Ex-agents describe spying on civilians

February 25, 1971

WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Former military undercover men testified Wednesday that the Army snooped on politicians, celebrities, civil rights leaders, radicals, reporters and thousands of ordinary Americans and kept personal files on them in big, centralized computers.

They said 1,500 Army plainclothes agents had infiltrated, photographed, recorded and watched over political picnics, party conventions, peace marches, a union meeting, yippie communes, a church youth group and a drunken college brawl in Yap, N.D.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said even the hearing itself was being watched. He said an Army military intelligence unit was taping the session.

Names names, dates and places, former agents Christopher H. Pyle, Ralph M. Stein and John O'Brien went before the Senate constitutional rights subcommittee to document their assertion that military intelligence had intruded into American political affairs in a growing threat to the right of free speech and separation of the military from civil politics.

Pyle and Stein told the subcommittee that Army files and blacklists include not only Communists such as Gus Hall, but former servicemen who have spoken out against the Vietnam war, such as Adm. Arnold E. True and Brig. Gen. Hugh B. Hester; folk singers Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez and Judy Collins; Executive Director Whitney Young of the Urban League; Julius Hobson Jr., a member of the District of Columbia School Board; actress Jane Fonda; Ralph David Abernathy, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and others.

Stein, who spent 15 months as a sergeant in the Army's Counterintelligence Analysis Branch in 1967-68, said the files contained detailed financial information, sexual activities, "especially illicit or unconventional," and personal beliefs and associations.

He said the names and data were put in a microfilm bank and given a number to classify the individual's political beliefs.

"For instance, 134.295 indicated that a person was a non-Communist, while 135.295 indicated Communist Party membership or advocacy of communism," Stein said.

Pyle, a former Army intelligence captain who is preparing a doctoral dissertation on the subject, said the Army maintains more than 1,500 plainclothes agents working out of 300 offices and scores of military bases from coast to coast.

Sen. Sam J. Ervin, D-N.C. charged that military spying was a direct threat to the First Amendment of the Constitution.

"The purpose of the Army is to protect this country against foreign forces," he said. "The Army under no circumstances has any right under the Constitution to enter into this area except where it is apparent that civilian law enforcement officers have attempted to suppress violence and failed."

O'Brien, 26, a former sergeant who served for a year with the 113th Military Intelligence Group in Evanston, Ill., said he had personally seen the file on Stevenson. It was started in September, 1969 when Stevenson was state treasurer of Illinois, he said.

He said the only reason the Army started the file was that undercover men had attended a Democratic Party picnic at Stevenson's home in Libertyville, Ill. and reported back that the Rev. Jesse Jackson was planning to endorse Stevenson's pending candidacy for the Senate. Jackson is a leader of Chicago's Black Community, heading an organization called Operation Breadbasket.

O'Brien said Stevenson's folder began to build with newspaper clippings and more reports from agents on his activities. Once a file was started, he said, undercover agents were on orders to collect all information possible on the "target."

Abbie Hoffman's Interview with the FBI in 1968 - Part 2

ABBOTT HOFFMAN, when interviewed by Special Agents (SAS) [...] and [...] on September 6, 1968, advised that he was raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, that he attended Worcester Classical High School, a public school, which "kicked" him out between his junior and senior year. HOFFMAN stated that he wrote a paper against God: that his teacher tore it up: that he "belted" the teacher and was expelled.

For a year thereafter HOFFMAN hung out in the pool halls of Worcester and was then enrolled in Worcester Academy, a private school where he completed his senior year. HOFFMAN then attended Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts. He took graduate work at University of California, Berkeley, California and he took courses in some school in France while at Brandeis.

HOFFMAN stated that he is registered with a Local Board in Massachusetts: that he is 4-F: that "all nuts" like himself are 4-F. HOFFMAN stated he had no military service.

HOFFMAN stated that he worked for about six years after college: that his last job was with State of Massachusetts as a psychologist: that he has held numerous jobs including that of a wholesalesman in Massachusetts. HOFFMAN stated that he has always been able to make money as a pool hustler. HOFFMAN claimed to be a superior pool player. HOFFMAN stated that when he first came to New York City he opened a store to sell the products of the Mississippi poor people: that he sold this store a year ago for one dollar. HOFFMAN said that his wife is also unemployed: that she makes beads at home and sells them wholesale to various bead stores in New York City.

HOFFMAN stated that he wrote a 180 page book, long hand, in three days after returning from Chicago: that he sold this manuscript to a publisher and that he got no money for the manuscript because he plans to donate all profits to "the people." He declined to identify the publisher and claimed that the book would be out in October, 1968, under the "Revolution for the Hell of It."

HOFFMAN stated that his parents are successful middle class Americans: that his father could be classed as a "Goldwaterite." HOFFMAN stated that his father, who has worked all his life and who does not approve of his own views or his acts, is in the wholesale drug business in Worcester, Massachusetts. Further, that when his father saw him on television during the Democratic Convention disorders from Chicago, Illinois, he suffered a heart attack and is still in the hospital.

HOFFMAN stated that he has no money, no bank account, and that he manages "somehow" to get by and to pay his $90.00 per month rent for his apartment. HOFFMAN stated that he does not own an automobile. HOFFMAN stated that his phone number, listed in the Manhattan book, is being changed soon to a private number: that too many "kooks" call him.

