I
94r' Aniran Onadl
Eighty-three years of editorial freedom
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
- letter from the editor
A proposal to rejuvenate
the Human Rights Party
420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mi. 48104
News Phone: 764-0552
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1973
New cause for impeachment
WITH THE DUST hardly settled over
President Nixon's decision to release
his Watergate tapes, two revelations of
possible administration scandals give
new impetus to efforts to terminate his
clouded Presidency.
New evidence indicates that the dairy
industry used political contributions to
gain favored treatment from the admin-
istration. This comes as little surprise.
The Nixon years have been marked by
scandalous collusion between the execu-
tive office and big business, ranging from
the ITT convention *fiasco to the more
subtle and sublime.
What does shock, however, is the mag-
nitude of the alleged payoff that found
its way into the Nixon campaign coffers..
The administration's budget for 1972
called for a 10 per cent increase in sub-
sidies to the dairy industry, a move
which was worth from $500 to $700 mil-
lion to the industry.
AFTER the President -made this gener-
ous decision, the American Milk Pro-
ducers made contributions to the Nixon
campaign totaling more than $400,000,
according to the Washington Post.
As this new evidence on the dairy scan-
dal surfaced, ABC news reported that
Special Watergate Prosecutor Archibald
Cox had uncovered a secret investment
portfolio established for Nixon at a bank
owned by his close friend Bebe Rebozo.
Allegedly more than $1 million in cor-
porate campaign contributions had been
used to set up the President's personal
investment package.
This latest report has added to spec-
ulation that Cox was fired because his
investigation had succeeded in finding
evidence of Presidential wrong-doing.
The absence of an independent probe of
the administration's activities surely
lends credence to this idea.
THESE TWO NEW charges of serious
corruption in the Nixon Administra-
tion demonstrate that the belated re-
lease of the Watergate tapes does little.
to erase the cloud of scandal which hangs
over the chief executive.
The President has clearly failed to re-
store the confidence of the Amierican
people in its government. Responsibility
to do so now lies with the Congress. At
this time there is *no reason to believe
that public confidence can or should be
revived with Richard Nixon in the White
House.
By CHRISTOPHER PARKS
IN THE SPRING of 1972, the Hu-
man Rights Party (HRP) was
bright, shiny and new. For t h e
city's flood of young, liberal to
radical voters, they represented
a distinct alternative to the "tired
worn around the edges" image of
the Democratic Party - a way
to vote for change without j u s t
casting another ballot for the New
Deal.
HRP's stunning two-ward sweep
proved convincingly that there is
a strong market for new ideas and
new blood - that the youth vote
can elect candidates in this city.
To those who viewed this phe-
nomenon as a distinctly exciting
and hopeful development, the par-
ty's subsequent decline has been
a depressing spectacle. Two cqn-
secutive shut-outs - in November
of '72 and April of '73 - sent poli-
tical writers scurrying to their
typewriters to pound out HRP's
obit.
YES, VIRGINIA, there still is
an HRP but it's dying and at the
rate it's going, after next year's
city election, it will be dead.
HRP has lost the one quality
which made it viable - the char-
ismatic lure of a new and exciting
alternative.
There never was a sizable social-
ist or even radical vote in t h e
city. Just as disgruntled liberal-a
were the cannon fodder of the
peace movement, they were also
the basis of HRP's electoral
strength.
Like the "Movement" from
whose ashes it rose Phoenix-like,
HRP has built a constituency and
then deserted it.
And like the late lamented
Movement, HRP has come to be
seen not as a hopeful vehicle for
change but as a hopelessly ineffez-
tive Marxist debating society.
IT NEEDN'T BE that way. The
liberal discontent within the Demo-
cratic Party which was tapped
so effectively in 1972 still exisi.;.
The Ann Arbor electorate is one
distinctly open to new ideas :and
"HRP has lost the one
quality which made it
viable-the charisma-
tic lure of a new and
exciting alternative."
...2s . .s o-:::"x:2: : .. .......
new approaches. It is, ny and
large, liberal and forward thinking.
Along with this progressive elec-
torate, the city is blessed with an
immense wealth of academic brain
power. The University's intense
emphasis on high level research
has produced a veritable hothouse
for the cultivation and nurturing
of rare and exotic ideas.
The party which joins these two
factors could be a powerful engine
for social change. As former May-.
or Hobert Harris has correctly
pointed out, Ann Arbor could be a
test tube environment for progres-
sive experiments in government
and social planning.
