Ehe $Richgan a IRy Eighty years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigon Doily express the individual opinions of stoff writers or the editors. This mtst be noted in oil reprints. TUESDAY, JANUARY 19, 1971 NIGHT EDITOR: ROBERT KRAFTOWITZ 0 images Wire-ta By LEE WINFREY (Reprinted with permission from the Detroit Free Press) A FEDERAL JUDGE in Detroit has a chance this month to clarify the muddled laws govern- ing wiretapping by federal opera- tives. The issue could lead to possible dismissal of the case against three members of the White Panther Party accused of bombing an of- fice of the Central Intelligence Agency in Ann Arbor in 1968. U.S. District Judge Damon J. Keith is presiding over the c a s e against Panthers John A. Sinclair, Lawrence R. (Pun) Plamondon and John W. (Jack) Forrest. The government has admitted wiretap- ping conversations involving Pla- mondon. The trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 26 in Keith's high-ceilinged, gold-curtained courtroom on t h e seventh floor of the Federal Build- inq. Sometime before then, however, Keith must. decide if the defense has the right to look at the logs of the wiretaps involving Plamon- don. 25, the White Panthers' min- iste~r of defense.' The U.S. Supreme C o u r t has never ruled on the exact question involved in the Plamondon wire- taps. Lower court decisions on the questions have been contradictory, so Keith could conceivably r u 1e either way. HERE IS A rundown on the is- sue involved: The wiretaps involving Plamon- don were placed at the order of U.S. Attorney General J o h n N. Mitchell. Mitchell did not ask the permission of any judge before placing the taps. In order for the wiretaps to be legal and the resulting evidence admissible in court, a judge's per- mission is normally necessary. The government routinely obtains a judge's permission before placing wiretaps - in cases involving the Mafia, for example. Since 1940, however, as a result of a decision by President Frank- lin D. Roosevelt that has n e v e r been contradicted, the govern- ment has had the right to wiretap at will in cases involving foreign espionae. It goes ahead in such cases without securing a court or- der beforehand. Since Mitchell and the N i x o n HERE IS the position of the de- fense in the White Panther case. as outlined before Keith I a s t week by New York attorney Wil- liam Kunstler: * Domestic wiretaps are illegal without a court order. 9 The defense should be al- lowed to see the logs of the wire- taps. Since the taps are illegal the case against Plamondon should be thrown out if any information gathered by the wiretaps was used to indict him. Here is the position of the pro- secution, as outlined by Assistant U.S. District Attorneys John H. Hausner and J. Kenneth Lowrie: " The taps involving Plamon- don were legal because they were necessary, according to Mitchell, to protect national security. 0 Mitchell's affidavit said that divulging details of the wiretaps would "prejudice the national in- terest." So no one should look at them except Judge Keith, who must, rule on their legality. * No information gathered in wiretaps was used to i n d i c t Plamondon. nor will any of it be used to prosecute him. So the taps are irrelevant to the case. IN ARGUMENTS la s t week Kunstler told Keith: "The attorn- cy general is asking for carte blanche to violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution." The Fourt Amendment forbids il- legal search and seizure. For the government, Hausner asked Keith to use "judicial re- straint . . . not to interfere with the President's right to g u a r d safety and liberty." He said it was illogical to allow the government less leeway in domestic security cases than in foreign ones. Mitchell's affidavit, as well as the comments of government pro- secutors in Detroit, indicate that, the government is unlikely to dis- close the wiretap logs to the de- fense no matter how Keith rules. If Keith rules that the defense must be allowed to see the taps, the government seems inclined toward dropping the case rather than divulge them. When, where and how Plamon- don was wiretapped is still un- clear. Mitchell's affidavit s a y , only that "the defendant Plamon- don has participated in conversa- tions which were overheard by laws contested in Ci A case government agents monitoring wiretaps . .." - MITCHELL'S PHRASING rais- es the possibility that Plamondon himself was not deliberately wire- tapped by the government, but only overhead when he called some other phone that was tapped. Plamondon's wife, Genie said last week that she and her hus- band has no idea when or where the tapping occured. But she said the phone at White Panther Par- ty headquarters in Ann Arbor of- ten behaved strangely. Sometimes she said she would pick up the phone and hear no dial tone, but she would be able to hear noises from every other John Sinclair Ginsberg speaks for Panthers -Daily-Tom Gottlieb The CIA tri~al and the jury administration came into office in 1969, Mitchell has attempted to broaden his authority by wire- tapping in domestic security cases without a court order. Attorneys for both sides are pro- ceeding on the premise that the Ann Arbor-based White Panthers rre purely a domestic operation. No one has contended that