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Comrades in Arms Vietnam

Mỹ-cộng đã chiến thắng trong cuộc chiến VN như thế nào

Một quyển sách của tiến sĩ Roger Canfield vừa được ra mắt ở Mỹ đã đưa ra một cái nhìn khác, khá thú vị, về kết cục của chiến tranh Việt Nam.

http://www.voanews.com/vietnamese/news/Comrades-In-Arms-How-The-Ameri-Cong-Won-The-Vietnam-War-Against-The-Common-Enemy-America-03-23-10-88945392.html

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Comrades in Arms Vietnam Why the Vietnam War Is Relevant Today

Sorley on Westmoreland: Loss of Vietnam War, NOT!

Lewis Sorley, Westmoreland: The General Who Lost the Vietnam War. NOT!

By Roger Canfield

We are forever grateful to Lew Sorley for reminding us in a Better War that the war in Indochina
was a strategic battle in the Cold War fought well for honorable purposes.  Lew Sorley is surely on that very short list
of historians of the Vietnam War worth reading.

In Westmoreland: The General Who Lost the Vietnam War, Sorley has now written a masterful work
on the legendary character flaws of Gen. William Westmoreland. [pp. 119, 302-3]
Westmoreland was somewhat late in adopting pacification, CORDS in 1967, as a part
of overall strategy. He and all of his superiors failed, to assault sanctuaries
in Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam (Hanoi, Haiphong). He and others failed to
conduct a relentless propaganda/counter-propaganda/truth/information war, e.g.
Frank Capra’s Why We Fight in WWII.

That said, Sorley has given insufficient attention to the
context of Westy’s failures, his foes in Washington as well as Hanoi.

Westmoreland was in over his head, but the rot began at the top.
Kennedy was a dilettante and LBJ was a coward fearful of the USSR, China,
weapons and war protesters alike. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara,
contemptuous of military men, gathered young lawyers and   game theorists around him to devise a cost
benefit strategy of gradual escalation. Nowhere was there a win or victory. DC
counted bodies and ammunition. Nixon hired a Harvard Professor, Henry
Kissinger, whose expertise was the diplomacy of a third rate power in the 19th
Century, Metternick of crumbling remnants of the Austro-Hungarian empire. They
bombed Hanoi into submission to American concessions (Negroponte). Nixon’s Defense
Secretary Melvin Laird retained Kennedy-Johnson holdovers like Paul Warnke,
Robert Pursley, Harold Brown, Dan Henkins, Jack Stempler.

Hanoi’s strategic game plan was no secret–three phased
warfare.  North Vietnam’s key strategist
and Minister of Defense, General Vo Nguyen Giap, says, How We Won the War,
“[Our party] combined military struggle (dau tranh vu trang) with
political struggle (dau tranh chinh tri) and at certain stages … also
with diplomatic struggle, in order to completely defeat the U.S.-Thieu
neo-colonialist war of aggression.”[1]
Le Duan, Lao Dong Party Secretary, instructed the Viet
Cong COSVN:  “The armed struggle [dau tranh vu trang] must be simultaneously
conducted with the political one [dau tranh chinh tri]. …” This principle was consciously applied in the
streets of America [dich van] far outside of Westmoreland’s responsibilities.

Hence, American disputes and Sorley’s own account, about
contending war strategies of attrition (Westmoreland) v. pacification (Abrams) are
overly simplified. Setting aside the decisive, politics and diplomacy, armed
struggle in all of Indochina was protracted, dynamic and ever changing
combinations of guerrilla terror and main force operations.

Hanoi actually defeated America in diplomacy and in politics
but not on the battlefield or in the hamlets. Until the Nixon-Kissinger bug out
and Congressional betrayal, America’s southern ally had won both the war of
attrition [Phillip Davidson, Vietnam At War] and the war of pacification [Mark Moyer, Phoenix and Birds of Prey].

Westmoreland was no more clueless about the enemy’s strategy than his superiors.

Westmoreland and Abrams fought the war presented to them by
the enemy and their civilian superiors. Westmoreland did not want to pursue
only a war of attrition. [Sorley 91-92] Westmoreland had greater strategic
objectives including a major operation to cut, block and hold the Ho Chi Minh
trail in Laotian panhandle. Hanoi has admitted this would have been fatal to
“the revolution”. Defense Secretary McNamara and his wonder boys put
the hex on that in 1966. (McMaster, Dereliction of Duty).

In different times and places both superior firepower (1965,
1968, 1972, 1975) and pacification were critical. After the failures of Tet
1968, on May 5, 1968 Politburo member Truong Chinh presented plans for a new
strategy, return to protracted and guerrilla war and to place the greater
efforts upon political struggle.[2] Giap neither believed “guerrillas” could win the war nor planned on
winning it using only guerrillas. The implication that VC/NVA could or did win
the war by elusive retreats after major battles is absurd.

The opposition in Hanoi saw many paths to victory (military,
political and diplomatic), many phases of the war (guerrilla, main force and
political), many wars fought throughout Indochina. The enemy nearly always held
the initiative. He fought, or not, at times and places of his own choosing. He
“stood and fought” at Dong Xoai in ’65, Thach Tru in ’66, At Dak To
in ’67. Hue and Khe Sanh and many other places in Tet ’68.

The war culminating in a massive, overwhelming conventional
warfare victory, the very superior firepower that Sorley insists was Westmoreland’s
uniquely flawed strategy. [101-102, 107]. In the end, just as Giap and Truong
Chinh planned, it was overwhelming conventional superior firepower that turned
the trick. “Pacification” alone would not and could not have withstood the assault.

Westmoreland did not ignore pacification. He did what he
could when he could with Diem’s flawed strategic hamlet program and he was slow
to adopt the MACV’s CORDS pacification.

General Abrams did not simply change to tactics that Westmoreland
could have easily adopted.  Abrams capitalized
on some factors attributable in part to Westmoreland’s efforts such as plummeting
VC recruitment and capabilities and improved RVNAF troops and modernized
weapons (no more WW II surplus) Hence, Abrams ably gave more attention to
pacification.

After Tet’s decimation of Viet Cong and NVA main forces in
1968 either Westmoreland or Abrams would have pursued the very same
policy–clean up the remnants at the hamlet level.

That Abrams and the Thieu/Ky regime did it so brilliantly does not mean that
Westmoreland’s earlier strategy was forever fundamentally flawed.

Yes, Westmoreland was a stuffed shirt as were MacArthur and
Patton in their own way.

Sorley highlights the critical issue of counterinsurgency, pacification, now so
critical to the future in Iraq, Afghanistan and the “Arab Spring.”

We can all learn from Generals Westmoreland and Abrams and
yes, Lew Sorley.

I would like to thank Bill Laurie upon whose thoughts I have
drawn heavily.

Roger Canfield, ATN2, VF-121, NAS Miramar, 1962-1964. Author
of Comrades in Arms: How the Americong
Won the War in Vietnam Against the Common Enemy—America
.  Also China’s
Trojan Horses” Red Chinese Soldiers, Sailors, Students, Scientists and Spies
Occupy America’s Homeland
.


[1] General Vo Nguyen Giap, How We Won the War, Philadelphia: RECON
Publications, 1976, 28 originally in Nhan Dan and Quan Doi Nhan,
June 31, July 1, 1975 and as “A New Development of the Art of Leading a
Revolutionary War, Vietnam Courier, August and September 1975.

[2] Thomas K. Latimer, “Hanoi’s Leaders and Their South Vietnam Policies:
1954-1968.” Ph.D. dissertation, History, Georgetown University, 1972,
Leaders, 336, cited in Phillip B. Davidson, Vietnam At War: the History:
1946-1975
, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, 543-4, 571, 573n14.

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Uncategorized Vietnam Why the Vietnam War Is Relevant Today

Peace, Politics, and Military Strategy

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Comrades in Arms Vietnam

Phoenix: Moral & Effective Counterinsugency

Comrades—Phoenix: An Untold USA Success is Hanoi’s Propaganda Victory

In the end, Mark Moyar, author of the definitive work on the Phoenix pacification program,
writes, “The Government of Vietnam had won the struggle for control over rural
South Vietnam and the allegiance of its inhabitants, but it lost the war.”[1]

Conventional histories tell another story of a program of great moral depravity and militarily ineffective.

Among the little told successes of the Diem
regime was pacification of hamlets beginning with providing safe havens,
fortifications, outside of Viet Cong territory. Hanoi promptly described Diem’s
strategic hamlets as “concentration camps,” a characterization more accurate
for Hanoi practice than Saigon policy.

Strategic Hamlets: Unpopular but Effective

Meanwhile, fortifying hamlets and relocating remote hamlets had improved security for
elections.[2] Involuntary moves to Strategic Hamlets away from VC controlled home hamlets was
not popular, perhaps intentionally over extended,[3]
mismanaged and sabotaged by communist spy Pham Ngoc Thao,[4]
but still “abandonment of the hamlets hindered [the VC making)]. . . the
villagers both less accessible and less cooperative” to the VC. A former village cadre said,

“The more that people migrated to the Government areas, the less production workers, corve laborers, and informers the Front had.

“The Front would no longer have the people to support them and with whom they could mingle to hide.

“Many young men from the village went to the Nationalist areas, enlisted in the Nationalist army and returned to
the village to fight against the Front.

“This fact demoralized and confused the Front cadres the most.”[5]

Col. Pham Ngoc Thao was a serial coup plotter and Hanoi spy that the
CIA and Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge nearly put into office after the Lodge
facilitated coup (and assassination) of South Vietnam’s President Ngo Dinh Diem.

Viet Cong expert and scholar Douglas Pike said of Pham Ngoc Thao that, “Although he was never uncovered as a Viet Cong spy, postwar reports from Hanoi indicated that he had been promoted posthumously to the rank of Colonel in People’s Army of Viet Nam and was buried in the Go Vap Hero Cemetery outside of Saigon.”[6]

…The Party Line: Pacification—Brutal and …Ineffective.

Hanoi’s super spy among the Saigon media, Pham Xuan An also was anxious to have Americans understand the failures of
pacification programs—Hop Tac, Phoenix-CORD—and to interpret them as
ineffective and brutal. It was one of An’s long term projects. Pham Xuan An
kept the North Vietnamese informed on all pacification efforts.

In one instance, Pham Xuan An drove Rufus Phillips, American pacification specialist, in his battered green Renault to
Cho Lon, site of a 100-man Viet Cong ambush of South Vietnamese village
self-defense forces at An Phu. According to Phillip’s account, Pham, a
Vietnamese friend, told him about “An incident occurred yesterday, right
outside of Saigon. The area is insecure as hell.”

Pham Xuan An says, “There were many places I could have taken Rufus, but this one [had] innocent
people…killed …and there was no such thing as security in these programs.”

The Viet Cong attack had passed through General Westmoreland’s vaunted “Rings
of Steel.” Decentralized South Vietnamese units did not communicate and had
taken six hours to respond to calls for assistance. Phillips passed the word to
Edward Lansdale and Brig. Gen. Fritz Fine who wrote reports, but “not a
goddamned thing happened.”[7]

Though Rufus Phillips believed An’s motivation was concern for the human tragedy at An Phu,[8] spy An had also achieved the objective of
disinformation, showing that pacification was not working to Phillips a  man deeply dedicated to helping the Vietnamese pacification and nation building.

Spy An’s northern commander, Mai Chi Tho, thought
that impugning the effectiveness of pacification was one of An’s greatest
achievements,[9] but Mai Chi Tho did not explain to Larry Berman,
An’s biographer, why An’s reports on pacification had high value added.

After all, the North Vietnamese already had reports from thousands of their other
cadre in the hamlets of South Vietnam who saw pacification up close and
personal every day in thousands of hamlets. An’s contribution was surely different.

The value of An’s work was likely sowing disinformation among the allies, saying the effective was ineffective and the humane was inhumane.

Moyar: Pacification Effective

Mark Moyar has documented that pacification programs had considerable successes in his Phoenix and The Birds of Prey[10], a book that was checked out only twice in a
decade from the shelves of professor Larry Berman’s university, UC-Davis, where he and others gave courses on the Vietnam War to a student body of 20,000.

A massive propaganda campaign was necessary to
defame pacification, the war in the shadows the communists finally lost. To
this day history falsely records pacification, particularly Phoenix, as brutal
and ineffective.  Later, the North Vietnamese admitted that Phoenix was effective[11] and that they had nonetheless successfully
undermined its legitimacy. “History,” Napoleon said, “is a fraud agreed upon.”

Phoenix—Moral and Effective Work to Pacify Villages

Pacification, especially the Phoenix program, has been falsely portrayed as an ineffective
program of indiscriminate assassination of thousands of innocent civilians and
political opponents. Both immoral and ineffective.

Its object was to neutralize the Viet Cong’s apparatus, its organized cadre, its secret shadow
government, propaganda shows and structure of terror. Neutralization could
consist of defection, capture, imprisonment, and yes, death. The Phoenix
program was the successor to a wide range of programs beginning with Diem,
Lansdale and Rufus Phillips such as the Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation, ICEX, Civil Action
Program, CAP, and in South Vietnamese it was known as Phung Hoang.

War Against A Shadow Government

This “war against the shadow government” was vast, complex and diverse and continued for many
years across many provinces and through many fits and starts and name changes.

Mark Moyar in Phoenix and the Birds of Prey presents the most thorough and honest treatment.[12] Moyar argues that Phoenix was neither
entirely black nor entirely white. It was shades of gray. It is true that the
South Vietnamese “arrested, tortured and killed (some) civilians who were not
Viet Cong…[On the other hand, it is clear] The allies went out of their way to
keep such abuses from occurring…The gray of the allies tended to be lighter
rather than darker…[Certainly] Ideals ran into reality”[13] in the villages and on the battlefields.

From 1960-1967 South Vietnamese pacification had included capturing, torturing, blackmailing and killing VC.

After 1967, the Phoenix era beginning in July 1968, American CIA advisors generally prevented
South Vietnamese torture and killing and insisted upon evidence to imprison.
Thereafter most of the falsely accused were promptly released and others served
short terms. In the end, as to who ultimately killed the Cong, Mark Moyar
credits the South Vietnamese: Provincial Reconnaissance Units, PRUs, and local
militias, which “devastated the Viet Cong shadow government, as well as the Viet Cong guerrilla forces.”[14]
Bruce Lawlor, former CIA officer and attorney remembers,

“A female lawyer…asked me…whether I had killed any babies…

“How do you answer an idiot like that…

“The PRU wasn’t a conspiracy. It was never an assassination program.

“Sometimes we made mistakes…but there was no evil intent. There were a lot of very honorable people.”[15]
The communists understood Phoenix better than our own CIA officers and morally pretentious attorneys,
not to be an assassination program, but a combination of allied Special Forces
targeting the shadow government, the Viet Cong terror network. These forces
included the PRU, Special Police, unconventional ARVN and U.S. specialty units,
e.g. Kit Carson Scouts, national police forces and small paramilitary units.

Indeed, Viet Cong cadre, traveling with armed escorts, resisting arrest, were shot rather more
often than they were peacefully arrested. Another explanation for high kill
rates was the bookkeeping—who got the credit. Phoenix
intelligence units provided the names of VC members to U.S. and ARVN military
units. Yet if ordinary military actions killed someone on the list, Phoenix
units were credited with the kill[16] instead of ARVN military units.

Hence, dead VC killed in armed combat and carried
on the Phoenix lists, easily were misinterpreted or intentionally characterized
as Phoenix assassinations.  It was this faulty method of accounting, so endemic to McNamara’s obsession with counting
things, resulting in Phoenix intelligence operations wrongfully being morphed
into an assassination program directed at civilians.

Covert cadre pretending to be civilians did not make them so.

It was this failure to make distinctions absolutely necessary in a covert war such as that fought in Vietnam and now in
Iraq and Afghanistan that led to charges of brutality and wanton civilian killing.

But killing armed Viet Cong cadre, dressed as civilians, was the same as killing armed soldiers, spies and terrorists. Viet
Cong cadres, whatever their disguises, were combatants, not civilians.[17]

But the Americong was highly proficient at disseminating this myth of wanton indiscriminate
killing of civilians.  For example, Elton
Manzione, a VVAW member is often cited as someone who claimed he had murdered
many civilians. Yet Navy Seals who served in Vietnam did not know this
self-proclaimed Seal because Manzione had never been to Vietnam.[18] Likewise, Mark Moyar discredits two other
witnesses, Mike Beamon and Kenneth Barton Osborne as an imposter and as a liar respectively.[19]
Journalists, Neil Sheehan and Frances Fitzgerald, widely promulgated the ruling myths of Phoenix assassinations.

Attempts were made to debunk the myth.  For example, in
answering the charge by columnist Walter Scott that Phoenix “established a new
high for U.S. political assassinations in Vietnam,” Phoenix Director, William
Colby, in a letter to editor Lloyd Shearer of Parade magazine on January 11, 1972 wrote:

“‘…Operation Phoenix is not and was not a program of assassination.

“It countered the Viet Cong apparatus attempting to overthrow the Government of [South] Vietnam by targeting its leaders.

“Wherever possible, [members of the Viet Cong apparatus] …were apprehended or invited to defect, but a substantial
number were killed in firefights during military operations or resisting capture.

“There is a vast difference in kind, not merely degree, between these combat casualties (even including the few
abuses which occurred) and the victims of the Viet Cong’s systematic campaign of terrorism…”[20]

Of the 15,000 neutralized in 1968 some 72% were captured, 13 rallied to the government, and
only 15% were killed.[21] The South Vietnamese embraced pacification after Tet 1968. In 1969 the number of killed doubled. Through July 1972 26,000 killed, 32% were killed.[22]

It was hardly successful as an assassination program when those in custody stayed alive.

Hanoi Found Phoenix Effective

Besides accusations of the immorality of Phoenix, another contradictory false claim was
simultaneously disseminated, namely that Phoenix was not effective. Nguyen Co
Thach, a senior North Vietnamese diplomat, said that Phoenix, “had slaughtered
far more than the 21,000 officially listed… We had many weaknesses in the south because of Phoenix.”[23]

For the sake of argument, as an assassination programs Phoenix was very ineffective 73% of the 67,006
“neutralized” Viet Cong defected or were captured, only 27% were killed.[24]
The Communists knew pacification programs were always a threat to the Viet Cong
and could sometimes be very effective. Hanoi assessed Phoenix as a combination
of “political, economic, and cultural schemes with espionage warfare in order
to eliminate the infrastructure of the revolution and build the infrastructure of neo-colonialism.”[25]

After the war the communists told Stanley Karnow, that Phoenix was “the single most effective
program you used …in the entire war.”[26]
That was why Hanoi made pacification programs prime targets of propaganda blasts on the Second
Front, where their reliable agents could be expected to dutifully parrot the North Vietnamese party line.

In the end, Mark Moyar, author of the definitive work on
the Phoenix pacification program, writes, “The Government of Vietnam had won
the struggle for control over rural South Vietnam and the allegiance of its inhabitants, but it lost the war.”[27][1]


[1] Mark Moyar, “VILLAGER ATTITUDES DURING THE FINAL DECADE OF THE VIETNAM WAR, 1996
Vietnam Symposium, “After the Cold War: Reassessing Vietnam,” 18-20
April 1996, http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vietnamcenter/events/1996_Symposium/96papers/moyar.htm

[2] Cutting vegetation, erecting fences, moats, towers, guard posts and government forces manning the hamlet 24
hours a day. See: Moyar, Phoenix, 126.

[3] Marguerite Higgins, Our Vietnam Nightmare, New York: Harper & Row, 1965, 116-7.

[4] Karnow, 257.

[5] Rand Vietnam Interviews, Series AG, No. 545, 30 cited in Mark Moyar, “VILLAGER ATTITUDES DURING THE FINAL DECADE OF THE
VIETNAM WAR, 1996 Vietnam Symposium, “After the Cold War: Reassessing
Vietnam,”18-20 April 1996, http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vietnamcenter/events/1996_Symposium/96papers/moyar.htm

[6] Pike, Chapter 1, War in Shadows, Boston: Boston Publishing Co., 1988, 6.

[7] Rufus Phillips, “Rings of Steel,” Al Santoli, To Bear Any Burden, 167-8.

[8] Rufus Phillips, Why Vietnam Matters: An eyewitness account of lessons not
learned,
Naval Institute Press, 2008, 270-272.

[9] Larry Berman, The Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter
& Vietnamese Communist Agent,
New York: Harper Collins, 2007, 178-9.

[10] Mark Moyar, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey; The CIA’s Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong, Annapolis:
Naval Institute Press, 1997; See also Lewis B. Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Final Years in Vietnam,
New York: Harcourt, Brace 1999.

[11] Stanley Karnow, 601-2.

[12] Mark Moyar, Phoenix…

[13] Mark Moyar, Phoenix…, xvi.

[14] Mark Moyar, Phoenix , xi.

[15] Mark Moyar, Phoenix 365n45 cites his interview of Bruce Lawlor.

[16] D.E, Bordenkircher, S.A. Bordenkircher, Tiger Cage: Untold Story, Abby Publishing, 1998, 31.

[17] Mark Moyar, Phoenix, 226n9 cites Stuart A. Herrington, 13.

[18] Mark Moyar, Phoenix, 225n6 cites Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program, NY: Pocket Books, 1994, 340.

[19]Mark Moyar, Phoenix [Also University of Nebraska, 2007.93-96, 117, 213, 216, 380 n26.

[20] CIA, FOIA, W.E. Colby to Lloyd Shearer, January 11, 1972, at 668 of Family Jewels.

[21] Lewis Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of
America’s Last Years in Vietnam
, New York: Harcourt, 1999, 145.

[22] Moyar Phoenix and the Birds of Prey, 236.

[23] Mark Moyar, Phoenix, 246n9 cites Seymour Hersh, Price of
Power
: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, NY: Summit Books, 1983, 280-81.

[24] Bill Laurie, Godzilla at Khe Sanh: Viet Nam’s Enduring Hallucinatory
Illusions
, unpublished manuscript to author August 26, 2009.

[25] War Experiences Recapitulation Committee of the High-Level Military Institute, Vietnam:
The Anti-U.S. Resistance War for National Salvation,
1954-1975, English 122
cited in Lewis Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final
Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam
, New York: Harcourt, 1999, 147.

[26] Karnow Vietnam, 602.

[27] Rufus Phillips, “Rings of Steel,” Al Santoli, To Bear Any Burden, 167-8.

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Cambodia Comrades in Arms Vietnam

