In 2014, the New York Times published this story about a group of anti-Vietnam war protesters who in March of 1971 broke into the then Media PA satellite office of the FBI’s Philadelphia office. Several comments about my very indirect connection with this
1. I had previously been a student at Haverford College, and would return in the Fall of 1971 to complete my undergraduate education. The organizer of the burglary was Bill Davidon, a known anti-war activist and a physics professor at the college.
2. Among the documents the activists got showed that the long-time athletic trainer at Haverford, the late Dick Morsch, who had served in the Navy, had been a confidential source for the FBI, as you can read in this 2009 article from the campus paper of Swarthmore, the other Quaker college near Philadelphia that was also a center of anti-war activity during Vietnam. Dick told me when I asked him what he had done. I think he trusted me because I had taken time off from the College to serve in the Marines. He said that when asked by the FBI if he could say something good about a student he would, and if he couldn’t he would tell the FBI he didn’t really know him. I suspect that the College accepted the explanation, since he was allowed to remain at the College until he retired.
3. The publication of2014 story in the Times led to this long article by the two Haverford grads who at the time of the break-in decided to publish the materials they received in the weekly newpaper then put out jointly by Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges.
4. Like the documents that Edward Snowden released, the documents released by the burglars to various publications informed the public and to some degree shaped the response to contemporaneous events.
So this brings me to the point of this post.
We are in a time of even greater crisis than this nation faced during the Nixon administration with its enemies’ list, its illegal expansion of the war into Cambodia, and the horrors exposed as a result of Watergate, both by the media and Congressional investigations. We already know what the NSA has done as a result of what Snowden has done. We have seen some in the FBI intervene in a Presidential election in a way that clearly altered the outcome. We have a national administration that is disregarding long-established norms, a President who has with his attacks on the press and complaints about the restrictions of libel laws made clear his willingness to undermine the protections of the 1st Amendment. He has already put his own man in charge of the FBI (and it is not clear whether that contributed to the FBI caving to the demands by Devin Nunes for material that would not normally be released, even to Congress, at this point in an investigation. Admiral Rogers, the head of NSA, who apparently resisted Trump’s attempts to public saythere was nothing against him, is retiring and as of now we have no idea who will replace him, and whether that person will commit to personal loyalty to Trump. The Attorney General who recused himself from Russia, thus leading to the Mueller investigation, may be about to be fired, and the investigation quashed. Meanwhile Republicans, who control the Congress, have key members attempting to undermine not only Congressional investigations, but also Mueller’s. They and Trump are also poisoning the public discourse in a way that may mean even clear evidence of impeachable and indictable behavior by Trump will not be accepted, thereby putting our basic democracy in jeopardy, even more than the financial impact of the policy decisions by this Congress and by the President’s executive action are destroying the financial well-being of far too many Americans.
So what do we have to learn from the past?
Those who still value country over personal security, financial well-being, party,and who are knowledgeable about the wrong doing MUST make sure that information gets out.
The burglars in 1971 took efforts to protect themselves, which is why their identities were not known for almost a quarter century, but they understood they might well wind up imprisoned They did what they did because they felt the country as a whole needed to know what was going on. The same can be said of Daniel Ellsberg’s getting the Pentagon Papers out to the New York Times and other newspapers.
The burglary in Media was in early March of 1971. The Pentagon Papers appeared on the front page of the New York Times on June 13, 1971, although Ellsberg had begun to discuss the material with the paper’s Neil Sheehan in February, before the burglary.
I lived in Media for several years, including overlapping with my brief time working for Franklin Mint a few miles south of there. By then the FBI satellite office had been moved to the Franklin Mint campus, had electronic alarms, and was covered by 24/7 cameras the company had because of all the gold and silver on the premises. A physical burglary like that in Media was no longer possible.
We used to have Congressional types with guts. Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska entered alost 5,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record near the end of June. The papers were edited/curated by two people who would be/remain major figures in anti-war circles, Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky.
We have for some time heard hints from Democrats in the House and Senate of what they have already seen and heard.
I wonder, would any of them have the guts to risk their political careers and possible imprisonment to let the American public know what has happened to this country?
During Vietnam many Americans stood up and took risks, and changed what the country believed.
That was in the context of the earlier efforts by African-Americans and their allies to move the nation forward against racial discrimination and for civil rights.
On January 21 last year we saw the largest demonstrations in this nation’s history. Many had the foresight to realize what was happening. Yet that was not enough.
So the question is, what do we do now?
What is our responsibility to the Constitution?
What is our responsibility to the rule of law, with this administration regularly flouts when it suits its prupose (think Russian sanctions)?
What is our responsibility to the environmental future of the world?
What is our responsibility to prevent the possible death of at least hundreds of thousands (vy conventional means) if not millions should war break out on the Korean peninsula?
I teach government. Part of what I teach is how government has changed over time. In the past most of the changes have been positive.
It is changing now, and not in a positive way.
So what are we ALL going to do?