1 RECEIVED»» 2 g m \
NOTICE: This newsletter is your personal property. It cannot legally be ©M taken from you for any reason. THE SERVICEMEN'S NEWSLETTER
VOL 1 NO. 1 APRIL 1, 1969 WASHINGTON, D:C FREE TO SERVICEMEN
GI'S FIND NEW "LEGAL" WAY TO PROTEST VIETNAM WAR
By Roger Priest, U.S. Navy
WASHINGTON, D.C. — For those members of the American military who are fed up with the senseless waste of lives in Vietnam—there is a nonviolent and perfectly "legal" way to register a protest and freak out the Military Dictatorship that runs this country. The idea is to change your personnel file and to designate as a beneficiary for all service-connected life insurance and death gratuity either a peace or a resist ance group. The procedure is simple enough. The forms that you want to change are: Army DA- 41, Air Force AF-246 and Navy/Marine Corps NAVPERS 601.2. These forms are maintain ed in your service record and go by the name of "Record of Emergency Data." You can expect some hassels from the Brass if you take this kind of action. But don't let them blow your mind with their petty threats and just plain outright lies. It's part of their job. Really, the rules state that if a member makes an "unusual" request he should be "encouraged to designate such dependents or parents as benefi* claries." And if you still don't buy the Brass B.S. then a "memorandum indicating that this was discussed with the member should be placed in the member's personnel file as a matter of record." The rules plainly state that an insured member may "designate any person, firm, corporation or legal entity, individually or as trustee, as beneficiary." So don't let them try to talk you out of it. I was interrogated for 45 minutes because I put down the War Resistors League of 5 Beekman St., New York, N.Y., as my "unusual" beneficiary. My division officer threatened me with a dishonorable discharge plus five years in jail if I belonged to any subversive group, an investigation by Naval Intelligence and a letter (note) home to my parents informing them of my actions. And I'm not kidding a bit. They really take it kind of personal. As you can see, this form of protest is not for the wishy-washy. But if you are committed to an end of the struggle in Vietnam, and a repudiation of all that made it possible—then by all means join us, and encourage others to do the same.
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way. A CALL TO INTERNATIONAL ACTION .
NEW YORK, N.Y. — Despite the talks in Paris, the Vietnam war goes on. The bombing pause in the north has not brought peace, but only intensified fighting in the south, and the continuing violation of Vietnam's right to self-determination. Not only is the aggression a war against the Vietnamese people, it is also a war against the American GI, who has been forced to fight against his own wishes and interests. In protest to the atrocities committed against the'Vietnamese and the American servicemen, American GIs have initiated a call for international actions against the war in Vietnam, to take place Easter Sunday, April 6. In the United States, thousands of GIs backed up by massive civilian support, will demonstrate in: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, New York, Chicago, Seattle and Atlanta. These actions will demand that American GIs be brought home NOW! We call for a round of demonstrations that will show the aggressors that we will not be quieted by the fancy-talk in Paris. We will fight until every GI is brought home and the killing is stopped. In those countries where American servicemen are stationed, we call upon the anti war movement to make a special effort for GI participation in the antiwar demonstra tions. Demonstrations against the war are perfectly legal and entirely within GI's rights as American citizens. It will also be difficult for the Brass to restrict men to base or give them extra duty on Easter Sunday in order to keep them away from the demonstration.
SELF-DETERMINATION FOR VIETNAM!
BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
ANYTHING GOES IN THIS WAR
By Vince Venditti
LOS ANGELES — I thought they were just going to take them back to An Khe for inter rogation, which was a pretty shitty assumption when I found out what they were really up to. It seems that, according to the machine-gunner, the "interrogation" consisted of the "friendly persuasion" of dangling a thin rope 1,000 feet above the jungle (from a helicopter, with the prisoner swinging through space—U.S. helicopter; Vietnamese prisoner). "You can't do that, man!" I said as they tied the small rope around one of the prisoner's legs. "Anything goes in this war, and you'd better get used to the idea," was the reply. Out went the prisoner, and in a few seconds he was just a dot dangling behind the chopper. They left him there for five minutes, then pulled him in and asked him if he was going to talk. The proud answer of "No" shot back. They dumped him out again, only this time, after leaving him there for about two minutes, they went down to tree- top level and let him hit the tree-tops for awhile. They hauled him in again; again told him to talk; again the proud "No!" shot back at them. Up again to 1,000 feet, and this time they cut the rope. I could see the horror that I felt imprinted on my "enemy's" face when they pushed him out. Then we dropped down to ground level where that cackling bastard lifer of a Sergeant made the other prisoner take a GOOD look at his friend, and advised him that it was much healthier to talk. I could only say, "Man, what did that prove?" "»othlner^-Sflid the Sarge, "but it sure was satisfying." FTN HN
DRUG ADDICTION
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Drug addiction in thv Military starts for everyone in the reception center. No one notices that one of the fluids shot into you produces disasterôus effects. The first effect is that it weakens your will. It makes one no longer able to stand up ..for his personal rights as he once did as a civil ian. His hair is shaved, his clothes are shipped home and he is left with fatigues. The drug makes you receptive to standing long hours in lines, eating terrible food, staying up late to 'GI', and rising earlv to make a good long training day. The drug is also supposed to make you able to respect your lifers in charge; respect for men (supposed leaders) who couldn't lead a Chinese fire drill, much less a platoon, company or battalion. Well, after seventeen months in the Military (Navy, Army or Marines; no difference) my shot is wearing off. Is yours? What can we do about it? Well, we have two choices. One is to go down to the re-enlistment office and take another shot (good for four to six years). With it you get a warm, soft, safe world to live in. Housing, insurance, medical and dental bills and everything is taken care of for you. And what do you give up for it? Not much, just a little thing known as self-respect. If you do take four to six years, you must be able to condition yourself to the idea that those years will be spent literally sucking ass. This comes very naturally to some people. To people with no minds and even less individuality, brown-nosing someone is a way of life. You may know some of these people, they smile and say "Yes Sir" to everything that comes out of the mouths of their super-lifers. They're ready to perform any ignomin ious task at the drop of a higher ranking man's condenscending smile. In olden days, these men were known as "toadies" (men who would eat toad on request); now we know them as lifers and the higher they go, the more rank they come in contact with, con sequently the more ass they suck! And what if you don't take a second dose of the drug? Can you make it in the hard cold world outside that our re-up counselors warn us about? Can you stand on your own two feet, think and make decisions like a man, and run your own life? Come alive, join the human generation! Step outside and live awhile! Don't allow yourself to get hooked on that Military drug! Don't get drugged by the Military life!
A LOVE STORY
By I. Lerik from his book Sal: A Love Story
Ho Chang rests his rifle across a branch and focuses its telescopic sight on the American infantryman wading through the rice paddy. Ho Chang is seventeen years old. He is a guerrilla fighter; a skilled assassin; a sniper. Concealed high in a tree — a tree that short years ago he climbed in play — he reaches and methodically plucks a leaf from his line of fire. He feels his familiar anticipation for the kill...Killing is his single remaining pleasure...
i 3 •' » i im»iiipi fJAf OM FTAF Ho Chang is a fanatic. He became a fanatic six months earlier while watching his mother, father, and beloved sister rur screaming from the pyre of curling flame and smoke that had been their home, He watched his loved ones, each a gaping-mouthed, wildly-gesticulating torcu - umbling crazily 11. the village and finally sprawling laying in the dust, eyeless, hairless black smoking hulks that twitched and emitted sounds not human. In the terrible racking sobbing agony of his griet, the boy Ho Chang knelt beside the charred remains of his family and pleaded that he too might die — but only his fire-seared soul -jould die...Their hut had been struck by a napalm bomb dropped from a low-flying American fighter... The American infantryman, Private Robe^' Cvans, is in his first day of combat. Always a peaceful boy and raised in the quiet suburbs*of Los Angelas, Private Evans, other than playful wrestling on the lawn with neighbor boys, had never been involved in physical conflict until today — today he has killed three people. A few hours earlier his squad was fired on from a dense thicket by a aumber of the enemy. The boy beside him, his only close friend in the service» suddenly stopped and turned, a surprised expression on his face and a small red oozing hole in his forehead. The boy was dead before his body hit the earth... The Sergeant shouted a command, and Private Evans in a blurred rage of revenge followed his combat training. Running, zig-zagging, firing from the hip, he charged the thicket with his squad. A flurry of shouts, of confusion and violent hand-to-hand combat resulted in Private Evans shooting two uniformed boys and pulling his bayonet from deep in the breast of a third, a slim uniformed enemy, a girl enemy, a girl younger than he. Their eyes had locked...his in young blue- irised horror; hers in brown, graceful tilted long-lashed acceptance that glazed to death while he watched and whimpered. Alone now, lost from his squad, wandering aimlessly, helmet gone but still carrying the heavy rifle with its blood-dipped bayonet dried to a rust hue, he slogs through the rice paddy, its muddy water almost to his knees. Dazed, obliv ious, mumbling to himself, his mind has returned home...to Los Angeles, to the suburban high school he last year graduated from, to sixteen-year-old Donna who still attends the school — Donna who promised to wait, who writes long chatty lonesome letters on ruled notebook paper, who has been with no other boy. Both slim, both with hair long and straight and blond, both blue-eyed and tanned and sandals and faded jeans and hand-in-hand down the street looked much the same. School days together, surfing together, high together, their clear eyes close staring inquisitive innocent learning one another. Touching one another, loving one another in gentle, tentative passion...Others wait: his younger brother who brags of a big brother hero in uniform; his father, veteran of an earlier war, American Legionaire, loudly proud of his fighting son; his mother, a Science of Mind student who, in spite of often-graphic televised combat death, successfully impersonalizes the war news and insures Robert's safety by prayer and daily holding an imaginai vision of his safe return...perhaps a medal, perhaps a Purple Heart — a slight, a romantic wound. His familiar woodside Ford wagon has been sold, but nbt his surfboard — the board he decorated and glassed himself waits stored in the garage rafters. Sometimes Mrs. Evans goes to the garage and stands a moment looking up at the board... Private Evans' head looms large framed in Ho Chang's telescopic sights. The young American's hair is a strange uneven brown — a few months earlier it had been pure pale blond, bleached by the California sun and the peroxide fad adhered to by the surfing crowd. Ho Chang feels grim satisfaction at the imminent destruc tion of another American, and carefully begins squeezing the trigger...he pauses... Deciding against quick death, he lowers his sights on the enemy figure. The rifle jumps, kicks solidly satisfactorily against his shoulder, and a violent crack of sound shatters the insect-buzzing bird-calling tropical day...The immediate absolute silence that follows hangs still and omrhous on the warm, heavy air... 4 fTMC CM UM The hate-altered hollownose bullet leaves a small, smoldering hole in Private Evan's tunic; enters his side below the ribs and above the hip bone. Expanding rapidly, it plows a deep trough across hj. abdomen, leaving his body in. a slightly lower location on the left side. Privet Evans throws up his hands and, as a wind- up toy soldier whose spring has spasmodical••- burst, scag6ex'3 esaaalifcy wildly awk wardly. He does not fall. Stunned by the bullet's slamming impact, he fails to understand what has happened...but immediately the numbness begins its change to pain — a trail of dull pain across his belly. He looks down, and in confused stupor unbelts his tunic. His shirt-front is soaking red...blood... He stands there swaying in shock and bewildered comprehension, and with fear- fumbling fingers, tries to unbutton the shirt. Sweat ppurs over his face and his lips move trembling. The real pain hits him then — its white LJC sear is terrible. He rips frantically at the red, seeping cloth, buttons fly, the shirt opens... Private Evans blinks unintelligibly at a jagged horizontal wrund across his lean smoothskin young belly. A wound from which his entrails now bui^e a wound that now sluggishly disgorges long, grotesque ropes of mangled gut; of. yellow dismembered quivering glands; of blue ruptured spurting arteries; of red severed nerve-jumping muscles: A hanging mutilated mass of brown leaking intestine that drops and dangles and splashes the muddy water of the rice paddy... Private Evans begins shaking his head in unbelieving protest. He mumbles "No... No...Oh God...No..." Swaying, crying, still moving his head in denial, he clumsily grasps the mangled mess of maimed entrails and begins to stuff them back into him- , self — into the pulsing, open wound of his belly. The blood, the undigested food, the waste from the destroyed colon are an overpowering stench of slime that stubborn ly slips and slides between his fingers. A few seconds he plays the hopeless game. His legs begin to shake violently, to jump uncontrollably. They buckle...Still striving to hold his intestines within himself, Private Evans slowly sinks to his knees. He kneels there, the muddy water mixes into the wound and his blood spreads out upon the scummy surface of the rice paddy. He understands then the futility — dimiyunderstands his death, as — head bowed — he watches his weakened hands fall away and his bulging intestines stream floating long reaching tenacles across the water... The sun catches the colors of his death — a lovely reflected spew under the noonday tropical sun. Private Evans' tears splash the water. His face works. No glory, no thoughts of country, no audience, no movie soldier brave clenched cigarette wisecracking death, no patriotic slogans in his fading.mind. As thousands and thousands of dying boy soldiers before him, he pitifully asks for that woman who bore him and taught him — quietly, softly, he speaks her name... He sobs his last now, shakes his head sadly — futilely — once more, and painfully whispers "Donna.. . .Donna.. .love. . .1 " His mouth moves grotesquely, and open- eyed he falls, splashing forward into his floating guts.
And Upon the sunlit surface of a far-distant native rice paddy oniy a smear remains... Nineteen years of clean young promise gone. Shot to hell.
This is a man he is a poor creature From Russia With Love you are not to kill him NOTHING WOULD PLEASE THE KREMLIN MORE this is a man THAN TO HAVE THE PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY he has a. hard time upon the earth CHOOSE A SECOND-RATE PRESIDENT. you are not to kill him RICHARD M. NIXON PITTSBURG, OCT 8, 1952 Kenneth Patchen 5 UAWM CM UAWHf \ 1 . - • • 1" ' > ' • r i . . • . i • i .. . . i . •••'I" I • L I . . • I ' . i.11 . i
POTFOURRI - - •
REIFICATION: The conversion of a symbol or other abstraction into a concrete or "real" thing; the»acceptance of a. symbol or other abstraction as something concrete or "real" with an „essence of its own; the folly of mistaking nothing for something— as when white, red and blue coloring is put on a rag and then mistaken for something other than white, red and blue coloring on a rag.
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FIRST COMMANDMENT: Don't take any Article1 15s when you go before the Man. The paper work and time taken up by Summary courts will drive the lifers crazy, fouling them all up. Besides, you want all those "black marks" on your record!
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SAN FRANCISCO — The Brass think they can stop the GI resistance by getting more vicious. They tried when they convicted three guys (so far) from the Presidio stockade in San Francisco of mutiny and sentenced them to 14, 15 and 16 years. It won't work. The GI resistance movement is too big and too angry. Furthermore, these guys are not going to serve any 15 or 16 years. One sentence of 15 years has already been reduced to two years. It seems that the Army isrganize worried that the public might "lose faith in the military system of justice."
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NEW YORK ~ The Movement is finally reaching the GIs and it's the GIs who are in a good position to jam the gears up good. All the money on Wall Street can't keep wars going without GIs. To quote off a latrine wall: "What if they gave a war and no one came?" The War Machine is really scared. Even the Stars and Stripes is losing the back home look to make room for propaganda.
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The streets of our country are in turmoil.. The universities are full of students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might and the Republic is in danger. Yes, danger from within and from without. We need law and order. Without law and order our nation cannot survive. Elect us and we shall restore law and order. We will be respected by the nations of the world for law and order. Without law and order, our Republic will fall.
— Adolph Hitler, 1932
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FAMOUS QUOTES — "I bet that Russian Army is jealous as hell. Our troops are here getting all this experience, we're learning about guerrilla warfare, helicopters, vertical envelopment, close artillery support. Those Russian generals would love to be here...Any true professional wants to march to the sound of gunfire."
— General William C. Westmoreland
6 ÛM OTHER SERVICEMEN NEWSPAPERS WITH A NATIONAL SCOPE
THE BOND THE ALLY Room 633 P.O. Box 9276 156 Fifth Ave. Berkeley, Calif, 94709 New York, N.Y. 10Q10 TASK FORCE VETERANS STARS & STRIPES FOR PEACE 2001 Milva St. P.O. Box 4598 Berkeley, Calif. 94704 Chicago, 111. 60680
VIETNAM GI P.O. Box 9273 Chicago, 111. 60690
LOCAL BASE NEWSPAPERS FOR NEWS ON THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL SCENE—THE WHOLE MOVEMENT SCOPE FUN, TRAVEL & ADVENTURE (FT. KNOX) Box 336 '•"'• GUARDIAN Lousiville, Ky. 197 E. 4th St. New York, N.Y. 10009 .FLAG-IN-ACTION (FT. CAMPBELL) (special GI rate - $1 per year/52 P.O. Box 2416 issues) New Providence, Tenn. 37040 I.F. STONE NEWSLETTER FATIGUE PRESS (FT. HOOD) 5618 Nebraska Ave., N.W. P.O. Box 922 Washington, D.C. 20015 Austin, Texas 78767 (Subscription $5 per year)
LAST HARRASS (FT. GORDON) P.O. Box 2994 Augusta, Ga.
SHORT TIMER (FT. JACKSON) REMEMBER P.O. Box 543 Columbia, S.C. APRIL 6th
Send your namet rankt service number SERVICEMEN'S PEACE DEMONSTRATION and address to receive free GI newspapers the ones without a lifer slant
OUR MISSION: To expose those in authority who have betrayed the trust of the American people by using their power to deprive men of their Constitutional rights and, by exposure, to act as a deterrent to such abuse. * To strive for Liberty, Justice and Equality for the men and women of the Armed Forces. * To be a forum and a rally point for dissent. * To destroy the negative influence of apathy among the servicemen of the Armed Forces and encourage them to stand up for their rights.
YOU CAN'T JUST SIT ON THE OUTSIDE AND BITCH. IF YOU DON'T LIKE SOMETHING, BY GOD GO IN AND CHANGE IT ~ FOR TRADITION IS NO EXCUSE FOR STUPIDITY, THE AMERICAN SERVICEMEN'S UNION
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Some servicemen may have heard something about a servicemen's union, but few really know why it was fortr d and what are its demands. Andrew Stapp, a recently discharged Army private from FL Sill, Okla., is the chairman of the American Servicemen's Union (ASU) and his wort's probably best state why there is a need for the ASU. "In a «arid characterized by rapid change and flux, the American military had changed not "at all (except to grow larger with the first permanent peace-time draft in our history). It is a stark unpleasant fact that enlisted men have not yet organized for their own defence in the armed forces. A great revolution ary of the past century said, "Without struggle ther,e is "no progress." Frederick Douglas was right. If we. are ever going to force a modicum of justice upon our haughty officers we must begin to?organize with the only power we possess— our numbers. "Some will say that this sort of fight will get us in trouble. But aren't .we in trouble when we are driven about like cattle, when we work 16 to 18 hours a day without saying "enough," when we allow ourselves to be used as pawns to bleed and die in some foreign land for the profits of the United Fruit Co. and Standard Oil? Aren't we in trouble when we are forced to fight in wars of aggression like that in Vietnam, with no say in the matter? Aren't we in trouble? "Should we listen to the bootlickers who counsel submission? So! We must band together in the fight for an enlistedmen's union and show those Brass who rule us that we are not dumb animals. The ASU has 8 demands its growing membership are working for: 1. An end to saluting and siring of officers; let's get off our knees. 2. Election of officers by vote of the men. 3. Racial equality. 4. Rank and filers control of court-martial boards. 5. Federal minimum wages. 6. The right of free political association. 7. The right of collective bargaining. 8. The right to disobey illegal orders—like those orders to go and fight in an illegal war in Vietnam. Anyone in the Active service, National Guard or reserve components can get more information by writing ASU at Room 633, 156 Fifth Ave. * New "York, N.Y. lOOlOT""
-J-'-S-BCSTAGS-- Roger Priest, U.S. Navy VAkRC/f .Office of Navy Information (01-210) The Pentagon + Washington, D.C. 20350 RED CRQS'
MONTH- ^RANKtm'trrroosEv n
YOUNG SOCIALIST P.O. Box 471 Oooper Station New York, N.Y. 10003 NOTICE: This newsletter is your 25* personal property. It ©M cannot legally be taken from you for any reason. THE SERVICEMEN'S NEWSLETTER
Vol. 1 No. 2 May 1, 1969 Washington, D.C. Free to Servicemen
A CALL TO RESIST ILLEGITIMATE AUTHORITY AN INDICTMENT AGAINST THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, THE ARMED SERVICES AND ITS INDUSTRIAL ALLIES
By Roger Priest, U.S. Navy
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As a U.S. citizen and as a human being I wish to expose the illegality and immorality of the unnecessary war in Vietnam. I specifically charge the U. S. government, the Armed Services and its industrial allies collectively and individually with the crime of waging aggressive war crimes against humanity, and with specific violations of the laws of war. Article VI of the Constitution states that the Constitution and treaties made under the Authority of the United States shall be the Supreme law of the land. Therefore if members of the U.S. government, the Armed Services and its industrial allies have broken any international law, then they are liable to prosecution by U.S. courts under Article VI of. the Constitution. I charge that the U.S. government, the Armed Services and its industrial allies have broken international laws and established personal responsibility for these criminal actions. The Nuremberg Principles define a "crime against peace" as the "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances." A state of war exists in Vietnam where Vietnamese and Americans are killed almost everyday in armed conflict. The war in Vietnam is a war of aggression on the part of the U.S. government, the Armed Services and its industrial allies. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter states that members of the United Nations have the right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations. All other acts of war are acts of aggression. This means that the United States would have the legal right to intervene in Vietnam if there was an armed attack upon Vietnam by military forces that crossed an international boundary. This is the only justification for armed intervention. The United States government has accused the government of Ho Chi Minh of aggression against the government of South Vietnam. For these actions if they did exist, to be defined as aggressive actions, North and South Vietnam must exist as separate countries. North and South Vietnam have never existed as separate countries. The current separation is the result of temporary zoning of the two belligerents of France and the Vietminh after the French-Indochinese War as of 1954. The zoning was only to be temporary. The two zones were to be reunited in 1956 pending elections. Elections the U.S. government never allowed, because Ho Chi Minh had become so popular a national hero that he would win free elections by a big margin (80 per cent, President Eisenhower estimated in his memoirs). The war in Vietnam, then is a civil war, a war between two belligerents indigenous to the same country. Therefore North Vietnam cannot be guilty of acts of aggression against South Vietnam as defined by the United Nations Charter because "armed attack" has never been carried across international boundaries.
