Volume 18 - Issue 3

' Accuracy 1n . A cad emta: .

Should They Patrol Our Classrooms?

\

Publisher Tony Reese Editor-in-Chief Joyce Banerjee Business Manager Lauren Rabin Executive Editor Rich Blow Managing Editor Anne Applebaum Designer Beth Callaghan Production Manager Margie Smith Photography Editor Mark Fedors Associate Business Managers Rob Lindeman Barrie Seidenberg Associate Editors Jay Carney• Melissa Turner• Tamar Lehrich• Dan Waterman•• Associate Designer Maria Hong• • Associate Photography Editor Carter Brooks* Circulation Manager Mike Sonnenblick Staff Margaret Bauer• • Katie Hazelwood David Hoffman Pearl Hu Meredith H yde••

Paul Kihn Patrick Santana H ank Mansbach Lori Sherman Pam Thompson Peter Zusi

• tltwd Octolxr 22, 1985 • •tltwd Nouemlxr 5, 1985

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2 The New Journal/December 6, 1985

Cover design by Tony Reese Cover photo by Mark Fedors

TheNewlo_u_r_n_a_l_~~~-·e~-h~_~s-~19-85 Between the Vines

6

The Other Side of Brunch Although mcst of us don~ think about it, working in a Yale dining hall can mean more than washing dishes and mopping floors. As students struggle with the problems of serving and working with their peers, regular employees search for wayl to r.Ual with management and oftm thoughtless Yalzes. By Tamar Lehrich.

Features

10

I n All Fairness Washington~ newest watchdog group, Accur/20' in Academia, claims it wants balance in the c/assrOQTTI. But a stur.Unt who worked for the organization finds that, for AlA, balance may be on?» a matter of interpretation. By jim Ledbetter.

20

Prisoner of the Times On August 21, 1971 Black Panther George jackson, along with three guards and two inmates, was killed while allegedly attempting to escape .from San Quentin. Implicated in the attempt, Yale graduate Stephen Bingham fled the country onb» to return 13 years later to face a complex and turbulent history and jive counts of murr.Ur. By jay Gamey.

34

Depths of Deception General Dynamics, America~ third wrgest r.lejense contractor, has been mired in scandal for the past year, but the submarine manufacturer appears to have emerged unscathed. The General Dynamics case has proved how this country pays the exceeding?» high cost of r.lefense. By Rich Blow.

Books

45

Codes of H onor In his new novel Honorable Men, Louis Auchincloss explores the American elite's leg/20' of Puritanism. By Miles Kronby.

Afterthought

47

Final Words As he completes a distinguished tenure as University Chapwin, The Reverend john Vannorsdall urges the University community to consir.Ur fundamental questions about the values under9'ing its secular, twentieth-century nature. ..

NewsJournal

4

The New journaVDecember 6, 1985 3

NewsJournal

Sound Effects Ten-year-olds sing along to Prince's "Darling Nikki," whose heroine is described as a "sex fiend." Their younger siblings, meanwhile, may learn about first love from bands like Motley Criie, who portray women as territory to be conquered. Certainly, rock music, with its often sexual or violent connotations, plays a part in the lives of many pre-teenagers. But do these uncensored lyrics really have a detrimental effect on the minds of young listeners? The Parents' Music Resource Center (PMRC), a lobbying group headquartered in Washington D.C., believes so. Two Yale researche rs, however, disagree. Any affect lyrics have on teenagers may have little to do with records and tapes. Instead, studies made here provide a possible link between videos and aggressive behavior in children.

"A lot of people have studied rock lyrics, and they haven't been able to find a ny effects at all- no effects on socialization, for instance," Dr. R oger Desmond, a visiting fellow of the Yale department of psychology, told The New York Timts. Desmond, who specializes in the relationship between children and the media, has completed several studies examining the influence of rock lyrics. He describes his work as the study of "how mass media operate as agents of socialization for young children."

A study he conducted four years ago compared the perception of rock lyrics by institutionalized adolescents to noninstitutionalized ones. Children with criminal records are more likely to hear messages in the music that aren't really there, he determined. "They feel, for example, that 'The Doors are speaking to me.'" Such conclusions indicate, then, that heeding lyrics l:onsidered offensive is only a manifesta4 The New Journal/December 6, 1985

tion of violent adolescent behavior, not Down Under its cause.

Desmond's findings are particularly significant in view of the recent con- The dark, thickwalled buildings of this troversy involving PMRC, which adcampus hold promises of morbid vocates a rating system for records secrets: the ancient catacombs beneath comparable to that imposed o n films. the colleges, undiscovered corpses in Discs containing potentially offensive the Sterling stacks, or voices echoing material, the group argues, should be late at night in Commons. Sometimes stamped with an "X" to warn parents of reality is not so different. Enter Street their sexual or violent content.

Hall , descend the thin winding stairs, Dorothy Singer, co-director of the continue past the bathrooms, past the Yale Family Television Research and unused display cases and old filing Consultation Center which studies the cabinets, until you reach a Babylonian effects of television programming on coffin. Turn to your right. You are the public, agrees with Desmond. now in the Yale University Art "Kids are caught into the sound-the Gallery, facing the grave marker of rhythm, the beat." Singer said. "Usual- John Trumbull, reknowned American ly they're doing something else while painter and benefactor of Yale, who listening to the music, like homework. died in 1843. His bocfy is buried not They're not really paying attentio n to far beneath your feet here.

Why is Trumbull buried underneath the lyrics."

One reason for these attempts to the Gallery? He simply wanted to be. curb rock lyrics may be the advent of In 1831 Trumbull decided to donate a music videos, which can take vague or collection of 100 of his own paintings unintelligible lyrics and transform and miniatures to Yale , which was them into something more graphic poore~; and in greater need of such artonscreen. Singer explained that the work than Harvard , his alma mater.

Center's content analyses studies His conditions, however , were that count the number of g ratuitous sexual they be housed in a building of his own or violent acts per video. Figures for design, that he receive a $1000 annuity such acts generally have been found to from the University, and that he be be quite high. buried beneath the works after his Singer's studies on the effects of TV death. Later that year the paintings programming on young children have moved into the completed Trumbull lead her to a grim conclusion: "There is gallery, which stood on Old Campus. a relationship between aggressive pro- So did Trumbull's wife, who had died in 1824 and had been buried in New gramming and aggressive acts."

Although Singer won't venture an York. Thirteen years later Trumbull opinion, perhaps music videos have himself died and was buried next to his harmful effects on young children . If wife, underneath his paintings. But as this is the case, it would seem that the the University evolved and the campus PMRC has attacked the wrong changed, the Trumbull collection medium. So far, the group has failed to moved around, and with it went the initiate successfully a national rating bodies of John and Sarah Trumbullsystem on albums and tapes, despite to Street Hall in 1869 and to the Art the favorable conservative political Gallery in 1927.

Still a central exhibit of the Gallery , climate. It just may be that scientific evidence is not on its side. the Trumbull collection receives many - }en Fleissner visitors. The tomb gets few. But

PSR-New Haven's steering committee. "The 'bomb run' was our initial, and most effective, tactic."

Yet with PSR's expansion over the past five years, initial momentum and effectiveness of the traditional "bomb run" approach dissipated. The organization's leaders realized that in order to remain effective PSR would have to do more than to tell nuclear horror stories. The emphasis of its argument has shifted away from medical grounding. Since 1983 PSR has stressed other aspects such as childrens' fear of nuclear attack as well as political issues of nuclear testing and "Star Wars."

Reflecting this shift in the national organization's strategy, PSR-New H aven sponsored two political forums in September and October of this year.

The first, held at the Yale Law School, Colo n ial painter John Trumbull demanded to be a permanent fixture at Yale. was a symposium on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The October Trumbull's wish has been fulfilled. run," one version of a horror story told forum centered on Star Wars. In addi"John Trumbull always wanted to be around the country by members of tion, the New Haven chapter, as part under his pictures," said Carolyn Physicians for Social Responsibility of the Coalition for a Meaningful SumRollins, coordinator of publications, (PSR). Founded in 1980 by former mit, publicly demands that President sales and membership at the Art Yale Professor Robert Lifton and 20 Reagan abandon his long-standing opGallery. Any future plans for the Yale Medical School (YMS) students, position to nuclear freeze and reverse Trumbull collection will inevitably the New Haven¡ chapter now boasts the arms race. have to include the graves also: where about 500 members. Both the New Controversy has arisen over the the paintings go, the Trumbulls go.

Haven and national PSR were politicization of the group. "Once doc-Peter Zusi established under the auspices of their tors step out of the medical-effects parent organization, International realm, do they lose their credibility?

Physicians for the Prevention of Do they have to take off their white Nuclear War, whose founders received coats and talk as citizens and not as Diagnosing the the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. doctors?" Kuckes asked. Controversy, Arms Race The national organization, with though, has not halted the group's ac65,000 members, comprises not only tivity. Today, with the more politicallymedical doctors, but medical students, oriented approach and the awarding of "A 20-megaton nuclear warhead health workers, and some laymen as the Nobel P rize, PSR is cautiously opdetonated over New Haven would well. It aims to educate the public timistic about its future. Doug Nelson, destroy everything in a four-mile about the medical consequences of YMS '87, a steering-committee radius. Almost every survivor would be nuclear war and thus tries to create an member, said, "The symptoms of maimed, burned, or in shock. In time, active public lobby against nuclear pro- the arms race have been ominous in the they would develop new and virtually liferation. "There's nothing like bring- past few years. PSR's message is more incurable ailments, such as st>vere ing the abstraction of nuclear war down prominent. It's too early to predict a radiation poisoning and reaction~ to to something very physical, something full recovery for us, but now the signs contaminated food and water . . . " people can relate to," said Laura are good."

So begins the New Haven "bomb Kuckes, YMS '87, a member of - KaLy Schneebaum The New Journal/December 6, 1985 5

Between the Vines7 Tamar [enricn

The Other Side of Brunch

We've all done it, we all do it, and we'll all do it again. Come on, don't look so innocent, you know what I'm talking about. Remember today at lunch when in your tension and quest for expediency, you dribbled French dressing all over the salad bar? You ignored it, looking up at the witnesses contemptuously, continuing to pile more cucumbers on your plate. As the dining hall worker wiped up the mess, you nonchalantly moved away from the area, feeling both defensive and somewhat guilty. But you quickly forgot the incident. You sat down at your favorite table with a friend. Your contented thoughts moved like circles of smoke, until they lifted and disappeared into the rafters-leaving behind all responsibility for the messiness of spilled salad dressing, sticky floors, and dirty dishes.

I entered a dining hall the other day, feeling grumpy and impatient, and flashed my cards at the woman behind the desk, not noticing or caring who she was. "Quiche. Mixed vegetables," I said to the servers, who remain faceless in my memory. I sat down, played with the salt, and created a series of hills on the table. Then I bussed my tray, oblivious to the signs requesting I throw away my napkins and styrofoam cups. Most of us who eat in dining halls forget the work involved in preparing our meals and cleaning our mess. We also forget the workers themselves.

Dining halls may be the most unusual work-place at Yale. On the one hand, it is one of the only contexts where unspoken class tensions between 6 The New JournaVDecember 6, 1985

"Sometimes when I'm working on the serving-line, I feel as .though there's a wall between me and other students."

students can be felt and seen. Students are literally put into the position of having to serve their peers. Moreover, because student dining hall workers receive the highest wage on campus, students on aid tend to occupy most dining hall jobs. Because of the economic and social differences which emerge once students put on their blue uniforms, workers often resent those whom they have to serve. "Sometimes when I'm working on the serving-line, I feel as though there's a wall between me and other students," said Betina Elias, PC '87. "There's sort of a worker-customer relationship. My contact with them stays in my mind, but for them I'm just the girl serving the green beans."