WHAT HRP NEEDS, to stay
alive, is an ample stable of "idea
people' drawn from the u r b a n
planning centers and other Uni-
versity research programs.
Surely, provided with an oppor-
tunity to put their talents to prac-
tical use, bright progressive peo-
ple could be recruited to develop
what could be a radically new and
futuristic way of looking at t h e
city's problems and potentials.
Interested persons should be re-
cruited now and put to work on
the present structure of the city
and its government.
There should be a crash four-
month program, culminating at the
end of February with some sort )f
position paper on the{ state of the
city environment and a series of
bold, future-oriented prigrans
which are feasible and yet un-
tried.
To survive, HRP must be a par-
ty of new ideas. Old ideas, no mat-
ter how "correct" their underlying
ideology, simply aren't going to
make it. Boldness, energytand in-
itiative are necessary to the par-
ty's survival and badly needed in
the city.
g: Resisi
A plea to impeach
President Nixon
(Editor's Note: The Michigan Daily, along with 16 other
college newspapers, has endorsed the following editorial written
by the Amherst Student. Although written before President
Nixon decided to release his Watergate tapes to Federal
Judge John Sirica, we believe the substance of the editorial
remains significant and sound.)
(iONSTITUTIONAL government in the United States may have
been suspended at 8:00 p.m. last Saturday- night. Richard
Nixon now rules by fiat and force. He is no longer a legitimate
leader.
With callous disregard for his oath of office and the intents
of Congress and the Judiciary, the President first refused to
abide by a court order to produce Watergate documents. He then
forced the resignation of the Attorney General and fired his
Deputy and the Watergate Special Prosecutor when they refused
to condone his conduct.
Moreover, the President abolished the office of Special Pro-
secutor and dispatched the FBI to seal off their records. These
decisive and unprecedented actions represent the tactics of a
military coup. They are anathema to a rational democratic polity.
WHEN ELECTED officials violate the sacret trust placed in
them by the people, the Constitution provides means for them
to be impeached and, if convicted, removed from office. These
procedures are very difficult to implement and are seldom used:
But if ours were a parliamentary system of government, the
Nixon Administration would have fallen months ago.
In the past, Mr. Nixon has cloaked his actions in a veil of
legality, but now he has bared his intentions to foresake rule by
law. The President must be impeached. No amount of legal double-
talk or political timidity can obscure this fact. The question of his
past culpability is almost moot. He is willing to maintain the
Watergate cover-up at any cost.
There is real question whether the Congress and the, Judiciary
can force Richard Nixon to deal with them within the confines of
the law. But our actions, for the moment, must be based on this
premise.
The weeks ahead could represent either the redemption of
American democracy or the prologue to its collapse. We remain
silent at our own peril.
Karl Armstron
Fance
on trial
No peace, no prize
THERE IS NO peace in Vietnam.
Le Due Tho's refusal to accept the 1973
Nobel Peace Prize because peace has not
come to Vietnam is the only possible re-
sponse to the Nobel committee's ostrich-
like award. Evidently there was agree-
ment with Tho's position in the ranks of
the committee, because two members
have resigned in protest of the joint Kis-
singer-Tho prize.
The news of Tho's rejection came on
the same day as reports of fierce battles
near Saigon, fought by the Thieu regime
on the premise of destroying villages to
save them.
Ten years and a peace agreement have
not changed the U. S. government's stra-
tegy for control of Indochina. The color
of the money is the same. Only the color
of the corpses has changed.
Investment firms from Japan and
factories, and Thieu's soldiers clear the
land - make it "safe." There is no peace
for the people who live on the land.
AT THE TIME that the award was given,
hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese
civilians were imprisoned and tortured
in prisons and concentration camps own-
ed and operated by the U. S. government.
There is no peace when citizens can be
seized on the streets or in their homes,
and obliterated by inhumane and clever-
ly criminal means because they disagree
with Thieu.
A "peace" that must be maintained at
such an exorbitant cost is not worthy of
recognition, much less praise.
That the Nobel committee could even
consider giving the Peace Prize to Henry
Kissinger, the man who developed the
Armageddon theory of brinksmanship
that became holy writ to the Nixon ad-
ministration, is an exhibition of execra-
ble taste, at best.
