CHAPTER 6
Hi Ma
Have you heard about me and the Presidio27 protest? It’s been on the news all week. I can’t tell you what’s happening cause, well, you know. I just got my last two letters back. Anyway, now I’m accused of mutiny, which has no maximum sentence but officially does carry the death penalty. I’ve postponed my AWOL court martial because now I’m going to get a civilian lawyer. He’s gonna handle a lot of the mutineers’ cases as well and assures us they’ll never make the charges stick. It does scare the hell out of me that the Army brags about being able to put me away for maybe the rest of my life. I don’t want to be a martyr but do feel in my heart I did the right thing by publicly protesting all the injustices we’ve been facing in this place.
Meanwhile, I’m still working on trying to get a Conscientious Objector status. After being refused several times they finally gave me the paperwork. I now have the application completed, and I want to turn it in sometime next week if I can. It sure is a lot of work, all that writing. After I turn it in, then I get interviewed by an army chaplain, to see if I’m sincere. Imagine that, the army judging me? O well, then I get interviewed by a psychiatrist to see if I’m crazy or not. He’ll probably find out that I’m crazy, cause I am by their terms, and they are ALL alienated from themselves by my terms. Then I go before a board of officers to see if I really am a Conscientious Objector. They use methods like having lawyers cross examine you to make you contradict yourself, setting up hypothetical situations like “if you were walking down the street with your sister and someone raped her, what would you do?” to see if I’m really a violent person. Then from the board it goes to Washington to be approved by some guy who sits behind a desk, and pledges allegiance to the flag five times a day. All in all it takes 2-6 months. So, I could be out by spring unless of course I’m convicted of Mutiny. Then I’ll hang.
Because of all the publicity about The Presidio 27 in the newspapers the Army has decided to make nice. We can have books now, of course ones mainly about religion, and we got some games, like cards and chess.
Now that Doug is back staying with Pop in California do you think he’s treating him OK? I worry about him pushing Doug around. Pop is such an unhappy guy and needs to take it out on someone I guess.
Oh yeah, almost forgot, You were right when you told me about Buddhism a long time ago. Could you send me ‘A Buddhist Bible’? I need to keep my spirits up and studying this new thing helps.
If you or your friends want to help me, they can write letters to their Congress folk and let them know what’s going on here. I wish I could tell you all about it. I will someday.
I love you Ma … your Ragamuffin
The Army couldn’t contain the story of Presidio conditions any longer. When the news of The Presidio 27 first hit television screens in the San Francisco area, outrage of a mutiny charge in response to a peaceful demonstration prompted further protests.
The undeclared war got more complicated by the day.
Lindy knew that his mother had been agonizing over him ever since her friend from Oakland called and told her about him and the other twenty-six prisoners charged with mutiny. Newspaper clippings detailed it further. Never had her sense of helplessness felt more acute. A sobbing phone call from Hawaii to daughter Carol delivered her the news too. Distraught, they agreed all they could do was write letters of support, send him books and cross their fingers the case would be brought to a quick conclusion of dismissal.
Meanwhile, the guards seized on these twenty-seven men for further abuse and had all the justification needed to inflict even more misery.
Hi Carol,
Well, I guess you know by now about me getting charged for Mutiny. Our attorney tells us they’ll never make the case and that’s the thread I’m hanging on to, his opinion. I’m really scared and losing lots of weight. By the time my court martial comes I won’t make a very good impression looking like I just crawled out from under a rock. Don’t tell Ma I said that.
I hate to admit it but jail has given me a new perspective and a little wisdom. I was reading a book about Ghandi but they took it away, too subversive I guess. I have lots of time to write poems. Here’s one I just scribbled down.
Look in Me
And you will see
the shadow of a man.
Look in you
through and through
and you will understand
that you are me
as I am thee
we are hand in hand
and as we touch
we are so much
Yet only still a man.
I finally got a letter from Pop. He says nobody cares about me. It was quite a composition. I hope he’s not trying to mess Doug up and that Doug resists him and maybe just runs away. Pop’s got a lot of hate pent up deep inside him. Maybe he’s traumatized from Mom leaving him.
I know I’m doing right and good but I just wanna be free so bad.
I love you, you know. Rags
During the 107 days that followed the sit-in protest, before the actual trials began, there ensued a flurry of changes. The mutineers had accomplished part of their goals, to get improved conditions. Clearly, the commanders had felt the heat generated when the mutiny news hit the airwaves.