they are financed or controlled by -any foreign power, such as Russia or China. In a memorandum to Judge Keith dated Dec. 14, Mitchell ad- mitted that Plamondon was tap- ped as part of an effort "to gath- er intelligence information deem- ed necessary to protect the nation from attempts of domestic organ- izations to attack and subvert the existing structure of government." Keith must decide if that is sufficient ground to justify tap- ping without a court order. Defense attorneys have cited a case in California in which a fed- eral district judge threw out charges against a Black Panther because he was wiretapped with- out a court order. Federal pro- secutors have cited other cases, in- cluding ones in Chicago and in Kansas, where district judges have upheld the government on t h i s question. room in the house that had a phone. , Plamondon, Sinclair and F o r- rest are accused of conspiring to bomb the Ann Arbor CIA office on Sept. 29, 1968. Plamondon is additionally accused of perform- ing the actual bombing. Only Plamondon was wiretapped, the government says. No matter how the trial turns out, Judge Keith seems assured of at least a footnote in legal his- tory. When the domestic wiretap- ping issue eventually reaches the U.S. Supreme court, as it seems certainto do, his ruling in the White Panther case will be one of 4 the precedents. E CIA bombing conspiracy trial has raised some interesting questions about what the composition of a jury should be. The case involves Ann Arbor W h i t e Panther leaders John Sinclair, Pun Pla- mondon and Jack Waterhouse Forest, charged with conspiracy to bomb the Ann Arbor CIA office. Plamondon is a 150 charged with the actual bombing of the CIA office in September, 1968. The defense claims that the jury is ser- iously under-represented in its inclusion of persons in the 18 to 29 age bracket. It maintains that the jury - since it is try- ing young people - should more ade- quately reflect them because they con- stitute a class of people whose problems and ideals are, in certain ways, peculiar to the group. Thus, the young are its fair- est judges. One must question first whether, the young do constitute a class, a homo- genous entity. In fact, there are nearly as many differences among the young as among the old. There are Republican jocks, revolutionary freaks, sons and daughters of the superrich, destitute blacks; affluent students, poor immi- grants. There are teenyboppers and grad- uate students in philosophy; hitchhik- ing troubadours, young married couples; hippies, well-to-do stockbrokers; fans of Muskie, followers of Che, readers of Ker- ouac, loyalists to Buckley - all u n d e r 30. THIS IS SIMPLY to say that inclusion of persons from the "young" age bracket is not a sure means of granting a fair trial to the defendants. What is to be hoped for is a jury which will con- sider the issue in a rational, impartial manner, without permitting a strong bias against the defendants' life-style to in- fluence it. The jurors could come with a wide variety of economic and social per- spectives, with a host of differing poli- tical views - as long as they are clear- headed in their approach to the issues. This is the ideal situation, but unfor- tunately, many jurors (both old a n d young) may have strongly built-up pre- judices against the defendants' life-style which could cloud their consideration of the case. Thus: the requests for young- er jurors, made in the hopethat younger persons ma~y consider the case more fairly since they are freer from the emotional sorts of resentment against the defend- ants. Given the diversity among the young, it is not inherently true that all young people are automatically the best quali- fied, to sit on this jury. But it is more likely for a young person to have the edu- cational background which would pro- vide the tolerance so necessary in this controversial case. Of course this means primarily select- ing persons from a relatively affluent background, since they are the ones who could afford to attain this education. The older jurists will probably be middle- class too, since, unlike poorer people, they can afford to take time off from their j obs. THUS, JURIES are composed of persons from a particular economic back- ground, with views by and large discrim- inatory against persons, like the White Panthers, who oppose the economic or- der. Attempts to offset this situation are bound to be arbitrary. It is simply easier to choose persons on the basis of their youth hoping their education will provide a measure of tolerance, than to choose people directly on their educational level -even if the latter is a more honest ap- proach. It should be realized, however, that the seeking out of younger jurors is not a panacea for obtaining a fair judgment. It simply makes it a little more likely. -RICK PERLOFF ,...:,: XX" JAMES WE('A'HSLERW,"".-%.*V,.=.