Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frey. This is part two of
Speaker 1: our two part episode on the draft board raids that
Speaker 1: took place in the United States during the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: In part one, we gave an incredibly basic overview of
Speaker 1: the war and why the US was involved in it,
Speaker 1: and some of the reasons why people were increasingly opposed
Speaker 1: to it as the war stretched on. We also talked
Speaker 1: about some of the earliest incidents of vandalism at draft
Speaker 1: board offices, which started in nineteen sixty six. In nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, as US involvement in Vietnam was escalating, but
Speaker 1: before it had reached its peak. It would be hard
Speaker 1: to overstate how deeply device these issues were and how
Speaker 1: incredibly polarized the United States was during the Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: so much so that growing up in the aftermath of it,
Speaker 1: not even during the actual war, has made me incredibly
Speaker 1: wary of trying to tackle these subjects in any amount
Speaker 1: of detail on the show. I kind of feel like,
Speaker 1: no matter what I say, people older than me are
Speaker 1: going to be very angry. The United States media framed
Speaker 1: a lot of this discourse about the war as a
Speaker 1: conflict between hawks who supported the war and doves who
Speaker 1: opposed it. Opponents were stereotyped as like dirty hippies and
Speaker 1: sanctimonious white college kids who spat on soldiers returning from service,
Speaker 1: but the anti Vietnam War movement in the United States
Speaker 1: was really broad. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panthers,
Speaker 1: and Martin Leuether King Junior were all vocally opposed to
Speaker 1: the war. The Asian American movement was deeply connected to
Speaker 1: the anti war movement, and a lot of Vietnamese Americans
Speaker 1: did not want the US to be fighting a war
Speaker 1: in the place that they, or their parents or their
Speaker 1: grandparents had come from. Japanese American young people had been
Speaker 1: raised by parents who were incarcerated in concentration camps in
Speaker 1: the United States during World War II, and they campaigned
Speaker 1: both for redress for their parents and an end to
Speaker 1: US imperialism in Asia. The Chicano Moratorium was a march
Speaker 1: held in Los Angeles that included more than twenty thousand
Speaker 1: Mexican Americans. These are just examples. It was not all
Speaker 1: hippies and college kids. Most, but not all, of the
Speaker 1: demonstrations we are talking about today were carried out primarily
Speaker 1: by Catholic clergy and devout Catholic li lay people, and
Speaker 1: that's another group that does not really fit in with
Speaker 1: that stereotype of opponents to the war. On September twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, a graduate student took over the cathedral
Speaker 1: of Saint John the Evangelist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This was
Speaker 1: a diversion to allow fourteen men to break into the
Speaker 1: Selective service building without being detected. Four of them were
Speaker 1: from Milwaukee and the rest had traveled from somewhere else
Speaker 1: to participate. They included four Catholic priests and one Catholic brother,
Speaker 1: and many of the others were Catholic laypeople. One was
Speaker 1: a member of the Church of Scientology. In photos of
Speaker 1: the incident, the ones who aren't in clerical attire are
Speaker 1: mostly wearing suits and ties, and one looks like he
Speaker 1: might be in a work uniform. After removing about ten
Speaker 1: thousand draft files, they took them outside the building and
Speaker 1: burned them with homemade napalm. They focused on the files
Speaker 1: classified as A one, meaning the people who were eligible
Speaker 1: to be called up at any time. They sang hymns
Speaker 1: while waiting for the police to arrive to arrest them.
Speaker 1: They were charged with burglary and arson. Twelve of them
Speaker 1: were tried together and were all convicted, and two who
Speaker 1: were tried separately were convicted as well. As we talked
Speaker 1: about in Part one, destroying draft cards was illegal under
Speaker 1: federal law, but a judge throughout a separate federal case
Speaker 1: because there had been so much publicity that it seemed
Speaker 1: unlikely that they could ever convene an impartial jury. One
Speaker 1: of the Milwaukee fourteen, Michael Cullen, was from County Wicklow, Ireland,
Speaker 1: and he spent nine months in prison before being deported.
Speaker 1: He was readmitted to the United States in nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: so that was one of the draft rates from nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight. Richard Nixon was inaugurated as president in January
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty nine. By that point, thirty one thousand
Speaker 1: Americans had been killed in action in Vietnam, and half
Speaker 1: of all Americans personally knew someone who had died in
Speaker 1: combat there. More than half a million American troops were
Speaker 1: in Vietnam. Nixon wanted to end the war within a year,
Speaker 1: but without simply withdrawing troops and abandoning South Vietnam. His
Speaker 1: administration had shifted from deploying increasing numbers of American combat
Speaker 1: troops to Vietnam to supporting South Vietnam and building up
Speaker 1: its own military capacity and also training the South Vietnamese
Speaker 1: to take over these combat roles. There were also public
Speaker 1: peace talks and secret, behind the scenes negotiations going on.
