All of the other survivors were released on bail by the end of the month. Deborah gave birth to Fred Jr. on December 18. Doc was recovering slowly after much of his colon was removed in surgery. He was left with an eight-inch scar extending from his abdomen to his chest. The wounds of the other survivors had mostly healed, although with her permanently stiff finger, Brenda Harris would never play the violin again.
Following the raid, members of the heavily rigged police Internal Investigations Division (IID) exonerated the raiders after asking them only three questions and furnishing them with the answers. Then there was a coroner’s inquest, led by an old Democratic Party loyalist, Martin Gerber. Not surprisingly, it found Fred and Mark’s deaths “justifiable homicide.” Their decision was based on two police accounts. First, a Chicago crime lab technician swore there was only one hole in the front door after the raid (the one going out), and John Sadunas, another technician, testified that two shotgun shells found by the police were fired from the Panther weapon held by Brenda Harris.
During the inquest a showdown occurred between Gerber and our office. Skip was held in contempt and spent a weekend in jail for refusing to produce the front door panel. He didn’t bring it in until the raiders’ had testified that no police officer fired through the front door. The panel clearly contained the bullet hole of an incoming shot.
The IID investigation and the coroner’s inquest findings convinced almost no one of the raiders’ innocence. Rather than easing public pressure, they added to the momentum for an independent investigation. This led the U.S. Justice Department to announce in December that a federal grand jury would convene in Chicago to determine if there was sufficient evidence to indict the police and their supervisors, including Hanrahan, for violating the civil rights of the Panther occupants, both during the raid and with their false accounts afterward. The Grand Jury started hearing testimony in January 1970.
Each of the Panther survivors was indicted by the county grand jury on January 31 on at least one count of attempted murder, one count of armed violence, and numerous other weapons counts. Hanrahan had presented the grand jury with the raiders’ stories and Sadunas’s report. The defendants were required to appear in court on February 11.
Thousands of people go to trial at the Twenty-Sixth Street building and even more thousands plead guilty to crimes to avoid the harsher penalty meted out if you lose at trial. Twenty-Sixth Street was my main workplace for many years. There was always a funny smell in the seven-story building. People said it was tears. I believed them.
When PLO and the other Panther defense lawyers arrived at Twenty-Sixth Street on February 11, the press was there en masse, with the reporters and sketchers in the courtroom and the TV camera crews on the first floor. Our case was assigned to Judge Epton, a moderate but often self-righteous judge, who sat in one of the spacious courtrooms on the higher floors of Twenty-Sixth Street.
“People v. Johnson, et al.,” the clerk called as we and the Panther survivors stepped up before Epton. The courtroom was full of Panther supporters and sympathizers and again I heard some of the spectators in the back call out “Power to the people” as we stepped forward. Hanrahan was absent, keeping a lower profile after his press debacle.
Judge Epton handed the lawyer for each defendant a copy of the charges. As was the custom, we waived formal reading of the indictment and entered pleas of not guilty. I was representing Harold Bell. The lawyers had collaborated on a set of pretrial motions. In addition to the standard discovery requests (which asked for the names of all the state’s witnesses and any documents the prosecution intended to use), we asked for disclosure of all information about informants, police infiltration, and surveillance relating to the raid. We argued that we could not properly prepare the defense if one of the survivors was collaborating with the police or prosecutors. Judge Epton looked at Bob Beranek, the heavyset prosecutor, and ordered the prosecution to disclose if any of the defendants or witnesses were informants.
Judge Epton continued the case until May to give both sides time to comply with the other’s discovery requests. We had asked the state to tell us if any of the defendants were in fact informants. There was widespread suspicion inside the party that one of the people in the apartment during the raid was an informant. This suspicion was fed by the reports of Seconal in Fred’s blood as well as the fact that the people on security in the front room had failed to protect the chairman.
O’Neal directed the distrust toward Truelock. Not only had Truelock been stationed near the front door on security, but he was an ex-con who met Fred in prison and was released shortly after Fred and then joined the party. We were familiar with jailhouse snitches who fabricated testimony about their cellmates in exchange for early release. Truelock, at least superficially, fit the profile.
But our investigation demonstrated Truelock had completed his original sentence. It was he who’d told me he’d overheard the police saying Rush’s apartment would be next, which allowed me to warn him. Truelock’s tip may have saved Rush’s life, and seemed inconsistent with being a police informant. Also, Truelock appeared so upset and forthcoming when I interviewed him originally, that I never believed he was working for the police. We never uncovered any evidence that he was.
