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Skip to comments.Road to Moscow: Bill Clintons Early Activism from Fulbright to Moscow
Posted on 08/22/2007 1:26:32 PM PDT by Fedora
Road to Moscow
Bill Clintons Early Activism from Fulbright to Moscow
By Fedora
During the 1992 campaign, Bill Clintons student protests and Moscow trip generated much controversy, but few answers. While Clintons government files from that era seemingly remain unavailable even today, there is at least more information available than in 1992. The public record reveals that Clintons social network and views on Vietnam were influenced by a pattern of contact between Communist agents and sympathizers and Clintons academic and political associates. This pattern is documented here through an analysis of Clintons antiwar activity up through the time he left Oxford in 1970. Included are quotations from a June 9, 1969 profile of Clinton by the Frederick, Maryland Post which does not seem to have been previously cited elsewhere.
As a Georgetown junior, Clinton inherited his antiwar orientation from his part-time employer, Senator J. William Fulbright. Fulbrights views on Vietnam had in turn been influenced by scholar Bernard Fall. Fall had an academic background at institutions linked to Chinese Communist apologist Owen Lattimore. He had recently co-authored a book on Vietnam with Marcus Raskin, cofounder of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), which disseminated Marxist propaganda aimed to sway Fulbright and other decision-makers. Fulbrights office was also in regular contact with Igor Bubnov, a KGB operative on Capitol Hill. President Johnson had ordered the FBI to monitor Fulbright and his staff for suspected Communist contact at the time Clinton went to work for Fulbright.
Clinton remained relatively quiet about his war views during his first year as a grad student at Oxford from fall 1968 to spring 1969. He took an activist turn in summer 1969 while seeking to avoid being drafted. During summer vacation, he worked with the Vietnam Moratorium Committee (VMC), a US antiwar group which was helping a Communist-dominated coalition called the New Mobe organize fall protests.
Upon Clintons return to Oxford that fall, he and his friend Richard Stearns helped a British VMC counterpart called Group 68 organize Americans in England for Moratorium protest events. (A supplementary background profile of Group 68 follows the body of the article, exploring the groups links to a British antiwar network centered around Bertrand Russell and Russells associate Tariq Ali. Russells network helped the North Vietnamese and Soviets disseminate anti-US propaganda through channels such as the International War Crimes Tribunal, sponsored by the Soviet front the Stockholm Conference on Vietnam.)
Over winter vacation of 1969-1970, Clinton toured Moscow, where he had been preceded by his roommate Strobe Talbott. Talbott was then translating the memoirs of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, which had been leaked to him by Victor Louis, a KGB disinformation agent and talent spotter. Clinton and Talbotts other roommate Frank Aller was doing similar work on the unpublished notes of Edgar Snow, an academic associate of Lattimore.
The conclusion suggests possible directions for further research, considering where additional information on Clintons early activity might be found in government files and other sources.
Before Oxford: Clinton, Fulbright, and the Legacy of Owen Lattimore
The story of how Bill Clinton became an antiwar activist begins when he was a Georgetown undergraduate working part-time for Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright. Fulbright, who chaired the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, was a leading critic of President Lyndon Johnsons Vietnam policy. Over the course of Clintons junior and senior years, his views on Vietnam turned antiwar under the influence of Fulbright and his staff. As Washington Post writer David Maraniss quoted Clinton:
When I went to work for [Fulbright] I was basically for the war, or at least I was not against it. As a matter of fact, I had a long debate I remember about whether I ought to drop out of school, whether even undergraduate deferments were all right, whether anybody ought to have a deferment when there was a war on. These were discussions with people who worked for Fulbright, who were on the staff. The older ones encouraged me to at least make a study of it, make up my own mind. . .And I sort of wound up turning against the war the way Fulbright did, after a thorough study of it.
Tracing the origin of Fulbrights antiwar views reveals an intriguing ancestry for Clintons views. Fulbright had not initially opposed the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was originally viewed as a measured, flexible alternative to full-scale escalation in Vietnam. But after a major increase in US ground deployment in summer 1965, and after Fulbrights relationship with President Johnson became strained over Dominican Republic policy that September, he began questioning Johnsons Vietnam policy. Pentagon Papers, a set of classified military documents on the Kennedy-Johnson administrations Vietnam policy.)