Speaker 1: At first, the American public didn't really know much about
Speaker 1: this policy shift, and while Nixon was reducing the number
Speaker 1: of American troops in Vietnam, overall, people were still being
Speaker 1: drafted and deployed, so protests against the war and the
Speaker 1: draft continued. As one example, on May twenty fifth, nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine, fifteen people broke into a draft board office
Speaker 1: in a predominantly non white neighborhood on the South side
Speaker 1: of Chicago, destroying about fifty thousand draft records. On November three,
Speaker 1: Nixon gave a speech outlining the basics of his so
Speaker 1: called Vietnamization strategy to end the war. He acknowledged that
Speaker 1: the nation was deeply divided over the war, and he
Speaker 1: called on a quote silent majority to support him in
Speaker 1: ending it in a way that would bring a just
Speaker 1: and lasting piece to Vietnam, meaning he could not just
Speaker 1: unilaterally decide to withdraw all the troops. Nixon did not
Speaker 1: give a specific timetable for this, because the timeline for
Speaker 1: troop withdrawal would have to depend on what was actually
Speaker 1: happening in Vietnam, but, in his words quote, if the
Speaker 1: level of enemy activity significantly increases, we might have to
Speaker 1: adjust our timetable accordingly. Also by this point, the war
Speaker 1: was unpopular in the United States, but the anti war
Speaker 1: movement was even more unpopular, and Nixon was really willing
Speaker 1: to put the focus on the protesters if it meant
Speaker 1: less attention to his military policy. Four days after he
Speaker 1: gave this speech, on November seventh, eight people, including two
Speaker 1: Catholic priests, a nun, and a seminarian, broke into draft
Speaker 1: board offices in the Boston neighborhoods of Jamaica, Plane, Dudley,
Speaker 1: Upham's Corner, and Copley Square, which contained records from six
Speaker 1: different draft boards. They destroyed records for one a draftees
Speaker 1: as well as one y which were designated as people
Speaker 1: who could be drafted in the event of a national emergency.
Speaker 1: They also damaged or destroyed other registers and documents. These
Speaker 1: demonstrators also took some of the records to Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And destroyed them there and tried to get arrested for
Speaker 1: their actions. During the second Moratorium March, which was held
Speaker 1: in Washington, d C. On November fifteenth, and which included
Speaker 1: roughly half a million marchers, the Boston Eight issued a
Speaker 1: statement in which they described having marched, written letters, conferred
Speaker 1: with officials, and spoken out against the war, capitalist materialism,
Speaker 1: and military control. This statement went on to say, quote,
Speaker 1: if you feel, as we do, that marching and demonstrating
Speaker 1: are unproductive, we encourage you to take responsible action to
Speaker 1: secure peace and end injustice. We have fashioned hope with
Speaker 1: our bodies, as free people must do. We oppose with
Speaker 1: our lives genocide and Vietnam and the arms race, exploitive
Speaker 1: investment abroad, rape of foreign manpower and resources, domestic racism,
Speaker 1: environmental ruin, and militarism in any form selective service, lottery
Speaker 1: or volunteer army. The raided offices were closed for about
Speaker 1: a week, and people whose records were in those offices
Speaker 1: were immune from the next call up, but the records
Speaker 1: were reconstructed before the one that followed. If the Boston
Speaker 1: Eight ever faced charges, I did not find evidence of it.
Speaker 1: It's possible they did, but the Boston Globe quoted a
Speaker 1: US attorney as saying that they would never be indicted
Speaker 1: because while they had taken responsibility for the damage, there
Speaker 1: was just no corroborating evidence they had actually been involved,
Speaker 1: so the FBI could not justify an indictment. Some of
Speaker 1: the people who named themselves in the statement were later
Speaker 1: arrested in conjunction with other anti war demonstrations. Though, just
Speaker 1: a few days after the Boston Eight raids, the public
Speaker 1: learned about the Meli massacre, which had happened so months before,
Speaker 1: in which US troops had massacred more than three hundred civilians.
Speaker 1: Then a few months after that, Nixon ordered ground troops
Speaker 1: to invade Cambodia. Vocal opposition to the war once again
Speaker 1: rose in the wake of the revelations around the Meeli massacre,
Speaker 1: and Nixon's invasion of Cambodia accelerated that dramatically. On May fourth,
Speaker 1: members of the Ohio National Guard killed four people and
Speaker 1: wounded nine others during an anti war rally at Kent
Speaker 1: State University. The number of draft board raids peaked in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy as all of this was happening, and in
Speaker 1: the months afterward. That February, the Beaver fifty five had
Speaker 1: destroyed an estimated ten thousand draft records in Minneapolis and
Speaker 1: Saint Paul, Minnesota. On July second, a group of women
Speaker 1: calling themselves Women Against Daddy Warbucks rated fifteen draft boards
Speaker 1: in New York City, shredding the paperwork and then throwing
Speaker 1: it around Rockefeller Center like confetti during lunchtime. Eight days later,
Speaker 1: on July tenth, teams of two or three people broke
Speaker 1: into selective service offices in Little Falls, Alexandria, Winona, and Wabasha, Minnesota.
