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VVAW - Free the Gainesville 8 and all Political PrisonersBy VVAW(The following article was written by the Gainesville 8 Collective. The article does not contain all the details of the case as that would jepordize the defense strategy to be used to defeat the bogus charges in court. At this time, no trial date has been set and apparently may not be set until the final hearings on pretrial motions, presently set for April 23-26. In any case, the trial is still many moths and a lot of defense expenditures away. The origional judge in the case has disqualified himself and has been replaced by Judge Arnow. Judge Arnow has recently ordered a hearing into the use of illegal wire taps by the government in the Gainesville Conspiracy, and has ordered the government to reveal the transcripts of any such 'taps.' As the case develops this paper will cover the progress of the trial.) Ed. On the 7th of July, 1972, agents of the FBI began to serve subpoenas commanding the appearance of 22 men and 1 woman before a Federal grand jury in Tallahassee, Florida. There were two reasons why these subpoenas were unique. First, all 23 subpoenas were returnable the same day, at the same hour - 9 AM, July 10, 1972. Second, all were for one organization: Vietnam Veterans Against the War. For the first time, the U.S. government had launched a frontal attack on VVAW. Prior to this date, the government seemed to be at a loss in coping with an organization of anti-war veterans. There had been attempts to deny that the "hirsute vagabonds" were actually veterans, but we could prove our claim. There had been harassment arrests, but not only were we unimpressed with the power of the police, our numbers were steadily increasing. The national steering committee of VVAW had been making plans to attend the Republican National Convention. In addition our southern regions were planning a scenario for the Democratic National Convention. Exactly what the government hoped to gain by holding the grand jury in July wasn't clear, but as pieces were added to the puzzle, the government's intentions became more apparent. Richard M. Nixon, in an attempt to make good his campaign promises of 1968, had to change the character of the war in Southeast Asia. He hoped that an escalated air war, coupled with a naval blockade and mining of North Vietnamese ports, would bring the Vietnamese to their knees and force them to accept U.S. terms at the Paris peace talks. His future as president seemed to hang on the war in Vietnam. Nixon was receiving a message from the American people he could not ignore - the war had lost its appeal! With the leaking of the Pentagon papers, more and more Americans were ceasing to be silent and starting to ask embarrassing questions about our involvement in Vietnam. Richard Nixon is no stranger to mud-slinging and dirty politics, as witnessed by his early Congressional campaigns. The situation in the Spring of 1972 clearly indicated a need for desperate measures if Nixon was to retain the presidency. Two of his backers, Gordon Liddy and George McCord, began to organize an espionage ring. One target was the suite of offices in the Watergate apartment building leased to the Democratic Party. The other targets of this strange organization of ex-CIA and FBI agents are still speculative at this point, but apparently VVAW was not beneath the notice of their elaborate spy ring. In May, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post quoted Alfred Baldwin as saying that he had been hired by McCord to act as a wire tap monitor at the Watergate and to infiltrate VVAW for the purpose of embarrassing the Democrats if the vets demonstrated at the Republican Convention. It is possible that the plans of McCord and Co. included the Democratic Convention. Without a doubt, the riots at the 1968 Chicago Convention affected that election. If a similar riot could be rigged at the 1972 Democratic National Convention, might it not affect the 1972 election? The 23 people subpoenaed represented most of the visible leadership of VVAW planning for the actions at the Democratic Convention. Included were a national coordinator, the regional coordinators of Florida, Texas, Arkansas, and most of the chapter coordinators of Florida. The government might have reasoned that some type of riot might occur if these people were detained during the convention. The grand jury in Tallahassee coincided exactly with the Democratic Convention. It began July 10th, at 9 AM and released those subpoenaed at 4:30 PM on July 13th. During this period the government would not disclose the nature of the investigation. "We're investigating serious violations of federal law," was the only response when attorneys for the defense pressed the issue. On the 13th of July, the events of the case took a bizarre turn. The Atlanta Constitution had quoted "informed government sources," the day before, under a banner headline proclaiming "BOMB PLOT AT GOP CONVENTION PROBED!" Nonetheless, the government prosecutor refused to tell the people before the grand jury what crimes were under investigation. The grand jury now turned its attention to four of the 23 people under subpoenaed. That afternoon, these four, (John Chambers, Bruce Horton, Jack Jennings, and Wayne Beverly), were called before Judge David L. Middlebrooks for a contempt hearing, and, after refusing to hear arguments for the defense, sent to jail. The other witnesses were informed by federal marshals that they were no longer under subpoena and were free to leave. That evening, Stan Michelsen, one of the subpoenaed and the assistant regional coordinator for Florida, received a strange phone call threatening the life of Scott Camil. The caller identified himself as an agent. Michelsen received a second call a little later from one of the women at the house in Tallahassee that was being used as the defense headquarters. She told him that about 30 agents and police had been to the house looking for Camil. This was the first notice VVAW had of the indictments. We learned the next morning that six people had been indicted. The six were: Scott Camil, Don Perdue, and Alton Ford of Florida; Bill Patterson and John Kniffen of Texas; and Pete Mahoney of the national office of VVAW. In late October, the grand jury issued a superceding indictment against John Briggs and Stan Michelsen of the Floridal regional. The indictments charged that the eight, "conspired to promote, incite and participate in a riot" at the Republican National Convention in Miami. The VVAW Gainesville 8 appeared before Judge Middlebrooks on November 6th to plead to the charges against us. The plea in this case established the nature of the defense. We plead 'not guilty' to conspiracy, but guilty of war crimes in Southeast Asia; the government was told in no uncertain terms that we considered the charges against us to be politically motivated. During the last few years we have seen an increase in the number of politically motivated grand juries and conspiracy trials. In Chicago, Seattle Harrisburg and now Gainesville, the government has used this tactic against anti-war activists. The grand jury system was conceived as a device to protect the individual from over-zealous or misguided public officials, but recently its purpose has been subverted for use as an intelligence apparatus for a national political police force. Guy Goodwin, the head of the Special Litigation Section of the Internal Security Division of the Justice Department, has personally supervised 17 of these politically motivated grand juries, including the one involving the Gainesville 8. These grand juries have delivered a total of 105 indictments; but of these indictments only two have resulted in convictions, and in many cases, the government has declined to prosecute. The questions asked of witnesses before these grand juries are very broad in scope. The government does not seem interested in any particular subjects, rather its chief interrogator, Guy Goodwin, attempts to pump witnesses for any form of information. Goodwin is interested in lifestyles, friendships, finances, and travels of his witnesses. Under him, the grand jury is purely a fishing expedition for any and all information. The information received from the grand jury testimony is integrated in a computer with local, state and federal reports. Through this network of information, or socio-graph as it is called, Goodwin and federal agents hope to learn everything possible about organized dissent in this country. The conspiracy indictments are ideal tools to use against those individuals who turn up too often in Goodwin's computer bank. Conspiracy is a thought crime. No actual crime or overt act need be committed. The government need only prove that a crime was contemplated. Todate, the government has not won a conspiracy case; but perhaps a conviction is not all that important to the government in the first place. THE GAINESVILLE COLLECTIVE! National Committee to Defend
VVAW THE GAINESVILLE DEFENSE
FUND
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