HOFFMAN, when interviewed, wore tight blue jeans and a dirty sports shirt held in by a large black leather belt. HOFFMAN's hair was fully grown, like a female, dark brown, curly unkempt. HOFFMAN, who appears to be alert, speaks in the jargon of the "beatnik," using expressions like "man," "my thing," "the establishment," and "I want to turn you on." He is evasive and appears to enjoy being the center of attention. HOFFMAN was cautious but not hostile during the interview. He made no complaint about being interviewed but made it clear that he felt that he was on the opposite side of "things" to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Abbie Hoffman's Interview with the FBI in 1968 - Part 1

SECRET
Federal Bureau of Investigation

Date: 9/12/68

ABBOTT HOFFMAN, also known as Abbie Hoffman, 30 St. Marks Place, New York, New York, was interviewed in the hallway of his apartment at 30 St. Marks Place between 11:05 AM and 11:40 AM, on September 6, 1968, by Special Agents (SAS) [...] and [...].

HOFFMAN, who advised that he was raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, and was graduated from Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, identified himself as a member of the YIP (Youth International Party) and stated that he was in Chicago, Illinois, during the Democratic Convention held in August, 1968.

HOFFMAN, to whom the interviewing SAS identified themselves as representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was advised that the interviewing agents desired to ask him certain questions regarding his participation in the Chicago disorders; that he was not obligated to speak to the agents and that he did not have to answer any questions which might possibly incriminate him.

HOFFMAN stated that his life is an open book; that he had no objection to the interview; that he understood his rights, and that he had received a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union; that is, the ACLU, only yesterday (September 5, 1968), indicating that the FBI would probably question him concerning his presence in Chicago during the Democratic Convention.

HOFFMAN stated that the Chicago disorders were the result of a set policy on the part of Chicago authorities: that as a representative of the YIP, he visited Chicago on March 25, 1968, and filed an application for a permit, with others, with the Chicago Parks Commission to allow demonstrators to utilize Lincoln Park, later changed to Grant Park, for their "thing" during the convention period: that he then met with Deputy Mayor STAHL, a Mr. BARRY of the Park Commission, certain Chicago police officials and others, and that the application was not then acted upon.

HOFFMAN stated that thereafter this application matter was left in the hands of the Chicago people who also wanted to use the park.

HOFFMAN stated that about five days before the Convention, he was advised that his Chicago group never received a permit to use Grant Park: that thereafter the application for a permit had been withdrawn. HOFFMAN stated that he then decided to go to Chicago to see what he could do to get a park permit; that he then flew to Chicago on a student rate fare and met immediately with Deputy Mayor Stahl and others in a last ditch stand to try to get Grant Park for the demonstrators.

HOFFMAN stated that his experience indicated that city officials usually hold off until the last day, then issue a permit, but that contrary to his advice to Chicago officials, this did not happen. HOFFMAN stated that he and others were told they could, within local law, use Grant Park, like any other city park, each day until 11:00 PM; that they could not sleep in the parks and would have to vacate them by 11:00 PM.

HOFFMAN stated that on Sunday, August 25, 1968, he and others then in Grant Park were confronted by Chicago Police between 6:00 PM and 9:00 PM; that he phoned the commander of the Chicago Police Department, 18th Precinct, between those hours to get a rule on the use of the park and that he was told that his group could legally stay there until 11:00 PM, and that the police unit forcing them about would be withdrawn. HOFFMAN stated that the police did not withdraw, but continued to pressure people out of the park.

HOFFMAN stated that he is identified with YIP, that YIP has no membership, no dues, no membership list, and no officers, but that he did act as a representative of YIP, while meeting with others in Chicago, Illinois. HOFFMAN stated that neither he nor any YIPs with whom he is acquainted in New York City or elsewhere, made any plans to cause any disorders in Chicago, Illinois, nor did they discuss any such ideas, nor did they bring any weapons or similar items to Chicago to protect themselves from attack or to use in attack.

HOFFMAN stated that while in Chicago, he made no plans to cause any disorders, that he gave no orders for anyone to become involved in any disorders, and that he has no knowledge of any such plans or activity on the part of any individual or any group in Chicago, New York City, or elsewhere.

HOFFMAN stated that the YIP issued a calendar of events for the Chicago Convention period: that he helped to prepare this program, and that it is a public record of all his own and all YIP plans, and that no disorders were scheduled or even suggested. HOFFMAN stated that he urged persons associated with the Convention confrontation to remain non-violent and that his position and policy in this regard has been quoted in the public press several times and was included in an article relating to him which appeared in the "New York Post", a New York City daily newspaper, on September 1 or 2, 1968.

HOFFMAN stated that he never advocated any disorder, fights with the police, or the use of weaponry of any sort, in connection with the Chicago disorders, and that he has no knowledge of such plans or activities on the part of anyone else.

HOFFMAN stated that he heard general gossip of absurd statements made by persons unknown to him, about putting LSD in the Chicago drinking water, and that since such things were so foolish and impractical he never took them seriously, but took them to be just talk and "letting off steam."