Speaker 1: Eight of them were captured and became known as the
Speaker 1: Minnesota Eight. Their goal was to destroy as many one
Speaker 1: A draft files as possible. This was a somewhat more
Speaker 1: secular group than some of the others that we've talked about.
Speaker 1: Many of them were college students and some were classified
Speaker 1: as conscientious objectors, but religion was still a factor for
Speaker 1: some of them. One in particular, Francis Kronk, laid out
Speaker 1: an argument that what they had done was a necessary
Speaker 1: act required by Catholic moral responsibility and that the selective
Speaker 1: service system was unconstitutional and morally unjustifiable. One of the
Speaker 1: Minnesota eight entered a guilty plea and got no prison time,
Speaker 1: and the rest served between fourteen and twenty nine months
Speaker 1: in prison. The last of them was released in January
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy three. These were not at all the
Speaker 1: only raids carried out that year. People broke into draft
Speaker 1: boards and destroyed records in Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island,
Speaker 1: and Delaware in nineteen seventy as well. These raids continued
Speaker 1: into nineteen seventy one, including in Evanston, Illinois, and multiple
Speaker 1: cities in New York. On January twenty fifth, nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: Daniel and Philip Berrigan were on the cover of Time
Speaker 1: magazine with the headline Rebel Priests the Curious Case of
Speaker 1: the Berigins. At the time, the Berigans were serving their
Speaker 1: sentence in federal prison. FBI director Herbert Hoover had claimed
Speaker 1: they were involved in a wide ranging plot to attack
Speaker 1: government sites and kidnap Henry Kissinger attributed to the East
Speaker 1: Coast conspiracy to save lives, and when the article was written,
Speaker 1: they and other alleged co conspirators had been indicted for
Speaker 1: this as well. Philip later faced trial for this, but
Speaker 1: he was not convicted. I find the two of them fascinating,
Speaker 1: but their story is like way beyond apart from the
Speaker 1: draft board raids, like way beyond the scope of the
Speaker 1: podcast for the most part. That brings us to the
Speaker 1: Camden twenty eight, which we will talk about after a
Speaker 1: sponsor break. The draft board raid that led me to
Speaker 1: this episode was the Camden twenty eight raid on August
Speaker 1: twenty second, nineteen seventy one. By this point, there had
Speaker 1: been hundreds of break ins at draft boards all around
Speaker 1: the United States. As we've said, not all of them
Speaker 1: had been carried out by people who were motivated by
Speaker 1: their faith, specifically by like religious convictions. But when those
Speaker 1: religious convictions were a factor, getting arrested was usually part
Speaker 1: of the plan, and so was going to trial and
Speaker 1: being convicted and receiving some kind of sentence. While some
Speaker 1: people were fined, a lot of people were incarcerated. So
Speaker 1: by nineteen seventy one, almost four years into these raids,
Speaker 1: some of the most committed active people in the Catholic
Speaker 1: Left movement either were or had been in prison. There
Speaker 1: were often other people who were willing to take smaller
Speaker 1: risks with smaller possible consequences, but there were just not
Speaker 1: as many people still prepared to be imprisoned for months
Speaker 1: or years in these Draft Board actions. Also, people had
Speaker 1: been protesting US involvement in Vietnam since the war had started,
Speaker 1: or since the American involvement in the war had started,
Speaker 1: and these protests had been growing for years, but there
Speaker 1: still did not seem to be any end to the
Speaker 1: war anywhere in sight. So a group of people started
Speaker 1: planning a raid in which they would try to take
Speaker 1: all of the records from the Draft Board office in Camden,
Speaker 1: New Jersey. Camden is across the Delaware River from Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: and in the eighteen thirties it became connected to New
Speaker 1: York City by rail. It grew into an important industrial
Speaker 1: manufacturing and shipbuilding center over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
Speaker 1: but the city had gone into a major economic decline
Speaker 1: after World War Two as two of its major employers,
Speaker 1: RCA and Campbell's Soup started decentralizing their operations. The third
Speaker 1: major employer, New York Ship, also started losing business as
Speaker 1: newer more modern shipbuilding facilities were built in other parts
Speaker 1: of the country. About twenty percent of the city's population
Speaker 1: moved away between nineteen fifty and nineteen seventy. This was
Speaker 1: part of the postwar white flight to the suburbs, meaning
Speaker 1: that the city's demographics shifted over those years, becoming more
Speaker 1: prenominantly black and Hispanic because of a range of economic factors. Poverty,
Speaker 1: a lack of housing, and a lack of job opportunities
Speaker 1: all became serious problems in the city. The people who
Speaker 1: planned the raid on the Draft Board office in Camden
Speaker 1: were white, but they saw the residents of the city
Speaker 1: as disproportionately at risk from the draft and at higher
Speaker 1: risk while serving in Vietnam because of their race and
Speaker 1: economic status. They also saw a connection between the country
Speaker 1: spending on military and war and the systems of poverty
Speaker 1: at work in Camden. The Camden twenty eight included four
Speaker 1: Catholic priests and one Lutheran priest, and most of the
Speaker 1: rest were Catholic laypeople. Seven were women. The Draft Board
Speaker 1: office that they raided was located on the upper floor
Speaker 1: of a building that also included courtrooms, actually the same
Speaker 1: courtrooms where they would later stand trial and the post office. Initially,
Speaker 1: they cased the building from the outside, but one of them,
Speaker 1: Robert Hardy, known as Bob, decided to try to get
Speaker 1: inside to find out exactly where the draft files were
Speaker 1: and what they would need to do. Once they got
Speaker 1: into the building, he took one of the others with him,
Speaker 1: and he walked in and said that he wanted to
Speaker 1: learn about how the draft system worked. That would seem
Speaker 1: suspicious to me, but the staff was apparently very happy
Speaker 1: to show him. Hardy wound up being instrumental in planning
Speaker 1: this raid. In fact, both he and other members of
Speaker 1: the group said they had pretty much abandoned the whole
Speaker 1: idea before he got involved. He was a former marine
Speaker 1: and a contractor. He had some of the tools that
Speaker 1: they would need, and he already knew how to use them.
