PART ONE

PROVIDENCE – Fifty years ago, on Friday, May 29, 1970, Leonard Weinglass, an attorney for the Chicago Seven, spoke for more than an hour in the Millburn High School auditorium in Millburn, N.J., before a packed audience of students and teachers.

Weinglass had been one of a dozen guests who had been invited to participate in a daylong Chautauqua of speakers at the suburban high school, some 12 miles west of downtown Newark, with some 1,000 students.

The full school day of guest speakers had been created to serve as a teach-in for students, following the tumultuous upheaval that began with the U.S. invasion of neutral Cambodia, ordered by President Richard Nixon in late April, then was amplified by the killings of protesting students by the National Guard at Kent State University and state police at Jackson State University  in May, and the rash of student strikes that erupted in response at numerous college campuses across the nation.

[To be fully transparent, I was one of the organizers of the May 29 event.]

Among the other speakers that day were: a member of the South Vietnamese opposition party to President Thieu; a representative of the National Welfare Rights Organization; state Sen. James Wallwork; a member of the New Jersey branch of the American Civil Liberties Union who spoke about women’s rights; and a representative of the John Birch Society.

In his talk, Weinglass held the audience of students and teachers spellbound as he recounted what had actually happened at the infamous trial of the Chicago Seven [originally the Chicago Eight] – and talked at length about the legal travails of Black Panther Bobby Seale and the Black Panther Party. Much of the information Weinglass presented had not been covered by the news media – and was certainly not part of any curriculum being taught in the high school at that time.

[At one point, when the school principal interrupted Weinglass, in order to encourage students to go to lunch in the cafeteria if they wanted, the students voted with their feet and stayed put in their seats.]

The story of the trial is now the subject of a new feature film, “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” written and directed by Aaron Sorkin. The reviews have focused on the similarities between the current political divisions and the political upheaval following the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968 – which led to the election of Richard Nixon as President, and the pursuit of polarization around racial and cultural differences. The Chicago trial had served as a political show trial for the Nixon administration.

The eight defendants were the first to be charged under a provision in the new Civil Rights of Act of 1968. They were accused of conspiring to incite a riot, despite the fact that a number of commissions said that it had been “a police riot.” Six of the eight were charged with crossing state lines with the intent of inciting a riot – what officials in the White House Justice Department later described as “ideological criminals” who should be rounded up and placed in detention centers.

Setting the stage
There is a much longer narrative about how the talk by Weinglass came to be, which I will address in more detail in the second part of the story, to be published in next week’s edition of ConvergenceRI.

Earlier that month, Weinglass had been refused permission to speak at neighboring Columbia High School, which served the suburban communities of Maplewood and South Orange, although the principal told Weinglass that she would be happy to host a coffee for him in her living room.

At another neighboring high school, Livingston, Weinglass had been permitted to speak – but only about the invasion of Cambodia. He was not allowed to talk about the Chicago Seven trial.

At Millburn, Weinglass’s talk had been preceded by an intense drama before he took the stage. A member of the Millburn Board of Education had attempted to prevent Weinglass from speaking. The school board member had warned Millburn High School Principal Donald Koehler that the only way Weinglass could be permitted to speak to students was if he appeared side-by-side with a member of the John Birch Society. [To quote WPRO’s Steve Klamkin, really?]

Koehler had asked Weinglass if he wanted to have someone from the John Birch Society appear with him on stage but Weinglass declined the offer. [I witnessed the entire conversation in the principal’s office when it happened.]

If Weinglass had been prevented from speaking, a teacher had offered to set up a wireless microphone system to broadcast over the school’s public address system from a car circling the campus, to allow Weinglass to speak and to be heard.

Here is a transcript of what Weinglass said, from an audio recording I have preserved from the talk:

WEINGLASS: [describing the offer from the Columbia High School principal to speak at her home, but not at the high school]

I told her that I wouldn’t be speaking at her house in her living room, it would be on her front lawn, and there would be a group of students from Columbia who weren’t permitted to hear me in their own auditorium.

I think that it is kind of important. I was invited to Livingston last week to speak. They permitted me to speak only on Cambodia and Vietnam, but not on the trial. I was told very specifically not to speak about the trial.

