America, 1975: The Invisible

AMERICA 1975: THE INVISIBLE

If the Vietnam War was the social upheaval that forced millions of liberals to reexamine their outlook in the '60's, the most potentially powerful radicalizing force in the present decade may be the increasingly apparent manipulation of the so-called "democratic process" in the United States and all over the world - by the intelligence agencies, multinational corporations, and crime syndicates - institutions which operate effectively outside any legal restraints and above the "consent of the governed."

Though the breach opened by Vietnam and Watergate are pouring new indications of conspiracy and coverup in the domestic political assassinations of the past decade; further disclosures of the leading role of the CIA, the corporate giants, and the banks in waging covert political and economic warfare abroad; and a new awareness of the power of these agencies to program the mass consciousness and manipulate the media. More and more Americans are getting the squirmy feeling that they, in reality, have very little to say about it all. A 1973 Louis Harris poll reported that 88 per cent of Americans, when asked the question, "What do you fear most , replied the use of intelligence agencies by politicians to distort the electoral process."

As Donald Freed, Jim Cookson, and Jeff Cohen of-the Campaign for Democratic Freedoms put it in a recent LA Free Press article, "The need to know, what the Greeks called anake, has reached a kind of critical mass for the American people."

The major information media, you will recall, were able to keep the lid on the grisly details of the US involvement in Vietnam, despite the existence of a mass protest movement, until Daniel Ellsberg defected and put the Pentagon Papers on the public record. In like manner, the media today, while reporting some of the raw information, are playing down its momentous implications. The consequences of increased public consciousness of the "invisible government" would be serious indeed: at stake is the very credibility of the U.S.' major political institutions and the future ability of the super-agencies to manipulate domestic and world events.

In an effort to increase public awareness of the activities of such institutions, a group called the Ann Arbor Teach-In is bringing together several internationally-known experts in a major conference at Ann Arbor's Hill Auditorium this weekend, November 2, 3 and 4 - the 10th anniversary of the first teach-in on the Vietnam War. The teach-in, titled The Bi-Centennial Dilemma: Who's in Control?", will offer a series of seven morning, afternoon and evening programs featuring such central figures in the current "information renaissance" as Mark Lane, speaking on the assassination of President Kennedy: Donald Freed, author of the movie Executive Action, speaking on the murder of Robert Kennedy; Representative Michael Harrington of Massachusetts on international subversion by the CIA; David DuBois, Editor of the Black Panther newspaper, on subversion of the black liberation movement; and Jeremy Rifkin, Director of the People's Bi-Centennial Commission. There will be sessions, including workshops, on such issues as corporate manipulation, police repression. surveillance and dataveillance, and mind control.

Tickets for individual sessions will be available at the door beginning Friday night at Hill Auditorium. Admission for the entire conference is $3.00. Tickets and further information are available from the Ann Arbor Teach-In, 332 S. State St., Ann Arbor, Mich. 48108. The Teach-In's telephone number is (313) 995-0404. 

AMNESTY FOR ATTICA

With New York's Governor Hugh Carey considering partial amnesty for the 34 prisoners still facing charges stemming from the September 1971 rebellion at Attica prison, and a report expected soon on corruption within the Attica prosecution, one state trooper has finally been indicted for his role in the massacre that left 43 dead. 62 inmates were originally indicted and charges of selective prosecution have been flying ever since.

Jomo Joka Omowale ( Eric Thompson), the prisoner who won a hearing on the selective prosecution issue in New York Supreme Court, earlier this month agreed to accept a guilty plea to "coercion" in return for the dropping of 41 other felony counts against him -- and the end of the hearing. During the one-day hearing, National Guardsmen and ex-prisoners testified that the prosecutors refused to investigate the accusations of atrocities against prisoners by state troopers and prison guards.

Governor Carey has already announced his intention to "edit" the Meyer report on corruption in the prosecution before it is released to the public. A support group for the Attica brothers insists that Carey is already implicated in the "coverup", and that "token" indictments of state troopers, at this late date, are designed to shield high state officials - including then Governor Nelson Rockefeller -- from prosecution for their role in ordering the slaughter and the selective prosecution policy.

The Buffalo-based group, Attica Now, is calling for total amnesty for all prisoners charged in the rebellion. Carey is reported to be considering partial amnesty for those still facing charges (excluding the two already convicted) plus any state officials who might have been involved. A bill before the state legislature would grant amnesty to troopers and guards as well, who in addition to perpetrating the 43 deaths, engaged in brutal and systematic torture of inmates for days afterwards. Jomo's defense committee has estimated that the state has spent $10 million on the prosecution, while almost all of the $750,000 voted by the legislature for the prisoners' defense has been held up by state courts.