At the same time, however, student workers find their relation to other workers hard to define. "We really don't have much in common with regular workers." Elias explained.

"Our jobs are such a small part of our lives, while for them it's their whole day." The regular-workers work side by side with students who will earn a

Yale d iploma at the end of four years.

Meanwhile, some full-time employees remain stuck in the same position for decades. With this double set of conflicts, this student job differs from any other.

From the outside, work ing in the dining hall seems appealing. Most workers would agree, and certainly a camaraderie develops among employees. However, the job also contains daily reminders of Y.ale's less-thandemocratic social structure. I once worked a brunch "floor shift," rumored to be the perfect job for those who are willing to interrupt their gossip sessions with friends to do a oit of work.

For about an hour, everything went as predicted. I sat in a carefully chosen corner talking to a friend, observing the eaters, casually watching the coffee level and the napkin supply, two of my top priorities. I knew that people were aware that I was a worker but that my presence didn't really register. I was invisible to most students.

But then, hal.fway through the meal, the craziness began. As soon as I had brought out more boxes of Sptcial-K, someone alerted me to the fact that he could find no more Lift. Then the hutter and the English muffins ran out simultaneously. "They can't expect us to eat this margarine, can they?" one student asked, horrified. After standing up for the next two hours and then sweeping and mopping the floor, I learned that the rumors concerning the ease .o f the "floor shift" were mere fiction.

Students commonly believe dining hall employees are responsible for

- -- ------

everything that goes wrong, much to the annoyance of the workers. When approached by a student who said, "This knife isn't clean," one worker meticulously cleaned it off with his own shirt. Then he handed it back to the dissatisfied student, saying, "No problem. Sir." Because of the daily complaints a nd tensions, some workers flee all student contact and head for the safety of the dish-room, which requires, I've heard, a very specific, highly-tuned temperament and skill. Not everyone can do it.

For some, the pressure is just too intense and the line of trays seems endless. For others, successful d ishroom performance is a physical impossibility. If you're too short, you can't reach everything. H owever, a select few thrive amidst the steam and water. Dave Carpenter, SM '86, has worked in the Berkeley dining hall for the past year. "I like to work in the dishroom. I listen to Miracle Legion or Gang of Four," Carpenter explained seriously. "It's an autonomous zone. I mean I don't have to deal with

students, and I have a pretty good rapport with the cooks, depending on their m oods."

I heard of one student whose performance was legendary- he could d o it all with one hand. Yet even dish-room workers are not cut off from all student input. Last summer in Berkeley, a note was sent to the dishroom written in a maniacal hand that said, "Never serve this shit again." Somebody else once wrote, "This food would gag a vulture."

As students struggle with the problems inherent in serving and working with peers, regular workers search for ways to deal with Yale and its students.

Lisa Gavoni, wide-eyed, funny, and approachable, has worked in Berkeley as a desk-attendant for the past two years. Born in New H aven 18 years ago, Lisa e xplains that many workers have held the same impressions of and attitudes toward Yale fo r long over 20 years. "A lot of people in New Haven just see big iron gates and tall buildings," she said, greeting most students by name as they passed her

desk. "It is seen as a big, spooky place, one you'll never get to see. Yale owns three-quarters of New Haven and everybod y knows that."

Johnny Edwards, another Berkeley employee, has been a cook with the Yale dining hall system for the past 13 years. In describing his situation with the Yale management, Edwards spoke with a sense of urgency. "L ots of workers feel they should be promoted," h e said, his eyes flashing. "But sometimes it seems impossible."

Edwards strongly advocates changing the current system and challenging the procedural standard. "Yale forces workers to take a written test to be promoted," Edwards continued, "but many of us were hired a long time b efore fhe test. I don't know. I don't think I will ever pass- it's far beyond my reach." He cannot quit because he does not have a document qualifying him to b e a chef in the real world. In other words, Johnny Edwards can't get a job in a restaurant or anywhere else outside of Yale.

Ed Huff, assistant director for the Yale College dining hall system, appeared accomodating and casual as he coolly offered me coffee in his office on Elm Str~et. A black and white photog raph of a dining hall filled with smiling Yale m en-wearing dark suits and waiting to be served- hung over his desk. Huff does not see any inequities in the system as it now exists: "Managem e nt has requirements for each position, depending on someone's education and work experience."

Although trying to approach the issues fairly, Huff is caught within the wheels The New Journal/December 6, 1985 7

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8 The New Journal/December 6. 1985

of Yale's immense machinery. "The test is just one small part of a whole series of things, including performance, appraisals, and adult-school attendance."

While listening to this man speak, I remembered the frustrated look on Edwards's face when he told me he had no more options. Asked whether it is discriminatory to base advancement in blue-collar jobs on reading skills or quantity of education, Huff only answered, "Look, it's a very touchy subject among the workers. We have a couple of grievances on that right now."

What about Yale's refusal to write recommendations? Huff hesitated. H e looked down at his hands. "We just don't deal with the question about whether an employee is good, bad, or indifferent. Management doesn't want to get involved in that."

The reasons for the tense relations between workers and management go beyond rules and fi gures. Discrimination, though seldom linked openly to the dining hall system, is a serious underground issue. One studentworker said, "The cooks ask the guys to do everything. If a woman comes in and works a shift, she's hassled by them. It's not direct, just 'work-place' intimidation." One regular worker then asked if I had ever noticed how few whites worked in the dining halls.

She explained that for decades she has watched whites enter the dining hall system, work there for a year or two, and then be promoted automatically to higher-paying physical plant or grounds maintenance jobs. Other employees feel even more strongly.

"Management is racist and demoralizing," a long-time regular-worker expressed. "They don't realize that being nasty and over-demanding causes people to do the bare necessity. They basically consider workers to be stupid children, and we become their pawns."

Locked into one position at Yale with no options on the outside

The resentments and anxieties that dining hall employees experience while working for Yale arc also reflected in their relationships with both non· working and working students. Desk· attendants find themselves in a par· ticularly ironic situation, for while the) encounter every student in the college. they are the most routinely ignored.

Yolanda Jackson, who has been a desk· attendant for the P"'~t 10 years, has found her own solution: she knows how to put the fear of God into people.

Because of her reputation, I was somewhat wary of her when we first spoke. We checked each other out. "I don't want to see my name in that arti· cle," she warned, her eyebrows raised.

Yet after talking several times, we both softened. I learned that she not onl)' met her husband in Berkeley dining hall, but her mother also works in tht system. She finally broke down, ofl handedly telling me, "Oh . . . by tht way, I don't really care if you includt my name. Go ahead and quote me. It's okay."

Although he understands that tht main priority of student-workers is their education, it still bothers J ohnn} Edwards that they are not more open to the regular staff. Staring at the grey· ing tiles of the kitchen wall, Edwards said, "Most students don't realize that we can be friends." Many of the full· time employees are not very anxious to pick up relationships with students.

They know that they may spend timt getting to know someone who wiU leave the job three months later. Al· though this happens often , it isn't always the case. Thad Bouchard, MC

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CALLING ON BEHALF OF SOME OF THE NATION'S '87, worked in the Morse-Stiles dining halls for two years before he was confide nt in speaking with John, the pot scrub be r . "One day he asked me, sort of dejectedly, 'You're a senior this year, a re n't you?'" Bouchard said. "When I told him I was only a sophomore, his whole face lit up."

Despite these conflicts, most dining hall workers said they don't want to fi nd jobs outside of Yale. Studentworkers stay primarily because of the high wage. Most regular workers stay for union benefits or because they are not qualified for other types of employment. Yet people continue to work in the dining halls for other reasons as well . Since workers share common experiences and a common disdain for the frequent thoughtlessness of people they encounter, very tight bonds often develop between them. "We're a very close-k nit group," J ackson admitted.

"The m ajority of the workers have been here a long time, and the students can be really pleasant." Then she ra ised an eyebrow skeptically. "But there are still days when nothing's set up for breakfast, because a student must leave early for a test."

She smiled. "You learn to expect it."

Rob P ierce, BK '86, student coordinator at Berkeley, approached her desk. When asked how he'd change the current dining hall system if he were given the opportunity, Pierce was quiet for several moments before replying. "Well, if I were in charge of the world," he mused, looking at Yolanda, "the Co-op would be a real coope r ative, and I would have everyone at Yale work in the dining hall for a while. Then maybe they wo uldn't abuse us so much." Yolanda nod ded in agreement.

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The New journaVDecember 6, 1985 9

In All Faimess Jim Ledbetter

Professors to Be Monitored for L¢tism That Washington Post headline caught my eye on August 4, 1985. I read that a new group called Accuracy in Academia (Al A) planned to weed out "10,000 known Marxists" on American college campuses. Malcolm Lawrence, president of AlA, vowed to seek out and publicize "political bias baaed on in· correct information" in the classroom.

The article- accompanied by a photo of a smiling Lawrence- named Bertell Oilman of New York University and filmmaker/instructor Saul Landau as examples of professors AlA would monitor.

As a student, I found it hard to believe that there were that many Marxist professors. I also wondered how AlA would decide which courses to monitor. So the next day I called AlA; I managed to reach Lawrence at home.

At first, he was evasive and reluctant to say too much.

"How large is the organization? " I asked. "'We11 be appointing an executive director this week," he replied in his deep, authoritative voice. So far it was just him. "'Which campuses do you plan to monitor?" "'WelJ, we're not going to zero in on specific schools. We're waiting for students to come to us with reports."

10 The New joumaVDecembcr 6> 1985

I told him that I was a senior at Yale and asked if they planned to be active on my campus.

"You're a student?" he asked. "Would you be interested in being our Yale con· tact?"

I was taken aback. Lawrence didn't ask whether I knew of any instances of Marxism, he didn't ask if I approved of the group, he didn't even ask about my political leanings. Not thinking it would amount to anything, I agreed a nd gave him my phone number and school ad· dress. Lawrence assured me someone would be in touch. For the next four months, I would be a liberal infiltrator of the New Right: I was a spy for A c· curacy in Academia.

I AlA is a spinoff of a similar group, A c· curacy in Media (AIM). Since 1969, AIM has targeted a purported liberal bias in American media. Working out of Washington, AIM uses its 11.7 mi)}jon annual budget to monitor the press and television for slanted coverage. AIM President Reed Irvine has gained respectabiltity through his frequent appearances on ABC's Nightline and other television programs.

Though best known for its two-hour rebuttal to Stanley Karnow's Emmy award-winning Vietnam: A Television History, which AIM labelled "good propaganda for the communists," AIM C 1985 bv Tim Ledbetter

1

on many fronts. They recentlr for example. that Fide~ ~eover o( Cuba was greatly

by Herbert Matthews of The New Times." And noting that polls American women to be more than men, AIM suggests that. explanation . . . is the among women of the Phil show." diacovered these biases, AIM asked itself about the ~;>rigin strong tilt. In August, they an nounced the answer: leftist acaaemia.

AIM created a new arm to "end the brainwashing"- AJA.. The new ~up would "tackle the root 13{ the problem, the indoctrination of our future journalists and otqer members of qqr society." Voluntl!er students and senior citizens- who can take courses Cree of charge at manystate universities-were asked to report "problem courses." AlA recognized that "young, impreaaionable students" are reluctant to criticize a professor who might Ounk them, so it promised t{) keep the identity of ita student monitors secret.

In the extensive media coverage s_i' A.IA sin~ August, the ~up has CJte(l a dozen or so "biased" professors.