Vietnam in HD: Barry Romo, Hanoi Agent? w/ postwar UPDATE

Comrades—Barry Romo
Barry Romo was a major commentator on the History Channel’s “Vietnam in (High Definition)—HD.” The viewer is informed that
Romo came home to toss his war medals and join the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, VVAW.
That account is incomplete.
In “Vietnam-HD” Barry Romo was falsely identified as a spokesman for American veterans in Vietnam. He
was a willing and enthusiastic agent of Hanoi during the war. He and others
like him did not seek peace in Vietnam. They sought victory for the Communist
enemy and a transformed America.
Romo had joined the enemy in war and at home. Today he continues in Iraq and the USA. (Update Below)
The horrific consequences for the peoples of Indochina cannot be fixed by a correction of Barry Romo’s curriculum vitae, but perhaps history
can catch up with the truth.
The following are extended excerpts from Comrades in Arms: How the
Americong Won the War in Vietnam Against the Common Enemy—America.
These extended
excerpts show the full context of Romo’s participation in pro-Hanoi activities.
Though a numerical minority, the collaborators with Hanoi created a large number of front groups claiming to
speak for vast constituencies: women, lawyers, doctors, students, racial minorities, and war veterans.[1]
Romo played a prominent role in Vietnam Veterans Against the War, VVAW which, among other groups, fronted for Hanoi.
At most VVAW had a few thousand members out of the 2.4 million who served in Vietnam.
American War Medals Tossed
On April 23, 1971, John Kerry led members of VVAW in a protest of tossing American war medals and
ribbons over a fence in front of the U.S. Capitol. “We came here to undertake one last mission, to
search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war,” Kerry said.
Among those tossing their medals are Rep. Ron Dellums, (D-California),[3] and Barry Romo.[4]
Parts of the toss were a fraud.
VVAW Tosses Medals: Some Theirs Some Not
Paul Withers of Boston came to the microphone claiming to be a former Green Beret. He said he had received
nine purple hearts and a long list of other medals, including the Distinguished Service Cross.[5]
The name Withers does not appear in an alphabetical list of the 1,055
recipients of the Distinguished Service Cross between the names Wishik,
Jeffrey and Witherspoon, Thomas where Withers should appear.[6]
Moreover, a Purple Heart website
cites Medal of Honor recipient Robert Howard being wounded 14 times in 54 months receiving a total of 9 awards
of the Purple Heart.[7] The Purple Heart website does not mention Withers as a recipient of an equal number of Purple Hearts.
While the “absence of a name should NOT
be construed to definitively negate a veteran’s claim to this award,” the VVAW
was legendary for the phony claims of its members including one of its
presidents Al Hubbard. B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley in Stolen Valor
document 1,700 persons fabricating war stories.
Lying about service in Vietnam gained veterans benefits for those
who had not earned them, made political points and answered the question, “What
did you do during the Vietnam War?” By 2000 service in Vietnam had become honorable.
Scott Swett reports that some VVAW participants were carrying medals for others who could
not make the trip to the Washington rally.
VVAW member Steve Pitkin remembered someone with long hair holding a bag filled with military
ribbons and medals and offering them to VVAW members. Pitkin said that most of
the medals, Korean War, weren’t right for service in Vietnam. Pitkin heard that
VVAW had cleaned out the local Army-Navy stores the day before. Disgusted,
Pitkin grabbed his handful of medals and threw them not over the fence, but
into a mob of reporters and marched off. [8]
Hanoi Happy With Medal Toss
Hanoi appreciated their front groups and their activities including the medal toss.
…Enemy’s Intimate Knowledge of U.S. Antiwar Movement–Viet Cong
Directive 31
In the midst of the spring demonstrations on April 28, 1971 the Viet Cong, oft described as uninformed black-pajamaed peasants
isolated from great world affairs, issued Directive No. 31 OT/TV[9] ordering VCI cadre to “step up …the anti-Vietnam War movement of the Americans.”
Directive No. 31 very precisely identified the activities of every major antiwar organization from
March through May 1971 including: the “nationwide alliance for peace” [i.e.
National Peace Action Coalition, NPAC], the Alliance of Americans for Just
Peace [i.e. Peoples Coalition for Peace and Justice, PCPC], the “US war
veterans who have fought in Vietnam” [i.e. Vietnam Veterans Against the War,
VVAW,] and “the families of those US soldiers who were KIA or captured” [i.e. COLIFAM].
The Directive No. 31 also mentioned ‘a law court to denounce the crimes of the US” [i.e. the VVAW’s
Winter Soldier Investigation], the “return of medals” [VVAW medal toss] and the demonstrations on April 24.
The Directive showed that Hanoi’s puppet had either a very comprehensive understanding of the
anti-war movement inside the USA or had a Hanoi-American author or both.
VVAW’s Joe Urgo on a tour in Hanoi received four tapes of POWs held by the Provisional Revolutionary
Government of South Vietnam—the Viet Cong.[10]
One POW was disturbed by “stories” of atrocities and had heard “reports” of the VVAW medal tosses.
Another praised the patriotism of PCPJ and VVAW. Another accused the U.S. of
“waging the most vicious and ignoble war of all times,”[11] a Hanoi theme John Kerry and VVAW oft repeated.
Meeting Pham Van Dong
OUpon meeting the PCPJ, VVAW and NPAC delegation in Hanoi, Pham Van Dong “highly praised the antiwar
activities…especially in the 1971 spring offensive” in which the VVAW had
played such a large role in the “Dewey Canyon”: the medal toss.
Radio Hanoi said, “The American guests …welcomed the Seven Point peace initiative…and promised to push
on [with] their coordinated antiwar actions.”[12]
…VVAW Plans Another Hanoi Tour
Al Hubbard whose credentials were marred by his lies about his rank and service in Vietnam did
not stand for reelection to VVAW. His pro-Hanoi agenda would continue nonetheless.
The Houston meeting of VVAW on the 11th of April 1972 would select its nominees
for a proposed trip to Hanoi.
Prospective candidates for a Hanoi trip were: were George Smith, Indiana-Ohio, a former POW; Marty O.
Jordan, an Indian from Arkansas; Scott Camil, Florida advocate of the
assassination of pro-war U.S. Senators; John Musgrave, Kansas; Barry Romo,
California; David Evans Ross, Colorado; and Bill Marshall, Michigan, a black.
Alternates selected were Peter Mahoney, Louisiana; Richard Bangert, Missouri;
Mike Dedrick, Seattle; Chuck Geisler, Michigan; Gale Graham, New York; and Jon
Birch, Philadelphia.[13]
The FBI transmitted the list of VVAW nominees for a Hanoi trip to the President and to
diplomatic and military agencies.[14] Local FBI offices were instructed to find
“possible weaknesses including pending prosecution, etc which can be exploited to bar individuals’ travel…”[15]
On May 9, 1972 John Smith, regional coordinator of the Connecticut VVAW, wrote to the North
Vietnamese Embassy, Paris offering a medical assistance team for Hanoi.[16]
Plans proceeded to send a seven-person VVAW team to Paris to meet with North
Vietnamese. It would cost $30,000, but VVAW was hopeful that Jane Fonda and
Soviet Union (half) would cover a major portion.[17]
Al Hubbard went on a California fundraising tour to San Francisco.
The Christmas Bombings of Hanoi: Barry Romo’s Ringside in Hanoi
On December 11, 1972 Anniversary Tours, a
Communist Party-USA owned travel agency, booked Scandinavian Airlines, SAS,
flights out of JFK Airport bound for Hanoi with folksinger Joan Baez,
the Episcopal Rev. Michael Allen of Yale Divinity, Barry Romo of VVAW, and Gen.
Telford Taylor, the former chief counsel of the war crimes trials of the Nazis at Nuremberg, Germany.[18]
On December 13, 1972, Cora Weiss held a press conference and introduced Baez, Allen, Taylor and
Romo as departing for Hanoi. Baez said she wanted to meet North Vietnamese and
to witness war damage. Allen said they carried 500 pieces of mail. Weiss said this was COLIFAM’s 36th mail trip.
…“Wet His Pants”
Nixon’s “Christmas” bombing strategy in December 1972 worked.
As Nixon and Kissinger first claimed, American POW’s later confirmed and the North Vietnamese admit today, the
December bombings were terrifying.  Joan Baez in the Metropole’s bomb shelter with Rev. Michael Allen of Yale Divinity,
Barry Romo of VVAW and Telford Taylor sang Christmas Carols. Close by in the
“Hanoi Hilton” the POWs cheered.
The Vietnamese trembled.[19] Truong
Nhu Tang remembered, “I had been caught in the Apocalypse. The terror was
complete. One lost control bodily functions as the mind screamed
incomprehensible orders to get out.”[20] One POW saw his prison guard
“trembling like a leaf, drop his rifle, and wet his pants.”[21]
Some 42,000 bombs fell seeking “maximum destruction of selected military targets.”
Hanoi’s 1,242 SAM missiles and artillery shells fired at American
aircraft fell back down amongst the civilians remaining in Hanoi.[22]
Romo Claims Civilians Targeted
VVAW’s Barry Romo claimed the bombing was
never to destroy military targets, but to terrorize and demoralize the
Vietnamese people. Bombs falling on nonmilitary targets were not errors. The
same homes and shops were hit several times, Romo claimed.[23]
Yet the actual orders from Washington were to
“exercise precaution to minimize risk of civilian casualties…”[24] Aircrews were ordered to maintain straight and
level flight to “maximize aiming time” and to “reduce the
chances of civilian damage.”[25]
These orders increased crew exposure to the
world’s best antiaircraft defenses. Although not the nuclear holocaust the left
frequently accused the US of planning—whenever the U.S. showed even diplomatic
firmness to Communist aggression–the new smart bombs fell with great accuracy.
“Carpet Bombing”
Stanley Karnow says American newspapers, television, and radio had uncritically carried a
French reporter’s claims [in Le Monde] of “carpet bombing” of downtown
Haiphong and Hanoi.  Malcolm Browne of The
New York Times
, a war critic, said this was “grossly overstated.”
Indeed, even Tran Duy Hung, mayor of Hanoi denied such false claims.  Karnow says, “American antiwar
activists…during the attacks urged the mayor to claim a death toll of ten
thousand.”
The suspects for such an intentional fabrication, a lie, would have
been Joan Baez, Barry Romo, Michael Allen, and Telford Taylor. Mayor Tran
refused to bump the numbers because “his government’s credibility was at stake.”
The North Vietnamese counted 1,318 civilian fatalities in Hanoi and 305 in Haiphong—a pittance
of the 85,000 killed in the real carpet firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945.[26]
Earlier in 1972, the North Vietnamese had turned artillery upon civilians
fleeing Quang Tri and An Loc killing at least 15,000. There was neither
discernible media nor “peace” pilgrim outrage to this slaughter of the purely innocent.
VVAW Support Hanoi’s Line and Tone
….At its January 4-8, 1973 national steering committee meeting of 102 delegates VVAW discussed
the inaugural, supported the Vietnamese 9 Point Peace Plan and approved sending
cash and medical supplies to the National Liberation Front.[27] Deciding to take a less militant tone than
their previous public tossing away of war medals, takeover of the Statute of
Liberty etc., the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, VVAW, vowed to refrain from violence and stop carrying the Viet Cong flag.
Had the North Vietnamese told VVAW to tone it down?
Barry Romo, returned from talks with communist officials in North Vietnam and hearing bomb
blasts, spoke at Arlington National Cemetery and signed the 9-point peace plan.[28]
Some 2,000 attended the Arlington demonstration and 30,000 from allied groups
rallied at the Washington Memorial.[29]
…VVAW Supports Amnesty for Draft Dodgers and Deserters
April 19-23, 1973 the VVAW National Steering Committee met at George Stapleton’s Ranch and at
Bernalillo Community Center in Placitas, New Mexico. Ed Damato discussed an
ambitious VVAW effort to win amnesty for deserters and draft dodgers.[30]
May 26-28 about 30 VVAW members including Al
Hubbard, Barry Romo, representatives of PCPJ, Fellowship Of Reconciliation and
persons from Canada and Europe attended an Amnesty Action Conference in Toronto, Canada.
Al Hubbard said, “Third World” brothers—blacks,
Hispanics—received a disproportionate number of less than honorable discharges.
The VVAW dominated conference supported unconditional amnesty and sought to
expand its amnesty efforts beyond its PCPJ patron to include Clergy and Laity
Concerned, CALC, and the War Resisters League, WRL.
The May Toronto conference was followed by the
creation of VVAW clearinghouse on amnesty, by the Midwest Amnesty Conference of
the National Council for Universal and Unconditional Amnesty, NCUUA, in
September[31] and by an amnesty conference at Edgewater
College in Madison Wisconsin in October.[32]
In January 1974 Fellowship for Reconciliation, War Resisters League and the Women Strike
for Peace, WSP, held an organizational meeting for amnesty. FOR files indicate
the ACLU, AFSC, CALC, WRL, WSP and other organizations supported amnesty for deserters.[33]
On April 11-15, 1974 a VVAW National Steering Committee would reaffirm its dedication to fight against imperialism and fight
for amnesty for deserters. The National Unitarian Organization of Churches,
NUOC, agreed to help pay for the VVAW amnesty campaign. Demonstrations were planned for May 17-18, 1974 and July 1- 4, 1974.[34]
In June VVAW/WSO conducted workshops on amnesty
through the Washington Peace Center Amnesty Project focusing on VVAW’s
Discharge Upgrading Project[35] using a National Council of Churches, NCC, film,
“Amnesty or Exile” before church and peace groups.
On occasion in the
Washington region the conservative Young Americans for Freedom debated the
issue. On WMAL-Channel 7, Henry Swartzchild of ACLU, Sen. Claireborne Pell and
Rev. Sterling Morse of NCC favored amnesty. Sen. Strom Thurmond, Rep. Larry
Hogan and Brian Jones, VFW, opposed.[36]
Meanwhile Hanoi had released POWS according to their own schedule and agenda.
…VVAW Goes International in St. Louis
August 23-27, 1973 nearly 70 members of VVAW from 15 states attended the National steering
committee in St. Louis, Missouri. Discussions covered recruiting GI’s at bases
overseas and detecting and jamming U.S. electronic surveillance.
Barry Romo read a telegram from a Cambodian General “thanking the American people and the VVAW
for…stopping the bombing in Cambodia. …Keep up the good work.”[37]
Romo had been communicating with the
Cambodian shadow government of Norodom Sihanouk, which had fallen under Khmer
Rouge control in May.
The Khmer Rouge–butchers of two million people–would never be remembered for its good
works.  Bill Hager objected to the Marxist-Leninist slant of VVAW national—Sam Schorr and Venceremos Brigadier
Brian Adams. For such Bill Hager was deemed incapable of political growth.[38]
…VVAW Solidarity With Khmer Krahom: Barry Romo
In Paris December 8-9, 1973, VVAW members Barry Romo and Peter Zastrow attended a Conference of
Solidarity with the Cambodian People.
The Cambodian Khmer Krahom had previously awed the VVAW delegates at the WPC conference in Moscow.
Romo had faithfully reported the Cambodian communist agenda. The Khmer Krahom demanded
the U.S. stop bombing Cambodia and aiding the “puppet” Lon Nol regime. It also
and recognize the Khmer Krahom dominated Royal Government of National Union of
now puppet Prince Norodom Sihanouk. “With the rainy season ending shortly in
Cambodia, the liberation forces will be on the move and in need of as much support as we can give them.”
VVAW delegates to the Paris conference, Romo and Zastrow, vowed, “to continue our support of the
struggle of the people of Cambodia” against American bombing and the puppet Lon Nol.[39]
And the Cambodians made a chilling forecast: “They do not intend to settle for anything less than total victory.”[40]
Saloth Sâr, Pol Pot, brutal leader of the Khmer Krahom was on the payrolls of Vietnamese and Chinese Communists and
Paris trained. Sar was fan of utopian socialism and took his practical
political instruction from reading Lenin, Stalin and Mao in Paris cafes.
Communists Rain Artillery and Rockets on Fleeing Cambodians
Meanwhile, back in Cambodia
the NVA and Khmer Rouge rained artillery and rockets upon the civilian
population of Phnom Penh, Cambodia who fled to safety or hunkered down in
bunkers, ditches and behind sandbags.
Agence France Presse reported 100 dead and 300
wounded over four days.
Elizabeth Becker told readers of the Washington Post,
“One can only imagine that many more wounded and dead were lying undiscovered
in bunkers and ditches.” Becker noted, “Phenom Penh is now experiencing the war
the way countless other villages have during the past three years.”
An unidentified European women, said, “I saw a rocket land just ahead of me.
…bodies shot into the sky so I ran home and drank one scotch.”[41]
The woman left in a few days yet another witness removed from the scene of a secret war of artillery and
terror in Cambodia. The North Vietnamese communists and Khmer Krahom were  far more evil than America’s long pilloried
“secret” bombing reported in every day’s New York Times.
Conclusion
In “Vietnam-HD” Barry Romo was falsely identified as a spokesman for American veterans in Vietnam. He
was a willing and enthusiastic agent of Hanoi during the war. He and others
like him did not seek peace in Vietnam. They sought victory for the Communist enemy and a transformed America.
The horrific consequences for the peoples of Indochina cannot be fixed by a correction of Barry Romo’s curriculum vitae, but perhaps history can catch up with the truth.
POST WAR UPDATE: Transforming America
Revolutionary Union–Revolutionary Communist Party.
Besides aiding Hanoi Romo’s VVAW continued on a far leftist path to transform America under
their increasingly a false flag of veterans rights.
Many sympathetic historians of VVAW, FBI informers, and local police reports agree on the critical facts.
During 1973, members of the Maoist Robert Avakian’s Revolutionary Union, RU (in fall of 1975
renamed the Revolutionary Communist Party, RCP) became active in VVAW[42]
with Barry Romo’s support. The RU faction claimed to represent an activist
veteran’s “vanguard of revolutionary change.”
In supporting the Revolutionary
Union (Revolutionary Communist Party) faction, Barry Romo said VVAW had to
avoid becoming a “Petite bourgeois debating society.” It was a classic split
between Maoists and other communists, single issue versus multiple issue.[43]
Like Barry Romo, VVAW’s Joe Urgo was also a member of the Revolutionary Communist
Party USA, RCUSA along with SDs members Clark Kissinger and Carl Davidson.[44]
VVAW Honors Disloyal POWs
In 1973 The VVAW appily recognized and welcomed home the POW’s Peace Committee which had
voluntarily made propaganda broadcast for Hanoi from the “Hanoi Hilton” where other
POWs were tortured to confess war crimes. VVAW listed the names and address of
the collaborators in VVAW minutes and newsletters. [45]
This VVAW roll of honor was SSG John A. Young, Sp4 Michael Branch, SSG Robert
P. Chenoweth, SSG James A. Daly, Sgt. Abel L. Kavanaugh, SSG King David Rayford
Jr., SSG Alphonso Ray Riate, and Pvt. Frederick L. Elbert Jr.
The now Marxist VAW had dropped the commissioned officers, members of the ruling class Col.
Miller and Cmd. Wilber, from their honor roll. The VVAW was surely under orrect party discipline.
Revolutionary Communist Party
In the fall of 1974, RU became the Revolutionary Communist party (RCP). VVAW/WSO members Barry
Romo, Bill Davis, and Pete Zastrow numbered among the founders. Uncertain about taking over VVAW/ WSO Davis, Zastrow, and Romo were elected to the national
office. “Their takeover resulted in the disintegration of the organization. By
the fall of Saigon in May 1975, VVAW/WSO had become just another small eft-wing splinter group.”[46]
In December 1974 according o an FBI report, “VVAW/WSO leaders voted at the Nat’l. Steering Committee meeting
to align with the RU, which organization follows a strict Maoist line designed o bring about violent revolution in the U.S.”[47]
Celebrating Communist Victories
A VVAW/WSO letter ays, “The Vietnamese and Cambodians have won great victories …aided by
progressive people and organizations throughout the world … such as IPC and
VVAW/WSO. …We too will one day celebrate our victory over imperialism.”[48]
New York: Khmer Rouge Welcomed
Five months after te fall of Phnom Penh on September 6, 1975 IPC, VVAW/WSO, the Maoist
Revolutionary Union (Revolutionary Communist Party), and the CPUSA sponsored a
reception at John C. Bennett’s Union Theological Seminary to receive thanks
from two Kampuchea (Cambodian) generals and Vice Prime Minister Ieng Sary for te American left’s support against “U.S. imperialist forces.”[49]
The Americans members of the antiwar movement had helped unleash one of the most loodthirsty regimes in human history.
The National ffice Collective of VVAW/WSO had thought the Indochina Peace Campaign, IPC,
was insufficiently revolutionary for getting involved in electoral politics.
Revolutionary Tom Hayden has decided to run for the U.S. Senate in California.[50]
Planning to Disrupt America’s 200th Birthday
After the war Romo’s VAW’s sought to disrupt the 200th birthday of the Republic on July , 1976.
VVAW and Revolutionary Communist Party eadership
Dr. William Kintner, Professor at the University of Pennsylvania testified before the Senate  a rival July  4th Coalition, a radical group, the
Revolutionary Communist Party (formerly the Revolutionary Union) planned demonstrations
in Philadelphia on the Fourth of July 1976 under the slogan. “Get the rich
off our backs!” According to Kintner, “The  RCP, a Maoist-Communist group” sought to
organize thousands of through its own “RCP youth organization, the
Revolutionary Student Brigade and the Vietnam Vietnam Veterans Against the War,
which some consider an RCP front operation.”[51]
Promotional materials for the July 4th demonstrations showed Romo’s VVAW taking
a leading role from the beginning. ““It is in this spirit that the Vietnam
Veterans Against the War put out the original call…” And “The Unemployed
Workers Organizing Committee has since endorsed the rally, along with many
other fighting workers’ organizations.” Promotional materials listed The July
4th Coalition as including Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Unemployed Workers
Organizing Committee, Revolutionary Communist Party, Revolutionary Student Brigade and unspecified others.
The two key demands were to be “Jobs or Income Now” and “We Won’t Fight in a Rich Man’s War!”[52]
Inspector George Fenel, Philadelphia Police Department testified that the plans were to take
physical action for “Four Days of Raising Hell. Targets were “museums,
statues, forts.” And that “every time the rich celebrate, we should be there and be visible for the 4 days.”
VVAW and Barry Romo Lead Protest
Inspector Fenel alsodescribed Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) as the main organizer of a July
4th Coalition planning conference held on March 27 and 28, 1976, at New York
University in New York City attended by about 200 persons. The goal was 60,000
in march and rally where “We will do what we have to.”
The Rich Off Our Back July 4th Coalition split off from the main coalition. Barry Romo was among
its spokesman including June Cohen, Roger Tauss. Glen Kirby.[53]
By 1978, there was a split with Romo and others creating VVAW-AI [Anti-Imperialist] as an offshoot
of the larger VVAW/WSO. (Nicosia 2001, 312-313; Moser 1996, 127).
A number of sources allege that Barry Romo was a founding member of the Revolutionary
Communist Party, RCP. Some also show he had disputes with RCP. It appears he a
Maoist in VVAW created RCP along with VVAW members Bill Davis and Mike Zastrow
and with Maoist and Revolutionary Union member Robert Avakian.[54]
Romo Stays Left
Romo’s credentials have remained far left and associated with Communists and their fronts. A Chicago New Party (the Democratic Socialists of America,
ACORN and SEIU) mailing list circa 1993 included Barry Romo, VVAW.
In 1994 Barry Romo, Chicago was listed on a “Membership, Subscription and Mailing List”
for the Chicago Committees of Correspondence, an offshoot of the CPUSA.[55]
Barry Romo has been frequently cited and once published (May 27, 2005) in People’s World, self-described as a “direct descendant of the Dailey Worker…
We enjoy a special relationship with the Communist Party USA, founded in 1919, and publish its news and views.”
By 2007 on  VVAW stationary Romo condemns far leftists in VVAW. “The ultra-leftists, Trotskyists,
Maoists, Stalinists, anarchists, and Avakianoids are mostly estranged from
their own families, mostly active on campuses… and number in the thousands….Let’s
be clear. I don’t want them driven out of the movement or kept from speaking
(except for the Revolutionary Communist Party)…”[56]
In defending Marxist Ward Churchill, Romo condemned the Revolutionary Communist Party.
In opposing the Iraq War Romo has worked with radical, communist influenced antiwar organizationa just as he did in Vietnam.
Romo’s complaints about RCP and Communists are tactical and sectarian, not fundamental.
As a moderator at the VVAW’s “Winter Soldier” investigation of American war crimes in Detroit (
January 31, 1971, February 1 and 2, 1971) Barry Romo said, “[T]he pacification
program…consisted of moving or forcing villagers to leave their homes…to deny
them to the Communists….I saw the use of artillery fire against civilian
targets… with no regard taken for the Vietnamese. I saw rice stolen from
Vietnamese because it was considered too much for them to have. I saw also a
general racist attitude by most Americans towards the Vietnamese.”[57]
Romo said that the My Lai murder of innocent civilians was “general policy and not an isolated
incident. We’re trained… to kill…. It is not the fault of Lieutenant Calley. It
is not the fault of the infantryman in his platoon, but the fault of the U.S.
government and the U.S. military…The whole system is… set up to dehumanize us
and to make everybody we see a nonhuman so that we can kill them. It would be
impossible with our background to go into a village and kill a woman and child
unless we looked at those people as nonhumans…. that’s how we look at the Vietnamese.”[58]

[1]
Veterans: Jack Calhoun, William Cathcart, Jerry Chodick, Gerry Condon, Donald
Duncan, Jan Barry Crumb, Jack Godoy, Frank Hoffman, Al Hubbard, Pfc. James
Johnson, Bill Jones, John Kerry, Dee Knight, Steve Krauss, Robert Levine, Bob
Marinaro, Peter Martinsen, Donald McDonough, Robert Bruce MacLeod, Dennis Mora,
James Purdy, Barry Romo, David Samas, John Seeley, Mike Spector, David Kenneth
Tuck, Terry Whitmore and many others.

[2] E.g. WILPF’s Carol Pendell consulted with KGB officer, Sergi Paramanov, First
Secretary of the Soviet Mission.  John
Barron, KGB Today, Reader’s Digest Press, 1983, 242-3. VVAW had a number
of Soviet bloc contacts.

[3] Tim Wheeler and Gene
Tournour, “Vets Dump Medals, Nixon Ducks March,” Daily World, April 23,
1971 at Wintersoldier.com … CDW0424_1.jpg

[4] Vietnam HD, History Channel, November
2011.

[5] Tim Wheeler and Gene
Tournour, “Vets Dump Medals, Nixon Ducks March,” Daily World, April 23,
1971 at Wintersoldier.com … CDW0424_1.jpg

[6] ttp://www.homeofheroes.com/valor/0_DSC/4_rvn/dsc_rvn_list.html

[7] tp://www.homeofheroes.com/medals/purple_heart/purple_heart.html

[8] Pitkins recollections are a http://www.wintersoldier.com/staticpages/index.php?page=YesterdaysLies1. Armond Noble, publisher of
Military magazine, says that phony vts often have chests filled with medals worn in inappropriate patterns.

[9 Directive No. 31 OT/TV, pril 28, 1971 captured in the field by the 23rd infantry Division
forwarded to Commander, United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam
(COMUSMACV) and to Combined Documents Exploitation Center, CDEC, at the
United States Military Assistance Command, Saigon, Vietnam. Directive 31 is
CDEC Doc Log No. 05-1660-71 and item number 2150901041 on line at the Vietnam
Archive at Texas Tech. Also cited in small part in Thomas Lipscomb, “Hanoi
Approved of Role Played by Anti-War Vets, New York Sun, October 26, 2004
at nysun.com/article/7356A. The Combined Documentation Exploitation Center
(CDEC) was created in October 1966 under the MACV Assistant Chief of Staff for
Intelligence (J-2), with the mission of receiving and exploiting captured enemy
documents as a source of military intelligence for assessments and
planning.

[1o] BI, VVAW, Member[s] of ubject organization, n.d., 6.

[11] Scot Swett and Tim Zigler cite transcripts of recorded messages from US servicemen captured
in South Vietnam, August 1971, FBI VVAW, HQ 100-448092, section 11, 174-181.

[12] “Pham Van Dong Receives Two
Antiwar Delegations,” Hanoi International News Service, 1557 GMT, August 26,
1971, TTU Archive cited in Rothrock, Divided…171n35

[13] FBI, Houston to Director,
Teletype, URGENT April 12,  1972 list
names. For reasons unknown three names were redacted under FOIA- George Smith,
David Ross and Marty Jordan on Jan 1, 1994; FBI, Acting Director to SACs (List
Albany St. Louis), VVAW-IS-Revolutionary Activities, URGENT TELETYPE May 2,
1972, 7.

[14] FBI, Domestic Intelligence Division, Informative Note, April 12, 1972.

[15] FBI, fragment CV 100-31431, 3.

[16] FBI, New Haven memo, VVAW, May 31, 1972.

[17] FBI, St. Louis to Acting
Director, VVAW-IS-RA, 7;56 PM NITEL, May 12, 1972; FBI fragment May 24,1972,
file 100-448092, 2481-9

[18] FBI, Acting Director to
President, COLIFAM, internal Security-Revolutionary Activities, 6:05AM December
12, 1972

[19] Fourth Estate (University of Colorado), February 20, 1973 cited in FBI, Denver, Memo, “VVAW,
Appearance of Barry Romo, National Coordinator, in Colorado, February 15-16,
1973,” Denver, February 27, 1973; FBI, Legat Rome to Acting Director, VVAW,
IS-RA, Hilev, TELETYPE 4:30 PM January 30, 1973.

[20] Truong Nhu Tang cited in Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor, 216.

[21] Eschmann, 179N22.

[22] Eschmann, 202-203.

[23] FBI, Legat Rome to Acting Director, VVAW, IS-RA, Hilev, TELETYPE 4:30 PM January 30, 1973.

[24] Eschmann, 74-5 cites: W. Hays Parks, “Line Backer and the Law of War,” Air University
Review
, Vol. 34, No. 2, (January-February 1983), 18.

[25] Eschmann, 80 N 27 cites:
Brig. Gen. James R. McCarthy, Et Al, U.S.A.F., Linebacker II,
Airpower Research Institute, Maxwell AFB, Al, 1979, 46-47.

[26] Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, 653

[27] FBI, Chicago to acting Director, VVAW-IS-Ra Protests During Presidential Inaugural Ceremonies,
TELETYPE 756pM URGENT January 9, 1973

[28] FBI, Tampa to Acting
Director, VVAW-IS-RA, TELEYPE 8:15 PM January 16, 1973.

[29] FBI, Kansas City, Demonstrations During Presidential Inauguration, 1973” LHM, January 30, 1973;
FBI, Washington, “Protests During Presidential Inauguration, 1973,” LHM, February 5, 1973.

[30] Acting Director to Chicago, VVAW National Steering Committee Meeting Placitas, New Mexico, 4/19-23/73,
April 12, 1973;

[31] St. John’s Unitarian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, September 21-23, 1973.

[32] October 26-28, 1973; FBI, [Redacted] to Acting Director, VVAW/WSO. IS-RA,
TELETYPE 7:23 PM URGENT April 26, 1973; FBI Jacksonville, LHM, VVAW/Winter
Soldier Organization, April 30, 1973; SAC, Denver to Director, VVAW-IS-RA, July
30, 1973; FBI, Cincinnati to Director, “Proposed Midwest Amnesty Conference,
Sponsored by VVAW, Cincinnati, 9/21-23/73,” NITEL, 613 PM, September 18, 1973
CFR; FBI, [REDACTED] to Director, “Proposed Midwest Amnesty Conference,
Sponsored by VVAW, Cincinnati, 9/21-23/73,” NITEL 742 PM September 24, 1973.

[33] Records of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, USA,(FOR-USA), files of Jack Travers, Amnesty Coordinator,
DG 013, Section 2, Series G, G-8, Box 22,23, 24,25 Swarthmore College Library at Swarthmore.edu/library/peace.

[34] FBI, Milwaukee to Director,
VVAW/WSO National Steering Committee; Milwaukee, Wis., April 11-15,
1974.IS-VVAW/WSO. 00: Chicago. TELETYPE, 11:15PMTVKNITEL April 14, 1974, 1-2;
Newsletter, Washington Peace Center, June 1974, July 1974.

[35] Newsletter, Washington Peace Center, June 1974.

[36] Newsletter, Washington Peace Center, July 1974.

[37] FBI, [REDACTED] to
Director, VVAW/WSO National Steering Committee Meeting, St. Louis, Missouri,
6/23-27/73, IS-VVAW-WSO, TELETYPE, 12-35 PM URGENT August 31, 1973; FBI, St.
Louis to Director, VVAW/WSO National Steering Committee Meeting, St. Louis,
Missouri, 6/23-27/73, IS-VVAW-WSO, TELETYPE, 1120 PM NITEL August 27, 1973.

[38] FBI, [REDACTED] to Director, VVAW/WSO; IS-RA, TELETYPE, 1114PM NITEL September 19, 1973.

[39] “Two VVAW/WSO Members Attend Conference on Cambodia,” National Office, Newsletter #16, Dec. 5. 1973, 3.

[40] VVAW, National Office, Newsletter, # 14, November 1973, 12-13.

[41] Elizabeth Becker, “The Agony of Phnom Penh… On
Edge As Insurgents Escalate Artillery Fire,” Washington Post, January 28, 1974, A-1.

[42] Mark D. Harmon, Found, Featured, then Forgotten: U.S. Network TV News and the Vietnam Veterans
Against the War, Knoxville: New Found Press,
2011, Digital version at
www.newfoundpress.utk.edu/pubs/harmon
[43] Jeanne Friedman cited in Andrew Hunt, The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans
Against  the War
, New York University Press, 180n60; Barry Romo at  181.
[44] National Office Collective of VVAW/WSO to Dear IPC members, June 3, 1975.
[45] “Eight POWs Charged,” Weekly Indochina News Report, VVAW, Number 4, June 29, 1973.
[46] Vietnam Vets, “John Kerry and VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War), Bella Ciao, Sunday August 29, 2004 – 22:36,
http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article3093
[47] FBI Rpt. 12/15/75, S 75, p. 171-172.
[48] National Office Collective of VVAW/WSO to Dear IPC members, June 3, 1975.
[49] FBI, VVAW/WSO, fragment, October 8, 1975.
[50] National Office Collective of VVAW/WSO to Dear IPC members, June 3, 1975.
[51] THREATS TO THE PEACEFUL OBSERVANCE OF THE
BICENTENNIAL
, Hearing Before The Subcommittee To Investigate To Investigate
The Administration Of The Internal Security Act And Other Internal Security
Laws Of The Committee On The Judiciary  of
The United States Senate, Ninety-Fourth
Congress, Second Session June 18, 1976, 75-425 Washington 1976, p. 19.
http://www.archive.org/stream/threatstopeacefu00unit/threatstopeacefu00unit_djvu.txt
[52] “Fight Back July 4!…”, pamphlet,  RICH OFF OUR BACKS JULY 4TH COALITION, Revolutionary Student Brigade, Chicago, “The
Revolutionary Communist Party has forwarded to us  your request for copies…” Appendix to[11] THREATS TO THE PEACEFUL OBSERVANCE OF THE
BICENTENNIAL
, Hearing Before The Subcommittee To Investigate To Investigate
The Administration Of The Internal Security Act And Other Internal Security
Laws Of The Committee On The Judiciary of  The United States Senate,
Ninety-Fourth Congress, Second Session June 18, 1976, 75-425 Washington 1976, 109.
http://www.archive.org/stream/threatstopeacefu00unit/threatstopeacefu00unit_djvu.txt p. 109.
[53] THREATS TO THE PEACEFUL OBSERVANCE OF THE
BICENTENNIAL
, Hearing Before The Subcommittee To Investigate To Investigate
The Administration Of The Internal Security Act And Other Internal Security Laws
Of The Committee On The Judiciary of  The United States Senate,
Ninety-Fourth Congress, Second Session June 18, 1976, 75-425 Washington 1976,p.
40. http://www.archive.org/stream/threatstopeacefu00unit/threatstopeacefu00unit_djvu.txt
[54] As a Founder of Revolutionary Communist Party along with other VVAW members, Bill Davis and  Pete Zastrow. Maoist founder Robert Akavian is
unmentioned here in a discussion of internal VVAW factions. Ssee: Melvin Small and William D. Hoover
(eds.), Give Peace a Chance: Exploring the Vietnam Antiwar Movement : Essays from the Charles Debenedetti  Memorial Conference, Syracuse: Syracuse
Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution, June 1992, p. 152, note 24. http://books.google.com/books?id=j-AUuKaDCKUC&pg=PA152&lpg=PA152&dq=barry+romo+%22revolutionary+communist+party%22&source=bl&ots=1T4m4vVbDh&sig=Nu5q0r5cDwDeg1VrpeNbDh_vaDk&hl=en&ei=iznLTtCXG6nYiQLUgqTBCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=barry%20romo%20%22revolutionary%20communist%20party%22&f=false;
Romo as RCP activist in disputes among  VVAW members in Riverside County  California, see:  eyewitness Steve Hassna, “VietNam Veterans
Against the War – Part II 1975 and Into the Abyss,”  http://www.sonomacountyfreepress.com/hassna/vvaw2.html;
Romo as part of a RCP, Maoist take over of VVAW in 1971-1972 see: Tim Ziegler, Scott
Swett and Max Friedman, “Interview with Max Friedman,” The Inquisition, Right
Talk Radio, July 4, 2005, transcript at www.tosettherecordstraight.com/staticpages/index.Php?p…j.
[57] Barry Romo, The Veteran, Fall 2007, Volume 37, No. 2.
[58] Also, “All it has been has been the atrocities that have been committed and not the reasons
why. And it boils down to one thing, and that’s racism.” Third World Panel, Part
I, http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Winter_Soldier/WS_32_3d_World.html
[59]
“Americal Division,” Winter Soldier Investigation. http://www.wintersoldier.com/staticpages/index.php?page=2004031620223057&mode=print
WHAT READERS ARE SAYING: RELEVANCE
TO IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN, CHINA
“This guy’s stuff is awesome.
Fascinating. Incredible. Every Vietnam vet should have a copy.
A great
service for this country and the cause of freedom.””
LT. COL ROBERT K. BROWN,
publisher, Soldier of Fortune, Capt. Army Intelligence, Special Forces, 1st
Infantry, Phoenix Program Vietnam 1968-1971. sofmag.com.
Very detailed and valuable study…”MARK MOYAR, author of Triumph
Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965,
and Phoenix and the Birds of Prey:
Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam.
“Connects America’s left-wingers and the Communist brass of North Viet-Nam” ARMOND NOBLE, Publisher, Military magazine. Warrant
Officer, California State Military Reserve; US Army Signal Corps, Westinghouse Broadcasting, Time Magazine. Vietnam, 1966-67. milmag.com
“The Filet Mignon” of why Vietnam is relevant today. Stephen Sherman, 1st
Lt. Civil Affairs Officer, US Army, 5th Special Forces Group
(airborne) 1967-1968. www.viet-myths.net and www.specialforcesbooks.com
“A major element of the Vietnam War never before fully explored. …Some met with our enemies to encourage
them…Canfield focuses the spotlight on this conduct so the full history can be
known.” B.G. “JUG” BURKETT, co-author Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its
History
. 1st Lt., US Army, 199th Light Infantry Brigade, Vietnam.
“The ULTIMATE source on Vietnam and the Left” LT. COL.
ROBERT “BUZZ” PATTERSON, US Air Force (Ret) Author of Dereliction of Duty, Reckless Disregard, War Crimes
“VERY good. Interesting.” PROF. ROBERT TURNER, University of Virginia,
Author Vietnamese Communism: Its Origin and
Development
, Editor The Real Lessons of the Vietnam War: Reflections
Twenty-Five Years After the Fall of
Saigon. Capt. US Army Vietnam JUSPAO, American Embassy, Saigon.
“Wow! …an invaluable reference…monumental achievement.” FEDORA, Free Republic.
“Dissects…US fronts for Hanoi,” Bruce Kesler, Sgt., USMC, Intelligence, Vietnam 1969-70, founder of
Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace, 1971, contributing editor
familysecuritymatters.org, blogs on Maggie’s Farm.
“Greatfacts we will never see in the liberal media” DAN NGUYEN, Boat People
“Stunning…could have been written about what is happening now [in Iraq and Afghanistan].” RODNEY DALE, Texas
“Intriguing…raises never-before asked questions…” MELODY CONROY, W.W. Norton.
GREAT…impressive book. “Comments
on Voice of America from Viet Kieu are positive.” NGHIA VO, Saigon Arts, Culture and
Education Institute, Author Bamboo Gulag, The Viet Kieu in
America
and The Vietnamese Boat People. SACEI07.org.
“Outstanding…we are all grateful…Should
drive a stake in the heart of the grand myths
…a vital piece of work,
necessary to any meaningful comprehension.” BILL LAURIE, Co-author Whitewash
Blackwash: Myths of the Vietnam War,
1st Lt. US Army (Ret) and defense attaché (1971-1975).
“A terrific history of the second front,” PROFESSOR
VICTOR COMERCHERO, Sacramento State Univ., former radical antiwar activist.
“A damn good piece of work” MIKE BENGE, contributor to Washington
Times
, History Channel, POW (1968-73), Vietnam: US Marines, 1956-1959,
International Voluntary Services (IVS), 1963-65; Foreign Service Officer, USAID, 1963-68.
“Wow. Impressivetour de force. I have never seen this breadth of information on the anti-war
crowd…A real jewel. Will make research of other Vietnam War scholars much
easier.” LT. COL. JAMES K. BRUTON, US Army SFT, Counterinsurgency Vietnam 1972.
“A tremendous project.” SCOTT SWETT, co-author To Set the
Record Straight
Webmaster, Swift Boats Veterans and POWs for Truth,
wintersoldier.com, tosettherecordstraight.com
“Massive study of the Hanoi Lobby” MAX
FRIEDMAN, National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, New Mobilization, Student Mobe, Washington Mobe and
correspondent in So. Vietnam. Co-author The Human Cost of Communism in Vietnam, 1972.
“Canfield amply documents a small group of New Left radicals who subverted the efforts of the US
military in Vietnam with pro-Communist propaganda and disinformation campaigns
in America.” JAMES McLEROY, 1st Lt., Army Special Forces, I Corps, 1967-68.
“I have been waiting for a book like Canfield’s for 40 years.” JACK J. GOERHRING III, Psychological War, Capt. US Army, Vietnam 1968-69.
“Takes the whole antiwar-activists-as-sincere-liberators myth and trashes
it… sets fire to the pile of pieces.  Wow.
A… truly monumental achievement.”
R. J. DEL VECCHIO Co-author Whitewash
Blackwash: Myths of the Vietnam War,
Cpl. Marine combat
photographer, 1st Marine Division, Vietnam (1967-8),
Amazing…dig so deep and see so far ahead.” THU-MINH
HUYNH, son of Gen. Huynh Cao
Recorded as the author has written” GEN.
HUYNH VAN CAO, Cdr. ARVN, 7th Division, 1961-63.
How well the NVA played the
political war
…should be known before all the veterans of the war die.” MIKE O’CONNELL, 101st Airmobile
Division, 1969-1970.
Promotes historical truths… and unfolds the ugly, shameful and mischievous acts of the
anti-war liberals and leftists in the USA and all over the world
. Joachim Le
“Masterpiece”, HUNG LE.