HOFFMAN stated that he could only speak for himself concerning motivation to visit Chicago during the period the Democratic Convention was being held. HOFFMAN stated that he believes in a free, unregimentated life: that he would hope to influence everyone to join him: that the philosophy of the Democratic Party advocates the continuance of the present system which is a monetary trap which causes people to work unnecessarily for an entire lifetime and only to perpetuate the system. HOFFMAN stated that in his opinion current technical advancements and scientific achievements, all of a revolutionary nature, can feed and clothe the entire world; that such technical and scientific achievements and their future refinements could, if allowed by the establishment to do so, release everyone from an organized life of work and entrapment, and that he wanted to utilize the Democratic Convention in Chicago to do his "thing," which was to confront the Democrats and to publicize his own philosophy of life.

HOFFMAN stated that he is not against the Democratic Party itself; that it is one group of many which advocated the established way of life. Further, that he has been called many things including a "Communist": that he is not a Communist and could never accept Communism since it is another absurd, regimented, disciplined group with its own aims and establishment type objectives.

HOFFMAN stated that he is against all political philosophies, that all presidential candidates hope to retain the establishment although they don't say so. Further, that he has expressed himself as favorable to George Wallace, only because Wallace is the least hypocritical candidate in that he is truthful and outright; that even though you can't agree with him on many points you know where he stands. HOFFMAN stated that he has made statements to this effect in public gatherings, in television interviews and interviews with the press, and that he has worn Wallace buttons at such gatherings and at public demonstrations.

HOFFMAN stated that "I presume that I will eventually be arrested for conspiracy because of my presence in Chicago." HOFFMAN stated that he did not know what the conspiracy charge, if any, would be. HOFFMAN stated that it is his understanding that his name was among those who are bringing a civil suit against the City of Chicago and Mayor Daley for 600 million dollars; that such suit started by a daughter of former Senator Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts and with a New York City law firm, if successful would allow the wronged demonstrators to give each Chicago police officer, who resigns from that police force in protest against the policies of the Chicago police, a sum of $10,000.00 each.

HOFFMAN stated that during his recent stay in Chicago he was under surveillance by the Chicago police: that he became friendly with those following him for his so-called protection, and that he enjoyed coffee and transportation from them.

HOFFMAN stated that he stayed at the Chicago home of a friend, whom he declined to identify; that he was out of the parks each night, and that, to his recollection, he was arrested and held for thirteen hours the day before that major trouble in Grant Park and near the Hilton Hotel and that he did not participate in these disorders.

HOFFMAN disclaimed any responsibility for any disorders at Chicago, Illinois.

Battleground Chicago: The Police and the 1968 Democratic National Convention

by Frank Kusch

The first incident with police took place three days before the start of the convention. On Friday the 23, the Yippies, showing their complete contempt for the political system, nominated their own Democratic candidate: a 145-pound black and white pig dubbed "Pigasus." The Yippie candidate for president was "released to the public" at the Civic Center Plaza and was promptly "arrested" by police as he was being "interviewed" by waiting journalists. Editor Abe Peck of the underground Chicago paper the Seed told a reporter for the New York Times that after the nomination, they were "going to roast him and eat him. For years, the Democrats have been nominating a pig and then letting the pig devour them. We plan to reverse the process."

A Yippie calling himself Wrap Sirhan stated that the group had sent President Johnson a telegram requesting Secret Service protection for their four-legged candidate. Five Yippies were taken to jail, including Jerry Rubin and Phil Ochs, while the pig for president's new official residence became the Chicago Humane Society. The Yippies were released after they each posted a $25 bond. "The only moment of levity between Chicago policemen and the Yippies that week occurred after we were arrested and were in jail and went in to be booked," said Rubin, following the convention. "One of the Chicago policemen came in and shouted out all of our names and then said, 'You guys are all going to jail for the rest of your lives--the pig squealed on you.'" The department had already put Hoffman, Rubin, Krassner, and some of their associates on 24-hour surveillance, sometimes uttering warnings that sounded to Yippie leaders like threats.

Come Together: John Lennon In His Time

by Jon Wiener

John did not know that a similar "War Is Over" campaign had been launched by Phil Ochs and the Los Angeles Free Press more than two years earlier. Ochs wrote an article for the paper in June 1967 calling for a "War Is Over" rally in Los Angeles, across from the Century Plaza Hotel, where Lyndon Johnson was scheduled to speak at a five-hundred-dollar-a-plate dinner and the Supremes were to entertain. Ochs wrote a song for the occasion: "I Declare the War Is Over." Lots of people came, marched down the Avenue of the Stars to the hotel, and chanted, "The war is over!" Ochs started to sing his song; the police ordered the crowd to disperse and then attacked, beating the marchers while TV cameras, on hand for the President, whirred. Delighted by the extensive TV coverage, Ochs staged a second "War Is Over" demonstration in New York's Washington Square Park in November 1967. Paul Krassner and the Diggers commune helped organize it. This time the police did not attack, but again the press coverage was extensive. The Village Voice ran a front-page story on the event.