Fulbrights reading on Vietnam was guided by a mentor Lowenstein had introduced him to in fall 1965, Howard University Professor of International Relations Bernard Fall. Fall was a specialist in so-called Asian nationalism, which is what the antiwar movement preferred to call what less sympathetic critics might characterize as Marxist-inspired insurgencies against Western-friendly governments. Fall, along with Cornells Indonesian nationalism specialist George McTurnan Kahin, led a chorus of academic antiwar activists insisting that the Vietcongs guerrilla war was motivated by nationalism, not Marxism. This argument aimed to undermine the Johnson administrations position citing Cold War containment policy as grounds for US intervention in Vietnam.
Fall and Kahin had both emerged from a group of Asian nationalist specialists who congregated in the late 1940s and early 1950s at Johns Hopkins University, a major Asian studies center. Johns Hopkins Asian studies program had been influenced by pro-Chinese Communist propaganda channeled through a Soviet-infiltrated think tank called the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR).
One influential Johns Hopkins Asian specialist linked to IPR was Chinese Communist apologist Owen Lattimore, accused by Joseph McCarthy in 1950 of being Moscows top spy and one of the principal architects of our Far Eastern policy. Declassified files available today indicate that while McCarthy was exaggerating by calling Lattimore Moscows top spy, Lattimore had been flagged by the FBI as a suspected Communist and potential security risk as early as May 1941, when he was being considered for a position as the Roosevelt administrations political advisor to Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. Lattimore did not run any of the Soviet spy rings known to US intelligence, and there was no direct surveillance evidence of him acting as a literal spy (at least judging by a 1949 report which is heavily censored in certain key sections), but he did have a well-documented pattern of regular contact with Communist front groups, party members and agents. Soviet agents Lattimore was in contact with during the 1930s and 1940s included Comintern agent Willi Munzenbergs lieutenant Louis Gibarti; Agnes Smedley and Chen Han-seng of the Sorge spy ring; Michael Greenberg of the Cambridge Five; Soviet agent Joseph Bernsteins Amerasia coconspirators Philip Jaffe and T.A. Bisson; and Silvermaster Group spy ring members Lauchlin Currie and Harry Dexter White. Currie and White, who were two key agents in the Soviet campaign to undermine the Chinese Nationalists, were the ones who recommended Lattimore for his position in the Roosevelt administration, and when Lattimore got the job he worked out of a desk in Curries office in the State Department Building (contradicting his later Senate testimony that he never had a desk at the State Department). Whether or not Lattimore was a full-fledged spy, his views on Asia were at least viewed by agents like Currie and White as sympathetic to Soviet foreign policy goals.
Lattimores sympathies were passed on to a younger generation of scholars which included Fall and Kahin. An FBI file on Lattimore records a conversation where he mentioned that Kahins appointment to the John Hopkins faculty was part of a broader effort to promote comparative work on nationalism in different Asian countries, including China, Mongolia, and Kahins specialty, Indonesia., Another John Hopkins expert in Indonesian nationalism, Amry Vandenbosch, taught a class called Nationalism and Colonialism in Southeast Asia. Fall took Vandenboschs class in 1952 after moving to the US from France, where his family had relocated to escape Nazi-occupied Austria. Because of Falls French background, Vandenbosch encouraged him to study nationalism in Vietnam, a former French colony. Fall subsequently went to Southeast Asia in 1953 to study the Vietminh insurgency for his doctoral dissertation.
Upon his return to the US in late 1953, Fall soon stopped to visit IPR. He began contributing to IPRs journal Pacific Affairs, and IPR commissioned him to do a study on Vietnam in 1957. He continued to travel to Southeast Asia regularly, making five more trips from 1957 to 1967 (when he was killed by a Vietcong landmine) and receiving North Vietnamese literature shipped through a Hong Kong publisher.
Fall had fought in the French Resistance during World War II, and his research received assistance from French military sources, who sometimes allowed him to see classified information. Some of Falls associates began to suspect he was a French agent. The FBI placed him under surveillance to evaluate these accusations and make sure he was not receiving any classified information from US sources, but apparently found nothing to substantiate Falls involvement in any intelligence activity (at least according to Falls widows interpretation of the portions of his file that have been declassified). Chalmers Wood of the State Departments Vietnam Working Group saw Fall as less of a spy and more of a sympathizer: Bernard Falls recommendations certainly follow very close to the neutralist, crypto-Communist line. I dont think that he is a Communist, but his emotions have been so long wrapped up in Viet-Nam that his judgement is false.