[1] Activist anti-war Veterans: Jack Calhoun, William Cathcart, Jerry Chodick, Gerry Condon, Donald
Duncan, Jan Barry Crumb, Jack Godoy, Frank Hoffman, Al Hubbard, Pfc. James
Johnson, Bill Jones, John Kerry, Dee Knight, Steve Krauss, Robert Levine, Bob
Marinaro, Peter Martinsen, Donald McDonough, Robert Bruce MacLeod, Dennis Mora,
James Purdy, Barry Romo, David Samas, John Seeley, Mike Spector, David Kenneth
Tuck, Joe Urgo, Terry Whitmore and many others in full text of Comrades in Arms.
[2] E.g.WILPF’s Carol Pendell consulted with KGB officer, Sergi Paramanov, First
Secretary of the Soviet Mission.  John Barron, KGB Today, Reader’s Digest Press, 1983, 242-3. VVAW had a number
of Soviet bloc contacts.
[3] Tim Wheeler and Gene Tournour, “Vets Dump Medals, Nixon Ducks March,” Daily World, April 23,
1971 at Wintersoldier.com … CDW0424_1.jpg
[4] Vietnam HD, History Channel, November 2011.
[5] Tim Wheeler and Gene Tournour, “Vets Dump Medals, Nixon Ducks March,” Daily World, April 23,
1971 at Wintersoldier.com … CDW0424_1.jpg
[8] Pitkins recollections are at http://www.wintersoldier.com/staticpages/index.php?page=YesterdaysLies1. Armond Noble, publisher of
Military magazine, says that phony vets often have chests filled with medals worn in inappropriate patterns.
[9] Directive No. 31 OT/TV, April 28, 1971 captured in the field by the 23rd infantry Division
forwarded to Commander, United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam
(COMUSMACV) and to Combined Documents Exploitation Center, CDEC, at the
United States Military Assistance Command, Saigon, Vietnam. Directive 31 is
CDEC Doc Log No. 05-1660-71 and item number 2150901041 on line at the Vietnam
Archive at Texas Tech. Also cited in small part in Thomas Lipscomb, “Hanoi
Approved of Role Played by Anti-War Vets, New York Sun, October 26, 2004
at nysun.com/article/7356A. The Combined Documentation Exploitation Center
(CDEC) was created in October 1966 under the MACV Assistant Chief of Staff for
Intelligence (J-2), with the mission of receiving and exploiting captured enemy
documents as a source of military intelligence for assessments and planning.
[10] FBI, VVAW, Member[s] of subject organization, n.d., 6.
[11] Scott Swett and Tim Ziegler cite transcripts of recorded messages from US servicemen
captured in South Vietnam, August 1971, FBI VVAW, HQ 100-448092, section 11, 174-181.
[12] “Pham Van Dong Receives Two
Antiwar Delegations,” Hanoi International News Service, 1557 GMT, August 26,
1971, TTU Archive cited in Rothrock, Divided…171n35
[13] FBI, Houston to Director, Teletype, URGENT April 12,  1972 list names.
For reasons unknown three names were redacted under FOIA- George Smith, David
Ross and Marty Jordan on Jan 1, 1994; FBI, Acting Director to SACs (List Albany
St. Louis), VVAW-IS-Revolutionary Activities, URGENT TELETYPE May 2, 1972, 7.
[14] FBI, Domestic Intelligence Division, Informative Note, April 12, 1972.
[15] FBI, fragment CV 100-31431, 3.
[16] FBI, New Haven memo, VVAW, May 31, 1972.
[17] FBI, St. Louis to Acting Director, VVAW-IS-RA, 7;56 PM NITEL, May 12, 1972; FBI fragment May 24,1972,
file 100-448092, 2481-9
[18] FBI, Acting Director to President, COLIFAM, internal Security-Revolutionary Activities, 6:05AM December 12, 1972
[19] Fourth Estate (University of Colorado), February 20, 1973 cited in FBI, Denver, Memo, “VVAW,
Appearance of Barry Romo, National Coordinator, in Colorado, February 15-16,
1973,” Denver, February 27, 1973; FBI, Legat Rome to Acting Director, VVAW,
IS-RA, Hilev, TELETYPE 4:30 PM January 30, 1973.
[20] Truong Nhu Tang cited in Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor, 216.
[21] Karl J. Eschmann, Linebacker: The Untold Story of the Air Raids Over North Vietnam, New York: Ballantine Books, 1989, 179N22.
[22] Eschmann, 202-203.
[23] FBI, Legat Rome to Acting Director, VVAW, IS-RA, Hilev, TELETYPE 4:30 PM January 30, 1973.
[24] Eschmann, 74-5 cites: W. Hays Parks, “Line Backer and the Law of War,” Air University
Review
, Vol. 34, No. 2, (January-February 1983), 18.
[25] Eschmann, 80 N 27 cites: Brig. Gen. James R. McCarthy, Et Al, U.S.A.F., Linebacker II,
Airpower Research Institute, Maxwell AFB, Al, 1979, 46-47.
[26] Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, 653
[27] FBI, Chicago to acting Director, VVAW-IS-Ra Protests During Presidential Inaugural Ceremonies,
TELETYPE 756pM URGENT January 9, 1973
[28] FBI, Tampa to Acting Director, VVAW-IS-RA, TELEYPE 8:15 PM January 16, 1973.
[29] FBI, Kansas City, Demonstrations During Presidential Inauguration, 1973” LHM, January 30, 1973;
FBI, Washington, “Protests During Presidential Inauguration, 1973,” LHM, February 5, 1973.
[30] Acting Director to Chicago,
VVAW National Steering Committee Meeting Placitas, New Mexico, 4/19-23/73, April 12, 1973;
[31] St. John’s Unitarian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, September 21-23, 1973.
[32] October 26-28, 1973; FBI, [Redacted] to Acting Director, VVAW/WSO. IS-RA,
TELETYPE 7:23 PM URGENT April 26, 1973; FBI Jacksonville, LHM, VVAW/Winter
Soldier Organization, April 30, 1973; SAC, Denver to Director, VVAW-IS-RA, July
30, 1973; FBI, Cincinnati to Director, “Proposed Midwest Amnesty Conference,
Sponsored by VVAW, Cincinnati, 9/21-23/73,” NITEL, 613 PM, September 18, 1973
CFR; FBI, [REDACTED] to Director, “Proposed Midwest Amnesty Conference,
Sponsored by VVAW, Cincinnati, 9/21-23/73,” NITEL 742 PM September 24, 1973.
[33] Records of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, USA,(FOR-USA), files of Jack Travers, Amnesty Coordinator,
DG 013, Section 2, Series G, G-8, Box 22,23, 24,25 Swarthmore College Library at Swarthmore.edu/library/peace.
[34] FBI, Milwaukee to Director, VVAW/WSO National Steering Committee; Milwaukee, Wis., April 11-15,
1974.IS-VVAW/WSO. 00: Chicago. TELETYPE, 11:15PMTVKNITEL April 14, 1974, 1-2;
Newsletter, Washington Peace Center, June 1974, July 1974.
[35] Newsletter, Washington Peace Center, June 1974.
[36] Newsletter, Washington Peace Center, July 1974.
[37] FBI, [REDACTED] to
Director, VVAW/WSO National Steering Committee Meeting, St. Louis, Missouri,
6/23-27/73, IS-VVAW-WSO, TELETYPE, 12-35 PM URGENT August 31, 1973; FBI, St.
Louis to Director, VVAW/WSO National Steering Committee Meeting, St. Louis,
Missouri, 6/23-27/73, IS-VVAW-WSO, TELETYPE, 1120 PM NITEL August 27, 1973.
[38] FBI, [REDACTED] to Director,
VVAW/WSO; IS-RA, TELETYPE, 1114PM NITEL September 19, 1973.
[39] “Two VVAW/WSO Members
Attend Conference on Cambodia,” National Office, Newsletter #16, Dec. 5. 1973, 3.
[40] VVAW, National Office, Newsletter, # 14, November 1973, 12-13.
[41] Elizabeth Becker, “The Agony of Phnom Penh… On Edge As Insurgents Escalate
Artillery Fire,” Washington Post, January 28, 1974, A-1.
Categories
Comrades in Arms Vietnam

Kent State: The Rest of the Story

Students Killed at Kent State and Jackson State
New Perspectives
Poorly understood and historically distorted events at Kent State in April 1970 turned millions
against the war.
Ohio National Guardsmen killed four students and wounded nine without readily apparent reason. Kent State
became another exemplar of how the U.S. government was conducting a uniquely
illegal and immoral war in Vietnam and on the very streets of America. The
background and context of radical political activities before and after those
events may perhaps offer new perspectives.
Radical Students for a Democratic Society Were Active at Kent State
At Kent State University in Ohio[1] for two years Weatherman Terry Robbins, SDS regional traveler, had helped Rick
and Candy Erickson and Weatherman and red diaper baby Howie Emmer organize[2]
a radical and militant chapter of the SDS ranging from six to 30 members.[3]
They operated out of the “Haunted House” on Ash Street up the hill from the fictional
“Bates Motel” in Alfred Hitchcock’s film classic “Psycho.”[4]
Assaulting Cops
A year before the killings, on April 8, 1969 six SDS members (No first name) Dimarco, Colin S. Neiberger,
George Gibeaut, Howard Emmer, Edward Erickson and Jeff David Powell—had been
arrested for assaulting campus cops at Kent State.[5]
Other SDS members at Kent State were Tim Butz, Joyce Cecora, Colin Neiburger and Mark Real.
Revolutionaries
Debbie Shryock of the Kent Daily Stater, wrote, ”They were…bent on destroying the university. They
were determined to start revolution here.”[6]
Many SDS national leaders visited the Haunted House, Bill Ayers, Corky Benedict, Katie Boudin, Lisa Meisel, Jim Mellen, Carl Oglesby, Diana Oughton, and Mark Rudd.
On April 28, 1969, Bernardine Dohrn had told students there to arm for revolution. On another occasion Jerry Rubin had said, “Until you are ready to kill your parents, you’re not ready to change this country.”[7]
Other groups at Kent State were the Young Socialist Alliance, YSL, Student Mobilization and Moratorium
Committee—all vigorous opponents of ROTC on campus.
Communists
Senior Professor Sidney L. Jackson, a lifelong communist activist of the CPUSA, was the faculty advisor to Kent State Committee to End the War,[8]
Among whose members were red diaper baby Howie Emmer, Bob Erlich, Joe Walsh,
Rick Erickson and Robin Marks. YSLer Mike Alewitz was leader of the Kent State Mobilization Against the War.
Weathermen Arrive on Scene: “Join the Americong…”
In early May 1970 cars arrived from Illinois and New York, home turfs of the Weather SDS, Bill Ayers
and others. In requesting help from the Governor, Kent Mayor Leroy told a grand
jury that two cars of Weathermen had arrived.[9]
The out of town contingent emerged with walkie-talkies and armbands. The
SDS Weather controlled Revolutionary Printing Cooperative Committee produced a
leaflet distributed at Kent State showing white radicals carrying rifles
captioned, “Join the Americong…Be an Outlaw. The Time is right for fighting
in the streets.” [10]
Not Students
Some of the most prominently witnessed leaders of the riots, Jerry Rupe, Rick Felber, Doug Cormak, Peter
Bleik, Thomas Foglesong and Thomas Miller, were not students of Kent State
University.[11] Witnesses later reported overhearing talk of meetings planning riots and the
burning of the ROTC building on campus[12] including gathering rocks[13],
railroad flares, and machetes. Students warned merchants to post signs
protesting the war in Vietnam and Cambodia or face damages to their stores.[14]
City of Kent: Days of Rage Before National Guard Called Out
Indistinguishable from the Weathermen “Days of Rage” in the streets of Chicago in October 1969, for three
days May 1-3, 1970 mobs surged through the streets of Kent, Ohio and the
university campus breaking windows, setting fires, burning the ROTC building,
attacking photographers, firemen and policemen and cutting fire hoses.[15]
Ohio Governor James Rhodes compared the mobs to Nazi brown shirts, Communists, nightriders and vigilantes.
They were “well-trained, militant” revolutionaries”.[16] [17]
Twenty-three faculty members of Kent State signed a leaflet distributed by the hundreds deploring the
Governor’s deployment of the National Guard saying the burning of the ROTC
building had to be taken in the “larger context of the daily burning of buildings
and people by our government in Vietnam, Laos and now Cambodia.” This faculty
minority demanded the removal of the National Guard, the end of “martial law”
and “greater understanding of the issues …contributing to the burning of ROTC building….”[18]
Only after the trashing of the city and the burning of the ROTC building, on May 4, 1970 had the Governor
called out the Ohio National Guardsmen.
Mobs Attack National Guard
Hundreds of students and nonstudents advanced upon the Guardsmen shouting obscenities and yelling KILL,
KILL, KILL.”[19] According to various witnesses and photographs the mob bombarded the Guardsmen
with bricks, concrete, golf clubs, baseball bats, spiked golf balls, sling
shots and ball bearings, razor embedded blocks of wood and bags of excrement.
Sniper Fire Reported
Radios of the National Guard and State Police reported sniper fire. Retreating up a hill one or more shots,
not from the Guard’s M-1 rifles according to contemporary witnesses, rang out.[20]
A TV reporter, Fred DeBrine of WKYC, claimed to have seen and overheard Kent
State student and FBI informant and photographer, Terry Norman, handing a
revolver to a police officer and saying “I was afraid they were going to kill
me, so I took out my revolver, and I fired it the air and into the ground.” [21]
Gunfire Confirmed in 2010
Such gunfire prior to the shootings of the Ohio National Guard was in dispute until a digitally mastered
copy of an audiotape of that day revealed new evidence in October 2010:
Kent State student and law
enforcement photographer, Terry Norman, was surrounded by an angry mob recorded
shouting, “They got someone” followed by “Kill Him, Kill Him.” Thereafter, the
sound of a digitally identical .38 caliber revolver is heard followed by “Whack
that [expletive]”and three more .38 caliber shots.
Then a command, “prepare to fire.”[22]
A contemporary photo shows Terry Norman in the protection of Ohio National
Guardsmen.[23] A perhaps guilt-ridden Terry Norman has since told many stories, denied firing
his .38 and avoided interviews, but the forensic evidence now seems to place
him in self-defense precipitating a human tragedy.
13 Seconds of Hell
Seventy seconds later, frightened and undisciplined members of the National Guard, 29 out of 77
guardsmen, returned rifle fire 67 times for 13 seconds killing four
students—Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller[24], Sandra Scheuer, William Schroeder– and wounding nine others.
Fateful Photo Forever Condemns U.S. Government
In a Pulitzer Prize winning John Filo photo, a tall 14-year-old runaway girl from a Florida junior high
school, Mary Ann Vecchio, was forever remembered kneeling, screaming with arms
outstretched over the prostate body of an innocent student bystander Jeffrey Miller.[25]
(There a similar photo of a woman holding the head of Benno Ohnessorg shot by a
West German policeman in a 1967 protest. The policeman, Karl-Heinz Kurras, was
a paid agent of the Stasi, the East German Secret Police. The “fascist” police
murder mobilized the German Left.[26])
The Filo photo and news coverage radicalized thousands.
Jerry Rubin who had told Kent State students,
“Until you are ready to kill your parents, you’re not ready to change this
country.”[27]
“radicalized, revolutionized and yippized”
About the bloodshed, Rubin said, “In 48 hours more young people were radicalized, revolutionized and
yippized than in any single time in American history.”[28]
According to Bob Haldeman’s diary, President Nixon upon being told of the student deaths
was “very disturbed. Afraid his (Cambodian) decision set it off, and that is
the ostensible cause of the demonstrations there.”[29]
Kent Makes Effective Soviet Propaganda
Kent State provided the stuff for Soviet agit-prop[30] such as Soviet poet
Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s Bullets don’t like people / who love flowers, a
propaganda piece, published in Pravda, the official newspaper of the
Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The poem was a
eulogy for 19-year-old protester and victim Allison Krause. The day before she
was quoted as saying “Flowers are better than bullets.” Yevtushenko’s
poem was both a condemnation of the war and a call to arms to overthrow
capitalism to “become a legion of flowers… armed with bullets.”[31]
To this day the photo of Mary Ann Vecchio hangs in Hanoi’s war museums.
Photo: Iconic Kent State photo,  War Remnants Museum wall, Roger Canfield, March
2008:.[32]
FBI Investigation
FBI Director Hoover privately reported, but did not publicly conclude that FBI investigations
showed rioting students and nonstudents at fault, as would ultimately a Special
Ohio Grand Jury and the families of the student victims.
Yet Jerris Leonard of the Justice Department, who had prosecutorial responsibility (and political
vulnerability) publicly claimed the FBI had concluded the Guard was at fault[33]
and on June 15, 1970 J. Walter Yeagley, Assistant Attorney General for Internal
Security wrote Hoover, “the evidence was insufficient to warrant presentation
…to a grand jury.” Hoover scrawled on the memo, “The usual run around by the do nothing Div.”[34]
Scranton Commission
Nixon appointed Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton to lead a Commission on Kent State, which would call
the actions of the National Guard “unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.”
Ohio Grand Jury
Thinking otherwise, Ohio Governor James Rhoades called a Special Ohio Grand Jury, which indicted 25 students[35] and no Guardsmen.[36]
U.S. District Court
On October 16, 1970.  Eight Guardsmen (James Daniel McGee, Mathew
Junior McManus, Barry William Morris, William Earl Perkins, James Edward
Pierce, Lawrence Anthony Shafer, Leon Herbert Smith, Ralph William Zoller) were
prosecuted for violating the civil rights of students, but U.S. District Court
Judge Frank J. Battisti acquitted the guardsmen. They lacked willful intent to
deprive victims of their civil rights.[37]
Prosecutions and Culprits Fade Away
Thomas S. Lough, a sociology professor and faculty advisor to SDS,[38]
was indicted for inciting a riot. Only two of the wounded students were among
the 25 indicted, Joe Lewis and Alan Canfora. Canfora was an identified Maoist
member of the Revolutionary Communist Party[39] and a member of the National Lawyers Guild.[40]
After two years of SDS mentoring only three of the indicted were SDS members in
the action-Ruth Gibson, Ken Hammond and Ron Weissenberger.
Thomas Graydon Fogleson, witnessed pulling fire hoses,[41]
and Larry A. Shub both pled guilty to first-degree riot. Jerry Rupe who was
witnessed setting fire to the ROTC building with a gasoline soaked rag, burning
an American flag, and assaulting firemen[42] was found guilty by a hung jury only for interfering with a fireman by cutting fire hoses.[43]
During trial charges were dismissed against Peter Bleik, witnessed leading the
action at the ROTC fire scene,[44] was not identified at trial.[45]
Charges against Mary Helen Nicholas were also dismissed at trial. On December
23, 1971 all charges against the remaining 20 were also dismissed.
Meanwhile, two of the indicted fled, Carol Mirman to California and Allen “Alfie” Tate, a Black
Panther, to New York and were never arrested or prosecuted –Tate for being
witnessed helping to set fire to the ROTC building. [46]
Payday for Rioters
Two indicted students, Joe Lewis and Alan Canfora, and one witnessed riot participant, Thomas Grace,
received money settlements in civil suits equal to or larger than the $675,000
settlements given to parents of the four dead students.
Every subsequent year since 1970 commemorative ceremonies have been held at Kent State as perpetual symbols
of the evil empire and its war in Vietnam. Mark Rudd, weatherman and an SDS visitor
to Kent State, in retrospect wrote, “In some measure, the militancy of the
university’s Cambodia demonstrations resulted from the confrontational politics
that Weatherman had helped to create at Kent.” The Kent State chapter of SDS  “had produced dozens of Weather cadre.”[47]
Buying Dynamite
Taking no time to mourn the dead at Kent State on May 4,
1970 Weatherman John Allen Fuerst (Aka Jeremy Pikser, Phil) and Roberta Brent
Smith, dedicated to an immediate revolution, illegally bought 30 pounds of dynamite,
under the alias William Allen Friedman and took the explosives to California.[48]
In mid 1970 a Gallup poll asked Americans to rate groups. 42% rated the SDS
highly unfavorable and the Black Panthers 75% highly unfavorable.[49]
A Gallup poll revealed that 58% of Americans blamed the protesters and only 11% the guard.[50]
Hardhats: “Kill the Commie Bastards
On May 8th in New York some two hundred, hardhatted
construction workers, following the example of their AFL-CIO leader, George
Meany who supported the war, opposed the leftists. Apparently not having read
Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, the workers chanted, “Kill the Commie
Bastards,” while defending capitalist Wall Street from a leftist assault.
The hardhats roughed up seventy students. In the weeks that followed prowar
hardhats in the thousands took to the streets in response to antiwar protests.
J. Edgar Hoover told Egil Krogh, “I’m glad (the construction guys) did what
they did…[T]hey really chased them down Broadway.”[51]
Washington Protest of Kent Killings
Assisted by Cora Rubin Weiss’s intelligence
network, organizational apparatus and public outrage over the killing of
innocents at Kent State in a few days, on May 9th up to 50,000-100,000
demonstrators converged on Washington, D.C.
Major speakers and organizers were Barbara Bick, Rennie Davis, Dave Dellinger, Richard Fernandez,
Fred Halstead, Phil Hirschkop, Abbie Hoffman, Brad Lyttle, John McAuliff,
Stuart Meacham, Sidney Peck, Jerry Rubin, Arthur Waskow, and Ron Young. The
protest concluded with demonstrators picking up caskets and marching them down
15th Street toward the White House ringed by tightly packed buses
and an invisible thousand National Guardsmen.
Police and National Guard Refuse to be Provoked
Marshals directed the caskets away from the White House, but an angry thousand rushed down H Street
breaking windows of buses until police tear gas turned them back. Some who occupied
the Peace Corps claimed, “Like the Viet Cong, we escape back into the people.”
On the whole the mass of demonstrators on the 9th was calm and peaceful. That angered Norma Becker,
Arthur Waskow and Sidney Peck who had hoped that mass civil disobedience would
provoke the government to use excessive force[52] as it had at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968.
Nixon: “Bunch of Bums”
Jane Fonda called President Nixon a “warmonger” for sending U.S. troops against the
Vietnamese in their sanctuary of Cambodia. Nixon replied that Fonda and kind
was “a bunch of bums.” At a Washington rally Fonda welcomed her
“fellow bums,” clenched her fist and declared “Power to the people.”
FBI Investigation of Kent State
On May 11, 1970, J. Edgar Hoover told White House aide Egil Krogh, “The national guardsmen (at Kent
State) would have been killed if they had not fired because students were
throwing lead pipes, rocks, and bricks at Guardsmen. …We have…photos of bruises
of the Guardsmen in color, some of which are shocking.” Hoover reminded Krogh
that the burning of an ROTC building two nights before had precipitated the calling out of the National Guard.[53]
Protesters Target ROTC
Attacks, harassment and disruption of ROTC
and military recruiting on campus—e.g. Wisconsin, Northwestern, Dartmouth,
Berkeley, Princeton– would reduce ROTC enrollments by two-thirds from the mid-1960s to the 1970s.[54]
This diminished the ranks of recruitable commissioned officers and negatively
impacted the quality of junior officers serving in combat, e.g. William Calley at My Lai.
Jackson State Killings
On May 15, two more students protesting the war were shot and killed at Jackson State College in
Mississippi.  On May 18th, Hoover told Vice President Agnew, “We found a considerable amount of firearms
in the …rooms of students (at Kent State)…Some say there was sniping and some
say there was not. …The same is true at Jackson …allegations of sniping at the troops before they fired and denials.”
Agnew said the media covered police shootings, but not the looting.
Hoover said Guardsmen were “severely provoked” at Jackson and Kent State.[55]
Later media reports would say the FBI had found no justification for the Kent
State shootings. An angry Hoover told President Nixon that was the view of
Assistant Attorney General Jerris Leonard, not the FBI. The FBI did not draw
conclusions. “We must not allow the press to get by with attributing things to
the FBI which are absolutely untrue,” said Hoover.[56]
In Washington on May 10, 1970 the Weather Underground bombed the National Guard’s Washington Headquarters in
retaliation, they said, for the killings of anti-war protesters at Jackson and
Kent State Universities.  In addition, a fire truck was destroyed, rocks
were thrown, windows broken at the Department of Justice and at businesses
along Connecticut Avenue and at Dupont Circle, areas around the Washington Monument were disrupted.[57]
Shutting Down the Universities, Nationwide
The organized left joined by the outraged shut
down universities nationwide for teach-ins on the Vietnam War. The objective
was not debates of the issues. They sought to win the Vietnam “debate” by superior force.
And they did.
More than 400 universities were shut down or on strike. There
were protests on 57% of the nation’s college campuses and even junior high
schools experienced protests.[58] On the whole, the left on campuses almost
everywhere succeeded in bullying timid school administrators and faced
unorganized or intimidated opposition.
An FBI report, “Campus violence hits new high during period of May 1-15” said, “Campus
violence hits new high during period of May 1-15” and counted the number of
student demonstrations. May’s two-week total was equal to the previous eight
months—844 campus demonstrations, 3,000 arrests, 166 injuries, six deaths.
Property losses were $4.5 million ranging from vandalism, 115 arsonist attacks,
3 bombings–often targeting ROTC facilities. Of 458 injuries, two-thirds, 295 were of police officers.
Public Opposes Student Strikes
“Less than 3% of student enrollment …(had)…taken part”[59] in a near 100 percent shutdown of the nation’s
colleges and universities. Indeed, throughout the war young people under thirty
were far less likely to think the war was a mistake than those over thirty when
answering Gallup’s question, “Do you think the U.S. made a mistake sending
troops to fight in Vietnam?”[60] By June Gallup found that 82% disapproved
of  “College students going on strike…to protest the way things are run in this country.”[61]