The first student report concerned Dr. Mark R eader, professor of political science at Arizona State University, who teaches an introductory survey

course on ~litical ideologic.$. AfA's first newsletter \leaked to the press weeks before it was published) cijarges R~er with teaching only his own "obsessions: anti-nuclear propaganda and fringe economics." An anonymous student ~so quoted Reader as saying that "the Soviet Union is no threat compared to the United States's imperial aggressions. • (Reader denies saying this, though he claims if he did say it, he had every right to do so.) In ttempting (o substantiate the charge, AlA call¢d Reader 18 times, wrote hitn a registered letter, and contacted the chair of his department. AlA has also asked its supporten to write letters asking ASU President J. Russell Nelson to change the •deceptive labeling" of Reader's course in th'e college catalog.

It ia no accident that R<*ier is AlA's fli'St target; the campaigrl against him &gan before AlA was ~m. Matthew Scu.lzy, former editorials editor of the ASU Sla/4 Press, wrote a series of columns last year criticizing R~s class and his •all-consuming dr~d of nuclear war." ScuUy, now graduat~, is national director of f-IA, a fact their newsletter failed to report.

In addition to Scully, AIA has attracted an impressive cast of characten, despite its short history. Their backgrounds cast doubt on the group's ability to promote "balance." Lawrence,

60, whose presidency officially expired November 30, is a retired Foteign Service officer who once served as a consultant to the Department of Education during Reagan's first term. He is best known as author of a form letter p&lent• can send to 3Cbool boards requesting that 'parents review all ~vant mater' before teachen discuss over 35 issues with students. The broad range o topics includes abortion, drugs a,nd alcohol, evolution, sex education, "values clarification," "Eastern mysticism," diaries or personal journals, and nuclear policy. Since january, two million copies of the letter have been di$tributed by evangelist Pat Robertaon's 700 Club, the Moral Majority, and Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum.

Lawrence's replacement as president is John LeBoutillier~ 31, an outspoken former congressman from Long Island.

He is the author of HarvtR'd Ha~ America, a polemic against the leftism and decadence he saw at his alma mater. LeBoutillier's escapades during his one House term won him natiqnal attention: he once called fel1ow Republican Charles Percy a "wimp" and an "idiot," and labelled Speaker Tip O'Neill "big, fat, and out of control. • Toward the end of his unsuccessful1982 campaign. he proposed constructing ~g:like "polar ptisons" in Alaska for

1

Accuracy in M edia P re1ident Reed Irvine: calling Vietnam: A Tekoision History "good propaganda fo r the oomm u n i1t1" Tackling the root o f media bias In the lndoctrlnstlon of future journalists

hardened criminals.

I n 1980, LeBoutillier made a $200,000 loan to his campaign. He claimed the sum came from his father's estate, but the money was not listed in his personal disclosure form filed before the election. A Federal Election Com· m ittee (FEC) investigation determined that he and his mother (who made the actual contribution) had violated the Sl ,000 limit on campaign contribu· tions. In November 1983 they signed an FEC conciliation agreement, in which they agreed to pay a $7,000 fine, but denied "knowingly or willingly" breaking the law.

During my tenure as an infiltrator, I never got a chance to meet either Lawrence or LeBoutillier. I did meet Scully, and I did meet the man who really runs AlA: Laszlo •Les" Csorba I II. L ike Scully, Csorba was calling at· tention to leftist professors before AlA was founded. And, like Scully, Csorba graduated from college last spring. At the University of California at Davis, Csorba led a conservative group, Students for a Better America, in a pro· test against leftist filmmaker and visiting instructor Saul Landau. Their . 12 The New Journal/December 6. 1985

tactics included publishing a pamphlet of Landau's "statements on socialism," and picketing the screening of his Castro documentary Fidtl. California State Senator H.L. Richardson then decided to investigate the state universi· ty's hiring practices, spurring counter· protest that the state was interfering with academic freedom. After Landau and Csorba exchanged threats of lawsuits, the controversy eventually died down.

In a recent issue of the conservative newsweekly Human Events, Csorba outlined his vision of AlA's challenge.

Academic Marxists "lie outright," he wrote, because they "do not believe in a higher being and have no Judeo· Christian moral framework." These professors "believe in violent change over democratic change" and are "com· mined to the overthrow of the United States government." Csorba called upon students to commit themselves to "academic excellence and scholarly ob· jectivity" and "to monitor and expose these campus academic travesties."

Csorba was appointed executive direc· tor of AlA on August 15, 1985.

Lawrence gave him my name and

,

number, and Csorba called me five days later. Again, there were no ques· tions about my beliefs.

Csorba was jubilant over response to the group. "In just five days, I've got people on 25 campuses," he bragged.

"I've been flooded with calls, and there are two stacks of letters on my desk. 1 bet we'll have 100 or 200 campuses by this fall."

"How should the campus chapter work?" I asked.

"We want you to go to classes in· dependently and report back anything that sounds absurd or blatantly false.

Later on we want to hook up with other groups, like the College Republicans and Young Amer icans for Freedom.

(Csorba's Washington roommate, J. Michael Waller, is national secretary of YAF.] Then maybe later you could meet on .a regular basis to establish camaraderie."

Feeling a little out of my league and thinking he might already have con· tacted the Yale chapters of these group$ to check me out, I replied, "Well, I haven't been too involved with those groups." H e told me that was fine, it didn't matter. Then he asked me if 11d encountered leftist professors at Yale .

â&#x20AC;˘sure, I think a lot of the professors are very liberal ."

This didn't surprise Csorba; in fact he said, "Yeah, because I have a list of over 1,000 radical, commie professors rve compiled over the last three years, and Yale seems to be one of the biggies.

In fact, I can think of one off the top of my head." "'h, really?" I deadpanned. "Who's that?"

H e named Frederic Jameson, who I knew only as the author of Sartre: The Origins of a Style. I told Csorba I didn't know him, but I'd look into it. I promiled to give him my campus phone number as soon as I knew it.

I immediately called Yale to try and get a reaction from Jameson. But Jameson left Yale in 1983 to go to the University of California at Santa Cruz.

publicly that A l A was giving students the names of professors to monitor, in effect creating its own reports of bias, would have compromised whatever legitimacy the group could hope to gain. It was then that I decided to go to Washington for a closer look.

II On October 26, I visited AlA- after cutting my hair and donning a suit and tie. Accuracy in Academia occupies just one room in AIM's 12th floor K Street suite. (AIM also shares the suite with The Wa.rhingwn Inquirer, a D.C. weekly ultra-conservative newspaper. As far as I know, AIM has never checked the paper for "balance.") Csorba and I were alsme; in the office on a Saturday. With salmon Polo shirt and topsiders, Csorba looked out of place sitting behind the of-

Despite his cartographic practice, Csorba was surpris~d when I told him later that New Haven is north of New York, and he could not remember where Brown University was.

Csorba¡ gave me a fuU tour of the suite, handing me numerous AIM newsletters, articles on AlA, and copies of Freedom Fighter, a pro-contra newspaper put out by something called the Coalition for Democracy in Central America. Accuracy in Academia had taken out a quarter-page ad on page five, describing itself as "a nonprofit, non-partisan organization." We talked about the Reader case, about the various reactions to AlA, and about why I wanted to keep my activity secret, at least for the time being.

In private, the directors of Al A do not talk about revolutionaries on the

n~:nnn1

DlrUDI He now teaches at Duke in the Department of Romance Languages and is on leave this term in China. Weeks later, when I reminded Csorba of this, he replied defensively, "Well, that was pretty early on. We're not going to get mto that business at all, targetmg people, giving you the names."

Why had Csorba been so uncomfortable about my mentioning the list? In the weeks that had passed, AlA had come under a great deal of fire from universities and other observers. In the debate, and even in his conversations with me, Csorba constantly stressed that the group was interested in "balance and fairness." To admit

fice desk. ScuUy, over six feet tall and campus. Instead, they downplay the athletically built, came in later. The at- competence of their targets. "Really, mosphere was casual, even playful; I these guys are a bunch of dumbbeUs; sipped a Coke, and when ScuJJy needed they're not that smart," Csorba told me keys, Csorba tossed them across the of- earnestly. Scully was disgusted that fice.

"30 years after [William F. Buckley's) On Csorba's wall hangs a framed God and Man at Yale there are calligraphic lament over the fall of still the same hacks running around.'"

Hungary in 1956. There are also per- He doesn't believe that there are many sonal endorsements from Senator Pete "thorough" Marxists teaching, "just a Wilson (R-California) and President bunch of old fools who bore everybody Reagan. A large map of the United with their own theories and only assign States dominates the wall across from books written by people just like them." his desk. Black-headed pins on the map Csorba and Scully also talk about mark each campus where AlA has a professors' "paranoid" reactions to AlA, contact. Csorba smiled proudly as he though Csorba, too, may be a bit showed me the pin marking Yale . paranoid: he told me he tapes "all rhis] The New Journal/December 6, 1985 13

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Academic groups, such as the Association of American University Professors, have denounced AlA as "reminiscent of M cCarthy" and as "intellectual goon squads." conversations with professors and with ' journalists." "It's legal in Washington," he reassured me; "you don't even have to tell them you're doing it."

At one point, Csorba pulled from his ftle cabinet what he called his "secret target list" of radical professors. He joked about how he could make money off it; I suggested publishing it as a directory of the left. In the same jovial spirit, Scully remarked, "I think you should take it to Wheeling, West Virginia [where Joe McCarthy launched his anti-commu nist campaign] to make a speech." As I scanned through the list , Csorba's earlier estimate of 1000 n a m es seemed accurate, though several names I remembered are not listed in the National Faculty Directory. I asked Csorba how he compiled the list; he told me he took it from a list of faculty who had endorsed a rally opposing U.S. involvement in Central America.

Csorba was enthusiastic about AlA's future, even though only about eight students had reported incidents of bias.

H e thought perh aps the p hone call to Washington was a hindrance; A lA has since established a toll-free number (1-800-334--9141). His chief long-term project is "to put all this on a computer and put out bios on these people." This annotated hit list will include party afftliations , published materials, and reports of alleged bias. But this is "a couple of years down the line," he insisted.

I wondered aloud how all these Marxists ended up as professors in the first place.

"Marxists seem to flourish in academia because they can't make it anywhere else," he said . "They don't seem to get into busi9ess or government."

This wasn't what I meant. Yale has traditionally been a liberal institution, I said, but by no means socialist. Why would the University tolerate radicals?

Csorba responded, "I think that liberalism is being q uestioned for having failed in areas from the welfare state to liberal foreign policy and that a lot of these professor s a d opt Marxism because of it."

I played dumb, looking for some concession to the idea of academic freedom.

At an Ivy League school the alumni and administration are often quite conservative and exercise a great deal of control over who is allowed to teach. Why would they ever want to have someone with whom they disagreed teach at their university?

He was puzzled. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe you could do a case Study."

The most surprising incid~nt of my visit was that Csorba-without telling me in advance- had arranged for me to call Robert Frahm, education writer at the Hartford Courant. I had spoken

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AlA President John L eBoutillier: the former congressman suggested gulag-like "polar prisons" for hardened criminals .

anonymously to Frahm two days earlier, but his editor wanted to confirm that I was a Yale student to prevent reporting a "hoax"; he was afraid AlA might claim to have a representative at Yale simply to gain Connecticut publicity. Csorba wanted me to call from AlA's office to assuage Frahm's fears. After actively resisting for Csorba's sake, I agreed to compromise by giving Frahm my first name. and my telephone number. Though AlA pledged to keep students' names a secret from professors, it was quite willing to divulge mine for press coverage.