Ochs had demonstrated that clever and novel forms of protest could win much more media coverage than traditional antiwar demonstrations. Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman grasped the implications of Ochs's "War Is Over" events. Shortly after the Washington Square demonstration, they began to plan an even bigger festival at which their "Youth International Party" would nominate a pig for President outside the Democratic national convention in Chicago the following August.

Although the similarities between John and Yoko's "War Is Over" campaign and the proto-Yippie ones which preceded it are striking, the differences are equally significant. John and Yoko put up billboard; Ochs organized demonstrations which thousands of people attended. John and Yoko were a long way from real mass politics.

BBC-TV featured John as a "Man of the Decade" in a special broadcast on December 31, 1969. In a long interview, John reflected on the sixties. "Not many people are noticing all the good that came out of the last ten years," he said. "The moratorium and the vast gathering of people in Woodstock--the biggest mass of people ever gathered together for anything other than war. . . . The good thing that came out of the sixties was this vast, peaceful movement."

And with his sweet optimism, he said, "The sixties were just waking up in the morning. We haven't even got to dinnertime yet. And I can't wait! I can't wait, I'm so glad to be around."

Bum Trip

By Stew Albert (published January 10-January 16, 1969)

At a New Year’s Eve party in New York the Yippies declared 1969 to be the Year of the Bum Trip. It was universal, the wild-men moved between parties and into the streets, and always came back with a “It was a lot more joyous last year” tale.

We sat around and it was all reminisces about last year’s pipe dreams of both freaking out and making love to America.

The felony indictments are going to come down heavy. If you plan a demonstration it will be conspiracy, and if you go to it it will be assault with a deadly weapon (existing in the pigs minds).

The despair was exaggerated, everybody at the parties knew that, but there were just no beautiful dreams as January 1 became a reality.

A lot of the best struggles have turned sour. There was an attempt to get Bill Graham to give the Lower East Side community a free night at the Fillmore East. Graham gave in for a while and then backed out claiming the insurance companies were threatening to cancel the Fillmore if the free nights continued.

There was a wild semi-riot after an MC 5 rock concert. Graham got his nose bruised by a chain and a couple of ushers were stabbed. The street people went after some of the MC 5 when they caught them leaving the gig in a bourgeois chauffeur-driven limousine.

A couple of days later Graham convinced people that the insurance rate really would ruin him and that there was no way he could give away the Fillmore.

Bill Graham may be a very big cat on the block for us, but for the insurance companies, he is a tiny mouse that can never roar.

I spent a couple of hours with Abbie Hoffman, a one-man global village, all electric and always optimistic. Even Abbie was seeing grey for the future. He hopes Eldridge is in Cuba, setting things up for an exile-dropout community. Hoffman figures we have a year or so and then the trip without a ticket will end.

Back in Berkeley everyone says the movement on the campus is at a ten year low. Telegraph Avenue is applying for status as a police station. The Diggers have gone a hundred ways into hopelessness.

I checked out the Panthers and they are in the needed business of purging crazies and reading Lenin. They are going to stop recruiting for a while, harden their core and be ready for a long cold winter with Richard Nixon.

The revolution has spread out a long way since the FSM. Campuses like Columbia and San Francisco have exploded higher into the sky than Berkeley ever did, and lots of high schools are blowing with them. The psychedelics are taking over TV and some of the best light shows are found in commercials that undermine the products they sell.

But the price is going to be paid. The man has no intention of letting us take over and illuminate his power trip without first trying to build concentration camps around our dreams.

To survive and grow in the next year we are going to have to re-examine every anti-organizational bias in our rebel souls. Everybody just can’t go off and do his own thing. We have to develop a program for winning the majority of American youth to a real thing, social and political revolution. Your own thing has to become our thing.

The FBI agents who have visited me four times since Chicago wake up early in the morning, and through the day exert a ferocious and determined energy in the cause of J. Edgar Hoover’s evil portrait.

Lying around stoned all day isn’t going to make the revolution for us. Those agents will install bars around our pads and leave us there to meditate on our navels and die.

Chicago Perspective

By Stewart Albert (published September 6-September 12, 1968)

In Chicago, teargas was a very democratic experience. On the last two nights, it impartially choked throats of Yippies, Women for Peace, TV cameramen, and even some delegates to the Democratic Convention.

The moderate forces tried to lead orderly marches on the sidewalk policed by monitors who must have taken a semester of piggery at some academy. Dick Gregory made an appearance, as did Eugene McCarthy, but it served for nothing.

Richard Daley saw every demonstrator in Chicago as Ho Chi Minh with a reefer in his mouth, out to rape his daughter.

The marches were broken up by teargas, rifle-butts (the National Guard occasionally joining the pigs), and nightsticks. We all went back into the streets, breaking store windows, throwing rocks at cops and tossing garbage.

The action centered around the heavily guarded Hilton Hotel, in which the delegates hoped to avoid any contact with Chicago.

It did not work. The teargas seeped through the airconditioning and even Hubert Humphrey got sick and had to take a bath.

The teargas scenes were grotesque – people running, vomiting, burning, choking and praying for some decency that it all stop.

Chicago was a revolutionary wet-dream come true. One night, a thousand longhairs joined at the picket-line of striking black bus-drivers. On the following night, striking cab-drivers left a picket-line to join the march on the Amphitheatre. The white working-class motorcycle gangs did not do the Oakland Border VDC thing; they were either free neutrals or with us in Lincoln Park.