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way. Page 2 OM, May 1, I960 ' • The United States government justified its military actions in Vietnam in a State Department Memorandum of March 4, 1966 as actions taken in "collective sell-defense." The State Department claimed the U.S. government had the right to intervene in Vietnam to protect South Vietnam from the aggressions of North Vietnam. By its own admission, there had not been an armed attack by North Vietnam upon South Vietnam until February 1965. This attack, the State Department alleged, occurred in an unspecified place at an unspecified time. The State Department has never proven that the North Vietnamese carried out an armed attack across the 17th parallel prior to the massive support of the South Vietnamese government by U.S. troops. The International Control Commission created under the Geneva Accords of 1954 has denied the State Department charge of "armed attack" by North Vietnam against South Vietnam. The ICC has charged the U.S. and the South Vietnamese government with the initial escalation of the war. North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front were forced to escalate their military activities as the United States government and the South Vietnamese government escalated theirs. Lets look back further in history. France assaulted by "armed attack" the state of Vietnam after the Second World War. France was clearly waging a war of aggression against Vietnam in an attempt to reinstitute Vietnam to its colonial status. Yet the United States government supported France between 1950 and 1954 with approximately two billion dollars in aid (to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people). When peace was negotiated between France and Vietnam in 1954 the United States refused to sign the document. As the French gradually began to pull their troops out of Vietnam, they were replaced by U.S. troops and supplies (remember the advisors?). The United States and the President of the southern zone of Vietnam refused to hold free elections in 1956 to reunify the country. These facts show that the United States has worked against the self-determination of the Vietnamese and against reuniting their country. The United States government has involved the people of the United States in an unnecessary war. Unnecessary because it can never be won. Unnecessary because it should not be won. The popular support of the people is on the side of those who are attempting to reunify Vietnam and throw the forces of imperialism back into the sea from which they came. United States actions in Vietnam can only be viewed as aggressive and criminal. By introducing large numbers of troops and military supplies on the side of their "puppet" government in the South, the United States government, the Armed Services and its industrial allies have committed acts of aggression against the Vietnamese people. Even the State Department does not claim that the actions taken between 1961 and 1965 by the United States government in Vietnam were not acts of aggression. Under Principle IV of the Nuremberg Principles, members of the U.S. government, the Armed Services and its industrial allies are guilty of a crime against peace punishable under international law. Principle IV states that even though a person acted under order of his government, he is not relieved of his responsibilities, as long as moral choice was possible. A moral choice was possible in these people's case. They chose to break the law. They are therefore guilty and liable for punishment under Article VI of the Constitution for willfully chosing to wage a war of aggression in violation of internation al treaties. They are also guilty of complicity in war crimes. The Nuremberg Principles define war crimes as violation of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the high seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity (but we destroy to save). I don't think that I have to illustrate the crimes against humanity committed toward the courageous Vietnamese people. Nearly everyday on the news or in the papers and magazines we see or read about the destruction of entire villages by napalm and fragmen tary bombs. We read about the relocation camps for civilians (concentration camps?). We hear about the corruption of Saigon officials. We watch the wanton destruction of cities on T.V. That crimes against humanity have been committed in Vietnam is beyond doubt. The U.S. government in complicity with the Armed Service and its industrial Page 3 ___ Man 1* I960 allies have committed these crimes and arc forcing the youth of this nation to commit them. Principle VII of the Nuremberg Principles states that complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity Is a crime under international law. The U.S. government, the Armed Services and its industrial allies have also partici pated by complicity in crimes against humanity. Crimes against humanity defined in the Nuremberg Principles as murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, or racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in the execution of or in the connection with any crime against peace or any war crime. The proof of these crimes can be found in almost any periodical. How many more women and children must be burned before the people of the United States realize the horrendous crime they are committing against a peasant people fighting to expel foreign oppressors from their homeland? Most Germans remained silent while their government murdered six million Jews. How much longer will the majority of Americans silently watch their Government slaughter the people of Vietnam? It is not surprising then that this is a time of increasing political repression. The negotiations to end the war have degenerated into à farce. The U.S. government has only two things to negotiate: the withdrawal of all U.S. troops and the payment in reparations due the Vietnamese people. There is nothing more to negotiate. And to those who hold illegitimate power over our lives we say to you that we will not accept the continuation of this war. We will continue to resist; and encourage others to do the same. SILENCE IS COMPLICITY.
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PLEASE SEND MONEY
That's what it takes to Be not too hard keep OM appearing regularly. for life is short Please help. and nothing is given to man be not too hard when he's sold or bought the dove has torn her wing for he must manage as best he can so no more songs of love we are not here to sing be not too hard we're here to kill the dove when he blindly dies fighting for things he does not own why are they pale and still young boys trained overnight and be not too hard conscripts paid to kill when he tells lies and dressed in gray to fight or if his heart is sometimes like a stone why statues towering great be not too hard above the last defeat for soon he'11 die old words and lies repeat often no wiser than he began across a new-made grave be not too hard and why your face undone for life is short with jagged lines of tears and nothing is given to man that gave in those first years and nothing is given to man all the peace I'd ever won
--Christopher Logue-Donovan -Jacques Brel Page i _w, •:..- _'_, /.>>;.J
^umeuà 2uefeà "If anything tangible is sacred, it is the gift of life and flesh, flesh which daily is burned, made homeless, butchered - without tears or clamour from most Americans - in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Peru, Guatemala, Bolivia, Columbia, Nigeria, South Africa, Harlem, Delano, Watts, and wherever the poor live and die, forgotten people, the anonymous majority. So property is repeatedly made enemy of life: gas ovens in Germany, concentration camps in Russia, occupation tanks in Czechoslavakia, pieces of paper in draft offices, slum holdings, factories of death machines, germs and nerve gas.'
- An excerpt from the Milwaukee 14 Statement
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"Our government...feels that we cannot extricate ourself without...damage to America': prestige. But the mire in which we flounder threatens us with even greater danger. It is the dilemma of either losing face or saving our soul...In a free society all are involved in what some are doing. Some are guilty, but all are responsible."
- Rabbi Abraham Heschel ******************************
"Civilians can scarcely understand or even believe that many ambitious military professionals truly yearn for wars and the opportunities for glory and distinction afforded only in combat. Standing closely behind these leaders, and encouraging and prompting them, are rich and powerful defense industries. Standing in front, adorned with service caps, ribbons and lapel emblems, is a Nation of veterans - patriotic, belligerent...finding a certain sublimation and excitment in their country's latest military venture. Militarism in America is in full bloom. ..the blight of Vietnam reveals that militarism is more a poisonous weed than a glorious blossom."
- Gen. David M. Shoup, former Commandant of the Marine Corps and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ******************************
A Pity the Joint Chiefs of Staff Won't Apply the Same Human Heresy in Vietnam -"I saw no point in senselessly sending people to their deaths."
- Commander Lloyd M. Bûcher before the Naval Court of Inquiry in the Pueblo Affair
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"Vietnam has vast resources of rubber, iron, tin, maganese, tugsten, rice...If we lose Vietnam we lose the ability to exploit this vast wealth."
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954 before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
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"It is clear that there are certain structures and institutions in society which cannot be reformed. After all, you do not reform inequity, you abolish it."
- Sen. Mark 0. Hatfield at the University of California, April 8, 1969 i l\igc S ; Ä.__^_J___J______
"We are outraged by the death-dealing exploitation of the people of the Third World who are victimized by your profit-seeking ventures. Specifically, we warn you, Dow Chemical, that...your offices have lost their right to exist. It is a blow for justice that we strike today."
- An open letter to the corporations of America by the "DC-9"
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"The record of events in Vietnam from 1945 to the present date is stained red with betrayal, duplicity, treachery, errors, misunderstandings, miscalculations, so great, so frequent, taken at such high levels, that ordinary citizens, not informed of events and needing to have faith in their leadership, find it almost impossible to believe the facts when the record is finally exposed to them."
- David Schoenbrun, former CBS news correspondent in Vietnam: How we got in How We get out, Atheneum, New York, 1968
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"Injustice is the great catalyst of revolution. A nation that found life through revolution has now become the world's number one counterrevolutionary force, not because American people would have it that way, but Decause the rich choose to defend their power and wealth. The masters of the trusts and corporate giants, along with their representatives in Washington, must learn the hard lessons of justice, or our country may be swept away and humanity with it."
- An excerpt from the Catonsville Nine Statement
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"If my soldiers were to begin to think not one would remain in the ranks."
- Frederick the Great
"...ITS ARMIES ARE EXTENDED WAY BEYOND THE SHORE AS THEY SEND OUR LOVELY BOYS TO DIE IN A FOREIGN JUNGLE WAR..."
"Most of the men who rule Saigon have, like the Bourbons, learned nothing. They seek to retain those privileges they have and to regain those they have lost. In Vietnam, only the Communists represent revolution and social change. The Communist Party is the only truly national organization that permeates both North and South Vietnam. It is the only group not dependent on foreign bayonets for survival. For its own strategic and political ends the United States is thus protecting a non- Communist Vietnamese social structure that cannot defend itself and perhaps does not deserve to be defended. Our responsibility for prolonging what is essentially a civil conflict may be one of the major reasons for the considerable amount of confusion, guilt, and soul-searching among Americans over the Vietnam war. I simply cannot help worrying that, in the process of waging this war, we are corrupt ing ourselves. I wonder when I look at the bombed-out peasant hamlets, the orphans begging and steaLing in the streets of Saigon, and the women and children with napalm burns lying on the hospital cots, whether the United States or any nation has the right to inflict this suffering and degradation on another people for its own ends."
"Not a Dove, But a Hawk" by Neil Sheehan, The New York Times Magazine of October 9, 1966 'JîiêjL UM, Mai, I, I Vol'
AMERICA'S RULERS ARE NOT THE FUZZ
By Martin Jezer
Just for a day I'd like to be one of those big scrubbed executives, sitting high iii a >> ta» s-enclosed building where the climate is regulated and you can't hang pictures on the will because the walls are made of plastic and because another big executive mind manipulator has circulated an inter-office memo prohibiting the posting of un authorized objects. Anyway, I'd be this big corporate manager, sitting in my office 50 floors above the street, watching the cops and the kids battle it out over turf neither of them will ever control. The kids protest injustice; the cops defend it as they're told; both get their heads cracked open. But high in my antiseptic tower, I'm clipping coupons and watching the money roll in. Occasionally, a New Left intellectual-type does some research and writes an article about how I -- and the institutions I control -- are milking the world dry. But these articles are read only by other intellectuals who don't speak in the language of the kids in the street, and they don't themselves ever call me a pig. So I'm sitting pretty in my tower, safe, rich and powerful, and the cops are doing my dirty work—nothing threatens me. But I'm still a decent fellow and deplore violence as much as the next man. So when the police get out of hand, as they did in Chicago, and start clubbing newsmen and demonstrators, I put my thumbs down. Public relations, you know. We Roman Emperors have to mind our image.
TAKE A GOOD LOOK MAN -- Demons, demons, that's what they are! They (lifers) are out to get the GI for anything he does to right the wrongs of this War Machine. They usually succeed under the Uniform Code of Military (In)justice. They are wretched old brainwashed puppets, controlled and made to dance to the music of the Brass Beast. They have no mind of their own and are therefore engulfed in the evils of this unconstitutional army.
Tomorrow morning, fellows, take a good look at the expression on the Lifer's face. What do you see? Across the forehead you'll notice wrinkles of despair born out of apathy toward human dignity. Notice the look in his eyes, the look of fear -- fear of the threatening evils embodied within him. On his face are the crevises of self ish and unrealistic character -- refusing to admit that he, like Jonah, is swallowed by the whale. On his lips, the expression of incredibility, falsity, human indecency and a manifesting doubt and indisposition to believe that surely the walls around him like those of Jericho, MUST, crumble and fall. Page 7 OM, i'km I, _
JOIN THE AMERICAN SERVICEMEN'S UNION -- There is a way to stop incidents such as the Presidio "Mutiny" and the Ft. Jackson (9) 8 Case: UNIONIZE! A union is strength. Together we won't have to take anything from the lascisl military system. If you have been debating joining the ASU, I'll ask you one question: "Isn't it about time you stopped debating it and joined? Get together tor the Union. The time to get organized is now. And no matter where these Brass-brained Bastards of the Fourth Reich send you -- ORGANIZE! Organize on board ships, in the jungle and in the brig. This fight is too important to let racist, scum of the earth, bigot dictators win and continue to control our lives. The ASU is the answer. For information on joining the ASU write the American Servicemen's Union at Room 633, 156 Fifth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10010 Tel: (212) 675-6780.
WHIPPING IT ON THIS ASS-LICKING DYING REGIME -- The war with the Brass is starting to reach a new stage. Now that servicemen are starting to pull together, the Brass has rolled out a new weapon. They are selecting key anti-war GIs and simply framing them for big time. This is supposed to be a "lesson" to other EMs. Keep crawling on your knees or you'll get a whipping from Big Brother! Well if they think that the "example1* they are making of the Presidio 27 will deter us, they have another think coming. They will not try the Presidio 27 for mutiny. We will try the Brass Beasts for the murder of Pvt. Richard Bunch. And if we do not get justice in the rigged courts of this land; then we shall turn to the streets. For the streets are the court of last resort in dealing with oppression. John F. Kennedy said, "Those who make nonviolent revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable." Shall we ask the Military- Industrial Complex which way they would like it?
DO YOU BELIEVE IN THEIR MADNESS? — The Brass keep telling us how those GIs who oppose the war are just a few kooks. We think it's just the opposite. When you find a servicemen who loves the military and thinks the war is great you know you're either talking to a lifer or a nut. It's damn clear that a majority of servicemen hate the military and think the Vietnam war stinks. So the Brass resort to informers, intim idation and harrassment of the EM. Why? Could it be that they realize our true potential for destroying their little Kingdom? Before we're through they will wish that places like Presidio and Ft. Jackson and yes, even Vietnam had never been invented. For they will pay. We cannot let them get away with the murder of over 33,000 American servicemen and the countless Vietnamese people. The Johnson's, the Rusk's, the DuPont's, the Dow Chemical, the Nixon's, the Humphrey's, the Westmoreland's, the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, all all will answer for their crimes. They will be hunted down and made to pay. Made to pay for earning $$$ "snuffing gooks" in Southeast Asia.
CADRE NEEDED
COMMIT YOURSELF to the grouth of OM - we need typists, office equipment, an office, stories on the GI struggle and Third World victories over American imperialism, distributers of the monthly newsletter and workers to help sustain our expanding operation. SILENCE IS COMPLICITY! Mail all contributions and questions to: Roger Priest, U.S. Navy P.O. Box 1033 Washington, D.C. 20013 Page 8 OM, J^lUju 1 if GH
BE FREE GO CANADA -- Deserters from the U.S. military can still find refuge in Canada, contrary to recent misleading reports in the Establishment press. The Montreal-based American Deserters Committee (ADC) reports James Cross of the Canadian Immigration Department as saying, "There's no legislation which would permit us to refuse landed immigrant status on that basis (of being a deserter) alone." Gross denied that deserters were banned from Canada and stated that they could not be deported to the U.S. The ADC suggests that servicemen seeking to escape the military enter Canada as a visitor, while on leave if possible, and use other than military identification papers, e.g. birth certificate, drivers license. Application for permanent legal status as a landed immigrant should be made after entry and in consultation with one of the following groups working with deserters: MONTREAL: American Deserters Committee , P.O. Box 611 Station H Montreal 25, Quebec
TORONTO: Toronto Anti-Draft Programme P.O. Box 764 Adelside St. Station Toronto 25, Ontario
VANCOUVER:Vancouver Committee to Aid War Objectors P.O. Box 4231 Vancouver 9, British Columbia
Advocating the overthrow of govern: ..ni is a crime—overthrowing it is something else al together. It is sometimes called revolution. But don't kid yourself—government is not where it's at. It's only a good place to start. ONLY THOSE WHO OPPOSE THE DEATHCAMP WARDEN ARE FREE OF GUILT!
The Dinosaur is no longer with us. The Mouse is: he ate the Dinosaur's eggs.
THAT,TC_UTNHT! DA,LY N,BBLE
WOULD YOU BUY A USED WAR FROM THIS MAN?
"Tactical atomic explosives are now conventional, and will be used against the targets of any aggressive force."
--Richard M. Nixon Chicago, March 17, 1955
"I am a chance-taker in foreign affairs."
--Richard M. Nixon Saturday Evening Post, July 12, 1958 ______OM, Man 1, 1969
LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE -- The Pentagon has a new war-room to house those who will deploy and coordinate an armed military repression in the U.S. It will be used in the event of what they call a "domestic crisis" or "civil disturbance." Commenting to newsmen an unidentified officer remarked: "Many of us feel Vietnam has been more or less a proving ground so to speak for apparatus that will have its ultimate test here at home." OVER THE HILL -- The Armed Services Committee recently disclosed that 53,357 servicemen have been clasified as deserters; that is, one every ten minutes. Now no one can tell just when a servicemen has taken enough of the military bull shit that is passed off as the "way we do things around here." Some just can't take as much as others. They have to run. I don't care how many laws you make or how you enforce them, those laws can't govern what the human mind will do. Right or wrong, when the breaking point is reached there's no turning back. And I don't blame those who have deserted. After all it is the insane, inhuman military that makes a man desert. But it is too bad, for our fight is in the United States; not in Canada or Sweden. I personally would not give the Military Bastards the satisfaction of knowing that they had run me out of this country. "America, Love it or Leave it" is pure shit man. I love this rotten, run-down and diseased country so much that I'm willing to stay and fight those that have brought us to the point of annihilation. But I can understand how 53,357 servicemen would take their leave from the U.S. War Machine. I can see how- three of the Presidio 27 would leave for Canada. For they have seen the U.S. Armed Forces as the Vietnamese peasant sees it. They are the victims of American militarism and power gone mad. They have learned nothing about anything except to hate. And hate they do. They hate what their country has forced them to do. Forced them to do in good conscience, I might add. I would never desert. But maybe I can make that kind of statement because I have never been handcuffed and kicked down a flight of stairs for my beliefs. I have never experienced the sadism of the guards in the brig. It's easy for me to feel condescending, and say, "I would never..." but would I? What is my breaking point? This I can't answer. I just don't know. It is a personal thing. And to those who make the decision to stay and fight or leave and (fight?) I wish you the best of luck. There are many ways of bringing this rotten system down to its knees. Perhaps a combination of the two might work?