[1] Ron Jacobs, The Way The Wind Blew: A
History Of The Weather Underground, Verso, 1997, 49-50.
[2] Mark Rudd, Underground: My Life With the SDS and the Weathermen, New
York: Harper Collins, 2009, 210; James A. Michener, Kent State: What
Happened and Why
, New York: Random House, 1971, 92; Cathy Wilkerson, Flying
Close to the Sun
, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007, 228, 356.
[3] “Active Members in SDS,” T.F. Kelly to D.L. Schwartzmiller, Kent State
University [n.d.1969] in a special collection, “4 May 1970,” Box 107, at the
Kent State University Library at speccoll.library.kent.edu/4may70/box 107/107f9p12.gif.
[4] James A. Michener, Kent State: What Happened and Why, New York: random
House, 1971, 80.
[5] Neil Wetterman report attached to T.F. Kelly to D.L. Schwartzmiller, Kent State
University, May 1, 1969 in a special collection, “4 May 1970,” Box 107, at the
Kent State University Library at speccoll.library.kent.edu/4may70/box 107/107f9p12.gif.
[6] James A. Michener, Kent State: What Happened and Why, New York: random
House, 1971, 88-89, 98.
[7] Alan Stang, “Kent State,” American Opinion, June 1974, 2,4,10.
[8] “Ohio notables at rites for Prof. Jackson,” Daily World, May 16, 1979, 11.
[9] “Entire text of special grand jury report,” The Record (Kent-Ravenna), October 16, 1970.
[10] Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee to Investigate the
Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, The
Weather Underground
, Committee Print, January 1975, 27-29.
[11] C.D. Brennan to W.C. Sullivan, FBI Memo, June 10, 1970.
[12] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, CV 98-2140, 302 interview of [redacted] on 5/19/70 at
Canton Ohio; FBI, FOIA, Kent State, CV 98-2140, 302 interview of [redacted] at Ravenna, Ohio 5/16/70.
[13] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, CV 98-2140, 302 interview of [redacted] at Kent Ohio, May 26, 1970.
[14] “Entire text of special grand jury report,” The Record (Kent-Ravenna), October 16, 1970.
[15] Francis L. Brininger, State Arson Bureau, to Eugene Jewell, Chief August 6,
1970, in “ROTC building arson May 2, 1970: Witness statements taken August 6,
1970, Kent State University in a special collection, “4 May 1970,” Box 107, at
the Kent State University Library at speccoll.library.kent.edu/4may70/box
107/107f9p12.gif.
[16] Cathy Wilkerson, Flying Close to the Sun, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007, 356.
[18] “Entire text of special grand jury report,” The Record (Kent-Ravenna), October 16, 1970.
[19] “Entire text of special grand jury report,” The Record (Kent-Ravenna),
October 16, 1970.
[20] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, CV 98-2140, 302 interview of [redacted], by [redacted]
JJD/jky, Cleveland, 5/15/70.
[21] Norman repeated his story off camera to DeBrine the next day; John
Mangels, “Kent State tape indicates altercation and pistol fire preceded
National Guard shootings (audio), Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 8, 2010.
[22] Terry Strubbe, tape recording from the ledge of his dorm room at Kent State,
April 4, 1970: AP, “Report: Pistol shots preceded Kent St. shootings,” Cleveland
Plain Dealer
, October 8, 2010; Robert F. Turner, “Turner: Not a massacre
but a mistake: New evidence indicates source of gunfire of shots that triggered
shootings,” Washington Times, October 12, 2010; “Kent Tribunal Hears New
Evidence of Clear Order to Fire at Kent State, Backs Rep. Kucinich in Call to
Open Inquiry: Audio Tape Shows Evidence of Pistol Firing Seconds Before
Verified Order to Shoot,” Common Dreams.Org, Press Release, October 12, 2010;
Testimony of Stuart Allen bit.ly/dakhWw;
[23] John Mangels, “Kent State tape indicates altercation and pistol fire preceded National
Guard shootings (audio), Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 8, 2010.
[24] A search of Miller’s clothing turned up a scrap paper with the number 673-1759
and words “communications center.” FBI, FOIA, Kent State, Teletype, FBI
Cleveland to Director FBI Washington, Unsubs: Firebombing of Army ROTC Bldg.,
Kent State Univ. (KSU), Kent Ohio, 5-6-70.
[25] The Filo photo of Vecchio is honored in the War Remnants Museum in Saigon,
author’s photos Viet II DSC_327-8
[26] Nicolas Kulish, “Spy Fires Shot in ’67 That Shook Germany, The New York
Times
, May 27, 2009, A4.
[27] Alan Stang, “Kent State,” American Opinion, June 1974, 2,4,10.
[28] Alan Stang, “Kent State,” American Opinion, June 1974, 2,4,10.
[29] H.R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House, New
York: Berkley Books, 1994,191.
[30] Bill Rood to author, April 1, 2011.
[31] Solomon Todd, “Ten Years After: Kent State in the Rearview,” The Nation,
May 1980.
[32] Author’s photos, Viet II, 237, 238.
[33] H.R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House, New
York: Berkley Books, 1994,220.
[34] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, Memo, C.D. Brennan to W. C. Sullivan, 6/10/70; FBI,
FOIA, Kent State, J. Walter Yeagley, Assistant Attorney General, Internal Security Division to
Director, FBI. June 15, 1970.
[35] The following were indicted: David O. Adams, William G. Arthrell, Peter C.
Bliek, Alan M. Canfora, Roseann Canfora, Douglas Charles Cormack, Joseph B.
Cullum, Michael Erwin, Richard G. Felber, Thomas Graydon Foglesong, John
Gerbetz, Ruth Gibson, Kenneth J. Hammond, Jeffrey D. Hartzler, Joseph J. Lewis,
Dr. Thomas S. Lough, Thomas D. Miller, Carol Lynn Mirman, Craig A. Morgan, Mary
Helen Nicholas, James M. Riggs, Jerry H. Rupe, Larry A. Shub, Allen Tate,
Ronald Weissenberger; FBI, FOIA, AIRTEL, SAC, Cleveland to Director [redacted]
et al Sabotage; Sedition; Destruction Government Property, civil Rights Act of
1968—interference with Federally Protected Facility, 10/20/70, 1-3; “Kent
25
,” The Burr, May 2000 at  http://www.burr.kent.edu/archives/may4/twentyfive/twentyfive1.html.
Only three of the indicted were SDS-Ruth Gibson, Ken Hammond and Ron
Weissenberger. Eyewitnesses identified the following
either throwing rocks, starting fires, beating up witnesses and firemen or
cutting fire hoses: Mike Brock, Peter Bliek, Tony Compton, Debbie Durham,
Richard Felber, Tom Grace, James Harrington, Jimmy Riggs, Jerry Rupe, Larry A.
Shub, Allen Tate, Donald Weisenberger. For eye witnesses see: Francis L.
Brininger, State Arson Bureau, to Eugene Jewell, Chief August 6, 1970, in “ROTC
building arson May 2, 1970: Witness statements taken August 6, 1970, Kent State
University in a special collection, “4 May 1970,” Box 107, at the Kent State
University Library at speccoll.library.kent.edu/4may70/box 107/107f9p12.gif
[36] H.R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House, New
York: Berkley Books, 1994,242.
[37] FBIB, FOIA, Kent State, FBI note, JJB, 11/8/74; FBI, FOIA, Kent State, SA
Martin V. Hale, Killing of Four Students at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio,
–May 4, 1970; Allison Krause, ET AL – Victims.

[38] Ken Hammond, Thomas Lough, Papers May 4 Collection, Box 21 http://speccoll.library.kent.edu/4may70/21.html

[39] Max Friedman to Roger Canfield, May 6, 2010.
[40] The NLG National Convention, February15-19, 1979, Information Digest, 9.
[41] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, Cleveland FD 204 June 23, 1970.
[42] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, Cleveland FD 204 June 23, 1970; FBI, FOIA, Kent State,
CV 98-2140, 302 interview of [redacted]at Kent Ohio, May 26, 1970; FBI, FOIA,
Kent State, CV 98-2140, 302 interview of [redacted] at [redacted] Ohio on June 18, 1970.
[43] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, Teletype, Cleveland to Director, 11-30-71.
[44] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, Cleveland FD 204 June 23, 1970.
[45] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, Teletype, Cleveland to Director, 11-30-71.
[46] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, LHM Cleveland [redacted] et al, February 8, 1972.
[47] Mark Rudd, Underground: My Life With the SDS and the Weathermen, New
York: Harper Collins, 2009, 210.
[48] FBI, FOIA, Weather Underground. The primary source is Acting SAC Chicago to Director, memo,
“Foreign Influence-Weather Underground Organization,” August 20, 1976, 199.
[49] Adam Garfinkle, Telltale Hearts: The Origins and the Impact of the Vietnam
Antiwar Movement
, NY: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997, 8n44, 306.
[50] Robert F. Turner, “Turner: Not a massacre but a mistake: New evidence indicates
source of gunfire of shots that triggered shootings,” Washington Times, October 12, 2010.
[51] Hoover to Tolson, memo, 10:27 AM, May 11, 1970 at FBI FOIA website under Tolson. DISCLOSURE-The author
was a leader, chairman of Campus Mobilization for the Committee for Academic Freedom,
which successfully fought to keep the Claremont Graduate School open during
debates about US Cambodian operations. Other activists of the committee were
Gary Gammon, Sue Leeson, Jo Ellen Schroeder, Richard Reeb, Steve Schlesinger.
See: Leeson, Canfield and Schroeder,  “A Plea For Academic Freedom”, spring 1970. The author subsequently gave speeches
supporting Governor Ronald Reagan’s policies at the University of California.
Some members of Claremont doctoral examination committee were unhappy—delaying
completion of the author’s PhD for several years.  Perpetrators of bombings injuring a
professor’s secretary and burning down a campus landmark, Story House, were never prosecuted in Claremont.
[52] Stewart Meacham, “May Ninth,” Win Magazine, July 1970; Wells, the War Within…, 437-445.
[53] Hoover to Tolson etc, memo, May 11, 1970 found at FBI FOIA website under Tolson.
[54] Rothrock Divided… 242-3.
[55] Hoover to Tolson, memo, 9:49 AM, May 18, 1970 at FBI FOIA website under Tolson.
[56] Hoover to Tolson, memo, July 24, 1970 at FBI FOIA website under Tolson; Hoover to Tolson, memo, 8:47 AM July
24, 1970 at FBI FOIA website under Tolson.
[57] Hoover to Tolson, memo, May 14, 1970 at FBI FOIA website under Tolson.
[58] Roger B. Canfield, “Democratic Legitimacy and American Political Violence, 1964-1970,” doctoral
dissertation, Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California 1972, 3.
[59] FBI, FOIA, “Campus violence hits new high during period of May 1-15,”file number 65-73268-127, May 21,
1970,at seanet.com/…
[60] “Support for the Vietnam War,” 21 November 2002.
[61] Joseph A. Fry, “Unpopular Messenger; Student Opposition to the Vietnam War,”
cited in David L. Anderson, John Ernst (eds.) The War Never Ends: New
Perspectives on Vietnam War
, Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2007, 237.
Categories
Comrades in Arms Vietnam

The True Story of “Christmas” Bombing, N. Vietnam 1972

The Christmas Bombings of Hanoi, North Vietnam.

During the Vietnam War on December 11, 1972 Anniversary Tours, a
Communist Party-USA owned travel agency, booked Scandinavian Airlines, SAS,
flights out of JFK Airport bound for Hanoi, North Vietnam.

Among its passengers were folksinger Joan Baez,
the Episcopal Rev. Michael Allen of Yale Divinity, Barry Romo of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and Gen.
Telford Taylor, the former chief counsel of the war crimes trials of the Nazis at Nuremberg, Germany.[1]

On December 13, 1972 Cora Rubin Weiss, Hanoi’s chosen liasion for POW mail and more, held a press conference and introduced Baez,
Allen, Taylor and Romo as departing for Hanoi. Baez said she wanted to meet
North Vietnamese and to witness war damage. Allen said they had 500 pieces
of mail for American POWs carried by Hanoi approved Committee of Liaison with Families of Servicemen
Detained in North Vietnam, COLIFAM. Weiss said this was COLIFAM’s 36th mail trip.

ABC, NBC, CBS, AP and UPI covered this pro-Hanoi press conference.[2] Such
favorable coverage of the enemy in war was common during the war. A study of CBS by the
Institute for American Strategy showed that 83.33 % of stories about the
government of South Vietnam were critical while 57.3% of stories about the Communist enemy in Hanoi were favorable.[3]

The media coverage of “Christmas bombings” is a case study not only of media bias, but media support for the enmy in war.

The bombings were also a success story for America in the Cold War. A success later squandered, but that is another story.

Nixon’s vigorous prosecution of the war, ‘Peace with Honor,” was an election mandate, a landslide, forty-nine state, victory
over the single issue, anti-war candidate, George McGovern. McGovern had met secretly with Hanoi officials in Paris to seek political advantage against Nixon failing miserably to do so.

So, in an effort to force the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table, resoundingly reelected President
Nixon escalated the bombing of targets previously off-limits in North Vietnam.

The bombings ocurred December 18-29 — the so-called Christmas Bombings despite a 36 hour bombing
pause at Christmas.[4]

There was no Christmas bombing. Since Communists do not celebrate Christmas or
any other religious holiday, their outrage over bombings on a Christian holy
day was feigned. The bombings, none of which occurred on Christmas day, were
dubbed the Christmas bombings for maximum propaganda value in the USA where a
majority were Christians.

The bombings were to provide “maximum destruction …of military targets” and to “inflict the
utmost civilian distress.” Admiral Moorer said, “I want the people of Hanoi to hear the bombs.”

Bombing of the 5-railroad track Long Bien Bridge
across the Red River into Hanoi was only two miles from the Metropole Hotel.
Surrounded by beautiful women and good food, the Baez group was well cared for at the Metropole.

There they met other internationalists such as Jean Thoroval of Agence France Press, a Cuban, an Indian and others.

The Americans were shown films of deformed children, dying caged animals and “an
American soldier shooting fire from a hose.” They were taken to a bombsite.

Joan Baez remembers very telling details,

“We came to what looked like a large expensive movie set of a piece of the moon.
…Men [were] shouting out the number of dead…in the hundreds. …Here was a shoe…
a half-buried little sweater, a piece of broken dish… a book lying open, its
damp pages stuck together. The press was there with their cameras.”

Nearby a women “hobbled back and forth” singing,
‘My son. My son. Where are you now?”
Twas a movie set, which Baez, a professional entertainer, recognized,
but she somehow failed to identify as a propaganda show too well staged to be true.
Telford Taylor astutely asked if the bombed sites were recent or left over from bombing in June.[5]

Ultimately, Nixon’s idea was to destroy the North’s will to fight.[6]

“Wet His Pants”

Nixon’s strategy worked.

As Nixon and Kissinger first claimed, American POW’s later confirmed and the North Vietnamese admit today, the
December bombings were terrifying. Truong  Nhu Tang remembered, “I had been caught in the Apocalypse. The terror was
complete. One lost control bodily functions as the mind screamed incomprehensible
orders to get out.”[8] One POW saw his prison guard “trembling like a leaf, drop his rifle, and wet his pants.”[9]

Joan Baez in the Metropole’s bomb shelter with Rev. Michael Allen of Yale Divinity,
Barry Romo of VVAW and Telford Taylor sang Christmas Carols.

Close by in the “Hanoi Hilton” the POWs cheered. The Vietnamese trembled.[7]

POW and Admiral James Stockdale, remembers: “At dawn, the streets of Hanoi were absolutely
silent. …Patriotic wakeup music was missing, …street sounds, the horns, all
gone. Our interrogators and guards (were solicitous)… morning coffee was
delivered…Any Vietnamese officer’s face . . . telegraphed… hopelessness,
remorse, fear. …[O]ur enemy’s will was broken.[10]
POW Michael O’Connor: “When we heard them crying in the streets, we knew it
would soon be over.”[11] POW Lt. Col. Frank Lewis remembers:  “I … danced around my cell like a
fool, yelling, and cheering … I cried with pleasure.”[12] The POW’s cheered.

The North Vietnamese had never experienced anything like it in decades of an American limited war strategy calibrated to send signals of
resolve with minimal provocations of either the enemy or his Soviet and Chinese Communist allies.

During thirteen days in Hanoi, the Vietnamese gave propaganda talking points to the
Americans–support the 9 Point Peace Plan, stop bombing and free South
Vietnamese political prisoners. Baez sang to a group of twelve POWs.[13]

Baez told a Japanese reporter, Tsuyoshi Doki,
“Nixon is nothing but a madman… When I return home, I will do my utmost so that
the antiwar movement can be unified and become more powerful.”[14]

Some 42,000 bombs fell seeking “maximum destruction of selected military targets.”
Hanoi’s 1,242 SAM missiles and artillery shells fired at American
aircraft fell back down amongst the civilians remaining in Hanoi.[15]

VVAW’s Barry Romo claimed the bombing was never to destroy military
targets, but to terrorize and demoralize the Vietnamese people. Bombs falling
on nonmilitary targets were not errors. The same homes and shops were hit several times, Romo claimed.[16]

Yet the actual orders from Washington were to “exercise precaution to minimize risk of civilian casualties…”[17]
Aircrews were ordered to maintain straight and level flight to “maximize
aiming time” and to “reduce the chances of civilian damage.”[18]
These orders increased crew exposure to the world’s best antiaircraft defenses.
Although not the nuclear holocaust the left frequently accused the US of
planning—whenever the U.S. showed even diplomatic firmness to Communist aggression–the
new smart bombs fell with great accuracy.

The New York Times claimed carpet bombing of square miles of densely populated
areas. Joseph Kraft wrote of “senseless terror” bombing. Dan Rather: “large
scale terror bombing.” The Washington Post quested Nixon’s sanity. Anthony Lewis called the President a “maddened
tyrant.”[19] Aerial photos showed that there was no indiscriminate carpet-bombing and no terror attacks upon civilians.[20]

Walter Cronkite uncritically cited the Soviet News Agency Tass and Radio Hanoi as
credible news sources about the alleged massive scale of the damages to
civilian homes and the President’s mental condition.[21]

Still on December 29, 1972 Nhan Dan reported excerpts from a statement of Lieutenant Colonel Luis (SIC) Henry
Bernasconi, navigator of a B-52 shot down on December 22. Now a POW Bernasconi
said, “We are taught that B-52s are used to bomb targets …tens of square miles.
Such targets do not exist in Vietnam. …B-52 bombing in densely [SIC] populated
areas is to kill more and more people to generate pressure.”[22]
Once released Bernasconi did not repeat such wild claims about B-52 target
sizes and intents to kill.

As the North Vietnamese now admit, their radar was successfully blinded, making their SAM missiles ineffective.[23]
Stanley Karnow’s first hand observations were that populations had evacuated,
damage in Hanoi and Haiphong was minimal, civilians were spared and the bombing
was accurately placed upon military targets.[24]

Back on the homefront on Christmas Eve, a small contingent of the members of VVAW, Brown
Berets, and Venceremos Brigade marched to the Veterans Administration Cemetery
in Los Angeles. They distribute leaflets titled “SIX MILLION VICTIMS—THE HUMAN
COST OF THE INDOCHINA WAR UNDER PRESIDENT NIXON.”[25] Six million was an outrageous number.

In contrast in South Vietnam when villagers moved to safer areas under government control the
Communists routinely mortared, bombed and mined markets and roads for no
military purpose whatsoever. Between 1968 and 1972, “roughly thirty thousand
civilians a year went to GVN hospitals with injuries from mines and
mortars…wounds [which] …greatly exceeded…those…by Allied shelling and bombing.”[26]
Unlike the communists raining artillery and mortar fire directly upon fleeing
South Vietnamese civilians, U.S. B-52s did not bomb people evacuating Hanoi.

Outrage Over “Carpet” Bombings of Hanoi

Le Monde compared the American
attacks to the horrific bombing of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War, a leftist
symbol of Fascist brutality against heroic Communist revolutionaries. Like
Pavlov’s dogs, the progressive media salivated on cue.

Friends of the Vietnamese communists, including the American media, were spitting mad and
hysterically outraged—not over the endless Viet Cong atrocities, but the bombing of Hanoi.

CBS’s Dan Rather called the bombing “(unrestricted) large scale terror bombing.” Radio Hanoi told
him and he parroted claims of “extermination raids on many populous areas.”

CBS’s Walter Cronkite quoted  as sources of fact the
Soviet News Agency, Tass, “U.S. bombers destroyed thousands of homes,” and
Radio Hanoi, “Nixon has taken leave of his senses.”

Henry Kissinger in his White House Years quoted the newspaper editorial headlines after the
bombings: “New Madness in Viet Nam” (St. Louis Post Dispatch,
December 19); “The Rain of Death Continues” (Boston Globe,
December 20); “Terror From the Skies”  (New York Times,
December 26); “Terror Bombing in the Name of Peace” (Washington
Post
, December 28); “Beyond All Reasons” (Los Angeles Times,
December 28).[27] “Frighteningly callous to consequences,” Mary McCarthy wrote upon learning a
bomb had killed the French Chief of Mission,[28]
presumably an unconscionable assault utopian high intellect and culture.
Privately Nixon called it “media fueled hysteria,” but to his critics such the coverage “reasonable.”[29]

On the whole Nixon was silent to outrageously false claims of immorality, barbarism and butchery,
fearing he later said, of driving Hanoi away from peace talks in Paris.

Stanley Karnow says American newspapers, television, and radio had uncritically carried a
French reporter’s claims [in Le Monde] of “carpet bombing” of downtown
Haiphong and Hanoi.  Malcolm Browne of The New York Times, a war critic, said this was “grossly overstated.”

Indeed, even Tran Duy Hung, mayor of Hanoi denied such false claims.  Karnow says, “American antiwar
activists…during the attacks urged the mayor to claim a death toll of ten
thousand.” The suspects for such an intentional fabrication, a lie, would have
been Joan Baez, Barry Romo, Michael Allen, and Telford Taylor. Mayor Tran
refused to bump the numbers because “his government’s credibility was at stake.”

The North Vietnamese counted 1,318 civilian fatalities in Hanoi and 305 in Haiphong—a
pittance of the 85,000 killed in the real carpet firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945.[30]

Earlier in 1972 the North Vietnamese had turned artillery upon civilians
fleeing Quang Tri and An Loc killing at least 15,000. There was neither
discernable media nor “peace” pilgrim outrage to this slaughter of the purely innocent.

And upon her return Joan Baez accurately estimated the casualties at 2,000.[31]

Parks says the civilian deaths in the Hanoi count were not entirely innocent. Civilians worked at
lawful military targets. Some were human shields. And still other civilians
were killed by “North Vietnamese SAMs or AAA projectiles…plummeted to the ground.”

Since “Hanoi fired more than 1,000 SAMs…[M]any
of the 1,318 civilian deaths can be attributed to these North Vietnamese
defenses.  …Measured against …the law of
war…Linebacker II is unprecedented in its minimization… of collateral civilian
casualties when compared with the intensity of effort against legitimate targets.”

That during the most intense bombing of the entire war Hanoi counted far less than 2,000 people
dead is “persuasive evidence (that)… the United States sought to avoid
collateral damage… so too had [the earlier] Rolling Thunder been “one of the
most constrained military campaigns in history.”

That the U.S. spent $100,000 for every truck destroyed [32]
was a measure of neither indiscriminate bombing nor economic waste, but of the
value Americans placed on innocent human life.

Bach Mai Hospital and Kham Thien Street

The few civilian targets hit loomed very large in propaganda about American bombing — the Bach Mai
hospital and Kham Thien Street, a residential area.

The North Vietnamese and their American friends said these were bombed intentionally.

Telford Taylor said Bach Mai hospital had been totally destroyed [For the 1,000th time?] and Baez
claimed the bombing had injured POWs in the Hanoi Hilton. The hospital was
never targeted, but the area around Bach Mai was target rich with legitimate
military objectives.  It was only 1,000 meter from the Bach Mai Military Airfield and 200 yards from a POL fuel storage
facility.[33] Also air defenses and Radio Hanoi.

The prime target was clear.  “The overall control of
the NVA air defenses … one of the best … in the world … was directed by
an air defense command and control center located at (less than 500 meters away
at) Bach Mai airfield.” This air defense system commanded and controlled
from Bach Mai airfield allowed targeting of U.S. aircraft from ground level to
19 miles up.[34] Moreover, air defenses were located among civilians and patients at Bach Mai.

Only a laser-guided bomb finally hit Radio Hanoi, which was at Bach Mai protected by a concrete revetment.

In the event photos prove that only the corner of one wing
of the hospital, not its center, was accidentally destroyed killing 28.[35]

The hospital was hit in a tragic accident. Col. John Yuill lost control of his aircraft at the
very moment of his bomb release as two SAM missiles exploded above and below
him spewing his bomb train off target and onto a portion of the hospital.[36]
Though captions of photos in one war museum claim the hospital was “destroyed”[37]
and in another museum only “damaged,[38] a
careful analysis of photos shows a corner of the hospital hit and a big bomb
crater off to the side of the hospital.[39]
Views of remodeled hospital today[40]
seems to confirm that the left front part of hospital was hit, probably
accidentally as Col. John Yuill described it thereafter.

Similarly, on December 26, 1972 SAM attacks on another aircraft diverted a B-52 bomb train to
residential Kham Thien Street[41] where it was claimed that 287 were killed and 290 injured.[42]

Upon her return to Hanoi in early January Joan Baez would report that $400,000 had been raised to
rebuild Bach Mai Hospital.[43] The CPUSA’s Young Workers’ Liberation League had created the tax exempt Bach
Mai Hospital Relief Fund.[44] April 8-15, 1973 was Bach Mai Week during which local peace organizations canvassed
dor to door and sold pancake breakfasts.[45] Despite the monetary contributions of many
other Americans to the relief fund, e.g. through Bill Zimmerman’s fund raising
for Medical Aid to Vietnam; Bach Mai would remain unrepaired for nine years.

To the “humane” Vietnamese Communists Bach Mai was worth far more as a war trophy
and as cash flow than it was as a functioning hospital.

For those who dismissed official American sources, such as Pentagon aerial photos showing
minimal damage to Hanoi, the Baez contingency had brought back North Vietnamese
Government film. The COLIFAM delegation used NBC film.[46]
CBS would forevermore simply report Hanoi’s numbers and never covered Hanoi’s
subsequent repudiation of the claim of extensive casualties at Bach Mai, which
had been evacuated long before the bombing.[47]

After the signing of the Paris Accord Henry Kissinger visited Hanoi and shared
his observations with Nixon and Haldeman,

“It was absolutely amazing in Hanoi how remarkably precise the American bombing had been. There’s virtually no
destruction in the city of Hanoi of anything except military targets, the
railway yard is completely wiped out, but all the other buildings and facilities
still stand. Large storage areas have been demolished, but virtually nothing adjacent to them.”

And “Henry feels that it is…a total repudiation of the attacks on the P(resident) for his
so-called carpet bombing….”[48] POW James Kasler soon told a Congressional committee, “The Americans who came
to Hanoi…[reported] Hanoi… lying in shambles.” Yet “the city was barely touched
as has been proven by unbiased photographers who visited there after our [POW]
release” some 90 days later. Kasler insisted, American travelers  “distorted the truth about the bombing of
civilian targets…because they wanted the North Vietnamese to win and they were
willing to betray their own country to attain that goal.”[49]

In contrast to Hanoi’s death toll of 1,318 civilians in December 1972, during its Easter
offensive during the spring of 1972 Hanoi’s invading armies had turned its
artillery and rockets upon the civilian populations of An Loc, Hue, Quang Tri and other cities.

During the battles of April 1972 the North Vietnamese had rained
artillery upon tens of thousands of civilian refugees fleeing on roads running
south from battles in Quang Tri and in An Loc. Some 15,000 or so civilians were
slaughtered on the escape routes Highways 1 and Highway 13 respectively.

About this indiscriminate slaughter of helpless civilians in South Vietnam there was
silence among the self-anointed humanitarians and pacifists within the peace
movement. Against all evidence they persisted in claiming that all the barbarism
of war came from one side, the American side. By late that July President Nixon
had reported 860,000 refugees, 45,000 casualties (15,000 dead).  Such was the “liberation” (during
the Easter Offensive) of Quang Tri, Hue, An Loc, Binh Dinh province and other
areas benefiting from the humanitarian policies of the North.

December’s bombings gave the Americans the moral high ground, if there is such a thing in the
accidental killing of civilians in war.

Of course, Hanoi’s franchised peace movement usurped the high ground by
declaring Hanoi’s death toll of 1,318 civilians was indiscriminate carpet bombing of many square miles of North Vietnam.

For the first time in the war Hanoi was shaken.

The communists had angered the mad man Nixon. America could at long last negotiate from a position of strength.

Visiting at the invitation of her Vietnamese friends at
Choisy-le-Roi, Mary McCarthy and Mr. Phan and Vy discussed the antiwar
movement. Barbara Deming’s letter wanted American women to go to Hanoi to work
under the bombs. Mary McCarthy suggested a group of big names go to Hanoi to
risk their lives. Phan said, “The place to be effective had been America.” From Paris NFL representative Phan
Thanh Nam secretly ran Hanoi’s intelligence operations in the USA, in part by meeting “freindly” Americans like Mary McCarthy.
McCarthy says, “About the failure of Americans at home to rise in protest
against the bombing he was bitter.” Mary McCarthy doubted the value of another
demonstration particularly during Christmas. She said the antiwar people were tired, alone and discouraged.

Among McCarthy’s handwritten list of notables to ask to go to Hanoi during bombings there had been no takers:
[Roger] Hilsman, Wald + Luris, Gene McCarthy, Ramsey Clark, F[rances]
Fitzgerald, Norman Mailer, Francine Gray, Tom Wicker, Francis Plympton, Tom
Finletter, Bishop Moore, John Kerry, McGovern, Father Hesburg, Abraham Herchel,
Waldheim, Mayor Lindsey, Al Lowenstein, Rene Dubos, James Baldwin, Roy Wilkins,
Coretta King, Gary Wills, Margaret Mead, Robert Lowell, James Jones, Wm.
Styron, John Knowles, Andrew Young, Ron Dellums, Arthur Schlesinger, Bennington Moore.[50]

Maybe Vietnam twasn’t radical chic any more.

The Christmas bombings had all but won the war
and the gas had run out of the antiwar movement. Or so it seemed.

The Christmas bombings of Hanoi in December 1972 had outraged Hanoi, the American press and
Hanoi’s allies on the Second Front in the USA, a “peace” movement largely
seeking a Viet Cong victory. That December the U.S. opportunity to negotiate
from a position of strength had never been better. The enemy’s will and
capability to wage war had been challenged as never before.

Yet Henry Kissinger would negotiate a betrayal of South Vietnam and a “bugout” and declare it peace. John
Negroponte, a member of the Kissinger negotiating team later said, “We bombed them into accepting our compromises.”

The antiwar movement’s influence on domestic politics, specifically upon Congress, provided an
explanation for this strange surrender moments before a final victory seemed in clear sight.