Judge Bernard Meyer, responsible for the report on corruption in the prosecution, was appointed by Rockefeller.

The question at this point, according to sources close to the case, seems to be how the state can extricate itself from the matter with a minimum of further embarrassment. Earlier this summer, a member of the prosecution team characterized its effort as "a shambles... We've all but given up on the cases."

GOVERNMENT AND THE NEED TO KNOW

On the home front : the November issue of the Saturday Evening Post, of all people, offers a quarter of a million dollars to the first person to offer information leading to the arrest of anyone who conspired to kill John F. Kennedy. . . . New Times, an Arizona weekly, says the Secret Service thwarted a 1968 CIA plot to remove "Clean Gene" McCarthy from the set. Commented McCarthy, "I didn't think they put that high of a price on me.". . . . Inside the inside story: Earth News confirms that the confidential sources for Rolling Stone reporters Howard Kohn and David Weir in their bomb story on the Patty Hearst escapade were, indeed. Jack and Micki Scott, formerly of the famous Pennsylvania farmhouse.

The scuttlebutt is that Bill Colby at the CIA will probably have to be given the heave-ho soon, since his tongue has been flapping too freely of late in Frank Church's committee. . . . Look for an accompanying statement by Jerry Ford announcing his plans to "reform" the company. . . Rep. Michael Harrington of Massachusetts may have enough on Henry Kissinger's involvement in the Chilean affair to force the globe-trotting Secretary of State to find a graceful way to exit. . . Meanwhile, Liberation News Service is out with a well-documented report on the CIA's 15 years of covert war in Tibet (which, then as now, is part of the People's Republic of China). . . . Can't tell the coups without a scorecard? Write the U.S. Govt. Printing Office for a copy of the September 30 Congressional Record . in which you will find what Harrington's office calls "a handy catalog of covert actions known to have been carried out by the CIA from 1950 to 1974." For 1975 on, watch this space.

In other developments in the intelligence community, Zodiac News reports that the North American Air Defense Command, having not seen any enemy bombers cross its radar screens recently. has turned its technical know-how against smaller private planes winging across the border from Mexico with a deadly cargo of (you guessed it) marijuana. . . Farther south. Henry the Traveler will soon be trying to work something out with Panama, which has decided it would like its canal back and has the support of most of Latin America, even Brazil...October brought to northern Argentina the reality of full-scale guerrilla warfare, being waged by two well-armed liberation movements. . . OPEC member Venezuela is in conference with Vietnamese leaders on the fine points of nationalizing foreign oil holdings.

On the other side of the Atlantic, with Generalissimo Franco apparently down for the count and most of Spain's neighbors up in arms over the recent executions of Iberian patriots, Morocco's rulers have decided the time is ripe to annex the Spanish Sahara. The proposed method is that 300,000 Moroccans should walk quietly across the border together, unarmed, to announce the change in authority. A native liberation movement in the Sahara, however, has indicated its intentions of providing a lively welcome for the invaders.

As the turmoil in Portugal continues unabated, Earth News notes pointedly  that the Pentagon has an especially keen interest in holding on to its air bases in the Portuguese Azores, which occupy a strategic military position in the Atlantic. . . Also in the balance is the wealth of raw materials contained in Angola, which the much-messed-with progressive government in the Portuguese motherland has promised its independence. Two of the three so-called "rival liberation movements" scrambling for the upper hand are reportedly receiving support from our old friends, the CIA. The Black Panther reports that lan Smith's white supremacist government in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) is considering the nation's black majority a separate state. .

Remember the grisly wire reports from Cambodia shortly after the U.S. and Lon Nol got the boot from the Khmer Rouge? Well, the Indochina Resource Center has offered a few explanations: according to its recent report, some 15,000 people, mostly small children, did starve to death in Phnom Penh in the last months of the puppet regime...The wartime population of Phnom Penh was swollen to several times its normal size by refugees from American bombing in the countryside, but the U.S. decided the cargo space in its planes was needed for munitions, so the city ran out of rice....After the liberation, says the report, three million people were sent back to the countryside, in an orderly manner, so that they might be able to feed themselves and assume a productive role in the new economy.

While Cambodia is reported to be getting its own rice supply together in first-rate fashion, Hong Kong is scarfing down record numbers of McDonald's apple pies. That's right-the Golden Arches are doing a brisk trade in burgers on the other side of the earth, and they will be popping up soon in Singapore, the Philippines and probably everywhere else that's still "safe tor democracy." No franchises are planned for Viet Nam.

From the world of show biz, Variety informs us that Chuck Colson of Watergate fame persuaded ABC's Howard K. Smith to drop a sizzling story on the CIA's involvement in the assassination of former South Vietnamese President Diem. Smith's conversation with Colson, who was relaying orders from Henry Kissinger himself, is on tape and now in the hands of Special Prosecutor Henry Ruth. Howard says he can't remember the conversation.