Speaker 1: They decided to enter through a fire escape, and he
Speaker 1: worked out where to put the ladder to avoid setting
Speaker 1: off an alarm. He also provided the latter which participants
Speaker 1: practiced scaling against another building, and he taught them how
Speaker 1: to drill through a window to break through it without
Speaker 1: shattering it. The day after he was approached about being
Speaker 1: part of this raid, Hardy had also started informing on
Speaker 1: them to the FBI. He told agents he was concerned
Speaker 1: about what they were doing and thought the FBI should
Speaker 1: put a stop to it. He was against the war
Speaker 1: and the draft, but also against tactics like destroying draft records.
Speaker 1: According to his sworn affidavit, FBI agents asked him to
Speaker 1: monitor what was happening with the group and keep them informed,
Speaker 1: assuring him that they would prevent the raid from happening,
Speaker 1: they would make their arrest during a dry run, and
Speaker 1: that none of the people involved would face jail time.
Speaker 1: The FBI did not stop the Camden twenty eight during
Speaker 1: their dry run, and in the early hours of Sunday,
Speaker 1: August twenty second, several of them broke into the Selective
Speaker 1: Service office and filled twelve large bags full of draft records,
Speaker 1: throwing him out the window. But before they could leave
Speaker 1: the building, FBI agents arrived on the scene and arrested them.
Speaker 1: A total of twenty eight people were ultimately arrested, some
Speaker 1: who had been part of the break in and were
Speaker 1: there right that at that moment, and the rest who
Speaker 1: had helped with the planning and preparation. It didn't take
Speaker 1: long for people to figure out that Bob Hardy had
Speaker 1: tipped off the FBI, among other things. As everyone else
Speaker 1: was taken into custody, no one could figure out where
Speaker 1: he was. According to Hardy, the FBI had paid him
Speaker 1: the equivalent of his usual daily wage while he was
Speaker 1: acting as an informant. He said the FBI had provided
Speaker 1: the walkie talkies they used to communicate during the raid.
Speaker 1: The FBI reimbursed him for that ladder and all the
Speaker 1: other tools and equipment that Camden twenty eight used, and
Speaker 1: even for the gas for his van that he used
Speaker 1: to drive them around. Hardy had been updating the FBI
Speaker 1: about their progress daily. Hardy's affidavit about this and a
Speaker 1: lot of points was not very flattering. In his characterization
Speaker 1: of the Camden twenty eight, he wrote, quote, it's really
Speaker 1: impossible to exaggerate how inept, undisciplined, and generally unable to
Speaker 1: pull off this action they were. They wouldn't keep to schedules,
Speaker 1: and they kept making simple matters complicated. At the same time,
Speaker 1: he did write this while trying to make the argument
Speaker 1: that the raid would not have happened without him or
Speaker 1: without the FBI, and in the same statement he described
Speaker 1: the Camden twenty eight as quote, the finest group of
Speaker 1: Christian people I have ever been associated with, and he
Speaker 1: described the raid as the best cooperative effort that he
Speaker 1: had ever experienced. Understandably, many of the rest of the
Speaker 1: Camden twenty eight felt immensely betrayed by Harty's actions. But
Speaker 1: on September tenth, less than a month after the raid,
Speaker 1: Hardy's nine year old son, Billy, fell from a tree
Speaker 1: and landed on a fence, and he was seriously injured.
Speaker 1: He died on October third. Some of the Camden twenty
Speaker 1: eight really rallied around Hardy during all of this. In
Speaker 1: a two thousand and seven documentary about the raid, some
Speaker 1: of the members talked about encouraging others to forgive Hardy
Speaker 1: in this moment, because if they didn't, they would regret
Speaker 1: having not done so. Later, the Reverend Father Michael Doyle,
Speaker 1: one of the Camden twenty eight, led Billy Hardy's funeral mass.