Falls work proved useful to antiwar propagandists who travelled significantly farther with Communists than Fall himself did. From 1964 to 1965 Fall collaborated on The Viet-Nam Reader with his friend Marcus Raskin, cofounder of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). IPS was a New Left think tank founded in 1962 by dissenters from the Kennedy administration who advocated nuclear disarmament enforced by a global government. Despite its professed goal of world peace, IPS travelled with terrorist groups that were being trained by Cuban and Vietcong revolutionaries, such as the Black Panthers, the Weathermen, and the Venceremos Brigade. IPS was characterized in FBI files as a Washington-based Think Factory, which [has] helped train extremist[s] who incite violence in the United States and whose educational research serves as a cover for intrigue and political agitation. IPS also helped disseminate propaganda critiquing US domestic and foreign policy from a Marxist perspective. An article clipped by the FBI aptly described IPS as The perfect intellectual front for Soviet activities which would be resisted if they were to originate openly from the KGB.
The Viet-Nam Reader was one of IPS earliest successful propaganda operations. According to Falls widow, Fall and Raskin hoped that their book would persuade sufficient numbers of readers to see the folly of the war and demand a negotiated settlement. The book achieved this goal, becoming a standard reference for antiwar activists after being featured by The New York Review of Books in September 1965. It was presumably high on Fulbrights reading list in December 1965. IPS also influenced Fulbrights Vietnam stance through channels such as Members of Congress for Peace Through Law, an IPS-spawned lobby Fulbright joined.
Meanwhile the KGB tried to influence Fulbrights staff directly. In 1967, Soviet ambassador Igor Bubnov, an active KGB operative on Capitol Hill, initiated regular discussions with Fulbrights chief of staff Carl Marcy. (After retiring from government service in 1973, Marcy would work for several organizations associated with Communist or IPS activity, including the Council for a Liveable World, the Center for International Policy, and the the American Committee on United States-Soviet Relations aka American Committee on East-West Accord.)
US intelligence came to suspect Communist influence on Fulbright. In February 1966, President Johnson ordered FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to investigate whether Fulbright and other Senate critics of US policy in Vietnam were receiving information from Communists. Hoover produced a report which demonstrated a correlation between the Soviet party line and the public statements of Fulbright and Senator Wayne Morse, but without authorization for wiretaps he was unable to confirm any direct contact with Communists or foreign agents. Ordered to seek confirmation, Hoover spent the next weeks producing a 67-page review of FBI wiretap records of contacts between Soviet bloc embassies and US Senators, Representatives, and Congressional staff, covering the period from July 1965 to March 1966. Hoover continued submitting biweekly follow-up reports to Johnson through January 1968. Johnson tasked other intelligence agencies to conduct similar inquiries. In 1968 Johnson boasted that he knew within minutes what Fulbright was saying over lunch at the Soviet embassy. Secretary of State Dean Rusk conveyed this fact to Marcy, telling him, We know every time that you or people on your staff meet with people in the Soviet bloc.
While US intelligence was investigating Fulbright and his staff, Georgetown junior Bill Clinton joined Fulbrights staff in summer 1966. Clinton had looked to Fulbright as a role model since high school, when he first learned that Fulbright had attended Englands Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, a career path Clinton would follow as a graduate student. He got the job with Fulbright through Jack Holt, a local politician who was supported by Clintons uncle Raymond. After Uncle Raymond got him on Holts campaign, Clinton approached Holt and expressed his interest in working for Fulbright. Holt recommended him to Fulbrights administrative assistant Lee Williams. Williams offered Clinton a job as an assistant clerk on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
Clinton continued working for Fulbright into his senior year. According to his autobiography My Life, he worked in the document room of the committees offices on the fourth floor of what was then called the New Senate Office Building (later renamed the Dirksen Senate Office Building), while Carl Marcy and a few committee senior staff worked in a larger room at the Capitol Building. Clintons primary duty was taking memos and other materials back and forth between the Capitol and Senator Fulbrights office, including confidential material for which I would have to receive proper government clearance. Beyond that, I would do whatever was required, from reading newspapers and clipping important articles for the staff and interested senators to answering requests for speeches and other materials, to adding names to the committees mailing list. He often read material stamped confidential and secret that I had to deliver from time to time.
