Uncle Sam is After Me

Sort of. I was drafted twice and had my status changed a few times.

The first time I was literally only moments away from being asked to take the symbolic `step forward' when a security formality - a blacklist of known/suspected Communist organizations - had the name of a group I had inadvertedly joined when I made a donation at an anti-war meeting. I had never been active in the group (Trade Unionists for Peace), but didn't object to being a member and had no idea that they were on the blacklist. I ticked it off at the Induction Center just to be honest. It didn't occur to me that they'd let that get in the way. But it did. They sent me to the `rejects bench' to get my bus ticket home. I was all set to spend the night in a brig or prison somewhere for refusing to take the step forward. Even brought along a book of anti-war quotes in some naieve belief that they'd let me keep it in my cell :).

The second time followed a bizarre series of events that, in chronological order, included:

* Being suddenly reclassified as `mentally unfit for the Armed Forces' (no psychiatrists, no history of mental illness, no nothing). It made it impossible to get a decent job.

* Being held by FBI and Military Intelligence agents for a week of daily interrogation without charges or the benefit of counsel (in the basement of the federal building in Pontiac, Michigan) where they attempted to badger, berate and intimidate me into dropping my anti-war/pacificist views and provide the names of the people I associated with. I had no idea how long this was going to go on or even if they were ever going to let me go. I was scared but I was also _very_ pissed off. [ On the way home on the final day, the FBI agent who was driving pulled out a `reefer'(marihuana), lit it and asked me if I wanted a toke! It was so bizarre and unexpected that I didn't know what to say at first and finally managed to blurt out a `no thanks'. He just smiled and said something about how I could do some real hard time if I ever got caught with one of those. I tore my bag apart when I got home but there was nothing in it. I did get the message though - loud and clear. ]

* Being subjected to a very thorough FBI harassment campaign that seemed to be intended to isolate me from my friends, family and any employers I managed to find. It worked in part. My father disowned me after being confronted by the FBI in front of all his friends at work. An uncle for whom I had been working fired me after the agents visited him. Most of my friends and acquaintances didn't want to see me again. Many employers changed their minds about hiring me after a visit from the FBI. I was under enormous pressure. I couldn't work, I couldn't talk to anyone and I had these guys following me around everywhere.

Years later, watching a movie about Andrei Sakhorov when he was under house arrest in the Soviet Union, all I could think was - Been there; Done that. I knew exactly how he felt.

[ In the deepest, darkest part of this period when practically down to my last dime and effectively all alone, I received a letter of acceptance, a check and a plane ticket to Boston from a long forgotten job application I had filled out months before. I had just become an employee of the White House's Office of Economic Opportunity - a VISTA volunteer! Only in America would half the government be trying to kill you off while the other half wants to hire you :) It was while I was with VISTA in Boston that I was reclassified 1A. And I was just beginning to enjoy being young and insane.]

The second and final, draft notice came while I was half way through my contract with VISTA in Boston. A Democratic Party `ward-healer' in the neighborhood heard about it and asked if I'd mind if Senator Robert Kennedy (in New York no less) helped out with an appeal. Meanwhile, the `healer' circulated a petition in the neighborhood asking Selective Service to bug off at least until I'd finished my VISTA time. But the appeal was a sham. They wouldn't tell me when or where it would be heard nor allow any submission or represenative present for my side. They ignored the neighborhood's petition. I think Sen. Kennedy's people felt worse than I did.

You were a victim of FBI harrassment. I would like you to tell me as much as you can remember, if possible. Forgive me if I'm asking you to write a book, but it's all going to the public record.