THE NEXT STEP for the Nobel com-
mittee is unclear, but two things are
obvious: Henry Kissinger should never
receive an award for peace, and no one
should get a prize for peace in Vietnam
while the fighting continues, while
colonization is a possibility for southern
Vietnam, and while 200,000 political pri-
soners rot in Saigon's jails.
Peace comes first., The prizes can wait
until later.
By the KARL ARMSTRONG
DEFENSE COMMITTEE
THE AUGUST, 1970, bombing of the Army
Math Research Center, Madison, Wis.,
followed a spring invasion of Cambodia,
the years of secret bombings of Laos and
Cambodia, the revelations that tens of
thousands of acres of land and tens of
thousands of lives were being lost or de-
stroyed in Indochina.
We had been protesting against this war
for so long and it seemed then that the
government just wasn't able to listen to its
own citizens, to those of the world.
If we had known then what we know now,
how would our actions have been different?
We know now, from the Winter Soldier in-
vestigations, from those veterans that have
testified to the Senate, from the Watergate
hearings, that much more than we even
dreamed was being perpetrated in Indo-
china, and further, that the government not
only heard us, it actively lied and, for
years, deceived all of us.
WHAT WOULD we have done different-
ly? The answer is moot, but many people
had the full insight of the truth of the war,
and their actions differed. Daniel Ellsberg
changed from designing the policies to re-
vealing the policies. The Berrigans destroy-
ed draft files, admitted their participation,
and then let the public judge their guilt.
The most visible military facility in the
Madison Community was, and is the Army
Math Research Center, developing the tech-
nology for the Army's Electronic battle-
field, and automated war, as well as other
advanced military programs.
The center became the focus of research
and edcuation in the Madison anti-war
movement in 1967 and the student attempts
to have the Center's Army sponsorship ter-
minated failed time and again for four
years.
The AMRC was the principal target of
anti-war protests for several.years and the
movement against it reached a peak of in-
tensity (with over 10,000 participants) dur-
ing the Cambodia resistance of May, 1970).
WHAT WERE the results of-the work car-
ried on at AMRC? Was it the Fire Bombing
program which dropped magnesium fire
bombs with the intent to burn large sections
of forest? Was it the Defoliation program
which burned 6 million acres of trees and
crops - an area the sixe of Massachusetts
in a country whose total size is the equival-
sensitive tracers, designed to pinpoint and
target anything that moved; planted on
ent of Florida? Was it the small warmth
highways and in forests. Or was it the
Land .Clearing Program which designed the
dropping of 15,000 pound bombs which could
obliterate a three-acre area without dis-
criminating life unseen at 30,000 feet.
The applied mathematics, developed at
AMRC made possible the withdrawal of
Americanntroops while computers and elec-
tronic sensors carried on the programs
which continued to cause the devastation
of Indochina, the deaths of thousands and
the injuries to millions.
IF WE COULD have known this as it
unraveled what would we have done? If
we had known it, what could we have
done?
All precautions possible were taken i the
assault on the Army installation in Madison.
Those who acted selected this building be-
cause of its involvement with the Army,
with murder, with the destruction so hor-
rifying to all of us.
A life was lost in the attack. An action
carried out in the name of humanity in-
advertently killed a man.
The bombing was a political act, one in
which the government is the victim. Every
year brings more political "crimes," be-
cause every year brings consciousness to
people who decide that they must act
against the government in the name of hu-
manity . . . and this constitutes acts against
government policy . . . acts which restore
power to people, victimizing the govern-
ment.
IN MADISON, on Sept. 28 of this year,
Karleton Armstrong assumed the respon-
sibility for the bombing; he has acknow-
ledged that it was, in fact, he who attack-
ed the building.
He does not by himself assume the re-
sponsibility for the death of Robert Fass-
nacht. Though sorrowful, Karl, with other
anti-war activists here, realizes that the loss
must be shared by those who carried out
the war, in Indochina, setting the context
and the imperative for acts of resistance
against their policies.
By pleading guilty, Karl admits the facts,
but, now more than ever, he denies the
premises of the government charges. A
Far from being a criminal, we feel Karl
to be just one of many who took actions
when they' saw the results of our, the peo-
ple's, powerlessness.