“One With You in Struggle,” Tom and Jane Tell Communists

In December 1972, “I’m Viet Cong” Tom Hayden, founder of Students for a Democratic Society, frequent flyer to Hanoi
and its messenger to the antiwar movement, was in Norway with actress Jane
Fonda, notorious propagandist for Hanoi and patron of both Vietnam Veterans
Against the War and John Kerry’s “Winter Soldier” charges of U.S. war crimes. Fonda was filming
“A Doll House”[1] for “progressive Marxist” Robert Losey.

Hayden and Fonda learned of the December bombings
of Hanoi and the port of Haiphong in a theatre in Paris. They marched off to
the Vietnamese mission to see some old friends, Nguyen Minh Vy and Madame
Nguyen Thi Binh, to ask them what to do. Jane flew to a Stockholm rally to denounce the “escalation of killing.”

Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda telegraphed North Vietnam.  On December 26, 1972, Radio
Hanoi broadcast the text of the Hayden-Fonda message to Hanoi:

“HAYDEN-FONDA MESSAGE–here is a message from Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden to the Vietnamese
people: [Word indistinct] Vietnamese will long live in people’s memory.  Defeat of B-52’s shows that our spirit and
resistance is stronger than technological power of any kind. We are one with you in struggle.  There will come [words
indistinct].  We are organizing international campaign for Nixon to sign the [“Hanoi-NLF”] agreement.”

Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden.[2]

In an Indochina Peace Campaign, IPC, brochure, Tom and Jane joined a broad coalition of
pro-Hanoi antiwar groups in escalating their claims of genocide in South Vietnam from four million[3]
to “six million.” After the widely described horrendous Christmas
bombings, Hanoi, despite the urging of Americans “peace” activists housed in
the luxurious French colonial Metropole hotel, curiously made no official
claims of genocide in the Hanoi bombings. Hanoi alleged only 1,600 dead in the
“carpet bombing” of a city of a million people. A real carpet-bombing of Tokyo in WWII took 85,000 souls.

1972 had closed with Fonda and Hayden telling fellow Americans they wanted to defeat the U.S.
forces– proclaiming their desire for a Communist victory. Though an American
peace would soon be at hand with North Vietnam, Tom and Jane, joined by many
other individuals and groups, would continue through the next two and a half
years to work tirelessly for a North Vietnamese Communist victory over the people of South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

Among those Hanoi front groups on the Viet Cong team after the Paris Peace Accords were: America Friends Service Committee, AFSC/NARMIC,
Clergy And Laity Concerned, Women Strike for Peace, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, War Resisters
League, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice, Fellowship of Reconciliation, SANE, Episcopal Peace Fellowship,
Medical Aid for Indochina, Indochina Resource Center, Don Luce’s Indochina Mobile [tiger cage] Education Project, church affiliated International
Committee to Free South Vietnamese Prisoners from Detention, Torture and Death[4].

There was the small, but more than symbolic Union of Vietnamese
in the U.S.A.[5] which attributed “the historic victory of our Vietnamese nation” to the wise and clear sighted leadership of the party Central Committee.”[6]

The Union was a front for Hanoi intelligence and influence operations in the USA.

Hanoi’s American operation included Nguyen Thi Ngoc Thoa in Washington, D.C.,  Nguyen Van Luy in SanFrancisco and later Dinh
Ba Chi in New York at the United Nations.[1] Both Luy and Thoa were active in the American antiwar movement, in Berkeley and in Hayden-Fonda’s IPC respectively.

Hanoi would be forever appreciative of the anti-war movement as revealed in annual public
statements on the April 30 anniversary dates and in displays in its many war museums.
Major Thomas Bibby writes;
“The outrageous reports of indiscriminate U.S. bombings of North Vietnam in December 1972 by the Western
news media were extremely successful in substantially hardening public and
Congressional opinions against continued American involvement in the war and
forcing the Nixon Administration to stop the bombing.”
In halting the bombing when it did, the U.S. failed to destroy North Vietnam’s war sustaining capabilities just at
the most opportune moment when Hanoi’s air defenses[7] were almost completely annihilated and U.S. aircraft could have virtually
roamed free over the skies of North Vietnam.[8]
It had been quite a turn around from communists’ military losses on the battlefields and loss of
popular support in the hamlets and villages of South Vietnam. Anticipating a
final defeat by the end of 1972, some 40,000 North Vietnamese soldiers had deserted to the South.[9]
The antiwar movement had helped mightily in translating the 1972 battlefield
defeats into a political victory in the USA.


[1] Yung Krall, A Thousand Tears Falling.

[1] FBI, Acting Director to President, COLIFAM, internal Security-Revolutionary Activities, 6:05AM December
12, 1972

[2] FBI, New York to Acting Director, COLIFAM, IS-RA, TELETYPE, 1125 PM December 13, 1972.
[3] Bruce Herschensohn, An American Amnesia: How the U.S. Congress Forced the Surrenders of South Vietnam  and Cambodia, New York: Beaufort Books,
2010, 9-10.

[4] Bruce Herschensohn, An American Amnesia: How the U.S. Congress Forced the Surrenders of South Vietnam  and Cambodia, New York: Beaufort Books, 2010, 6.

[5] Joan Baez, And a Song to Sing With, New York: Plume Trademark, 1987,
201-202 209-210, 218 cited on December 25, 2004 at
thecommonills.blogspot.com/2004/12where-are-you-now-my-son.html.

[6] Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor, 215.

[7] Fourth Estate (University of Colorado), February 20, 1973 cited in FBI, Denver, Memo, “VVAW,
Appearance of Barry Romo, National Coordinator, in Colorado, February 15-16,
1973,” Denver, February 27, 1973; FBI, Legat Rome to Acting Director, VVAW,
IS-RA, Hilev, TELETYPE 4:30 PM January 30, 1973.

[8] Truong Nhu Tang cited in Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor, 216.

[9] Karl J. Eschmann, Linebacker: The Untold Story of the Air Raids Over North Vietnam, New York: Ivy Books, 1989, 179N22.

[10] Jim & Sybil Stockdale, In Love and War
(Annapolis: United States Naval Institute Press, 1984, 432 (emphasis added).

[11] Michael O’Connor, September 30, 2008.

[12] Eschmann, 236-237.

[13] Denver Post, February 18, 1973, cited in FBI, Denver, Memo, “VVAW, Appearance of Barry Romo,
National Coordinator, in Colorado, February 15-16, 1973,” Denver, February 27,
1973; VVAW newsletter, (n.d.), 3; San Francisco Chronicle, December 22, 1972,and January 2, 1973.

[14] “Akahata Interviews U.S. Singer in Hanoi,” Akahata, Tokyo, December 24, 1972 cited in Rothrock, Divided
We Fall
, 169n26.

[15] Eschmann, 202-203.

[16] FBI, Legat Rome to Acting Director, VVAW, IS-RA, Hilev, TELETYPE 4:30 PM January 30, 1973.

[17] Eschmann, 74-5 cites: W. Hays Parks, “Line Backer and the Law of War,” Air University
Review
, Vol. 34, No. 2, (January-February 1983), 18.

[18] Eschmann, 80 N 27 cites: Brig. Gen. James R. McCarthy, Et Al, U.S.A.F., Linebacker II,
Airpower Research Institute, Maxwell AFB, Al, 1979, 46-47.

[19] Bruce Herschensohn, An American Amnesia: How the U.S. Congress Forced the Surrenders of
South Vietnam  and Cambodia
, New York: Beaufort Books, 2010, 8-9.

[20] Eschmann, 202-203.

[21] Bruce Herschensohn, An American Amnesia: How the U.S. Congress Forced the Surrenders
of South Vietnam  and Cambodia, New York: Beaufort Books, 2010, 9.

[22] Photo with caption at “Hanoi Hilton” museum, author’s Viet I 226.

[23] Indo. Chron. Vol. VI, No. 4 (October-December 1987, 19 cites “Aerial Dien Bien Phu
Victory”, Radio Hanoi, December 18, 1987, FBIS-EAS 87-247; and Gen. Tran Nhan in Nhan Dan December 17, 1987.

[24] Stanley Karnow, 668 in Rothrock, Divided… v

[25] FBI, Los Angeles to Acting Director, 4:00 PM NITEL, December 24, 1972.

[26] Louis Wiesner, Victims and Survivors: Displaced Persons and Other War Victims in Viet-Nam, 1954-1975 (New
York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 229, cited in Mark Moyar, “VILLAGER ATTITUDES
DURING THE FINAL DECADE OF THE VIETNAM WAR, 1996 Vietnam Symposium, “After
the Cold War: Reassessing Vietnam,”18-20 April 1996, http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vietnamcenter/events/1996_Symposium/96papers/moyar.htm

[27] Lt.-Gen. Lam Quang Thi, ARVN), THE VIET NAM WAR REVISITED: A VIEW FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY
quotes from Henry Kissinger, the Whitehouse Years.

[28] Mary McCarthy, The Seventeenth Degree:  How It Went, Vietnam, Hanoi, Medina, Sons of the Morning, New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1967, 1968, 1972, 1973, 1974, 9.

[29] Christopher Goffard, “New batch of Nixon tapes released,” Los Angeles Times, June 24, 2009.

[30] Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, 653

[31] San Francisco Chronicle, December 22, 1972,and January 2, 1973.

[32] Parks, “Rolling Thunder and the Rule of Law,” 10, 23, 26.

[33] John Morocco, Rain of Fire, Boston: Boston Publishing Co., 1985, 157.

[34] Eschmann, 29 N 59 cites USAF, AIROPS, Top Secret, 148. See also: Eschmann, 23.

[35]Wayne Thompson, To Hanoi and Back: The US Air Force and North Vietnam,
1966-1973,
Washington DC.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 2002, 262; John
Hubbell, POW, 592-3; James Banerian and the Vietnamese Community Action
Committee, Losers Are Pirates: A Close Look at the PBS Series “Vietnam: A
Television History,”
Phoenix: Tieng Me Publications, 1984, 227.

[36] Eschmann, 143-145, N 33-36.

[37] New Bach Mai Hospital “Destroyed,” December 22, 1972, author’s Viet I DSC_ 230
displayed at Hanoi Hilton, in Hanoi. Actual photo shows corner of hospital,
left front, destroyed and a big bomb crater nearby.

[38] Bach Mai heavily “damaged” December 22, 1972, author’s Viet II DSC_ 274-77 captions and photos displayed
Saigon, Remnants Museum.

[40] Author’s Viet I DSC_ 246-256 Today’s Bach Mai Hospital.

[41] W. Hays Parks, “Linebacker and the Law of War,” Air University Review,
January-February 1983 at airpower.maxwell /airchronicles/aureview/1983/jan-feb/parks.html

[42] At Hanoi Hilton museum in Hanoi, author’s Viet I DSC_231 and Viet II DSC_270-271 at Saigon’s War Remnants museum.

[43] Stanford Daily, January 15, 1973.

[44] Max Friedman, Council for Inter-American Security, study in lieu of testimony
to Chairman of House Ways and Means Committee, Lobbying and Political
Activities of Tax-Exempt Organizations, Hearings, subcommittee on Oversight,
March 12-13, 1987, 399 cites Rep. Larry McDonald,(D-Ga), Congressional
Record
, February 19, 1976, E 709-10 and July 5, 1977, E 4809-4810.

[45] Syracuse Peace Council, Peace Newsletter, April 1973, SPC [No.] 682,  1-2, 8-9, 12.

[46] FBI, Acting Director to President, COLIFAM, TELETYPE, 12:35AM January 2, 1973, 5.

[47] W. Hays Parks, “Linebacker and the Law of War,” Air University Review,
January-February 1983, note 53 at airpower.maxwell
/airchronicles/aureview/1983/jan-feb/parks.html

[48] Haldeman, Diaries…708.

[49] House, Hearings on Restraints on Travel to Hostile Areas: Hearings before the Committee on
Internal Security, 93rd Cong., 1st sess., 1973, 32-3 cited in Rothrock Divided… 197n14.

[50] Mary McCarthy, The Seventeenth Degree: How It Went, Vietnam, Hanoi, Medina, Sons of the Morning, New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1967, 1968, 1972, 1973, 1974, 54-58.

[1] Time, January 3, 1972,  67.

[2] Hanoi in English to American Servicemen involved in the Indochina War, 1300, GMT, 26 Dec. 72
B; “Hayden Detained,” The Washington Post, December 27, 1972, A-5.

[3] Los Angeles Times, August 3, 1972.

[4] The International Committee to Free South Vietnamese Prisoners from Detention,
Torture and Death was affiliated with AFSC, War Resisters League, Catholic
Peace Fellowship and Canadian Council of Churches. Sources: CCPF 1/13 folder,
Catholic Peace Fellowship Records, University of Notre Dame Archives; Ann
Buttrick Collection, University of Toronto Library; Records of War Resisters
League, box 25, Collection DG 040, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

[5] IPC, “Indochina: A National Planning Conference, October 26-28, in a camp at
Germantown near Dayton, Ohio, initiated by the Indochina Peace Campaign,” n.d.,
[October 1973]; Tom Hayden, “Cutting Off Funding for War: the 1973 Indochina
Case,” Huffington Post, March 20, 2007 at huffingtonpost.com.

[6] Vietnam News Agency, VNA 14 Feb 73, K-16.

[7] “Not a single SAM was left”, Allan Goodman, Lost Peace, 161 cited in
James Banerian and the Vietnamese Community Action Committee, Losers Are Pirates:
A Close Look at the PBS Series “Vietnam: A Television History,”
Phoenix:
Tieng Me Publications, 1984, 226.

[8] Sir Robert Thompson, Peace Is Not At Hand, New York: David McKay, 1974, 135, cited in Thomas M. Bibby,
Major USAF, “Vietnam: The End, 1975” 1 April 1985 at global security.org See
also: Herz, Martin F. (Rider, Leslie, Assisted by). The Prestige Press and The
Christmas Bombing, 1972: Images and Reality in Vietnam, Ethics and Public
Policy Center; Washington, D. C.1980.

[9] John M. Del Vecchio, “Cambodia, Laos and Viet Nam? The Importance of Story Individual and Cultural Effects of
Skewing the Realities of American Involvement in Southeast Asia for Social, Political and/or Economic Ends,” 1996 Vietnam
Symposium “After the Cold War: Reassessing Vietnam,” Texas Tech, 18-20 April 1996.

Categories
California Politics Comrades in Arms Songs

Song: Where Have All the Commies Gone

Parody of Pete Seeger’s “Where have all the flowers gone.” Copyright 2003 Roger Canfield

Where have all the commies gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the commies  gone?
Long time ago.

Where have all the commies gone?
The liberals kissed them ev’ry one.
Oh, when will you ever learn?
Oh, when will you ever learn?

Where have all the liberals gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the liberals gone?
Long time ago.

Where have all the liberals gone?
They’ve become progressives every one.
Oh, when will you ever learn?
Oh, when will you ever learn?

Where have all the progressives gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the progressives gone?
Long time ago.

Where have all the progressives gone?
They’re all in camouflage.
Oh, when will you ever learn?
Oh, when will you ever learn?

Where have all the progressives gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the progressives gone?
Long time ago.

Where have all the progressives gone?
They’ve gone to California every one.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where has poor California gone?
Long time passing.
Where has California gone?
Long time ago.

Where have all the Californians gone?
They’re gone to Arizona, nearly every one.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the commies gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the commies gone?
Long time ago.

Where have all the commies gone?
Universities hired them, every one.
Oh, when will we ever learn?
Oh, when will we ever learn?

Parody lyrics copyright 2003 Roger Canfield.

Categories
Auburn Dam California Politics Comrades in Arms Environmental Extremism Jane Fonda Jerry Brown Tom Hayden Water

Power from the Sun: Big Red, Little Green; Jerry Brown, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda

Excerpts from an unpublished political biography of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden.

Copyright Roger Canfield 2011

Solyndra, the Prequal,

After decades (1984-2010) in the wilderness of National
Public Radio and Oakland California, in 2010 Jerry Brown, 72, was reelected,
really resurrected, as Governor of California where the past is often prologue. The more things change the more they are the same

It was the return of the living dead and the prequal of all solar power scandals.

The former Governor Jerry Brown with the active assistance and
inspiration of Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda is the creator, the originator of
California’s decline from the Fifth largest economy in the world to the Eighth.

Brown nurtured delusions of power from the sun and presided over “public investment” paid to political cronies.

Jerry Brown’s California has led the way in banning DDT and nuclear
power and inspiring the elimination of incandescent light bulb and the
criminalization of carbon, one of God’s own elements. Moreover, Brown’s legacy
as Governor from 1975 through 1984 thrived thereafter during the administrations of
Governors George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson, Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Republican governors, the courts and Democrat legislatures extended the
Brown-Hayden-Fonda legacy to the present day’s high unemployment, high taxes,
nanny state regulations and whacko environmental regulations.

Through his former chief of staff, Governor
Gray Davis, and RINO Governors Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, these
policies of the Brown era have been extended down to today where California’s
first in the nation effort to alter the planet’s climate (green house gas
regulations, AB32) and to build a $100 billion bullet train to nowhere. Though intended to benefit the entire planet they will
continue to impoverish California. This is both the legacy of Jerry, Tom and Jane
and the future of California under Brown 2.0.

Across the decades Brown’s successors have vigorously
sought alternatives to the internal combustion engine, cheap nuclear and
hydroelectric power. These have been demonized in pursuit of fantasies such as
cheap solar power and zero emission (electric) cars.

These ambitions are totalitarian. They require changing human nature, establishing utopian
socialism and altering the very climate of planet earth itself. What is
necessary is absolute power to achieve these absolute goods. The failure to
achieve astonishing environmental goals is really quite irrelevant.

The real game is absolute power.

Command and control of everyone and everything under the sun.
While environmentalists gain power and profits from public funds, they
claim politicians are conspiring with corporations to poison the public and its air and water for
political power and corporate profits.

In early 2011 many of the same faces have return for an encore under Jerry Brown. Early
Brown appointments Mary Nichols, Gerald Meral, John Laird, and Nancy Ryan
promised a renaissance of green energy and red (leftist) politics.

Meanwhile there have been decades of bad consequences in the seeking of impossible dreams.

A No Growth Economy

Beginning with Jerry Brown,
California stopped building roads, bridges, dams, canals, power plants,
refineries, mines, lumber mills, auto painting, independent gasoline stations, factories and yes, gold mines and gravel pits. The Hayden,
Fonda and Brown policies of radical no growth environmentalism, continued
thereafter, turned California’s abundance of natural resources into a scarcity
of water, energy, roads, bridges, timber and housing.

California blessed with a cornucopia of natural resources, sunshine, yes plentiful water, and fertile soils today
imports sand, gravel, timber, gold, oranges and garlic. In the Central Valley, food
basket of planet earth, California feeds its water deprived and unemployed farm
workers surplus canned mandarin oranges from China.

In a cosmic understatement of the problem, Sacramento Bee columnist
Dan Walters recently said, “It’s entirely
possible that California with its high taxes, dense regulatory underbrush,
poorly performing schools, congested and crumbling highways and water supply
issues, may have become noncompetitive in a global economy.”[1] Duh.

California’s decline toward a third world economy, culture and
government began with the first term of Governor Jerry Brown (1975-1983). Doonesbury’s and Mike Royko’s image of him as
“Governor Moonbeam”[2] obscures the true Jerry Brown.

As Rep. Tom McClintock and Gubernatorial candidate reminded us in the
2003 recall of Jerry Brown’s former chief of staff Gray Davis, the once golden
California has been bleeding businesses, people and opportunities to the desert
landscapes of Arizona and Nevada ever since Brown et al. Whole industries have been decimated (timber, tourism,
gold mining, automobiles, auto painting, furniture, independent gas stations)

Jack Stewart, president of the California Manufacturers and Technology
Association recently told CalWatchdog that California’s 12 percent of US
population is only producing only 1.5 percent of the nation’s manufacturing.
Jobs that left the state paying $69,000 are being replaced by new jobs at
$43,000. Stewart says green jobs are likely to be illusionary replacements for
those lost.[3] Jobs installing insulation and double pane windows are not replacing jobs lost in
other vanishing industries. In early 2011 some 175,000 green jobs were being proudly
claimed in California out of a workforce of 6 million. 3% green jobs do not an
economic recovery make.

Immaculate Hearts.

It all began in 1971 when Jerry Brown, drop out from a Catholic seminary and son of master builder
Governor Pat Brown, met Tom Hayden at Immaculate
Heart College in Los Angeles. Serially negligent in adherence to Catholic vows
the school invited Tom Hayden to lecture on the Vietnam War.

Who was the Tom Hayden
Jerry Brown met in 1971? Hayden was an early leader of Students for a
Democratic Society, SDS, and author of the seminal work on  “participatory democracy” the Port Huron
Statement. Hayden since 1965 had visited the Vietnamese Communists at war with
the United States and Hayden used Hanoi’s slides and numbers, the enemy’s
propaganda, in his lectures at Immaculate Heart. Like Hanoi, Hayden said, the
Vietnam War was illegal, immoral and unwinnable. Hayden sought a communist
victory in Vietnam and a socialist America by revolution if necessary.
Revolutionary Acts

After meetings with Communist Vietnam leaders in Hanoi, Bratislava and Paris in 1967 Hayden, Dave
Dellinger and Rennie Davis organized riots at the Democrat Convention in
Chicago 1968. An SDS friend of the underground weathermen, Bill Ayers and
Bernadine Dohrn, in Berkeley Tom Hayden and Robert Scheer founded their
revolutionary cell the “Red Family” and operated their International Liberation
School in firearms and combat medicine.

In the spring of 1969, Tom Hayden wrote a manifesto for the Berkeley Liberation
Movement: “We will break the power of the landlords … We will create a
soulful socialism.”[4] In the July 1970 issue of Ramparts,
Hayden wrote of liberated territories (i.e., Berkeley) where private property
would be abolished and tenant organizations would transform local housing into
communal shelters.[5] In mid 1969, Tom Hayden co-sponsored a
revolutionary shindig called the National Revolutionary Conference for a United
Front to Combat Fascism with the Rev. Cecil Williams, one of the prime sponsors
Rev. Jim Jones’ People’s Temple.

Enter Jane Fonda

Meanwhile, Hayden met Jane Fonda in Detroit at a Howard Johnson Motel in early 1971 at the Winter
Soldier “war crimes” show trials sponsored by John Kerry’s Vietnam Veterans
Against the War, which Fonda helped fund. Hayden and Fonda shared their slides
and beds, married and had a son who they named “Troi” after Nguyen Van Troi, a
Viet Cong terrorist who had attempted to assassinate Secretary of State Robert
McNamara.

In 1972 Hayden and Fonda’s
Indochina Peace Campaign, IPC, and the staff of Indochina Resource Center, IRC,
formed the leadership of the Coalition to Stop Funding the War (and successor
orgs.) which successfully targeted key legislators to cut funds for the war in 1973-75.[6]

Hanoi Jane and POW Edison Miller

In June 1972, Hayden
helped arrange Fonda’s infamous July tour of North Vietnam headlined by her
many radio broadcasts and her girlish glee at a Communist gun battery posing
shooting down American pilots and their aircraft. She among many others would receive
a ring made from a downed American plane, which she was photographed wearing on
her necklace.  She called America the
common enemy and, along with Tom, was honored as a “comrade-in-arms “ of Hanoi.

During Fonda’s visit of Hanoi on
July 18, 1972 Fonda met with seven American POWs at the Hanoi Hilton, two of
whom, Edison Miller and Walter Wilber were collaborators with the Vietnamese
enemy, who received special treatment and who had voluntarily made broadcasts
over Radio Hanoi. Over Radio Hanoi, Fonda
said the POWs “all assured me that they have been well cared for. … They
are in good health.”[7]

According to AP: “I was looking carefully in their eyes and they were not
glazed” she said, they were not brainwashed.[8]
Edison Miller according to Thomas Elias, “made war tapes for the North Vietnamese;
allegedly in return for better treatment than was given other POWs.”[9] Miller admitted he had made his broadcasts over
Radio Hanoi voluntarily, but that was only after resisting torture for 4-5
years and turning against the war.[10] Yet fellow POWs “claimed that … he received
special treatment, eggs, bread, bananas, and fruit, that the rest of them did
not get.”[11] Edison Miller had an open window, an exercise
area, books, an aquarium, and a bed.[12] Further,
POWs claimed that Miller was an open, active, and voluntary collaborator.  He had gone over to the enemy. Miller made a
broadcast the first, not the fourth or fifth, year of his captivity.[13]

In 1970 on Mother’s Day, Miller broadcast saying,

Mothers have been suffering loss and injury of
sons in time of war since time began. … This war is different … Their sons
are killing fellow human beings and destroying foreign countries for an unjust
cause, making our actions not only illegal, but immoral … Immorality is the
rottenness which is consuming us.  We are
a militaristic nation of the first order. … My country’s immoral and illegal
actions, which are, now culminated in the tragedy of Vietnam is America’s shame
and blight on the world’s conscience.[14]

Navy Captain, POW, and future U.S. Senator, John McCain said that Miller and another
POW made an hour long broadcast. POW McCain overheard Miller making
tapes “not only condemning U.S. participation in the war, but also the
United States as a government.”  Other
POWs said that Miller “praised Socialist systems as superior to our own.”[15]

Coming home on February 12, 1973 Edison Miller arrived at Camp Pendleton to a hero’s
welcome and wild applause.  200 Marines
stood quietly at attention in his honor. Showing his gratitude, Miller mocked
the USMC welcome– “He stopped, held up a clenched fist, and turned full
circle.” His POW commanding officer James Stockdale filed charges against
Miller, but the Secretary of Navy John W. Warner issued a letter of censure and
dismissed the charges. Miller’s public career and involvement with Tom and Jane
was far from over.

During 1972, Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda formed the Indochina Peace Campaign. Among IPC
members, besides Edison Miller, were other POW collaborators such as POW Bob
Chenoweth of the POWs “Peace Committee,” and early release POW George Smith.[16]

Fonda calls Tortured POWs, “Hypocrites, Liars and
Pawn” Jerry Brown Defend Hanoi Jane

In 1973 when POWs returned en mass telling of their torture, Jane Fonda
called the POWs “hypocrites, liars and pawns.” Resolutions from the legislatures
of Colorado, Indiana, and California excoriated Fonda. The California Senate
resolution condemned Jane Fonda who “spread the lies of enemy.”

Brown Helps Fonda and Hollywood Elects Brown Governor, 1974

A politically ambitious Jerry Brown was now California’s Secretary of State. Hayden and Fonda met Jane
Bay, an aide of Secretary of State Jerry Brown, who persuaded Tom Quinn to
prevail upon Senator George Moscone to kill the anti-Fonda resolution in the
Senate Rules Committee.[17] The deed was done, the resolution failed and
the Jerry Brown and Hayden/ Fonda friendship was sealed.

During 1974, Hayden wrote a positive
article in Rolling Stone about Jerry Brown and this Watergate year Jerry
Brown had the support of Jane’s Hollywood friends for his successful
November campaign for governor against a moderate Pomona college professor,
Houston Flournoy.

Brown, Hayden and Fonda Antagonistic to Indochina Refugees, 1975

During the spring of 1975 while thousands of civilians fled North
Vietnamese heavy artillery and Soviet tanks and some desperately sought refuge
in America.  Tom and Jane led the way
opposing assistance to refugees and favoring forced repatriation. And Governor
Jerry Brown complained, “We want to dump Vietnamese” on California “which is
suffering a high rate of unemployment.”[18]

As late as April 31, 1988 Tom Hayden was
confronting Vietnamese protesters outside his house carrying a baseball bat. He
screamed expletives at the Vietnamese who objected to Hayden saying the San
Jose Vietnamese were mostly members of criminal gangs.[19]

In 1975, Hayden joined with Institute
for Policy Studies in establishing the National Conference on Alternative State
and Local Policies. Hayden “guided a group decision… to speak to issues
of [among others] …corporate crimes against the environment.”[20] Environmental issues moved up on the leftist
agenda as the Vietnam concluded.

Jerry Brown’s Staff Comes Out of Tom Hayden’s U.S. Senate Campaign, 1976

By January of 1975, as 17 divisions of North Vietnamese troops with Soviet tanks moved toward
Saigon, John Holum, a member of George McGovern’s staff, suggested that Tom
Hayden run for U.S. Senate against liberal Democrat incumbent John Tunney in
1976. No longer the revolutionary befriended by Jerry Brown, Tom Hayden now
claimed to be an ordinary liberal Democrat who had voted for Brown, McGovern
and President Lyndon B. Johnson (unlikely). Liberal Democrat and Senate Pro
Temp James Mills later condemned Hayden’s “ferocious [1976] campaign of
character assassination” against Tunney.[21]

Out of Hayden’s 1976 Senate campaign, Derek Shearer, Larry Levin, Lu Haas, Edison Miller and
Fred Branfman would receive appointments from Governor Jerry Brown. Branfman
would work on Jerry Brown’s 1980 Presidential Campaign.

Who were these future appointees of Governor Brown? Derek
Shearer, co-authored Hayden’s 1976 U.S. Senate platform and a book Economic
Democracy; IPC’s
Larry Levin lobbied Congress to cut off aid to South
Vietnam and spent the last days of the war with the enemy in Hanoi became
Hayden’s campaign manager; Lucien
“Lu” Haas was a Hayden Senate campaign worker as well as a
spokesman for prior Governors and Senators; POW Edison Miller collaborator
voluntarily made broadcasts from Hanoi; Fred Branfman, Policy Director for the
campaign, had headed Project Air War a Hanoi favored attack upon US air power
after US troops left Vietnam, was an Editorial Board Member of Philip Agee’s Counter
Spy
which exposed CIA agents and became a cheerleader for the Sandinista
Regime in Nicaragua[22]

During Hayden’s campaign for the U.S.
Senate against Democrat incumbent John Tunney in 1975-76, Hayden’s platform
condemned “crimes in the suites”[23] one of which was “environmental
destruction.”[24]

Campaign For Economic Democracy

In 1976 Hayden lost his run for the
US Senate, but built the organization that became Campaign for Economic Democracy, CED.

Tom Hayden and Derek Shearer, Institute for Policy
Studies admitted that CED’s “economic democracy” was a very thinly veiled front
for socialism. Hayden saw it as a “transition to socialism.”[25] It sought “to create public control over
the crucial economic decisions…”[26] including “public control of offshore drilling, land use and
water decisions.” CED had a new dream of new industries creating new jobs in
solar, transit and environmental industries. “This dream has a name:  Economic Democracy … controlling giant
corporations, … directing investments…. Ownership and control … spread
among a wide variety of public bodies…” Hayden thought, “An
honest socialist knows the image of socialism is tarnished.” [27] Hence, Economic Democracy was a useful “euphemism
for Democratic Socialism.”

