Editor’s Note: In the first part of this story, ConvergenceRI provided the first half of the transcript of Leonard Weinglass’ talk on Friday, May 29, 1970, at Millburn High School in Millburn, N.J.

Weinglass had been one of two attorneys representing seven of the eight defendants in the political conspiracy trial brought by federal prosecutors in the Nixon administration in the aftermath of the demonstrations that occurred at the 1968 Democratic National Convention held in Chicago. Six of the eight defendants were charged with crossing state with the intent to incite a riot.

Under the Nixon Administration’s Justice Department, the defendants were labeled “ideological criminals” who should be rounded up and placed in detention centers.

Weinglass spoke for more than an hour in the high school auditorium, part of daylong teach-in, featuring speakers that included: state Sen. James Wallwork; an exiled member of the opposition party to South Vietnamese President Thieu; a member of the John Birch Society; a representative of the National Welfare Rights Organization; and a member of the Newark, N.J. office of the ACLU, talking about women’s rights. [See link below to ConvergenceRI story, “A political show trial that went awry.”]

The Chicago 7 conspiracy trial, which had begun in September of 1969 and lasted for five months, ended in February of 1970, with a guilty verdict that was late overturned on appeal. The trial also featured contempt charges brought against the defendants and their lawyers by Judge Julius Hoffman that totaled 19 years, three months and three days – including more than 30 days for laughing in the courtroom.

The trial was but one of many tumultuous events that occurred in 1969, in a year filled with political and cultural seismic shifts – the year began with the New York Jets winning the Super Bowl, followed by the landing of men on the moon, the Woodstock festival, the Charles Manson murders, the New York Mets winning the World Series, the Moratorium against the Vietnam War, the first public revelations about the My Lai massacres, the break up of the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones’ Altamont Speedway debacle of a concert in California. And, of course, the growing casualty list of soldiers fighting in Vietnam.

Fifty years later, the transcript of an audio recording of the talk given by Weinglass brings into sharp focus a time of upheaval not unlike our current lives in 2020, in ConvergenceRI’s opinion.

Call it a not-so-subtle knife that cuts through the blurriness of our memories and our histories, connecting the worlds we inhabit today and the world as it was in 1970, perhaps, hopefully, serving as a way to repair the damages to the American democratic experiment. Those are high hopes.

On the precipice of a national election, filling the nation with anxiety and dread, the question can be asked: What is revealed by publishing the transcription of a talk given 50 years ago by attorney Leonard Weinglass?

We are always, it seems, like the farmer in Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting, “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” continuing to plow our fields, oblivious to the drama of Icarus falling into the sea and drowning, his waxen wings having melted from flying too close to the sun.

Sometimes, however, there are serendipitous moments when our lives are illuminated in such a way to fashion a pathway to a higher ground of understanding and humanity.

PART Two

What happened at the trial?
WEINGLASS: Having finished talking about the trial of Black Panther Bobby Seale in New Haven, and the trial of the Black Panther 21 in New York City, and a discussion of the ways that the government was subverting the court system as a tool of political oppression, Weinglass pivoted, asking a rhetorical question:. What happened in Chicago at the trial that was in keeping with all of this?

Just by way of a very brief background, as you all know, the Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago in August of 1968. About five months before the convention was to be held, the National Mobilization To End The War In Vietnam, and the Yippies, the Youth International Party, agreed that they would come to Chicago at that time to have demonstration.

On the part of the National Mobe against the War, it was to protest the war; and the Yippies wanted to have a kind of pre-Woodstock Woodstock. This was a year before Woodstock.

They had contacted a number of rock singers and folk singers to [ask them to] perform at Lincoln Park in the city of Chicago at the time of the Convention.

And the Yippies wanted to indicate to the adults [that were there attending the Convention] and the country in general, that there was an alternative lifestyle that had more validity than the Democratic Party.

So, those were the groups, the National Mobe and the Youth International Party, who applied for city permits, to be in the park, to rally, to march and to parade legally.

And they applied, not one month in advance – which is what the law required, they applied five months in advance. And, they tried for four months to get the city to approve the application for a permit to use the park and the streets around the park.

And the city refused to take a position, one way or another. The city refused to talk with them.

They then went to the U.S. Justice Department in Washington. These “irresponsible radical revolutionaries” went to the Justice Department to see if they could get the Justice Department to intervene to get Mayor Daley to start to negotiate [on issuing permits].

[Former] U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark had attempted to testify at the trial, but Judge Hoffman refused to allow him to testify. So Clark was not permitted to tell the jury about the fact that [the National Mobe and the Yippies] had sought a permit.

[In a last-minute attempt to obtain a permit, the National Mobe and the Yippies sued the city of Chicago in U.S. District Court, where Judge William J. Lynch, Mayor Richard Daley’s former law partner, presided.]