According to Clinton, he adopted an antiwar position while working under Fulbright. A few months after he began working for Fulbright, he had the Senator autograph a copy of his book The Arrogance of Power, which criticized US foreign policy on Vietnam and other topics. Clinton says his antiwar orientation was also influenced by members of Fulbrights staff who encouraged him to study the issue of draft deferment.
One staff member who influenced him was Fulbrights speechwriter Seth Tillman, who Clinton says taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and had become a friend and mentor. Tillman, along with Committee on Foreign Relations Latin American specialist Pat Holt, had recently helped shape Fulbrights opposition to Johnsons Dominican Republic policy, arguing that Dominican rebels were not Marxists and did not pose a threat similar to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. (Holt, who advocated working with Castro rather than removing him, had previously encouraged Fulbright to oppose the Bay of Pigs invasion. In retirement he would participate in seminars and publish books for the Center for International Policy, an IPS spinoff cofounded by Orlando Letelier, a Chilean Marxist linked to agents of Cuba, East Germany, and the USSR. Holt recently published an article titled, Was Cuba ever really a threat to the United States?)
Others Clinton mentions he worked with on the Committee on Foreign Relations staff were Carl Marcy, who Clinton says worked over in the Capitol Building, and who presumably received the documents Clinton delivered from the New Senate Office Building to the Capitol; Lee Williams, who talked Clinton out of quitting school to join the military; documents clerk Buddy Kendrick, who was Clintons supervisor; Kendricks part-time assistant Bertie Bowman; and Phil Dozier and Charlie Parks, two of Clintons student counterparts.
By Clintons senior year, his academic papers were expressing antiwar views. However, Clinton was not yet an activist. Clintons pro-war roommate Christopher Kit Ashby recalled that among their roommates, Bill was the most against the war, but not in a hysterical way. . .Bill was not out demonstrating on the streets.
Clintons antiwar views would begin to take a more activist turn after he won a Rhodes Scholarship his senior year. Following in Fulbrights footsteps, he left for England to attend Oxford in fall 1968.
March 1969: Bill Clinton Attends His First British Antiwar Protest
When Clinton arrived at Oxford he initially kept his antiwar views relatively quiet. His Oxford friend Cliff Jackson, later to become a critic, recalled his impression that Clinton was not vocally antiwar his first year at Oxford. As related by Maraniss:
It was during that first year at Oxford that Clinton met the fellow Arkansan, Cliff Jackson, who became his bete noire this year by releasing letters indicating that Clinton had not told the complete story of how he avoided the draft. . .Jackson contends that Clinton was not overtly anti-war that year--that in fact, several more radical American students considered Clinton spineless and a fake for not being more vocal--and that his activism did not become evident until his body was on the line.
Jackson got the impression that Clinton did not become vocally antiwar until after he began facing the strong possibility of being drafted in April 1969.
By this time Clinton had absorbed the antiwar atmosphere circulating at Oxford. In March 1969, he accepted former Miss Arkansas Sharon Evans invitation to attend his first British antiwar protest. A detailed profile of Clintons Oxford days by Times reporters Nick Rufford and David Leppard recorded:
Whatever his delight at being at Oxford, Clinton could never escape the war. At the Union debating society, Clinton's eyes were opened to the depth of feeling provoked by Vietnam. The atmosphere in Oxford was decidedly anti-American, recalled [Rhodes Scholar Alan] Bersin.
It began to play on Clinton. He had worked during the previous summer for Senator William Fulbright, an outspoken critic of the Vietnam war, and was proud of a set of books inscribed by Fulbright which set out the senator's objections to war. This, and the climate of student unrest, aroused the first stirrings of militancy in Clinton.
In March 1969, he went to his first anti-war demonstration in Britain, accompanied by Sharon Evans, a former Miss Arkansas. Evans said she persuaded Clinton to attend. We were down at Trafalgar Square for a Sunday afternoon. I said: Y'all, I want to go, I've never been to a demonstration. So Bill said Gosh, I'll go too.