But the nice thing about Millburn is that there have been no restrictions placed in advance on my speech. I want to thank Mr. Koehler and whoever else made that possible.

[Sustained applause.]

There are not even any police here, which is kind of unusual.

[Laughter.]

Whenever we traveled, particularly in the middle section of the country, we were usually greeted by a number of police, who were there supposedly for our own protection.

When Abbie [Hoffman] and I flew into Dallas airport about a month ago, there were 20 plainclothesmen who greeted us when we came off of the plane and went through security.

Abbie has a standard way of getting rid of plainclothes policemen. We went into the terminal and he had Eldridge Cleaver paged at the American Airlines counter.

[Laughter.]

You had to see the Dallas terminal when that announcement was made.

[Laughter.]

He actually helped quite a bit during the trial. In fact, with seven defendants and two lawyers, our roles apparently were interchanged quite a bit.

We either ended up being 10 defendants or 10 lawyers, I’m not sure which.

But, on the first day of the trial, when I attempted to make my opening statement to the jury, I tried to indicate to the jury what we were going to prove… But Judge Hoffman interrupted me and wouldn’t let me finish.

The prosecutor was standing, shouting objections. The judge was screaming down from the bench. There was general pandemonium in the courtroom.

And, in the midst of the chaos, I was standing at the lectern, and felt a tug at the back of my jacket, and I turned around expecting to see Bill Kunstler, my co-counsel there, with some information that would help me out of this particular dilemma.

And it wasn’t Bill Kunstler, it was Abbie Hoffman standing there, and he passed a note to me, which I very carefully opened at the side of the lectern while Judge Hoffman was screaming at me, and the note read: “Fight, team fight!”

[Laughter].

Later on in the trial, Bill Kunstler had an argument with Judge Hoffman over a ruling, and Kunstler said to the judge, “In all my 20 years of practice in New York, I have never heard of such a ruling.”

Judge Hoffman, trying to get the last word in, said to Bill Kunstler. “It might come as a surprise to you, Mr. Kunstler, but before I was a judge, when I was a young man, I used to practice law in New York.”

Abbie Hoffman jumped up and said: “Yes, but that was when it was under British rule.”

[Laughter.]

Abbie got two weeks [in jail for contempt] for that.

[More laughter.]

It is actually good to hear laughter without wincing.

The defendants received over 30 days for laughing in the courtroom. That included the times when Judge Hoffman was laughing, [along with] everyone else, including the press, were laughing.

The judge would make a note of it in a big ledger that he kept up on the bench in front of him. At the end of the trial, we were all sentenced [to jail for contempt] for laughter.

When the government ended its case, after two and half months and 54 witnesses, the defendants gave the prosecutors a standing ovation. They got 17 days [in jail] for that.

[Laughter]

In all, what happened, in terms of the total sentences for contempt, the defendants received a total of 19 years, three months and three days. I think that set some kind of a record.

Not a laughing matter
WEINGLASS: It wasn’t at all entirely a laughing matter. I want to discuss the trial with you, but I feel in talking about the trial, I should point out some important things. In the first place, I think, events since the trial, which ended the third week in February, have far eclipsed the trial.

The trial is no longer a seriously relevant matter to America today. I think the trial, like trials throughout history, served the purpose of being a precursor of better things to come.

[Laughter.]

If you study history, the trial of Socrates, the trial of Christ, the trials of Nazi Germany, right down to the present, you will note that periods of repression and oppression have always been heralded at the threshold of their beginning by a large political trial of people who are considered by those, whoever they are, who are in power, who have prosecuted people who [they believe] are dangerous.

I think our trial was, in some sense, the precursor of what’s happened to this country in the months immediately following the trial in March, April and May.

When our trial was over, Tom Hayden, who I think is perhaps the most articulate of the eight [defendants], said in a press interview that he felt that now that the trial was finished, the government would take steps to escalate the war in Indochina – which was laughed at by the press, because in February, the President had announced a gradual withdrawal of troops.

Hayden said that he felt that the government would go ahead with the extermination of the Black Panther Party, which I will speak about today.

And finally, Hayden said that he thought in the coming years, we’d even see the beginning of executions and murders of even white radicals as they demonstrated on the campuses or the streets around the country.