What happened that week was the prototypical formation of the alliance necessary to bring the man down and keep him down. It all happened without a single leaflet being given to anyone and without a single white missionary getting a factory job.

This wasn’t the way I was told it would happen. The catechism of orthodox American Leninism is to shave off your beard, get a haircut and stop smoking pot. A revolutionary act is to give leaflets to dockworkers.

The Progressive Labor Party, for example, sends its best people into factories and they recruit a couple of new members each year – and we are the dropout freaks doing everything we were not supposed to do, out on the same rock-throwing things as the workers, and not a single Freddy in sight.

We must realize that the fragmentation dumb-dumbs of repression fired at us in Chicago finally explode in the paycheck prisons of nine-to-five average America.

The best way we can push the workers into revolution is not by sharing in their factory slavery, but by creating our own liberated communities in every major city.

We will constantly confront the man in the battle for the street, parks and living space needed for us to humanize in. Occasionally we must interrupt the pigs’ highest ceremonies by dumping a huge pile of shit on their best rug.

We did this in Chicago, and maybe we can follow it up at Richard Nixon’s inauguration. It is nothing like going into the man’s churches on his high holy days barefooted and smelly, to make him fire his Madison Avenue front group and show off his southern sheriff soul to NBC.

It is by our example of rebellion that we will steer the workers into realizing their own dreams. We won’t do it by collapsing before the mediocratic cleanshaven alcoholic conformities and telling the prolies to read this after they have read that.

We found out in Chicago that the military man of imperialism might have at least one clay foot. There were 43 soldiers at Fort Hood who refused to come to Chicago. The National Guard obeyed orders, but they had faces and not pig-snouts. We went up and down the line telling them not to let their officers kick them around and to behave with more humanity than the Russians did in Prague. The reaction was one of embarrassed presence and rationalization. There were few true believers in the crowd.

At first, our own reaction was one of terror and frenzied running. Then a more confident move-just-as-far-back-as-you-have-to walk, and finally the discovery that tear gas canisters could be hurled back and a cop-car taken out of action if enough people surrounded it. A lot of manhood emerged in Chicago, and for that we must be ironically grateful to the Democratic party.

Our revolution is going to be a chaotic, funky mud type of thing, not fitting any Germanic isms of somebody else’s historical necessity. It is being made in the streets right now. On its appearance, you laugh with joy at its absolute originality.

In Chicago, it was a street-tough with a swastika tattooed on his arm, waving an NLF flag and giving skin to a Blackstone Ranger who had just called for the overthrow of the government. It was a Cleveland suit-and-tie sociologist belting out a pig.

It was a bloodied NBC photographer telling us the National Guard was coming and where there were rocks to throw at them. It was bearded OM-ing hippies breaking windows of scabbing buses.

And finally, it was a busload of ten-year-old black children exchanging revolutionary fists and victory signs with me, and the proud look on the face of an on-looking, and then saluting, black woman.

Our revolution is a movable feast. You can sup of it wherever you make your scene. All it takes is the guts to be free.

The Fog is Red

By Stew Albert (published August 30-September 5, 1968)

CHICAGO (3 AM Thurs Aug. 22, by phone) – Chicago tonite reeks of teargas. It is an ugly gasping fog and it is being inhaled by the entire City.

There is rioting in the streets.

Shop windows are being shattered. Fires are being started. The major sections of midtown Chicago have been in the mobile hands of the new revolutionary people of the street.

The National Guard has been called up and Mayor Daley’s Chicago pig force are running amuck.

The Yippies have asked for UN observers to be sent to Chicago to investigate this latest trampling upon human rights.

I have spent most of my time in Lincoln Park and in the streets. The park is seven miles from the Amphitheater where the Democrats curse and tear at each others throats.

The park was supposed to be where the Yippies would hold their Festival of Life, rejoicing and making love. Now, because Mayor Daley denied us a permit to sleep in the park, Yippie nights are spent in the streets taking on the cops on a block-to-block basis.

The human composition of Lincoln Park during the day is the “what’s happening” of the revolution.

There are the usual middle-class dropouts, but they have been joined by the working class dropouts of the motorcycle gangs, by the black and Puerto Rican dropouts from the Mother country.

They have been joined by the press (who have had their asses beaten like the rest of us) and by Catholic priests (who have been teargassed like the rest of us).

They have been joined by striking black bus drivers wearing Free Huey buttons and by those soldiers at Ft. Hood who would not come to Chicago to beat and kill their brothers.

On Tuesday in the park there was a huge wooden cross, NLF flags, red flags, black flags, Yippie flags. The tear gas drove this symbolic diversity into the streets and into revolutionary brotherhood.

If Daley and the Democrats had been smart, they would have given the park to the Yipipes and allowed a march to the Ampitheater. But the triumphant mood in the backrooms of hack politics is fascism.

They denied us everything and in doing that they pulled us together. Maybe they thought we’d fold up and go home. I guess they had the same opinion of long-hairs as some of the left wing groupings in Berkeley.

Perhaps Daley had the image of the apolitical love-generation hippy who offered America a flower and sixty minutes of cuteness on a TV special.