After 30 years many of the specifics are gone. I remember applying for a job at American Cellulose(?) and coming back the next day for an interview. The first thing the personel manager told me was that he was an ex-FBI agent and had had me checked out by his old friends. He then proceeded to lay into me about how I was a traitor to my country, no good Commie bastard, etc. etc. I assumed I didn't get the job and left as he still ranted and raved behind me. I applied for another job at a Ford assembly plant. They told me I had a heart murmur. Apparently it was only a temporary condition as it hadn't shown up before or since ;). To work for Chrysler I needed a security clearance from the FBI so I knew that was a waste of time. Even for a lousy minimum-wage job I'd get hired just to get a phone call later telling me they'd changed their minds. The only guy who hung in there was the manager of a gas station who was so desperate for a graveyard pump-jockey who could do simple arithmetic that he hired me. He told me he had a visit from a couple FBI agents who tried to persuade him otherwise but...he _was_ desperate. The rest of the time it was `the strange car' parked across the street. The neighbors pointed it out to me - the agents had been around knocking on doors asking about me.

The FBI harassment didn't end with my move to Canada. Three incidents in particular stand out in my memory. The first involved one of my sister's who died of cancer while in her teens. My mother concealed the illness and death from me until after the funeral out of fear that I might try to show up. Guess who was at the funeral? Guess who followed the procession to the grave? Two FBI agents. The second involved my patriotic father who, while sleeping off a night shift one afternoon, was awoken by the sound of someone moving around in what should have been an empty house. It was an FBI agent who had broken into the house and was looking for letters from me. Pop threw him physically out the back door :). The final incident involved a lot of pressure a young FBI jerk put on my mother to contact me with an offer. He said that if I agreed to accept Consciencous Objector status they'd drop all the charges and I could come home no strings attached. The offer was so ludicrous I couldn't believe it. It broke Ma's heart when I dismissed the possibility. They just don't stop coming at you. It just re-enforced my confidence in the wisdom of moving to Canada.

The 'mentally unfit' classification constituted a flagrant abuse of power to me. Do you agree?

The `mentally unfit' classification demonstrated to me that they were willing to abuse their powers. How many others carried that classification and the stigma that goes with it? Is it any different from the old Soviet government branding dissidents as crazy? Did any of our crazies/dissidents end up in mental hospitals? Who knows? Who would even ask? Who would lend credence to the word of a crazy person?

Did your friends tell you that they couldn't see you because of explicit FBI threats and warnings?

Not that they couldn't but that they thought it best that they didn't. I understood. I was as afraid of involving anyone else in that mess. It was the kind of situation that people had to voluntarily involve themselves in. Few did.

You said agents followed you everywhere.Are you sure?

Everywhere I turned people told of visits by the FBI. I felt surrounded.

I think my questions are important because I remember the paranoia the antiwar movement felt back then.

No problem. They used the paranoia - it was just another tool.

Your comments validated feelings I've carried around with me for years and years. The FBI (especially the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover) was no better than the KGB.

It's a lot like being an electrician - no matter where you go electricity is the same and the techniques for dealing with it are very similar. We're the juice they've got to try channeling. In the 60's we were lightning and they didn't have a chance. We blew all their breakers and melted the lines. No wonder they were so mad :).

I know you compared yourself to Sakharov for good reason, but your week long interrogation reminded me of K from Kafka's "The Trial."

We shared a similar experience. What has always puzzled me is the obvious fact that I'm not even vaguely of Academician Sakharov's stature but it didn't buy me any slack whatsoever. The government expends the same time, energy and expense on the insignificant as it does on the significant. If they'd just given me the money and said "Take a hike kid.", it might have saved us all a lot of trouble :). Kafka's always been a favorite.

I want to talk a whole lot about your week's "holiday" with the FBI and military intelligence (now there's an oxymoron). First of all, I have questions:

How were you detained? Did they present you with an arrest warrant, or were you persuaded to go with them?

No arrest warrant. Just one morning they appeared at the front door, flashed their badges and said come along. I'd never seen an FBI agent before and was the good kid from the suburbs. I doubt if their intention was to "brainwash" me. Certainly there wasn't any physical abuse. We sat on opposite sides of a table dominated by one of those big reel-to-reel tape recorders. Usually there were two to four agents on their side of the table. I only knew them by their affiliation: Army Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, etc. .

Each morning I was given a transcript of the previous day and instructed to read it then sign off on it. It was cool at best and outrightly hostile at worst. The only term that adequately describes it is: mind-fucking. Closer to what a hostile attorney does in a courtroom. Except of course I had no right to cross-examination be sure. That's one of the residuals of an experience like this - I've carried a fear that the jerks found a couple other lives to screw up.