Earlier, Csorba had given the same information to a reporter at Timis Washington bureau after I refused to speak to the magazine's Yale stringer.

Some time after the telephone performance, I excused myself to the bathroom to scribble notes of our conversation. When I came back, Scully was pecking away at one of AIM's Macintosh computers, and Csorba was nowhere in sight. I returned to Csorba's office and remained there for several minutes. The file cabinet drawer had been left wide open, but I held myself back. Clutter covered the desk, and even though I wanted a second look at that list of professors, I settled for reading Reagan's letter on the wall. I heard some sounds and went to look for Csorba. AIM has a Media Monitor Room where they videotape network news shows; there was Les, glued to a TV set. I realized that I could steal files, I could raid Reed Irvine's office, I could do anything; Csorba was watching Battle for the PlAnet of the Ape· .

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The New JournaVDecember 6, 1985 15

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Al A Executive Director Caorba labels questions over A l A's val idity as resiatan ce from "paranoid" professors.

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One of AlA's major concerns is simply establishing the group's right to exist.

Media coverage of AlA has questioned the validity of external interference with academic freedom. Csorba attributed this to "paranoid" professors resisting AlA's calls for balance. "In a year or two we'll just be a standing presence and people will accept what we're doing as legitimate," he said. "We're not going to go away."

I wonder. So far, AlA has raised over $50,000, mostly from subscribers to the AIM newsletter. The group's an¡ nual budget is $162,000, including 10 newsletters per year and staff fees. But Csorba told me that the newsletters would be sent to 40,000 people. Subtracting staff fees from the budget, there is no way AlA can afford 400,000 newsletters. They planned to charge non-students $25 a year for the newsletter, but I doubt they'll get that many subscribers. Other financial backers can be found; AIM seems willing to

support them for some time, and there is plenty of conservative foundation money to be had.

But I don't know what A l A could spend that money on, except to raise more money and to tap into the New Right network. A l A claims to have 500 representatives on 110 campuses, but that only means people who wrote in or called , and who haven't necessarily done any more spying than I have . At the rate reports have come in, there just isn't enough for a staff of 15 (AlA's initial projection for 1988) to do even if AlA could pay them. As it is, the job of AlA president is basically a figurehead, and Scully was brought in mainly for the Reader case. Which leaves Csorba, alone in his office, phoning professors 18 times.

Simply put, AlA has so little to do because the target it seeks doesn't exist.

Their model for the academic Marxist is Oilman, who has been quoted as saying his task "is to make more revolutionaries." No professor I spoke with thinks there are more than a handful of such academics. "There are

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"In a year or two we'll just be a standing presence and people will accept what we're doing as legitimate.

We're not going to go away." a few socialist faculty members," said David Apter, professor of economic and social development at Yale, "but I don't see them having much of an impact, and it is absurd to think that they indoctrinate students."

Elizabeth Mahan ag rees. For three years, she was program coordinator for the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. She is also on Csorba's target list, and I was told to "check her out." Now at the University of Connecticut, she was amused to find out that "I'm a threat to the social order." She said she has "never professed to be a Marxist" and that her teaching and writing "stand on their own. Very few of my colleagues," she said, "are so wedded to their own ideas that they cannot allow students to express their own."

Like most senior faculty with whom I spoke , Mahan doesn't take AlA very seriously. She feels "more annoyed than threatened," and thinks the group will probably fade away. Commented another professor, "These things tend to break out in rashes, and they come and go." Academic groups, such as the Association of American University Professors, have denounced AlA as "reminiscent of McCarthy" and "an intellectual goon squad ." Others have charged that the press gave undue publicity- and legitimacy- to AlA by reporting their existence before they actually accused a professor of bias.

Such groups insist that anyone is

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free to teach a Marxist or leftist or liberal perspective as a part of academic debate. Of course a professor has a responsibility to present "accurate" facts to a class. But AlA's assertion that because Mark Reader assigns anti-nuclear writings, he must also assign pro-nuclear writings is absurd.

"Academic debate is not an opinion poll," as one professor put it. It is not the task of the professor to assemble every imaginable treatment of a topic and dump them in a student's lap. A l A wants to deny academjc freedom to professors who don't teach AlA's point of view. AlA claims, of course, that it is interested in "bias" across the political spectrum; that is as false as it sounds. At no point did anyone at AlA give me names of conservative professors to monitor, or even mention them.

I'm willing to bet that A l A's facade of · fairness is temporary. The pressure AlA put on me to talk to reporters suggests a media hunger which will one day trip them up. Groucho Marx once said: "I wouldn't want to be a part of any club that would have me as a member." If AlA is careless and unprofessional enough to allow a mole into their inner sanctum, imagine how they might misrepresent a professor they're already out to get. AlA's amateurism also costs AIM more than just money; one Washington editor told me, "Irvine's really shot himself in the foot with this." LeBoutillier's reputation (one academic who knows him called him "poison") can only enhance the already obvious charge that the group is more biased than what it claims to monitor.

But despite its bias and inexperience, AlA can still do damage. I tried to find a facu lty member to work

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with me in infiltrating the group; none would, citing the "har assment" and "intimidation" of Reader as one deterrent. ("I'd like to, but I just don't have the time to deal with these twerps," said one professor). I also learned that untenured junior faculty members are particularly wary of AlA and that some graduate students- the most vulnerable scholars- have begun to suspect students in their sections as AlA representatives. Such suspicion affirms that AlA is harming the exchange of ideas essential to classroom learning. "I think we are having a chilling effect ," Csorba boasted to me. "I think we deter professors from saying what they used to say."

AlA will probably not put any individual's job at risk . The only real threat they pose is to academic freedom. The professorial right to teach what one believes, to say what one chooses in a scholarly way, is hardearned. The idea that a student is in the classroom not to learn through interpretation and debate, but to spy, may inhibit a professor from interpreting mater ial with complete intellectual honesty. The fear of being wrongly labelled a Castro supporter on the pages of The New York Times should not be part of a professor's job. Once the accusation is made, substantiated or not, the professor's reputation is already tarnished . He or she has no way to check the motives or responsibility of this secret group. AlA wants professors to be accountable to the public; to whom will Accuracy in A cademia be accountable?

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The New J ournaVDecember 6, 1985 19

Stephen Bingham: facing trial in a state that does not differentiate between murder and accessory to murder 20 The New J ournal/December 6, 1985

lI

II

Prisoner of the Times Jay Carney

In the small, comfortable living room of an Upper East Side apartment, Stephen Bingham, '64, sat on the edge of an overstuffed chair, phone in one hand and pen in the other, leaning over an open briefcase and some loose papers spread out on the floor. A handsome man, about six feet tall, Bingham has deep-set eyes and full, wavy hair that is just a bit longer than conventional for his generation. He is 43 now, and time has softened the lines of his face and streaked his hair with gray.

After hanging up the phone he said, "I only flew in from California yesterday, so it's still just seven a.m. my time." He paused, shuffling through some papers, and then began to speak. "You know there are some things I can't talk about, that my lawyers don't want me to talk about now. I'd like to say it alJ, but I can't until the trial. There really isn't much I can add to what I said last night."

The night before, in a plush midtown apartment, Bingham gave one of

his "receptions," a gathering of his friends, friends of the tamily and others who came to hear his story and to con sider his request for donations to his defense. T he elegant room on the 54th floor gradually filled to 30 people.

Bingham himself was there early, busy shaking hands and talking with people he either didn't know or hadn't seen in years: old friends of his from Milton Academy and Yale, all verging on middle age, and others, a full generation older, friends of Bingham's father, Alfred, '27. Wayne Batcheler, '64, who arranged Bingham's schedule for this East Coast trip, signaled the start of the talk.

As Batcheler made a brief introduction, Bingham stood against a wall studying notes through reading glasses that seemed to age him another 10 years. Glasses ofT, he came forward slowly, looking slightly uncomfortable in jacket and tie. He cleared his throat and lifted his eyes to the small seated crowd. "First I'd like to thank all of you

"Had I stayed there would have been no fair trial, no bail, and I wouldn't have survived in the Califomia jails with those guards. I was acc~ed of killing three of their colleagues."

The New JournaVDecember 6, 1985 21

Bingham and his lawyers are determined to show there are more plawible explanations than the one held by the prosecution for the events of August 21, 1971.

for being here," Bingham said in a soft, steady, oddly high voice that often seemed on the verge of cracking. "I've been back now for a year and a half, and it has amazed me that after being gone for 13 years, so many friends and family and new friends have rallied to support me. I could not get a fair trial without this help."

On July 9, 1984 Stephen Mitchell Bingham, member of a prominent Connecticut family , radical attorney of the sixties, surrendered to the Marin County, California sheriff after 13 years in hiding. He has returned to face trial- and gain acquittal- on five counts of murder and one count of con spiracy to murder for his alleged involvement in a riot and an escape attempt at San Quentin prison on August 21, 1971. Bingham disappeared that day shortly after leaving San Quentin, where he had visited Black Panther George Jackson, the most celebrated and closely watched prisoner in the United States at the time. According to prison guards and 22 The New Journal/December 6, 1985

authorities, Jackson had finished his visit with Bingham and was returning to his cell in the Adjustment Center, the maximum security ward in San Quentin, when he suddenly produced a gun and two clips of bullets from his hair. A chaotic and bloody escape attempt then ensued, leaving three guards and two white prisoners dead inside the Adjustment Center. Jackson himself was shot and killed by a tower guard as he sprinted across the prison yard. The next day the papers announced that Bingham was the prime suspect for smuggling the gun to Jackson . By the end of the week, the District Attorney of Marin County claimed he had "conclusive evidence" of Bingham's guilt. Fearing that he was the victim of a conspiracy to kill Jackson , that his political activism had biased the state against him and that he could not get a fair trial under those circumstances, Bingham fled prosecution and almost certainly left the country.

Today, the Marin County DA still maintains that Bingham supplied the

gun to Jackson, making him a coconspirator in an escape attempt that caused five deaths. Released on $300,000 bail, Bingham went through lengthy preliminary hearings last March. The presiding judge decided that the prosecution has enough circumstantial evidence to warrant a trial. In early January , Bingham will be tried in a state that does not differentiate between murder and accessory to murder; if found guilty, he could go to prison for life.

Since his reemergence, Bingham has hired three full-time attorneys and has mounted a fundraising campaign to defray his defense expenses. The DA has pledged to give the case the "Cadillac treatment ," forcing Bingham to match that effort with comprehensive jury studies and handwriting and ballistic experts. To raise funds , Bingham has scheduled numerous receptions like the one in New York during which he can explain his case and make an appeal for help.

At his Manhattan reception

Bingham stated simply and immediately that he is innocent. He held notes in front of him, yet rarely referred to them, knowing by heart how to avoid self-incrimination or damage to his defense. Although he would later discuss the case against him, he began instead with who he had been 20 years ago, calling himself a representative of "a time period badly understood. I am," he said, "typical of many people who got caught up in the idealism and hope for positive change in the late fifties and early sixties."

Indeed, Bingham comes from a background that fostered many of the young liberal intellectuals and activists of that era. Along with their wealth, the Binghams of Connecticut have a long history of prominent missionaries and politicians. His great-greatgrandfather, Hiram Bingham I , was the first missionary in Hawaii . His grandfather, Hiram III, a conservative Republican governor and U.S. senator from Connecticut, also discovered the lost Incan city of Machu Picchu.

Bingham's father, Alfred, however, broke from the family's conservative political past. Before serving as a Connecticut state senator, Alfred Bingham founded and edited in the thirties a left-of-New Deal magazine called Common Sense. The youngest of four children, Stephen Bingham went to Milton Academy and then to Yale, where he became executive editor of the Yale Daily News.