According to another article that ran in Londons Times on October 25, 1992, former Eugene McCarthy campaign organizer Richard Stearns introduced Clinton to the British peace movement. The time when this occurred is not specified, but from the available information it may be inferred that it took place either in spring 1969, or in early October 1969 when Clinton stayed with Stearns while helping him organize protests. (Clinton later considered Stearns for a possible nomination as FBI Director.)
Over spring break that April, Clinton toured Bavaria with his Georgetown girlfriend Ann Markusen, a former McCarthy campaign volunteer; Stearns; and Rudy Lowe, who came from Bamberg on the East German border. Clinton had met Lowe in November 1967 at Georgetowns Conference on the Atlantic Community (CONTAC), a series of seminars and lectures attended by student delegates from the US, Canada, and Europe.
June 1969: A New Star in Oxfords Antiwar Community Attracts Attention
Clinton spent the early part of June 1969 touring Paris. His tour guide was Alice Chamberlain, whom he had met through mutual friends in London.
By this time, Clintons antiwar views were attracting attention. On June 9, 1969, the Frederick, Maryland Post ran an article by Tom Cullen on antiwar sentiment among the 29 American Rhodes Scholars attending Oxford. The star of the article was Bill Clinton. The article includes a picture of Clinton relaxing with two unnamed fellow Rhodes Scholars. It quotes Clinton describing his views on the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement:
. . .The latest U.S. casualty figures from Vietnam are just as real whether you read them in the New York Times or the London Times.
And that's the way it should be, says William J. Clinton, 22, of Hot Springs, Ark., who is one of the current crop of Rhodes Scholars. There would be something wrong with us if we could put the war out of our minds when our friends are being shot up in Vietnam.
. . . Clinton, who is fairly typical of the present American Rhodesmen at Oxford, is returning to Arkansas to be drafted in July, although his scholarship still has another year to run. For brown-eyed, curly-headed Clinton it has been an agonizing decision to make, for he is opposed to the war. . .
Politically he describes himself as a moderate.
'I was never one of the militants at Georgetown, he explains, and I have always been opposed to violence. Nevertheless, I find myself in sympathy with some of the aims of the Students for a Democratic Society. The same goes with the other Rhodes Scholars here at Oxford. . .. . .
Clinton, whose views are echoed by other Rhodes Scholars, blames both student extremists and university authorities. The authorities made the great mistake of allowing what should have been a limited war to escalate. As for the Students for a Democratic Society, they are bad Marxists who are muddled in their thinking, for the most part, and purely negative in their approach.
Instead of arguing about whether to add a course in Negro history to the university curriculum, the authorities and students, black and white, should be engaged in a meaningful dialogue about the real problems that threaten us. They should be worrying about how to manage in the computer age, how to save the lives of our cities, how the American people can lead happier, fuller lives."
Summer 1969: Clinton and the Vietnam Moratorium Committee
Over summer vacation that year, Clinton returned to the US, dividing his time between taking steps to avoid the draft and organizing antiwar activity. Maraniss summarizes:
That summer Clinton's efforts to avoid the draft and protest the war merged. He spent half his time in Arkansas feverishly working the system so that he could get accepted into the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas Law School--which he would never attend--and thus delay induction. The rest of the time he was in Washington, working as a low-level organizer in the anti-war movement.
Clintons Oxford associate Cliff Jackson contended that at this time, Clintons future roommate Strobe Talbott was advising him how to avoid the draft. In a rebuttal to a TIME column by Talbott that Managing Editor Henry Muller refused to print, Jackson wrote:
I know that Strobe was one of the chief architects of Bill Clinton's scheme to void his draft notice, avoid reporting on his scheduled (postponed) July 28 induction date and to secure a 1-D deferment, yet nowhere in his personal testimony does Strobe mention his involvement. . .I have a crystal clear recollection of Strobe and Bill standing in my office door at Republican State headquarters in the summer of 1969 and discussing the plan, devised by Bill with the able assistance of friends, to kill his draft notice and secure a deferment.
Clinton effectively confirmed Talbotts advisory role in his autobiography but put a somewhat different spin on it, writing:
Just before I left Arkansas for Marthas Vineyard, I wrote a letter to Bill Armstrong, chairman of my local draft board, telling him I didnt really want to do the ROTC program and asking him to withdraw my 1- D deferment and put me back in the draft. Strobe Talbott came to Arkansas to visit and we discussed whether I should mail it. I didnt.
