ACTIVISTS BUOYED BY ACQUITTAL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403640044-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 44
• Publication Date: April 19, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403640044-0
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'ARTICLE APPF ED 19 April 1987
ONP
Activists
buoyed by
acquittal
By Susan Levine
Inquirer Staff Writer
NORTHAMPTON, Mass. - It seemed a perfect
scene from the '60s: Triumphant defendants,
their fists clenched skyward. Blue-jean-clad sup-
porters, their placards now discarded. Cars honk-
ing. Bullhorn chanting. And the defeated? No
less a mighty force than the U.S. government.
But Wednesday afternoon in Northampton was
definitely an event of the '80s. Led by 19-year-old
"'7C Amy Carte and 50-year-old Abbie Hoffman - a
celebrity duo that bridged the two incongruous
decades - 15 defendants were acquitted of mis-
demeanor charges arising from a protest in No-
vember against recruitment by the Central Intel-
ligence Agency at the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst.
The defendants declared that their civil dis-
obedience and success, though reminiscent of
the past, held the greatest import for the future.
"This is just the beginning!" Hoffman crowed.
Those involved in today's burgeoning activism
enthusiastically agree.
Whether the issue is the CIA or South Africa,
nuclear arms or nuclear plants, the people doing
the demonstrating and the lawyers defending
them in court say the highly publicized Carter-
Hoffman victory will breathe new life and power
into their causes.
"It legitimizes dissent, and it legitimizes pro-
test," said Cambridge, Mass., lawyer Lee Gold-
stein, who does much work in these sorts of
cases.
"I think it's a tremendous inspiration for peo-
ple," said Marc Kenan, a U-Mass graduate student
who helped coordinate the defense for the North-
ampton case, dubbed the "Put the CIA on Trial'
project.
The impact is already being felt, according to
organizers of a national rally planned for next
weekend in Washington.
The Mobilization for Justice & Peace in Central
America and Southern Africa, will
call attention to the "covert and ille-
gal actions" of the CIA and U.S. gov-
ernment in those two regions of the
world, its sponsors say. Tens of thou.
sands of people are expected to
gather Saturday on the Washington
Mall.
The following Monday, hundreds
of protesters will move to Langley,
Va., where they will attempt to block
the entrance roads to the CIA head-
quarters there.
Ned Greenberg, one of the organiz-
ers of the Washington demonstra-
tion, said the Carter-Hoffman case
was sparking "a lot of interest. It's
prominent in everyone's mind."
More than 1,000 busloads of people
are expected from throughout the
country, Greenberg said, including
50 from the Philadelphia area. A 17-
car train has been reserved for dem-
onstrators from the Boston area. And
more than 300 people are going from
western Massachusetts, where the
Carter-Hoffman trial was held.
Local organizer Lisa Bohne said,
"A lot of people were sort of on the
edge. This has pushed them over.
Everyone's ecstatic."
A major reason for the jubilation is
the way that the former President's
daughter and her compatriots won
their case.
The defendants, most of them stu-
dents at area colleges, were among 60
people arrested after an hours-long
occupation of a building at the cam-
pus on Nov. 24. Those in court last
week included 12 charged with tres-
passing and three, including Carter,
who were charged with disorderly
conduct after they linked arms and
sat in front of buses that would trans-
port those' arrested.
The facts were not in dispute. In-
stead, the students argued a "neces-
sity defense." This defense contends
that individuals may commit a lesser
crime.to prevent a larger one - in
this case; what the students called
the CIA's' covert work to overthrow
the government in Nicaragua.
Activists are increasingly embrac-
ing this or parallel defenses, such as
"clear and present danger," a classic
example of which is the person. who
breaks into a burning building to
alert and rescue the people inside.
They contend that their nonvio-
lent protests are, in fact, upholding
the law, both national and interna-
tional.'- It is the other side that should
be branded criminal, they say.
Not everyone, particularly judges,
buys this reasoning.. In one of the
first cases of its kind this decade, an
anti-nuclear protester arrested as he
prayed on a missile test site was
sentenced to a year it a federal peni-
tentiary.
And in reaction to the verdict
Wednesday, U-Mass chancellor Jo-
s-ph Duffey was quoted in a North-
ampton newspaper as saying it
"could leave the university and
other institutions vulnerable to stu-
dents and others who are moved by a
higher moral authority."
Although the record is spasmodic
from state to state, the win-loss ratio
in cases where such defenses are
used has improved steadily in recent
years. In 1985, protesters trom a Cni-
cago rally against nuclear weapons
and apartheid used the necessity de-
fense and were acquitted.
And that year in Vermont, a group
of defendants known as the "Winoo-
ski 44" also was found not guilty.
They had been charged with occupy-
ing Sen. Robert Stafford's Winooski
office to protest his support of the
administration's policy in Central
America.
"Most states have a defense of this
kind, either by statute or through
case law," said Andy Lichterman, a
lawyer with the Western States Legal
Foundation in Oakland, Calif. "The
big question is always how much
range will it be given and what kind
of testimony will you be permitted to
put on for the defense."
The federal courts present a
greater challenge, though. Lawyers
say that the federal judiciary re-
mains hostile to necessity and re-
lated defenses, which makes protests
in the capital an especially risky un-
dertaking.
Washington lawyer Nina Kraut ex-
pressed undisguised frustration.
"They take these kinds of cases so
seriously here, you wouldn't believe
it. It's as if these people are the
Boston strangler."
Still, surprises occur. Early this
month in Philadelphia, the trial of
two Catholic priests and two peace
activists accused of damaging gov-
ernment aircraft at the Willow
Grove Naval Air Station ended in a
hung jury despite U.S. District Judge
Raymond J. Broderick's instructions
to the jury that an individual's mo-
tives were no defense.
"I think what it's doing is seeping
into the public consciousness," said
Rich Archambault, a coordinator
with the Clamshell Alliance, an ac-
tivist group that opposes the Sea-
brook nuclear plant in New Hamp?
shire.
"It's an exciting new trend," said
Susan Davidoff with the Pledge of
Resistance, a group committed to
changing U.S. policy in Central
America. "It shows that if we do get a
chance to explain our work to the
people ... many of them agree."
One of the witnesses to testify in
Northampton was Francis Boyle, an
international law scholar who teach-
es at the University of Illinois and
who wrote the forthcoming book,
Defending Civil Resistance Under In-
ternational Law.
In a telephone interview last week,
Boyle said publicity from the acquit-
Cont ue
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403640044-0
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403640044-0
d,
tals of Carter and Hoffman "will help
us win more."
?
Boyle predicted that today's activ-
ists, no matter what their issues,
could coalesce into a broad-based
movement that would affect the 1988
election. " 1 think that this movement
could produce a new generation of
leaders that see the world in differ-
ent terms," he said.
Attorney Thomas Lesser of North-
ampton, a member of the team of
lawyers that defended Carter and the
14 others, agreed.
That is why he used a quote from
Robert F. Kennedy in his closing
arguments Wednesday: "You know
how each act of a person of con-
science sends out a ripple, and those
ripples form a current, and those
currents change politics."
"This was a big ripple," he said
after the acquittal.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403640044-0