So do your duty boys and join with pride serve your country in her suicide find a flag so you can wave goodby but just before the end even treason might be worth a try this country is too young to die. — Phil Ochs
--Ill«» student puut-r. K_i' NO WONDER THE BRASS ARE FULL OF SHIT/ — Another example of military self-control (literally) occurred the other day at the Korean Military Armistace Commission in Panmunjon. The incident took place when an American General and a North Korean General sat for a record 11 hours and 35 minutes without eating or leaving their seats in all that time. During the last kh hours they sat silently glaring at each other with folded arms. Now if we could only get all the Brass in all of the military forces of the world to sit down and glare at each other 24 hours a day... WHY? — Representing only six per cent of the world's people, America controls half of the world's productive wealth and 60 per cent of its finance. While people starve for bread and lack decent housing the rich debase themselves with comfort paid for by the misery of the poor. WHY? And most importantly, why do we allow it to go on? Why? GI NEWSPAPERS UNDER SEIGE — Pfc. Dennis Davis, the editor of The Last Harass, a satirical GI newspaper at Ft. Gordon, was given an undesirable discharge only 16 days before he was to complete his two-year hitch. The message seems to be clear that the Brass will not tolerate dissent from within the ranks. But this was a low, mean, chicken-shit way to treat a man. But the Brass bastards will not make us crawl to them again. We have had it with American Military Facism. GI newspaper editors will not be intimidated by this kind of petty reaction. With the brave Vietnamese people fighting to free their country from U.S. imperialism, and dying from U.S. guns in the process, the least, the very least we can do is to raise our own level of opposition to this bloody, inhuman war the moneymen on Wall Street have got us into. GI newspapers can be edited anywhere. Try and stop us. They can't. The only way we can be stopped is with the gun. OMEGA. We will resist to the end. BRING THE WAR HOME OM is published by Roger Priest, U.S. Navy. Its mission is to encourage all forms of opposition to the Vietnam war and to the GIADWER Military-Industrial Complex here at heme and abroad. If you would like to receive OM regularly, just send the coupon below. Subscriptions are free to GIs, $5.00 to civilians. Name Address Mail to: Roger Priest, U.S. N \vy P.O. Box 1033 Washington, D.C. 20013 JUNE - 25c DONATION THE LIBERATION NEWSLETTER PEOPLE'S ENEMY NUMBER ONE A pig, by any other name, is still a pig, s W S REMEMBER: THE PIG IS ARMED AND DANGEROUS. Melvin Laird, Secretary of War, is proud of his war-monger haircut. But then he is proud of war too. After all, war is good business. Laird backs the military butchers in Vietnam to the hilt. That's good for business also. And when it comes to knowing what is best for this country—Laird comes through again. What does the future hold for us? Ask a practising prostitute and pimp for the Military-Industrial Complex. Parroting his threats and promises, Mel Laird has more, much much more of the same to offer the country. After Vietnam, he says, the money presently spent on "defense" will be used to rebuild, replenish and outfit a new more modern version of the present broken-down army that we have todav. That should be good news to the poor and oppressed in this country. While the poor starve; institutions ol death and imperialism wrack up more money (and more bodies). With the urban bomb ready to explode into revolutionary violence; the jumping jocks of the Military-Industrial Complex, who run on boo:.e and hate, bomb the Cong and plan for more Vietnam-like engagements. With "peace as their profession" they are planning for the future. QUESTION: DO WE HAVE A FUTURE? BOBBY SEALE'S PARABLE Once upon a time, there was a very poor man who was walking along the base of a tall mountain. The man was extremely thirsty, so he was delighted when he came upon a stream. But as he bent down to quench his thirst, he noticed that the stream was full of muck and filth,. In desperate need of a cool, clean drink, the man tried to get the muck and filth out of the stream, but to no avail. As he was about to give up, another man appeared and asked him what he was doing. "I am very, very thirsty," the poor man said, "but I can't drink from this stream because it is filthy and I am unable to clean it." N The second man smiled and explained that the stream was 1 of Mine eyes have seen muck and filth because a huge ho was the coming of- • • standing in the middle of the stream at the top of the mountain. "This hog," the man said, "is pissing IT:u, IT LIKE IT is, MAN! and shitting in the stream, and that is why it is so dirty. "It would he a disaster to have our men led "If you want a cool, clean drink, you by ignoramuses." must get that hog out of that stream." And with that, the two men set out --Gen. William C. Westmoreland, at Armed to climb the mountain and get the hog forces ß.-iy Parade, New York, May 18, 1969 out of the stream. L. MENDEL RIVERS. GET YOUR ASS OUT OF TO LIVE ONE MUST LOVE THAT STREAM. YOU HEAR, BOY? TO LOVE ONE MUST SURVIVE TO SURVIVE OME MUSI' EIGHT! So 1 pledge allegiance against the flag and for all for which it stands I'll raze it ill can. --Phil Ochs 'Jmt look at it our way. Ia4y. Tour saa was a profitable in» We all know high morale is necessary for a successful war effort. Stop and think for a minute about how Germany kept up their troops' morale dur illy. W.W. IT. The Nazi cause was unjust, yet the German troops were tough and difficult to defeat. How did the Nazis accomplish their high troop morale. They did it by appealing to German boys' blind national ism. A good German accepted the draft, fought, killed, and died for Germany. They did it because Hitler was their elected leader, Germany was at war and a "good citizen" is not afraid to die for his country. "WE WERE JEST DOING OUR JOBS." "WE WERE UNDER ORDERS." "SEIG HEIL!" "SE1G HEIL!" "Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the besi he can get out ot it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the count.rv v-'ho determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people a loin-, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictator ship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All vou have to do is to tell then they ire being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and expositit; the country to danger. Tt works the same in any country." • Hermann Goer i n. at the Nuremberg Trials When law is tyranny, revolution is in order. "People must see clearIv the 1 utility oi main taining the fight for social goals within the framework of civil debate." OM —Che Guevara, Guerriil Warfare, now 1 available in paperback lor $1.65 from Vol. 1 No. ) June , 1969 Vintage Books, 33 West 60th, New York, N.Y. Washington , D.C. OM is publish ed l>y Roger Priest, U.S. Navy. Its miss ion is to 1 i berate us from the "We are dying of preconceptions, outworn rules, tyranny that rci gns thr oughout this land. decaying flags, venomous religions, and senti 1f you would li ke to receive OM regu larly, mentalities . " just send the coupon be low. Su iscr i pI ions are free to GI's , $5.00 to civil ians. I —Josephine Johnson, The Inland island Name Address If Spiro Agnew jumped (or was pushed) from the spire of the Empire State Building, and i was caught by a favorable crosswind, he would Ma il lo: Roge r I' r iesl , II „S. N.ivv hit 34th Street at a velocity of 281.6 feci I'.O. Bo - i ii n per second. W.isli i il ! -:i . <».G •0011 3 SMASH TH.: PIG ARMY! In 1776 a group of American patriots got together and petitioned the ruling authorities for their rights. They also held meetings to discuss the issues that were important to them--like free speech and the right to hold meetings and to present grievances. Today, these men are considered heroes. At Ft. Jackson, S.C., a group oi Gl's attempted to do the same thing, but were harassed, restricted, imprisoned for two months and threatened with court-martial proceedings. And the outcome? The Army has backed down. Charges against the men were dropped. In a classic "retreat under fire" situation; the Army had to admit that it had no case against the men-- no case that could stand the scrutiny of anv court, even one convened and staffed by the Army itself. The Army does not like to admit that it is wrong. So, to save "face" or maybe their "ass", the colonels and generals who rule with an arbitrary will are seeking to discharge three of the men for what the Army terms, "unfitness"--a euphemism for an unwillingness to eat military shit. While the undesirable discharges are as unjust as they are illegal, they represent significantly less than the punishment the Army intended to bring down on these men and, where contested, may even be reversed to honorable. In sum, eight heroic men have provided an example for all those inside and outside the armed forces who oppose this dirty war and want to act to end it. DON'T THINK, FOLLOW. DON'T TALK, SHOOT. IT'S THE AMERICAN WAY.' FOR SALE: One (1) used country, Ah, but some time later reasonably priced. Call after When I feel a little safer 7:00 wkds. Ask for Gen. Thieu We'll assainate the President or Gen. Kv. DEath-3-3000. And take over the government - And then we're going to fry them.' . « --Phil Ochs FRIENDS: Yes, 1 am against the war in Vietnam and applaud the active duty servicemen in Washington who are speaking out against it. I,: would like to help keep OM in print and free t'è ||p| servicemen by becoming: t* M_i /~~7 a SUPPORTER, here is $ ($20-$50). / / a CONTRIBUTOR, I am enclosing $ ($10-$20). / 7 a FRIEND, here is $ ($5-$ 10). IF YOU GET A PROMOTION; YOU ARE GETTING A PROMOTION TO FUCK OVER / / a WORKER. If you need help, call me at _____ YOUR BROTHER--DON'T GET PROMOTED. FAIL THE SYSTEM. IT MAKES A SEND TO: Roger Priest, U.S. Navy MOCKERY OF THE CONTENTION THAT WE P.O. Box 1033 ARE FREE MEN TN A FREE SOCIETY. Washington, D.C. 20013 SUPER PIG J. Edgar Hoover: I haven't forgotten you. You can remove the tap from rav phone and call off those pigs that follow me every where I go and leave my life alone. When the revolution comes, you will be the grass, and we will be the lawnmower. So, lake care. TODAY'S PIGS ARE TOMORROW'S BACON. "My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its office holders. The country is the real thing...to watch over... Institut ions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can .aar oui ... become ragged. To be loyal to rags...that is a loyalty of unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was invented to monarchy. The citizen who thinks he sees that the cor.nnonwea 1 tli 's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace, and does not agitate for a neu- suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor. That he may be the onlv one who thinks he sees this decay, does not excuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway." —Mark Twain DOES THIS PIG SPEAK FOR YOU? General Earle G. Wheeler, Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaks for the power structure. He demands obedience. lie says, you do as you're told no matter what it is. If he orders you to go to Vietnam and get killed you aren't supposed to ask questions. It's just your job to die for important people like him. And they're ready to fight. They're ready to fight to the last drop of YOUR blood. He and his kind are the power behind every rotten officer and lifer. He says, I and the people that count give the orders son; you just do what you're told and shutup about it and say sir when you're talking to an officer. AND THE SHOT WE FIRE UNDER 1 HI BOW IS THE SHOT Ol REVOLUTION! WHEN THE SANE PEOPLE DON'T DO IT, WHEN ALL THE GOOD MIDDLE CLASS PEOPLE DON'T DO IT, THEN THE MADMEN HAVE TO DO IT, AND THE MADMEN SAY THAT WE'RE GOING TO HAVE FREEDOM OR WE'RE GOING TO HAVE CHAOS; WE'RE GOING TO BE PART OF THE TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA OR WE'RE GOING TO BE PART OF THE LIBERATION OF AMERICA. —Eldridge Cleaver Gun-powder? Three parts sodium chlorate to one part sugar. THERE ARE WO KINDS OF VIOLENCE: VIOLENCE DIRECTED AGAINST A PERSON OR GROUP TO KEEP THEM IN A PARTIC ULAR PLACE AND VIOLENCE USED , TO DEFEND THE PEOPLE AGAINST THIS SUPPRESSION. WE WILL USE VIOLENCE TO DEFEND THE PEOPLE. HIS» The Dinosaur is no longer with us. The Mouse is. He ate the Dinosaur's eggs. $# END THE BLOCKADE Stick 'em up! UXHorSl.bO 3'/." x 2V?" stickers Write; Box UHU fiij.irilifiii ITS THE DAILY NIBBLE THAT COUNTS 197 I. 4th SI.AGAINS T CUBA N>w Yuri., N.Y. KKX/l AMERICAN SERVICEMEN UNITE! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR STRIPES! BEETLE BAILEY —By Mort Walker "I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-crooked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own...which they don't want crammed down their throats by Americans." --General David M. Shoup, former Marine Corps Commandant "Science and Peace will triumph over ignorance and war, nations will unite, not to destroy, but to build, and the future will belong to those who will have done most for suffering humanity." --Louis Pasteur The U.S. military must be turned upside down and shook so loudly that our brothers throughout the world can hear we've joined the struggle. COMING SOON--THE GREAT RATTLE! lie free, be whatever you are, whatever you want to be, as long as you don-'t hurt anyone. A -,äM Thanks to Dow's napalm and modern technology, it is possible to take the ovens to the people rather than the people to the ovens. HAMBURG El- HILL This system doesn't care how many of it's own soldiers are hope Less 1 y slaughtered just as long as it has a ready supply of bodies to be thrown on the burning fires of imperialism. OUR JOB IS TO PUT OUT THAT FIRE. COLD BLOODED MURDER DROP BO X 1) S s r r s i N s T !•: A ni *_._^ You have used a word Which means nothing. you have given a word the power to send men to death. Men are not free who are sent to die. Only those who send them are "free." You should have freedom stuffed down your fat throats. --Kenneth Patchen FREE US NOW WE MUST STOP THE CAPITALIST CORPORATE GUNS BABY GUNS! POWER STRUCTURE FROM KILLING US, TAXING US, [DIVIDING US AND RULING US. WHY DO WE HAVE CAPITALISM, IMPERIALISM AND AN The police.uen arrested me in the name of the law; ECONOMY BASED ON MILITARISM? I hit him in the name of liberty. THE*TIME HAS COME TO FAIL THE SYSTEM. i --Clement Duval IT ONLY USES US TO PERPETUATE ITSELF. TO §ERVE THE SYSTEM IS TREASON. SMASH THE STATE o POWER TO THE PEOPLE WAR OVERSEAS and injustice at home are among the defining characteristics of J7\H American society and no institution is free of their stain. BRING THE WAR HOME! WE WILL STOP AT NOTHING TO STOP THE VIETNAM WAR, AND THE POWER ARRANGEMENTS THAT MADE IT POSSIBLE. WE TAKE THAT "NOTHING" SERIOUSLY. We, the staff of OM, would like to apologize for some of the obscenities which are frequently used in OM, such DESTROY THAT SACRED COW OF CAPITALISM--PROPERTY. as: army, brass, lifer, war, kill, gun, Vietnam, stockade or brig, bai racks, "duty" and capitalism. These gross BOMB AMERICA. MAKE COCA-COLA SOMEPLACE ELSE. terms have to be used in order to describe the obscene situation we are in. OUR GOAL IS LI BERATION...BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. SHOOT A PIG! ! DON'T JUST STAND THERE Help in the liberation of this country from those power pigs that have their hands in our pockets and around our throats. If you would like to help write to: Roger Priest, U.S. Navy P.O. Box 10 3 5 Washington, D.C. ?00'l'5 LINK ©M THE SERVICEMAN'S LINK TO PEACE 1029 Vermont Avenue NW, Room 200 THE BEST & THE WORST Washington DC. 20005 (202) 638^126 25^ Donation July 1969 Washington, D. C. Free to Servicemen A CALL TO RESIST ILLEGITIMATE AUTHORITY AN INDICTMENT AGAINST THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, THE ARMED SERVICES AND ITS INDUSTRIAL ALLIES By Roger Priest, U.S. Navy WASHINGTON, D.C. — As a U.S. citizen and as a human being I wish to expose the illegality and immorality of the unnecessary war in Vietnam. I specifically charge the U. S. government, the Armed Services and its industrial allies collectively and individually with the crime of waging aggressive war crimes against humanity, and with specific violations of the laws of war. Article VI of the Constitution states that the Constitution and treaties made under the Authority of the United States shall be the Supreme law of the land. Therefore if members of the U.S. government, the Armed Services and its industrial allies have broken any international law, then they are liable to prosecution by U.S. courts under Article VI of the Constitution. I charge that the U.S. government, the Armed Services and its industrial allies have broken international laws and established personal responsibility for these criminal actions. The Nuremberg Principles define a "crime against peace" as the "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances." A state of war exists in Vietnam where Vietnamese and Americans are killed almost everyday in armed conflict. The war in Vietnam is a war of aggression on the part of the U.S. government, the Armed Services and its industrial allies. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter states that members of the United Nations have the right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations. All other acts of war are acts of aggression. This means that the United States would have the legal right to intervene in Vietnam if there was an armed attack upon Vietnam by military forces that crossed an international boundary. This is the only justification for armed intervention. The United States government has accused the government of Ho Chi Minh of aggression against the government of South Vietnam. For these actions if they did exist, to be defined as aggressive actions, North and South Vietnam must exist as separate countries. Notth and South Vietnam have never existed as separate countries. The current separation is the result of temporary zoning of the two belligerents of France and the Vietminh after the French-Indochinese War as of 1954. The zoning was only to be temporary. The two zones were to be reunited in 1956 pending elections. Elections the U.S. government never allowed, because Ho Chi Minh had become so popular a national hero that he would win free elections by a big margin (80 per cent, President Eisenhower estimated in his memoirs). The war in Vietnam, then is a civil war, a war between two belligerents indigenous to the same country. Therefore North Vietnam cannot be guilty of acts of aggression against South Vietnam as defined by the United Nations Charter because "armed attack" has never been carried across international boundaries. There is no way to peace. Peace is the way. The United States government justified its military actions in Vietnam in a State Department Memorandum of March 4, 1966 as actions taken in "collective self-defense." The State Department claimed the U.S. government had the right to intervene in Vietnam to protect South Vietnam from the aggressions of North Vietnam. By its own admission, there had not been an armed attack by North Vietnam upon South Vietnam until February 1965. This attack, the State Department alleged, occurred in an unspecified place at an unspecified time. The State Department has never proven that the North Vietnamese carried out an armed attack across the 17th parallel prior to the massive support of the South Vietnamese government by U.S. troops. The International Control Commission created under the Geneva Accords of 1954 has denied the State Department charge of "armed attack" by North Vietnam against South Vietnam. The ICC has charged the U.S. and the South Vietnamese government with the initial escalation of the war. North • Vietnam and the National Liberation Front were forced to escalate their military activities as the United States government and the South Vietnamese government escalated .theirs. Lets look back further in history. France assaulted by "armed attack" the state of Vietnam after the Second World War. France was clearly waging a war of aggression against Vietnam in an attempt to reinstitute Vietnam to its colonial status. Yet the United States government supported France between 1950 and 1954 with approximately two billion dollars in aid (to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people). When peace was negotiated between France and Vietnam in 1954 the United States refused to sign the document. As the French gradually began to pull their troops out of Vietnam, they were replaced by U.S. troops and supplies (remember the advisors?). The United States and the President of the southern zone of Vietnam refused to hold free elections in 1956 to reunify the country. These facts show that the United States has worked against the self-determination of the Vietnamese and against reuniting their country. The United States government has involved the people of the United States in an unnecessary war. Unnecessary because it can never be won. Unnecessary because it should not be won. The popular support of the people is on the side of those who are attempting to reunify Vietnam and throw the forces of imperialism back into the sea from which they came. United States actions in Vietnam can only be viewed as aggressive and criminal. By introducing large numbers of troops and military supplies on the side of their "puppet" government in the South, the United States government, the Armed Services and its industrial allies have committed acts of aggression against the Vietnamese people. Even the State Department does not claim that the actions taken between 1961 and 1965 by the United States government in Vietnam were not acts of aggression. Under Principle IV of the Nuremberg Principles, members of the U.S. government, the Armed Services and its industrial allies are guilty of a crime against peace punishable under international law. Principle IV states that even though a person acted under order of his government, he is not relieved of his responsibilities, as long as moral choice was possible. A moral choice was possible in these people's case. They chose to break the law. They are therefore guilty and liable for punishment under Article VI of the Constitution for willfully chosing to wage a war of aggression in violation of internation al treaties. They are also guilty of complicity in war crimes. The Nuremberg Principles define war crimes as violation of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the high seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity (but we destroy to save). I don't think that I have to illustrate the crimes against humanity committed toward the courageous Vietnamese people. Nearly everyday on the news or in the papers and magazines we see or read about the destruction of entire villages by napalm and fragmen tary bombs. We read about the relocation camps for civilians (concentration camps?). We hear about the corruption of Saigon officials. We watch the wanton destruction of cities on T.V. That crimes against humanity have been committed in Vietnam is beyond doubt. The U.S. government in complicity with the Armed Service and its industrial allies have committed these crimes and are forcing the youth of this nation to commit them. Principle VII of the Nuremberg Principles states that complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity is a crime under international law. The U.S. government, the Armed Services and its industrial allies have also partici pated by complicity in crimes against humanity. Crimes against humanity defined in the Nuremberg Principles as murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, or racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in the execution of or in the connection with any crime against peace or any war crime. The proof of these crimes can be found in almost any periodical. How many more women and children must be burned before the people of the United States realize the horrendous crime they are committing against a peasant people fighting to expel foreign oppressors from their homeland? Most Germans remained silent while their government murdered six million Jews. How much longer will the majority of Americans silently watch their Government slaughter the people of Vietnam? It is not surprising then that this is a time of increasing political repression. The negotiations to end the war have degenerated into a farce. The U.S. government has only two things to negotiate: the withdrawal of all U.S. troops and the payment in reparations due the Vietnamese people. There is nothing more to negotiate. And to those who hold illegitimate power over our lives we say to you that we will not accept the continuation of this war. We will continue to resist; and encourage others to do the same. SILENCE IS COMPLICITY. Dear Friend, A young Navy man, Roger Priest, is facing court-martial charges and a possible lengthy prison term for things he published in his anti-war, anti-racist newsletter, OM. He needs help. David Rein, the noted Washington attorney, has agreed to defend Roger against the charges - all of which challenge his First Amendment rights under the Constitution, but it will take public pressure to make the Navy drop the charges. Your help is urgently needed in three ways: 1) write today to the Secretary of the Navy, John Chafee, The Pentagon, Washington, D. C., urging him to stop the court-martial proceedings against Roger. Send LINK a copy of your letter. 