Speaker 1: Back at the beginning of part one of this episode,
Speaker 1: we mentioned that two of the Camden twenty eight had
Speaker 1: been involved in the break in into the FBI office
Speaker 1: in Media, Pennsylvania. That was Keith Forsyth and Robert Williamson,
Speaker 1: although that was not known until much much later, way
Speaker 1: after all of this. At the time, nobody knew the
Speaker 1: identities of the people who had broken into the FBI
Speaker 1: office in Media, but Media and Camden were only about
Speaker 1: twenty miles apart, and the FBI believed that the media
Speaker 1: perpetrators were among the people planning the raid in Camden.
Speaker 1: So it appears that one of the reasons the FBI
Speaker 1: allowed this raid to continue and even enabled its happening,
Speaker 1: was with the hope of using all of this to
Speaker 1: apprehend the people who were responsible for the break in
Speaker 1: in Media. We will talk about what happened when the
Speaker 1: Camden twenty eight went to trial after we paused for
Speaker 1: a sponsor break. A year and a half passed between
Speaker 1: the arrest of the Camden twenty eight and the trial. Initially,
Speaker 1: prosecutors planned to try everybody together, which was a huge
Speaker 1: challenge for the defendants, not just a lot of people
Speaker 1: and on time that the Camden twenty eight was not
Speaker 1: one unified, coalesced organization. It was more like several smaller
Speaker 1: groups of closer knit people which then had some connections
Speaker 1: among one another. Some were Catholic clergy, but most of
Speaker 1: them were lay people, and everybody had different priorities and
Speaker 1: different responsibilities going on in their lives. They did not
Speaker 1: have anything close to unanimous agreement on a lot of
Speaker 1: really important questions, like whether they should accept a plea
Speaker 1: deal if they were offered one, or what their goal
Speaker 1: should be at the trial, like did they want to
Speaker 1: focus on winning so that they could hopefully avoid jail time,
Speaker 1: or did they want to have what had become known
Speaker 1: as a movement trial or a political trial, making the
Speaker 1: trial itself part of their anti war advocacy, not just
Speaker 1: keeping it in the news, but making their testimony an
Speaker 1: anti war act. They were really all over the place
Speaker 1: on everything from how to raise money for bail to
Speaker 1: how and how much to prepare for the trial. Eventually,
Speaker 1: an organization called the Camden twenty eight Defense Committee formed
Speaker 1: to help coordinate, raise funds and support the defendants. This
Speaker 1: included holding regular rallies that were part anti war demonstrations,
Speaker 1: part fundraising, and support for the defense. Once the trial started,
Speaker 1: the Defense Committee also made sure there were always lots
Speaker 1: of supporters in the gallery. In the eighteen months that
Speaker 1: passed between the raid and the trial, public opinion in
Speaker 1: the United States had continued to turn against the war,
Speaker 1: and against the Nixon administration. The New York Times had
Speaker 1: started publishing excerpts from the Pentagon Papers a couple of
Speaker 1: months before the break in at the Camden office. These
Speaker 1: top secret documents had been leaked to the press, and
Speaker 1: they revealed all kinds of details about now the US
Speaker 1: involvement in Vietnam and in Southeast Asia more broadly, going
Speaker 1: all the way back to the Truman administration. These reports
Speaker 1: and the decision to publish them were really controversial, but
Speaker 1: a lot of the details that they contained were also
Speaker 1: very damaging to the government's reputation. Also, the Watergate break
Speaker 1: in took place during the period between the draft board
Speaker 1: break in and the trial, and that led to an
Speaker 1: enormous scandal for Richard Nixon. Eventually, the prosecution decided to
Speaker 1: sever ten of the defendants from the Camden twenty eight trial.
Speaker 1: These were people who had been accused of being involved
Speaker 1: in the planning and coordination, but not the actual break in.
Speaker 1: One other defendant accepted a plea deal. The remaining seventeen,
Speaker 1: which included four Catholic priests, were all tried together. Two
Speaker 1: defendants were charged with conspiracy and the rest with conspiracy,
Speaker 1: breaking and entering and destroying draft records. The prosecution really
Speaker 1: thought it had an open and shut case. The people
Speaker 1: who had broken into the draft office had been caught
Speaker 1: red handed, and others had acknowledged what they had done.
Speaker 1: They had photographs, they had recorded conversations from those walkie
Speaker 1: talkies that the FBI had given to Bob Hardy. The
Speaker 1: prosecution also argued that these were not hapless amateurs, but
Speaker 1: experienced anti war demonstrators, and they expected Bob Hardy to
Speaker 1: be a key witness. It just really did not seem
Speaker 1: like it was going to be difficult at all to
Speaker 1: get a guilty verdict. But according to Hardy's account, he
Speaker 1: had been assured that the authorities were going to stop
Speaker 1: the raid before it happened, and that any charges that
Speaker 1: Camden twenty eight might face wouldn't lead to prison time
Speaker 1: if they were convicted. Now they were facing the possibility
Speaker 1: of lengthy prison sentences. He felt complempletely betrayed by this,
Speaker 1: and like it just wasn't what he had agreed to.
