Jeremy Varon (61 page)

99. Marcuse,
Counterrevolution and Revolt,
133.

100.
Guardian,
October 18, 1969, 14.

101.
Helix,
October 16, 1969, 7;
Rag,
October 21, 1969, 14.

102. According to FBI intelligence, RYM II members themselves complained that their actions in Chicago were poorly organized and somewhat uninspiring.

FBI Report, Chicago Office, “Students for a Democratic Society,” November 7, 1969, 180–83. FBI-WUO. RYM II failed to establish a presence on campuses and by the spring of 1970 was essentially defunct.

103.
Guardian,
October 18, 1969, 8.

104. Ibid., 14.

105. Ibid.

106. Larkin and Foss, “Lexicon of Folk-Etymology,” quotations from 363–64.

107. See Tom Wolfe,
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
(New York: Bantam Books, 1981).

108. The pioneers of the psychedelic culture used their own death imagery.

A key emblem of The Grateful Dead—the “house band” of the Acid Tests—is a skeleton wearing a crown of cascading roses, in which death and the fecund beauty of life merge. Unifying the two, or at least mastering their tension, may be described as the most profound challenge of an LSD trip. A skull with a lightening bolt shooting through it, called a “Steal Your Face,” is another of the band’s symbols. Taken from the lyric “steal your face right off your head,” it suggests that LSD can entail a kind of ego death.

109. Raskin,
For the Hell of It,
67. Raskin, a close friend of the late Hoff-328

Notes to Pages 106–18

man, suggests that Hoffman exaggerated the role of LSD in his activism. Raskin presents Hoffman as a master of self-fashioning who showed precisely how fun-gible both self and politics are—for better and for worse. Raskin concludes: “Abbie’s life provides a cautionary tale about how we live and die. Perhaps we can’t change the world, as so many of us believed in the sixties. But we can change our immediate circumstances, at least some of the time. We are the authors of our own lives. . . . The choices are up to us. We can create ourselves as well as destroy ourselves.” Ibid., 264.

110. Ibid., 162.

111.
FIRE!
October 21, 1969.

112.
FIRE!
November 7, 1969.

113.
FIRE!
October 21, 1969.

114. Ono, “Weatherman,” 235–36.

115. Ibid., 271–72.

116. Ibid., 261.

117. “Weatherman: The Long and Winding Road to the Underground,” in
Defiance #2: A Radical Review,
ed. Dotson Rader (New York: Paperback Library, 1970), 15.

118. Jones interview.

119. Stern,
With the Weathermen,
154–55.

120. Hirsch-Dubin interview.

121. Interview with anonymous Weatherwoman.

122. Braley interview.

123. “Weatherman: The Long and Winding Road,” 14.

124. Jones, Columbia, 86.

125. Mellen interview, 34.

126. Braley interview.

127. Weiss interview.

128. Gitlin,
The Sixties,
253–54.

129. Hirsch-Dubin interview.

130. Ayers interview.

131. Ono, “Weatherman,” 271.

3 . “ h e a r t s a n d m i n d s ”

1. Wells,
War Within,
328–31.

2.
Guardian,
October 25, 1969, 4–5, and Wells,
War Within,
370–75.

3. Wells,
War Within,
371.

4. Ibid., 371, 382, 385, 383.

5. Hoffman pledge,
Washington Post
(henceforth cited as
WP
), November 11, 1969, A1; Rubin remark, Wells,
War Within,
382.

6.
WP,
November 11, 1969, A1. Ayers remarks, FBI memos, Chicago office to regional offices, October 13, 1969, October 30, 1969. FBI-WUO.

7.
Guardian,
November 22, 1969, 3.

8. John Cohen, Introduction to Samuel Melville,
Letters from Attica
(New York: William Morrow, 1972), 50.

Notes to Pages 118–28

329

9. Jane Alpert,
Growing Up Underground
(New York: William Morrow, 1981), 115.

10. Jane Alpert, “Profile of Sam Melville,” in Melville,
Letters from Attica,
20.

11. Palmer interview.

12. Alpert,
Growing Up Underground,
214.

13.
WP,
November 12, 1969, A8.

14. Cohen, 77.

15. Ibid., 78.

16. The cunning of undercover agents was impressive. At the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Palmer threw a chunk of concrete through the window of a Cadillac right in front of Demmerle. Several activists at the scene, Demmerle among them, were arrested. Palmer grew suspicious of Demmerle (though insufficiently so) when the charges against them were mysteriously dropped.