2) send a contribution to help pay for Roger's defense to: LINK, Room 200, 1029 Vermont Avenue, N. W., Washington, D. C. 20005 or call 638-4126 to donate your help. 3) start a petition demanding that all charges be dropped against Roger. Let's begin a campaign to force the Armed Services to honor the constitutional rights of all servicemen. It costs money to build public support for dissenting GI's and unhappily, it costs money to obtain justice. We hope that it will be possible to give Roger the maximum possible public support through letters, the press and advertisements. We are counting on your assistance. Peace and Justice, Carl D. Rogers\^J Project Director THE WASHINGTON POST WedneMday.JuM2S.1969 "What I'm hoping for right now is for lots of folks to write the Secretary of the Navy because this whole thing hinges on free speech, freedom of the press. Texas Sailor They're not talking about my military behavior; they're not talking about what I do on the job as a sailor. They're talking about what I do on my own free time, outside of the Navy, in my own apartment with Vs. the Navy my friends ... in other words my rights as an American citizen." By Nicholas von Hoffman Yet it's not fair to blame the Navy for wanting to throw this likeable young man with his pleasant South Last March when Seaman Roger Priest, the young western twang in the brig. On duty or off, no military man from Texas with the Gomer Pyle accent and the organization is going to survive very long if the privates undershot jaw, first hit the papers, the expectation can publicly go about calling the generals pigs. To was the Navy would have him in an Okinawa dungeon say, as the indictment does, that such language inter feres with and impairs loyalty, morale and discipline within 24 hours. Roger had been sitting in a Pentagon is a bit of an understatement. office cheerfully advising his fellow sailors to make The fault lies not with the Navy. There may come antiwar groups the beneficiaries of their GI life a time—South Africa, for instance—when many of the insurance. people opposed to this war will want a well disciplined, The Navy, which is sometimes not nimble enough to efficient Navy. The admirals and the generals aren't pigs. Some of them—one hopes only a few—may be escape being run over by friendly aircraft carriers, stupid, inept, even corrupt, but most or them are doing acted with some dexterity in Rogers case. It pulled him their best in a calling that was almost universally out of the Pentagon in a matter of hours, but instead honored in America until a couple of years ago. It's of making a martyr out of the boy, they assigned him not right to call a man a pig when he has served long to easy duty over on the other side of town. and bravely through a whole lifetime and it is folly Nonetheless, a contest between Roger and the Navy to expect him to understand and accept you when you had begun. The sailor, with the help of a beat-up off do. set press, continued to put out his truculently anti- Not that this helps Roger. He sees Hamburger Hill, military newsletter called OM. The Navy, Roger and he hears United States Senators call it senseless his civilian friends report, began to follow him around, slaughter, slaughter of his own young life, and so in his civilians "in Ford Fairlanes and Plymouth Valiants. I have all the license numbers if you want them. Leave a newsletter he writes of the generals, "They're ready message for me at 638-4126 and I'll give 'em to you." to fight. They're ready to fight to the last drop of When Roger wasn't being followed by plainclothes- YOUR blood." men he was dutifully at work, obeying orders and The fault lies with the political leaders, as he him giving his officers as small a target to hit as he could. self suspects for in the last issue of OM, Roger's in His strategy was to force them to court-martial him serted these lines Herman Goerring uttered at Nurem for OM's contents, and not for some extraneous charge berg: which might disguise the political nature of his battle with the military. At length either his Navy bosses "Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk grew impatient waiting for Roger to break a rule or his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is OM was getting too outrageous. to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the However it was, on Friday he was hit with a court- common people don't want war ... it is the leaders martial charge sheet accusing him of everything that's who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter happened to the Navy except perhaps stealing the to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or Pueblo or letting the air out of that atomic submarine that sank in San Francisco Bay last month. It takes Fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a Communist more than four, single-spaced typewritten pages to Gictatorship . . .All you have to do is tell them they enumerate all the bad things Roger has done, which are being attacked and denounce the paficists for lack include the charge that he "did wrongfully use con of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It temptuous words against the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee to the House of Representatives, works the same in any country." L. Mendel Rivers." How Roger managed to use con Against such a reality the struggle for peace will temptuous words against the Congressman wrongfully have a ferocity to match that of war. If a young sailor is not explained, but if he did, he's a very clever boy who wants to live to be an old man calls old men of and they should make him an admiral. power and position unfair names, he should be under stood and forgiven. People feel too strongly about this Each of OM's three issues has been wilder than the war to confine themselves to the pallid statements of one before. The last one is almost rabid. "TODAY'S verifiable fact. Gen. Eisenhower recognized this when PIGS ARE TOMORROW'S BACON," a headline pro he remarked toward the end of his Presidency, "I think claims. Not a boy to make it in the military by apple that people want peace so much that one of these days polishing, Roger applies that word to Gen. Earle G. governments had better get out of their way and let Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, J. Edgar Hoover them have it." and Melvin Laird, who he also accuses of being "proud of his war-monger haircut." He probably would have said something equally insulting about the President, but Roger, like so many others, seems to have trouble remembering his name. If Roger Priest were a civilian, the only place in the country he could be arrested for putting out his news letter would be in Montgomery County, because he has some drawings in it of parts of the body which are illegal there. That's why he sees his case as a Con stitutional one: COPY COPY COPY COPY COPY COPY COPY COPY COPY COPY COPY CHARGE SHEET PRIEST, Roger Lee, B-72-6 Naval Station Washington, District of Columbia Lhited States Navy- Charge I: Violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 82 4 Specification: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 May 1969 solicit members of the military and naval forces of the Uhited States to desert in violation of Article 85 of the Uhiform Code of Military Justice through statements in a pamphlet entitled"OM The Serviceman's Newsletter," to wit: "BE FREE GO CANADA — Deserters from the U.S. military can still find refuge in Canada contrary to recent misleading reports in the Establishment press. The Montreal-based American Deserters Committee (ADC) reports James Gross of the Canadian Immigration Department as saying, "There's no legislation which would permit us to refuse l&nded immigrant status on that basis (of being a deserter) alone." Gross denied that deserters were banned from Canada and stated that they could not be deported to the U.S. The ADC suggests that servicemen seeking to escape the military enter Canada as a visitor, while on leave if possible and use other than military identification papers, e.g. birth certificates, drivers license. Application for permanent legal status as a landed immigrant should be made after entry and in connection with one of the following groups working with deserters : MONTREAL: American Deserters Committee P. 0. Box 6ll Station H Montreal 25, Quebec TORONTO: Toronto Anti-Draft Programme P. 0. Box 76k Adelside St. Station Toronto 25, Ontario C A rJ D< O' VANCOUVER: Vancouver Committee to Aid War Objectors t' t?P P. 0. Box U23I Vancouver 9. British Columbia" Charge Violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice", Article 89 Specification: In that~Tttjgec__Lee PRIEST,--journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, diJÈÏJ^'ïcÇ^^shington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 June 19&9 in thß^Ftäieissue of a^Smphletentitled "OM The Liberation Newsletter," behaye^ftimself with disrespect towar2s~~EacleG. Wheeler, General, United States-Army, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, .erior com- missioned-'officer, by stating in said pamphlet: COPY COPY COPY COPY "DOES THIS PIG SPEAK FOR YOU? General Earle G. Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,, speaks for the power structure. He demands obedience. He says, yoi do as\you're told no matter what it is. If be orders you to go to VietnainNcmd get killed you aren't supposed to ask questions. It'i just your^ob to die for important people like him. And theyTe^eady to fight. They're ready to fight to the last drop of YOUR bloc He and his ß4.nd are the power behind every rotten officer and lifer. He says, I and thie\people that count give the orders son; you just do what you're told and sirutup about it and say sir vnen you're talking to an officer." Charge III: Violation of the Uniform\ode of Military Justice, Article 92 Specification 1: In that Roger Lee PRIESu\ journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Was_i__qg&m, District of Columbia, on or about 1 April 1969, violate a lawful general/regulation, to wit: Article 1252 of the U.S. Navy Regulations, l$kBt by failing to include in the 1 April 1969 issue of a pamphlet entitled "OM The Se_nricemaj_/ Specification 2: In that Rog^r Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States N&vy, did, at Washington, District or\Columbia, on or about 1 May I969, violate/a lawful general regulation, to wit: ^Article 1252 of the U.S. Navy Regulations, 19^8, by failing to include in the 1 Mav 1969 issue of a pamphlet entitled "XM The Serviceman's Newsletter," published andNdistributed by him, the said Roger^Lee PRIEST, a statement to the effect that opinions or inser tions contained in that pamphlet were the private ones of the writer, T>he said Roger Lee PRIESa?, and were not to be construed as official or reflecting\£he views of the Navy Department or the naval service at large. Specification 3: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist 6eaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at W a shington, District of Columbia, on o_ about'1 June 1969, violate a lawful general regulation, to wit: Article 1252 oj the U.S. Navy Regulations, I9U8, by failing to Include in the June issue of a pamphlet entitled "OM The Liberation Newsletter," published and distributed by him,N the said Roger Lee PRIEST, a statement to the effect that opinions or insertions contained in that pamphlet were the private ones of the writer, the said Roger Lee PRIEST, and were not to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the Navy Department or the naval service at large. Charge ISF". Violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 134 Specification 1: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 April 1969 with intent to interfere with, impair and influence the loyalty, morale, and discipline of the military and naval forces of the United States did cause to be printed and distributed a pamphlet entitled "OM, 1 April I969, The Serviceman's Newsletter," which said pamphlet contained statements advising and COPY COPY COPY 6 COPY COPY urging insubordination, disloyalty and the refusal of duty by members of the mili tary and naval forces of the United States. Specification 2: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 May 1969 with intent to interfere with, impair and influence the loyalty, morale, and discipline of the military and naval forces of the United States did cause to be printed and distributed a pamphlet entitled "OM, 1 May 1969.» The Serviceman's Newsletter," which said pamphlet contained statements advising and urging insubordination, disloyalty and the refusal of duty by members of the mili tary and naval forces of the United States. Specification 3: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 June 19&9 with intent to interfere with, impair and influence the loyalty, morale, and discipline of the military and naval forces of the United States did cause to be printed and distributed a pamphlet entitled "OM The Liberation News letter," which said pamphlet contained statements advising and urging insubordina tion, disloyalty and the refusal of duty by members of the military and naval forces of the United States. Specification h: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Wasington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 April I969 with design to promote disloyalty and disaffection among members of the Armed Forces of the United States cause to be printed and distributed a pam phlet entitled "OM The Serviceman's Newsletter," which said pamphlet contained statements disloyal to the United States. Specification 5: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 May 19^9 with design to promote disloyalty and disaffection among members of the Armed Forces of the United States cause to be printed and distributed a pam phlet entitled "OM The Serviceman's Newsletter," which said pamphlet contained statements disloyal to the United States. Specification 6: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, united States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 June 1969 with design to promote disloyalty and disaffection among members of the Armed Forces of the United States cause to be printed and distributed a pamphlet entitled "OM The Liberation Newsletter," which said pamphlet contained statements disloyal to the United States. Specification 7: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United StatesNavy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or^about 1 June 19^9 in the June issù^-Qf a pamphlet entitled "OM The Libera-tl^oa^Newsletter" wrongfully use the following contemptuous words againgt-tfle Chairman of the Armed Services Committee to tlre^Eouse of Representatives, L. Mendel Rivers, to wit: "BÖ! JEALE'S PARABLE Once upon a tjjne7"there was a very"-pQor man who was walking along the base of a tali mountain. The"__an was extremely thirsty, so he was delight _when he came upon' a stream. COPY COPY COPY COPY COPY 7 But as he bent down to quench his thirst, he noticed that the stream was full of muck and filth. In desperate need of a cool, clean Sink, the man tried to get the muck and filth out of the stream, but to\o avail. Ak he was about to give up, another man appeared and aakéd him what he was doing. "I am v&ry, very thirsty," the poor man said^/^out I can't drink from this stream because it is filthy and I am tillable to clean it." The second man\smiled and explained that the stream was full of muck and filth because, a huge hog was standing in the middle of the stream at the top of tnè\mountain. "This hog," the man saift-^is pissing and shitting in the stream and that is why it is so diLc-tyX^ "If you want a cool, clean drirü^ you must get that hog out of that 6tream. " And with that, the two men set out to o^imb the mountain and get the hog out of the stream. L. W$BMK\RIVERS. GET YOUR ASS OUT OF THAT STREAM>\YOU HEAR, BOY? Specification 8: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman a_>çrentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 Jun^/1969 in the June issue of a pamphlet entitled "OM The Liberation Newsletter" wrop'gfiilly use the followJng riàntemptuoue worfls agalnefc the Secretary o^Defense Lvin LAIBD, to wit: "People's Enemy No. 1," "pig," and'k practicing prostitute •iind pimp. " Specification P: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, jpurnalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 June 1969 solicit members of the military and naval forces of the United States to commit sedition in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 9U, through statements in a pamphlet entitled "OM The liberation Newsletter," to wit: "TODAY'S PIGS ARE TOMORROW'S BACON" "WE MUST STOP THE CAPITALIST CORPORATE POWER STRUCTURE FROM KILLING US, TAXING US, DIVIDING US AND RULING US. WHY DO WE HAVE CAPITALISM, IMFERIIAISM AND AN ECONOMÏ BASED ON MILITARISM? THE TIME HAS COME TO FAIL THE SYSTEM. IT ONLY USES US TO PERPETUATE ITSELF. TO SERVE THE SYSTEM IS TREASON. SMASH THE STATE. POWER TO THE PEOPLE." "WE WILL STOP AT NOTHING TO STOP THE VIETNAM WAR, AND POWER ARRANGEMENTS THAT MADE IT POSSIBLE. WE TAKE THAT "NOTHING" SERIOUSLY." "DESTROY THAT SACRED COW OF CAPITALISM -- PROPERTY." "BOMB AMERICA. MAKE COCA-COIA SOMEPLACE ELSE." "OUR GOAL IS LIBERATION...BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY." "SHOOT A PIG'!" 8 COPY COPY COPY COPY COPY Pf ACE Ir- 1967 Mine eyes have seen the coming of- • • "Ah, but some time later When I feel a little safer We'll assainate (sic) the President And take over the government And then we're going to fry them! ' --Phil Ochs" "FREE US NOW GUNS BABY GUNS!" "Don't just stand there help in the liberation of this country from those power pigs that have their hands in our pockets and around our throats. If you would like to help write to: Roger Priest, U. S. Navy P. O. Box 1033 Washington, D.C. 20013" COPY COPY COPY COPY COPY COPY COPY 9 Potpourri REIFICATION: The conversion of a symbol or other abstraction into a concrete or "real" thing; the acceptance of a symbol or other abstraction as something concrete or "real" with an essence of its own; the folly of mistaking nothing for something—as when white, red and blue coloring is put on a rag and then mistaken for something other than white, red and blue coloring on a rag. «lie«««««««««««*« FAMOUS QUOTES--"I bet that Russian Army is jealous as hell. Our troops are here getting all this experience, we're learning about guerrilla warfare, helicopters, vertical envelopment, close artillery support. Those Russian generals would love to be here... Any true professional wants to march to the sound of gunfire. " --General William C. Westmoreland *************** The streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are full of students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might and the Republic is in danger. Yes, danger from within and from without. We need law and order. Without law and order our nation cannot survive. Elect us and we shall restore law and order. We will be respected by the nations of the world for law and order. Without law and order, our Republic will fall. --Adolph Hitler, 1932 *************** FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE--"Nothing would please the Kremlin more than to have the people of this country choose a second-rate President. --Richard M. Nixon, Pittsburg, October 8, 1952 *************** "Civilians can scarcely understand or even believe that many ambitious military professionals truly yearn for wars and the opportunities for glory and distinction afforded only in combat. Standing closely behind these leaders, and encourging and prompting them, are rich and powerful defense industries. Standing in front, adorned with service caps, ribbons and lapel emblems, is a Nation of veterans - patriotic, belligerent. ..finding a certain sublimation and excitment in their country's latest military venture. Militarism in America is in full bloom.. .the blight of Vietnam reveals that militarism is more a poisonous weed than a glorious blossom. " --Gen. David M. Shoup, former Commandant of the Marine Corps and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff *************** If Spiro Agnew jumped (or was pushed) from the spire of the Empire State Building, and was caught by a favorable crosswind, he would hit 34th Street at a velocity of 281. 6 feet per second. 10 You have used a word Which means nothing. You have given a word The power to send men to death. Men are not free who are sent to die. Only those who send them are "free. " You should have freedom stuffed down your fat throats. --Kenneth Patchen The policemen arrested me in the name of the law; I hit him in the name of liberty. --Clement Duval "Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. " --Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg Trials "Science and Peace will triumph over ignorance and war, nations will unite, not to destroy, but to build, and the future will belong to those who will have done most for suffering humanity. " --Louis Pasteur Thanks to Dow's napalm and modern technology, it is possible to take the ovens to the people rather than the people to the ovens. — F rum siudfiH puiM-r. Rivd Colli-jcr Don't get caught up in the system "Injustice is the great catalyst of revolution. A nation that found life through revolution has now become the world's number one counterrevolutionary force, not because American people would have it that way, but because the rich choose to defend their power and wealth. The masters of the trusts and corporate giants, along with their representatives in Washington, must learn the hard lessons of justice, or our country may be swept away and humanity with it. " --An excerpt from the Catonsville Nine Statement 11 EXCERPTS FROM LETTERS TO THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY Dear Mr. Chafee: ... Mr. Priest appears to be charged with Freedom of the Press, a crime which our founders fought for in this great nation. This seems to me as a direct attack upon the First Amendment of the Constitution...... I hope you will make every effort to prevent any attempt to punish Roger for his critical attitude of the military industrial beast that is devouring this country...... Mr. Priest has an unusual style of expression saturated with much tabasco but nevertheless ringing out the truth loud and clear for all to hear and consider... You will never be able to stop or silence the truth no matter what you do...... The attack upon freedom of the press in the form of the charges against Roger Priest constitutes an act of Treason. Wake up.' Wake up»' Honor life - or die as a pig...... Apparently the junior Hitlers only punish people who speak out against war. Well if it would stop the war, I would personally go to jail to stop it, and I have served 21 years in the U. S. Navy, in two wars, and was retired for disability...... I sometimes run movies in Walter Reed Hospital for the wounded and have seen how they come back from Nam. Why don't you visit them and see what the war does to them? ... Even though some of Seaman Priest's activities have been from an unusually strong conscience, I have not been able to actually discover anything illegal. Just what basic legal ground do you have for the charges--over and above discomfort? ... If we court-martial servicemen for exercising their first amendment rights, we undermine the country by contributing to the revolutionary feelings that are so common today...... Roger Priest has demonstrated beyond a doubt that he is brave. But if his home becomes a jail, then the best part of the soul of this great land is dragged into the cell with him, there to languish. And maybe to die...... Why should generals and admirals have the right to criticize national policy matters, when the same right is denied to enlisted men? "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal... " Are some of us more equal than others? ... With the growing sentiment against the Vietnam War, I highly recommend that you review the charges against Mr. Priest before initiating court martial proceedings. This wax is in violation of the United States Constitution. Our own country, your own colleagues, tried German officers at Nuremberg for the crimes of silence and complicity. You now propose to try Roger Priest for upholding the Nuremberg Principles... THE SERVICEMAN'S LINK TO PEACE 1029 Vermont Avenue NW, Room 200 LINKI Washington, D.C 20005 (202) 638-4126 PENTAGON TO COURT-MARTIAL 1st AMENDMENT Vol.1 No. 4 COURT- MARTIAL EDITION October 1969 - 25 0 Inside: Military 'Justice' GI Union Navy v. Priest Victory Fall Calendar 1st Amendment: "It's crap." How a flippin' little rag scared the barnacles off the marooned Admirals in the Pentagon By Roger Priest, U. S. Navy The steamy heat of the hot July day was being felt by the 102 members of the Navy's Ceremonial Guard as they assembled themselves for riot duty. Armed with M-l rifles, two clips of live ammo, bayonet, gas masks and the determination to put down with whatever force necessary any riot or insurrection that might take place; the Navy thought itself prepared to launch the pre-trial investi gation into the "facts" surrounding the publication of the first anti-war newspaper to appear in the Navy's long and often inglorious history. So began the U. S. Navy's efforts to "silence" Roger Priest, editor of OM, and to crank up the legal machinery necessary to put the lad away behind the bars of military injustice; thus stemming the strident criticism against the Vietnam war and the ways of military "discipline" voiced in his monthly publication. ITie Navy made careful preparation for the two hairy hippies, three young girls, two assistants for the defense, a couple of oldsters and reporters from the New York Times, Washington Post and Evening Star who showed up for the pre-trial at the U. S. Naval Station in Washington, D. C. Held in reserve was a company of Marines in full riot dress. What the Navy was not prepared for on that July 22 day was the revelations made concerning the methods used by the Navy's own investigative apparatus in building a case against Seaman Priest. Testimony was given at the pre-trial to the fact that 25 agents from the Naval Investigative Services Office (ONI) were assigned to follow and harass the Texas sailor. It was also learned then that the District of Columbia Department of Sanitation had cooperated with the ONI by provid ing a truck for a special pickup of trash outside the apartment building where Priest lives. When these facts were submitted to a more candid world than customarily resides in the laby rinthine Pentagon, all hell broke loose. Mayor Walter Washington called for a "full and complete investigation. " ONI was called on the carpet; and has since fallen back to its old task of planting informers. After all, political intelligence involves more in the way of intelligence than the ONI sleuths were able to muster. The two-day investigation itself was just a formality to get on with what the Navy Brass really had on their minds; namely to find guilty and prove guilty and sentence Priest by General Court- Martial for daring to defy the ancient tradition that those of higher rank know what is best for those of lower rank; so those of lower rank should shut up and be quiet about what those of higher rank cause to be done to those of lower rank. The spectators to this charade of military (in)justice were presented with Cmdr. Norman Mills, a Navy aviator with no legal experience, conducting the hearing and charged with making the recommendation on how best to proceed with the task of putting Priest in prison without creating too much criticism from Congress and the public. The spectators watched as Cmdr. Mills asked Lt. Thomas J. Donegan, the Navy prosecutor, time and time again in helpless amazement at the intricacy of military (injustice as to the rules of evidence, how to proceed and how to rule on the questions raised by the defense. 