His four years at Yale coincided with the nationwide growth of the civil rights movement, and Bingham worked as the Daily's civil rights reporter. In the fall of 1963 Bingham joined a group of Yale and Stanford students organized by Allard Lowenstein which went to Mississippi to work on a mock gubernatorial election for black candidate Aaron Henry . That

"Whenever anybody ends up dead, you look at the situation and say, Well who was mos~ interested in his being killed?'"

Bingham himself was involved ¡in the causes of the time, he helped establish legal defense committees to assist students who had been harassed, beaten, or arrested during peaceful protests on campus. He also organized a project which brought together law and medical students to look after the health and safety of workers in the San Joaquin Valley. After taking the California bar exam in 1969 he settled in Oakland in a "collective-commune" with several other young lawyers (he was now divorced) and started work with the Berkeley Neighborhood Legal Service Program, concentrating on housing issues and landlord-tenant relationships among the poor.

Although he adhered to a belief in peaceful activism, Bingham saw violence grow commonplace around him. He asserts, however, that chroniclers of the sixties have placed responsibility for the violence on extremist movements, ignoring or down playing the role of officially sanctioned brutality. He cites Kent State, Jackson State, People's Park, and Neshoba County as examples of police violence against activists that led to unnecessary death.

By emphasizing the often unsavory role of the authorities, Bingham introduces a main contention of his defense. The prosecution's case against him rests upon circumstantial evidence that suggests George Jackson could only have obtained a gun that afternoon through Bingham, the last outsider with Jackson before the escape attempt. But Bingham and his lawyers are determined to show that there are other possible explanations- more plausible than the one held by the prosecution- for the events of that day at San Quentin.

fall Bingham was arrested in Clarksdale, and following his graduation in 1964, while working with the Mississippi Summer Project, he was beaten up in the town of Durant. That summer the whole country learned about the South's violent resistance to change when the FBI found three activists dead on the side of a road in N eshoba County, Mississippi.

Yet in 1964, most civil rights activists, led by Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), still believed that change could come from within the system through non-violent protest. As part of this movement, Bingham enrolled that fall in Boalt Hall Law School of the University of California at Berkeley. After marrying in 1965 he volunteered for the Peace Corps and spent an apparently frustrating year-and-a-half in Sierra Leone. He returned to law school at Berkeley two years later, perhaps less idealistic, but still determined to do his part for the movement on a smaller, more effective scale than in the Peace Corps.

From 1967 to 1971, as fervent antiwar demonstrations and the revolutionary Black Power movement disrupted the Bay area, Bingham continued his quiet activism. While Was George Jackson trying to escape

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Pamphlcta uaed in Bingham's fundraising drive Holding receptions to counter the "Cadillac treatment" 26 The New Journal/December 6, 1985

on August 21, 1971? Official reports of what happened that day seem to suggest no other alternative. Convicted of a $71 robbery as a teenager, Jackson had spent 11 years in California prisons and was scheduled to go to trial once more, this time for murder, on August 23, 1971, just two days after his death. While in Soledad prison, he became known for his efforts at organizing black inmates against the institutionalized racism of the California prison system. On January 30, 1970 three black inmates were killed by a prison sharpshooter during a "riot" in the Soledad prison yard. Blacks and whites had been put in1 the yard together, something never done in prisons because of the potential for interracial fighting. To many, Bingham included, this was a conscious effort to encourage a riot which would justify the firing of shots-and the deaths of three prisoners- in reestablishing order. One of the three men killed was W.L. Nolen, another outspoken member of the prison reform movement and a close friend of Jackson.

A week later, Jackson and two other black inmates, collectively dubbed the "Soledad brothers," were charged with throwing a white guard off a railing to his death, and transferred to San Quentin to await trial. The Soledad killings were already drawing public attention when, in late 1970, a collection of Jackson's prison letters entitled Soledad Brother was published. The book, with an introduction by Jean Genet, brought Jackson international recognition as the leader-from-within of the · movement, the new cause adopted by both the Black Panthers and more moderate civil rights activists. At the same time, Huey Newton, the leader of the Black Panther party who had just been released

from prison, made Jackson his "field marshall," giving him theoretical control of the more militant, revolutionary wing of the party and increasing his public prominence.

The Black Panther party was behind the rise of prison reform, a movement which took hold as news of civil rights activity and its gains infiltrated prison walls in the late sixties. At that time, Panther leaders Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver and, finally, George Jackson were either in prison, wanted by authorities or facing trial.

On the inside, men like Newton and Jackson organized prisoners against the use of inhumane treatment and racial tension as means of control, portraying the black prisoner as a victim of the system. On the outside, sympathetic lawyers were constantly visiting prisoners and successfully encouraging journalists and civil rights leaders to do the same.

As a radical attorney working in the Bay area, Stephen Bingham was drawn into the prison movement around 1970. "I was not involved in the prison movement in any large degree, but was recruited for sparse work on a pro bono basis," Bingham said. "The National Lawyers Guild had a support network which, among other things, provided a minimal amount of legal help to the Panthers, particutarly those who were afraid of police raids on their offices and things like that. But my main work was legal services in Berkeley, and so it really was not the kind of thing that, other than in an almost symbolic way-just to give a little free help here and there-! got involved in."

"However, I Juui visited George Jackson four or five times [over a seven month period] to discuss the filing of a federal civil rights suit charging inhuman conditions at the infamous San

Alfred Bingham: t h e start of a family rebellion againet conservatism.

Quentin Adjustment Center, the maximum security section which had 23 Y2 hour lockup, neck chains and ankle chains, strip cells and use of tear gas."

Evidence supports Bingham's claim that he visited San Quentin on August 21 to discuss the civil suit and that he had no other business that day, legal or otherwise, withJackson: he had never been listed as the inmate's attorney of record, nor had he arranged permission prior to the visit to see Jackson .

The prosecutor in Bingham's upcoming trial , Assistant Marin County DA Terrence Boren, charges, however, that Bingham and Jackson wer~ co-conspirators in the plan to escape. Yet he apparently has made no effort to prove the existence of a relationship between Bingham and Jackson nor between Bingham and the

Black Panthers that explains Bingham's involvement in such a plan.

Instead, the state bases its case upon the circumstantial evidence. Because Bingham was the last visitor to see Jackson alive, because, according to prison authorities, the gun "could not have come from the guards" and it "could not have come from the prison," and because, according to the guards, Jackson was strip-searched before entering the visiting room and the gun was discovered during the strip-search after his visit, the DA maintains that "there was no other wa'/' Jackson could have gotten the gun.

The state does have other evidence to use against Bingham. First, a letter said to have been discovered by a dry cleaner in pants belonging to Jimmy Carr, a close friend of J ackson , was The New journaVDecember 6 , 1985 '27

"The only good thing that h appened all day is that we got George Jackson. Killed him.

Shot him in the head." turned over to the FBI. The letter con- "Take the bullets out of the bag. Hurry tains an exchange of messages between a nd give m e the piece in the bag. K eep Carr and J ackson about the possibilty the bullets." No evidence exists conof J ackson's escape from San Quentin. necting Bingham to this message. I t But, as Bingham pointed out in his was found in J ackson's cell, not on his statement upon his return from hiding, body, meaning that, if the note did "California's leading documents ex- have any link to Bingha m's visit, aminer later testified that the po rtion J ackson had taken the time after he of the message supposedly written by began his escape attempt to hide it Carr was not in his handwr iting." in his cell. Moreover, if it were adThen there is also the testimony of a dressed to Bingham, why did it say woman who met a young man named "keep the bullets" if he supposedly "Tony" in a singles bar in San Fran- smuggled two clips of bullets in to cisco the night after Jackson's escape Jackson along with the gun and wig?

The official account of the escape atattempt. The man mentioned that he was from the East Coast and had done tempt finally emerged after a week of something that "had ruined his life." false starts and conflicting stories.

And, in an illegal search of Jackson's Even the simple detail of the type of files after his death, authorities found gun George Jackson was said to have an erased note written on the back of used changed three times during that an envelope which had o nce read, week, ranging from a "tiny gun with

the grips removed" to the eight-inch long, nine-millimeter Astra automatic described in the final report. The Astra's serial number had not been completely filed off, conveniently allowing authorities to trace the gun to the Black Panthers. Six days before the attempt, however, the police had a r rested a Panther and confiscated an Astra, suggesting that the police themselves may have previously had the gun supposedly found on Jackson's body.

Was it the same gun? If so, as a confiscated weapon it could only have reached Jackson from within the prison, most likely through a guard, not from the outside. H ow could a visitor like Bingham smuggle such a weapon into San Quentin without detection? The state's own witnesses

The questio n of Bingham's guilt rests on more than the physical poa1ibilities of 1muggling a weapon into San Quentin.

Suggesting more plausible explanations than the prosecution's for the events of Augus t 21, 1971 28 The New Journal/December 6, 1985

Yale Repertory Theatre Lloyd Richards, Arti stic Director

have said in the pre-trial hearings that Bingham and his folder passed smoothly through the metal detector and that the tape recorder which supposedly contained the gun and clips were routinely inspected . Moreover, could a gun the size of a eight-inch Astra plus two clips be concealed inconspicuously inside of a tape recorder? Again in the pre-trial hearings, the guard who had been on duty at the visitors' desk, said that, yes, the tape recorder he had inspected was large enough to hold a gun that size, but added, "I'm not saying there was a gun."

Allowing that Bingham's tape recorder contained a gun, the question remains how Jackson , once he had it, managed to conceal the weapon during the escorted 50-yard walk from his visiting room back to the Adjustment Center, where it is said to have been discovered. The prosecution asserts that Jackson hid the large gun and bullets under a flimsy afro wig not found by guards until August 24, three days after a thorough search of the Adjustment Center.

The question of Bingham's guilt rests on more than the physical possibilities of smuggling a weapon into San Quentin. Although accused of concealing the gun and bullets inside a tape recorder, he did not bring a tape recorder with him. According to state's witnesses, Bingham and his folder had already been cleared when the guard on duty asked him if he was taking a tape recorder. After Bingham replied that he had not brought one, a woman awaiting permission to visit jackson offered him hers, which he took.

Therefore, the tape recorder and case may have been brought into the prison , not by Bingham , but by another visitor, Vanita Anderson, a 23-year-old woman with close ties to

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the Panthers. I n the upcoming trial the prosecution may name Anderson as a co-conspirator with Bingham and Jackson, but she has not been charged with anything. In fact, in the intervening 14 years, state investigators have never made a serious effort to question her, let alone arrest her. T he only explanation for these actions is either that authorities knew Anderson was not guilty (but how, then, could Bingham be guilty?) and consequently did not interrogate her, or that Anderson herself had been working with the authorities as an infiltrator into the Black Panthers.

Could the flaws and inaccuracies in the prosecution's case have resulted from a hurried attempt to cover up more than a foiled prison break-out? With the

prison movement at its peak and Jackson a celebrity, the entire California State prison system would have been on trial. Jackson's best hope for freedom lay with the legal system, not with a suicidal attempt at escape.

"Whenever anybody ends up d ead , you look at the situation and say, 'Well who was most interested in his being killed?"' said Kathleen Cleaver, onetime Black Panther and former wife of Panther leader, Eldridge Cleaver, who was an inmate in the Adjustment Center during the sixties. "Inside San Quentin, there are any number of people, in particular guards, who could have had it in for him Uackson] for an y length of time.

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which prisoners, in particular black prisoners who they considered troublemakers, ended up dead. That's one of the methods of prison control and intimidation used, so why wouldn't it be used in the case of George Jackson?"