Wherever there's a war, you can just about count on the good old U.S.A. getting its finger in the pie somewhere along the line. According to the New York Times, the U.S. has sold $100 billion worth of weapons to no less than 136 different countries over the last thirty years. Many of these countries, the Times observes, have since used their new toys on each other. Nothing like working both sides of the street!

The State Department has finally released the so-called "Pumpkin Papers," which the then aspiring young attorney Richard M. Nixon used to nail Alger Hiss in 1948 on a treason rap, launching Nixon's subsequently scandalous career. The documents. which Nixon termed at the time "documentary evidence of the most serious series of treasonable activities which has been launched against the government in the history of America," turned out to be somewhat less of a bombshell than Dick had indicated. One of the microfilms involved was overexposed and completely illegible; the other two contained poor prints of Navy documents illustrating the construction of life rafts. fuel valves, and fire extinguishers.

The civil suit filed by the families of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, Chicago Black Panthers killed by police in a 1969 search-and-destroy mission, and the seven survivors of the raid, goes to trial in US District Court in Chicago on November 3. The plaintiffs are asking for $47 million from former States' Attorney Edward Hanrahan, who directed the assault, and the 14 police involved in it.

Last month. the US Attorney, after having claiming it had  "lost" William O'Neal, the informant who acted as Hampton's bodyguard, supplied police with the apartment layout, and allegedly drugged Hampton before the raid, almost as quickly located O'Neal when asked to swear they didn't know where he was.

Last month, the Hampton family's lawyer claimed to have obtained documentary evidence that Hanrahan made a deal with the federal grand jury impaneled to investigate the raid. In return for dropping indictments against the occupants of the apartment, neither Hanrahan nor any police were to be indicted. Ballistics evidence showed that only one shot was fired from inside the apartment, while police delivered such a fusillade that the fact that anyone survived was remarkable.

In an effort to increase public awareness of the activities of such institutions, a group called the Ann Arbor Teach-In is bringing together several internationally-known experts in a major conference at Ann Arbor s Hill Auditorium this weekend, November 2, 3 and 4 - the 10th anniversary of the first teach-in on the Vietnam War. The teach-in, titled The Bi-Centennial Dilemma: Who's in Control?", will offer a series of seven morning, afternoon and evening programs featuring such central figures in the current "information renaissance" as Mark Lane speaking on the assassination of President Kennedy; Donald Freed, author of the movie "Executive Action" speaking on the murder of Robert Kennedy; Representative Michael Harrington of Massachusetts on international subversion by the CIA; David DuBois, Editor of the Black Panther newspaper, on the subversion of the black liberation movement; and Jeremy Rifkin, Director of the People's Bi-Centennial Commission; 

THE POLITICS OF MURDER

Despite the best efforts of major news media like the New York Times and CBS News to lay the controversy at rest, the lid is still threatening to blow off the Robert Kennedy assassination case following the re-firing of "lone nut" Sirhan Sirhan's gun before a panel of ballistics experts in Los Angeles October 6.

Having read the first sentence of the panel's report on the experiment, billed as the supreme test of the "second gun" theory, the Times leaped into print with a headline claiming "Experts Rule Out Second Gun in Robert Kennedy Death." Several panel members immediately complained that the press had "jumped the gun" and misinterpreted their findings. At least one, Lowell Bradford, has called for a more extensive inquiry into the questions of the direction of RFK's wounds and the number and characteristics of bullets found on scene.

CBS. which had interviewed Bradford after the re-firing but before the release of the report, included in a new segment his statement that no evidence of a second gun had been found-- but omitted the telling fact that the bullets found on the scene could not be matched to Sirhan's gun. In fact, Bradford said that some of the bullets were too deformed to be matched to any gun. and that three of the bullets recovered at the scene did match each other, but not the test bullets. In other words, it's difficult to explain the presence oi the three bullets not to mention the nature of

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Kennedy's wounds without a "second gun." Los Angeles County Special Prosecutor Thomas Kranz, at any rate. is continuing his search for the gun. which he believes was ripped off and is presently in the possession of an Arkansas stolen weapons operation.

Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguchi stated in his autopsy that RFK's major wound was inflicted from behind at point-blank range, as indicated by the powder burns on the back of the candidate's head. An eyewitness named Donald Schulman. who has never been called to testify in the case, claims to have observed a security guard who admits pulling his gun  after the shooting started - fire from behind RFK. Witnesses unanimously placed Sirhan two to six feet away, in front of Kennedy. Sirhan's gun held only eight bullets, but ten were found at the scene. Information on the trajectory of the bullets has been difficult to substantiate, since the LAPD has conveniently "lost" bullet-riddled ceiling panels and door jambs from the scene. The President of the Academy of Forensic Scientists says the case could have been solved years ago but for the "prevarication and stonewalling" of the Los Angeles Police.