Meanwhile, Clinton began working for the Vietnam Moratorium Committee (VMC), the core of an antiwar coalition then planning major demonstrations scheduled for that fall. Clinton wrote to University of Arkansas ROTC head Colonel Eugene Holmes that winter:
I have written and spoken and marched against the war. One of the national organizers of the Vietnam Moratorium is a close friend of mine. After I left Arkansas last summer, I went to Washington to work in the national headquarters of the Moratorium, then to England to organize the Americans here for demonstrations October 15 and November 16.
The VMC had been conceived in April 1969 by Massachusetts antiwar activist Jerome Grossman, who proposed the idea of a committee to coordinate a nation-wide, grassroots-generated series of demonstrations against the Vietnam War. To help him organize these demonstrations, Grossman recruited the help of 1968 antiwar Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy and former McCarthy campaign organizers Sam Brown, David Hawk, David Mixner, and Marge Sklencar.
Through Brown, the Moratoriums national director and principal organizer, the VMC joined forces with the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, or New Mobe, a national coordinating group for antiwar protests. The New Mobe coordinated its actions with the Soviet Union and North Vietnam through the KGB-linked World Peace Council (WPC) in Stockholm. A 1970 Congressional report found that the New Mobe was under communist domination by the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party, a rival Trotskyist group linked to Cuba.
The New Mobe, which organized national gatherings in Washington, DC, worked in cooperation with the VMC, which organized protests and political activism on a local level. The VMC was represented on the New Mobes steering committee from the New Mobes first meeting. Sam Brown organized for the New Mobe while he directed the VMC. The New Mobe formally endorsed a major protest the VMC scheduled for October 15, 1969, and the VMC in turn supported a major New Mobe protest scheduled for November 15, 1969. The New Mobe shared its headquarters with the VMC at 1029 Vermont Avenue NW in Washington, DC, which would presumably be the building where Clinton says he worked when he went to Washington to work in the national headquarters of the Moratorium.
Clinton met VMC leaders Brown and Mixner at a gathering of former McCarthy campaign organizers held at Marthas Vineyard in 1969. Clintons attendance was publicized by the Bush campaign during the 1992 election. Clinton confirmed his attendance in interviews with TV host Phil Donahue and with the Boston Globe but emphasized it was a reunion for McCarthy organizers rather than a VMC meeting. Bush campaign statements described the event as occurring in early 1969, but a U.S. News & World Report article by Steven Roberts and Matthew Cooper placed it a few days after a September 9 letter Clinton wrote to Richard Stearns, and Clintons autobiography places it near the end of September. Accounts also varied as to whether the meeting was a political organizing or social event, with Brown denying that the event involved any antiwar planning, and Clinton campaign staff chief Eli Segal telling Boston Globe reporter Curtis Wilkie, We spent most of our time water skiing and eating frankfurters. . .To call this a cabal of the left is so preposterous. However Clinton in his 2004 autobiography seemingly conceded that he made what little contribution I could to their deliberations about that falls protests:
Near the end of September, while working my way back to Oxford, I flew to Marthas Vineyard for a reunion of anti-war activists who had worked for Gene McCarthy. Of course, I hadnt done so. Rick Stearns invited me, I think because he knew I wanted to come and they wanted another southerner. The only other one there was Taylor Branch, a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina, who had just been in Georgia registering blacks to vote. . .Besides Rick and Taylor, there were four other men at the reunion whom I kept up with over the years: Sam Brown, one of the most prominent leaders of the student anti-war movement, later got involved in Colorado politics and, when I was President, served the United States with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe; David Mixner, who had begun organizing fellow migrant workers at fourteen, visited me several times in England and later moved to California, where he became active in the struggle against AIDS and for gay rights, and supported me in 1992; Mike Driver became one of my most cherished friends over the next thirty years; and Eli Segal, whom I met in the McGovern campaign, became chief of staff of the Clinton-Gore campaign. . .The group was planning the next large protest, known as the Vietnam Moratorium, and I made what little contribution I could to their deliberations.