In fact, Warden Jim Park of San Quentin was quoted on August 21 as saying, "The only good thing that happened all day is that we got George J ackson. Killed him. Shot him in the head. " Cleaver, now a second-year student at Yale Law School, believes that J ackson, as a well-known bla~k revolut ionary, frightened authorities with the attention he drew to prison conditions.

"The fact that he ends up dead in San Quentin two days before he was scheduled to go to trial, a public trial on a case from which he probably would have been acquitted- it's clearly not George Jackson who wanted to die that day," Cleaver said.

Cleaver's knowledge of San Quentin and the possibility of smuggling weapons into the prison contradicts the state's assertion that Jackson could have gotten the gun only through Bingham. She remembers that when her husband was in San Quentin, the most unlikely and risky way to get a gun was from a visitor. Instead, "corruptible guards" were the best sources of contraband.

If the gun did come from the inside, if officials or guards did conspire to kill Jackson for fear of his activism, then Bingham may have been enveloped unknowingly by a cover-up. He was, as a California radical attorney, an easy and advantageous target. "Why does an innocent man flee?" Bingham asked the group at the New York reception. "Those of you who remember the sixties know that it was a different time than now, a time when government agencies persecuted

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GALLERY groups and individuals who were when it was reported that the DA had working for change. "conclusive evidence" against him, "The California D epartment of Cor- he decided to flee. "Had I stayed," A fine art gallery geared rections was concerned about the role Bingham said, "there would have been to structure and design, of lawyers in prison reform. The Uhler no fair trial, no bail, and I wouldn't also features wares and Commission set up by Ed 'Meese have survived in the California jails modern objects by artists reported that lawyers were fomenting with those guards. I was accused of and architects-perfect rebellion. The FBI outrageously killing three of their colleagues." des igns for holiday giving. harassed the National Lawyers Guild.

Bingham provides few details about Attorneys were the outside agitators. the 13 years he spent in hiding, saying 1015 State St. We were the catalysts for getting the only that he learned to work in conword out." Bingham believes that he struction, continued his political acNew Haven, Connecticut became the convenient scapegoat for a (203)785-8350 tivism,and lived with a woman for five state government determined to dis- years whom he has since married. He has credit activist lawyers. During an inreturned because he believe~ , today he .--D=--1-'-RRJ...........,~S"=""'H=--H--O~U=s=E~ terview on August 21, Warden Park can receive a just trial. "Things are difen had said, "You can. lay some of the ferent now," he explained. "The at965 STATE STREET, NEW HAVEN, CT blame for these six deaths at the titude people have toward state and naDISTINCTIVE GREETING CARDS doorstep of some of these radical attional governments has changed.

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those who have been actively working for change." Although confident he will be acquitted, he does not and cannot disregard the state's efforts to convict him.

After the reception was over and most people had gone, Wayne Batcheler led Bingham and his father out onto the terrace. From 54 stories high, the view of Manhattan on the clear, unusually warm November night was startling. Bingham pointed to the Chrysler building. "Which one is that?" he asked. Batcheler !'lnswered and then named some of the other impressive towers nearby. Like a visitor seeing the skyline for the first time, or perhaps like someone who had been away for so long he had forgotten its beauty, Bingham continued for a moment to gaze out at the city. I n the next few days he would give more receptions in New York , then on to Boston, and finally back to California where he would continue raising money until J a n uary 7, when his trial begins. The jury will have to decide if Bingham is guilty of five murders. Fourteen years have elapsed since that day in San Quentin, and it will be up to Bingham a nd his lawyers to place the events of August 21, 1971 into the context of an era that, for some, has grown faded in memory. Whatever the outcome of the trial, the mystery surrounding George J ackson's death will probably not be resolved. "People want to know, if I didn't do it, then who did?" Bingham said. "But it's not like Perry Mason.

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New Haven, On Yale Campus The New journal/December 6 , 1985 33

Depths of Deception Rich Blow

Perhaps the only problem with th e Trident is that only one company in the United States h as the facilities to build it: G en e r al D yn amics.

The Tri d e nt Nevada, l a u nc h e d September H, 1985 " We see a new day da wning."

On September 23, 1985, United States Senator Chris Dodd and Congressman Sam Gejdenson, both Connecticut Democrats, led a special, one-timeonly tour through the highly-classified Electric Boat shipyard in Groton, Connecticut. Among the visitors were Sc:nator Sam Nunn (0-Georgia), mmority leader of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator James Exxon (D-Nebraska), and Senator Jeff Bingaman (0-New Mexico).

Dodd and Gejdenson had brought them to see the gigantic shipyard and its imposing creation, the Trident nuclear su bmarine. The senators had already heard a lot about the yard, not much of it good. The Connecticut politicians wanted their guests to like what they saw. After months of scandal and embarrassing political investigations, Electr ic Boat (EB) could use some good P R .

The v isitors were impressed. "There is no more important defense construction in the whole free world," Exxon said at a press conference. The politicians posed for pictures. "We believe we see a new day dawning," said a beaming Gejdenson.

The showcase of the tour was clearly the Trident, EB's most famous product. At 560 feet, the submarine is almost as long as two football fields end to end. It can carry up to 24 nuclear sea-launched cruise missiles. The sub's four torpedo tubes fire the Mark 48 torpedo with unerring accuracy. With a crew of 154, the Trident can cruise the world's oceans for over three months without surfacing. Military ex-

perts consider it the most important element in this country's air-land-sea military triad.

Perhaps the only problem with the Trident is that just one company in the United States has the facilities to build it: General D ynamics (GO), the owner of the Electric Boat shipyard .

GO was the third largest defense contractor in 1984, with six billion dollars in revenue'<,'tnd is the only contractor supplying major weapons to all three branches of the Armed Services: M 1 tanks for the Army, F-16 jets for the Air Force and, of course, the Tridents .

The Navy has purchased 11 Tridents from GO at about $1.7 billion each, making the submarine the nation's most expensive weapon.

But for the past year, General Dynamics has been beseiged by troubling revelations about expense fraud, illegal gratuities, stock manipulation, and more. If military reformers had needed evidence of the power and influence of defense contractors, the General Dynamics case gave it to them. If the Pentagon had needed proof of defense fraud , that was there too. And if members of Congress had needed to be reminded of the "revolving door' from government to big business, they didn't have to look far into General Dynamics.

Yet after all had been said and done, General Dynamics got away with it. A year of government uproar over "waste, fraud and abuse," and GO's earnings are increasing, its stock is strong, and in August the company was awarded a con.tract to build The New JournaVDecember 6, 1985 35

Aggressive, arrogant Takis Veliotis managed the Electric Boat shipyard from 1976-1981. Veliotis was widely credited with bringing an overdue, overbudget submarine-building program back on course. After he became an executive vice-president, word among company insiders placed Veliotis as heir apparent to GD Chairman David Lewis.

But in 1983, Veliotis suddenly resigned from GD and returned to his homeland of Greece, saying only that he had to tend a family estate rumored GD is nearly a century old, and an ex- to be worth hundreds of millions of pose of the company could probably dollars. Shortly after his return, the begin before the First World War. But Justice Department indicted Veliotis, perhaps the easiest place to start is with claiming that he had accepted $1.3 an aristocratic Greek millionaire million in kickbacks from an Electric named P. Takis Veliotis and a dog Boat subcontractor.

In Greece, American law has no named Fursten.

another Trident.

Everyone has heard stories of military rip-offs-$500 hammers, $700 coffeepots- the list could go on almost indefinitely. But such stories only hint at the greater flaws in defense spending; long after they have faded from headlines, deeper, more fundamental problems remain. Why is it that the scandals come and go but the roots of the corruption linger on? The General Dynamics scandal provides many of the answers.

!"

8

The Electric Boat division of General Dynamics in Groton, Connecticut "It would send shock waves through Congress if GD stopped making Tridents."

36 The New Journal/ Decembe r 6 , 1985

power over Veliotis. Nonetheless, he still has millions in assets tied up in this country and is unable to leave Greece for fear of arrest. Perhaps that explains why in January 1984, Veloitis informed Tile Washington Post that he wanted to make a deal with the Justice Department: in exchange for immunity, he would give them tapes and documents proving fraud at General Dynamics. Despite its reluctance to listen to a fugitive, the Department agreed to hear Veliotis out, choosing to decide afterwards about his immunity.

A few months later, the trut~ came out about Fursten the dog.

Fursten belonged to a GD vicepresident fond enough of his pet to bring it on business trips. During one conference at Kiawah Island resort in .South Carolina, Fursten's owner had to board the dog at a kennel, the Silver Maple Farm. Kennel rent was $155, apparently more than the vicepresident wanted to pay. So he claimed Fursten as a business expense and put the bill on the Navy's tab. But when Veliotis started talking, the government found out about Fursten.

Fursten's bill, it turned out, was only one of thousands of illegitimate expenses GD (and Electric Boat in particular) had charged to the government. Among some of the most egregious items: $1'8, 650 for country club memberships; $15,705 for golf shirts and caps; $251,000 for public relations dinners; $300,301 for company promotions, and amazingly enough, $15,000 for the Grace Commission on Waste and Fraud in Government. The grand total was about $250 million.

"If it weren't for Veliotis and the subsequent publicity, it's hard to imagine that any of that money would have been disallowed," says Richard

Launching the Trident USS Hyman G . Rickover, named for the Navy admiral who masterminded the Navy's sub building program In 1985, General Dynamics was fined $676,000 for giving Rickover nearly $60,000 in illegal gratuities.

The Ne w Journal/ December 6, 1985 37

Kaufman, general council to Congress' Joint Economic Committee. Kaufman has been investigating the case for Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire, a Democrat with a reputation for battling government waste.

Colonel Robert O'Brien, deputy ass istant secretary of defense, disagrees with Kaufman. "Our investigators were on these things before Congress," O'Brien claims. "Congress just made them public."

In this case, the fact that the Pentagon was auditing GO's claims proves nothing about Pentagon knowledge of their fraudulence. Pentagon auditors challenge only a small percentage of expense claims, and even if a claim is challenged , studies show there is about a 50-50 chance it will eventually be paid.

It took the investigations of Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee John Dingle (D-Michigan) and Senator Proxmire to sting the Pentagon into action. Both politicians held Congressional hearings on the case and spoke out in the press, embarrassing the company and the Pentagon.

Pressun..d mto action, the Pentagon fought against its critics and apparently penalized GO for its financial maneuvers. In March, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger announced he was suspending $40 million in payments to GD for 30 days.

Weinberger also stated that all defense contractors would now have to swear to the legitimacy of expense claims under penalty of perjury.

Then in May, Navy Secretary John

Lehman announced that the Navy would withhold the awarding of any new contracts to two GD divisions, Electric Boat in Groton and the Pomona missile factory in Los Angeles. General Dynamics was rife with "a pervasive corporate attitude that we find inappropriate to the public trust," Lehman pronounced.

Lehman established three conditions the company had to meet before he would consider lifting the suspension.

According to Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Max Allen, "General Dynamics had to establish and enforce a rigorous code of ethics for â&#x20AC;˘all company officers and employees. Second, they had to resubmit and certify all outstanding overhead proposals, and, third, they had to negotiate those proposals in good faith."

For its part, once GD realized the c: .2 scandal would not go away, the com~ pany acted quickly to cut its losses.

First came an announcement that GD 0 ~ was withdrawing $23 million in ex~ pense claims. Then David Lewis, GD l; chairman, announced that he would resign his position by the beginning of ~ 1986. Few doubted that he was a casualty of the scandal. From all appearances, General Dynamics was in 8 trouble.