WEINGLASS: …The former law partner of Mayor Daley took it under advisement, which means he did not issue an opinion for 13 days, until a day before the convention was to begin, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, so that there would be virtually no time for an appeal.

Lynch issued his opinion, denying the Yippies and the National Mobe all the relief that they sought. Thousand of people had already come to the city.

What happened to them over the next five or six days is well-documented and probably well known to you, though the Walker Commission, which characterized the activities [that transpired] as “a police riot.”

[The demonstrators] were gassed, beaten and clubbed. More than 600 people received injuries during the week.

We called to the stand – not Yippies and not “radical revolutionaries” – we called to the stand many people [from all walks of life]. We called a U.S. Army doctor who was stationed at Walter Reed Army Hospital, who happened to be walking into the park one night after the police had passed through, and he said that the scene that he saw was as bad as anything he had seen in combat, with people laying on the ground, fallen on the ground, with their heads bleeding; he referred to it as a “bloody carnage.”

We called Anne Kerr to the stand; she’s a lady member of British Parliament.

She flew in from London to testify; she’s a Labor MP. Anne Kerr came here as a British representative to observe the American political process at work.

She was very heavily Maced while standing on a street corner [in downtown Chicago]. She was a member of Parliament, 55 years old, and she was Maced along with everyone else.

And when she got down to the police station, because she was arrested after being Maced, she brought out her documents, identifying herself as a member of Parliament. And the police said, “Well, the you can go home.”

She said: “I don’t think I want to go home. I want an officer of the British Consulate to come here to see my condition.”

Upon hearing that, the police picked her up, threw her into a cell, fracturing her left elbow and two ribs. She is now suing the city of Chicago for several million dollars.

[applause]

When [U.S. Attorney General] Ramsey Clark began receiving reports about what had happened, he said he was very concerned, and after looking over the reports, he called the U.S. Attorney in Chicago, who later became our prosecutor, and told him: I don’t want a grand jury in this case yet, because I’m afraid if a Chicago grand jury sits now, they are going to whitewash this whole thing.

Clark called what happened “an official misconduct exercise.” Clark called on the Justice Department to make a complete investigation and review the facts. The U.S. Attorney in Chicago, of course, agreed.

But the chief judge of the federal court in Chicago, Judge Campbell, he was a Daley appointee, overruled the U.S. Attorney General and the United States Attorney, and he convened a grand jury on his own, which he has the authority to do, a federal grand jury to look into what happened.

The grand jury was convened on the eighth day following the Convention. That grand jury sat for all of September, all of October, all of November, all of December, and all of January, and didn’t return any indictments.

As the United States Attorney said in a speech after our trial, “It was only after John Mitchell came into office as Attorney General of the United States, on Jan.  21, 1969, that life was breathed into the grand jury, and seven weeks later, they returned an indictment.

And, I might point this out about Judge Campbell – Judge Campbell retired three weeks after our trial.

And, at his retirement ceremony, he dedicated a law library in the building used in the trial, a law library that was named after him.

Judge Campbell invited Mayor Daley. And, in a public speech, Judge Campbell said: “I would like to thank Mayor Daley for making my appointment on the bench possible, as far as I’m concerned, Mayor Daley, you’re still the chief.”

A political trial
WEINGLASS: I think that will give you some idea of the nature of the court system and how it is tied into Chicago politics. When our trial was over, it was not the U.S. Attorney who announced the verdict; it was not anyone from Washington who announced the verdict; it was Mayor Daley, who appeared on television and read a statement, one hour after the jury returned, saying that the jury’s verdict vindicated his actions during convention week.

The grand jury had returned an indictment in a very particular order. Indictments are generally handed down alphabetically, but not this one. In this indictment, the first [person] indicted was David Dellinger.

Dave is a 54-year-old pacifist. He spent four years in prison in World War II for his refusal to participate in the draft. At that time, he was in Divinity School at Yale University. He would have qualified for an exemption. All he would have had to do register.

He took a principled position against that distinction. As a result, he spent four years in a federal penitentiary during the war years. During all of his life he has been involved with nonviolent resistance.

The next on the list were Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden. They were both approximately 30 years old – 28 and 29. Seven years ago, they founded SDS [Students for a Democratic Society]. Tom Hayden wrote the basic document upon which SDS was founded, the Port Huron declaration.

The next two [defendants] named were Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, the two who founded the Yippies, the Youth International Party.

The next two named were the two unknowns, professors; Professor John Froines, who was Ph.D. with a degree from Yale in chemistry, who was teaching at [the University of] Oregon; the other professor was Lee Weiner, who had master’s degree in Sociology and who teaches at Northwestern University.