Capitalism and private property were the enemy. CED
promotional brochure was titled the “Stagnant Thing in Our Midst . . .
Corporate Capitalism.” Hayden said, “… a rising demand for a
voice in the decisions controlling our lives — will spread…particularly to the
corporate world where…power is concentrated and in so few hands.”[28] CED was, said Senator Pro Tempore James Mills, a program of “public control
and ownership of the great corporations,” and that made Hayden a Marxist.[29] Corporations did great evil. A Hayden flyer
entitled “Stop the Poisoning of California” said,  “Overuse of pesticides profit only the
petrochemical industry … It’s time to put tougher controls on the excesses of
chemical age.”[30] Fueled demagoguery and public fears, Governor
Jerry Brown and his successors enacted a regulatory apparatus against chemistry
in every setting.

Hayden and Fonda also formed
the Laurel Springs Institute to indoctrinate children and adults in socialist
ideas. Heather Booth, wife of former SDS president and Hayden friend, Paul
Booth formed the Midwest Academy to perform the same functions. Hayden demanded that
landlords return their Proposition 13 property tax cut “windfall” to
renters.[31]

Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda brought the Campaign for Economic Democracy, CED, a
stalking horse for socialism and radical environmentalism into the Governor’s
Office.

Jerry Brown Welcomes Tom Hayden and Economic
Democracy into the Governor’s Office.

Governor Jerry Brown had appointed
Tom Hayden his “special counsel.”[32] In 1977, Esquire’s
Joel Kotkin met Tom sitting at a typewriter in the Governor’s office in the
state Capitol.  It was not an occasional acquaintance with power.

By 1977 Hayden had become an accessory to the governor’s core of advisors. … One
day … I ran into Hayden sitting at a typewriter in the governor’s
offices.  Hayden said, ‘I’m doing a
little work for Jerry … Now it’s the governor and the CED against everyone
else.”[33]

Hayden told Kotkin that Jerry Brown was “the only person around who can give us
power and legitimacy.”[34] Radical
Jeffrey Klein of Mother Jones put it less charitably. Brown would
“hand a curtain of legitimacy that will blur his [Hayden’s] radical
past.”[35]

Gray Davis, governor Brown’s chief of staff, future State Controller, and recalled
Governor said, “Hayden can be very helpful to us…This is not fun and games
with Tom and Jane.  It is as simple as this:  he has the troops, and he has the
funds.  You ignore him at your own peril.”[36] Indeed,
some said the Hayden’s influence meant “Jane and Tom say jump and Jerry
says ‘how high?”[37]

Hayden and Brown also appeared together at rallies dealing with rent control,
anti-nuclear and South African issues.
Fonda biographer Christopher Andersen says:

“Yet much of the Haydens’ influence was unseen.
Brown attended CED meetings closed to the press, and with [songstress
Linda] Ronstadt tagging along, spent weekends at the Hayden’s Santa Monica home
or the Laurel Springs ranch.  There they
conferred on all the important issues facing the state and nation — from solar
power and disarmament to Mexican farm workers and secretaries’ rights. They
talked about what Brown would do if elected president, and who would he would
appoint to the cabinet.  Jane, Brown
agreed, would make an excellent secretary of state.”[38]

“Behind the democratic veneer,
Tom’s very autocratic,” said a Brown official.  “With the governor behind him, he
bullies any bureaucrat he wants.” And in a whisper, “Everything he does is a way station to
power.”[39] And in an ironic development for Hayden who had planned and incited street fights against
the Daley machine in Chicago in 1968, Jerry Brown provided “a network of
patronage jobs for CED supporters, a classic throwback to the Daley-style
political machines”[40]

Brown Appoints Minions of Hayden-Fonda

In addition to “special counsel,” Brown appointed Hayden director, Solar Cal; governor’s
representative, Southwest Regional Border Commission; and member, Governor’s
Public Investment Task Force. Some 60 POWs presented Jerry Brown the
“Benedict Arnold Citizenship Award,” for Brown’s naming a former antiwar
activist Tom Hayden to a federally funded solar energy firm.”[41]

Brown Appointments of Friends of Tom and Jane, 1975-1983

The most infamous appointment of Jerry Brown was of his chauffer and a
traffic court judge, Rose Bird, to Chief Justice of the California Supreme. Tom Hayden and CED had supported Bird. After
nearly 60 decisions against the death penalty, Californians voted Rose Bird out of office in November 1986.

However, the most disastrous of
Browns’s appointments were radical environmentalist pals of Tom Hayden and Jane
Fonda, including Adrianna Gianturco.
Hayden and Fonda’s CED platform favored heavily taxing the “privilege of … private transportation” to pay
for heavily subsidized public transit with low and no fares. CED urged
disincentives for automobile usage and favored car pools.[42] Brown
appointee Adrianna Gianturco
implemented the CED platform, halted road and bridge construction, sold off
rights of way for future highway construction, created car pools and promoted
public transit in the sprawling, low density population of California.  Freeways once the wonder of the world
devolved into the roads of Bangla Desh and the traffic of Cairo.

Brown appointed many other friends of Tom and Jane to major departments
and policy positions. Some, like Fred Branfman and Lu Haas, sat in the Governor’s office along with
Tom Hayden.

Fred Branfman became director of Planning and Research, the major
policy making unit in the governor’s office. Branfman had visited Laos as a key
figure in Hanoi friendly Indochina Resource Center and headed Project Air War
using enemy propaganda, film and numbers. After the war Branfman had stayed in
the Hayden-Fonda home and became a CED founder and developer of “Jobs From
The Sun” for the California Public Policy Center. Lucien “Lu” Haas became Brown’s chief media advisor in a very media astute administration.
Haas, an opponent of the Cold War including the Vietnam War had been spokesman
for Senator Alan Cranston and worked for the George McGovern and CED and
Hayden.

Brown appointed Ruth Yanatta
Goldway (Shearer) to the Department of Consumer Affairs, the state’s
major agency for the regulation of every business and profession. Derek Shearer worked at the renamed Employment Development Department,
EDD, which developed no jobs, but handed out checks for the unemployed and the
disabled. Shearer was co-author of Economic Democracy, wrote Hayden’s
1976 U.S. Senate platform and the working papers for CED’s Santa Barbara
founding conference. He was board member of Hayden-Fonda’s radical training academy,
Laurel Springs Institute, the California Public Policy Center, and the New
School of Democratic Management. He was associate fellow of the Institute for
Policy Studies and an economic advisor to Bill Clinton Shearer who has been an
Occidental College professor since 1981. Shearer might have been one of Barak
Obama’s “Marxist professors” at Occidental where Barak Obama was a member and a
speaker for Students for Economic Democracy, a creation of Hayden and
Fonda.

John Geesman was appointed executive director of the California Energy
Commission (1979-83). Geesman had participated in CED’s founding conference in
Santa Barbara, board member of the Solar Center (an offshoot of the Foundation
for National Progress), and CED contributor. The California Energy Commission
led decades long opposition to nuclear and hydroelectric power, new power
plants and refineries pushing a conservation and alternative energy
agenda.  The Commission supported high
cost, publicly subsidized solar and wind projects. Over time the cost of energy
in California became twice the national average. Geesman returned to the
commission 2003-2008 and 2010.

Stanley Sheinbaum became a regent for the University of California. Husband of Betty
Warner of Hollywood’s Warner Brothers family he came into great wealth.
Sheinbaum financed Hayden’s revolutionary “Red Family” and “International Liberation School” in Berkeley as well as
Daniel Ellsberg and Yasser Arafat.

Gov. Brown appointed still other Hayden/CED people.
Jane Dolan, “CED member”[43], wife of Bob Mulholland and Butte county
supervisor (until 2010) was appointed to the Office of Economic Opportunity.       Brown
appointed Nathaniel Gardels to head the Governor’s Public Investment
Task Force. Gardels was the official CED contact in the Santa Monica area and
today writes for the Huffington Post and with billionaire Nicholas
Berggruen’s Think Long foundations plans to reform California. To the task
force Brown also appointed CED activists Patti Lightstone and Robin Schneider.  Also Cary Lowe.

“Affordable” Housing

Cary Lowe was also appointed
chairman of the Governor’s Affordable Housing Task Force. Lowe was a CED
tenants rights activist, member of the National Lawyers Guild, board member of
the California Policy Center, founding board member of the Liberty Hill
Foundation, board Member of the California Housing Action and Information
Network, CHAIN.[44] The CED platform for housing was to provide
affordable housing as a right through:
rent control; land as a public utility; reduced residential property
taxes; tax speculative profits; pension fund financing, cooperative/non-profit
ownership. In short, expropriation of
private property in stages. In December 1978, Governor Jerry Brown joined Tom
Hayden at a Los Angeles town hall meeting with 500 renters.  A February 1, 1979 article in the Los Angeles
Times
reported that Hayden’s CED and the Coalition for Economic Survival,
headed by Reverend Al Dortch did “the bulk of the tenant political
organization” in Los Angeles and Santa Monica.  Dortch, a former IPC activist, was very aggressive and said his group
was “an organization which challenges political and economic power
structure…” The Coalition was thrown out of meetings of the Los Angeles
County Board of Supervisors.[45] They had better luck with the City of Los
Angeles.  Dortch, Cary Lowe, Hayden, and
Governor Jerry Brown literally harassed the Los Angeles City Council into a
rent moratorium and eventually a rent control ordinance[46] reducing the rental
housing supply and increasing rents in unregulated market.

In a 1988 “Dear Member” letter, CED’s
Executive Director, Cathy Calfo, claimed that CED had “successfully fought
for affordable housing.” CED’s leadership in rent control, no growth and
slow growth in every community where it had power contradicted this claim and
led to housing shortages and inflated housing prices.

Tom Sowell observes, “After the environmentalists and others pushed for
heavy-handed government restrictions on building anything anywhere, San
Francisco housing prices rose to become more than triple the national average.”
The impoverished housing supply has created a great market for government bonds
(1C, 2006) and redevelopment agencies to build a symbolic few affordable
housing units for a few with great fanfare. California’s post WWII building of
cheap housing for returning veterans and a booming economy, was killed.

Today Cary Lowe is a land use attorney and planning consultant
recommending that housing be made green, keeping it very expensive and very
unaffordable. Jerry Brown’s legacy was making housing unaffordable for millions
of Californians.

Larry Levin, became staff
director of Western Sun. Levin had been the top IPC lobbyist and visitor to
Hanoi while the people of South Vietnam fled Soviet tanks in April 1975. By
2010, Levin returned as a spokesman for Berkeley’s far left State Senator Loni
Hancock. Margaret Gardels, wife of Nathan Gardels and a CED contributor, was
appointed regional director of the federally funded Western Sun.

Jimmy Carter Competes with Brown for Hayden-Fonda’s Favors.

In December 1977 Tom Hayden showed up as Gov. Brown’s California delegate to the
White House Conference on Balanced National Growth and Economic Growth. CED’s
impending endorsement of Jerry Brown likely led to a Carter invitation for
Fonda and Hayden to the White House the following February. Carter’s generous
federal appointees out of the ranks of SDS, VVAW, IPS and NACLA had also eased
the way for the Tom and Jane.[47] Carter
was very receptive to Hayden and Fonda’s anti-war sentiments having pardoned
all 10,000 draft dodgers and offered those opportunities to some deserters —
the first day after his inauguration — on January 21, 1977.  One of Carter’s top aides and a close
political and personal friend was Peter Bourne who was an admirer of Fidel Castro
active in Vietnam Veterans Against the War whose Winter Soldier war crimes
conference Jane Fonda had helped finance.

In February 1978 Carter, who could not find time to meet the wives of troops
Missing In Action in Vietnam [48] met privately with Tom Hayden accompanied by
Peter Bourne in the Oval Office of the White House. According to Max Lerner in
the New York Post of February 10, 1978, the visit was stimulated by
Carter’s dislike of Jerry Brown. Carter wanted Hayden’s independence from
Brown.  In return, a Carter aide said
“Tom and Carter are dedicated to the same thing — making the system more
responsive,” making Hayden “an inside-the-system Democrat.”

Hayden gave president Carter a copy of Working Papers on Economic Democracy produced
for CED by the California Public Policy Center.[49]

Hayden:  “We would like our Economic Democracy
considered as a legitimate part of the national debate and we would like a way
to plug our ideas, … into [the president’s] office”

Carter:  “That would be fine.”

Through friendships with both Jerry
Brown and Jimmy Carter, taxpayer funds flowed into Hayden’s CED and his allies.

Carter Patronage to Hayden and Fonda

President Carter had placed 60’s activists, most known to Hayden and Fonda, into his
administration and funded 60’s activists outside of government.  He appointed Sam Browne, antiwar activist, to
head up ACTION with the assistance of Lee Weiner of the Chicago Eight.  Marge Tabankin, led VISTA She had been a
Hayden recruit in his Newark community organizing before riots there in 1967.
Tabankin was a national Student Association leader who signed Hanoi’s People’s
Peace Treaty in Hanoi.  John Froines of
the Chicago Eight worked for OSHA.  CED’s
housing expert, Ed Kirschner handled government loans for the National Consumer
Cooperative Bank for Jimmy Carter and economic democrat Derek Shearer was put
on the bank’s board of directors. The banks provided loans to cooperatives and
nonprofit organizations serving the low income and homeless.

ACTION funded staff for the San
Diego CED (via the Youth Project labor)[50];
Tom and Jane’s CED training arm, the Laurel Springs Institute (VISTA Volunteer
training); Western Sun (Hayden, Director); Citizen/Labor Energy Coalition
(Hayden, Co-Director); and the CED research arm, the Center for New Corporate
Priorities (Derek Shearer’s wife’s organization).  VISTA’s
National Director, Marge Tabankin had first met Hayden in Newark, joined SDS,
and signed the Peoples Peace Treaty in Hanoi, etc. VISTA’s Regional Director,
Loni Hancock, also knew Hayden from his Berkeley days and Larry Levin later
joined her Senate staff.

In 1978, a CED training and research arm, the Center for New Corporate Priorities
(CNCP), received $126,000 from the Department of Labor, under the Comprehensive
Employment and Training Act, CETA.  The
CETA funds were used to covered the salaries of (CNCP’s) director Ruth Yanatta
Goldway (wife of Derek Shearer), and of CETA laborers used by CED affiliated
groups — California Public Policy Center, California Housing Research Council
(successor to CHAIN), and the Coalition for Economic Survival.[51]

Power From the Sun. SolarCal, 1977-78

Back in California Jerry Brown appointed Hayden-Fonda friends to SOLARCAL. SolarCal was Hayden’s creation. The April 17,
1977 issue of the San Diego Union described Hayden’s “public solar
energy corporation.”  Fred Branfman
said Solarcal was a Hayden originated “solar development bank” in the
June 18, 1977 issue of The Nation. The June-July 1977 issue of CED
News
proclaimed CED “leadership … in the development of a state
owned solar industry.”  The December
1, 1977 issue of the Daily Californian said SolarCal was a product of
research by CED and the California Public Policy Center.

Stanley Sheinbaum, the Stern Fund,
Abelard Foundation, New York Community Trust, Pacific Alliance, Foundation
financed Fred Branfman’s study Jobs From the Sun released in February 1978, for
National Progress, DJB Foundation, Daniel Ellsberg and Stewart Mott.[52] IPS funded California Public Policy Center (Fred
Branfman) and the Pacific Alliance (Alvin Duskin)[53] lobbying assistance for “a public solar
energy corporation.” Hayden, Branfman, and antinuclear activist Alvin
Duskin testified before the state legislature and local CED members worked on
key legislators. CED activists and friends of Tom and Jane had endorsed
Solarcal: Rep. Ron Dellums, Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally, and Daniel Ellsberg.[54] SolarCal was officially established on “Sun
Day” 1978 with a four-day CED sponsored celebration in Berkeley.

Many CED-affiliated persons were appointed members of the Solar Cal Local Government
Commission. The most noteworthy were:
Supervisor Barbara Boxer, Marin County …… elected to Congress in 1982 and US Senate in 1992; gay activist and
future member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Harry Britt; Supervisor
Wesley Chesbro, Humboldt County, elected to the State Senate in 1998 and
Assembly to the present; Supervisor Rod Diridon, Santa Clara County; Supervisor
Jane Dolan, Butte County; Supervisor Dan McCorquodale, Santa Clara County
elected to the state Senate in 1982; Councilman John Means, City of Bakersfield
– later candidate for the state Assembly; Supervisor Gary Patton, Santa Cruz
County, later Planning and Conservation League; Councilman Wilson Riles, Jr.,
City of Oakland and later California Superintendent of Public Instruction.

CED Supports Brown’s Political Ambitions

It was certainly no wonder that Hayden and CED
endorsed Governor Brown’s upcoming Gubernatorial re-election in 1978.  Endorsing Brown ensured that Tom had not
completely alienated the Democratic Party establishment from his future
political options.[55] And Fonda
promised to raise $3 million to Brown’s impending run for president in 1980.[56]
The solar and other patronage did go forever unnoticed.

Political Patronage Scandals

Bill Wallace wrote articles in October 1979 in the radical Berkeley Barb.  Wallace said, Hayden’s

political machine … put CED members on the payroll of Western Sun, … obtained federal
funding from CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) … to pay wages
to CED members for doing CED work, (and)…. used [another federally funded]
… Santa Monica crime control program called Communitas, … a quarter of a
million dollars, … to promote rent control … dear to CED’s heart, but
completely unconnected to crime control.

Wallace said Brown’s appointments were using taxpayers’ monies to build Hayden’s
personal political machine, his “community action groups”.

Border Commission

Brown’s appointment of Hayden to the Southwest
Regional Border Commission also added Hayden’s political ally Richard Ybarra
and CED’s San Diego founder and Laurel Springs director, Shari Lawson to the
public payroll.  By 1979-80 the Democrat
controlled California Senate and Assembly, Assembly Speaker Leo McCarthy and
Senate Pro Tempore James Mills, fought
Jerry Brown’s prior appointment of Hayden to the Southwest Border Regional
Commission alleging cost over runs[57]
making future funding of the Commission dependent upon Senate confirmation of
Hayden.[58]
By December 1980, Hayden resigned to “rebuild progressive grassroots
forces.”[59]

Western Sun

Brown had also made Hayden the Director of Western Sun, a federal solar project
funded by the Department of Energy.  The Barb’s
Wallace said Hayden “many political allies…on Western Sun’s [Federal]
payroll.”  Mark Vandervelen,
lobbyist of Friends of the Earth, said, “It’s just a big solar pork
barrel. … Tom would … scream if some right-wing Republican put … his
cronies on the payroll … (and) then used them to do precinct work for his own
re-election campaign.”

Wallace reported that Larry Levin, a CED member, a Hayden campaign manager in 1976 and
now the Western Sun field representative met to discuss federal grants with CED
allied officials in Berkeley and Oakland in 1979.[60] Levin had
spoken to CED activists in Berkeley on the subject of “The Battle Against
Corporate Power.”  Judy Corbett, a
Western Sun consultant, and her husband Michael, a Davis political activist and
future mayor, were CED fundraisers.  Two
other CED members also were paid consultants for Western Sun — Kit Bricca of
Santa Clara and Keith Bray of Sacramento. Hayden had received $82,000 from the
Department of Energy for Western Sun as start up monies — well spent.  Others noticed that it was used “to hire
his leftist cronies.  All the people
hired and all the sub-contracting has been to CED members,” according to
SUNRAE, a Santa Barbara solar power group.[61] Other
solar-power groups felt “frozen out.”
If you were not with CED, “you can just go fish.”  And one environmentalist told the Barb’s Wallace
that Tom Hayden was simply a “Piranha of the Left.”  Another told Wallace, “This is really a
no-win situation for the left … the fallout will go to discredit the
movements …anti-nuke, solar power, the whole schmear.”[62]

CETA

In 1979, the Center for New Corporate
Priorities, which had been founded in 1970, returned what remained of its CETA
grant and closed its doors. Later the Los Angeles Times reported that
the Center had “ . . . at least three participants engaged in political lobbying
activities on CETA paid time…”[63] Closing the Center may have headed off the
Department of Labor’s impending investigations of CNCP’s alleged misuse of
public funds.[64]

Overall, from 1978-1980, Hayden’s CED received $743,000 in federal funds.[65]

Hayden used appointments
to wield power within the Brown administration.

Preventing Crimes …of the Landlords

The CED affiliated Comunitas in Santa Monica, headed by Hayden ally Rev. Jim Conn,
received $334,761 in grants from the Department of Justice (DOJ) for crime
prevention efforts — “safe houses, block clubs, and neighborhood
councils” — among women, seniors and minorities to provide
“grassroots” crime prevention services such as neighborhood alert and
target hardening against burglars, muggers, rapists and such.  In fact, Conn’s Communitas focused on block
organization, precinct work and information night meetings on Santa Monica’s
Rent Control initiative. Jim Conn was treasurer of Santa Monicans for Renter’s
Rights headed by CED and Santa Monica City Council members Ruth Yanatta and
Bill Jennings.[66]

A Communitas publication, “A Short History of Ocean Park,” described
its “crime prevention” activities:
land use regulation to reduce development; forced relocation of
businesses; eviction protection for nonpayment of rent; and stricter rent
control.  Communitas wanted to prevent
economic “crimes” that might be committed by capitalists — apartment
owners, small businessmen, and homebuilders — those obvious class enemies of
the people identified at CED’s founding convention.

Thus two grants to Communitas and the soon defunct Center for New Corporate
Priorities helped fund community organization — house to house, among seniors
and low income people, in Santa Monica for the benefit of a CED affiliate Santa
Monicans for Renters Rights, SMRR, which succeeded in 1979– passing one of the
strictest rent control measures in America, electing a majority of the rent
control board in 1979 and in electing a majority of the City Council of Santa
Monica in 1981.  Mayor Goldway appointed
her husband and Hayden’s intellectual mentor, Derek Shearer, to the City
Planning Commission.  She may have placed
CETA employees into CED positions as well.
About the misuse of funds we have a sympathetic George Cornell interview
of Hayden: Noting that no investigations have resulted in prosecutions, Hayden
said, ‘The whole thing is totally made up so it’s got you in a position where
you have to write there’s been no prosecution — which makes it seem like,
well, he must have used his influence with the governor to squelch that.’[67]

Brown’s Continuing Political Favors

Besides subsidizing their far left payroll,
Hayden and Fonda called upon Jerry Brown for many controversial political favors

Dennis Banks.

In 1978 Hayden persuaded Brown to block
the extradition of Indian activist Dennis Banks for sentencing in South Dakota
for his actions in the 1973 Custer County Courthouse riot. At Wounded Knee
Banks and/or his compatriots occupied a courthouse, firebombed a building,
burned two police cars, and injured seven police officers. A South Dakota jury
convicted Banks of assault with a deadly weapon, but he fled to political
sanctuary in California. Governor Brown refused to extradite Banks back to
South Dakota for sentencing.  Banks was also on the lam for firearms possession charges in Oregon.[68] In March
1976, Hayden had called Banks a “political and philosophical leader of
great importance. …  Both claimed Banks
faced death if Banks was returned to South Dakota.”[69] Brown granted Dennis Banks political asylum in
the sovereign state of California on April 20, 1978.

People’s Temple, December 1978

Jane Fonda said, “The church I
relate to most is called the People’s Temple” as it offers “a sense
of what life should be about.” Many of Tom and Jane’s friends were great
admirers of Jones’ community of socialism, peace and justice. Joining the Black
Panthers Governor Jerry Brown attended Jim Jones services at the People’s
Temple in San Francisco as did his Lt. Governor, Mervyn Dymally.  Hayden’s memoirs Reunion, is
dismissive the exotic “religious” cults of many of his old friends in
the New Left, but he does not mention Jim Jones. Attorney Charles Garry said of
Jonestown, Guyana “For the first time, I saw a world where there was no
racism, sexism, ageism, elitism no poverty.”

On November 21, 1978 Leo Ryan, D-San Mateo, and 933 Americans died at the hands of
Jim Jones at an airport outside Jonestown, Guyana. The Congressman and his
entourage traveled to Guyana to investigate constituent complaints of mistreatment
and found the classic Marxist cult of personality and oppression. Jones used
public humiliation, purges, radio Havana, informers, beatings, sex and drugs to
control commune members and to make his socialist revolution.  Back at the commune 933 died in a mass
murder-suicide ritual, drinking cyanide laced grape Kool-Aid.  Subsequent investigation showed that the
“Reverend” Jim Jones planned to move his commune to the Soviet Union
and that $7 million expropriated from his parishioners was to be given to the
Communist Party – of the Soviet Union. One of Jones’ agents, Mike Prokes and
two others left Jonestown with $500,000 in cash earmarked for the Soviet
Embassy where Jonestown leaders had had weekly meetings.

Lt. Gov. Dymally had intervened with
the government of Guyana to help Jones establish his slave colony. Ignoring
Jones’ long-term infatuation with Marxism and his decision to “infiltrate
the church,” the California left had successfully protected Jones from his
critics — Temple defectors and an occasional journalist.[70]

Joan Baez Confronts Jane Fonda et al, 1978-79

In the fall of 1978 in Berkeley,
site of Ho Chi Minh Park, Doan Van Toai spoke to a cool audience about
Communist oppression. Doan was a former Viet Cong agent who had toured American
college, been arrested six times by the Theiu-Ky government, welcomed the North
Vietnamese liberation of Saigon and taken a position confiscating private
property. Disillusioned Doan had a meeting with folk singer and pacifist Joan
Baez who spent $200,000 investigating the Vietnamese human rights record.[71] On May 30th,
1979 Baez, published an “Open Letter to the Socialist Republic of
Vietnam,” condemning human rights violations in Vietnam in a full-page
newspaper ad in five major metropolitan newspapers. Baez’s asked the North
Vietnamese to stop the imprisonment, torture and clearing of mine field with
political prisoners.

A grim mosaic

The jails are overflowing…

People disappear and never return.

People are shipped to reeducation centers, fed a
starvation diet …

Forced to squat bound wrist to ankle, suffocated
in “conex” boxes.

People are used as human mine detectors, clearing live mine fields with their hands and feet.

For many, life is hell and death is prayed for.[72]

Prior to publication Tom Hayden and
Jane Fonda “led the charge on the West Coast”[73] to suppress the publication.[74] Fonda mailed members of the anti-war movement —
including 25 of the Baez signators.
Fonda said, “The repression was not
as bad as the predicted bloodbath…” Baez says, “whoever wrote the
letter…was extremely careless and wrote,
‘I don’t know if we can expect the Vietnamese to turn free millions
of people overnight.”[75]

Jane Fonda called the Vietnamese
refugees, “misfits”[76] Tom Hayden railed against corporate oil
dictators. “It’s the yacht people who caused the boat people’, he said.[77] Similarly, Jim Wallis, frequent war
protester, SDS leader at Michigan State, friend of Daniel Berrigan, editor of Sojourners,
an advocate of Marxist-Leninist social justice and a cheerleader of the Viet
Cong said “Many of today’s
[Vietnamese] refugees… are fleeing to support their consumer habits in other
lands.”[78] Wallis would become President Barack
Obama’s spiritual advisor on matters of morality.

Fonda told Baez she was aligned
“with the most narrow and negative elements in our country who continue to
believe that Communism is worse than death.”[79] Officially, Tom Hayden “endorsed”
Jane’s letter.  He probably wrote it. [80] Jane Fonda said, “We never criticize
revolutionary regimes, don’t you know?”[81] By late
July, a backtracking Jane Fonda said, these “attacks … imply that I am
unwilling to be critical of the new government in Vietnam.”[82]

Baez remembered, “A campaign
was launched to stop me…. The phone rang off the hook with ultimatums and
suggestions that I was naive, that … Toai was … CIA.” Hayden pals Fred
Branfman, William Kunstler, and Gareth Porter of the Indochina Resource Center
were particularly vehement. Baez says, “all hell broke loose…I was a CIA
rat.  ‘It’s an honor to be called both a
CIA rat and a KGB agent,’ I responded. ‘I must be doing something
right.”  Kunstler said Baez was
“cruel and wonton” adding “I do not believe in public attacks on
Socialist countries, even where violations of human rights occur.”  Dave Dellinger wrote, “You have to [be]
naive to [think] that a Leninist revolution will allow any independent
thought.”[83]

Peter Collier says, “Tom and Jane … were opposed to Baez.  So …
was the coalition of old-line communists, neo-fellow travelers, and
unreconstructed sixties radicals… There were no enemies on the left.”[84] These
were clearly friends of Hanoi and Moscow in the United States. The official
party line was published in the New York Times of June 24, 1979.
“The Truth About Vietnam,” said, in part, said, “we are appalled
at you recent attack on Vietnam and embarrassed by the ignorance it displays.
…”

The Baez charges were “Outrageous … without
foundation …without a scintilla of documentation. …Some 400,000 servants of
the former barbaric regimes were sent to re-education camps … agents of the
former repressive regimes.  …  Vietnam now enjoys human rights as it has
never known …  the right to a job and
safe, healthy working conditions … education, medicine and health care …
[which] we in the United States have yet to achieve.”[85]

The ad had provided two clip-out coupons:
One demanding billions of dollars for the reconstruction of Vietnam and
the other seeking volunteers or money for a Soviet front — the U. S. Peace
Council. Really. The Soviets cared about the Baez attack on Jane Fonda. A Los
Angeles Times article, “Soviet Press Backs Miss Hayden” in the
August 15, 1979 issue, had a few words Joan Baez and Jane Fonda.  About Baez, the Soviet press said, “She
must have been ‘singing with someone else’s voice … Recently she sang in
Seattle … where a strong crowd … [confronting her] holding up signs
[saying] ‘The CIA likes Joan Baez’ and ‘Joan Baez likes the CIA.’ Thus sayeth Sovietskaya
Kultura
about Joan Baez.

About Jane Fonda, the Komsomolskaya Pravda said she is “a symbol of
American freedom fighters like Angela Davis, … The name of Fonda is today on
all the blacklists of America… .  She
is like Joan of Arc and they are threatening her with the same fate.”  Yet “Even the strong of the world are afraid
of her.”

Other American friends included the
American Friends Service Committee, whose letterhead was used to denounce Doan
Van Toai as a “CIA lackey.”[86]
Philadelphia SANE Nuclear Policy Committee honored Tom and Jane with
their 1979 SANE Peace Award.[87]

In early August millionaire Fonda
held a $25 fundraiser for an airlift of supplies to Vietnam, Operation
California, attended by hundreds including Robert Vaughn, Mike Farrell,
Governor Jerry Brown’s first sister and future state Treasurer and later
gubernatorial aspirant Kathleen Brown Rice, Brown aide Tom Quinn, CED activist
and POW-collaborator Edison Miller. Fonda hadn’t changed her mind about Vietnam
— the refugee problem could be attributed to American “government
bureaucracy and red tape get in the way of helping those in dire
straits…”[88] Peter Collier observed, “Tens of thousands
of people are mired in unspeakable tragedy while Hayden and Fonda mince words
to avoid offending the Stalinist Gerontocracy that runs Hanoi.”
Collier described Tom and Jane holding a Hollywood gala to raise funds for the
boat people, as if their problems were caused by a natural disaster, “a
potato famine,” rather than political repression.[89]

Jerry Brown Stands By Hayden and Fonda

On October 8th, Governor Jerry Brown honored Jane Fonda at a “Salute to
Women” breakfast in Los Angeles.