1 f

The launching of the fast-attack submarine Providence, August 4, 1984 Electric Boat had the highest number of Illegitimate expenses of any GD division.

38

New ournal/December 6 1985

Three months later, the Navy held another news conference. The crisis was over. It was lifting its ban on new contracts to GD. "There was no pattern of corruption," announced Everett Pyatt, assistant secretary of the Navy for logistics and shipbuilding. The Navy proudly asserted that it had combed through 97 million expense vouchers in 90 days. GD would have to lower its expense claims by $55 million.

Within hours after the suspension was lifted, the Navy awarded GD a

$616 million contract to begin construction on the 12th Trident. As far as the Navy was concerned, everything was back to normal.

Others following the case weren't convinced. Dingle and Proxmire in particular charged that the Navy had done nothing to punish the company seriously. By cracking down on General Dynamics, they argued, the Pentagon could have set an example for the entire defense industry. But no one was sure how General Dynamics had convinced the Navy to be so reasonable.

General Dynamics certainly isn't telling. Company strategy throughout the investigations has been remarkably like that of their most famous product, the submarine: dive down silently underneath the turbulence and hope that when you come up again, the danger "has passed. Bjll Pedace, director of public affairs at Electric Boat, politely refused to be inter;,;iewed. Pedace would only say, "It's company policy not to give interviews." Or as another GD official put it, "We don't need another snake in the pit."

Still, company critics have continued their digginr , and what they have discovert>d is alarming: the Navy's suspension had literally no effect on GD's economic well-being.

"The only consequence the Navy's actions have had is the publicity associated with them," Proxmire says.

"I don't think that would bother a firm like GD very much. They didn't lose any contracts, and they're right back in business in a big way."

"General Dynamics laughed all the way to the bank," adds Pete Stockton, who investigated the company for Congressman Dingle. "They may have lost somewhere close to $100 million worth of overhead when we forced

P . Takis Veliotis: the Greek millionaire who exposed the General Dynamics fraud is stiU an outlaw in this country.

them to retract their claims. But in the whole scheme of things at GD, that isn't that much. The suspension they had during that time, and the actions taken by Lehman- that's not going to hurt General Dynamics."

Logically, it would be in the Navy's best interest to crack down hard on GD. Here was a golden opportunity to strike back against a greedy contractor caught with its hand in the till. A crackdown would send a warning signal to other contractors and a welcome signal to the American public that the Navy was fighting defense fraud. So why did the Navy let this one get away?

The answer has a lot to do with the symbiotic relationships the Pentagon cultivates with all of its contractors, the

you-scratch-my-back-1'11-scratch-yours friendships. "They use each other to increase the budget and to get the weapons that they want," Stoc_kton says. "After a while, the relationship is . so tight that you feel, hey, maybe this is an aberration, we can rationalize that. But we're not really ¡g oing to screw ¡our friends to the wall and actually hurt them economically."

"The Navy can send two messages," Senate Investigator Kaufman explains. "Navy officials could indicate to the company that they've been embarrassed, and they don't expect that to happen again. Or they could pass along that this is just a couple of isolated cases blown out of proportion, and they're not going to allow some wild congressional committees to drive a wedge between them and their most The New JournaVDecember 6 , 1985 39

to your district," he argues. "If anything that makes you concerned about the status of that company, it's that they have a significant number of employees in your district."

Though Gejdenson's concern for workers is well-meant, it avoids the national issue of defense fraud altogether. The problem arises when congressmen, representing GD divisions all over the country, start saying the same thing. Democrat or Republican, it makes no difference when the economic prosperity of your own district is threatened.

"Before we started our hearings," Pete Stockton rememh'ers, "Tip O'Neill and Jim Wright from Fort Worth (where GD makes F-16s] put their ¡a rms around Dingle and said, 'Gee, John, don't you have something Boat is his district. As EB points out in else better to do with your time? These its annual report, the GD division is a ¡ guys at GD are nice guys.' But once the "Major Factor in Local Economy." In hearings started nobody has tried to 1984 Electric Boat paid $620 million in defend GD because what they've do"ne wages and salaries; $4 million in propis just so blatant." erty taxes; $7 million in unemployment tax, and spent $70 million at 653 Connecticut businesses.

Political influence and friendly relaElectric Boat's imposing presence in tionships with the Pentagon are not the his district makes life tricky for only cards General Dynamics can play Gejdenson, a Democrat who generally in times of trouble. As long as GD has opposes Pentagon demands. Gejden- a monopoly on the Trident, the Penson depends on EB for votes and tagon's options in punishing the commoney just as EB and its workers pany are limited, and GD knows it. In depend on Gejdenson for representa1976, during a cost dispute with the tion. So when GD's expense chicanery Navy, GD threatened to halt Trident came to light, Gejdenson had to walk a construction entirely unless the dispute fine line. His solution was, in a way, was promptly settled-which it was. quite clever: don't defend the "The major contractors have these sercompany, defend the workers. vices by the balls," Stockton says. "The "We had to make sure that there was services supposedly have nowhere else a separation between EB and its to go for their weapons." "It would corporate management and its send shock waves through Congress if decisions," Gejdenson says. "We didn't General Dynamics stopped making want the workers punished for some- Tridents," Senator Chris Dodd said in thing they hadn't done."

February. Thus, debarment-proGejdenson is at least forthright about hibiting a company from doing his priorities. "Your first obligation is business with the government- is out.

"The major contractors have these services by the balls," Stockton says. "The services supposedly have nowhere else to go for their weapons."

valuable contractors. And it's hard to tell which way they're leaning."

Of course, Pentagon officials are not the only ones reluctar;lt to crack down on a defense contractor. Many congressmen and senators are similarly inclined. They may have a defense company in their district- and defense companies are traditionally large employers-or they may rely on campaign contributions from contractors around election time.

"The contractors will do a lot to influence politicians," admits one Congressional aide. "They'll give contributions, do favors, take people up in their airplanes- stroking them. They really get their hooks in these guys, especially the congressmen, who have to get elected every two years. The representatives all want to cut defense until it comes to their district and then they say, 'Oh shit, we can't do that.' But the contractors, they lean in¡ on these senators and representatives, and they give in every time."

In this case, the congressman getting leaned on is Sam Gejdenson; Electric 40 The New Tournai/December 6. 1985

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At the moment, there is no one else to give the contract to.

Of this country's other shipyards, only Newport News Shipbuilding, a Virginia corporation which builds the Navy's nuclear aircraft carriers, is close to being able to build a Trident. But awarding Newport News a Trident contract (assuming the company would bid on one, though it never has before) would probably increase the price of the Trident. "GD has already built all but the last seven or so of the Tridents the Pentagon has planned for," Gejdenson says. "T o start splitting up the last seven, the cost of tuning up [Newport News] would be enormous.

The question is, 'Do you want to pay the price?'"

Colonel O'Brien at Department of D efense (DOD) adds "People are constantly crying for competition. Still, as the saying goes, 'Only God can· make a tree, but only Newport News Drydock can make a nuclear aircraft carrier.' To the people who are out yammering for competition, I say fine, get three or four friends together with eight or 10 billion dollars and build a shipyard.''

Lieutenant Allen at the Pentagon confirms that the Navy has asked Newport News to consider bidding for the next Trident contract, but there is a good chance that request will come to nothing. Preparing a bid on a military contract involves a huge amount of time and money; Newport News might not want to commit itself to a bid only to see Electric Boat win

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another Trident. Uack Schnaedter, corporate information manager at Newport News, declined to say whether his company plans to bid for the next Trident.)

For Senator Proxmire, breaking up the GD monopoly would be an effective way to punish the company. Proxmire advocates the establishment of "competing government shipyards building essential weapons systems like the Trident, aircraft carriers. and so forth. You often have one, two, at most three firms bidding for a contract,H P roxmire says. "In that kind of a situa· tion, at best you have collusion ." But P roxmire doesn't see much hope for

the establishment of such shipyards.

"It's a mistake .we made many years ago," he says, "contracting these weapons like the Trident to private mdustry, and it'd take a long time to correct it now. And certainly this Administration would resist the idea of competing shipyards."

Congressman Dingle and Investigator Stockton have an even more radical plan: a government takeover of the Electric Boat shipyard.

"A takeover is provided for in the contract, if they breach the contract, which they did," Stockton explains.

"So the Navy on an interim basis moves in and operates the yard. All

you do is knock off the top 15 people from General Dynamics and everyone else stays in place. Then you put the contract up for competitive bidding. If any other contractor saw that, they'd think, 'H o ly shit, if we screw around with the Army o r the Air Force, we may be the next o ne."'

"That would be nationalizing one of the two yards which can build submarines, " O'Brien counters . " It wouldn't be practical and it was never seriously considered."

In truth, Stockton's plan would hardly lead to the kind of nationalization O'Brien fears. But given GD's influence with Congress and the Pentagon, O 'Brien is right about the impracticality of such a move. The company would certainly exert all its considerable influence to prevent any takeover. Many politicians would fight such a move by claiming that the invaluable Trident program would be jeopardized. C learly, the takeover of a defense corporation with nine billion dollars in government contracts will never happe n while Ronald Reagan is president.

What then could the Navy have done to teach GD a lesson? There are plausible optio ns. Besides forcing the company to withdraw its fraudulent expense claims, the Navy could have fined General D ynamics so heavily that G D (and every other defense contractor) would hesitate to try cheating the government.

Perhaps the most effective way to punish a corporation is to punish the individuals who run it. There are any number of charges the Navy a nd Justice Department could levy against G D officials in court- fraud being the m ost obvious, treason the most serious. And if company officials were held personally liable for their law-

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"Only God can make a tree, but only Newport N ews Drydock can make a nuclear aircraft carrier." breaking decisions, then they would be less likely to make such moves.

"The problem with white-collar crime is that it's often profitable to cheat now because you may not have to pay later," New Haven Congressman Bruce Morrison says. Morrison is a member of the House SubCo~mittee on Crime, which is holding heanngs on General Dynamics early next year. "I am appalled at the notion of individuals getting off while com panies pay the price," Morrison says.

"That's not the way to control whitecollar crime, that's the way to promote it. And 1 am by no means satisfied with the way this case has been handled."

General D ynamics' future is still far from secure. Both Proxmire and Dingle are continuing their investigations into the company. Newport News may bid for and win the next Trident contract. In Greece, Takis Veliotis says he has not revealed his most damaging tapes. General Dynamics Vice· ~re~ident George Sawyer was recently mdtcted by the Justice Department· Sawy~r. is ~harged with secret!; negottattng wtth GD for a job while still in his post as assistant secretary of the Navy. In that position Sawyer presided over the awarding of some five billion dollars in contracts to GD. But on the financial side, things

don't look bad at all for General Dynamics. A recent report by Barron's, a financial weekly, predicted "further and substantial gains" for GD stock on its nine billion dollars in earnings.

Next year that figure should top $1 0 billion. Barron's conclusion? General Dynamics is "bloody but unbowed." If they're right, and GO's profits continue to grow, then there's no reason to expect any significant change in the way General Dynamics conducts its business.

What is perhaps mos~ frustrating about this situation is that there is no easy villain- not General Dynamics, not the Navy, not Capitoi Hill . As Senator Proxmire says, "It's hard to blame the people involved as much as the system." As long as the United States is committed to building weapons like the Trident, there will always be scandals like this one. There is just too much money involved, too much temptation to cheat, too much that falls through the cracks. For many of the people involved, the problem of defense fraud is a secondary consideration. The important thing is simply that the weapom get built. But the widespread corruption and disheartening amorality of the defense industry make you wonder. If you can't trust the detenders of America with your money, should you trust them with your life?