Sirhan, according to former San Quentin prison psychologist Eduard Simson - who spent several days interviewing him in prison - gives all the indications of having been hypnotized and programmed to shoot Kennedy. Simson. also a graphologist, insists that Sirhan's diary - a major piece of prosecution evidence - was a forgery.

A TRAIL OFCORPSES

Last year, Sirhan's roommate at San Quentin was suddenly transferred to a Nevada prison, where he wrote to a Nevada state legislator and to Playboy magazine, claiming to have the story of the conspiracy to kill RFK from Sirhan's lips. Before he could talk. he was murdered in prison.

This is child's play , of course, in comparison to the trail of corpses leading away from the assassination of President Kennedy five years before RFK. At least 18 material witnesses sought by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison died mysteriously in the years following the Dealey Plaza ambush, and a total of perhaps 100 people related in some way to the assassination have been taken off the set in all. Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania, whose committee is investigating three different conspiracy theories of the JFK assassination, says the Warren Report is "about to collapse like a house of cards."

In the most recent development in the Warren Commission travesty, the FBI has admitted to destroying a threatening hand delivered letter which Lee Harvey Oswald brought to its Dallas office two days before the shooting. An FBI clerk has testified that five days before the assassination took place, the agency's southern offices received a Telex warning that an attempt on the President's life might be made in Dallas. The clerk said the offices were later ordered to destroy any evidence that didn't confirm the Warren Commission's "single bullet" theory.

WAS OSWALD INNOCENT?

Despite several clear indications that at least two gunmen had to be involved in the President's murder. the Warren Commission, according to numerous investigators, concocted - under considerable pressure, and at the expense of the evidence - a theory explaining several of JFK's wounds by the trajectory of a single bullet entering the President's neck from behind. The now famous Zapruder film, of course, shows Kennedy's head jerking backward as he is clearly hit from the front as well. Several witnesses have described shots as coming from the direction of a grassy knoll adjacent to JFK's motorcade route.

Although a three-quarters majority of the American people now believe the Warren Commission covered up a conspiracy, most still believe Oswald was guilty. One researcher, however--George O'Toole, author of The Assassination Tapes-- has subjected Oswald's taped statements of innocence to analysts by the PSE, a kind of after-the-fact lie detector, and concluded he was telling the truth. Rifle champions have been unable to duplicate Oswald's supposed performance from the Texas Book Depository building-- two hits out of three shots, fired in 5.6 seconds and have stated that his weapon was incapable of that kind of performance in front.

THROWING AWAY THE KEY

Oswald's assassin. Jack Ruby. reputedly also worked for the FBI and wanted to talk to the Warren Commission. He died of cancer in jail without giving that testimony. Dorothy Kilgallen, the only reporter to interview Ruby without police present, was dead of a reported "suicide" before she could write her story.

A thick CIA file on Oswald, along with JFK's brain and many volumes of evidence, is locked up in the National Archives until the year 2039. Even without this evidence, many investigators feel that information currently being developed will be sufficient to blow the case open. If this happens, among those whose reputations will undoubtedly suffer will be Leon Jaworski, a special consultant to the Commission and the man Richard Nixon appointed to investigate himself, and none other than Jerry Ford, a Commission member who wrote a book based on its explanation of the murder.

The Kennedy assassinations, of course, are only the most notorious of several political assassinations during the past decade now coming under intense new scrutiny. James Earl Ray, the "lone nut" blamed for killing Martin Luther King, Jr., has been trying for several months to get a retrial in order to tell his story. The shootings of Malcolm X (whose bodyguard the night he was murdered was an FBI agent), and, most recently, of George Wallace, were also explained by the familiar - and suspect "lone assassin" theory.

At long last, the coat of whitewash hastily applied to the politics of murder in the past decade is wearing very thin indeed. If pressure on the "official" explanations for this reign of terror continues to build at the present rate, we may yet perceive a pattern behind it all - and possibly avoid a future in which American politics are decided at gunpoint, rather than through what we have, perhaps naively, known as the "democratic process."

COMING IN THE SUN

The November 19 issue of The SUN will be devoted to an in-depth look at the first two years of the administration of Coleman Young, Detroit 's first black mayor. We 'II be talking about the significance of the political change, the shifting social and economic realities in the Motor City, and how the Young administration is planning and shaping its future. You 'II find out about the city's night life renaissance, meet some of City Halls dynamic new administrators, and gel a closeup look at Coleman himself. You can find The SUN all over Detroit and the suburbs. (See partial suburban list on page 29 or call 961-3555 for the location near you).