2 Justice? Bullshid Priest knew all along that it was to be nothing more than an elaborate ritual, very similiar to a Star Chamber proceeding in which the guilty are to be proven guilty; so that they might be done away with in the least amount of time and with the least amount of effort. Priest knew only too well that he was going to have to face that grand and glorious and over glorified kangaroo court; otherwise known as the General Court-Martial. Priest was not too horribly surprised when on August 28 it was announced that Priest, the journal ist seaman apprentice from Houston, the 25-year-old sailor who hated war and the conditions that made it possible; who with the aid of half of his base pay of $110.40 had singlehanded caused the Brass on Capital Hill, in the Navy and in the FBI much consternation, and not just a little expense of public monies; had conceived of and printed on a beat-up, broken-down offset press the flagrant ly anti-war, often anti-military but even more often pro-humanity, life-affirming publication known variously as OM--The Servicemen's Newsletter and OM--The Liberation Newsletter. Priest's journalistic efforts had not gone unnoticed by those officials who have it as their desire and duty to inter fere with what goes on in the hearts and minds of the people for whom they so graciously serve. Priest would now be tried by General Court-Martial to con vene on or about November 4 on charges that "Priest solicited members of the military to desert and commit sedition and that he published statements urging insubordination, disloyalty and refusal of duty by members of the military and naval forces with intent to impair loyal- ity, morale and discipline, " as well as publishing statements with "design to promote disloyalty and disaffection among members of the Armed Forces of the United States and which contained e«MlUTAR_/ JUSTICE^ statements disloyal to the United States. " The combined charges, added together for maximum possible punishment, building up up and away with the insanity represented behind those charges, came to a Grand Total of 39 years and a Dishonorable Discharge from the Navy. Priest was not totally dismayed at the possibility, now quite real of being incarcerated for the better part of his young life in some Devil's Island nightmare that was now being conjured up for him. No, Priest was undismayed, not because he held firm faith in the publicity efforts of his supporters and the brave public officials who spoke out against the ridiculousness of the charges, and the mean, nasty vindictiveness of those pressing the charges; but on the sheer weight of the charges, Priest knew that even the Navy, historically the most stupid and insensitive of all the services, could not; nay would not punish the soft-spoken, lanky anti-war sailor so severely that its own image would be tarnished. Priest had the feeling that the Navy Brass could become very sensitive when the gold braid that was lavished on themselves as a reward for showing the flag of American economic opportunity abroad showed signs of being tarnishable. The young sailor also knew that the Navy knew that gold braid tarnishes fastest in the rapid oxidation process of unfavorable press publicity. Stars, gold braidj yes, and even advancement and choice duty spots depended upon how one was held in the public eye and most importantly, the eye of one's immediate superior. To the utter amazement of Pentagon officialdom, the Priest Intelligence Agency (PIA) in a daring caper managed to find out that the Navy had to pay its "dues" in the Priest case to that member of Congress who pulls the purse strings for things the Navy wants. The Navy fell all over them selves in drawing up charges against Priest—after all, they had to protect that bourbon and branch- water philosophy of "You scratch my back and I'll scratch.yours. " 3 So Priest did do battle with the "Better dead than red" tried and true blue Amerikan Patriots that one sees running amok in the Pentagon and Congressional maze. Now he will have to pay his dues. For he chose to demand that an injust inhuman system recognize its injustice and inhumanity before it was too late. By pointing out that not only does the Emperor have on no clothes; but that the Emperor does not even deserve clothes that are taken off the backs of the poor and oppressed he will be sent to jail and made to suffer for what others chose not to recognize. A martyr, perhaps? No. The cloak of martyrdom does not seem to fit. A scapegoat then? Closer to what is really happening. At the very least someone to punish for the false dreams of conquest and glory now dashed forever in far-off Vietnam jungle mud. . To not have expected it to turn out this way was sheer folly. To half-expected it was naive. And to have fully expected it was insanity. How else can it be? The leaders of America call themselves "sane"; the opposition to such leadership then must be "insane. " "You will reach the point where you will realize that it takes power to talk to power, it takes power to make power respect you and it takes madness to deal with a power structure that is so corrupt, so corrupt." —Malcolm X With newspapers, there is some times disorder; without them, there is always slavery." ... Benjamin Constant 19th Century French painter "Who is on my side? Who?" --II. Kings 9:32 SEND MONEY as much as you can get $1 MINIMUM Yes folks. OM needs money to keep operating. Thanks to Herblock, There are a lot of you out there that can spare The Washington Post a buck here or there to keep OM free to GI's. Won't you help? Send all contributions to: OM, c/o LINK, 1029 Vermont Avenue NW, Room 200 "Silence Roger Priest and stop that damn Washington, D.C. 20005. OM. You hear, boy?" CHARGE SHEET PRIEST, Roger Lee, B-72-69-03 Naval Station Washington, District of Columbia United States Navy Charge L Violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 82 Specification 1: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 May 1969 solicit members of the military and naval forces of the United States to desert in violation of Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice through statements in a pamphlet entitled "OM The Serviceman's Newsletter, " to wit: "BE FREE GO CANADA -- Deserters from the U.S. military can still find refuge in Canada contrary to recent misleading reports in the Establishment press. The Montreal-based American Deserters Committee (ADC) reports James Gross of the Canadian Immigration Department as saying, "There's no legislation which would permit us to refuse landed immigrant status on that basis (of being a deserter) alone. " Gross denied that deserters were banned from Canada and stated that they could not be deported to the U.S. The ADC suggests that servicemen seeking to escape the military enter Canada as a visitor, while on leave if possible and use other than military identification papers, e.g. birth certificates, drivers license. Application for permanent legal status as a landed immigrant should be made after entry and in connection with one of the following groups working with deserters: MONTREAL American Deserters Committee P. O. Box 611 Station H Montreal 25, Quebec TORONTO: Toronto Anti-Draft Programme P. O. Box 764 Adelside St. Station Toronto 25, Ontario VANCOUVER: Vancouver Committee to Aid War Objectors P. O. Box 4231 Vancouver 9, British Columbia Specification 2: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 June 1969 solicit members of the military and naval forces of the United States to commit sedition in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 94, through statements in a pamphlet entitled "OM The Liberation Newsletter, " to wit: "TODAY'S PIGS ARE TOMORROW'S BACON" "WE MUST STOP THE CAPITALIST CORPORATE POWER STRUCTURE FROM KILLING US, TAXING US, DIVIDING US AND RULING US. WHY DO WE HAVE CAPITALISM, IMPERIALISM AND AN ECONOMY BASED ON MILITARISM? THE TIME HAS COME TO FAIL THE SYSTEM. IT ONLY USES US TO PERPETUATE ITSELF. TO SERVE THE SYSTEM IS TREASON. SMASH THE STATE. POWER TO THE PEOPLE." "WE WILL STOP AT NOTHING TO STOP THE VIETNAM WAR, AND POWER ARRANGE MENTS THAT MADE IT POSSIBLE. WE TAKE THAT "NOTHING" SERIOUSLY. " "DESTROY THAT SACRED COW OF CAPITALISM — PROPERTY. " "BOMB AMERICA. MAKE COCA-COLA SOMEPLACE ELSE. " "OUR GOAL IS LIBERATION...BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY." "SHOOT A PIG::" "Ah, but some time later When I feel a little safer We'll assainate (sic) the President S And take over the government And then we're going to fry them.' Phil Ochs "FREE US NOW GUNS BABY GUNST "Don't just stand there help in the liberation of this country from those power pigs that have their hands in our pockets and around our throats. If you would like to help write to: Roger Priest, U. S. Navy P.O. Box 1033 Washington, D. C. 20013" Mine eyes have the coming of* • < Charge IL Violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 134 Specification 1: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 April 1969 with intent to interfere with, impair and influence the loyalty, morale, and discipline of the military and naval forces of the United States did cause to be printed and distributed a pamphlet entitled "OM,l April 1969, The Serviceman's Newsletter," which said pamphlet contained statements advising and urging insubordination, disloyalty and the refusal of duty by members of the military and naval forces of the United States. Specification 2: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 May 1969 with intent to interfere with, impair and influence the loyalty, morale, and discipline of the military and naval forces of the United States did cause to be printed and distributed a pamphlet entitled "OM, 1 May 1969, The Serviceman's Newsletter, " which said pamphlet contained statements advising and urging insubordination, disloyalty and the refusal of duty by members of the military and naval forces of the United States. Specification 3: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 June 1969 with intent to interfere with, impair and influence the loyalty, morale, and discipline of the military and naval forces of the United States did cause to be printed and distributed a pamphlet entitled "OM The Liberation Newsletter, " which said pamphlet contained statements advising and urging insubordination, disloyalty and the refusal of duty by members of the military and naval forces of the United States. Specification 4: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 April 1969 with design to promote disloyalty and disaffection among members of the Armed Forces of the United States cause to be printed and distributed a pamphlet entitled "OM The Serviceman's Newsletter, " which said pamphlet contained statements disloyal to the United States. Specification 5: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 May 1969 with design to promote disloyalty and disaffection among members of the Armed Forces of the United States cause to be printed and distributed a pamphlet entitled "OM The Serviceman's Newsletter, " which said pamphlet contained statements disloyal to the United States. Specification 6: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 June 1969 with design to promote disloyalty and disaffection among members of the Armed Forces of the United States cause to be printed and distributed a pamphlet entitled "OM The Liberation Newsletter, " which said pamphlet contained statements disloyal to the United States. "CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW... ABRIDGING THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH, OR OF THE PRESS; OR THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE PEACEABLY TO ASSEMBLE, AND TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES. " --The First Amendment, U. S. Constitution On Military Injustice By David Tomasi It seems at times that the only segment of the Constitution applicable to those in the military is the income-tax amendment. The full protection of the First Amendment (free speech), Fourth Amendment (search and seizure), Fifth Amendment (due process), Eighth Amendment (cruel and unusual punishment) and 13th Amendment (involuntary servitude) are denied you as soon as you enter the Service. The First Amendment is side-stepped by declaring any verbal utterance offensive to the brass as "conduct detrimental to good order and discipline. " The Fourth Amendment is violated constant ly by unreasonable searches and seizures at the whim of local officers. The Fifth Amendment is mocked by the simple fact that in a court-martial, judge, jury, prosecutor and often defense counsel are chosen by the officer who originally pressed charges, thus making due process and fair trial impossible. The Eighth Amendment is flouted by excessive sentences that would not be tolerated for civilian criminals in any state of the Union. And the 13th Amendment, of course, is utterly abolished by the involuntary servitude of the Selective Service System itself. "MILITARY JUSTICE IS TO JUSTICE WHAT MILITARY MUSIC IS TO MUSIC." - - Clemenceau THOUGHTS OF AN AWOL GI earth shakes, universe smiles at vibrations of fast-fading empire gasping. Black babies of malnutrition dying pig politicians for law 'n' order crying; government run on paranoid energy, Thought Police want to know: are you now or have you ever been a commie? general seeking another star spawns on a blood-nourished hill the future liberators of amerika. fascism? "it can't happen here" say white superliberals as they tap Black "A court-martial is not yet an independent instrument of saints' phones, justice but remains to a significant degree a specialized tortured visions of future fester in part of the overall mechanism by which military discipline my head is preserved... Article 134... punishes as a crime 'all rockefeller's army marching on disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and peru; discipline in the armed forces. ' Does this satisfy the harlem streets enflamed by sheets of standards of vagueness as developed by the civil courts... ? napalm A civilian trial, in other words, is held in an atmosphere stockade is ugly--Sweden like a conducive to the protection of individual rights, while the siren beckons military trial is marked by the age-old manifest destiny of but i cannot desert my brothers retributive justice«.. As recently stated... None of the we must struggle on. travesties of justice perpetuated under the UCMJ is really for the proof is in the Viet Cong very surprising, for military law has always been and pudding: continues to be primarily an instrument of discipline, The People shall surely triumph: not justice. " Greg Laxer —Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas in Written in celebration of his second O'Callahan v. Parker refusal to go to Vietnam. 8 WHHEIUCTIŒ JOIN THE Gl sUNION To Break Down the Bars The American Servicemen's Union is: a joining together of rank and file servicemen to gain their rights. It recognizes that the services are run by a military dictatorship which violates the rights of every, servicemen everyday. "Attention!"... "Bight face!"... "Forward rçarch!"... "Say 'sir' when you're talking to an officer!" are merely every day humiliations to prepare you to be a willing robot, to do the dirty work, to die if the boss-man says so, so that the boss-man can go on giving unjust orders. Your fellow GIs are founding this union.They are no longer willing to be slaves of this dictatorship. But they know that individual résistance alone, while it can inspire others, is not enough. The Brass, who have usurped illegal, un-Constitutional and completely unjust power over you and millions of others, is able to control you precisely because they are organized into a machine that can grind individuals up. And rank "Constitutional rights? I'll de- filers must organize their own power into a stronger machine. decide who's got Constitutional rights on this base!" It may seem now an impossible thing --that nothing could unite ail the guys so that you can act together against the power of the Brass. But it can be done -- and WILL.be done! P: ;;.v.-. -*-••: ™;y^\- •••__,.•« THAT'S WHAX ORGANIZATION IS ALL ABOUT. JOIN TODAY! To Andy stapp, Chairman, Provisional Organizing Committee of the American Servicemen's Union, c/o The Bond Room538, 156 Fifth Ave., New York 10010. ÄUMÖ? I am a rank and file enlisted man, I hereby declare that I support the American Servicemen's Union and enclose one dollar to register myself as a member. As a union member I agree to support other union members in our effort to gain our rights. As a union member I will receive a copy of The Gl's Handbook on Military "Injustice and any other advice and instruction issued by central union organizers. I will also contact the union center for advice in case of emergency and keep the center informed in order to aid other uniow members. military address home address EIS » m UNION DEMANDS 1. An end to saluting and sir-ing 5. Federal minimum wages of officers -- let's get off our 6. The right of free political knees association 2. Election of officers by vote of 7. The right to disobey illegal or the men ders -- like orders to go and fight 3. Racial equality in an illegal war in Vietnam. ..Rank and filers control of 8.. The right of collective bargain court-martial boards ing. WIZARD OF •y Pvrkar and Hort . /THE/ THF' &fX30Pe,fx*)P i WORK FOR PEACE / uiUV \ / PEAWNST«MTIM« I I -WIT»» I I* TXE-ARMl. .' OCTOBER 15 •fr*Kr Cartoon from The Washington Evening Star National Fall Offensive Calendar Oct. 8-11 SDS actions in Chicago around the theme "Bring the War Home. " Oct. 15 Vietnam Moratorium — an effort led by students who were active in the Kennedy-McCarthy campaigns to "Stop business as usual" for one day to engage community education against the Vietnam war. The Moratorium will be extended two days in November if the war is not ended. Oct. 25 New Mobilization Committee sponsored actions in Chicago in support of eight anti-war leaders indicted for "Conspiracy" and calling for an end to the war in Vietnam. A guerilla theater march down State Street, a tribunal dealing with political repression and a rock concert are planned. Nov. 4 PENTAGON TO COURT-MARTIAL FIRST AMENDMENT in the case of U. S. v. Priest at the Washington Navy Yard, Bldg. 200. f Nov. 8-15 A week of local activity around the war and U. S. imperialism, to build ongoing local organizations and to help mobilize for November 15 in Washington and San Francisco. The goal is to plan activity appealing to a wide variety of constituencies and political styles. Nov. 13-14 Possible dates for November Vietnam Moratorium. Nov. 14 Student Strike -- called by Student Mobilization Committee. Nov. 14- 15 Memorial Death March in Washington, D. C. A single file solemn procession of Americans equivalent to the number killed in Vietnam walking from Arlington National Cemetery past the White House to the Capitol. Nov. 15 Mass march and Rally in Washington, D. C. and San Francisco. Nov. 16 Continuing actions. , Subversive literature "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life. liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The above portion of the American Declaration of Independence—without being identified as such-was recently read to 252 U.S. GIs at a base in West Germany in an experiment conducted by the University of Maryland. The GIs were asked' to sign the statement if they agreed. The result: 73% refused to sign because they .though* it v_as subversive. 10 VICTORY Bullet has muzzle velocity, so great, 1235 feet per second and 1.2 seconds later it meets Steel Helmet who held up as well he might Bullet but Bullet's force was great and he was melting and vaporizing and spritzing out tiny blobs of lead as Helmet gave in inward bulged the steel and on rushed Bullet 1. 204 seconds after leaving Muzzle - jagged edges behind him he met Hair who held him up nowise in his Journey Skin gave way to mushroomed Bullet and Bones deformed at his will Whç is the slayer, 671 feet a second he went as he tore who the vessels too surprised to bleed victim? Speak. " then Bullet nosed through soft gray-white stuff hardly hard as butter - - Sophocle s First he cut through the memory of Mom then a small gray dog , .—, through a first car, a wreck but what the hell it ran Subscription Order Form through a huge area of scraped knees and pulled pigtails then Please enter my subscription to a little bit of fear -- about this OM, about that payment for which is enclosed. about bullets One Year (12 issues) • $5 then through a first kiss and the warm soft Two Years (24 issues) o $9 skin of a girl and plans for a boat -- someday name and tears — of acrid wine first tasted -- address the rememberance of raucous birds calling in the soft gray dawns of winter of food cooking warm and pungent — of sex and school and sandwiches and sorrows This offer free to Servicemen. then he was through that map of life and out the otherside easy as punch OM, c/o LINK, 1029 Vermont Ave. flicking Helmet's edge NW, Room 200 Washington, D. C. continuing on 20005 (202)638-4126 If" erratic now partly flattened 5ÎH going 662 feet per second slowing down until 853 feet on he rests himself in a palm tree sitting there warmly -- duty done -- to map Hell where Paradise had been. Ronald J. Willis 11 To Be A Soldier By Jack London, International Socialist Review, October, 1913 Young men: The lowest aim in your life is to become a soldier. The good soldier never tries to distinguish right from wrong. He never thinks; never reasons; he only obeys. If he is ordered to fire on his fellow citizens, on his friends, on his neighbors, and on his relatives, he obeys without hesitation. If he is ordered to fire down a crowded street when the poor are clamoring for bread, he obeys and sees the gray hairs of age stained with red and the life tide gushing from the breasts of women, feeling neither remorse nor sympathy. If he is ordered off as firing squad to execute a hero or benefactor, he fires without hesitation, though he knows the bullet will pierce the noblest heart that ever beat in human breast. A good soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine. He is not a man. He is not a brute, for brutes only kill in self defense. All that is human in him, all that is devine in him, all that constitutes the man has been sworn away when he took the enlistment roll. His mind, his conscience, aye, his very soul are in keeping of his officer. No man can fall lower than a soldier—it is a depth beneath which we cannot go. Keep the boys out of the army. It is hell. Down with the army and navy. We don't need killing institu tions. We need life-giving institutions. U.S. Commander Draws Collision Reprimand SUBIC BAY, Philippines —Cmdr. Albert S. McLe- mofe was reprimanded by a Navy court-martial yester 8 day for negligence while he was commanding officer of 3 a U.S. destroyer that col ru lided with an Australiah car<- rier in June killing 74 Amer icans. t» The reprimand was the ET lightest possible sentence 0 that could be given to the o p captain of the destroyer O Frank E. Evans. But Navy CO officers believe the outcome of the court-martial will se CMDR. A. S. McLEMORE verely damage McLemore's ... gets lightest sentence chances for promotion add another command. The sentence was pr --Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression WORLD A-STOCKPILE'S LETHAL POWER STATED Reuters MADRAS, India--The world's nuclear armament stockpile is about 320, 000 megatons-the equivalent of 100 tons of TNT for every living man, woman and child, according to a lead ing Indian defense scientist. The stockpile was enough to kill all the peoples of the world several times over, Dr. S. Bhagavantam told a conference of technologists here. FIGHT BACK "We don't want you to die-er, quickly" FOR FREEDOM: support OM. WHAT WE'RE FIGHTING FOR We are told that we are fighting in Vietnam against communist aggression. We are constantly warned that if we don't stop Communism in Vietnam, then a giant 10, 000 mile high slant-eyed domino will fall on California and cause America to collapse and sink forever into the oceans of history. Our leaders patiently explain to us that if we don't allow 10, 000 Americans to be killed each year for the next five or ten years in order to prop up the Duo Dictators (Thieu and Ky) in Saigon, then we will quickly lose our freedoms and rights (except for the ones Mayor Daley al ready took) to the Big Red Tide of the International Communist Conspiracy and its brother the Yellow Hordes of Genghis Mao and Kubla Ho. --from Head On (Camp Le jeune) 13 The Green Weenie Award This issue the GREEN WEENIE AWARD is awarded to the Naval Investigative Services Office (ONI), Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D. C., and to the 25f agents assigned to gather information, interrogate, follow and harass Journalist Seaman Apprentice Roger Priest for the past several months. Doing their jobs in the most diligent manner they knew how; ONI left no stone unturned or garbage can unmolested, nor did they mind to stoop to entrapment in trying to deny the constitutional rights of free speech and free press to Seaman Roger Priest. If the Navy is really the guardian of apple pie and democracy, why is it the Brass is so afraid of a Seaman Apprentice voicing his opinions? ITie highest form of political attainment in a society is "democracy. " Roger Priest believes in democracy. How come the Navy doesn't? How come does the Navy have agents go through garbage of a serviceman living off-base in commercial housing? What were they after? Roger Priest was not trying to hide anytliing. In fact, he was one of the few servicemen to put out a GI newspaper and to sign his name. Roger knew that what he was doing was legal and was protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. But it seems that the forces of repression can disregard the law and the Constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press; if it happens to disagree with that speech. GI's should beware of attempts to silence free speech and free press. Do Not Be Intimidated! For every GI editor "silenced" 10 others will take over and join the fray. A movement if its time has come will mushroom in the face of repression. Our time has come. WE ARE THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE. THE MEANING OF "OM" To anyone who has practised meditation or Yoga; the word MANTRA is familiar as a word of power concentrated upon in meditation. ITie most important word of power in the Hindu scriptures is the word OM, which pronounced AUMmeans 'God', 'All', 'Being', 'The answer'. Thought or intentness on it's meaning will cause the exclusion of all other thoughts, ultimately bringing about the state of mind to which meditation aspires. Between the eyes and ears there lie, DISCLAIMER The sounds of colour And the light of a sigh. The opinions contained in this publication are die private ones of the authors and are With thoughts of within not to be construed as official or reflecting To exclude without • The ghost of a chord AD RATES the Navy Department or die military and Will expel all doubt. 