I So Affirm

That's what freethinkers say when asked to swear to God, as I was asked in a Chicago courtroom in December 1969.

I testified that Tom Hayden told me one night during the 1968 Democratic Convention that, according to the police, the federal government was planning an incitement-to-riot case against him.

I could truthfully affirm that I'd never seen Hayden and Abbie Hoffman et al conspire in the months preceding the convention to incite a riot (as opposed to a demonstration). I did see them plotting to lure “the kids” (Rennie Davis's contemptuous term) to Chicago with false promises of Credence Clearwater Revival. But the prosecution didn't ask about that.

According to a Chicago Tribune story, “The witness said he was in Chicago for ‘Ramparts’ magazine to print a daily convention newspaper called the Wallposter. He said defendant Tom Hayden, after being bailed out of jail on an arrest for deflating a police car tire, came to the newspaper's office on August 27, 1968.

“Hayden said he was ‘going underground’ because policemen assigned to follow him ‘had threatened to kill him,’ Gardner testified.

“Hayden called himself ‘a marked man,’ Gardner said.

“Gardner also said defendant Abbie Hoffman told him Aug. 22 of ‘threats agaiunst his life.’

“The session was interrupted twice by angry defense protests that US district judge Julius J. Hoffman was treating defense witnesses differently from government witnesses. Judge Hoffman, who has threatened attorneys with contempt-of-court rulings several times, warned defense attorney Leonard Weinglass at one point, ‘Be careful. Be careful.’

“Weinglass maintained that ‘two rules apply’ during the trial.

“Attorney William M. Kunstler also protested the judge's ‘lectures to defense witnesses.’

“Gardner said at one point, ‘I do feel ill at ease here, your honor.’

“‘Don't be critical of me,’ Judge Hoffman said. ‘I didn't bring you here. You don't have to testify if you don't want to.’

“Gardner also told of seeing policemen swinging clubs when he went to the Grant Park bandshell August 28 to distribute handbills asking for sympathy by the police and the National Guard. He said he saw defendant Rennie Davis lying on the ground and bleeding from a head wound. He read the police handbill to the jury: ‘Our argument in Chicago is not with you but with the rich men in power,’ it said.”

I made a little sketch of Judge Hoffman while I was on the stand.

The defense had paid my fare and I'd flown into O’Hare, arriving on the afternoon before I was supposed to testify. They put me up at an apartment on the South Side where Hayden and members of the defense legal team were staying for the duration of the trial. The pad had been put at their disposal by a University of Chicago grad student named Bill Zimmerman, whom Larry Bensky described as “Tom’s gofer.”

That evening Hayden and Zimmerman were going out to a meeting. Zimmerman handed me a phone number on a slip of paper and said, in reference to a lawyer on the defense team, “If Kinoy’s wife calls from New Jersey, tell her he's just gone down for a quart of milk.” Then I was supposed to phone Art Kinoy at his girlfriend’s, so he could call his wife in New Jersey.

I wasn't about to participate in the betrayal of Mrs. Kinoy. I told them I was tired and wouldn't answer the phone. I should have said, “Why do you think I would lie for Kinoy, or you, or anybody?” But I had not yet split with the fake left.

My only “Kodachrome” memory from the cross examination is of Abbie Hoffman cupping his mouth with his hands and offering a word of silent advice: “Lie.”

Allen Ginsberg and Phil Ochs testified at that session, too. We were in a large, dark room waiting to be called. Ginsberg asked Ochs where he was staying. Ochs told him, a friend's place or another defense pad, I can't recall. Ginsberg asked if there was any room for him. Ochs said there wasn’t. Are you sure? Yes, said Ochs. Ginsberg asked if he could share Ochs’s bed. Ochs laughed it off. Ginsberg asked again. Ochs said no. Ginsberg asked again and again and again and again. Ochs was obviously embarrassed and so was I. I assumed Ochs was straight, but what did it matter, no means no, and Ginsberg’s come-on was relentless and creepy.

The federal conspiracy charge was absurd upfront, but Tom was crazed in Chicago and would have incited a terrible riot if a McCarthy staffer had gone along with the idea of broadcasting a tape recording from the Hilton (where delegates were staying) to the massed protesters across Michigan Avenue, in which Tom asserted that he had made it into the hotel and that everyone “owed it to the Vietnamese people” to charge across the police line! He was completely out of perspective. The murder of Bobby Kennedy had blown away his deep, sincere hope that we could change this country by electoral politics. (A hope he would regain in a few years.)

The Kennedy family invited two peace-movement organizers to Bobby's funeral – me and Tom. I was in SF. I called my folks to say I might be flying in. My father said, “They know who to kill.”