Palmer interviews.

17. Wells,
War Within,
159.

18. Two of the Catonsville defendants, Thomas Lewis and Philip Berrigan, had received but not yet started serving sentences of six years in federal prison for spilling their blood on draft files in 1967.

19. Daniel Berrigan,
The Trial of the Catonsville 9
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 35. Subsequent quotations from 44, 94, 94–95, respectively. See Murray Polner and Jim O’Grady,
Disarmed and Dangerous: The Radical Life and Times
of Daniel and Philip Berrigan
(1997; reprint, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1998).

20. Interview with Paul Mayer.

21. Ibid.

22.
Guardian,
July 15, 1967, 3.

23.
Treason!
Winter 1968, 27–28.

24.
FIRE!
November 7, 1969, 1, 9.

25. Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” 83–84

26.
FIRE!
November 21, 1969, in
Weatherman,
ed. H. Jacobs, 276.

27.
Helix,
November 13, 1969, 3.

28. Wells,
War Within,
392–93;
WP
November 14, 1969, A1, 18.

29.
Fifth Estate,
November 27–December 10, 15.

30. Wells,
War Within,
391–92.

31. FBI memo, Chicago to Washington, November 25, 1969. FBI-WUO.

32. “Weatherman: The Long and Winding Road,” 17.

33.
Quicksilver Times,
November 26–December 6, 7.

34.
WP,
November 15, 1969, A1, 8.

35. These are visible in a film of the protests,
Tarzan Stripes Forever or the
Great American Tragedy,
made by Michael Dee, Jeffrey Lewis, Jonathan Dee, and Philip Coleman while undergraduates at Yale University.

36.
Quicksilver Times,
November 26–December 6, 3.

37. Yurick refers to Russia’s “Bloody Sunday,” when workers marched to Tsar Nicholas II’s Winter Place to plead for justice and were shot at by the tsar’s troops.

38. Sol Yurick, “On Making Foreign Policy with Your Feet,” in
Defiance #1,
ed. Dotson Rader (New York: Paperback Library, 1970), 238, 245.

39.
WP,
November 16, 1969, A14.

330

Notes to Pages 128–35

40. Mellen interview, 34–35.

41. Ibid., 35.

42. Ibid.

43. Wells,
War Within,
395; imagery largely from
Tarzan Stripes Forever.

44.
WP,
November 16, 1969, A14.

45.
Guardian,
November 22, 1969, 16, and
WP,
November 17, 1969, A1, A18.

46.
Guardian,
November 22, 1969, 16.

47.
Seed
4, no. 9 (1969): 3, 23.

48. Wells,
War Within,
398–99.

49.
FIRE!
November 21, 1969, 1.

50.
WP,
November 16, 1969, B6.

51. Ibid., B7.

52. Wells,
War Within,
435–46; George W. Hopkins, “‘May Day’ 1971,” in Charles DeBenedetti Memorial Conference,
Give Peace a Chance: Exploring the
Vietnam Antiwar Movement: Essays from the Charles DeBenedetti Memorial
Conference,
ed. Melvin Small and William D. Hoover (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1992), 72.

53. Hopkins; button from Mayer interview.

54. Paul Goodman,
Drawing the Line: The Political Essays of Paul Goodman,
ed. Taylor Stoer (New York: Dutton, 1977), 170.

55.
WP,
November 16, 1969, B6.

56. Ibid., B7.

57. George Mosse,
The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism
and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third
Reich
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975).

58.
Guardian,
November 22, 1969, 7.

59.
WP,
November 16, 1969, A14.

60.
Guardian,
November 22, 1969, 7.

61. Wells,
War Within,
397.

62.
WP,
November 17, 1969, A1.

63. Ibid., A1, 19.

64. The language of the silent majority was not new in discussions of Vietnam. In 1967, the hawkish AFL-CIO President George Meany asserted that prowar labor spoke for “the vast, silent majority in the nation.” Quoted in Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones,
Peace Now! American Society and the Ending of the Vietnam
War
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 181.