But we’ve all been beaten on the heads a little too much. We decided to stay and fight, and when we did we were joined by the others who have been beaten on the head too much. The forces were joined, and the battle began.

The motorcycle gangs were dubious of this kind of alliance at first, dubious of the willingness of the children of the suburbs to fight cops; but when the point was proved the new brotherhood was formed. They came to fight for the park in the streets.

We were told that the Blackstone Rangers (an organization of black streetfighters – ed.) were being paid off by the Mayor to drive us out of town. But I stood next to a Ranger speaking from a microphone in the park, and he said that in this battle there were no separations and that the thing to do was to make a revolution.

The Chicago fuzz have an international reputation of sleek, brutal piggery, but what the people have seen in Chicago has blown their minds, and they are scared.

When they see motorcycle gangs doing security for Bobby Seale while he speaks, or bodyguarding Jerry Rubin day and night, they must realize that the balance of forces is undergoing changes.

When we first arrived in Chicago the pigs put 24-hour tails on the Yippie leadership and boasted to the press that everything was under control. They followed us wherever we went, into restaurants and into theatres. They saw to it that our phone service was disconnected and they blocked us from going to meetings in hotel rooms.

But when we started fighting back the […]

Seven of us spent the day in jail for bringing a 200 pound pig into the center of Chicago and calling for his nomination by the Democrat Party. If Americans have unconsciously chosen to be ruled by pigs, they should be awakened and made to see what their leaders really look like. That time the cops were positively sweet to us and insisted they were for Wallace only because he is an honest man.

[…] for us someday and that they are interested in protecting their pensions.

It’s been very rough. One kid was killed when he was stopped on the street for a curfew violation. The pigs claim he had a gun but they have not yet come up with it. My six stitches came soon after that, and then as our revolutionary gangs began to move around town the cops really began to escalate.

Hundreds of young people have been arrested and there has been a special concentration on the most radical of the leadership. Tom Hayden has been arrested three times and beaten up in the station. Rennie Davis has had his head cracked open.

Jerry Rubin has been busted twice and at this writing is still in jail. Wolf Lowenthal, a kind of all-around bodyguard and bringer together of the gang, has been arrested three times and brutally beaten.

Marvin Garson, a visiting journalist from San Francisco, had four stitches put into his head and a charge of aggravated assault laid on him.

The cops have suffered their casualties too. They have had their cars and their faces smashed by bottles and rocks. Estimates are that between 50 and 70 police cars have been put out of commission, and on several occasions the police have been caught in their own tear gas.

I have never felt the essence of American power as I have on those nights leaving Lincoln Park at midnight. Seeing the gas floating up into the sky and the distorted masked faces of the police moving through it. Following as if it was a guru in hell, an electronic monster armored car moving slowly forward with the same contempt that advanced disease has for its victims.

There has been very little rock music in the park. The Miss Yippie contest has been cancelled, as well as Paul Krassner’s Pin the Contraceptive on the Pope game. Ed Sanders of the Fugs said music somehow wasn’t appropriate, and Joe McDonald of the Fish, whose nose was broken in the hotel lobby, left town.

The Yippies have shown themselves to be a two-edged sword. They can lure children away from the mediocrity of suburban supermarkets and graveyards by showing through their own groovy actions the possibility of another and more exciting form of life. Rock music and the dadaist puton is at the center of this approach.

But Chicago has shown that there is another side to this Yippie madness. We have cultivated our courage, we can fight, we can be tough, and we can talk to workers better than any old Marxist owl I ever met on the Cal terrace.

Berkeleyans know a lot about the Yippies media games, but about their clenched fists they know very little.

In the next week’s issue of the BARB, I want to go into the significance of this for the American revolution. I have learned much from Chicago that I never heard out of the mouth of a Hal Draper or a Pete Camejo.

I have always believed as a matter of DIALECTICAL faith that there would be a revolution in America.

Here in Chicago I know there will be a revolution; because it has begun and I am in the red and black center of it.

Subject: Youth International Party (YIP)

1. Allegedly conceived during a New Year's Eve party on 31 December 1967 in Greenwich Village, New York City, the YOUTH INTERNATIONAL PARTY (YIP) has been referred to as "the first attempt to give social direction to the drug movement." The "founders" of YIP included: Jerry Clyde RUBIN, organizer and leader of numerous demonstrations opposing U.S. activities in Vietnam; Abbot [sic] Howard (Abbie) HOFFMAN, hippie leader at the 1967 Pentagon demonstration; Paul J. KRASSNER, editor of The Realist; Edward SANDERS, leader of "The Fugs," a rock group; Keith R. LAMPE; and, possibly, Stewart Edward ALBERT, active opponent of the Vietnam war.

2. The first published announcement of the formation of YIP appeared in a "throwaway" on a Liberation News Service letterhead as a 16 January 1968 press release datelined New York City, with HOFFMAN, RUBIN, KRASSNER, and SANDERS listed as founders. What the founders had in common was the use of LSD, other mind-expanding drugs, and marijuana. They considered themselves "revolutionary artists" devoted to the "politics of ectasy [sic]." RUBIN has described their politics as "wild in the streets." Both RUBIN and HOFFMAN glory in violent encounter with authority.