Hayden projected this as analysis of what would happen in the next few years. The remarkable thing is what Hayden spoke about happened not in the next few years, but in the coming 90 days after the trial.

The four murders at Kent State, and the two at Jackson State, are obvious acts of criminal assault, carried out by law enforcement agencies.

Ongoing events that are not so obvious
WEINGLASS: There are other ongoing events that are not so obvious. In January of this year, the Assistant Attorney General of the United States, who is in charge of all criminal prosecutions, the chief criminal prosecutor in the country today, Assistant Attorney General Will Wilson, made a statement to the effect that the country today had within its midst, persons and protesters who he labeled as “ideological criminals” – those were his words.

Wilson said these “ideological criminals” are people who should be rounded up and placed in relocation centers.

I don’t know if you’ve studied this in your history classes, but as a result of the 1954 Internal Security Act, Title 2 of that Act, the government has the authority and has built relocation centers around the United States.

That Act gives the government the authority, if the President declares a national emergency or a national crisis, to round people up who are “politically unstable” and place them in those centers without the benefit an indictment, a grand jury, [lawyers] appearing in their defense, witnesses being called, or evidence presented.

Those people are to remain in those relocation centers until the President of the United States indicates they can be [released].

That law does exist. And if you don’t think those relocation centers are there, there is one in Allenwood, Penn., which I visited with two of the defendants about three weeks ago. As reported in the October issue of Look magazine, the Allenwood Relocation Center has been refurbished.

It was originally built in 1955, but it was starting to show signs of disrepair, so last year it was restored and repainted. If you go there, you can see through the barbed wire fence that the buildings are newly painted and the facility is in a ready condition.

There is also the news about revelations by the United States Army, in a letter dated in March of this year to New Jersey Congressman Cornelius Gallagher, that the U.S. Army had collected a total of 7 million names of people who are politically unstable and fed them into a computer at the Pentagon in Washington.

That was acknowledged in a written letter to the Congressman. The Army indicated that in order to have this matter not be investigated by Congressman Gallagher, the Army agreed that it would disband that computer.

As a result, those 7 million names were taken from that computer, and from what I can [ascertain], they have evidently been disseminated to the police chiefs of the various departments around the country and the National Guard.

Historical precedent
WEINGLASS: Is there a precedent for the Government rounding up people without the benefit of a trial and making them relocate to centers?

Of course, the answer to that is yes. It happened in 1942, when it came to 172,000 Japanese Americans, who were picked up by the Army in military vehicles, often in the middle of the night, and transported to relocation centers, where they remained without the benefit of a trial or a writ of habeus corpus, for the duration of the war. They were released at the end of 1945.

Some people naturally doubted the constitutionality of that action; a lawsuit was [brought] by a Japanese American by the name of Korematsu.

The case, Korematsu v. the United States went to court; it went to the U.S. Supreme Court, arriving there in 1944.

The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, the Bill of Rights not withstanding, asserting the right of the federal government, through the Army, to round up people and place them in relocation centers, without the benefit of a trial.

It was based upon the Korematsu decision that Congress, in 1954, at the height of the McCarthy period, enacted Title 2 of the Internal Security Act.

So we have those relocation centers, we have the legal authority, and, I think for the first time, really, since 1954, we have men in positions of authority who are currently willing, quite willing, to use the authority they have.

The Black Panther Party
WEINGLASS: In addition to that matter, the question also comes up: What was the situation in respect to the Black Panther Party in the United States? And, with [the Panthers’] apparent ongoing struggles with the federal, state, and local police departments?

Let me introduce that by saying to you, we were charged, on a totally false and baseless charge, we charged nonetheless, the eight defendants and two lawyers, with coming to Chicago with the intention of using the court system, perverting the court system for our own purposes, to further the ends of what the media regarded as “revolution.”

And, that we were also trying to sabotage, with respect to the court system of the United States, to undermine the confidence of people in that system. But, nothing could be further from the truth.

The truth, I think, is that the government today is using the court system in a way that is undermining respect. It is the government that is using the court system to try and subvert the structure of that system.

Let me start with probably the most noticeable Panther trial that is scheduled. That is the trial of Bobby Seale, the chairman of the Black Panther Party, who was with us in Chicago, and who now faces trial on the charges of conspiracy to [commit] murder in New Haven, Conn.