A GENTLE and courageous man, Karl is
AP Photo
Another kind of violence
America exert
countryside of
point to places
growing control on the
southern Vietnam. They
where they want to build
TODAY'S STAFF:
News: Gordon Atcheson, Chris P a
Cheryl Pilate, Gene Robinson,
Schuster, Sue Stephenson
r k s,
Jim
Editorial Page: Marnie Heyn, Zachary
Schiller, Chuck Wilbur, David Yalowitz
Arts Page: Sara Rimer
Photo Technician: Steve Kagan
admitting the facts to avert the example
he feels that the government would make
of the case and, most importantly, he is
doing it so that at his hearing to determine
sentence the facts of the war will them-
selves be put on trial.
In the two to three week sentence hear-
ing, the movement in Madison plans to do
what has been so difficult in all of our
previous trials, put on the evidence against
th government. Unhindered by legalities
and the rules of evidence, we have the un-
parallelled opportunity to call in witnesses
to war, to present the history of resistance,
to expose publicly the war crimes commit-
}, as well as the crimes of
deceit and secrecy committed against the
American people by their own government.
Karl deserves your continuing support not
only because his actions were motivated by
deep feelings of love and sorrow, but be-
cause he is continuing to resist the govern-
ment now and in the coming weeks and
years.
WE FEEL we must stand by him now be-
cause our own integrity is at stake; we
have protested this war for so long, in all
of our different ways and it is Karl who
is shouldering the responsibility and the re-
pression now.
For the survivors of Indochina, the war
is not over till their homes are rebuilt,
until their limbs are mended, until their
people are released from prison. For us at
home, the war is not over until the lessons
are revealed and learned, until justice, real
justice is granted the people involved ...
both those who made the policy and those
who fought it.
We plan to continue to reveal these les-
sons, to support Karl in all the ways open
to us; principally through the coming hear-
ing.
Your concern is still needed, your s~upport
is still needed. In the name of humanity
and dignity we urge you to help us pre-
eent the evidence against the military,
against the policies of war.
Approval of Karl's act is not being asked
for, but understanding of why it;seemed
so necessary and why we have to continue
our struggle now, to bring justice to the
couirageous people of Indochina and to those
who planned the war.
The Karl Armstrong National De-
fense Committee includes Ruth and
Donald Armstrong, Phillip Berrigan,
Noam Chomsky, David Dellinger,
Staughton Lynd and Anthony Russo.
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Letters: Readers ask Nixon eviction
To The Daily:
AMERICA is in the midst of the
most destructive event to occur in
this nation's history. Even the War
between the States didn't destroy
democracy. Unless action is im-
mediately taken for the impeach-
ment of President Nixon the an-
swer to whether a democracy could
survive this crisis may very well
be that it could not.
During the five years of the
Nixon administration we have seen
an upsurge of presidential power
as it was unconstitutionally wrest-
led away from Congress. The pow-
er to make treaties, which belongs
to t'nr.c- w selimnatd b
anti-war protests of the early
1970's he felt that the people were
out to get him. This feeling clearly
came out during the Watergate
hearings. For the election itself,
Nixon felt that the Democrats were
all evil and out to get him so he
instituted a plan of political de-
struction in an attempt to elimin-
ate his competition. Can there be
any higher crime in a democracy?
On Saturday we found that the
answer was yes. Now Nixon has
also tried to eliminate the judicial
system that this nation is found-
ed upon. Nixon, supposedly a strict
constructionist of the Cnstitution,
has obviously forgotten the mean-
iate
on.
impeachment of President Nix-
-Guy Cavallo
College Young Democrats
of Ann Arbor
Oct. 23
unacceptable
To The Daily:
I SENT the following letter to
Rep. Marvin Esch:
I find Mr. Nixon's action of Sa-
turday night regarding Cox, etc.,
to be unacceptable. I do not feel
Nixon is discharging his presi-
dential duties adequately.
T tsn Rmnn o h imn-'t
comfort?
Wil you vote yes for impeach-
ment? I will be quite upset if
you answer me no. If no, I ask
you what in heaven's name will
it take for you to impeach?
Please answer. Thank you.
-John Stafford
Oct. 20
levity
To The Daily:
THIS PAST week I sat in the
student section at the football
game and watched the girls being
passed up on the hands of the
Would yod be
the matter?
-Samuel
Oct. 23
willing to consider
D. Marble
unalnimously
To The Daily:
WE, THE first year PhD. can-
didates in the American Culture
Program of the University of Mich-
igan, unanimously call for the im-
mediate impeachment of Richard
Nixon.
-John P. Beall
Marvin Olasky
John Reiff
A