48 Years Ago Today; J. Edgar Hoover and John Mitchell announce the arrest of 20 of the Camden 28.

[Dennis Donovan]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Camden_28



The Camden 28 were a group of Catholic left anti-Vietnam War activists who in 1971 planned and executed a raid on a Camden, New Jersey draft board. The raid resulted in a high-profile criminal trial of the activists that was seen by many as a referendum on the Vietnam War and as an example of successful use of jury nullification.

The goal
The goal of the group was to make a bold statement in opposition to the war in Vietnam by way of sabotaging the portion of the draft process that was administered through the local draft board in Camden. Their plan was to break into the draft board offices at night and search for, collect, and either destroy or remove the records of all Class 1-A status draft registrants. It was to be both a symbolic and real blow to the process through which tens of thousands of young American men were being drafted and sent to fight in Vietnam.

They wrote in a statement before trial:

We are twenty-eight men and women who, together with other resisters across the country, are trying with our lives to say "no" to the madness we see perpetrated by our government in the name of the American people – the madness of our Vietnam policy, of the arms race, of our neglected cities and inhuman prisons. We do not believe that it is criminal to destroy pieces of paper which are used to bind men to involuntary servitude, which train these men to kill, and which send them to possibly die in an unjust, immoral, and illegal war. We stand for life and freedom and the building of communities of true friendship. We will continue to speak out and act for peace and justice, knowing that our spirit of resistance cannot be jailed or broken.

The group
Not all of the group's members were students or "hippies," the stereotypical anti-Vietnam War activists. The mostly Catholic group also included four priests and a Protestant minister, people working in education or legal and social services, veterans, and middle-aged parents. One notable member was Frank Pommersheim. Members of the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI were also involved.

Informant
One group member, Bob Hardy, was opposed to the war but was also secretly opposed to the group's plans to break the law with this action. Feeling torn between loyalty to his friends in the group and his strict law-and-order personal philosophy, Hardy approached the local FBI with his concerns. The FBI encouraged Hardy to remain with the group so that he could pass along information about their activities. Hardy agreed to become an informant, allegedly only after receiving assurances from his FBI handlers that none of the group would ever spend any time in jail for the raid against the draft board. The FBI agreed to finance much of Hardy's role within the group.

As an FBI informant, Hardy became heavily involved with the group from a planning and training perspective. As he was a hands-on carpenter and handyman, he helped devise the plan whereby the group could break into the Federal office building within which the draft board was located. He supplied tools (mostly paid for by the FBI), expertise and training. Ladders would be used, windows would be cut with glass cutters, alarms would be bypassed, etc. 2-way radios were supplied by the FBI so that the activists could better communicate and coordinate their actions when the raid was to finally occur.

Raid
The raid was planned for the early hours of Sunday, August 22, 1971. With the activists all in their positions the raid commenced. Unknown to the activists, the raid was being carefully monitored and documented from the shadows by more than 40 FBI agents. The FBI agents held back and watched as the activists broke into the draft board office and commenced destroying and bagging thousands of draft-related documents. After a significant amount of time passed during which thousands of documents had been handled, the hidden FBI agents were ordered to spring into action and arrest everyone involved. Those arrested, including two Catholic priests and a Protestant minister, became known as the Camden 28. The fact that Bob Hardy had betrayed the activists became readily apparent as the night wore on.

Trial
By the time that the Camden 28 were brought to trial in the Spring of 1973, their case was viewed by many as a referendum on the Vietnam War. Each of the 28 faced seven felony charges stemming from the raid and more than 40 years in prison if convicted. The 28 chose to be tried together.

Immediately prior to the trial they were offered a plea-bargain whereby they would each plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge and the rest of the charges would be dropped. After intense discussion the 28 decided that they would not take the plea and that as political activists they preferred to be put on trial. Historian Howard Zinn was brought in to testify on behalf of the defendants.

Unfortunately for the prosecution, its star witness Bob Hardy was feeling that he had been betrayed by the government. Hardy maintained that from the start of his interaction with the FBI he sought and received assurances that none of his co-conspirators in the raid would see any jail time. Now, as the trial loomed ahead, each of the "28" was facing more than 40 years in prison.

For the FBI and the prosecution, the cost of betraying Hardy in this fashion was to lose him as a friendly witness. Scorned, Hardy would now, in fact, testify extensively for the defense. Hardy would testify regarding the extent to which the FBI encouraged and enabled the raid on the draft board to take place. Through Hardy's testimony, the raid came across as being funded and driven by the FBI, and the defense was able to argue effectively that through the FBI, the government "over-reached" in its zeal to arrest and prosecute this particular set of anti-war activists.

Additionally, it became apparent that the FBI had enabled the plot to form and develop because it believed the Camden group might have been connected to the theft and publication of FBI documents in Media, PA several months prior. In fact, at least two of the Camden defendants (Keith Forsyth and Robert Williamson) had been involved in the Media burglary, though this was not revealed until they stepped forward in 2014. Those documents had revealed the COINTELPRO program, and the Camden defendants essentially used their own trial to publicize and question FBI methods.

On May 20, 1973, the jury returned "not guilty" verdicts for all counts against all 28 defendants, acquitting them. Howard Zinn had testified at the trial and recommended civil disobedience and jury nullification.

Hoover and Mitchell - the Rosenstein and Barr of their time.

[AllaN01Bear]

1. thanks for bringing this to light. yet another instance of government injustice .

our war of independance was to stop all this , but did it after we became our country? how many of these situations are still buried out there and not taught in public schools .?

[gratuitous]

2. For further reading . . .

I recommend "The Burglary" by Betty Medsger, which is about the break-in at the Media PA FBI office in 1971, and completely unsolved by the FBI until the burglars came forward with their story in 2014. How the eight conspirators came together (and worried about whether a ninth person who left the conspiracy part way through could be trusted), trained, practiced, cased the FBI office, and plotted the break-in for the night of the first Ali-Frazier fight. The story of that night is told in meticulous, (dare I say?) thrilling detail, but it doesn't stop there. For a long time afterward, the conspirators copied the mind-numbing bureaucratic paperwork of a typical FBI office under J. Edgar Hoover, and disseminated what they had to journalists they felt they could trust to publish what they had. It was from this burglary that the notorious counter intelligence program (COINTELPRO) was revealed to the American public.

[SCantiGOP]

3. Defense lawyers are no longer allowed

to instruct the jury in jury nullification, the concept that a jury can go decide not to enforce an unjust law. The reasoning is that the prosecution and defense present the facts, and then the judge instructs the jury on the law. Judges can stop defense attorneys from discussing this, even to the point of jailing them for contempt if they persist.
This means that a juror in 1855 would have been required to convict anyone assisting a slave with escape. And it could mean one day soon that anyone who fails to report an immigrant who is in the country illegally could be tried and would not have access to the principle of jury nullification, to the concept that they were following a higher law.
Of course, if the public is aware of this then there is nothing that can stop a jury from ruling against the facts regardless of what the judge instructs.

This happened several times during the Vietnam Nam era. A draft resistor’s judge would instruct the jury: If you determine that this person refused to accept their lawful military draft notice then you must find them guilty. Ten minutes later the jury would return and say, “Not Guilty.”’