If I were to ask you, or stop any 10 people on the street, and ask them if Bobby Seale was guilty, I think the almost unanimous opinion would be that he is.

The lawyers for the defense in that case have been placed under a very strict court order not to discuss the case with the media.

And, they have refrained from doing so. However, the same order did not apply to the police. So, the police have been able to discuss freely with the media all aspects of their case.

They have revealed to the media – claiming that they do have evidence that they don’t have – all of which has poisoned the atmosphere against Bobby.

When 15,000 young people came up to New Haven [on May Day], to demonstrate their support for Bobby Seale, you know the kind of charges that were made – that these people were trying to undermine a fair trial for Bobby Seale.

So, how was Bobby Seale indicted? A pretrial conference was held in New Haven two weeks ago. I have the transcript of that pretrial conference in my office.

It was not reported in the press with the sole exception of the New York Times, which gave it a very perfunctory treatment. In that pretrial conference, the sheriff, who was responsible for selecting the grand jury for New Haven County, testified; he took the oath and he testified that the 22 people who constituted the grand jury that indicted Bobby Seale were made up of the following persons: first, my barber; secondly, my landlord; thirdly, 14 people who are neighbors of mine, and finally, six people who the [neighbors] selected to come along. That was the selection of 22 people who indicted Seale.

The sheriff of New Haven County also serves as detective for the prosecution. He is very intimately involved and intimately connected with the prosecution of Bobby Seale. And he handpicked the grand jury. If you see how the grand jury was selected, you can wonder about which side is using the court system for its own end.

By any conceivable application of the theory, if not the letter, of the Constitution of the United States, [I believe] that Bobby Seale has been wrongly indicted. An appeal is now underway, but frankly, I feel that that appeal will fail, that Bobby Seale’s indictment will stay and he will have to go to trial.

More from the pretrial hearing
WEINGLASS: In the evidence produced at that pre-trial hearing, [it was revealed that] the chief prosecution witness, a man by the name of George Sams – Sams was allegedly a former member of the Black Panther Party, and he is the one who testified that Bobby Seale said, when he was shown the body of a man by the name of Rackley, that they should “off the pig.”

George Sams is the one that tied Bobby Seale to the murder of Rackley. George Sams took the stand two weeks ago in New Haven. Conn., a fact that I doubt you will know because it wasn’t reported in the press.

It came out for the first time that this was the George Sams who had served more than four years in a mental institution out of the last seven, and that he suffered from a very serious mental condition. After the defense examination was completed, the judge, who was not a friend of the Panthers, felt that it would need to necessary to order a psychiatric examination of this witness before the court would accept his further testimony in the trial.

I point this out to you because, while you know all the facts that the police have about Bobby Seale’s [alleged] guilt, you know none of the facts of the pre-trial hearing which indicates quite clearly that Bobby Seale was illegally arrested and been illegally detained in Connecticut.

[In my opinion] the efforts on the part of the prosecution in Connecticut was a pre-meditated act to prevent a fair trial from taking place.

The Panther 21 trial in New York
WEINGLASS: How about the trial of the Panther 21 in New York? They are presently indicted and undergoing pre-trial hearings.

Of course, you may know that these men disrupted the court [proceedings] at a pretrial hearing, which they did, in Judge Murtaugh’s courtroom, in New York. They were loud and boisterous and at times became physical in reaction to the marshals in the court.

The problem was that they had been, at that time when pre-trial hearings began, in jail approximately 11 months, going into their 12th month in jail, being held under assurance of bail, requiring $100,000 cash bail. So, that would mean virtually no bail.

But why did they get so upset and how did they get in that position?

Judge Murtaugh, the New York Times revealed about six weeks ago, was the same person who had been the commissioner of investigations under New York City Mayor O’Dwyer in 1950. Murtaugh was the man who was prosecuted for criminal malfeasance in office. They prosecuted him, but the case was reversed on appeal because the case was brought in the wrong jurisdiction; he was prosecuted in Kings County, it should have been Queens County.

A grand jury was convened in Queens County and presented with the evidence against Mr. Murtaugh, but they elected not to indict Mr. Murtaugh. Instead, they issued a grand jury presentment, which is a statement by a grand jury concerning official act of a public officer.