3. The YIP has no leaders, no elected officers, no formal structure, no members. It is not a real organization, but has been functioning as a sort of New Left coordinating group, utilizing the extensive underground press network to broadcast "its gospel of protest and ridicule of the establishment." RUBIN, HOFFMAN, and KRASSNER have been described as "non-leaders" who have given "credence" to YIP myths by "their prestige in the news media."

4. In early March 1968, an undated YIP announcement of "an international youth festival" in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention in August was distributed. In this, the YIP was referred to as "a new coalition of forces." The announcement urged the public to participate. At a news conference in Chicago on 25 March, spokesman for the New Left and anti-war groups announced a coalition to cooperate with the YIP on the August "love-in" in Chicago. Allen GINSBURG [sic] and Dr. Timothy LEARY had attended the weekend planning conference preceding this announcement as "YIP observers." The YIP then wrote Mayor Daley of Chicago requesting facilities in the parks for "thousands" of young Americans who would be coming to Chicago in August. RUBIN announced on 19 March YIP plans for offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. At a May YIP meeting, HOFFMAN announced there was no YIP movement in Chicago and that the Blackstone Rangers had no interest in YIP plans.

5. On 14 April the YIP held a music festival in Central Park, New York City. On 29 April LAMPE stated at a press conference that the YIP could call up 700 people in a half hour to prevent police from removing striking students from Columbia University. On the evening of 24 May, some 100 hippies led by RUBIN and HOFFMAN harassed police in St. Marks Square.

6. Planning for the Chicago Confrontation continued during June and July. HOFFMAN was the main speaker at a 5 August meeting of Veterans and Reservists against the war in Vietnam. He said that about 1,000 would be "trained" and that the day when the Democratic candidate was nominated would be the "big day." He further stated that the YIP would be dissolved after the Convention as it had been conceived solely for the purpose of countering the Convention. On 10 July a YIP survival manual prepared by HOFFMAN was published in New York in 10,000 copies. The $1,000 for this project came from the Urban Task Force through the Judson Memorial Church.

7. A number of YIPPIES were arrested in connection with the disturbances in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. HOFFMAN and RUBIN were indicted by the Federal Grand Jury in Chicago. Trial is scheduled in October 1969. RUBIN described Chicago as "a high speed, high intensity course in street insurrection."

8. After the Convention, RUBIN and HOFFMAN announced that the YIP would hold another "Festival of Life" in Washington on inauguration day, 20 January 1969. A group of YIPPIES participated in counter-inaugural activities, including the smashing of windows in stores, churches, banks, and other buildings, but they failed in their efforts to break up the inaugural parade.

9. On 13 February 1969, the YIP handled the mailing of several thousand Valentine greetings containing marijuana cigarettes.

10. The relationship between the YIP and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) apparently has never been overly friendly. YIP leader HOFFMAN, in the 3 April 1969 issue of "The East Village Other" charged SDS national office with failure to support the YIP and asserted his own agreement with charges by Black Panther Julius LESTER that the SDS was racist. HOFFMAN asserted that the SDS claimed to be the "vanguard of the white revolution," but had no national officers in trouble with the U.S. Government. He further stated that the SDS goal was similar to that of Castro's Cuba, i.e., everything free. HOFFMAN concluded his article by commenting that his "attack" on SDS was undertaken with the hope of ironing out differences between the YIP and SDS.

11. As of July 1969, the YIP had virtually ceased to exist as a functioning organization.

--CIA report, 1969

CIA Profile: Jerry Clyde Rubin

Jerry Rubin, one of two "Conspiracy 8" defendants who came to the Chicago trial under arrest and in the custody of U.S. marshalls, is a co-founder and leader of the Youth International Party (Yippies), and is said to be the "brains" behind the movement. He was a key leader in the 1967 student sit-ins at Berkeley; acted as coordinator of the October 1967 march on the Pentagon; and is an experienced organizer of war protests.

Rubin has been prominent during the trial, if for no other reason than his unconventional dress in court, a yellow and red-striped polo shirt, and the clowning he has indulged in with fellow Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman. He also, however, has featured as the target of much testimony by witnesses for the prosecution, who have related various incidents of his inciting demonstrators during the Convention riots in Chicago, some of which incidents have been detailed in previous Situation Reports.

Rubin was born on 14 July 1938 in Cincinnati, Ohio; graduated in 1956 from Cincinnati's Walnut Hills High School, which is described as having then been "the goal of Jewish mothers with sixth graders"; and in 1961 received an AB degree in American history from the University of Cincinnati. He attended Hebrew University in Jerusalem during 1962-1963; and upon his return to the United States entered the University of California at Berkeley as a graduate student in sociology, but remained for only two months. Thereafter, in the summer of 1964, in a group of eighty-four, he visited Cuba, in violation of State Department regulations, on a trip sponsored by the pro-Castro Student Committee for Travel to Cuba.

It was following this visit to Cuba that Rubin entered upon his New Left career. As one newspaper account expressed it, he became: "Jerry Rubin, public troublemaker, blocking troop trains in California, running for mayor of Berkeley, organizing the march on the Pentagon, getting busted in Chicago." The same April 1969 Washington Post account stated that, "At thirty-one, he lives in a strange man-boy world, completely cynical about manipulating the media, rushing to a TV set so he can see his 'rap' on the evening news, calculating what will drive adults up the wall...(but that) At the same time he is intensely earnest in his role as Marxist preacher to the young."