1/8 page..... $10 naval service at large. Neither should the lies spread by the Department of Defense, And to name this chord 1/4 page $20 the Navy Department or any of its agents Is important to some 1/2 page $40 be construed as reflecting the views of the So they give it a word full page $75 authors of this publication. And the word is 'OM'. Circulation 10,000 14 Generals Denounce Vietnam War! "Nevertheless, and regardless of whether United States "I see no strategic or other aggression In Vietnam is finally recorded by our historians reason for maintaining a ... this brutal, disgraceful and utterly indefensible war base in Vietnam... Our anti- against a gallant peasant people, fighting only for their freedom Communist adventures bring and independence from the world's largest and most aggressive us no return, while social imperial power, will be remembered for a thousand years by programs suffer at home and millions of the rest of the world as one of the basest, most twenty million of our citizens cowardly deeds of all times. " are in such despair that there is rioting in the streets. " —Gen. Hugh B. Hester x —Rear Admiral Arnold E. True The generals and admirals quoted on this page have spoken out'at one time or another against the war in Vietnam. They are subject to the same provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) as Seaman Roger Priest. Yet he is being tried by General Court- Martial November 4 for saying the same thing as they did. WHY? Write your Congressman today and demand to know why some are more equal than others. "With no clear-cut limit to our "I want to tell you, I don't think "I recommend that we bring immediate military objective, the whole of South Asia, as related hostilities in Vietnam to an end and no precise and pragmatic to the present and future safety and as quickly as we can, that we definition of our immediate and freedom of the people of this devote those vast expenditures long-range political objectives, country, is worth the life or limb of our national resources to wè commit ourselves to an up of a single American. " dealing with our domestic ward splruling course that may --General David M. Shoup, former problems..." approach annihilation... " Commandant of the U. S. Marine —Lieutenant General James —General Matthew B. Ridgway Corps M. Gavin "I agree with U Thant that this is a war of national independence, not a case of Communist aggression... I think we ought to get out the way we went in - unilaterally. " —Brigadier General Hugh B. Hester IN THE TIMES (LONDON) "I think we should go back to the 1954 Geneva agreements and hold free elections in Vietnam. I have no doubt they "f can't see the objection to spraying people with napalm would go Communist, but our if it makes the world a beffer phce to live in" own political morality demands "Those who oppose the war have as much right that we abide by the results of to freedom of press and speech as those who free elections. " support it. " --Brigadier General William Wallace Ford --General Hugh B. Hester 15 Does anybody give a damn I about Roger Priest? Senator Charles É. Goodell does. In a statement issued September 5th, the New York Senator scored the Navy's decision to proceed with a I MY General Court-Martial. Goodell said, in part: "Given the fact that free expression of opinion is basic to our system, it seems especially -CRIME inappropriate that Seaman Priest should be facing such serious charges r/sj for acting in a way which is protected by the Constitution of the United States. " "When Roger Priest enlisted in the Navy, " said the Senator, 5PEECHJ "he accepted certain well-defined responsibilities as a soldier. He did not, however, forfeit his Constitutional rights as a citizen of the United States. " Peter, Paul and Mary are concerned about Roger Priest. In fact, the folksinging trio say very clearly that they are "terribly worried" about Roger. In their current concerts they are dedicating a song to him called "The Great Mandella. " It tells the story of a young man who goes to prison because he would not accept his father's advice and "shut up and do his job like a man." "WIN OR LOSE NOW - YOU MUST CHOSE NOW - AND IF YOU LOSE, YOU'RE ONLY LOSING YOUR LIFE," sing the trio. Parents of men killed in Vietnam are protesting the charges against Roger Priest. Mr. Gail L. Olson of Russell, Pennsylvania wrote this to the Secretary of the Navy: "Mr. Priest has an unusual style of expression saturated with much tabasco but nevertheless ringing out the truth loud and clear for all to hear and consider. " "... Mrs. Olson and I lost a wonderful son, Sgt. Bill Olson, twenty-one years old, in Vietnam on January 15th of this year. He died trying to capture a grass hut in a nameless jungle village. The untold grief and frustration of all of us over this illegal, immoral, completely insane military stupidity prompts me to write and express the contempt of all the American people. " Citizens around the country are angered at the Navy's response to dissent in the ranks. They are writing their Congressmen and Senators. ITiey are sending letters to the editors of their local papers. Some are sending contributions to help pay for legal defense and publicity being provided by The Serviceman's LINK To Peace. IF YOU GIVE A DAMN ABOUT ROGER PRIEST, FILL OUT AND MAIL THE COUPON BELOW L'MIL xtc. lose _.now_ _j_oiij_xua£_chQse_DOW_r_ To: The Serviceman's LINK To Peace, 1029 Vermont Avenue, N. W. Washington, D. C. 20005 AREA CODE 202-638-4126 I give a damn about Roger Priest and have written my Congressman and Senators to say so. I sent a copy of my letter to John Chafee, Secretary of the Navy, The Pentagon, Wash., DC Another copy is enclosed for your records. I want to help organize support for Roger in my area. Tell me how else I can help. Enclosed is a contribution of $ to help pay defense costs and to provide publicity for Roger's case. Please send me copies of this issue of "OM" to distribute. NAME (Please Print) NUMBER STREET OM POSTACi CITY STATE ZIP CODE • <>• W'inUt Offensive edition JANUARY 1970 - 25tf To Pvt. Richard Chase, the Ft. Dix 38, Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers and the thousands who have been imprisoned or murdered in the fight against American imperialism and racism this issue is dedicated. top the Trial! By Roger Priest, U. S. Navy Freedom of speech and of the press were established at the trial of John Peter Zenger two centuries ago. Yet, today the U. S. Navy -- backed by the fossil-like chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, L. Mendel Rivers, (D. S. C. ) are planning to court-martial the First Amendment of the Constitution and thereby be in a position to smash the GI anti-war press. The oft-postponêd trial of this reporter will probably take place in the latter part of January or early February. It will be in this trial that the military for the first time will challenge the right of a GI to put out a paper on his own time, off-base and with his own funds--a right supposedly guaran teed by the Constitution. What started out on June 20, 1969 as four-and-one-half single-spaced, typewritten pages listing 14 charges and specifications was reduced to eight charges and specifications when referred to trial August 28, 1969. After a hearing before Capt. B. Raymond Perkins, the military judge, two more charges and specs were dropped—these alleging solicitation to commit sedition and desertion through statements in OM. But the system struck back and the convening authority, Rear Adm. George P. Koch, Commandant Washington Naval District, ordered that the dismissed charges be reinstated. My lawyers were not disturbed by this new interference into the trial proceedings. They carried the issue up to the Court of Military Appeals, which on Dec. 20, 1969 ordered Koch to answer our charge that he applied command influence on the military judge in ordering that the charges be re instated. No matter what decision is finally reached by the Court, a trial will take place on the six counts under Article 134 Uniform Code of Military (Injustice which have remained intact to this date. It is under this notorious catchall provision of the code that I'm being charged with the "crime" of "advising and urging insubordination and disloyalty with intent to interfere with, impair and influence the loyalty, morale and discipline of military and naval forces" through statements in OM "which said pamphlet which in its entirety contained statements disloyal to the United States. " If found guilty of this "crime of speech" I could receive a dishonorable discharge and up to 39 years in jail. The ridiculousness of the charges and its obvious repressive intent does not need expanding upon, except to say that as an American citizen I have been speaking and writing the truth as I see it to be. If that be a "crime" it is one I PROUDLY admit.' And I might add that I am more than willing to measure my "crime" against those who have perpetrated thé illegal and immoral war in Vietnam. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are not liberties that are won easily--and are not liberties to be given away easily. L. Mendel Rivers may well get the court-martial that he ordered and the Navy may get the conviction that it wants so desperately. But I tell it to you straight; it will be WE -- not THEY -- who will have the last word. Pray for the aged. We are the only damn younger generation they have got. Think about it. But meanwhile: DARE TO STRUGGLE. DARE TO WINJ Protest or Resist? By Julius Lester Reprinted from The Washington Free Press To protest is to speak out against. To let it be known that you do not like a certain action of another. To protest is an act of intellectual commitment. It is to say, "Sir, I protest" when you are slapped in the face. To protest is to play a game. You go to a demonstra tion, listen to speeches, wave signs, and go home to see if you got on television. There are many toys in the game of protest. There is the picket line. Originally a picket line was formed by striking workers to keep strike-breakers out. If anyone tried to cross that picket line, the strikers tried to kill him. Today you get a permit from the police to protest. There is no protest if permission must be sought or rules abided by. We have allowed the form that our pro test takes to be defined for us by those whom we protest against. Thus our protest is drained of its power because we do not have the power to make our protest effective. We think the war in Vietnam is being waged only against the Vietnamese, but we are its victims, too. It is our own deaths we protest, but we haven't realized it. It is not a war against "the Vietnamese people. " It is a war against us and the little humanity we have remaining. Too little humanity we have remaining. Too little human ity because we are no longer outraged at what is being done to us. If we were, we would resist. To resist is to say, No! without qualification or ex planation. To resist is not only to say I won't go. It is to say, I'll make sure that nobody else goes, either. To resist is to pit Life as you define it against Life as they define it and to do all that is necessary to see that their definition is destroyed in all its parts. To resist is to not go to jail when sentenced, but only when caught and surrounded and there is no other choice but death. To resist is to make the President afraid to leave the White House because he will be spat upon wherever he goes to tell his lies, because his limousine will find the street filled with tacks and thousands of people who will surge around it, smashing the windows and rocking the car until it is turned on its side. Have we forgotten? The man is a murderer. It is us he is killing. To resist is to realize that your own life is at stake at this very moment. o To resist is to become alive, truly alive for the first time. It is to say not only will I not accept what you are doing, I will stop you from doing it. No one shall sleep peacefully again until you cease, desist and abdicate. To resist is to say if the parents of Vietnam weep for their children, then the parents of America shall weep for theirs. If the people of Vietnam are unable to harvest the crop without fear, to live their lives without being shrouded by the shadow of death, then no American shall harvest his crop without fear, no American shall live outside the shadow of death. To protest is to dislike the inhumanity of another. To resist is to stop inhumanity and affirm your own humanity. One does not protest murder. One apprehends the murderer and deals with him accord ingly. Soldiers in the Streets It doesn't take much sense to know that this country is coming apart at the seams. Our cities have become incapable of providing even clean air, let alone employment, housing, medical care, and education. Riots don't even make the front page any more and the crime rate is souring out of sight. There are two ways of stopping this breakdown. One is to eliminate the causes of the growing rebellion. This includes everything from taking the profit out of militarism and racism to making education relevant. The other way is to create a police state with so much "law and order" that the privileged few can ignore the results of their inhumanity. The country is taking the second way. The Army recently signed a contract with the International Association of Police Chiefs, Inc., to let soldiers out six months early to become policemen. Today's trooper will be tomorrow's cop. As part of the creation of the police state, the militarization of the police proceeds at an incred ible pace. Police armaments is the hottest industry. Cops have armored cars, tear gas (CS varie ty included), chemical MACE, copters, grenade launchers, automatic rifles, and military battle plans. The methods of the military and the police grow more alike every day. The question is no longer, "Will I get out of the service?" It's "Will it make any difference?" "Violence seems to be the only thing we understand. The system will not yield without a fight, and it will react only if the people with the power begin to fear those who have nothing to lose. " --William Kunstler, civil rights lawyer in LIFE, July 25, 1969 4 IN NAZI GERMANY. . . First they arrested the communists -- but I was not a communist, so I did nothing. Then, they came for the social democrats -- but I was not a social demo crat, and I did nothing. Then they arrested the trade unionists - - and I did nothing, because I was not one. And then they came for the Catholics, but I was not a Catholic and I did nothing. At last they came and arrested me -- and there was no one left to do anything about it. --Martin Niemoller "The most violent criminal acts that are being committed today are being committed by our leaders in Washington. " IF YOU'RETHINKING OF OPENING YOUR MOUTH, OPEN IT WIDE, BECAUSE WE'RE •General Hugh B. Hester GOING TO DROP A BOMB IN IT. QUESTION: Would you have worked in a Nazi concentration camp just because you would not have to tend the ovens or the gas but could be a guard or a clerk? Blind, unquestioning and obedient patriotism to nation is treason to humanity. And it can happen here. Because it has happened here. What "Riot Control "U All About rttstv »1_»HIWT »BTiNy TO em *ESfORB>1or*r , *REVlO« «MB«! "Man is what brings society into being. The prognosis is in the hands of those who are willing to get rid of the worm-eaten roots of the structure." --Frantz Fanon (Advertisment) A NEW CALL TO RESIST ILLEGITIMATE AUTHORITY Opponents of the Vietnam War have worked to end it in many ways, some through conventional politics, some by supporting draft resistance or attacking university complicity in militarism. Others have carried resistance further, destroying draft files and developing opposition within the armed forces. We believe that resistance to many forms of illegitimate authority is necessary to bring health to this country and make it a constructive force instead of a terror in the politics of nations. Therefore, we support those who resist by • refusing to register for the draft or submit to induction • impeding the operations of draft boards and induction centers • expressing anti-war views while in the armed forces, or refusing to obey illegal or immoral orders, or absenting themselves without leave • conducting rent and workers' strikes, boycotts, and similar direct actions aimed at ending exploita tion in the fields, in factories, in housing • organizing against harrassment by police, by the FBI, by the courts, and by Congress • organizing sit-ins, strikes, and any principled actions at schools and universities, to end racist prac tices and direct complicity with militarism The Vietnam War has reminded us that major decisions The war on Vietnam is neither a unique folly nor an error in can be made in the United States in cynical disregard of the judgment. Since the end of the last century, U.S. power has clearly expressed will of the people and with little concern for been used for economic, political and cultural exploitation those most affected, at home and abroad. The war has also of smaller and poorer nations. The "accelerated pacifica illustrated the readiness of the U.S. to use violence to impose tion," the most ferocious non-nuclear bombing in history, and the social arrangements of its choice and to destroy those who the deceitful maneuvering in Paris are recent manifestations attempt to achieve popular control over their affairs. Closely of a global strategy aimed at building an integrated world linked to the government, providing its top personnel and shap system dominated by the U.S. Thus seen, Vietnam is one of ing its policies, are the centers of private power, the great cor a long series of interventions in the affairs of many nations: porations that control the economic life of the nation and, in Greece, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Iran, creasingly, of the world. They are governed not by popular Laos, Thailand, the Congo, the Philippines, and others. will but by corporate interests as determined by a narrow auto Motivated by a mixture of private interests gnd misplaced cratic elite. The government's resort to force to impose decisions convictions, the Pax Americana continues to inflict suffering of a ruling elite is one sign of failing democratic institutions and and subservience on much of the third world. thus of the illegitimacy of the state. Both the use of police and the military and the absence of democratic control over major institutions underscore the illegitimacy of the authority that sets The Vietnam War has also brought the human and economic public policy in the U.S. and establishes the framework for social costs of the garrison state at home. It has allowed an in life. But it is not enough to decry the exercise of ille satiable military organization to claim over half of the fed gitimate authority; if it is illegitimate, it must be eral budget, directly and indirectly. (A tenth is allocated to resisted. health, education, and welfare.) Beyond that, President Nixon has promoted the MIRV and the ABM, both bellicose Resistance to the war and the draft has brought peace gestures towards China and the Soviet Union as well as groups into conflict with police, courts, and universities. This is extravagant subsidies of aerospace industries. The Pentagon not surprising, for the war has its roots deep in our society and has insisted recently that military expenditures, even "after to oppose it seriously is to attack a wide range of evils and the Vietnam," will remain at current levels, in order to "resupply institutions that sponsor them. A brief review of five areas of and modernize" the armed forces. And in states and cities, illegitimate authority follows. a martial mood prevails as police and national guardsmen ^dvertisment} arm themselves with new weapons, gas the Berkeley campus mass transport systems that might serve all — hardly a sur from helicopters and, there and elsewhere, shoot at citizens, prise, given the dependence of the nation's largest corpora particularly the poor and the young. Dissidents in the army tions on the automobile. Industrial wastes, oil leakages, and face heavy sentences; and for young men generally, the municipal sewage rob citizens of beaches and streams and, draft remains the prime symbol of social obligation. In brief, with the fouling of the atmosphere, literally threaten the the violence of the state has come increasingly to threaten continuation of life. In short, most people have little control or control the lives of U.S. citizens. over the conditions of their work, their education, their pro tection, their means of transport — indeed, the air they 3. This triumph of illegitimate force has continued to enrich the breathe and the water they drink. rich. Cost-plus defense and space contracts have guaranteed affluence to a handful of corporations and subsidized their 5. The most powerless have been people of color. U.S. history growth, while the real wages of workers, after inflation and has included the systematic conquest and slaughter of Ameri spiraling taxes, have diminished. The non-unionized and the can Indians, the enslavement, degradation, and murder of unemployed are, obviously, the worst victims: welfare pro Afro-Americans, the callous exploitation of Chicanos, the grams, ill-conceived to begin with, have been cut back or detention and robbery of Japanese-Americans, and the use left languishing, more an insult than an aid. Real welfare of atomic weapons, napalm, gas, and crop-destroying chemi programs have been reserved for the wealthy: tax loopholes, cals against people of the third world. Consequently, U.S. the oil depletion allowance, airline subsidies, farm subsidies, citizens inherit a nation in which white privilege and white highway projects, urban renewal, subsidies to elite universi power are part of the "natural" order and structure of ties, and so on. In the past government policy has charac society. People of color die at a disproportionate rate in teristically preserved or increased the distance between rich warfare or "peace." They are unemployed disproportion and poor. The policy of permanent preparation for war is ately, receive inferior education disproportionately, are no exception. humiliated disproportionately. Despite the recent recognition of some mystical, undefined "racism" by official government 4. Like wealth, control over institutions has been unequally dis commissions, the living conditions o; non-whites have re tributed and irresponsibly used. The mistreatment by police mained intolerable. Every effort by non-whites to gain of the people they supposedly serve has been only the most power, even in their own communities, has been met by blatant example. Schools have failed to educate the chil violent opposition; militant blacks, determined to bring about dren of poor and working class families, thus guaranteeing the promised changes, are harrassed, jailed, killed, or forced their impotence in a technological society: in most inner into exile. In many ghettoes, there is virtual war between cities, fewer than half the students who enter high school blacks and predominantly white police. graduate; in New York City, where blacks and Puerto Ricans make up about half of the student population, only a fifth Two years ago, the first Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority of the graduates of academic (i.e., college-oriented) high focused on the war and the draft. But we cannot oppose schools are black or Puerto Rican — and only a fifth of those the war without opposing the institutions that support graduates go on to college. Yet attempts by parents to and maintain it. Imperalism, militarism, economic exploitation, improve the schools through community control have been undemocratic power, racism: though the words may seem stale, fought bitterly by New York's educational bureaucracy. Or they describe the exercise of illegitimate authority in the United to take a rather different instance, heavily subsidized high States today. Again, we call upon all to join us in the struggle ways have displaced families and foreclosed possibilities for against illegitimate authority. Now is the time to resist. In reversing the convictions of the Boston Four, the First Circuit Court of Appeals left open the possibility that sign ing the original Call to Resist or this New Call could, in conjunction with other acts, be viewed as illegal. We believe it is the government's actions, not ours, which are illegal. However, signers and contributors should be aware that their actions might be found illegal. send to: RESIST/Room 4/763 Mass. Ave./Cambridge, Mass. 01239 fj Add my name to the list of signers of the "New Call"; you may make my endorsement public. • I enclose a contribution of $ to support the work of RESIST. (Please make checks payable to RESIST.) • I pledge $ monthly to support the work of RESIST. • I am interested in organizing or joining a group in my community. Please Print name _ddr city. „state _ _zip 1970 - YEAR OF THE PEN AND THE SWORD "I believe that every man in uniform is a citizen first and a servicemen second, and that we must resist any attempt to isolate or separate the defenders from the defended... " --President Richard M. Nixon, at the Commencement Exercises of the U. S. Air Force Academy, June 4, 1969 Thank you, Mr. President. That's what we've been saying all along. "...the mind is restless, turbulent, strong and unyielding. . . as difficult to subdue as the wind. " --Bhagauad -Gita Those who protest at injustice are people of true merit. When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out. --Ho Chi Minh "ICH BIN NICHT ADOLF EICHMANN" "No one knows what blasphemy is or what sedition is, but all know that they are vague words which can be fitted to any meaning that shall please the ruling powers. " --Walter Bagehot "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. " --Thomas Jefferson OM VOL. 1 NO. : V "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who OM, 1029 Vermont Ave. NW, Room 200 falsely believe they are free. " Washington, D.C. 20005 (202)638-4126 Roger Priest, USN - Editor --Goethe You say that we are scum because we sing; You shout that we are vile because we dance; You rush to punish us because our hair is long our legs are shown, we earn our keep, we do not want to fight. Because we will not take your favorite drug Because we will not follow in your ways, you use the law to injure us, But none of us have ever said: OLD MEN You have been ruling for 1000 years, Why: Is the world still half illiterate? Why: Is two-thirds of the world still hungry? Why: Do 800,000, 000 have no work? Why do you hover on the brink of war each night? Why do you loath the likes of us Who want to pass their time on earth right happily? YOU ASK FOR GRATITUDE. For what? For schools where lies are taught? YOU ASK FOR US TO BE PROUD OF YOU. For what? Your only true reward is money. YOU ASK FOR OUR R ESPECT. For youj Who squabble all day long among yourselves? Subscription Order Form YOU SAY YOU DIED THAT WE SHOULD LIVE. What cockj You died to save yourselves Please enter my subscription to From the biggest mess you ever made- OM, Except the next-which you are busily preparing. payment for which is enclosed. Oh, my dear