Nevertheless, the Gainesville Eight were found innocent after their defense had brought only a single witness to the stand. The explosives expert had told the court that "someone would be better off using kitchen matches" than the home-made bomb Camil allegedly had prepared to blow up a police station.

"We talked to six or seven of the Jury members right after the trial," Perdue said, "and they told us that they could see right through the case. They knew it was a political trial and they picked up the contradictions in the testimony of the witnesses."

Perdue said the defendants believed that all but five of the government witnesses lied under oath and were paid to do so.

"The VVAW was probably more paranoid than the government about what was going to happen at the Miami Beach conventions," Perdue said. He described two incidents that frightened him:

* After an unsuccessful meeting to coordinate VVAW marshals with local police, Perdue was taken aside and told that assassination squads had been hired to "wipe out" VVAW coordinators. At the same time rumors were flying that the leaders would be ambushed, kidnapped and taken to Mexico.

* At another point, a Bal Harbor, Fla. police officer who fell for Perdue's conservative looks, told him. "I can't wait until the shirt hits the fan down there [in Miami Beach] so I can kill some of those hippies." The patrolman proceeded to display some of his department's newly-acquired rifles to Perdue who said he was dumbfounded.

Co-Defendant Stanley Michelsen Jr. of Pompano Beach, Fla. told The Crimson after the acquittal that "The government really got smacked in the face on this one. I don't think that they can spend that much time and money again."

Perdue disagreed: "As long as we have people like Nixon in government these things or something like them are going to continue."

In retrospect, Perdue said that his tour of service in Indochina--March 1969 through October 1970--was the most purifying experience in his life. "The service gives you a lot of time to reflect on your values and Vietnam puts you in a position that forces a mature man to ponder and question those values," he said.

Perdue said that he was fascinated by the Vietnamese people's values, life style and mystical religion. He claimed it transformed his life, and he became disgusted with Western "consumerism and role-playing." His stay in Southeast Asia laid the groundwork for his present research on environmental balance, particularly in the ocean.

Perdue's tour in the Marines led him to become increasingly involved in minority rights in the armed forces. He served as VVAW coordinator for 900 members in metropolitan Fort Lauderdale, Fla, from July 1971 through August 1973.

If Perdue could relive the past few years he said there is apparently very little he would do differently. He paraphrased Mao Tse-tung: "If your enemy never bothers you, you must not be very effective; if he's always trying to lock you up or kill you, you must be doing something right."

Perdue resigned from the VVAW after the acquittal but he strongly denied any connection with the trial or the group's objective. "It's just that certain tactics die out after a while and you have to go to different kinds. Protesting in the street won't work anymore. There has to be more educating and lobbying," he said.

"I don't really like politics. I just joined because I was against the war. Now that it's all over I want to devote full time to school and environmental issues."

Perdue has one-and-a half years to go at the Florida Institute of Technology's Oceanographic Center in Melbourne, Fla., before he receives his B.A. in Marine Science. He will return to school this Fall where he will complete his studies courtesy of Uncle Sam--on a government-guaranteed loan.