Speaker 1: In March of nineteen seventy two, Hardy filed a motion
Speaker 1: for the case to be dismissed, which read, in part quote,
Speaker 1: the substantive crimes were committed because the government wanted them
Speaker 1: committed and made their commission possible. They were committed by
Speaker 1: and or with the indispensable assistance of the government. Without
Speaker 1: the action, expertise, and material support of the FBI informer,
Speaker 1: the conspiracy would have remained abandoned. This motion to dismiss
Speaker 1: was denied, but Hardy instead became a witness for the defense.
Speaker 1: He helped to build a case that the raid would
Speaker 1: not have happened without his involvement and support, and that
Speaker 1: he would not have been involved had the FBI not
Speaker 1: directed him to keep on working with the group and
Speaker 1: provided him with the money and the supplies to do it.
Speaker 1: The resulting trial was in many ways unconventional. In a
Speaker 1: lot of the political trials or movement trials that evolved
Speaker 1: over the nineteen seventies, people often defended themselves. This was
Speaker 1: the case for a lot of the Camden twenty eight.
Speaker 1: Although some of the defendants did have attorneys, there were
Speaker 1: three attorneys involved with the trial, and many of the
Speaker 1: defendants acted as one another's co councils. The defense pursued
Speaker 1: a strategy of jury nullification, that is that the jury
Speaker 1: would find the defendants not guilty in spite of their
Speaker 1: established guilt because of the moral and ethical questions surrounding
Speaker 1: the case. To successfully do this, the defense would need
Speaker 1: to prove misconduct on the part of the government and
Speaker 1: also convince the jury that an acquittal was the only
Speaker 1: moral and just thing to do. The defense also needed
Speaker 1: the right jury to be able to pull this off,
Speaker 1: so there was a lot of research into potential jurors,
Speaker 1: paired with a very careful jury selection process. This was
Speaker 1: a fairly new strategy which had been employed in only
Speaker 1: a couple of trials and is now known as scientific
Speaker 1: jury selection. This also only really worked because the judge
Speaker 1: US District Court, Judge Clarkson Fisher, was pretty permissive in
Speaker 1: what he allowed the defendants to do. The defendants were
Speaker 1: allowed to give testimony about their opposition to the Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: and to bring in details about things like the Watergate
Speaker 1: scandal and the Pentagon papers and those documents that had
Speaker 1: been stolen in the raid on the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: which were a big part of shutting down co Intel
Speaker 1: pro None of this was directly related to what had
Speaker 1: happened at the Draft Board, but the defense used it
Speaker 1: to establish a pattern of dishonesty and malfeasance on the
Speaker 1: part of the US government. Defendants also gave their thoughts
Speaker 1: on greater social and political questions during the trial. One
Speaker 1: of them showed slides of burned out villages in Vietnam
Speaker 1: juxtaposed with destroyed buildings in Camden, and his opening statement,
Speaker 1: Father Michael Doyle asked rhetorically whether a place as troubled
Speaker 1: as Camden should exist in a nation as rich as
Speaker 1: the United States. Opening statements started on February twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, and since there were so many people
Speaker 1: acting as attorneys, there were a lot of statements. Overall.
Speaker 1: The defendants tried to create an atmosphere of an almost
Speaker 1: spiritual community during the trial, like the defendants who were
Speaker 1: also acting as one another's attorneys, introducing themselves and saying
Speaker 1: hello and calling each other brothers and sisters, or celebrating
Speaker 1: whoever's birthday it was in the courtroom. They also took
Speaker 1: questions directly from the jurors, which was another new thing
Speaker 1: in US legal proceedings. The defendants, whose cases had been
Speaker 1: severed from the rest were still present in the courtroom
Speaker 1: almost every day and over the course of the trial,
Speaker 1: the Camden twenty eight became a lot more coalesced than
Speaker 1: they had ever been before it. Bob Hardy appeared as
Speaker 1: a defense witness on April tenth and was questioned for
Speaker 1: the next three days, building a narrative about how much
Speaker 1: of his involvement in the raid had been facilitated and
Speaker 1: encouraged by the FBI. During a cross examination, an FBI
Speaker 1: inspector had also confirmed that he had been paid about
Speaker 1: seven thousand, five hundred dollars, both for his work as
Speaker 1: an informant and for various tools and travel expenses that
Speaker 1: he was reimbursed for. Philip and Daniel Berrigan were among
Speaker 1: the expert witnesses. Historian Howard Zinn, who had also testified
Speaker 1: in the trials of other draft board readers, was another
Speaker 1: expert witness, giving an overview of the history of colonialism
Speaker 1: in Southeast Asia and civil disobedience in the United States.