Rubin, in 1967, was an unsuccessful candidate for mayor of Berkeley, California, on a platform which opposed the Vietnam war and "American imperialism", and espoused Black Power and the legalization of marijuana.

In the fall of 1967, Rubin and Dick Gregory founded the Youth International Party; and in 1968 Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panther Party suggested that Rubin run for Vice President on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket, on which he was to be the Presidential candidate. (However, at the New York Peace and Freedom Party Convention in July 1968, another was named as "interim candidate for Vice President.") As of August 1968, when the National Democratic Convention began, Rubin was the Chicago organizer for the Youth International Party.

Since launching his new militant career, Rubin has been arrested on a number of occasions: On 24 August 1965, in San Francisco with a group demonstrating against General Maxwell Taylor; on 19 August 1966, in Washington, D.C., for causing a disturbance during a session of the House Committee on Un-American Activities; on 30 November 1966, for demonstrating on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley; on 13 June 1968, in New York City, on a charge of possessing marijuana; and twice in August 1968, during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, on charges of disorderly conduct, mob action, and resisting arrest.

Rubin can possibly best be pictured by quoting his own words, notably statements made by him in an article he wrote for Evergreen magazine (May 1969) titled: "A Yippie Manifesto". In this he describes the Yippies as a "revolutionary religious movement" and states that: "The religion of the Yippies is 'Rise Up and Abandon the Creeping Meatball!!' That means anything you want it to mean. Which is why it is so powerful a revolutionary slogan." Rubin promotes the much-quoted Yippie warning, "Don't trust anyone over thirty!", but says: "We are born twice. My first birth was in 1938 but I was reborn in 1964 in the Free Speech movement...I am four years old." According to Rubin, Bertrand Russell, age ninety, "is our leader."

Regarding the war in Vietnam, Rubin has stated: "The purpose of the Vietnam war is to get rid of the blacks. They are a nuisance. America got the work she needed out of blacks but now has no use for them." "It's a psychological war. The old send the young to die for the old." He sees the U.S.A. as "a military bully in Vietnam."

Some of Rubin's Yippie pronouncements:
"We fight to...do what we want to do whenever we want to do it."
"Prohibitions should be prohibited. Never say No."
"Rules are made to be broken."
"Property is theft. What America got, she stole."
"How was this country built? By the forced labor of slaves. American owes black people billions in compensation."
"'Capitalism' is just a polite schoolboy way of saying: 'Stealing.'"
(Money, according to Rubin should be burned and during rallies he often has demonstrated its burning. Wall Street businessmen are "money freaks".)
"America is a loony bin."
"America does not suffer a cold; she has cancer."

Rubin claims that young whites are dropping out of "white society" with its middle class institutions, schools and homes, and forming their own communities. "We are becoming the new niggers. ... Within our communities we have the seeds of a new society. We have our own communications network, the underground press. We have the beginnings of a new family structure in communes. We have our own stimulants." Their long hair, he says, "is vital to us because it enables us to recognize each other. We have whtie skins like our oppressors. Long hair ties us together into a visible counter-community." The "smell", (and by implication of the dirt) of which he says "white society" accuses the Yippies, he dismisses with the statement: "That's what they used to say about the black people, remember? They don't say that about black people anymore. They would get punched in their _____ mouths." Rubin's speech and his writings are larded with the use of four letter obscenities.

Despite his jester-like appearance and "kookie" ideas, Rubin is sometimes a keen analyst of human nature. He has noted that: "We (Yippies) are a new generation, species, race. We are bred on affluence, turned on by drugs, at home in our bodies, and excited by the future and its possibilities. Everything for us is an experience...we live off the fat of society. Our fathers worked all year around for a two-week vacation. Our entire life is a vacation." Another of his observations is: "The economy is closed. It does not need us. Everything is built."

Rubin frequently makes outlandish statements--some of which even he couldn't intent to be taken seriously. Others, he obviously does believe in and it is sometimes hard to tell what he actually means to say. For example: "Everyone in the world should vote in American elections, because America controls the world. The Vietnamese have more right to vote in the American elections than some 80-year-old grandmother in Omaha. ...I am in favor of lowering the voting age to 12 or 14 years. And I am not sure whether people over 50 should vote. It's the young kids who are going to live in this world in the next 50 years. They should choose what they want for themselves."

Rubin, like the other "Conspiracy 8" defendants, has spent much of his time during the last year lecturing to obtain funds; and he has continued his agitating even while on trial. On 14 October, the eve of Moratorium day, eh spoke on the Berkeley campus of the University of California to some two thousand students, following a talk by former Chancellor Dr. Clark Kerr during which James R. Retherford, former editor of a New Left newspaper at the University, threw a pie in Dr. Kerr's face and was arrested. Rubin spoke of the injustices of the Chicago trial--following which five hundred marched to the jail to support Retherford, and a rock was thrown through the Police Department window.

--Central Intelligence Agency report, 1969