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CIA
From page LOB
heard Pun tell him that he'd
blown up the CIA office. But to
the White Panthers, the way
that Valler's approach to life
shifted so drastically once the
authorities got their hands on
him reeked of a desire to get the
government on his side, even if
it meant participating in an plot
to shut down the White Panther
Party.
Sinclair and his co-defendants
were hopeful given the circum-
stances. U.S. District Court Judge
Damon Keith, who was hearing
the case, had the reputation of
beingliberal. What's more, Keith,
who now sits on the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit,
is black - which lead the defen-
dants to feel he'd be more sym-
pathetic to a bunch of would-be
revolutionaries than some white
Establishment lackey.
The defendants secured the
help of a top-notch radical legal
team through the National Law-
yers Guild, and their attorneys
used strategies that were inno-
vative to say the least. The legal
team wanted to know if poten-
tial jurors thought the killings
at Kent State were justified and
if they had ever heard of Abbie
Hoffman or Eldridge Cleaver
- or the John Birch Society. It
also planned to ask jurors, "If
you had a choice, would you pre-
fer your child to grow up to be a
CIA agent or a hippie?"
The defense filed motions
seeking to have the indict-
ment quashed on First Amend-
ment grounds, arguing that the
charges were merely meant to
suppress political dissent. It
also sought changes to ensure
young people would be includ-
ed on the jury, noting that the
process for selecting the jury
pool meant all potential jurors
would be 25 or older. As Sin-
clair argued in his underground
newspaper, "Older people can't
possibly judge us. They're too
engulfed by their culture of
death to really understand what
our lives are all about."
Those motions didn't get very
far. As Judge Keith noted, if
there was a conspiracy to com-
mit a bombing, that would go
beyond the protections of the
First Amendment. While the
motion to secure a more youth-
ful jury did get a hearing, com-
plete with poet Allen Ginsberg
testifying as an expert on youth
culture, it also failed.
A motion seeking to have the
government turn over any elec-
tronic surveillance of the defen-
dants, however, met with greater
success, and the government was
ordered to divulge any wiretaps
of the defendants. In response,
Attorney General Mitchell filed
Much to Mitchell's consterna-
tion, however, Keith ordered the
government to turn over the con-
tents of the wiretap. It refused,
and the resulting lawsuit, United
States vs. United States District
Court, made its way to the U.S.
As Mitchell saw it, though,
handing over the contents of
the wiretap to the defense
would compromise national
security.
an affidavit acknowledging that
Plamondon had been overheard
on a warrantless wiretap that
was part of the government's
efforts to spy on domestic dissi-
dents. As Mitchell saw it, though,
handing over the contents of the
wiretap to the defense would
compromise national security.
In an interview in The Michi-
gan Daily after the court case in
1972, Plamondon said the wire-
tap must have been of a phone
call he made to the Detroit office
of the Black Panther Party.
Panthers was to hand over the
wiretap. That wasn't palatable
enough, so the government sim-
ply dropped the charges, and
the former White Panthers - by
now, the organization had been
renamed the Rainbow People's
Party - went on with their lives.
In his memoir "Lost to the
Ottawa," Plamondon discusses
the CIA bombing as well as the
bombing two weeks later at the
Institute of Science and Tech-
nology. He writes:
"I believe the 'antiestablish-
ment group or individual' that
carried out the bombing had
wished the local and under-
ground press would report
not only the flash and fury
of the explosions, but would
look deeper at the motives for
the bombings. What role, for
example, did IST and the uni-
versity play in maintaining
American imperialistic power
around the world?"
That's an awful lot of insight
into motives for someone who's
publicly denied carrying out the
CIA bombing to have. But given
the distaste for both dissent and
the rule of law that character-
ized the Nixon White House,
even the White Panthers' version
of events is difficult to dismiss
out of hand.
Supreme Court. There, the jus-
tices ruled 8-0 that the Nixon
Administration couldn't just
ignore the Fourth Amendment
whenever it felt like carrying out
some domestic surveillance, no
matter what it said about nation-
al security. (One hopes that the
Bush Administration recalls that
precedent).
Once the Nixon Administra-
tion had lost every appeal in
the courts, the only way for the
federal government to continue
its prosecution of the White
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