And in that grand jury presentment, they criticized Mr. Murtaugh for permitting questionable activity in allowing the loss of more than 300 investigations of police corruption while he was the commissioner of investigations.

The presentment found that files were lost under very suspicious circumstances so that there was not enough evidence to indict [any officers]. It repeatedly questioned his integrity and his ability to function as a commissioner of investigations.

Murtaugh was no longer served as the commissioner of investigations, but he was soon elevated to the bench and he was made a judge.

[laughter]

Where he sits now as Judge Murtaugh. And Judge Murtaugh, as a judge, continues to perform essentially the same function, which is the cover up of misdeeds by the police department.

He is known in New York as a police judge. Any matter that involves actions by the police department are assigned to Judge Murtaugh.

When the District Attorney [Frank] Hogan had the 21 Panthers arrested, he naturally had that case assigned to the police judge. Judge Murtaugh promptly saw to it that these men were held without bail, and they were each assigned to different prisons.

The question of whether or not a prosecutor has the right to select a judge of his own choosing is now before the highest judges in New York, they have been sitting on that case for approximately seven weeks without issuing an opinion, so we are all waiting to see if they are going to permit it, that procedure in New York whereby the prosecution, the government, selects the judge.

Not only are these men being held in excessively high bail, I might point this out, because I am an advocate, and I don’t expect everything I say to be taken at face value, but Mr. Morgenthau, who was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced a month ago, after leaving office, that the 21 Panthers are being held, in Mr. Morgenthau’s words, “illegally, by a government and by a court system that is closed to their appeal for reduced bail.”

About a month ago, a [commentator] pointed out that while the Panthers are being held on very high bail, excessively high bail, a week before, a New York City fireman who was being charged with arson – he burned down a youth center in Queens – was released on $7,500 bail.

The Panthers are not being charged with arson; they didn’t burn anything. They are being charged with conspiracy to commit arson, in other words, an agreement supposedly made to do the criminal act, but not doing the act itself.

The fireman was charged with actually burning down the center, which did burn down, and people were injured, but he was released on $7,500 bail.

Further, by special order of the court, the Panthers were placed in different prisons and placed in high detention, which is an illegal thing for a man to be placed in, in advance of a trial.

They were kept under maximum security. Their attorney could not see them all together. He had to see one, in Prison A, then travel cross town to Prison B, to see the second Panther, and then go back to the first prison, then to the third, back to the second,

A federal court in New York recently ruled that was not constitutionality permitted, it was a constitutional deprivation of legal counsel.

Now, not very much of this is getting out to the public, and not much was known, so the Panthers when they came to trial for the first pretrial hearing, seized the opportunity. It was their first time out of prison, and they seized the opportunity to have a demonstration in the courtroom, so that their condition, their plight could generally become known to the public.

As a lawyer, I can’t approve of people using the courtroom for a demonstration, nor can I approve of what happened in court. But I can, as a human being, understand that men who have been incarcerated in high detention for almost a year, and facing 50 more years, in a system that apparently, from their point of view, was attempting to railroad them in jail for the rest of their lives, performing a mild act when they stand up and protest in the courtroom so that the media will carry their protests and there will finally be some public exposure.

Editor’s Note: On May 13, 1971, after the longest political trial in New York's history, all 21 New York Panthers are acquitted of all charges.

Coming Next Week: In Part Two of the transcript of Leonard Weinglass’s talk, he describes the efforts by the defendants to present a defense that showed the movement, calling as witnesses writers such as Norman Mailer and Bill Styron, singers such as Judy Collins and Phil Ochs, poets such as Allen Ginsberg, civil rights leaders such as the Rev. Jessie Jackson, Dick Gregory, and Rev. Abernathy, in a failed attempt to sway the jury. Weinglass also details the difficulties encountered with Judge Julius Hoffman and the machinations of Chicago Richard Daley.

As part of the story, ConvergenceRI will share his next encounter with Leonard Weinglass, when he was part of the legal team successfully defending Abbie Hoffman and Amy Carter, President Carter’s daughter, in a 1987 trial in Northampton, Mass., stemming from a civil disobedient action at UMass Amherst to disrupt the CIA from recruiting students on the campus.