Repairmen scurried around to fix anything broken. A new kitchen boiler appeared, along with two new cook stoves and three new cooks. The population of prisoners in the Stockade shrank drastically as a result of transfers to other bases. At the on-base Letterman Hospital, a separate special prisoner ward in the building’s basement improved the lives of the infirm. But the change that brought the biggest cheers from the inmates was the demotion of their least-favorite and abusive high-ranking guard to a lowly Assistant Correctional Officer.
On November 5, 1968, the formal hearing began. A 28-year-old Army attorney, brought in from the outside, was appointed to review all the circumstances of the case the Presidio was desperate to spin. At the start, he bristled when the court reporter received instructions from the overseer not to take down all of the Commander’s testimony. Essentially the tactic was to censor the proceedings from the start.
The Commander brought in two more Army lawyers to specifically object to any evidence or testimony outlining conditions in the stockade at the time of the protest. Despite the many objections hurled, it came to light that most of the #510 forms filed to officially complain about conditions had never been processed or acted on. Neither had most of the forms from prisoners requesting to see a chaplain or psychiatrist.
The presiding Commander was deeply disappointed that the new attorney’s review led him to recommend a lesser charge of ‘willfull disobedience’, along with a full-scale investigation. In another blow to the Army’s case, the outside attorney concluded that the trial should take place in a courtroom, not in the Stockade.
The higher-ups were so outraged at those recommendations regarding what they deemed a defection from the outside attorney, that they delayed typing his report for three weeks. In the end, they sent back a letter saying the evidence was inconclusive and a mutiny trial by general court martial would commence. The one concession? The charge would not carry the death penalty.
Terry Hallinan, the civilian attorney that many of the twenty-seven had chosen over an appointed Army counsel, made the following statement quoted in the book An Unlawful Concert by Fred Gardner.
“Only an outraged public will offer any hope for the twenty-seven defendants. The Army is watching to see whether the American people will stand for this. They could call off this travesty of justice with a snap of the fingers, but they don’t want to. They want to see if it’ll go over. And just wait; if they can railroad these twenty-seven kids, all GIs can kiss their rights of free speech and free assembly good-by.”
Unfortunately, improvements to the Stockade didn’t include treatment of the twenty-seven mutineers. Their vilification bordered on torture. Openly called the lowest scum on earth by the officers, fear occupied all of their minds after hearing a Major give guards orders to shoot if any attempts at escape occurred. One Army Specialist told a prisoner that hadn’t participated in the sit-in, “The mutineers should all be liquidated.” The most trivial complaints, such as questioning an order, caused many, including Lindy, to be thrown in ‘the box.’
Hepatitis ran rampant and, after the shortest of hospital stays, a still-infected member of the twenty-seven would be returned to the main population and, if a grievance was uttered, there was ‘the box.’ Suicide attempts increased.
The twenty-seven, often singled out to receive only one hour of free time per day, were sometimes required to march continuously around the yard.
On Christmas Eve, two of the twenty-seven made a run for it by climbing out an unbarred window. Somehow, they hitchhiked to the Canadian border and disappeared successfully, giving encouragement to others to try the same.
Unfortunately, when three other prisoners escaped, through a door accidently left open by a guard, they were quickly recaptured, landing them all in ‘the box’ for an extended stay.
Treasure Island, a Marine-run brig on a Naval base, occupied a small spit of land in the middle of San Francisco Bay. Legendary for its inhumane treatment of prisoners, in early January of 1969, five mutineers were mysteriously transferred to the infamous facility.
Daily beatings, being ordered to stand naked for hours while their testicles were twisted and being made to drink out of toilets were common occurrences. Terry Hallinan, the civilian attorney of the five transferred men was never informed of his clients’ abrupt change of location.
Many men, left traumatized after a stint at Treasure Island, lived in constant fear and were never the same.
Even the Army attorneys assigned to represent the mutineers were maligned. One had evidence and paperwork go missing on a regular basis and was given a public dressing down for just standing with his hands in his pockets.
But the private attorney most reviled, Terry Hallinan, received the rudest treatment. His clients were routinely told that because of him they would suffer the worst punishment of all.
The Army was not going quietly into the night.
This treatment is horrible!
Your are doing a wonderful job! thank you for sharing