65. Jeffreys-Jones,
Peace Now!
198, 236.

66. William Safire, “Old Pro Perot,”
NYT,
May 7, 1992, A27. The scheme grows still more comic. Ron Zeigler, Nixon’s press secretary, at one point inquired where the letters, never delivered to Washington, were being kept. Upon learning that they were in depositories throughout America, he asked, “You mean . . . when reporters ask me ‘Where is the Silent Majority’ I can say we have them locked up in bank vaults all over the country?”

67. Recent revelations indicate that the Nixon administration manipulated the impression that the silent majority speech caused a spontaneous outpouring of support for Nixon’s policies. Alexander Butterfield, a Nixon aide, testified in Notes to Pages 136–44

331

court in 1999 that he had helped arrange that pro-Nixon telegrams and letters be sent to the White House by labor unions, veterans’ groups, and Republican governors and party chairmen (
NYT,
January 23, 1999).

68. Jeffreys-Jones,
Peace Now!
197–98.

69. Quoted in ibid., 198.

70. Ayers interview.

71. Harrison Salisbury gave Americans a glimpse of the unity of the Vietnamese resistance in
Behind the Lines—Hanoi
(New York: Harper & Row, 1967).

Having toured North Vietnam, he described how all layers of society were involved in military operations, civil defense, the treatment of the wounded, and rebuilding after bombings.

72. Ayers interview.

73. Goodman, 166.

74. David Farber,
The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s
(New York: Hill & Wang, 1994), 167.

75. The Vietnamese were themselves divided in their ambitions for the American resistance. Vietnamese officials told Weathermen on a 1969 Venceremos Brigade, who were considered worthy of special instructions, that it was imperative to “stop the airplanes. . . . Your people are killing our people. Violence is not a choice for us.” In response, the Weathermen attempted to disable warplanes in California air bases. Ayers interview.

76. Mellen interview, 36.

77. Palmer interviews.

78. Mellen interview, 36.

79. Jean Baudrillard,
In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities, or, The End of
the Social and Other Essays,
trans. Paul Foss, John Johnston, and Paul Patton (New York: Semiotext(e) and Paul Virilio, 1983), 5. Subsequent quotations from 7, 2.

80. Ibid., 13–14.

81. For example, two major works on the antiwar movement, Charles DeBenedetti,
An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era
(Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1990), and Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan,
Who Spoke Up? American Protest against the War in Vietnam, 1963–

1975
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984), heap criticism on the Weathermen and other militants.

82. Government duplicity on Vietnam was legion, as evidenced by the Pentagon Papers, leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, and efforts to suppress CIA data on enemy troop strength, which as early as 1966–67 all but foretold U.S. defeat in Southeast Asia. On this, see Ralph W. McGehee,
Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years
in the CIA
(New York: Sheridan Square Publications, 1983).

83. Wells,
War Within,
4.

84. On the movement’s achievements, see ibid., 4–5, 357, 377, 397.

85. Ibid., 2–3.

86. Ibid. Wells,
War Within,
174, 179–80, 219, quotes antiwar activists castigating violence variously as a politically shallow effort at emotional gratification, a form of one-upsmanship in a crass competition over degrees of commitment, and an expression of a characteristically American impatience, at odds with the Vietnamese’s appreciation of the need for stamina in political struggle.

332

Notes to Pages 144–53

87. Quoted in Joan Morrison and Robert K. Morrison, eds.,
From Camelot
to Kent State: The Sixties Experience in the Words of Those Who Lived It
(New York: Times Books, 1987), 314.

88. Weiss interview.

89. How the public would have responded to more detailed and timely knowledge of the brutal nature of U.S. conduct in Vietnam is a matter of speculation.

Veterans who turned against the war eventually tried to spell out for the American public the worst of what was happening in Vietnam. Most notably, in early 1971, Vietnam Veterans against the War held the “Winter Soldier” hearings in Detroit, in which veterans testified about atrocities in which they had participated or of which they had learned. Though such accusations caused some stir, they received conspicuously little media attention and inspired fierce rebuttals from military and political officials. Incredulity, fueled by government efforts to discredit antiwar veterans, was perhaps a more common public response than outrage. See Vietnam Veterans against the War,
The Winter Soldier Investigation: An Inquiry into American War Crimes
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1971) and Andrew Hunt,
The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans against the War
(New York: New York University Press, 1999).