Fred’s murder had pushed the Weathermen further toward furtive political activity. The United States was set to invade Cambodia and expand the war. Nonviolent opposition seemed to have had no effect in stopping the escalation. Mary and I had opposite reactions to the swell of political events. I was getting drawn in more just as she began pulling back from what she saw as a one-dimensional and increasingly threatening and maybe dangerous political life.
Two police cars were firebombed at the Nineteenth District Police Station on December 6, two days after the Panther raid. The Weathermen later claimed credit, stating it was a response to Fred’s murder. In a statement issued clandestinely in early 1970, the group called itself the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) for the first time and issued a “Declaration of a State of War” against the U.S. government. Its members were adopting fake identities and pursuing covert activities.
Skip had a different reaction to the police raid than did the rest of us at PLO. His response was to become the best prepared—indeed, the consummate—criminal defense lawyer, which he believed was necessary to defeat Hanrahan and the police in court. Don, Dennis, and I had less and less confidence in the legal system. For the time being, my increasing disillusion with the political system and the courts was consistent with representing the sectors of the movement seeking the most radical change. Similarly, while the Weathermen sought to win converts to their politics and actions, they also wanted lawyers to represent them and were content that we remained in our roles.
The issue of “armed struggle” was of primary importance to a large number, if not the majority of movement people in 1970. Most of us supported the Vietnamese, the African National Congress in South Africa, and the other liberation movements who, in President Kennedy’s words, had found no nonviolent means of struggle open to them. But support for armed struggle in the United States, as well as the wisdom of carrying it out, was widely debated and we liked to say that it was the “cutting edge” issue of the time.
I supported the need, necessity, and rightness of armed struggle because I saw it winning and freeing people around the world. I felt the frustration of seeing all the nonviolent antiwar work we had done appear to have little effect on Nixon and Kissinger’s pursuit of the war. The “Vietnamization” of the war, where Vietnamese bodies would be substituted for Americans, and the Phoenix Program of targeted assassinations were not progress. As a movement attorney, I had the luxury of supporting armed struggle by defending its adherents, without the personal risks inherent in carrying it out. I was not underground and did not even have to sacrifice a generally comfortable lifestyle for my political beliefs.
Many of the Weather people who went underground came from middle- and upper-middle-class backgrounds similar to my own. The challenge to give up what was a privileged life was part of the motivation and allure of both the Weather people and myself toward armed struggle. They did it, at least for a while, and I didn’t. I still believe in the rightness of armed struggle in certain circumstances. I don’t think the leaders of the slave rebellions, John Brown, Nat Turner, or Crazy Horse were wrong. Nor were Patrick Henry and George Washington, who were hardly nonviolent. And I respect the partisans who resisted the Nazis with guns.
The Weathermen and Panthers both wanted revolution. Both believed, with substantial historical and contemporary proof, that it would not come about nonviolently. Not in the violent United States. Today I realize our revolutionary vision did not take into full account the strength of the forces against us. No strategy would have succeeded. Our position inside the United States made it easier to expose and sometimes block U.S. military actions abroad, but it did not mean we could successfully use the tactics of those we supported to fundamentally change this country. In different ways the Panthers and the Weather people risked their safety and their lives to bring about the change we all believed was necessary. I want to understand both their mistakes and their contributions. I have learned it’s far easier to review history than to make it. I’m not sure what I would have done had I not had a law license and been using it to defend those who espoused revolutionary change. Would I have had the courage to take up armed struggle even if I had been willing to risk imprisonment? Could I actually commit violent acts that were so antithetical to the liberal, nonviolent, and rational way I was raised? Even if I could screw up my courage, would it have been right?
It was difficult in those days to balance political effectiveness and personal challenges. Indeed, have we not all imagined ourselves behind the telescopic sight of a rifle aimed at Hitler’s head as he rose to power in the 1930s and wondered if we could pull the trigger? I think there were mistakes made when peoples’ desires to challenge their own limitations overshadowed the political correctness or viability of what they were attempting. I can understand this. It does not condemn all violent acts or actors, but it’s something to watch out for as you head for the point of no return.
The People’s Law Office survived and grew because we did not require uniformity on political issues. It was a delicate balance at PLO to stay politically involved, aware, and participating, without requiring support of the same movement factions.
On March 6, 1970, three Weathermen were killed in an explosion inside a townhouse in Greenwich Village in New York City, when a bomb they were making accidentally detonated. Ted Gold, who was killed, and Cathy Wilkerson who was reported fleeing, had stayed with Mary and me a week before when they came to Chicago for their court dates. The war had come home.