The last named was Bobby Seale, [the leader of the Black Panther Party].

You have a pacifist, two SDS, two Yippies, two academics, and, finally and symbolically, the leader of the Black Liberation movement. The indictment lumped them all together.

It’s never been done before in the history of the Republic. There have been trials of anarchists, communists, labor leaders – every kind of political persuasions, every point of prejudice.

The Academy Award for protests
WEINGLASS: I don’t’ want to go into the trial in full… Do you have to leave to go to class in a very short while?

[Shouts of “No!” from the audience]

Here is something else that I don’t think was reported in the press. We were indicted on national TV. Jerry Rubin received his indictment from a federal marshal, and Jerry Rubin thanked him. He called it the Academy Award of protests.

[laughter]

He said he wanted to thank all those who made it possible…

[more laughter, followed by applause]

We had the report by the Walker Commission on violence, which came up with the finding that it was the police who had rioted.

[The defense team said] we can do better than that, because a lot of people wouldn’t talk to investigators, they were movement people, and over the summer [before the trial began], we prepared to bring some 120 witnesses – about 113 testified finally.

These witnesses not only included Anne Kerr, Ramsey Clark, and Rep. John Conyers. We had leading figures from the literary world: Norman Mailer, Terry Southern, Bill Styron. We had leading figures in civil rights – the Rev. Jessie Jackson testified, Dick Gregory testified.

Rev. Ralph Abernathy was called as a witness but not permitted by Judge Hoffman to testify, Abernathy was flying back from Sweden, he got to [the courtroom] 17 minutes late, and Judge Hoffman said no, he couldn’t testify.

When Rev. Abernathy came into the courtroom, he has been represented by Bill Kunstler for the last five years, they hadn’t seen each other in several months, When he walked into the courtroom, Bill Kunstler went to the back of the room to tell him that he wouldn’t be allowed to testify, and Rev. Abernathy grabbed Bill and embraced him.

And, as a result of that, Judge Hoffman sentenced [Bill] to six months in prison for contempt.

We also had the entertainment people [as witnesses]: Judy Collins, Peter Seeger, Phil Ochs, and Ed Sanders of the Fugs. The people in the press could not take seriously [our strategy] to bring in performers and to put them on the stand.

It was the intention of the Yippies [to show] what they wanted to happen in the Park was a rock festival, a rock concert, and Phil Ochs attempted to sing, “I Ain’t Marching Anymore.” Judy Collins sang, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.”

We wanted to show to the jury that this was not a situation that had a violent concept, but to the contrary, it was the opposite. In addition to those witnesses, we put on witnesses to explain this to the jury of mostly middle-aged housewives in suburban Chicago, who were shocked at the presence and sight of the defendants, with their long hair and beards.

Two jurors said after the trial that all they had to do was to look at the defendants, they didn’t need to hear any evidence.

We [believed that we] had to explain who the movement was, who the defendants were, what they stood for, and what they represented. We brought in a series of movement witnesses, and the first witness was [the poet] Allen Ginsberg,

Allen Ginsberg showed a remarkable amount of patience, trying to indicate the jury that because of the way that people act and dress the way they do, it doesn’t mean they were violent. The opposite was true. They were withdrawing from a violent society, leaving a violent society, and seeking a society that was healthy in a human manner.

In addition, we called Jacques Levy, the producer of “Oh, Calcutta,” [the Broadway show]. He had been a clinical psychologist at Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, before deciding to work in the theater instead.

Levy told the jury that people had become divorced from the physical. Through the medium of putting people on stage, who were undressed and naked, in a beautiful, meaningful production [of “Oh, Calcutta”], they were showing that there was no need to be ashamed of your nakedness, your nudity.

Levy tried to explain that to the jury, because there was testimony offered against us that said that there were certain people were naked in the park.

Sexual politics
WEINGLASS: There was also testimony that there was open public fornication and intercourse, they were unable to prove that at all, except for one police officer,who said that he saw a couple engaged in an act of intercourse in the branches of a tree.

[laughter]

We asked him at that point if he had [accidentally] wandered into the zoo because the zoo adjoined the park.

[laughter]

We also brought on Timothy Leary. Timothy Leary is known for his position in the drug culture. He also has a Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard. But the jury took little notice of that. They only became attentive when they heard this little known fact that Tim Leary served two years at West Point as a cadet.

Tim Leary spoke to the jury about drug use and the use of psychedelic drugs as necessary, meaningful and important, and not dangerous to many people.

We brought on a full-time revolutionary, Linda Morse. She came to Chicago in 1968 and left with a very different opinion of things. She is now a full-time revolutionary, she practices every day with a M-1 rifle, she is fully proficient in karate, and believes that the government should be brought down through violent means.