Fathers, One Year (12 issues) o $5 You are a ten-ton, thousand-year-old flop. Two Years (24 issues) o $9 Your systems do not work, This offer free to Servicemen Your politicians lie name Your Army, Power and Police Only make matters worse. address Yet you are ours and we are yours And when you're old we will comfort you And when you're tired we will nourish you, (Pfease include zip cod«.) And when you're dead we will bury you (Make checks payable to Roger Priest) With fife and flute and drum. But do not try to make us be like you. OM, 1029 Vermont Ave. NW, Room 200 No doubt we have some tears to come. Washington, D.C. 20005(202)638-4126 Men always do. And they shall be our own. II" --Christopher Logue, reprinted from International Times "In peace children bury their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents »4- * to bury their children. " --Herodotus o VIETNAM WILL WIN! "The idealists and visionaries, foolish enough to throw caution to the winds and express their GRIN AND BEAR IT By Uchty ardor and faith in some supreme deed, have ad vanced mankind and have enriched the eartia. " oS. g —Emma Goldman Congressman L. Mendel Rivers is a kindly old gentleman. He epitomizes the very best of Southern graciousness and genteelness. Following the Pueblo incident he suggested a possible course of U. S. action. It had to do with a North Korean city. Listen to the white-haired savant as he presents his homey philosophy: "I'd select a target, I'd do like Truman did. Let one of them disappear. " Oh, if 'twer only possible to make L. Mendel Rivers disappear. "People ask us how you can have the military without n. . . And our government e«n't hoW back discipline. But the way to maintain discipline is througfa »he Redmeriaee or strike « blow for domocrsc) respect; not repression." unless we get our monthly check on tun«, Excellency!" —LTjg. Susan Schnall, a Navy nurse court-martialed for marching in an anti-war parade while in uniform 10 "This country, with its institutions belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolution ary right to dismember or overthrow it." --Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address "Having seen in our lifetime the nightmare of Stalinist Russia, the nightmare of Nazi Germany and the nightmare of the war in Vietnam, I think that we must recognize a simple truth: whatever duty we may have as members of particular social institutions is less important than our fundament al moral duties. The smooth functioning of the social institution to which one belongs is not more important than human life. " —Dr. Donna Strauss, in LIFE, July 25, 1969 "Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. " --Frederick Douglass "To me, nothing could more tragically demonstrate our complete and utter moral bankruptcy than for us deliberately to initiate a 'preventive war'. Once we take that absolutely fatal step, our civilization would be doomed. We would have to rely on conquest for survival from then on, until our society crumbled as the empires of Alexander and of Rome crumbled, from their own inner decay. In all the history of the world no civilization based on conquest has long endured. America would be no exception. " --Chapter 32, "Indochina, Quemoy and Matsu" from the book, "Soldier: Memoirs of Matthew B. Ridgway" DANGEROUS DRUG I was wondering why the military has not been banned by the 1914 Narcotic Act. It definitely is a depressant. It attacks all the senses, dulling them into insignificance from boredom and lack of stimulation. Fur thermore, I believe it has a potential for psychological dependence. Have you ever noticed the great number of empty-eyed, fuzzy-faced career types who seem to exist in a perpetual state of insomniatic trance? If the military is such a dangerous, habit- forming drug, why is it so readily available on the open market without a prescription? "Aha! Another career man. ' "I think it takes the maximum of courage and patriotism for a man to refuse to fight in a war that is illegal, immoral, and a disgrace to the country. " --Brig. Gen. Hugh Hester He asked, will you carry a gun for your country? I answered the Effbee--aye "YayJ" I will point a gun for my country, "Now that you've learned to «ay 'sir* to your superiors, I hope you'll But I won't guarantee you which way.' remember It when you set back I won't guarantee you which way.' into civilian life." I will point a gun for my country But I won't guarantee you which way. YOU KNOW SOMETHING'S HAPPENIN1 BUT YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS --Woody Guthrie DO YOU MR. JONES? --Bob Dylan I Love My Flag I love my flag, I do, I do, Which floats upon the breeze I also love my arms and legs, And neck and nose and knees. One little shell might spoil them all Or give them such a twist They would be of no use to me I guess I won't enlist. I love my country, yes, I do, I hope her folks do well. Without our arms and legs and things, I think we'd look like hell. Young men with faces half shot off Are unfit to be kissed, I've read in books it spoils their looks; I guess I won't enlist. •Patrick Renshaw, The Wobblies, "Back in my country, it's shot out of cannons and Doubleday Anchor Book, 1968, p. 169. served with milk and sugar for breakfast." 12 "Spectre of Los Patricios" By Howard N. Key er Anglo-Saxon cupidity and love of domin try. Commissioned as a lieutenant in ion." He argued that our only hope of the Mexican Army, Riley gathered others It is not yet certain whether the national redemption, lay in a united around him who had resented their own Vietnam war will cease to be considered demand of press, pulpit, and public for army's mission and conduct. Their ranks "Lyndon Johnson's War," and come to be the (unilateral) "instant recall of our were augmented by Americans who known as Mr. Nixon's. There was no forces from Mexico. ' ' responded to the appeals of Mexican such problem with America's war against It has been suggested that our in priests to "abandon your unholy cause." Mexico, which was called "Mr. Polk's volvement in Vietnam began when CIA Los Patricios fought gallantly, War" by its opponents during and after agents, under orders to undermine the most notably at Churubusco, where his presidency. In many ways the inva 1954 Geneva agreements for Vietnam's their cannon almost stopped the invaders sion of 1846-7, undoubtedly America's unification secretly returned an emigre and they were overcome only after their most detested military action before named Diem from New York to Saigon. ammunition was gone. Many died in 1965, resembles the present Southeast A similar device brought Santa Anna, action, some escaped, and about 60 Asian conflict. butcher of the Alamo, back to Mexico were captured. All but a handful were Sen. Daniel Webster, in some ways from his Cuban exile. On the very day hanged by their captors, in spite of the Everett Dirksen of his day, eloquent that Polk sent his war message to Con pleas of the archbishop of Mexico and and influential if not popular, denounced gress, our naval blockaders received the British ambassador. our attack on Mexico as "a war of pre orders to permit the emigre soldier- They are not forgotten by a proud text, a war in which the true motive is politicians to pass through. "How came people whose territories were taken not distinctly avowed, but in which pre it into Mr. Polk's head that Mr. Santa from them in a war that they still remem tenses, afterthoughts, evasions and Anna was likely to come that way?" ber as one of aggression. Annual trib other methods are employed to put a asked Sen. Webster, - and in answering utes are still paid at the plaque at case before the community which is not his own question revealed that secret Mexico City's San Jacinto Church, a true case." U.S. agents invited the exile's return. bearing such names as Hogan, O'Connor, Men such as Webster, who questioned This attempt at a coup to install a puppet Sheehan and Flaherty, inscribed EN the war but voted for appropriations to pro-US. regime was a fiasco, for Santa MEMORY OF THE HEROIC SAN PAT wage it, were in turn denounced by Henry Anna double crossed us. RICIO BATTALION/MARTYRS WHO David Thoreau.. our great naturalist- Among the troops under Santa Anna's GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR MEXICO philosopher, who complained: "There command was one battalion whose DURING THE UNJUST AMERICAN are thousands who are in opinion op spectre may be haunting the men of the INVASION OF 1847. posed to slavery and to the war, who Pentagon as reports arrive on every yet, in effect, do nothing to put an end hand of disaffection among our G.I.'s. NICKEL REVIEW August 1969 to them." The name "Los Patricios" (for Battal There was a credibility gap that ion of St. Patrick) is not mentioned in Howard N. Meyer of Rotkville Centre is an developed soon after Congress was popular U.S. military histories. Books attorney and civil rights historian and au rushed into voting a declaration of war about the American Irish dating from thor of "Colonel of thé Black Regiment: in 1846. Men like Sen. William Fulbright the 1840's, when they were commonly The Life of Thomas Wenkvorth Higginson." (D-Ark.), who regret having been stam victims of native American bigotry, peded into passing the Tonkin Gulf omit mention of the battalion. The unit's resolution Of 1964 - the sole "legal" origins must be understood in the light basis for the outpouring of U.S. blood of a period when to them, as to the and treasure by our commanders in chief blacks today, the Army was a place of - remind one of Sen. John C. Calhoun, refuge from the economic hardships of who ruefully remarked that less than civilian discrimination. 10 per cent of the 1846 Congress would Many Catholics (not just the Irish) have agreed to war on our southern in the invading army tended to sympa neighbor had they been given time to thize and identify with the Mexican examine the case. Later, a freshman peasantry. They were appalled at the congressman from Illinois pressed for conduct of their comrades in occupied an inquiry as to whether the "spot" areas, especially by thg Texans who, on which U.S. and Mexican forces first as Lt. Ulysses S. Grant reported, "seem clashed was not in fact Mexican terri to think it perfectly all right to impose tory, defined as such by an 1819 treaty. upon the people and even to murder His name was Abraham Lincoln. them." Bigotry among noncoms and Just as the late Rev. Martin Luther junior officers helped develop the cli King Jr. spoke out often and vigorously mate fa defection. The last straw was against the Vietnam war until his assas the desecration of Mexican churches. sination, America's greatest black civil That was too much for men who had rights leader of 1846 took an uncompro seen churches in Boston and Philadel mising stand against the Mexican war. phia burned by mobs unmolested by the Ten years out of slavery at the age of official guardians of "law and order." 31. Frederick Douglass denounced the First over the hill, to switch to "disgraceful, cruel, and iniquitous war" the side he thought was right, was Sgt. that doomed Mexico to be "victim to John Riley, Company K, 5th U.S. Infan- 13 Wiiard of Id Cartoon from The Washington Evening Star "Ring around the Pentagon, a pocket full of pot PLEASE PASS THIS PAPER AROUND Four and twenty generals all begin to rot. TO YOUR FRIENDS AFTER YOU'VE All the evil spirits start to tumble out READ IT! Now the war is over, we all begin to shout. " JOIN us: JOIN us: / , * f AD RATES 1/8 page $10 1/4 page $20 | SUCCESS | 1/2 page $40 full page $75 Circulation 10,000 DISCLAIMER The opinions contained in this publication are the private ones of the authors and are not to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the Department of Defense, the Navy Department or the military and naval service at large. Neither should the lies spread by the Department of Defense, the Navy Department or any of its agents be construed as reflecting the views of the "No one denies that he had the right authors of this publication. to hold dissident views. On the other hand, it was a drag haxnng him around." 14 Uncle Sam Exam TRUE AND FALSE 1. The United States has a treaty with the Saigon government. T F 2. The Saigon government is a member of SEATO. T F 3. The intervention in Vietnam is a SEATO action. T F 4. The U. S. paid for 80% of the colonial French Indochinese War. T F 5. John Foster Dulles wanted to use nuclear bombs rather than end the French Indochinese War. T F 6. The U. S. signed treaties not to unilaterally intervene in international disputes. T F 7. No international law or agreement exists which claims that Vietnam is two countries, North and South. T F 8. There are Russian or Chinese fighting troops in Vietnam. T F 9. The United States is the only major power with any fighting troops in any part of Vietnam. T F 10. The majority of National Liberation Front combatants are from north Vietnam. T F 11. It is the expressed and proven policy of the U. S. to support, arm and aid almost all the world's military dictatorships against domestic insurgency. T F 12. Red China has bases and troops outside her borders. T F 13. The U. S. has over 2,000 bases outside her borders. T F 14. The U. S. was one of six signers who failed to ratify the 1925 Geneva Protocal prohibiting "the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases. " T F 15. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is the only "legal" justification for having U. S. troops in Vietnam. T F Answers for True and False: J> 'ST 'X- °f\ 'X- '21 'â- °ZT *X- 'U *d- *0T 'J> '6 *__- '8 'X- %L 'X- *9 *_t- *S 'X- 'f *_I- '£ 'd- 'Z 'a- "T SEND MONEY as much as you can get $1 MINIMUM Yes folks. OM needs money to keep operating. There are a lot of you out there that can spare a buck here or there to keep OM free to GI's. Won't you help? Send all contributions to: OM, 1029 Vermont Avenue, N. W., Room 200 Washington, D.C. 20005. . i \ / Gl REFERENDUM \ ON VIETNAM Should the United States bring the rest of the GFs ome from Vietnam now? D YES D NO Photo taken by Roger Wiitiams at the Bob Hope Christmas Show Long Blnh, Vietnam, December, 1968. G.I. REFERENDUM ON VIETNAM ould the United States Bring the Rest he G.I.'s Home from Vietnam Now? D YES • NO % -J tosed is my $1.00 contribution to help pay for ting the G:i. Referendum on Vietnam in Playboy, y Times, Navy Times, and A»r Force T'mes. me copies of this referendum for distribution in my area. f*** J ture « print name k and Branch of Service dress , ate Clip and Mail To: SEAMAN ROGER L PRIEST, U.S. NAVY 1029 Vermont Avenue, N.W., Room 200 Washington, D. C. 20005 Telephone: (202) 638-4126 SOUVENIR •H UUUHI - MARTIAL EDITION j^c '^\ TU? mm AP' '•(.PU VII ttoris Trta K_4Uus*» aL a i 4 PjMlM-täLRL fo CMM. ^ «•f-i The Great Disloyalty Trial By Roger Priest, United States Navy It ought to be clear by now that the Amerikan military doesn't give a damn about a serviceman's constitutional rights -- especially, if by exercising those rights the military Brass and their co conspirators in Washington are exposed for what they are. As the editor of "OM" -- the first anti-war, anti-brass paper put out by a Navyman in the U.S. Navy's long and inglorious history, I will be the first serviceman to face court-martial solely for statements written in a GI newspaper. For this dubious distinction I face up to 39 years in the brig and a Dishonorable Discharge when tried by a General Court-Martial "Kangaroo" Court on April 14, 1970 here in Washington, D. C. WHY? One reason was that I was speaking the truth about the Amerikan war in Vietnam. Have you ever heard that the "truth shall make you free?" Don't believe it. Pentagon dictionaries define truth as something to be hidden or manipulated. I also never minced words in conveying my disgust and contempt for the lying pig politicians in Washington, the industrial complex and the other war criminals in the Pentagon who give the orders, make the policies, gain the promotions, and the medals and reap the money while OUR blood and Vietnamese blood is shed to benefit these few "leaders" who see progress in body counts. "OM" said in very plain language that you didn't have to take it -- that there was another way. And the way was through ORGANIZATION. "OM" showed GI's that they had nothing to lose by organizing but their stripes. The paper further pointed out to servicemen that NOW was the time to speak out against the war, racism and oppression; not after they got out. But the war criminals -- the military, the government and the war industries -- need the big lies to survive. How else would we ever fight and die for them in their bloody wars? They want and need us silent about our fate so as not to rock the boat or spoil the profits. So when a newspaper comes along and pricks the Patriotic Balloon of Bullshit that is held before us -- someone has to pay. Today, they are trying to make me pay for the "crime" of speech. Tomorrow, what will they try to make YOU pay for? The situation is that you either stand up for your rights or you let people continue to use you for their own ends. And if you wait till tomor row it will probably be too late; for then they will be coming after you too. But what of our "rights?" Do servicemen give up certain "rights" upon entering the Armed Services? Do they give up their First Amendment rights after they raise their hands and swear to defend the Constitution of the United States? The answer to the last question is no. Servicemen do not lose their rights to speak and to write or to even assemble. But the problem comes when you try to exercise those rights. Try writing, speaking or demonstrating for an end to the war in Vietnam. There is no end to the harassment or intimidation that the Pentagon and local base commanders will use to try and "silence" you. The Pentagon is scared shitless. They are afraid of the anti-war GL They are afraid that he has "infected" the ranks of servicemen with "subversive" ideas like peace and freedom. And they are right. For right now the cancer has spread throughout the body of the Monster. And soon the Monster will die. You know, if one person starts a paper, They'd think he's crazy. If a couple of papers were started They'd think it was a Conspiracy. But if a lot of papers were started, They'd think it was a Movement... and that's what it isl A Movement that has grown to over 70 newspapers reaching hundreds of thousands of GI's--on land and on the sea. And to paraphrase the founder of of the U.S. Navy, "We have not yet begun to fight." A specter is haunting the Amerikan military -- the specter of a mass movement of GI's de claring in solidarity with each other the end of their complicity with the Pentagon war criminals. The GI movement is realizing that its powers lie in the collective might of servicemen standing up and refusing to be used any longer. And if enough start affirming their basic rights; then courts-martial will no longer be possible. There is strength in numbers... and we've got the numbers. Now we've got to get it organized and "together." 2 Anytime you engage in struggle, you run the risk of losing. Losing what? Your life? Your freedom? If you are in the service then you have already lost your life and your freedom. You have lost it because someone else is in control of it. And if you struggle for your life and your freedom what can the Pentagon do to you? They can't take away what they already have. What they are doing now is to imprison those who dissent. But you can't imprison an idea. This has been the lesson all totalitarian regimes have failed to learn. You can be handed a paper that says, "Undesirable Discharge"or maybe if you are lucky one that says, "Dishonorable Discharge. " What an honor.' You might lose that clearance or even be transferred for joining the struggle. So what. Types of discharge or prison records will not be the currency for OUR society. Only in this Alice in Wonderland society that we live in do you receive "Honorable Discharges" for participating in the rape and murder of a people 10,000 miles away from us. And for that "honor" we are told (never asked) to give our lives? Bullshit. So I will face trial for editing and publishing 1,000 copies apiece of the three issues pictured on this page. What a crimel Things have got to be really bad. The Pentagon is truly paranoid. By singling me out, they have caused a reaction just the opposite of what they wanted. My circulation has increased to 10, 000 and several more papers are being put out by Navymen. Keep up the repression Pentagon. Our numbers and our determination are increasing. I was orginally charged on June 20, 1969 with violating 14 specifications under four Articles of the Uniform Code of Military (In)Justice based on statements and articles out of the April, May and June 1969 issues of "OM. " They were as follows: Article 82-soliciting others to desert and commit sedition. Article 89-disrespect to Gen. Ear le Wheeler, Chairmen, Joint Chiefs of Staff. Article 92-not disclaiming that my views were not Official Navy views. Article 134-conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline (making disloyal statements-8 counts), violation of Title 18, Section 2387 (the notorious 1940 Smith Act-intent to interfere with, impair, etc., etc., loyalty and discipline, etc., etc., -good for 10 years each. Pretty heavy. On August 28, 1969 I was ordered to stand trial. Charges under Articles 89, 92 and two specifi cations under 134 were not referred to trial. On November 19, 1969 the military judge ruled that the solicitation charges be thrown out. But the judge was overruled by Rear Admiral George P. Koch, Commandant, Washington Naval District; who ordered that the charges be reinstated since he disagreed with the judge as a "matter of law. " Koch has worn several hats in dealing with this case. He convened the court, picked the attorneys for both sides and will review the case after his drumhead court finds me "guilty. " But he is an honorable man. My attorneys filed a petition with the U. S. Court of Military Appeals stating the obvious: that the Commandant's actions were an "unwarranted interference into the judicial proceedings" and that he had no authority to overrule a military judge on "matters of law. " After being before the court for over four months, a decision was handed down on March 13, 1970 denying our petition. The court ruled that a convening authority (with no legal training) has the authority to overrule a military judge (a trained lawyer) on "matters of law. " The court said further that they could see no "irreparable harm" coming to me from standing trial on the charges that had been dropped; since if I am found guilty then it can be taken up on appeal. The court, it seems, was more concerned that "irreparable harm" might come to the Navy's case against me if they were not allowed to prosecute. So much for the military's "courts. " And you can bet there will be an appeal. What chance does an enlisted person have when tried by a court of officers? You know, being tried by an all-officer jury is like being a Jew tried in Nazi Germany. My request to be tried before a jury composed of E-2's and E-3's was turned down by the Commandant. What's more, to top everything else, it only takes a 2/3 vote to convict! But all the charges and all the legal maneuvering is just BULLSHIT! Correspondence which I have obtained between the Chairmen of the House Armed Services Committee, L. Mendel Rivers of South Carolina and Rear Admiral Means Johnston, Chief of Legislative Laison, Pentagon, clearly shows that it was Rivers who was instrumental in bringing about this court-martial. In a letter dated June 6, 1969, Rivers wrote Rear Adm. Johnston that "OM" reflects a "gross abuse of the constitutional right of free speech. " He then demanded to know just what the Navy planned on doing about it. So the Navy toadies tried to interrogate me on June 12; they SoUOTtO/V transferred me to the Processing Division, Washington Naval Station, on June 17; and formally charged me on June 20, 1969. Fast reaction time, huh? One ôf the things that brought Rivers' attention to "OM" was a parable written by Bobby Seale in the June 1969 issue. All the Southern-fried bigot had to do was to turn to page two to read of a very thirsty poor man who finds a stream at the foot of a mountain, but can't drink from it because it is full of filth. A second man explains that there is a huge hog standing in the middle of the stream at the top of the mountain. "This hog," the man said, "is pissing and shitting in the stream and that is why it is so dirty.