4/13/2007 3:02 PM ****Draft Copy*** Not to be copied or circulated without permission of the author. Outlaw or American Patriot? Francis X. Kroncke 387 Pelham Boulevard The Cottage St. Paul, MN 55104-5251 [email protected] 651-895-0607 ©2007 4/13/2007 3:02 PM Foreword......................................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 6 My life on trial ............................................................................................................................ 6 Chapter 1: The Raid...................................................................................................................... 17 Chapter 2: Key trial profiles ......................................................................................................... 43 The Minnesota 8 ....................................................................................................................... 48 Attorney and Defendant: Me .................................................................................................... 53 Witness: Gordy Nielsen, Vietnam veteran................................................................................ 59 Two Judges ............................................................................................................................... 65 The Twelve Jurors..................................................................................................................... 76 Chapter 3: Preparing for trial ........................................................................................................ 81 My Catholic Background.......................................................................................................... 89 Catholic boy.......................................................................................................................... 89 Vatican Council II’s impact on my spiritual and moral development .................................. 94 Teilhard made me do it!...................................................................................................... 109 Examining my life................................................................................................................... 114 The “Defense of Necessity”................................................................................................ 134 Framing a trial “sermon” .................................................................................................... 137 Chapter 4: “The trial that wasn’t”............................................................................................... 141 No good deed goes unpunished: Daniel Ellsberg testifies...................................................... 142 “Speak truth to power!” ...................................................................................................... 145 Witnesses ............................................................................................................................ 148 “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I am …” ...................................................................... 160 Vatican Council Two and “Total War” .............................................................................. 170 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s vision .................................................................................... 174 Teilhard’s global human heart ............................................................................................ 178 War as an act of killing yourself......................................................................................... 179 Closing Statement ................................................................................................................... 191 Chapter 5: After the trial............................................................................................................. 207 Appellate Court....................................................................................................................... 207 Sentencing............................................................................................................................... 213 Afterword.................................................................................................................................... 217 The challenge revisited ........................................................................................................... 217 Is America in the 2000s, America in the 1970s? .................................................................... 218 Foreword On July 10, 1970, the FBI arrested me and seven others during three raids on Selective Service draft boards in Minnesota. The press dubbed us “The Minnesota 8.” Six months before we had pulled off the largest draft raid in American history, destroying over 45 boards in one night. The FBI was steamed; the anti-war Resistance community, ecstatic. By next morning, I and the others were indicted on “sabotage of the national defense.” We faced ten years in federal prison. What makes a 1970’s draft raid trial relevant today? Simply, all the major issues surrounding the draft raids and trial continue to impact the character and quality of life in America. Even more than in the ‘70s, these national issues have global impact. The legality of undeclared war, government deception, patriotic dissent, and whether an appeal to a “Higher Allegiance” ever justifies illegal acts lead the list. All the issues concern morality and patriotism. The challenge I issued to the courts is one American justices have yet to answer. I challenge the court to articulate guidelines to determine in what extreme circumstances people who act in a measured way for reason of conscience, and for the purpose of effecting their religious truths, may resist the immoral acts of their government.1 (Appellate brief. Emphases added.) The Minnesota 8 were typical white, middle-class American youths. We were over-achievers who sought, in differing areas, to realize the American Dream. Though media depictions often stereotyped “student radicals” and “draft resisters” as degenerate, dope-smoking, lazy drop-outs who conspired in communes where they collected welfare, espoused Free Sex and Marxism, the opposite was truer. Likewise, the religiously identified draft raiders (usually, “Catholic Radicals”) were alleged to be priests or former seminarians acting out of years of sexual suppression. 1 All quotes are verbatim as recorded in the trial transcript, legal documents or public media sources. All quotes not reference are verbatim trial transcription. For clarity, I have made trial transcript edits. Changes are italicized. All supporting documents are listed in Appendix A. 3 One of the 8’s mothers struck a chord that rings true to this day. Look, my Peter is just an average kid who realized an obvious thing -- that he can't kill. He isn’t a kook or a weirdo – he’s my son. Can't you people look into your hearts and realize that when kids like my Peter do things like this that something is seriously wrong with the country? (Mary Simmons’ interview on, “Dialogue” a program of KDWB, St. Paul, produced by Connie Goldman and emceed by Earl Craig, 1971.) When I first studied the Vietnam War, I did not disapprove. In time, I obtained a legal deferment as a Conscientious Objector. I served two years of Alternative Service and fulfilled my military obligation. Slowly, ever so slowly, I came to realize the extreme circumstances of the times, and the need for acts of nonviolent Resistance. It took me even more time to embrace nonviolence as the only practical mode of moral action. Like Martin Luther King, I struggled to accept the linkage between social injustices inside America and America’s foreign wars. More, my Resistance was not simply a matter of enlightened self-discovery. Gordy, a Vietnam veteran, told me about his battlefield conversion. On a “Search and Destroy” mission, he realized that the peasant hootch he was burning was someone’s home. That the enemy “gook” was a person. Furthermore, that he was killing his own people – his brothers and sisters in the human family. If Gordy was right, did I have the guts to join him on the battlefield – to wage peace? As I later challenged the courts, so did Gordy challenge me. “What are you going to do to counter these immoral acts?” I sought various measured ways to act. I wrote letters, preached sermons and marched. But Gordy challenged me to do more than act according to my conscience. He came seeking spiritual counsel after hearing me preach. Who else, he sensed, to bring the spiritual truth revealed through his battlefield conversion to all people? As I later argued in court: to heal America, it was necessary for me to raid draft boards. 4 Raiding a draft board was my ritual of peace. That is my story. The draft raid effected my religious truth. The truth that my God is a peace-making God, not a God of War. That through the nonviolent draft raid, God became present in the minds and hearts of others who heard His call, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Is: When can governmental acts be legally resisted? still a critical question? Do “extreme circumstances” and “immoral acts of government” reflect the position of America, today? Is there a need to “act in measured way(s) for reason of conscience” and for the “effecting of …religious