•

Rich Blow, a senior in Branford, is executive editor <if TN].

Books/Miles Kronby

Codes of Honor Honorable Men

by Louis Auchincloss 1985 Houghton Miffiin Compa ny $15 .95, 278 pages

Revi s ioni sts o ften expose the weaknesses and corruptions of the people who were once our heroes- they reveal o ur champions as rascals a nd our supermen as boys. Babe Ruth, alas, was a lush; J ohn F. K e nnedy, it seems, preferred blondes. But in his new novel, Honorable Men, Louis Auchincloss smashes his idol even as he builds it. Despite a heavy-handed approach, Honorable Men is an intriguing and often disturbing study of an American "hero" and why he fails.

The hero, Chip Benedict, has credentials simila r enough to those of Auchincloss to suggest that Chip may be the author's grim selfparody. Their resumes are almost interchan geable: like Auchincloss, Chip went to a New England prep school , graduated from Yale in 1938 (Auchincloss was '39), attended the University of Virginia Law School, and served with the Navy's a mphibious fleet during WW II . They both began their legal careers with Wall Street firm s and went on to direct cultural organizations in New York City.

D espite his highly distinguished public career, however, Chip disappoints himself. Although he was leader of his class at Yale, decorated for bravery in the war, a nd praised as a businessman by Forbts a nd Fortune, he sees himself as a "moral crook." The novel unearths a side of Chip's conscience that may apply to the conscience of the American elite in general: Chip is smart, handsome, welleducated and rich, yet he is tortured by the expectations of his class.

Chip's upbringing emphasized the principle that "people who have been born with certain privileges . . . are therefore bound to contribute more

Author Auchincloss: creating a handsome, rich, well-educated yet tormented h ero

than average to their fellow men."

Chip wants to be righteous, but he's not quite sure how to do it. By creating glib shortcuts through every moral issue to bypass what he sees as his inherent "wickedness", Chip fails to distinguish honor from decency. Thus, even dilemmas like the war in Vietnam become simple problems with simple solutio ns . . . . â&#x20AC;˘can't you see that this is the first real moral challenge we've had since Pearl Harbour? And that we've actually elected to meet it without using the bomb? That we've chosen to fight not a war, but a duel, and with prescribed weapons? We, who could annihilate Hanoi with a single blow! It's .. . well, it's magnificent! It restores honor to a cynical globe.

It's as if Chip has learned his morality by rote - he wields aphorisms like tarnished swords of justice. For exam-

pie, when his best friend submits a plagiarized article to the Law School Review, Chip forces him to withdraw fro m the University. "It's not a question of forgiveness," Chip says, "We took the pledge to observe the honor code when we came down here."

Fo r aJI his apparent insensitivity, Chip seem s fundam entally misguided- by his family, church and school- rather than wicked.

Auchincloss chose two narrators to tell this story. About half of the chapters appear in the third person, yet this narrator tends to lapse into confusing Socratic dialogues that may or may not be projections of Chip's thoughts. For example, Chip's superficial charm, his "blue eyes and golden hair," are described as a "mask."

And had the mask been torn away, the plaudits might have been silenced, to be The New Journal/December 6, 1985 45

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succeeded by what? By jeers or even a hail of pebblestones? Not inevitably.

That one was a fraud did not have to mean that one was vicious. Perhaps one had to be a fraud. Why? Did there have to be an answer?

In the other half of the chapters, Auchincloss turns the story over to Chip's wife, Alida, who "takes pen to paper" and writes in the first person.

Before Alida's marriage to Chip, she is a sharp, independent, ferociously ambitious woman (Debutante of the Year), quite unlike the drunken lap dog s h e becomes. Conditioned by domesticity, she learns to wag her tail for Chip's presence, mid-morning cocktails, and "the blessed narcotic of bridge." This contr ast is frustrating because Auchincloss doesn't offer sufficient explanation for her transformation. Chip may somehow have reduced her to a weakling, despite the fact that she seemed more than a match for him when they were courting. The insufficient explanation · of Alida's decline suggests that, a fter introducing her as a driving force, Auchincloss decided to downplay her dynamic role in the story so that he could concentrate on Chip. · The once-honorable woman remains i!l the book, but her narrative con'ri-ibutions are no longer trenchant, but merely fatuous and self-pitying. "And what was left of me," she asks, "but a shivering, naked, crouching figure whose G-String of a soul-saving personal resentment had been brutally snatched away?" The double-narrator technique would have been much more effective if Alida had remained consistent. As it is, she does not make a believable victim.

The dialogue i n Honorable Men is like a series of prepared speeches.

In one scene a 15-year-old boy says to Chip, "1 ask you, Tarzan, have you ever seen such a collection of bilious crones as our cleaning women? They say your grandfather inspects each candidate for the job. That o ld boy must have a depth of concupiscence to spot so precisely the attributes in a female that would make the most sex-starved boy

vomit!" At times conversations sound like the Hardy Boys act in g sophisticated. Here, Chip a nd his college roommate are discussing their parents: They don't really think I'll make it.

They think I'm going to trip and break my stupid neck!"

"Which would really mean breaking theirs?"

"Ah, you see it too!" cried Chip, striking the arm of his chair. "It's true of their whole damn generation, teachers as well as parents. When Tinker slobbers about the drowning of Shelley, don't you know that he's keeping his good eye on you?

He's afraid you might think he's a ghastly ham 'al'ld that Percy Bysshe was an ass to go samng in a storm., Occasionally, Auchincloss assaults his reader with blunt symbolism. For example, as Chip watches two bald eagles in their aviary at the zoo, he thinks to himself, "these huge birds expressed the dilemma of the times. What could they do but fly helplessly to and fro between the moral cause and the practical horror, encaged in the limitations of the soul?"

Despite these flaws in the structure of the novel, the premise of Honorable Men is valuable: extreme Calvinism can produce a destructive moral rigidity. Chip believes he serves some sort of heroic cause whe n he betrays his friel!ds, his wife, and his parents. This paradox, as a comment on the relationship between humans and faith, is by far the most interesting part of the novel. Yet Auchincloss struggles to build his fiction around this idea.

Perhaps, if Auchincloss sees C hip as his alter-ego, then it is Chip who offers the story's message: "if you can deal with the world as it is, you can handle truth, and if you can handle truth, you're free." With Honorable Men, we must get past the fiction before we come to the truth.

•

Miles Kronby is a sophomore in Saybrook.

erthought/John Vannorsdall One of the tasks of the new president of Yale will be to continue the work of Mr. Giamatti in establishing humanist rather than theistic languages, myths and rites to describe and rehearse the purposes of the institution.

One of the tasks of the new University chaplain will be to affirm the new president's efforts to do ·so, while at the same time rigorously describing the inadequacies of whatever the new president proposes. If both will accept their respective tasks in this area, it could mean an interesting future.

It's part of the problem that the history must be given.

Most people know that Yale, some centuries ago, was started by ministers. Too few realize how profoundly and pervasively Christian concepts and practices have shaped the institution and its people. Yale's purpose was to prepare men for the service of the Church and civil state.

That one should serve the civil state was a sub-set of service to the Church, as in love of God and neighbor. The languages taught included Hebrew and Greek, in part to facilitate the reading and understanding of the Holy Scriptures. It was God's world which was to be studied, and when Yale decided to take science seriously, it sent a Christian professor to England to learn science so the conflict between science and religion would not find root at Yale. The president of Yale was the stated preacher for Chapel services and all students and faculty members were required to attend. The rhythm of each day was morning and evening prayer.

The ethos of Yale was Calvinist Christianity. There was a price to be paid for its tightly woven fabric. Jews and Roman Catholics were few . in number, both within the student body and among the faculty, and those who did come to Yale, were allowed to come, were expected to live and work within the assumptions and practices which each Yale generation inherited and embraced.

Some mark the change-time by the coming of Arthur Hadley, the first lay president. More likely the change actually occurred in the period following the Second World War when the college increased in size and large numbers of veterans could afford to come, men made self-confident and mobile by warfare.

Vestiges of the past are still with us. Prayers and hymns at Freshman Convocation are a shock to the many who have no idea that this is Yale's source and tradition.

Crosses adorn our buildings and banners, a chapel is the largest structure in our central quadrangle, the graduation procession detours around Center Church and the festivities begin with a prayer by the chaplain and end with a bishop's benediction. Substantively, however, the language of Yale's self-description and stated purposes, the mythology,· rites and rhythms of Yale, when discernable at all, are non-theistic. The student body is marvelously heterodox, there is no religious test for faculty appointments, and a significant part of the student body acknowledges no religion at all.

Whatever might have been the possibility of sustaining Yale's Calvinist Christian cohesiveness, that time is now past for both Yale and for the nation. Sound arguments can be offered for affirming the change and embracing a rich variety of ways of viewing ourselves. It means that we must find a new language. The time of reaction against opr reli!tious roots should be over and our defensiveness ended. It was not necessary for Payne-Whitney's Fall folder to be headed "Body and Mind." The classic formulation, "Body, Mind, Spirit," is more accurate and

need not imply theistic religion. The president, in naming what occurs at Yale, need no longer omit religious services and events. More people are probably involved in some form of religious practice than are involved in athletics. It's just a fact, and there is no need to be defensive about it.

President Giamatti has made a good beginning in his Freshman Convocation and Baccalaureate addresses. The word civility has taken root. We have been encouraged to avoid apocalyptic boding and to affirm that we have a future, to accept our responsibility to society, to rejoice in our differences and to learn from one another, and to affirm the sciences within our liberal arts curriculum. Most of this language has not taken root among us. It has no liturgical valence and there are no humanist hymns by which to sing it, no rhythm that we should care to dance to it. _M?reover, Yale College is not one college, but twelve. Except for one freshman experience, and one for seniors, we have found no way to gather: the great congregation for the purpose of rehearsing our identity.

It's not unreasonable to ask whether we even have a governance structure which allows for an inclusive discussion of the things we value and of the ways in which we shall say it. Do the officers of the University ponder such matters? Are the dean of Yale College and the chaplain, the next ranked persons, included? Do masters and deans spend time searching the humanist tradition for adequate language and ceremonies? There is no evidence.

There are areas in which Yale has spent energy on the question of what is to be valued. Concerning South Africa, we ·have asked what it means to behave ethically.

Concerning equal opportunity, we have spoken and acted, though often prompted by the commonwealth rather than leading it. In both areas we may have been equivocal, but we have tried to define ourselves in humanist language. On the other hand, we chose to approach the issues raised by Local 34 and the issues posed by the energy crisis largely from the standpoint of the narrowly defined interests of the institution.

One thing can be said for the various chaplains and the religious communities: There is little or no effort to press Yale to return to the days of Calvinist cohesion. On the other hand, the chaplains have not adequately appreciated the difficulty which the University faces as it attempts to replace Calvinism with humanism. Neither have the chaplains and members of the religious communities said clearly enough how they see the world, the person, and the meaning of higher education. We have not well understood how our worship and pieties, feasts and acts of penitence, function for ourselves and what they contribute to the common life of humankind.

Both the new chaplain and the new president have an important contribution to make to Yale's future selfunderstanding. Hopefully, the process of shaping a new language, new rites and myths, will be shared by all the people of the University. The religious communities will always find humanism inadequate, lacking in numinous power, unnerved by evil, without processes of repentance and renewal, and with an inadequate history and future.

But we can have the best of both: A university determined to clarify and rehearse what it values, and within it religious communities performing the role of responsible critic and themselves living and declaring what they consider a more profound and adequate way.

•

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