Speaker 1: There was also testimony by some of the defendant's parents,
Speaker 1: including Betty Good, mother of Bob Good. Another of her sons,
Speaker 1: Paul Good, had been killed in Vietnam, and she gave
Speaker 1: wrenching testimony about his death. This trial lasted for fifteen weeks.
Speaker 1: When it was time for the jury to deliberate, Judge
Speaker 1: Fisher gave them instructions that included this quote. If you
Speaker 1: find that the overreaching participation by government agents or informers
Speaker 1: in the activities as you have heard them were so
Speaker 1: fundamentally unfair to be an offense to the basic standards
Speaker 1: of decency and shocking to the universal sense of justice,
Speaker 1: then you may acquit any of the defendants to whom
Speaker 1: this defense applies. The jury deliberated for four days. Part
Speaker 1: way through, the foreman had to be replaced. Apparently her
Speaker 1: family had been telling her they thought the jury should
Speaker 1: find the defendants guilty, and base on all their pressure,
Speaker 1: she did not want to be the one to deliver
Speaker 1: the verdict. At this point, the defendants thought they might
Speaker 1: be winding up with a hung jury. There had been
Speaker 1: one juror in particular who had asked a lot of
Speaker 1: questions during the trial, and some of those questions really
Speaker 1: seemed to imply that he was in favor of the war.
Speaker 1: But on May twentieth, nineteen seventy three, the jury found
Speaker 1: the defendants not guilty on all counts. To my knowledge,
Speaker 1: the remaining ten defendants were never tried. I could not
Speaker 1: find any mention of them eventually going to trial, and
Speaker 1: this also did not reveal any connections or lead to
Speaker 1: any prosecution for the people who had broken into the
Speaker 1: FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. That investigation was closed in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, and the identities of the people who
Speaker 1: were involved remained unknown until twenty fourteen, when five of
Speaker 1: them agreed to have their identities revealed. Although there had
Speaker 1: been a lot of testimony about the Camden twenty eighth
Speaker 1: moral opposition to the war, the case itself really wasn't
Speaker 1: about whether the war was just or whether the US
Speaker 1: was right to be fighting it. The judges instructions to
Speaker 1: the jury had also put the focus on the actions
Speaker 1: of the government in relation to the raid, not the war,
Speaker 1: But this verdict is often read as a referendum on
Speaker 1: the public's attitudes about the Vietnam War in the spring
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy three. By the time the trial ended,
Speaker 1: the draft had ended as well. The last US troops
Speaker 1: had also left Vietnam. That happened on March twenty third
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy three. Two years later, the US suspended
Speaker 1: selective Service registration, although it resumed in nineteen eighty. Still today,
Speaker 1: male US citizens and male immigrants to the United States
Speaker 1: are required to register within thirty days of turning eighteen.
Speaker 1: With few excit, President Jimmy Carter issued a blanket pardon
Speaker 1: for the people that had evaded the draft during the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War, but not to people who had deserted the
Speaker 1: military on his first full day in office. The people
Speaker 1: who were part of all these various draft raids all
Speaker 1: went on to have their own lives, with many of
Speaker 1: them continuing their anti war activism. The Berrigan brothers, who
Speaker 1: both had long and complex lives beyond this, became founding
Speaker 1: members of the anti nuclear Plowshares movement, whose activities included
Speaker 1: damaging warhead nose cones and pouring blood onto files at
Speaker 1: a General Electric nuclear missile facility in King of Prussia,
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania in nineteen eighty Nixon's remarks in his Silent Majority
Speaker 1: speech that we referenced earlier focused on the idea of
Speaker 1: removing US troops in a way that would leave South
Speaker 1: Vietnam able to defend itself, and in January of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, the US and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
Speaker 1: had signed peace accords, but the fighting there had continued.
Speaker 1: By April of nineteen seventy five, the US had started
Speaker 1: evacuating non essential personnel from Vietnam and had brought people
Speaker 1: from the more remote areas of Vietnam into the South
Speaker 1: Vietnamese capital of Saigon. An effort was also made to
Speaker 1: evacuate South Vietnamese orphans, called Operation Babylift. We talked about
Speaker 1: that in an installment of Six Impossible Episodes in June
Speaker 1: of twenty eighteen. Saigon ultimately fell to the North Vietnamese
Speaker 1: Army on April thirtieth, nineteen seventy five, leading to a
Speaker 1: massive effort to evacuate remaining diplomats, embassy staff, and other
Speaker 1: Americans who were still in Vietnam. Since other routes of
Speaker 1: evacuation had been blocked, the one way remaining out was
Speaker 1: by helicopter from the US Embassy. US Ambassador Graham Martin
Speaker 1: ordered the evacuation of South Vietnam these officials and staff
Speaker 1: as well. Ultimately, about five thousand, five hundred Vietnamese people
Speaker 1: were evacuated from South Vietnam, but thousands more had tried
Speaker 1: to get a spot aboard departing helicopters and were not
Speaker 1: able to. In nineteen seventy six, Vietnam unified as one
Speaker 1: nation under the Communist Party of Vietnam, which is the
Speaker 1: nation's sole legal party today. There's a pretty new book
Speaker 1: about the Camden twenty eight. I think it came out
Speaker 1: last year. It's called Spiritual Criminals by Michelle M. Nickerson.