Even before the Baez problem
would run its course, another ghost of Hanoi past would appear.  In 1979 at the urging of Jane Fonda and Tom
Hayden Governor Jerry Brown appointed Miller Supervisor of Orange County.

Edison Miller

Tom and Jane recommended that Brown CED activist[90]
and former POW and Hanoi collaborator, Edison Miller, to a vacancy on the
Orange County Board of Supervisors.
Miller’s credentials looked especially fine to the Haydens. As a POW
Edison Miller had met Jane Fonda in Hanoi in July 1972[91]
At a minimum, Edison Miller had been a cooperative prisoner when talking to
antiwar activists and back home Miller worked on Tom’s Senate campaign and
served on CED’s steering committee.[92]

Organized opposition to Miller mounted:  The
California Democratic Party Chairman (Richard O’Neil); the two local Democratic
Assemblymen (Dennis Mangers, Richard Robinson); a top U.A.W. official (Bruce
Lee);[93] and, of course, the Republicans opposed the
Miller appointment.  The Republican
Lieutenant Governor, Mike Curb threatened to appoint someone else if Brown
traveled outside of California.[94] The odds
of Edison Miller being elected in his own right in 1980 appeared low in
conservative Orange County.[95]

Governor Brown was still wanted “to shore up the left” and to gain access to
Hayden’s political machine and Fonda’s money.
The perception was that “Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden could call 50
actors and 50 rock stars and easily raise millions.”[96] Why the
money?  Jerry Brown was running for president.[97] Jane may
have already made her promise of $3 million, though denials of any fundraising
promises would continue for months.[98]

On July 13, 1979, Jerry Brown finally appointed Edison Miller to the Orange County
Board of Supervisors as “the first ex-POW from the Vietnam War to hold
elective political office anywhere in the nation.”[99] Tom
chuckled when he told a crowd of 40 CED activists, “We’re invading their
most privileged strongholds. … It has terrified the political
establishment.”[100]

Once appointed Miller hired five CED members for his conservative Orange county
staff.[101] One, Fred Branfman,  telephoned the good news to
his friends across the country.  Miller fired Branfman.  Not to worry — Branfman
found work with Governor Jerry Brown.
Still another Miller hiree, Pamela Bigelow, had been accused of misusing
CETA funds while at the Women’s Law Center of Southern California.

Edison Miller lost to Bruce Nestande in his first election in June 1980 and blamed
his friendship with Tom and Jane.[102]

Meantime, Jerry Brown appointed yet another Hayden choice to the Santa Cruz Board of
Supervisors —  Chris Mathews.  As the appointed supervisor, Mathews
appointed a “pesticide protester” to the County Agricultural Advisory
Board who had been convicted for planting bombs on a crop duster.[103] Mathews would be defeated at the polls in
1981, but Gary Patton an ally of the Hayden’s would serve there into the
nineties on environmental and other issues.

Jane Fonda on Arts Council

In 1979 Governor Jerry Brown made
still another appointment that caused him even more trouble than Edison Miller
and Chris Mathews — Jane Fonda to the California Arts Council.  Brown appointed Fonda in March, but the
appointment required confirmation by the liberal Democrat led State Senate.
Curiously, Brown had actually pursued the likely controversy. Jane said,
“Drop a bomb in there, blow it up, get people talking about it.  He liked the idea.  I’m hot and there is this controversy surrounding
me.”[104]

After the Baez affair, Hanoi Jane
really didn’t have a chance before the State Senate, which resoundingly
rejected her (28-5) on a bipartisan vote. Democrat Ruben Ayala said, “She
waived her right to serve…. when she went to North Vietnam and did her little
thing.”[105] Governor Jerry Brown defended Jane, “If these senators were as tough and big as
they like to think, why didn’t they invite Jane Fonda to be heard and call her
to her face the names they called her like a bunch of little kids?”[106]

While Jane later said she was
surprised by the Senate’s rejection, Fonda was well prepared with a four and
one half page speech — “hold for release 10:00 a.m., Friday, July 27,
1979” — and an op ed prepared for the Los Angeles Times.  She said it was “a witch hunt … the
spirit of McCarthyism …”

That was the script — tears, anger, and shouts of “McCarthyism.”

In her Arts Council Statement, Fonda said,

“It saddens me … Art can bring people
and nations together, heal their differences, create understanding and respect
where conflict exists,” said America’s greatest film propagandist of class
conflict.  She, artista politica,
opposed injecting “politics into what should have been a discussion of my
merits as an artist to represent the arts community in California.”[107] And “They excoriated my name and reputation
in the most vicious terms. … These Senators appeared to have forgotten the
meaning of Democracy.”  It was “… paranoia, narrow mindedness, … tactics of McCarthy and Nixon …
,” said Jane.

And as for her six years supporting
the enemy in war, “I became a patriot … out of concern for what was
happening to my country and to help end the needless suffering of the
Vietnamese people and the American servicemen who were ordered to fight.
…” The clincher, the campaign theme to come.  “Never again must the spirit of
McCarthyism intimidate us.”[108]

Baez?  “I have spoken with Joan Baez about the
boat people.  We have a common concern
… .”  Another misunderstanding.  “I am perfectly prepared to criticize
brutality, torture or violations of human rights anywhere, regardless of the
ideology of the government involved. …”

The Los Angeles Times dutifully printed a slightly revised version of her original prepared statement
for the Arts Council.[109]

Nearly 300 Hollywood luminaries signed[110] an ad on August 8th defending Fonda from the
fearsome California State Senate:

“THE CALIFORNIA STATE SENATE HAS SAID JANE
FONDA IS NOT A QUALIFIED REPRESENTATIVE
OF THE ARTS.

THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY DISAGREES.

“The leaders of the fight against Jane Fonda, a two time Academy award winning actress, have
characterized her as a traitor. This tactic is all too reminiscent of … when…
Joe McCarthy labeled hundreds of prominent members of the arts community as
communists in order to deny them work. …. We affirm that we will fight any
resurrection of the specter of McCarthyism in California or our nation.”
(McCarthy had nothing to do with the Hollywood’s homegrown black list).

Tom said that it was an example of
the “poisons of history, that are passed on unless they are
expunged.”[111]

A week after the Hollywood ad, State Senator Paul Carpenter, D-Cypress, responded with a paid ad in the Los Angeles Times
on August 15, 1979:

McCarthyism.  Telling lies about people

and then persecuting them on the basis of those lies.

When Jane Fonda accused the State Senate of McCarthyism.

SHE became the McCarthyite.

The State Senate never once lied about Jane Fonda.

She DID travel to Hanoi and make anti-American tapes …

American prisoners of war WERE severely punished because of her visit.

It is Jane Fonda — not the California State Senate — who

is guilty of McCarthyism.

Free speech. … Jane Fonda has free speech. …

In America she is free to say what she thinks. …

The people of California — and their State Senate — are also free. …

[T]hey have decided they want no part of Jane Fonda as their representative.[112]

Though only 12.5 per cent of the liberal Democrat dominated State Senate had voted in her favor, by late August
the people of Californian narrowly split 49-45 per cent in favor of Fonda and
by 54-39 per cent they supported her appointment to the Arts Council.[113]

Tom Still a Revolutionary?

James R. Mills, a liberal Democrat and President Pro Tempore of the California Senate said, “Not only was
[Hayden] a Communist, he was a Stalinist…He lies to us now… He say’s he’s a
Democrat”[114] Mills said, “He denied ever having advocated
violence, revolution and public ownership of business in America.” Yet “his advocacy”
was in “public print” [115] In an interview with Larry Liebert published in
the August 27, 1979 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle, Tom said:  “I never believed that there could be a
successful violent revolution in the United States.”  Hayden also denied he had ever been a
Socialist or a Marxist.[116] Columnist Joe Scott  described “confessions,
not nearly as complete as … St. Augustine.”  Scott cited then quoted Hayden in CED’s
September 1979 newsletter: at “the actual moment of showdown” between
two major political forces, “… power is to be won by either by an
overthrow of the existing government or a peaceful transfer at the polls.”[117] Old Ramparts friend, Peter Collier mocked
Hayden “unequivocally disclaiming any past connection with Marx or revolution … that he was always a liberal Democrat …”[118] Collier
said Hayden “… gives something like a broad wink…We’ll have to take him on faith as our Manchurian candidate.”[119]

Brown for President, 1979-1980

Hayden and the CED’s statewide
steering committee endorsed Brown for president in December 1979 promising full
organizational and fundraising support.[120] As leader of “a political machine in a
gentle sense,” Hayden was forced to visit local CED chapters to
“explain” the Brown endorsement.
Despite a $3 million commitment from Fonda, Hayden said that CED’s
support was limited to the New Hampshire primary.  Hayden said CED owed Brown since he had
raised the nuclear issue when other presidential candidates had not.[121] Brown’s
alignment with Hayden’s anti-nuclear and pro-solar agenda had gained him
notoriety as Doonesbury’s and Mike Royko’s “Governor Moonbeam.”[122] Democrat state Senator Paul Carpenter, ran paid
newspaper ads in New Hampshire in January 1980 — tarring presidential
candidate Jerry Brown with the red brush of Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda.[123] Brown did
poorly in New Hampshire.  Tom Quinn,
Brown’s campaign director said that Hayden “simply couldn’t produce. …
Hayden … clearly hurt Jerry … .”[124] In late May 1980, Tom Hayden endorsed
Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy.[125]

Jerry Brown remained loyal to CED. A 1981 CED fundraiser at the Beverly Hilton
featured Jerry Brown’s father and former governor Pat Brown as well as CED
member and farm worker organizer Caesar Chavez. Entertainment notables included
Ed Asner, Mike Farrell, Robert Blake, Margot Kidder, Fonda, and Gloria Steinem.[126] Margot
Kidder[127] made a fundraising tour of northern California
for CED in late 1981.  Fonda’s films “Julia” and “Nine to Five” were used as draw for CED
fundraising in 1981.

Medfly

In 1981 led by CED member Bob Brownstein, CED opposed aerial spraying of a
pesticide, Malathion, against the Mediterranean fruit fly then threatening to
ravish hundreds of California crops. Governor Brown delayed a decision until
his chief of staff, B. T. Collins — subsequently a leader to create a Vietnam
veterans memorial, a state Assemblyman, and a critic of Hayden — broke the
policy crisis by ridiculing CED. Collins drank a glass of the stuff before TV
cameras.[128] In 1990 Tom Hayden appeared on Ted Koppel’s
“Nightline” still opposing the spraying to stop the Medfly.

Hayden Given Assembly Seat, 1981-1982

In 1981 Hayden-Fonda political allies Governor Jerry
Brown and Speaker Willie Brown paved the way for Tom Hayden by intervening to
prevent an anti-Hayden gerrymander[129] in the California Assembly. Cleared to run in
1982 Hayden’s campaign “brochure” was a
slick 24-page book.  Signed by Jerry
Brown’s father, former Governor Pat Brown. It showed Hayden, “… is a normal
human being who is just like everybody else:  He has a family, he’s     a father, he fishes, he plays softball.”[130] The Los
Angeles Times
got the picture, “[H]e is a regular guy that just happens to
be an exceptional fighter for progressive causes.”[131] Hayden
also loved dogs and children. Perversely, there was great enthusiasm for Hayden
among Republican politicians who felt Hayden hurt the entire Democrat ticket.[132] Lu Haas,
a CED activist and the Governor Brown’s media advisor, said “ [R]ight
wingers…won’t let it die.  It’s a form of Red scare.”[133] Thereafter Hayden’s long political career in
Assembly and the Senate[134] was halted only by term limits and unsuccessful
campaigns for other offices.

Brown’s Political Legacy

As late as February 1989, Hayden put his whole machine, including his top political operatives, Bob
Mulholland and Cathy Calfo, behind electing former Governor Jerry Brown to the
Chairmanship of the state Democratic Party. CED leaders Bob Mulholland and
Cathy Calfo became political director and executive director of the state
party. This continued into 1991-1992, when the new chairman, Phil Angelides,
selected Bob Mulholland as his own political director.  Mulholland had been on Hayden’s payroll for
15 years since his 1976 campaign for U.S. Senate and today remains a major
spokesman for Democrat party apparatus in California.

Brown leaving office in January 1983 did not end his legacy.

Governor George Deukmejian 1983-1990.

A law and order and fiscal conservative former Attorney General George Deukmejian
gave little attention to environmental matters which had their own growth
momentum in the state bureaucracy, the Democrat legislature and in public
opinion. Short of abolishing an Adrianna Gianturco construct, the Caltrans
Office of Bicycle Facilities and the Office of Appropriate Technology,
Deukmejian’s 1985 budget increased spending on environmental projects.

During the Deukmejian administration the state bureaucracy and the Legislature
aggressively moved against high public perceptions of dirty air and water and
toxic chemicals. Governor Deukmejian renewed the broad mandate of the
Environmental Affairs Agency over the Air Resources Board, Solid Waste
Management Board, State Water Resources Control Board, and the Regional Water
Quality Control Boards, Outer Continental Shelf, Office of Offshore
Development, offshore oil and gas mitigation. Thus the bureaucracy plodded
forward on the Brown-Hayden-Fonda environmental jihad against corporate
poisoning of air, water and life, both human and wild. In an atmoshere of
sustained hysteria, the State Legislature enacted new legislation: the
California Clean Air Act, Integrated Waste Management Act, Beverage Container
Recycling and Litter Reduction Act, Oil Spill Prevention and Response Act,
Proposition 65, Drinking Water Well Protection Act, Underground Storage Tank
Laws of 1983, Toxic Pits Cleanup Act, Hazardous Waste Management Act and
Hazardous Waste Source Reduction and Management Review Act. The regulatory
apparatus and ambitions grew unchecked[135]
year after year.

In his closing hours Governor Deukmejian vetoed a property tax exemption bill for
Solar Electric Generating Stations built by Luz Limited International. Without
this subsidy LUZ went bankrupt and the construction of large solar power
projects were halted for years thereafter.

The Transition: Wilson to Davis to Schwarzenegger

When he was elected Governor in 1990, Pete Wilson appointed Sierra Club Director Doug Wheeler to
run California’s Resources Agency overseeing departments regulating
California’s water, forests, fish and games. Despite Wilson’s tied to corporate
California, it was the reign of the spotted owl, kangaroo rat and suckerfish,
the decimation of the forest products industry, manufacturing, and an assault
upon agriculture and rural communities dependant upon the development of
natural resources.

After Wilson, Governor Gray Davis carried the Brown legacy forward. Brown’s former chief of
Staff, Gray Davis appointed Mary Nichols as Secretary of the California Resources Agency and
former Assemblyman Tom Hannigan to direct the Department of Water Resources and
Jonas Minton, a rafter from Planning and Conservation League as Deputy Director
of DWR. Minton a fierce opponent of water storage continued Jerry Brown and
Gerald Meral’s animosity toward dam construction[136]
and obcession with water conservation including toilet to tap recycling of
water.

Davis signed a California-only law demanding the manufacture of more efficient vehicles to cut greenhouse gas
emissions. This measure charged the California Air Resources Board with achieving
“maximum feasible” cuts in greenhouse gases. In one irony MTBE was
added to gas to reduce emissions, but by early Davis made an executive order to
eliminate MTBE as a gas additive. It polluted water.[137]

Davis signed  an environmental justice statute to ensure
the “fair treatment of all races, cultures, and incomes” in environmental
laws and regulations. After rolling blackouts of electrical power, caused by an
electrical restucturing law creating loopholes for market manupulation,[138]
Davis declared an  emergency and ordered
the California Energy Commission to speedup the backlogged application process
for 38 new power plants, the first in decades. Gray Davis would be recalled, in
part, because his slow respose to the energy crisis.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Bonnie Reiss, a Hollywood friend of Arnold Schwarzenegger became a
principal advisor on environmental issues. As a member of Norman Lear’s
Environmental Media Association, Reiss was a leader among Hollywood’s
environmentalists. [Lear owns a 26-car garage and tells everyone else to get
out of their cars] Yet it was Fonda-Hayden’s
Hollywood “brat pack” Network: Jeff Bridges, Tom Cruise, Morgan Fairchild,
and Daphne Zuniga[139] which formed the Earth Communications Office,
ECO, and made Bonnie Reiss its executive director.

Broadly promoting an anti-market, anti-private property agenda, Reiss’s ECO helped
rewrite Hollywood scripts to deliver environmental ideas such as global warming, green house effect, deforestation,
and cloth diapers. Reiss’s ECO mounted hysterical and anti-business plots about
toxic waste, animal rights, recycling. In the late eighties Reiss said, “We
have only ten years left to do something.” Reiss opposed reforms of
environmental regulations blocking the restoration of California’s roads, water
and electric supplies. Hollywood’s own Arnold Schwarznegger, advised by Bonnie
Reiss, counts as his own legacy California’s law against carbon and climate change.

Jerry Brown replaced Schwarzenegger as Governor returning to same game with many of
the same players. His legacy was waiting for him. Brown had campaigned, in
part, on producing 20,000 megawatts of solar energy by 2020. Awaiting him in
the legislature were bills to: toughen regulation of toxic chemicals in
consumer products; make 30% of California Energy renewable (sans
hydroelectric); and require automakers to build lower emission vehicles.

Despite the distraction of a $25 billion budget deficit, Brown’s early appointments
indicated Moonbeam had returned.

2010 Brown Appointments, 2010

Governor Brown reappointed Mary Nichols to the California Air Resources
Board, spearheading California’s effort to clean the air of planet earth all by
itself. This is to be done by criminalizing and imprisoning carbon, a natural
element in our cells and the air we breathe. Whatever. The earth’s climate will
be changed for the better and lots of people will get jobs, government and
government subsidized jobs. This measure, AB 32, and Mary Nichols herself, are
proud legacies of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yet Nichols has her own continuing
provenance. As part of a Toxic Network in 1986 Mary Nichols helped the
Hayden-Fonda team pass Proposition 65,[140] the Safe Drinking Water Act. Producers and
users of chemicals were engaged in the “manufacturing of death” according
to spokesmen for the Sierra Club and the Environmental Defense Fund.[141]

Hence Prop 65 required the regulation of any chemical at any detectable level —
“zero emissions” that are “less than detectable” — in the
water supply for anything that might cause cancer or birth defects. Proposition
65 covered virtually every economic enterprise in California and every commonly
used product –aspirin, beer, cola, paint, vitamins, peanut butter, paper, nail
polish, table salt, white out, soap, gasoline, spot removers, paint and varnish
removers.
Tom, Jane, and CED on their own had contributed and loaned over three
quarters of a million dollars — $766,000 to enact Prop 65.[142] By 2010 the State of
California listed some 800 chemicals as cancer causing and a like number as
having reproductive toxicity, causing birth defects. Only a dozen or so
chemicals, e.g. Saccharine, have been delisted. Experts set “safe harbor’
levels for cancer causing chemicals and “maximum allowable doses” for
reproductive toxicity. A massive bureaucracy holds forth.

Nichols, affiliated with the Natural Resources Defense Council (of Alar apple panic) also supported the
Hayden-Fonda’s “Big Green” initiative in 1990. It took 13,000 words to describe
Big Green’s comprehensive plan for clean air, water, soil and food.[143] As a package that effort failed at the ballot
box defeated by claims it didn’t go far enough. Not to worry it came back in legislation.

In 2011 Jerry Brown appointed river rafting and dam-busting Gerald Meral
as Deputy Secretary of the Natural Resources Agency charged with saving Delta
Smelt to the detriment of the human users of water, see Chinese oranges above.
Meral, wildlife biologist formerly with the Environmental Defense Foundation
opposing all dam projects except their destruction and opposing pesticides used
to kill weeds hiding burrowing animals weakening flood controlling levees.
After serving the first term of Jerry Brown Meral worked for the Planning and
Conservation League, PCL, a coalition of groups that included Friends of the
Earth, Californians Against Waste, Friends of the River, the Audubon Society,
Greenpeace Pacific Southwest, the Wilderness Society. PCL supported a $900
million “mountain lion” habitat[144] and CED candidates for office.[145] PCL also helped Hayden and Fonda in closing down
the Rancho Seco nuclear power plant outside Sacramento.

In 2011 Brown appointed John Laird Secretary of Natural Resources. A former
Assemblyman and a self-described gay progressive, [146] Laird was a member of the Democratic Socialist Organizing
Committee[147] with which Tom Hayden was also affiliated. CED supported his run for
the Santa Cruz City Council where he and most of his colleagues were
self-described socialists pushing for rent control and aligning themselves with leftists in Central America.[148]

Brown has appointed lesbian Nancy
Ryan as executive director of California Public Utilities Commission. She is an
advocate of alternative fueled vehicles, renewable energy resources and reduction of greenhouse gas
emissions. She served previously as Senior Economist and Deputy
California Director at Environmental Defense Fund, concentrating on reducing
greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles and power plants, curbing air pollution
from diesel engines and restoring rivers and watersheds.

Déjà vu all over again?


[1] http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/16/3327302/dan-walters-even-browns-5-year.html#ixzz1BDg1Z26d

[2] Joel Kotkin and ———– Grabowicz, California, 104.

[3] John Seiler, “AB32′s echoes failed policy,” CalWatchDog, JUNE 16, 2010.

[4]Collier & Horowitz, Destructive Generation…, p. 194.

[5]”Tom Hayden, Trial,” Ramparts (July, 1970).

[6] Others in the organization formed at Germantown, Ohio in October 1973 were America Friends Service Committee, Clergy And
Laity Concerned, Women Strike for Peace, Women’s International League for Peace
and Freedom, War Resisters League, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, People’s
Coalition for Peace and Justice, Fellowship of Reconciliation, SANE, Episcopal
Peace Fellowship. Medical Aid to Indochina, Indochina Resource Center, Don
Luce’s Indochina Mobile [tiger cage] Education Project.

[7] Radio Hanoi, August 15, 1972; See also:  San Francisco Chronicle, July 26,
1972; Thomas E. Elias, Santa Barbara News Press, April 3, 1979; Steven
Denny, 14-15; Andersen, 256.

[8] AP, San Francisco Chronicle, (July 26, 1972) and (August 1,
1972).

[9]  Thomas D. Elias, “Vietnam Controversy Perils Hayden’s ‘Populist’ Image,” Santa Barbara News Press,
April 3, 1979.

[10]  Los Angeles Herald Examiner, July 30, 1979. On Tom’s own “five year” explanation of Miller’s
“anti-war statements” see: Davis-Woodland Daily Democrat, August 15, 1979.

[11]  Los Angeles Times, August 6, 1979.

[12]  Herald Examiner, July 30, 1979.

[13]  Los Angeles Herald Examiner, July 30, 1979.

[14]  John Kendall, “Edison Miller: From Marine Pilot to Censured POW to Supervisor,” Los Angeles
Times
, August 6, 1979, p. II-1.

[15]  John Kendall, Los Angeles Times, August 6, 1979; Herald Examiner, July 30, 1979.

[16] Chicago Tribune, September 28, 1973, 8. See also: Black Panther, June 16, 1975, 15.

[17] W. B. Rood, “Hayden and Fonda: Who Has the Clout,” Los Angeles Times, August 15, 1979, p. D-1.

[18] Kissinger taped telephone conversations, TELCON April 26, 1975 10:15 a.m. Ambassador Dean
Brown/The Secretary.

[19] Los Angeles Herald Examiner, May 2, 1988

[20] Kotkin, Esquire, p. 46].

[21] James R. Mills Says Hayden Has No Credibility as a Democrat,” Los
Angeles Times
, January 19, 1980.

[22] Branfman was the first Director of the Center for Development Policy created by the
Commission of U.S.-Central American Relations, an organization with close ties
to the Sandinistas. Powell, Cadre, pp. 237-238, N 67-68.  Also John Feliz,  Network of Networks.

[23] “Issues ’76; Crime Prevention,” Tom Hayden for U.S. Senate, Santa Monica,
[January, 1976], p. 1.

[24] “Hayden Outlines Stand In 86 Page Platform,” Sacramento Bee, January 19, 1976.

[25] Ron Ridenour, Seven Days, (April 11, 1977).  Also cited in Bennett and Dilorenzo, p .  Ridenour came back from Viet Nam and while a
student at Claremont Men’s College blew the whistle on the My Lai massacre which journalist Seymour Hersh made the biggest story of the Viet Nam war.

[26] John Judis, “Perhaps A Great Notion,” In These Times, (May 9-15, 1979), p. 14 cited in Bunzel, p. 45 N 12.

[27] Davis-Woodland Daily Democrat, August 15, 1979.

[28]  Tom Hayden, “America and the Populist Impulse: The New Left’s Legacy,” Los Angeles Times, September 14, 1978.

[29] “James R. Mills Says Hayden Has No Credibility as a Democrat,” Los Angeles Times, January 19, 1980.

[30] A flyer in the possession of the author.

[31]  Los Angeles Times, September, 21, 1978.

[32] William J. Poole, “Campaign for Economic Democracy Part I: The New Left in Politics,”  Institutional
Analysis #13, Heritage Foundation, September 19, 1980. 2.

[33] Joel Kotkin, Esquire, May 1980, p. 48.

[34] Kotkin, Esquire, May, 1980, p. 48.

[35] Jeffrey Klein, Mother Jones, February/March, 1980, p. 49.

[36]  Kotkin, Washington Post, July 5, 1979 and Esquire, p. 46.

[37] Christopher Andersen, Citizen Jane. 293.

[38] Christopher Andersen, Citizen Jane, p. 294.

[39] Kotkin, p.

[40] Joel Kotkin, Washington Post, July 5, 1979.

[41] Washington Post, May 30, 1978 cited by Dornan in Cong. Record, June 13, 1978, p. 17516.

[42] “Specific Objectives Decided upon at the Santa Barbara Conference on Economic Democracy.” February 16-18, 1977.

[43] CED News, February, 1978.

[44] CHAIN was headed by CED activist Cary Lowe.  It’s Board of Directors included CED members
Bill Bradley, Richard Purkey, Mike Lawson, and Steve Mabs.  CHAIN’s Sacramento lobbyist was Stephen
Hopcraft.  See:  Network, p. 59; CHAIN’s November, 1979
Board in Southern California would include the following:  Mabs, Bradley, Lowe, and Gwen Davis of San
Diego; and Mike Jacobs of the Santa Barbara Rent Control Alliance.  See:  CHAIN, Action Project Narrative Report (November 11, 1979).

[45]Los Angeles Times (November 26, 1979).

[46]Tom Bourne, “The Prop. 13 Boost to the Hayden-Fonda Team,” California
Journal
(August, 1979),  269-270; and Kenneth Reich, Los Angeles Times (April 26, 1979).

[47] Out of the anti-war movement Carter appointed close political friends
like VVAW’s Peter Bourne and his wife Mary King.  besides King at ACTION he would also add
National Moritorium’s Sam Browne, Newark SDSer Marge Tabankin. Also IPS
scholars like Robert Pastor, Guy Erb, and Mark Schneider; NACLA associates like
Brady Tyson. See; Powell, Covert Cadre…, 224-225; William J. Poole, “Campaign
for Economic Democracy Part I: The New Left in Politics,”  Institutional Analysis #13, Heritage
Foundation, September 19, 1980, 10.

[48] Dornan, Cong. Record, May 12, 1978.

[49] Bunzel, 16. Also: William J. Poole, “Campaign for Economic
Democracy Part I: The New Left in Politics,”
Institutional Analysis #13, Heritage Foundation, September 19, 198010.

[50] Youth project annual report for 1978 cited by William J. Poole, “Campaign
for Economic Democracy Part I: The New Left in Politics,”  Institutional Analysis #13, Heritage
Foundation, September 19, 1980 38.

[51] Santa Monica Evening Outlook, February 16, 1980.

[52]  Daily Californian,
December 1, 1977.

[53] San Diego Union, April 16, 1977. Fred Branfman, The Nation,
June 16, 1977. CED News, February, 1978. See also; William J. Poole, “Campaign
for Economic Democracy Part I: The New Left in Politics,”  Institutional Analysis #13, Heritage
Foundation, September 19, 1980, 22-25.

[54] CED, paid ad, Sacramento Bee, February 9, 1978.

[55] See: Jerry Rankin, “Hayden Takes First Step Toward an Elective
Office, Santa Barbara News Press, (December 25, 1977).

[56] Andersen, p. 293.

[57]  .

[58] Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1980, p. 3; Los Angeles Times,
July 9, 1980, p. 22

[59]  Lee Framstad, “Hayden
Forces Jockey for Democratic Party Control,” Sacramento Bee,
December 10, 1980, p. A-9; Los Angeles Times, August 23, 1979, p. 3.

[60] Bill Wallace, Berkeley Barb, October 4-17, 1979. See also,
William J. Poole, “Campaign for Economic Democracy Part I: The New Left in
Politics,”  Institutional Analysis #13,
Heritage Foundation, September 19, 1980, unpaginated
executive summary, [ 2-3].

[61] National Inquirer, October 16, 1979.

[62] William J. Poole, “Campaign for Economic Democracy Part I:
The New Left in Politics,” Institutional Analysis #13, Heritage Foundation,
September 19, 1980 40 cites Wallace, Barb, October 4-17, 1979.

[63]  Los Angeles Times, March 10, 1980.

[64] Los Angeles Times, March 10, 1980.

[65] Bennett & DeLorenzo.

[66] Bill Wallace, Berkeley Barb, October 4-17, 1979. See also;
William J. Poole, “Campaign for Economic Democracy Part I: The New Left in
Politics,”  Institutional Analysis #13, Heritage Foundation, September 19, 198044.

[67]  George Cornell, San Diego Union, Feb. 9, 1981.

[68] On Banks and Brown see: Los Angeles Times, January 15, 1977; Sacramento
Union
, March 30, 1978 and April 20, 1980.

[69]  “Hayden Seeks Aid for AIM Leader,” Sacramento Bee, (March 4, 1976).

[70]  See: Richard Grenier, “Jane Fonda and Other Political Thinkers,” Commentary, June
1979; Midge Decter, “The Politics of Jonestown,” Commentary,
May 1979, pp. 29-34; Don Feder, Boston Herald, March 3, 1984; Don Feder,
“Jonestown and Dallas: The Red Link,” Sacramento Union,
November 17, 1988; Eric Brazil, “Dead Preacher Keeps His Hold on Former
Followers,” Sacramento Union, November 16, 1988, pp. 14, 16.