We thought the jury should have the benefit of hearing Linda Morse’s testimony because there is part of the movement that does believe that. And, it would be less than honest to [exclude her].

We put our whole selves on display in the courtroom, and I don’t think that was reported.

We tried to put on many witnesses who depicted very graphically, better than on television, some of the incidents of violence [by police] that were cut out of the story.

No intent to disrupt the courtroom
WEINGLASS: [The defendants and the lawyers] were charged with about 155 counts of contempt by Judge Hoffman.

There wasn’t a single planned event that was deliberate. There was no planned disruption. We sat there for 103 days. Picture if you can, sitting in a courtroom, for an entire semester, and listening to what was a horrible series of lies and fictions.

There was a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who wrote that he attended the trial for four days but he couldn’t take it anymore. He said that he had no idea how the defendants were able to sit there, day in and day out, from 9:15 in the morning until four in the afternoon, for 103 days. The trial didn’t stop for one day.

Without a lawyer
WEINGLASS: On the first day, the judge, seeing that Bobby Seale didn’t have a lawyer representing him… [Weinglass pauses his thought to explain why]

Charles Garry, his attorney, was in a San Francisco hospital. Charles Garry was the only attorney who had ever represented Bobby Seale. Garry could not be there because he was sick; Garry prides himself that in more than 30 years of practice he had never once asked for adjournment of a criminal case because for health reasons.

Bobby Seale presented the hospital records and affidavits from the doctors. Bobby Seale further told Judge Hoffman that he didn’t know the other seven defendants, he had never met them, the first time he met them in person was in the courtroom.

Bobby was charged with conspiring to have a frame of mind [to incite a riot]…

[Principal Donald Koehler interrupted Weinglass, coming on stage, saying: “Please not that we have other speakers coming this afternoon at 1:30 p.m. So, if some of you want to go to lunch, go to lunch. Few students get up to leave.]

WEINGLASS: I was asked to have someone from the John Birch Society up here when I spoke…

[cries of disbelief from the audience]

…But I refused that request.

If I can quickly wrap with what happened on the first day of the trial. Bobby Seale made that request to the judge, saying he was facing 10 years and $20,000 in fines, and he was trying to get his lawyer there.

He also told Judge Hoffman that he had been picked up in San Francisco, and for some unknown reason, not flown to Chicago but driven, handcuffed in a back of station wagon, for six days and nights. When he arrived and was being held at the Cook County jail, he requested medical attention, he had a temperature and was ill. But the requests had been denied by the U.S. Attorney.

Judge Hoffman realized that he couldn’t begin the trial without a lawyer, so Hoffman went back to the records from the Registry Court, and he found that there were four lawyers who had briefly handled our pre-trial motions.

We had filed 29 pre-trial motions and lost all 29. [One of the motions was to dismiss the chargers because Judge Hoffman had illegally wiretapped the defendants.]

So Judge Hoffman ordered these four lawyers arrested and brought to court and told that they could defend Bobby Seale.

The marshals went out and arrested the four lawyers, and they were brought back in handcuffs. When they got to court, they were ordered to sit at our defense table. And they were told that they would defend Bobby Seale, even though he didn’t know who they were.

At the end of the first day, Judge Hoffman lined the four lawyers up in front of him, and turned to Bill Kunstler, and said, “If you can get Bobby Seale to waive his rights to be represented by Charles Garry, I’ll let these four lawyers go home. Otherwise, these four lawyers are going to jail.”

Kunstler said he couldn’t do that, to negotiate Bobby Seale’s rights way to be represented by a lawyer of his own choosing.

So, the four lawyers were summarily sent to jail by Judge Hoffman, and bail was denied.

We had to send an appeal of that order to the Circuit Court.

Picking a jury
WEINGLASS: We told the defendants that to pick a jury would probably take about three weeks. But it didn’t take three weeks to do that, or two weeks or one week, the jury was picked in two hours and 55 minutes.

[We were not allowed to ask questions of the jurors by Judge Hoffman.] We had no idea of who those people were, how they felt about anything, what they felt about the Black Panthers or the John Birch Society, or whether they read the newspapers.

They were asked their names, addresses, and ages, their occupation, how many children they had, what the children did, whether they knew the defendants or lawyers.

When asked if any of the jurors knew the lawyers, one Black juror got up and said yes, I know the chief prosecutor, Thomas Foran. The judge asked, “How do you know Thomas Foran.”

The prospective juror said, “Well, my wife works for him.”

Judge Hoffman responded: “Oh, your wife is a domestic?”

The prospective juror said, “No your honor, my wife is a legal secretary.”

That prospective juror was dismissed.

Editor’s Note: The recording ends here, as the tape apparently ran out of room to record.