Speaker 1: I only read a couple of chapters of it leading
Speaker 1: into this because there was like one particular area that
Speaker 1: I felt like I needed another perspective on. But those
Speaker 1: chapters were really good. So if you want to check
Speaker 1: that book out, it exists. Do you have some listener
Speaker 1: mayl Now that we have wrapped up this rather large topic.
Speaker 1: That's that's such a large topic, we'll talk about more
Speaker 1: about how big it is on Friday. I do have it.
Speaker 1: This is from Sammy. They wrote and said, Hi, Holly
Speaker 1: and Tracy, I just listened to your episode on Exem Clement,
Speaker 1: attorney at law, in the Saturday Classic on the Lost
Speaker 1: Cause of the Confederacy. I was tickled to hear that
Speaker 1: Exem started as a stenographer and clerk. Since I am
Speaker 1: currently a court clerk and looking into stenography. Clement's connection
Speaker 1: to the lost cause is very interesting to me, since
Speaker 1: the most important part of stenography is maintaining an accurate
Speaker 1: and honest record of events. But it is just like
Speaker 1: an attorney to pick out the words states' rights and
Speaker 1: leave behind to own slaves when defending their point, even
Speaker 1: if it's a bad one. Most people know that court
Speaker 1: reporters slash stenographers type really fast and transcribe hearings. What
Speaker 1: many don't know is that the Steno machine is a
Speaker 1: shorthand keyboard that's completely different from a standard quirty keyboard
Speaker 1: and uses different letter combinations to type the meal and syllabically.
Speaker 1: This allows for typing speeds as fast as two hundred
Speaker 1: words per minute, when most people can type forty words
Speaker 1: per minute. It's much easier to keep up with people
Speaker 1: talking that way. For example, the word keyboard would look
Speaker 1: like this on a Steno machine. Sammy has then put
Speaker 1: in kind of a little It's two lines with letters
Speaker 1: broken out over the two lines, and only some of
Speaker 1: them line up with each other. It's a little hard
Speaker 1: to describe, but like the top line is K and
Speaker 1: then a space AO, and then a space and E,
Speaker 1: and then at the bottom there's some space and then
Speaker 1: PW and then space, and then AO and then a
Speaker 1: bigger space, and then R and then a space and
Speaker 1: then D. Sonography isn't to sought out as a career anymore,
Speaker 1: screw you, AI, but its applications are so important to
Speaker 1: Not only do sonographers transcribe legal and medical hearings, they
Speaker 1: also provide closed captioning services to death and heart of
Speaker 1: hearing folks. Any Ways, thanks for this show and all
Speaker 1: that you do, and of course obligatory cat pictures attached.
Speaker 1: Binks mostly black tuxedo, the only one not related Bebop,
Speaker 1: mostly white tuxedo, Jet, all black Valentine multicolor jet and
Speaker 1: Bebop's mom. All my best wishes, Sammy. Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Sammy for this this email. I did not really know
Speaker 1: that about the tools that stenographers used to keep all
Speaker 1: their typing. I did kind of think that they typed
Speaker 1: just really fast. Also, I see your Cowboy Bebop naming convention.
Speaker 1: I see it. Yeah, yeah, I love that. These are
Speaker 1: some adorable cats, Oh my goodness, just so much. They're
Speaker 1: all loungy, except for one who looks like this kitty
Speaker 1: cat might attempt to eat a part of a Christmas tree.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's actually what's going to happen, but
Speaker 1: if this were my cat, I'm thinking that cat is
Speaker 1: about to jump up and grab the end of the
Speaker 1: Christmas tree. Froud. This has just given me fresh fear
Speaker 1: in my soul as I have been talking about our
Speaker 1: ill behaved new cats lately. I'm like, oh, man, Christmas
Speaker 1: is gonna be a disaster. But oh goodness goodness. Now
Speaker 1: I'm kind of wondering should there be an episode on
Speaker 1: the Steno Machine. Maybe I don't know. So thank you
Speaker 1: so so so much, Sammy for this email and these
Speaker 1: cat pictures. We always love cat pictures. If you don't
Speaker 1: have cats or dogs or any other pet animals, you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about that. You can send pictures
Speaker 1: of a bird you saw or a flower you saw outside,
Speaker 1: or some other random thing, or no picture. It's fine.
Speaker 1: But we do love all the pictures that folks send in.
Speaker 1: So thank you, so so so much, Sammy. If you
Speaker 1: would like to send us a note about this or
Speaker 1: any other podcast, we are at History Podcast at heartradio
Speaker 1: dot com, and you can subscribe to our show on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you'd like to get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
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Speaker 1: favorite shows.