[71] See: Doan Van Toai, “Vietnam:  How We Deceived
Ourselves,” Commentary, March 1986, pp. 40-43; also Doan Van Toai, Vietnam Gulag.

[72] http://www.phoeniciatimes.com/archivesPT/PT.8.16.2007/pov.html

[73] Peter Collier, Second Thoughts, 63.

[74] They also sought to suppress a Sacramento showing of the “Hanoi Hilton.”

[75] Joan Baez, And a Voice to Sing With, New York: Summit Books, 1987, 275-276.

[76] Joseph Farah, Between the Lines, August 1988, 3.

[77] Antioch Leader, September 30, 1979.

[78] Ronald H. Nash, Why The Left Is Not Right, Zondervan, 1996, 59.

[79] Denney, 16.

[80] Jeffrey Klein, Mother Jones, February/March 1980, p. 42.

[81] Don Feder, Boston Herald,
March 3, 1984.

[82] Jane Fonda, “Statement by Jane Fonda Before the California Arts Council,” July 27, 1979. See
also: Jane Fonda, “Jane Fonda on McCarthyism, Boat People,” Los
Angeles Times
, (undated clipping), late July or early August 1979.

[83] Baez, 1987, p. 280.

[84] Collier, in C & H, Second Thoughts, 274; Among those showing
solidarity with communist Vietnam: Karen Ackerman, Mobilization for Survival;
Phyllis Bennis, National Lawyers Guild; Carl Bloice, Editor of People’s
World
and former campaigner for Red Family founder Robert Scheer; Marjorie
Boehm and Vivien Myerson, Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom;
Susan Borenstein, National Chile Center and Venceremos Brigadeer; Harry
Bridges, President Emeritus of ILWU and long time Soviet agent; Benjamin
Chavis, and Charlene Mitchell, National Alliance Against Racism and Political
Repression; Marilyn Clement, Center for Constitutional Rights; Joseph H. Crown,
Chairman, Lawyers Committee on American Policy Toward Vietnam; William H.
Eisman, U.S. Vietnam Friendship Association (SF); Joan Elbert and Fr. William
Hogan, CPUSA presidential electors in Illinois in 1976[84] and leaders of Clergy & Laity Concerned,
Chicago; Terrence and Vincent Hallinan, Attorneys and fellow travelers; Joshua
Kunitz, writer; Corliss Lamont, Chair, National Emergency Civil Liberties
Committee which had honored Hayden in 1974 and was an apologist for the Stalin
show trials and the Katyn forest massacre; Joseph Miller, Philadelphia SANE,
which soon gave Fonda a humanitarian award.[84]; Michael Myerson, CPUSA and U.S. Peace Council;
Davis Sales, New York Coalition for Peace and Justice; Doris Streiter, Chicano
Committee to Save Lives in Chile.

[85] New York Times, June 24, 1979, cited in Toai, Vietnam Gulag, p. 341-342.

[86] Pat Morrison, “Ex-Vietnam Prisoner in Middle of Feud,” Los Angeles Times,
September 9, 1979; see also: Doan Van Toai, Vietnam Gulag.

[87] Philadelphia News, October 7, 1979.

[88] “Fonda Raises Money for ‘Boat People,” San Francisco Chronicle, (undated clip) early
August 1979.

[89] Peter Collier, “I Remember Fonda,” New West, September 24, 1979, 19.

[90] George Thurlow, “Barnstorming Hayden Has to Cope With His
Success,” The Daily-Democrat, Davis-Woodland, California, August 15, 1979.

[91] Thomas E. Elias, Santa Barbara News Press, April 3, 1979.

[92] Los Angeles Times, October 15, 1979 cited in Network, p. 48.

[93]  San Francisco Chronicle, July 22, 1979; California Journal, November, 1979.

[94]  Los Angeles Times, July 14, 1979.

[95]  Los Angeles Times, July 14, 1979; California Journal, November, 1979.

[96]  W. B. Rood, “Hayden & Fonda: Who Has the Clout,” Los Angeles Times, August 19, 1979.

[97]  San Francisco Chronicle, July 22, 1979.

[98] See denial as late as the end of August in Larry Liebert, San
Francisco Chronicle,
August 27, 1979, p. 1.

[99] Qualls and Gulotta, “How POW’s Remember Miller,” Los
Angeles Herald
, July 30, 1979.

[100] Davis-Woodland Daily Democrat, August 15, 1979.

[101] Los Angeles Times, October 15, 1979 cited in Network, p. 48.

[102] Los Angeles Times, April 20, 1981, p. II-1.

[103] Who’s Who in CED, Cypress Institute.

[104]  W. B. Rood, Los Angeles Times, August 19, 1979.

[105]  “Notes on People – Legacy
of Vietnam,” New York Times, (undated) late July, 1979.

[106] Andersen, p. 296.

[107] Andersen, p. 296.

[108] “Statement of Jane Fonda Before the California Arts
Council,” July 27, 1979.  “Hold for release 10 a.m., Friday, July 27, 1979.” pp. 1-5 in possession of the
author;

[109] Jane Fonda, “Jane Fonda on New McCarthyism, Boat People,
‘Witch-hunt Spirit Lives on in State Senate,” Los Angeles Times,
(undated clip) early August 1979.

[110] Alan Alda, Edward Asner, Tony Bill, Cher, Francis
Cappola, Mike Farrell, Bruce Gilbert, Hugh Hefner, Alan Ladd, Jr., Norman Lear,
Jack Lemmon, Albert Maltz, Mike Medavoy, Holly Near, Mike Nichols, Michael
Ovitz, Gregory Peck, David and Nessa Picker, Helen Reddy, Burt Schneider,
Stanley Sheinbaum, Donald Sutherland, Lily Tomlin, Jon Voight, Haskell Wexler,
Robin Williams and many more, not previously or at least publicly associated
with Jane Fonda’s radical politics.
Asner, Lear, Nichols and Tomlin had signed the Baez letter against
Vietnam’s human rights violations despite Jane’s disapproval.

[111] Davis-Woodland Daily Democrat, August 15, 1979.

[112]  Los Angeles Times,
August 15, 1979.

[113] Mervyn Field’s California Poll cited in the San Francisco Chronicle,
September 1, 1979, p. 6.

[114] [Sacramento Bee and Los Angeles Times
of December 14, 1979; also: A.P. December 15, 1979; also Los Angeles Times,
January 19, 1980. Mills would reconfirm his allegations in February 1981, San
Diego Union
, February 1, 1981].

[115] “James R. Mills Says Hayden Has No Credibility as a
Democrat,” Los Angeles Times, January 19, 1980.

[116] Larry Liebert, San Francisco Chronicle, August 17, 1979, p. 6.

[117] Joe Scott, “Fonda-Hayden Balloon Launched,” Sacramento Union, October 8, 1979.

[118] Peter Collier, New West, September 24, 1979.

[119]  Peter Collier, New West, September 24, 1979.

[120] Los Angeles Times, December 18, 1979.

[121] See Barbara Evans, “Tom Hayden and the Campaign for Economic
Democracy,” Santa Barbara News Review, Feb. 21, 1980.

[122] Joel Kotkin and ———– Grabowicz, California, p. 104.

[123] California Journal, March 1980; Los Angeles Times,
September 10, 1979.

[124] Kotkin and Grabowicz, p. 104; California Journal, March 1980, p. 121.

[125]  Los Angeles Times, May 31, 1980, p. 14.

[126] William Endicott, Los Angeles Times, November 12, 1981.

[127] Randi Eldredge, “No Kiddin’ Actress supports couty
candidate,” Davis Enterprise, December 7, 1981, p. 3.

[128]

[129] Michele Willens, “The Democrat’s Dilemma:  How to Stop Hating Tom Hayden,” California
Journal
, January 19, 1982, p. 14; San Diego Union, May 10, 1982; See also:  Jack W. Germond and Jules
Witcover, “Tom Hayden, Whipping Boy,” Sacramento Bee, undated clip, (March 1983).

[130] David Holley, Los Angeles Times, April 26, 1982.

[131] Los AngelesTimes, April 26, 1982.

[132] Claudia Luther, Los Angeles Times, February 11, 1982.

[133] Michele Willens, California Journal, January 1982.

[134] Disclosure the author conducted opposition research for his opponent Rosenthal
in Hayden’s first Senate race.

[135] The Author was Chief of Staff to Ernie Konnyu, the GOP vice chairman of the Toxics Committee which uncritically
charged forward to protect the public from all imaginary and a few dangers of  any and all “chemicals” anywhere.

[136] The author received an award for flacking for this flawed DWR policy.

[137] The author worked on research exposed by WorldNetDaily on MTBE.

[138] AB 1190 in which the author sounded an incomplete and ineffective alarm as a consultant on the
Utility and Commerce Committee of the Assembly.

[139] Joseph Farah, Between the Lines, November 7, 1989, 4 and February 26, 1990, p. 2.

[140] Paul Jacobs, “Political Ploys Seen in Debate on Toxics Law,” Los Angeles Times, August 18, 1986, 3, 17; Richard
C. Paddock, “Clean Water Plan Wins Ballot Spot,” Los Angeles Times,
June 27, 1986, pp. 3, 26; Economic Democrat, June 1986.

[141] UPI, “Groups Say Firms Violate Label Law,” Sacramento Union, July 6, 1990, p. C-2.

[142] Santa Monica Evening Outlook, August 1, 1988.

[143] Environmental Protection Act would enact: a
phased ban of any use of cancer causing pesticides in any amount; a tough
“more sensitive” children’s standard of chemical safety for those
chemicals missing the outright ban; a phased ban of the most common air
conditioner/refrigerant chemicals (chlorofluorocarbons) in seven years and a 40
per cent reduction of carbon dioxide [auto, factory] emissions in twenty years
since both CFC’s and CO were ozone-depleting chemicals; “health
based” limits on corporate discharges into the ocean; an outright ban of
off shore oil drilling;  homebuilders
requirements to plant one tree for every 500 square foot lot developed [6 trees
per modest single family dwelling]; tough federal quantitative standards for
local sewage treatment discharges of toxic pollutants; a $200 million budget to
acquire ancient redwoods and $100 million to fund nonprofit and government
planting of trees in “urban forestry” projects; a tax on private oil
transport of $500 million to fund public oil spill responses; and, a first time
in the nation, statewide elected post of environmental advocate costing
$750,000 a year with an annual research budget of $40 million.[143]

[144] These dollar contributions are reported to the Secretary of State.  See: Roger Canfield, “This time the
Demos are deceived,” Sacramento Union, October 31, 1990, p. A-2.  PCL had previously accepted
contributions and written initiative language that benefitted its contributors
in a tobacco tax measure — generating widespread criticism from columnist Dan
Walters and others.  Some said PCL’s massive office space negated its claim to be a “grassroots” organization.

[145] Roger Canfield, “Ed’s certainly their ‘dear friend,” Sacramento Union, October 17, 1990, p. A-2.

[146] Donald Miller, “SCAN tradition Or Machine? Progressives build at grass
roots,” (Santa Cruz) Sentinel, November 3, 1988, p. A1, 8.

[147]Lee Frenstad, “Left Moves to Change Santa Cruz,” Sacramento Bee (Februaru
15, 1982), pp. A-1, A-3.

[148]Bill Neubauer, “Voters Against Rent Control Ralley Draws Large Crowd in Santa Cruz,”
(Santa Cruz) Sentinel (April 15, 1982); Lee Fremstad, “Left Moves
to Change Santa Cruz,” Sacramento Bee, February 15, 1982; Phil
Kerby, “Prodigal Son Returns to Angry House of His Fathers,” Los
Angeles Times
, March 18, 1982; “CED Focus,” Economic Democrat,
March 1982, p. 2; See also: Campaign for Economic Democracy reports filed with
California’s secretary of state from 1979 through 1981.

Categories
Vietnam

A Black Hole in History: How Americong Won Vietnam War Against America

Filling a Black Hole in History
Comrades in Arms:  How the Ameri-Cong Won the Vietnam War against the Common Enemy—America. Copyright Roger Canfield, 1988-2010.
The excerpt below about an obscure meeting in Germantown, Ohio in 1973 is from a book on Vietnam uniquely important to current events. Today a divided American political elite has a declining will both to fight terrorism and to remain vigilant to a rising Communist China. A large faction of the America political elite, even President Obama, still carries a “blame America” template to all U.S. military and foreign policy. This is contemporary evidence of the power of Hanoi propaganda extended down to the present day.
Comrades in Arms fills a black hole in history by the telling story never told of how closely the top leaders of the American peace movement coordinated their antiwar demonstrations and propaganda themes with Hanoi.  In one place for the first time the book names hundreds of Americans who met the Vietnamese Communists frequently not only in Hanoi and Paris, but also in Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Windsor, Havana, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo, Geneva, Munich, East Berlin, Moscow, Budapest, Helsinki, Sofia, Bratislava, Tokyo, Jakarta, Peking, Phnom Penn, and Vientiane. In these meetings antiwar leaders and the enemy agreed to common political strategies and tactics and propaganda themes. They  coordinated their political actions by date, place and themes. This collaboration and coordination was not to achieve peace, but to defeat U.S. imperialism and impose communism upon Indochina.
Much of what our children learn, our historians write and the mass media tells us about the war in Vietnam is false. In particular effusive accounts of the peace movement, portray idealistic youth and honest pacifists rightfully protesting an illegal and immoral war by U.S. imperialism against innocent peasants in a far away place of no strategic interest to the United States. Au contraire, the book demonstrates how the Vietnamese Communists considered the antiwar movement an essential, ultimately the most critical factor, in their grand strategy for a military victory. Indeed, very many of those named leading demonstrations and lobbying congress happily collaborated with Hanoi. They made the U.S. homeland a second front in the rear of their enemy. After all, by 1972 the United States and South Vietnamese ARVN had both all but won the war on the ground and in the hearts and minds of the people of South Vietnam until America’s national leaders lost the will to win.  The book confronts most of Hanoi’s propaganda themes, point by point. It describes in horrific detail Communist atrocities that far surpass the sins of the allies in Vietnam.
Though scores of meetings and hundreds of persons are named and quoted, the usual American suspects include: John Kerry, William Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, Joan Baez, David Dellinger, Cora Rubin Weiss, Daniel Berrigan, Tom Harkin, John Conyers and hundreds of others. Similarly, the book describes top Vietnamese Communist leaders meeting American fellow travelers: Ho Chi Minh, Pham Van Dong, Nguyen Van Hieu, Nguyen Khac Vien, Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, Nguyen Thi Dinh, Col. Ha Van Lau, Le Duan, Le Duc Tho, Xuan Thuy, Nguyen Minh Vy, Huyn Van Ba, Do Xuan Oanh, Hoang Tung, Hoang Minh Giam, Mai Van Bo and scores more.  The book also names spies, agents of influence and gullible journalists who played critical roles. Of particular interest are reports from American POWs who had ringside seats to observe American collaborators and to learn Hanoi’s propaganda themes.
The whole story has not been told previously this account is comprehensive, covering 1,500 pages, 4,700 footnotes citing long lost or rare documents, interviews and memoirs, letters and leaflets, CIA and FBI files, captured Viet Cong documents, Radio Hanoi and Vietnamese and American newspapers.
**************************************
In January 1973 a peace accord had been signed in Paris, but the Hanoi conquest of South Vietnam was incomplete. The American peace movement played the critical role in that conquest. Tom Hayden, returning from meeting Hanoi and Kymer representatives in Paris, in mid October 1973[1] would bring back a new sense of focus for the peace movement.
Germantown Brings ‘clarity and…coordinated strategy” October 26-28, 1973
In order “to clarity and to develop a coordinated strategyamong over a dozen peace organizations, the Indochina Peace Campaign, IPC, held a National Planning Conference on Indochina October 26-28, 1973, at a chapel in a Methodist camp in Germantown outside Dayton, Ohio.[2] According to Max Friedman the conference had been “delayed for a week for Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda and others to meet with VC/VN in Paris for their marching orders. Hayden actually said this” (on Friday October 26.) Hayden and Fonda’s Indochina Peace Campaign had been on a U.S. road tour from late September to mid October, e.g. Chicago, Austin, and Madison. The week before the Germantown gathering the IPC group met the Vietnamese communists in Paris. [3] Indeed, Tom Hayden was in Paris meeting with PRG and DRV and on October 20, 1973 interviewing Ly Van Sau,[4] a Viet Cong representative and spokesman of Hanoi’s puppet, the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam.[5] Ly told Hayden “We want to convey to our American friends to be with us on the long march.”[6] He instructed Tom Hayden that political “action should be pursued” to cut aid to Thieu and Lon Nol, free 200,000 political prisoners and to implement the Paris Peace Treaty, i.e. overturning the Thieu regime. Ly, Viet Cong spokesman of a political-military operations known for terror and assassinations said, it was the Thieu regime which “burn houses, plunder property, raping etc” and it “tortured and massacred” political prisoners.
Ly Van Sau also made promises through Tom Hayden to a larger American audience: “We do not want to build Communism in South Vietnam…We do not want a monopolization of political power in South Vietnam.” The Viet Cong only wanted an independent and neutral South Vietnam. Indeed, “We will be very glad to see the people of South Vietnam to vote freely in elections.”[7] To reinforce this message of peace and freedom, Hanoi apologist Gareth Porter of the Indochina Resource Center wrote that Hanoi was taking no aggressive actions only defending its zones of occupancy.[8]
Responding Premier Nguyen Van Theiu proclaimed there was a real but unseen, “phantom” Communist offensive. If only Hanoi were left with arms, as Hayden and Ly wished, a Communist political and military victory was a near certainty.
Hayden arrived a week late in Germantown, Ohio on Friday October 26, 1973 delivering messages from Hanoi via Paris, which became instructions for future actions of the US peace movement until the final defeat of South Vietnam.
Some 200 representatives from 15 organizations attended the Germantown gathering of mostly hard-left organizations: America Friends Service Committee, Clergy And Laity Concerned, Women Strike for Peace, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, War Resisters League, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice, Fellowship of Reconciliation, SANE, Episcopal Peace Fellowship. Church groups were in the majority.[9] Some others organizations performed specialized tasks or represented special interests such as Bill Zimmerman’s Medical Aid to Indochina, Indochina Resource Center, Don Luce’s Indochina Mobile [tiger cage] Education Project, church affiliated International Committee to Free South Vietnamese Prisoners from Detention, Torture and Death[10] and the small, but symbolic Union of Vietnamese in the U.S.A.[11] Together the tax exempted United Methodist Church, Board of Social Concern, United Church of Christ, and the United Presbyterian Church funded the tax exempt Indochina Resource Center,[12] which illegally lobbied Congress despite a demand for records from the House Committee on International Affairs.[13] AFSC/NARMIC was tightly tied to the IPC sharing events, administrative support and Indochina Resource Center[14] research staff–Don Luce, David Marr, Gareth Porter, Mike Klare, and Fred Branfman.[15] We know the names of some of the individuals who attended the Germantown conference from materials listing participants in each of twenty workshop groups on the 27th.[16] Among the most noteworthy organizations and their representatives were; WSP, Trudi Young; IPC, Tom Hayden, Susan Wind, Marianne Schneller, Steve Cagan[17], Ira Arlook, Nina Mohit, Sokum Hing[18] and Allen Imbarrato; Chicago Seven, John Froines; NARMIC, Merlin Rainwater; Indochina Resource Center, Fred Branfman, G.C. Hildebrand, Bill Goodfellow; AFSC John McAuliff, Gail Pressberg, Jack Malinoski, Lo Anh Tu; WILPF, Roland and Paula Westerlund, Beatrice Pearson, Rosalie Riechman; Medical Aid to Indochina, Bill Zimmerman; [19] Union of Vietnamese in the U.S.A, Tran Quoc Hung.[20]
At this conference in late October an earlier IPC offshoot formed in late 1972, the Coalition to Stop Funding the War, changed its name to the United Campaign for Peace in Germantown and thereafter the United Campaign to End the War and the United Campaign to Honor the Peace Treaty.[21] The tax exempt Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church acted as the ultimate Communist front group becoming the major conduit of funds for Hanoi agents in the United Campaign to End the War and the United Campaign to Honor the Peace Treaty and its successor, the Coalition for a New Foreign Policy.[22] Stewart Mott, General Motors heir, used the Methodists to launder $90, 000 to the Coalition to Stop Funding the War.[23]
After Hayden’s trip to Paris to talk to the Vietnamese communist, the IPC’s ad hoc coalition, pursuing a hodgepodge of goals, was transformed into a strategically defined political campaign with quite specific tactical objectives. The tactics created the conditions to achieve the strategic objective of a communist victory in Vietnam.
Prior to the meetings in Paris, an IPC strategy dated October 7th, had contained a long laundry list of calendared objectives involving war funding, political prisoners, amnesty, medical aid, and crisis planning.[24] The final preconference document, almost certainly drafted in Paris, focused with “clarity” upon a single overriding issue, political prisoners, and a single target, members of Congress in selected states. The IPC said South Vietnam had 200,000 political prisoners, many kept in inhumane tiger cages, and had created six millions of refugees. IPC-Hanoi would stick to this 10-year old, story, a political campaign plan, for another two years. If believed to be true this story would reduce the legitimacy of the southern regime making it easier to persuade a credulous post-Watergate Congress to cut off all remaining aid to South Vietnam and Cambodia. The alleged horrific treatment of political prisoners was a powerful moral issue among Americans, which if left unchallenged, was indefensible. Moreover, two other demands not in the October 7 document were payment of reparations and establishing a “government of national reconciliation,”[25] which were elements of the Paris peace treaty giving Hanoi all the fruits of a total victory—both a political coup of Thieu and the plunder of the defeated.  The October Pledge to End the War was replaced with an Indochina Peace Pledge. All these elements given “clarity” in Germantown were North Vietnam’s precise propaganda themes,[26] which IPC had been instructed to clarify, use and coordinate.
IPC outlined a sophisticated grass roots political campaign in key states and Congressional districts to put local service group pressure on U.S. Senators and House members to cut off aid to Thieu. Geoffrey Pope of Atlanta said, they’d “gotten down to the nitty gritty of how realistically to accomplish that goal.”[27] With tactics acceptable to an American majority, the campaign would focus on Congress. This plan was later laid out in tactical detail in the IPC’s Organizers Guide For the United Campaign to Honor the Peace Agreement, 9 February 1974, a document demonstrating a high level of professional political competence.[28] It was what Hanoi wanted– a clear and coordinated strategy.  From Saigon, Ambassador Graham Martin asked Rep. Ron Dellums to place the “manual of instructions” in the Congressional Record, which Dellums did on October 31, 1973.[29]
Indochina Resource Center and IPC produced common pamphlets and sample letters to be used by all groups affiliated with the campaign. National liaison with local groups were Karen Nussbaum (Boston), Ira Arlook (Cleveland) and out of the IPC Resource Center Tom Hayden and Carol Kurtz. IPC national travelers were “nationally funded” to go to designated areas, states and congressional districts, where they would be most effective. IPC states and contacts were: New York, Suzanne Ross; New Jersey, Eldridge; Pennsylvania, David Hughes; Ohio, Jay Westbrook; Michigan, John R, Illinois, Gardels-Culran; Texas, Dan Thibodeau; Arizona, Nina Mohit; Oregon, Brunner and Willens; and California, Ren Mabey and Shari Whitehead. In Washington, IPC had a full time lobbyist, Larry Levin, using the offices of Rep. Ron Dellums (D-CA).
Back on their IPC road tour Tom and Jane were accompanied by as many as 20 bodyguards in coats and ties and collected fees of $1,000 or so with Tom calculating the exact finances of each stop.  IPC introduced Don Luce’s infamous mobile education project on the “tiger cages.” At a Hayden/IPC speaking engagement on the Hanoi-approved topic of political prisoners at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, the event cosponsors were the National Lawyers Guild, Vietnam Veterans, Young Socialists Alliance, Women’s Liberation Union, United Mexican American Students and the Communist Party, USA.[30]
During the fall of 1973 and spring of 1974 (broken by a trip to Vietnam in another episode), Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda and entourage toured 40 cities in 10-12 states. Meanwhile the word from Hanoi and its Hanoi agent, IPC, was presented simultaneously on the international scene.

[1] Max Friedman, Council for Inter-American Security, study in lieu of testimony to Chairman of House Ways and Means Committee, Lobbying and Political Activities of Tax-Exempt Organizations, Hearings, Committee on Oversight, March 12-13, 1987, 403.
[2] Emphasis in original, IPC, “Indochina: A National Planning Conference, October 26-28, in a camp near Dayton, Ohio, initiated by the Indochina Peace Campaign,” n.d., [October 1973] provided by Max Friedman; Conference materials also are in the papers of Jan Waggoner Suter, 1954-1985, MSS-059 at the Ward M. Canaday Center, University of Toledo. Suter, a Harvard graduate, was an antidraft Counselor for the Toledo Area Council of Churches, 1969-1973.
[3] Max Friedman to Canfield, June 5, 2008.
[4] Ly Van Sau was a Viet Cong spokesman at the Paris Peace talks, a journalist and Vietnamese Ambassador to Cuba. Politics in Brief, “Cuban hero’s birthday celebrated,” June 13, 2008.  Http://english.vietnamnet.vn/politics/2008/06/788292/
[5]IPC, “Peace Groups Unite on ’74 Plan,” Indochina Focal Point, November 16-30, 1973 provided by Max Friedman.
[6] IPC, “Peace Groups Unite on ’74 Plan,” Indochina Focal Point, November 16-30, 1973 provided by Max Friedman.
[7] Tom Hayden, IPC, “a Vietnamese vision: interview with Ly Van Sau, ‘be with us on their long march,’ in “Peace Groups Unite on ’74 Plan,” Indochina Focal Point, November 16-30, 1973 provided by Max Friedman.
[8] IPC, “Peace Groups Unite on ’74 Plan,” Indochina Focal Point, November 16-30, 1973 provided by Max Friedman.
[9] Max Friedman, Council for Inter-American Security, study in lieu of testimony to Chairman of House Ways and Means Committee, Lobbying and Political Activities of Tax-Exempt Organizations, Hearings, Committee on Oversight, March 12-13, 1987, 403.
[10] The International Committee to Free South Vietnamese Prisoners from Detention, Torture and Death was affiliated with AFSC, War Resisters League, Catholic Peace Fellowship and Canadian Council of Churches. Sources: CCPF 1/13 folder, Catholic Peace Fellowship Records, University of Notre Dame Archives, Ann Buttrick Collection, University of Toronto Library; Records of War Resisters League, box 25, Collection DG 040, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.
[11] IPC, “Indochina: A National Planning Conference, October 26-28, in a camp near Dayton, Ohio, initiated by the Indochina Peace Campaign,” n.d., [October 1973]; Tom Hayden, “Cutting Off Funding for War: the 1973 Indochina Case,” Huffington Post, March 20, 2007 at huffingtonpost.com.
[12] Max Friedman, Council for Inter-American Security, study in lieu of testimony to Chairman of House Ways and Means Committee, Lobbying and Political Activities of Tax-Exempt Organizations, Hearings, Committee on Oversight, March 12-13, 1987, 403.
[13] Max Friedman to Canfield, November 26, 2008.
[14] Wells, The War Within 567-8N102-3 cite “Notes from IPC National Meeting, Feb 16-18, 1973 (IPC papers SHSW); Santa Barbara IPC, “IPC’s Original, Continuing and current goals,” early 1973; Hirsch, “Notes on Congressional Pressure,” July 31, 1973; IPC Boston/Cambridge Resource Center to IPC state offices, December 15, 1972b; Tom Hayden, “Cutting Off Funding for War: the 1973 Indochina Case, Huffington Post, March 20, 2007.
[15] SDS and NACLA (No. American Committee on Latin America. From an old red family. Max Friedman to author, February 25, 2008. Wells, The War Within 567-8N102-3 cite “Notes from IPC National Meeting, Feb 16-18, 1973 (IPC papers SHSW); Santa Barbara IPC, “IPC’s Original, Continuing and Current Goals,” early 1973; Hirsch, “Notes on Congressional Pressure,” July 31, 1973; IPC Boston/Cambridge Resource Center to IPC state offices, December 15, 1972b; Tom Hayden, “Cutting Off Funding for War: the 1973 Indochina Case, Huffington Post, March 20, 2007.
[16] “Workshops for Saturday,”[27 October 1973] from Max Friedman.
[17] Brother of Leslie Cagan. Rick Perloff, “Radical Family Values: The Activism Gene Rarely Skips A Generation. But Even Protesters Kids Insist On Doing Things Their Own Way,” Cleveland Free Times, Volume 13, Issue 38, January 11, 2006.
[18] A Kymer representative, one presumes, Kymer Rouge.
[19] “Workshops for Saturday,”[27 October 1973] from Max Friedman.
[20] Wells, The War Within 567-8N102-3 cite “Notes from IPC National Meeting, Feb 16-18, 1973 (IPC papers SHSW); Santa Barbara IPC, “IPC’s Original, Continuing and current goals,” early 1973; Hirsch, “Notes on Congressional Pressure,” July 31, 1973; IPC Boston/Cambridge Resource Center to IPC state offices, December 15, 1972b; Tom Hayden, “Cutting Off Funding for War: the 1973 Indochina Case, Huffington Post, March 20, 2007.
[21] IPC, Organizers Guide For the United Campaign to Honor the Peace Agreement, 9 February, 1974; http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1660323/posts
[22] Max Friedman, Council for Inter-American Security, study in lieu of testimony to Chairman of House Ways and Means Committee, Lobbying and Political Activities of Tax-Exempt Organizations, Hearings, Committee on Oversight, March 12-13, 1987, 403.
[23] Fortune, March 1974; cited in Max Friedman, Council for Inter-American Security, study in lieu of testimony to Chairman of House Ways and Means Committee, Lobbying and Political Activities of Tax-Exempt Organizations, Hearings, Committee on Oversight, March 12-13, 1987, 405.
[24] IPC “Proposed Strategy for Action in the Coming Year,” October 7, 1973 provided by Max Friedman.
[25] IPC, “Indochina: A National Planning Conference, October 26-28, in a camp near Dayton, Ohio, initiated by the Indochina Peace Campaign,” n.d., [October 1973]
[26] AFSC/NARMIC promotional materials, “From the New NARMIC slide show, THE POST-WAR War, Dollars for War, Dollars for Repression, order form, NARMIC Publications, 11/73 at FBI, FOIA, A, AFSC.
[27]IPC, “Peace Groups Unite on ’74 Plan,” Indochina Focal Point, November 16-30, 1973 provided by Max Friedman.
[28] The author has written and implemented just such strategic plans for political campaigns for candidates and ballot initiatives in California.
[29] Political Prisoners in South Vietnam and the Philippines, Hearings, Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, May 1 and June 5, 1974, 108.
[30] Daily World, November 1, 1973, 11.