= Decaying servicesimperil communitn GRADUALLY a suspicion deepens: are we really living tition. But who can do anything about Western Union in the second half of the 20th century or have we now? slowly regressed to an earlier time? This is not about For a while the telephone was the secret weapon;'it man's stubborn folly in great world affairs; it is about' is hardly necessary to elaborate further on the collapse of the disintegration of all the services once associated with that vulnerable device. our emergence from the maligned age of the horse-and- "Don't write, telegraph" was an early commentary on buggy. the fallibility of the mails. "Don't telegraph, telephone,' An associate tells of writing a letter on a Tuesday that was a subseque battle-cry. What does one do now required delivery by Thursday. She took it to a post of- Where did everything go wrong? fice near her home in Queens at 8:30 Tuesday evening;Ti the astpicup as oficall at10.THERE ARE CERTAIN furtive compensations in thi telephonic disarray; one never knows exactly what may The letter arrived at its Brooklyn destination Satur- happen when innocently using the instrument. The other day morning. day I dialed a number and suddenly found myself listen- Each time someone recites such a story there is an- ing in an a dramatic farewell address from a man ex- other victim with a more bizarre experience to recite. plaining to a woman why he would be unable to continue And there are mysterious twists. On a recent Friday their apparently illicit romance. A sense .of propriety morning copies of the same letter went out from my of- should have obliged me to hang up at once, but I assurec f ice to a Manhattan and a Washington, D.C. address. It myself that the click might be more distressing than my reached Washington (not via air mail) the following continuing eavesdropping; it might have invited the an- Monday; it was delivered to the Manhattan-recipient xiety that their line was tapped. Tuesday - about 96 hours after departure time. What discourse will one inadvertently encounter nex But do not entertain a false image of intercity trans- in this scrambled system? A thoughtful dialogue between mission; it can also take four or five days to get through J. Edgar Hoover and Martha Mitchell? to Washington, and vice versa. CLARIFICATION DEPT.: It is dangerous to f oo : ONCE UPON A TIME the telegram was considered a around with the printed word, as I should have learne sure if luxurious device for speeding messages, but that long ago. Recently there appeared here a series of imag was another era. A friend who resides in Washington inary projections about new health hazards to be un and recently celebrated a birthday told me that he had folded in the year 1971; among other items included ir been rebuked by two relatives for failing to acknowledge the fantasy was the suggestion that President Nixon' their congratulatory wires. The trouble was they never favorite dish - cottage cheese - might be exposed as ar arrived. ulcer-producer. There was a more joyous time when an institution Numerous readers have called yes, their calls go known as Postal Telegraph actually competed with West- through) to ask whether I was hinting that I had somf ern Union for our patronage. On political campaign inside information about a forthcoming revelation abou trains the rivalry for the business of the traveling journ- F cottage-cheese. The unequivocal answer is no. It is truf alists was sometimes fierce and always stimulating; even that I never touch the stuff, but that is purely a matte ordinary citizens must have benefited from the compe- of taste. Vt it n -t ie -ap I it :d t- - n ,s n to to Letters to The Daily 1kJ w N HOVle$. -Nrf&) A~)OTI4R MAN-ANDJL AtJOTh~f MAt&-AML2 akV'iT45.2 MAti. AFTER A GOUF1.E OF M(N1tET I ASK (tHN TO &fIk)E2MV 'SEAT- AWsTJPNEXT Tr O AWThfR HMR. U&M L H AVE& UMwJ! VR -Oi MA&DI MAY SAT. AFTW A COUPL OF M tUL)TC5 ITASS' H1 T MWP MY&ViSEAT- AV09SIT L)EXT To Ak~X3TfR kAQ3. Course Mart To the iuaily: OF RECENT CONTROVERSY has been a new course-mart course known as College Course 327, "Analysis and Strategies in Po- licital Action". Whether credit will be given for this novel course is presently in dispute. Being attracted by "Political Action's" leaflet, I attended the organizational meeting on Janu- ary 12, and was quite surprised at what I saw. Whatever the reasons may be that the University has for questioning this course, I have a few of my own that I ;eel are suf- political actions which will pre- sumably be performed by the, stu- dents. Course discussion in sec- tions of various topics would be based upon planning and discus- sing these actions. What the ac- tions would be, or the guidelines within which they would be taken was not stated by the professor, and the course's "legal advisor", a law student, stated that as fas as he is concerned, anything goes. Though I doubt that that state- ment was serious, I contend that the tone involved in it and other statements shows a lack of aca- demic responsibility. The speeches by the individual teaching fellows regarding their showed a general lack of organiz- ation of the type necessary for any course, and the references made to the dispute of which I am discus- sing tended to present the Univer- sity in a generally negative light. I submit that the basic tone andy objectives of "Political Action" are inconsistent with academic principles, and are even inconsist- ent with academic freedom as evi- denced by the sometimes political appeal of the staff members. Col- lege Course 327 merits a careful review by the University before it 4 is granted normal course status. -Martin Newman '73 LSA FHa*J 6 Hot-fu. POWE~R! Cb'