- If you want a cool, clean drink, you must get that hog out of the stream. I added to the moral of the story by attaching the follow ing line of my own at the end: " L. Mendel Rivers. Get lSoLUTtOM" __,. your ass out of that stream. You hear, boy?" That did it. An investigation that used as many as 25 Naval Intelligence agents to follow and harass me was terminated and charges brought. And now Rivers wants to see me in jail. The issues that my trial are concerned with are much broader than the personal vendetta between Rivers and the Navy over my newspaper. The whole question of a service men's right to dissent without fear of punishment will be at stake. The stakes are heavy. You either have the freedom to voice your concerns during your off-duty hours, off-base, out-of-uniform and with your own funds or you don't. The Navy will maintain that I went "too far" and that what I said should be punished since it is "disloyal" and undermines morale and discipline. My answer to that is that you can't go "too far. " There is no way that you can abuse the constitutional right of free speech; except by not exercising it. And that is precisely what the Pentagon wants. Every lifer knows that when you enter the Armed Services you give up your constitutional rights. It's all unwritten though. The illusion is maintained that you have "rights. " The illusion is shattered when you exercise those "rights. " This trial should pull the veil of lies back even further and shatter a lot of illusions that people have about themselves and their precious Bill of Rights. I believe in freedom of speech and of the press. They are fundamental rights that should not be given up. If I should have to go to prison for standing up for my rights, then that is what I am prepared to do. Others can pick up the pen that I have used and continue the fight« By struggling together we shall win the peace and freedom that is rightfully ours. SEIZE THE TIME. Charge L Violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 82 Specification 1: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 May 1969 solicit members of the military and naval forces of the United States to desert in violation of Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice through statements in a pamphlet entitled "OM The Serviceman's Newsletter, " to wit: "BE FREE GO CANADA -- Deserters from the U.S. military can still find refuge in Canada contrary to recent misleading reports in the Establishment press. The Montreal-based American Deserters Committee (ADC) reports James Gross of the Canadian Immigration Department as saying, "There's no legislation which would permit us to refuse landed immigrant status on that basis (of being a deserter) alone. " Gross denied that deserters were banned from Canada and stated that they could not be deported to the U. S. The ADC suggests that servicemen seeking to escape the military enter Canada as a visitor, while on leave if possible and use other than military identification papers, e.g. birth certificates, drivers license. Application for permanent legal status as a landed immigrant should be made after entry and in connection with one of the following groups working with deserters: MONTREAL: American Deserters Committee P. O. Box 611 Station H Montreal 25, Quebec TORONTO: Toronto Anti-Draft Programme P. O. Box 764 Adelside St. Station Toronto 25, Ontario VANCOUVER: Vancouver Committee to Aid War Objectors P. O. Box 4231 Vancouver 9, British Columbia Specification 2: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 June 1969 solicit members of the military and naval forces of the United States to commit sedition in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 94, through statements in a pamphlet entitled "OM The Liberation Newsletter, " to wit: "TODAY'S PIGS ARE TOMORROW'S BACON" "WE MUST STOP THE CAPITALIST CORPORATE POWER STRUCTURE FROM KILLING US, TAXING US, DIVIDING US AND RULING US. WHY DO WE HAVE CAPITALISM, IMPERIALISM AND AN ECONOMY BASED ON MILITARISM? THE TIME HAS COME TO FAIL THE SYSTEM. IT ONLY USES US TO PERPETUATE ITSELF. TO SERVE THE SYSTEM IS TREASON. SMASH THE STATE. POWER TO THE PEOPLE." "WE WILL STOP AT NOTHING TO STOP THE VIETNAM WAR, AND POWER ARRANGE MENTS THAT MADE IT POSSIBLE. WE TAKE THAT "NOTHING" SERIOUSLY." "DESTROY THAT SACRED COW OF CAPITALISM -- PROPERTY." "BOMB AMERICA. MAKE COCA-COLA SOMEPLACE ELSE." "OUR GOAL IS LIBERATION...BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY." "SHOOT A PIG::" "Ah, but some time later When I feel a little safer We'll assainate (sic) the President And take over the government And then we're going to fry them: Phil Ochs "FREE US NOW GUNS BABY GUNSI' "Don't just stand there help in the liberation of this country from those power pigs that have their hands in our pockets and around our throats. If you would like to help write to: Roger Priest, U. S. Navy P. O. Box 1033 Washington, D.C. 20013 Mine eyes have seen the coming of* • • Charge IL Violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 134 Specification 1: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 April 1969 with intent to interfere with, impair and influence the loyalty, morale, and discipline of the military and naval forces of the United States did cause to be printed and distributed to such members of the military and naval forces a pamphlet entitled "OM, 1 April J969, The Serviceman's Newsletter, " which said pamphlet in its entirety contained statements advising and urging insubordination, disloyalty and the refusal of duty by members of the military and naval forces of the United States. Specification 2: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 May 1969 with intent to interfere with, impair and influence the loyalty, morale, and discipline of the military and naval forces of the United States did cause to be printed and distributed to such members of the military and naval forces a pamphlet entitled "OM, 1 May 1969, The Serviceman's Newsletter, " which said pamphlet in its entirety contained statements advising and urging insubordination, disloyalty and the refusal of duty by members of the military and naval forces of the United States. Specification 3: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 June 1969 with intent to interfere with, impair and influence the loyalty, morale, and discipline of the military and naval forces of the United States did cause to be printed and distributed to such members of the military and naval forces a pamphlet entitled "OM The Liberation Newsletter, " which said pamphlet in its entirety contained statements advising and urging insubordination, disloyalty and the refusal of duty by members of the military and naval forces of the United States. Specification 4: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 April 1969 with design to promote disloyalty and disaffection among members of the Armed Forces of the United States cause to be printed and distributed to such members of the armed forces a pamphlet entitled "OM The Serviceman's Newsletter, " which said pamphlet which in its entirety contained statements disloyal to the United States. Specification 5: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 May 1969 with design to promote disloyalty and disaffection among members of the Armed Forces of the United States cause to be printed and distributed to such members of the armed forces a pamphlet entitled "OM The Serviceman's Newsletter, " which said pamphlet which in its entirety contained statements disloyal to the United States. Specification 6: In that Roger Lee PRIEST, journalist seaman apprentice, United States Navy, did, at Washington, District of Columbia, on or about 1 June 1969 with design to promote disloyalty and disaffection among members of the Armed Forces of the United States • cause to be printed and distributed to such members of the armed forces a pamphlet entitled "OM Hie Liberation Newsletter, " which said pamphlet which iri its entirety contained statements disloyal to the United States. "CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW... ABRIDGING THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH, OR OF THE PRESS; OR THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE PEACEABLY TO ASSEMBLE, AND TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES." --The First Amendment, U.S. Constitution Rieten/ J» */ * * * * * c^^x^e^-«^» ' '—» "^ " "* r ~* r ^ ^ "^ uftis-tiuititititu-A a$ the ®efenbent AbibMn,ït.(iarppcûtun anb llJattttlsSlatlep * ^ TV ?V Tir a?tbe©efen$$e!attornep? Captain p.iEAapmonbÇtrliin? * A A- * * a*the3rubBe Commanber CftomajsSieffet^onfimimrjsort anb Ht. C(j^ItQ>lJfIopt) TV £ TV agtljc^ropctutionattornep? ilRtar^bmtral (§eorge^.^OCft * * * ajJtheCbmmanbant _jy &aphmgtonJ2atoal Betritt anb introbucing allien ÄGteg baton the <&M chant *** ticket? tan be purthapeb from the&oger kriegt Uefen?e Committee rm. 200 1029 Vermont S^e J_^^?hmston _BC 20005 orcaU(202) 683-4126 •••••*•***••• an "OM SWEET OM'* production WHO'S WHO OF THE CAST ROGER PRIEST - as The Défendent. Roger has been a member of The Players for two years. The other roles he has appeared in are: the editor of "OM", a member of the Pentagon Players and as a menial laborer at the Washington Naval Station Theatre. CAPTAIN "KANGAROO" PERKINS - as De Judge. Perkins comes to this production after many years of performing on the vaudeville circuit. He is also widely known for his impersonation of Jack Benny. st? 3_c ?lf ifr ^ *tr jjc sfcrfî 3f c ifc )f?rfC jf c )fcrf? ?} . lie 9{î 9JC >H jjc ?tc >f. 3ft ^fc lie COMMANDER THOMAS JEFFERSON JIMMERSON (that's his REAL name) - as Navy Prosecutor. We will not see Jimmerson for some time after this performance--he is scheduled to leave for that long- running smash-hit now playing in Saigon. tat fat gtA ^ ftt ifc Jtt^t Et 1É| fit Et ÉtIÊt l^t __fc i__C ^t ill Alfc ill ill ^t ^t A LT. CHESNEY "PRETTY BOY" FLOYD - as Navy Prosecutor. Millions of you, we are sure will remember Chesney for his sterling performance in "The Sandbox Kid. " DAVID REIN - as Defense Attorney. Mr. Rein, you may remember had a successful performance with the Ft. Jackson 8 Players. Mr. Rein has had many leading roles with productions of First Amendment Courtroom Theatre. f LT. GARY BROWN - as Defense Attorney. Brown has been featured in numerous UCMJ Productions. LT. JAMES BAILEY - as Defense Attorney. Bailey has been featured with the Appellate Players. SPECIAL THANKS & CREDIT REAL ADMIRAL GEORGE P. KOCH deserves "Special Thanks" for devoting the time and energy to write, co-produce and direct this play. He chose the cast, arranged for the stage and will be a critic for his own production. t L. MENDEL RIVERS deserves "Special Credit" for his role as Congressional Lush and Pogromist and for his four-paragraph letter to the Navy from which this play is adapted. We only hope that this staged presentation can do it justice. DEFENSE PRODUCTION STAFF Stage Manager - Carl Rogers and The Serviceman's LINK to Peace Stage Hands - Sara Baker, Gail Harris, Jim Hayes, Joan MacQuarrie, Harry Scott, Jack Susarrey and Steve Wilcox. Art Direction - Lou Stoval and The Workshop 10 N P a r i V e y s Hi t 1. Voir Dire - Seating the jury SCORING : Note : If you are attending the play ACT I you may find it enjoyable to keep, score and see if you can outguess the panel of jurors. In 2. Prosecution Opening Statement scoring, you must remember to project the effect the testimony will have had on the jury, 3. The Navy's Case though you should record your own impressions as well. 4. Defense Cross Examination a) After each scene you may evaluate how events during that scene affected the case of the ACT II défendent. First, rate the degree to which | Priest was affected on a scale of 0-10 : 0 for no 5. Defense Opening Statement effect, 10 points for maximum effect. If the effect was favorable for Priest award points to 6, Priest's Case him; if unfavorable, award them to the Navy. b) At the end of the play, the number of points 7. Navy Cross Examination made by the actors should be totalled and re corded in the boxe s marked "Review Navy" and ACT m "Review Priest. " c) Miscellaneous Bonus Points: In addition to 8. .Defense Summation the point scale above, miscellaneous bonus points may be granted to the Navy (N) and Priest 9. Navy Summation (P) as follows: 1. For each juror who: 10. Charge to jury by De Judge is of the rank above Lieutenant... 50N is of the rank of Lt. or below 75P 11, Review Points (Navy) is a Vietnam veteran 100N sports a crewcut 50N 12. Bonus Points (Navy) has hair over 3" long 20P who resembles Herb Philbrick 20N 13. TOTAL POINTS (Navy-add 11 & 12) who says he can render a fair and impartial verdict 20N 14. Review Points (Priest) has a blank or vacant stare on his face or appears to be asleep 50N 15. Bonus Points (Priest) 2. For each successful provocation of laughter in the courtroom 10P 16. TOTAL POINTS (Priest-add 14 & 15) 3. For each time De Judge shouts, "One more outburst like that and I'll clear the court VERDICT : If line 13 totals more than line 16 then room. " 100P check Guilty. If not, check Innocent. 4. For each time De Judge says, "Well," Guilty D (like Jack Benny) 10P Innocent D 5. For each witness with hair over his ears or wears a beard 20P SENTENCE: If found guilty. 6. For each Navy agent who forgets his lines Mhnfhs, ypars or otherwise needs prompting 25P Finp nr Forfp-it-ur^ 7. For each Defense witness who makes strong political points 50P Discharge 11 G.I. AND VET TESTIMONY SOUGHT The National Coordinating Committee of the Citizens' Commission of Inquiry is in the pro cess of gathering evidence and testimony regard UNION DEMANDS ing U. S. war crimes in Vietnam. We believe 1. The right to refuse to obey illegal orders-- that individual soldiers should not be made like orders to fight in the illegal, imperialist scapegoats for carrying out policies designed war in Vietnam. by those at the highest levels of government 2. Election of officers by vote of the men. decision making. We hope that by encouraging 3. An end to saluting and sir-ing of officers. large numbers of GI's and vets to speak out 4. The right of black-and brown-skinned regarding Standard Operational Procedures in servicemen to determine their own lives free Vietnam, the responsibility for war crimes can from the oppression of any racist whites. No be fixed where it belongs -- on the U.S. govern troops to be sent into black or Spanish-speaking ment. communities. Vietnam veterans and active duty GI's who 5. No troops to be used against anti-war have personal knowledge of combat operations demonstrators. or training procedures which they believe are 6. No troops to be used against workers on possible violations of commonly accepted legal strike. and moral standards are encouraged to contact 7. Rank-and-file control of court-martial the Citizens Commissions of Inquiry on U. S. boards. War Crimes in Vietnam at 156 Fifth Avenue, Room 1005, New York, N.Y. 10010 or call 8. The right of free political association. (202) 989-0164. 9. Federal minimum wages. 10. The right of collective bargaining. Subscription Order Form To Andy Stapp, Chairman, American Servicemen's Union, Room 538, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010 ise enter my subscription to OM, fment for which is enclosed. I am a rank-and-file enlisted man. I hereby declare that I support the American Year $5 Servicemen's Union and enclose one dollar to .Years $9 register myself as a member. As a member I Time Sub to OM...... $100 will receive a copy of The GI's Handbook on [S OFFER FREE TO SERVICEMEN Military Injustice and a subscription to The BOND and other advise and instruction issued by central union organizers. Name and rank Military address .ess Home address ETS or discharge date. e checks payable to the Roger Priest ense Committee. «1 (|f OM €<25 Vol. 1 No. 6 OM, 1029 Vermont Ave. NW, Room 200 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202)638-4126 Roger Priest, USN - Editor 12 l_ KJ w The following is an excerpt from the transcript of an Article 39 A (pre -trial) hearing, October 9, 1969. The Voir Dare examination was conducted by David Rein for the Defense (De Judge ruled against the challenge). \ > Q. I would like to ask Your Honor at this time whether you believe the war in Vietnam serves the best interest of the Uiaited States, or do you share the view by many senators and a widespread section of the public at this time tftat a withdrawal of our armed forces from Vietnam at this time would be in the best interest of thdAtràtW?, A. Well, Mr.. Rein,M}è|tms ^rt of an either/or proposition. Let me say this. That I cannot honest ly say that I possess |ny^ çoj^q&on as to whether or not that conflict is in the best interest of our citizens in, the n^ion as 13 • I '•••:;,,,;,ü The following is an excerpt from an interview with L. Mendel Rivers, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and the "King" of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex, who ordered the Navy Department to "silence" Seaman Priest and "OM". The tape recorded interview took place on Veteran's Day, November 11, 1969, at a "Freedom Day Rally" held in Washington, D.O. Interviewing Rivers is Vietnam veteran Carl Rogers, the director of the Serviceman's LINK to Peace. ROGERS: What about servicemen who have published papetsi like Seaman Roger Priest? Are you familiar with his publication? "p,* RIVERS: They ought to be in jail. ^Ofe* Ä fy'r ROGERS: Are you familiar with Seaman Priest's publication? W' ^ H*"!«»5* RIVERS: I, I've seen some of them. He aught to be in jail in my opinion. ROGERS: Is it your view then that this is not a question of constitutional rights, or free speech, or, or a matter of servicemen being allowed to speak their views? ' fa£3 f'">â^ RIVERS: No, I don't think so, I, I can't elaborate on that now, you know, there's something that's very close to — ah, you know you've got to distinguish between dissent and treason. PRIEST, R. NAVY HOLD (FS) June 6, 1969 Rear Admiral Means Johnston, USN Chief of Legislative Liaison EDITOR'S NOTE: The letter from Department of the Navy L. Mendel Rivers to Admiral Johnston Washington, D.C. 20350 is reproduced from a Xerox copy of a carbon copy. The original was on Dear Admiral Johnston: House Armed Services Committee Today I received a copy of a publication identified stationary and was signed by Rivers, as having been prepared and published by "R. Priest, U. S. Navy. " The publication, which is enclosed herewith for your information, reflects a gross abuse of the constitutional right of free speech. I would appreciate being advised as to whether or AD RATES not the alleged author is a member of the U. S. Navy. 1/8 page $10 In the event it is established that "R. Priest" is a 1/4 page $20 member of the U, S. Navy, it is requested that the 1/2 page • .$40 Judge Advocate General of the Navy provide me with full page • $75 an opinion as to whether or not this activity by the individual identified as "R. Priest" constitutes a Circulation and distribution 10, 000 violation of Navy regulations and/or a violation of Title 18, United States Code. DISCLAIMER Finally, I would appreciate being informed as to The opinions contained in this publication are what action you contemplate taking in this instance. the private ones of the authors and are not to be construed as official or reflecting the views Sincerely, of the Department of Defense, Navy Department or the U. S. Government. Neither should the L. Mendel Rivers lies spread by the Department of Defense, Navy Chairman Department, U. S. Government or any of its Enclosure agents to be construed as reflecting the views LMR:fsk 14 of the authors of this publication. OFFICIAL COURT- MARTIAL SOUVENIRS PROCEEDS GO TO THE ROGER PRIEST DEFENSE COMMITTEE 91ÏE2^_mjàl to: .Qrjqalk^gg]! 6_3_8_-4_126____ The Roger Priest Defense Committee, Room 200, 1029 Vermont Avenue NW, Washington, D. C. 20005 Quantity ."Seditious Literature" - The first three issues of OM, contains juicy "Disloyal Statements" @ $1.00 for the three. -L. Mendel Rivers Effigy Doll § $19.95 each. -Effigy Stick Pins (in red, white and blue) @ 50 per pack -U. S. Constitution Poster 31" X 38" ("Void For Servicemen" stenciled across front) @ $1. 00 each. -Official "OM" sailor hat @ $1.00 each. -Naval Intelligence (ONI) approved garbage from Priest's own trash cans. (Write Special Agent Robert V. Howard, Jr., 6100 30th N. Arlington, Arlington, Va. or call 532-2771 for bulk rates). -Official "FTN" Pennant @ $1. 00 each. Name (Please print) Number Street City State Zip Code GENERAL COURT MARTIAL DONT LET THE PENTAGON COURT-MARTIAL THE FIRST AMENDMENT JOIN THE ROGER PRIEST DEFENSE COMMITTEE Qy?_and_ma_il_toi _Or çall_:_(2_02)_638:4126 The Roger Priest Defense Committee, Room 200, 1029 Vermont Avenue NW, Washington, D. C. 20005 I want to SAVE THE PRIEST. Add my name to the Roger Priest Defense Committee. I will tell my Senators and Congressmen to STOP THE TRIAL and I will tell Sec. of the Navy John Chafee, too by writing the Pentagon (4E686), in Washington, or by telephoning (202) 695-3131. I want to help organize support for Roger in my area. Tell me how I can help. Enclosed is a contribution of $ to help pay defense costs and to provide publicity for Roger's case. Make checks payable to the Roger Priest Defense Committee. Please send.me copies of Roger's "SOUVENIR COURT-MARTIAL EDITION OF "OM" (Suggested donation: 500 per copy) .Please send me buttons saying "SAVE THE PRIEST" and/or (Suggested donation: 250 each) buttons saying "AND THE OM GOES ON" Name (Please print) Number Street City State Zip Code ••WWWWWfWTT- _ ~ 1 liiiHhi'f""""""'* _ss ••M«-J1.NJ>IPH « the dory ivtan ctimc cjfoi i-__->MWlT Heftr-fM— • mi i—iMi r rUMimTirii i the apparel of innocence -- , : — •%>! J.I- L'PiHiiyw ••••• ' I '»" W. ' —"" »tw w rm».**>mi. »I 11 I 11PH4P* '. - JpHWWI .lit »^M^wcywwi •-if-- ^y^wmv» w f—-j»>*y w- .*«— jp. jpiu.iMM.MHI ii iwppi ucLunat. i ioi)«àr tiiM3 \t ^•» ___-__**"^ ***r^\^ pr ife? i s ca lied » l^on_jo justify itself. ••"•"'•'-.""«»'WPi" ;•• > Of) m 03 __ hfiiMMii-_i-ti«i%_lii___ .-rmmir .-liiHi-m-mniM limn i nihirH»nmrir_>.i —_«t»i ,n_n__ .T____I. __. niiin n_m__ii«ii - -;••-•:— • .__, —-*__-_-____ .- !» " • t WHAT IS THIS? A CONSPIRACY? Roger Priest's trial must be stopped, too! Join the Conspiracy to Save the Priest, GMk^y^y^ &JL. 1 X top the Trial! By Roger Priest, U. S. Navy Freedom of speech and of the press were established at the trial of John Peter Zenger two centuries ago. Yet, today the U. S. Navy -- backed by the fossil-like chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, L. Mendel Rivers, (D. S. C. ) are planning to court-martial the First Amendment of the Constitution and thereby be in a position to smash the GI anti-war press. The oft-postponed trial of this reporter will probably take place in the latter part of January or early February. It will be in this trial that the military for the first time will challenge the right of a GI to put out a paper on his own time, off-base and with his own funds — a right supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution. What started out on June 20, 1969 as four-and-one-half single-spaced, typewritten pages listing 14 charges and specifications was reduced to eight charges and specifications when referred to trial August 28, 1969. After a hearing before Capt. B. Raymond Perkins, the mil itary judge, two more charges and specifications were dropped — these alleging solicitation to commit sedition and desertion through statements in OM. But the System struck back and the convening authority, Rear Adm. George P. Koch, Comman dant Washington Naval District, ordered that the dismissed charges be reinstated. My lawyers were not disturbed by this new interference into the trial proceedings. They carried the issue up to the Court of Military Appeals, which on Dec. 19, 1969 ordered Koch to answer our charge that he applied command influence on the military judge in ordering that the charges be reinstated. No matter what decision is finally reached by the Court, a trial will take place on the six counts under Article 134 Uniform Code of Military (Injustice which have remained intact to this date. It is under this notorious catchall provision of the code that I'm being charged with the "crime" of "advising and urging insubordination and disloyalty with intent to interfere with, impair and influence the loyalty, morale and discipline of military and naval forces" through statements in OM "which said pamphlet which in its entirety contained statements disloyal to the United States. " If found guilty of this "crime of speech" I could receive a dishonorable discharge and up to 39 years in jail. The ridiculousness of the charges and its obvious repressive intent does not need expanding upon, except to say that as an American citizen I have been speaking and writing the truth as I see it to be. If that be a "crime" it is one I PROUDLY admit! And I might add that I am more than willing to measure my "crime" against those who have perpetrated the illegal, immoral and genocidal war being waged against the people of Vietnam. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are not liberties that are won easily — and are not liberties to be given away easily. L. Mendel Rivers may get the court-martial that he or dered and the Navy just may get the conviction that it wants so desperately. But I tell it to you straight; theirs will be a hollow victory. It will be WE — not THEY -- who will have the last word. Pray for the aged. And remember that we are the only damn younger generation around. But if we DARE TO STRUGGLE and DARE TO WIN the peace that is rightfully ours; this trial will be stopped. If we fail in stopping this trial and others like it, the loss will be felt by all. STOP THE TRIAL! Do not let the Navy court-martial the First Amendment. The struggle is just beginning. Will you join? GENERAL COURT MA&TIAL DONT LET THE -Ml •••• PENTAGON COURT- MARTIAL THE B__üü '__• FIRST AMENDMENT SAVE THE PRIEST! JOIN THE ROGER PRIEST DEFENSE COMMITTEE PJiB-^i^êiLto; &£j^i&Ç&lɧ§zâM§m The Roger Priest Defense Committee, Room 200, 1029 Vermont Avenue NW, Washington, D.'c. 21)005 I want to Save the Priest. Add my name to the Roger Priest Defense Committee. I will tell my Senators and Congressmen to STOP 1HE TRIAL and I will tell Sec. of the Navy John Chafee, too by writing the Pentagon (4E686), in Washington, or by telephoning (202) 0X5-3131. I want to help organize support for Roger in my area. Tell me how I can help. _Enclosed is a contribution of $ to help pay defense costs and to provide publicity for Roger's case. _Please send me copies of Roger's "SOUVENIR COURT-MARTIAL EDITION OF "OM" (Suggested donation: 500 per copy) _Please send me buttons saying ''SAVE THE PRIEST" and/or (Suggested donation: 250 each) buttons saying "AND THE OM GOES ON' Name (Please print) Number Street City State Zip Code Roger Priest Thanks You April 8S 1970 Dear Sisters and Brothers, On Tuesday, April 14th, I will finally go on trial for state ments made in my first three issues of "GM". Once again the perpetrators of repression will further their conspiracy to put GIs down by trying to silence me and my paper. But THE CM GOES ON.' and will continue to go on. Enclosed are copies of my latest SOUVENIR COURT-MARTIAL EDITION and some other material that I hope will be of interest to you. I believe that the issues raised in my case pertain to all of the editors of GI papers and I believe that action on my defense should be taken in the larger context of repression against all who dissent against policies that are antithetical to life and justice. I believe this "Court-Martial of The First Amendment" gives us the opportunity to escalate the movement toward peace and justice. In reviewing the activities and publicity surrounding my court-martial, I want to gratefully acknowledge all the support which has been provided me by the GI press. For this I am very thankful. I pledge to you that I will do everything within my power to continue confronting the brass, continue demanding that GIs have their Constitutional rights and continue to let people of this country know that this demand for rights will not cease until we get them. FTN FTA FTMC FTAF.' Roger Priest, USN, Soon to be political prisoner RLP/hs VA A//) TlHi M£*~" &1u> ^United SPfaA* jVavp and 3ïie t&tvicenuvnb SßmA 3c âfeace ^cteliaf/u invite yen fo fAe IM *ißcutf tAûxtotfaJ cf tâe &ïut fJ&nentûnenf in /ne ca&e o£ KM ine tyl.SP. jVavy % Slope* éPtieét >^§ ÇHizàAinpfcn, QiéAict c^ ^c/uméia &LSP.Y.&. Mail this RSVP to: The Serviceman's LINK To Peace, 1029 Vermont Ave., NW, Washington, D. C. or telephone (202) 638-4126 I accept your kind invitation to the Court-Martial of The First Amendment, Please notify me of the exact time and date. I regret that I cannot attend this important trial, but I would like to help in the defense of Seaman Priest. Enclosed is a contribution of $ to help pay costs for legal defense and publicity. Send me copies of this invitation for distribution in my area. Send me copies of Seaman Priest's 16-page Court-Martial Edition of "OM. " (Suggested donation: 25£ per copy) Send me buttons saying "SAVE THE PRIEST" and/or buttons saying "AND THE OM GOES ON" (Suggested donation: 25£ eacli) Name (Please Print) Number Street City State Zip Code (Area Code) Telephone No. to H XL (/i r» CO M ST. SE. J Ith a N ST. GATE llth8 OST. _GATE ILLARD «w PARK WILLARD ^\iVEST PARK EAST