What kinds of questions would they ask, things would they say or threats would they make to "badger, berate and intimidate [you] into dropping [your] anti-war/pacificist views?"

I remember a lot of questions about pacificism. I wasn't sure if I was in the groups I was involved in. The first time through I mentioned a bookstore operated by a retired ex-Merchant Mariner and his wife figuring it was far too innocent to be of any use to them. Whoa! They jumped on it like a dog on a bone. I'd like to believe that that was as close as I came to involving anyone else but I can't be sure. That's one of the residuals of an experience like this - I've carried a fear that the jerks found a couple.

The first session very naieve, willing to try a straight answer at all their questions certain that in an hour or two it would all be over. But as matters wound on it became apparent to me that I wasn't chatting with friends or even friendly strangers. These guys didn't give a damn if I lived or died and a couple of them made it obvious that the latter would probably make their day. I didn't scare them but my ideas sure did. They let me know whether or not I was a communist, if I was too questionable to put in the military, etc. That's what was so puzzling about the week - they didn't seem interested in clarifying any of that stuff. The War and how far I'd go in opposing it were what was on their mind. They just assumed I was a communist and a danger to the government. In fact, I was just a snot- nosed kid trying desperately to sort out the shit from the shinola.

An FBI agent let me know that they could get me in other ways. It was a show of power. An attempt to intimidate. Along with all the other events of the week, it left me with a lifetime pathalogical fear of bureaucrats. I'm nervous around Social Security clerks for crissakes.

When the FBI agent lit the joint, did he inhale?

I'm not sure. He was definetly happy about something.

What point in the war did you emigrate?

In April of 1967. I had to enter Canada as a visitor, then bus to New York City a couple weeks later to catch a flight into Montreal's Dorval Airport. The reasoning was that it looked a lot better to Immigration if you flew in and it also put you physically too far from the border to allow an easy hand-back if things didn't go well. In my case, it also involved a dangerous re-crossing 2 weeks after my draft call-up date. The War Resistor's League people prepped me and ran me through some practice interrogation sessions before the flight. They were well experienced and organized. Nonetheless, it took a month's time and enormous effort before I finally was granted Landed Immigrant status. Canadian Immigration officials completely disregarded their own Prime Minister's directive that an American's draft status was irrelevant. They routinely worked with US officials to hand over anyone they suspected of evading the draft. It was very dangerous if for no other reason than that you had a potential 10 years or so for International Flight added to any charges brought in a US court. I was good for 6-30 years.

How many people emigrated to Canada during that time period, do you think?

I knew a few in Vancouver up until 1991. We were all over the freaking place. I suspect most are still there either satisfied with the lives they've put together or prevented from returning because of legal complications (AWOL, previous record for other offenses, etc.) to emigrate. Backgrounds were from across the spectrum: elected members of provincial governments to painters. The number of Americans who went north during the War exceeded anything admitted to by either govenment. But there will never be an accurate count.

Was it difficult to leave your old world behind?

Emotionally - yes. I felt like my native land, my family, my friends, my whole world had been stolen from me and I would never get them back within my lifetime. But, on the other hand I felt an enormous sense of relief that I was finally free of FBI and military intimidation and harassment. I had escaped from America. [ I had a recurring dream that lasted right up until I returned. It would be night and I would always find myself walking towards a well-lit border crossing. I felt terrified but couldn't stop. I'd walk right ueeing governments run amuck. They maintained their culture in the face of centuries of abuse by first the British and then the English Canadian successors of the British. They were to no strangers to dodging drafts either. Ultimately as well, growing up in Detroit and being a major hockey freak, Canada was no stranger to me. Montreal is still my favorite city.]

Last of all, do you think all the pain youÕve gone through was worthwhile opposing the war?

We ended their little death party. Even so, what we did was nothing compared to what the Vietnamese did. They kicked butt on the most technically advanced killing machine in human history and lived to tell the tale. All but about a million of them who unfortunately got in the way. It was an astounding feat.

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