Brown, Mixner, and other eyewitnesses, including Strobe Talbott, have also described the event.
Fall 1969: Clinton Organizes London Antiwar Protests
That October, when Clinton returned to Oxford, he temporarily moved in with Richard Stearns for a couple weeks. He helped Stearns organize Americans in England for protests to be held there in solidarity with October 15 and November 15 protests the VMC and New Mobe were planning in America and other countries. An October 1992 Boston Globe article by Curtis Wilkie summarized Clintons recollections of his activity that fall:
In an interview with The Boston Globe last April, he said he had taken part in two demonstrations and a teach-in while a student in England.
I remember once we did a teach-in that I was asked to participate in. . .at the London School of Economics, the University of London, one of those schools in London, he said. And I remember once I demonstrated around the US Embassy. I remember whatever we did around the embassy in Grosvenor Square, I remember Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward came.
He said he later went with a group from Oxford to an antiwar demonstration in London that I wasn't part of putting together.
Maraniss article gave a similar account:
He took part in two anti-war demonstrations, helping to organize a teach-in at the University of London and serving as a marshal at a peaceful vigil outside the U.S. Embassy. . .
The protest was relatively small and orderly and rather self-conscious as well, said [Clintons roommate Douglas] Eakeley, now a lawyer in New Jersey. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were there, and a few hundred people. It did not require months of organizing; it was not a full-time protest movement.
Rufford and Leppards Times article provided additional details:
Stepping up his campaigning against the war, Clinton joined meetings with Group 68, Americans backed by the pro-Soviet British Peace Council. Tariq Ali, the former radical student leader, described Group 68 as being on the soft wing of his hardline coalition.
In the autumn, Clinton helped organise demonstrations outside the American embassy in Grosvenor Square. In the evening, protesters held a candlelit vigil attended by Jessica Mitford, the writer, and Paul Jones, the pop singer.
Clinton's role in organising that protest was a natural extension of his voluntary work for the peace movement in America. But the extent of his involvement is unclear, and not as influential as right-wing critics have alleged. The notion that Bill was a national organiser is not accurate, said Bersin. He took on the chore of contacting Americans in London. He was at the edge of it.
A month later, Clinton took part in a weekend of demonstrations near Grosvenor Square. On the first day, protesters led by Vanessa Redgrave dropped cards with the names of war victims into a black coffin. [Tom] Williamson said he and Clinton served as unpaid marshals. We were very much part of the peaceful demonstration, rationalist approach, he recalled.
On the second day, Clinton organised a church service to provide Americans with an alternative to more radical protests by British Marxists. He asked an American priest, Richard McSorley, to read a prayer at the service in St Mark's American church near the embassy. McSorley recalled that afterwards they paraded in front of the embassy carrying white crosses, an indication of our desire to end the agony of Vietnam.
Tariq Ali insists that Clinton was never prominent in the peace movement. He knew the Americans who led the marches, and after checking his records he is certain Clinton was not among them.
Two events described above can be identified as London counterparts to a pair of major demonstrations the VMC and New Mobe organized in the US and other countries that October 15 and November 15. (I have not been able to clearly identify the teach-in at the London School of Economics or University of London that Clinton and other sources refer to.) As Rufford and Leppards article mentions, Clinton organized these events on behalf of Group 68, a British counterpart to the VMC formed by expatriate former supporters of Eugene McCarthys 1968 Presidential campaign. Group 68 had emerged from the Stop It Committee, which was part of the Viet Nam Solidarity Campaign (VSC), a Trotskyist-controlled antiwar coalition financed by Bertrand Russell and led by Russells associates Ralph Schoenman and Tariq Ali. (For more information on Group 68 and related groups, a detailed background profile is provided below after the body of the article.)
The event Clinton remembered Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward attending took place outside the US embassy in London on October 15, 1969, the same day the VMC held its first major protest in the US, with New Mobe support. Newspaper descriptions of attendance ranged from 200 to 400, describing the crowd as mostly American. A UPI wire of the event appearing in the San Antonio Light included a photo showing Newman carrying a sign that said Moratorium. An Associated Press account carried by numerous papers noted that American Rhodes Scholars at Oxford University delivered petitions to the London Embassy. In coordination with this petition, Forty members of the British Parliament signed a letter demanding the withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam.
The Grosvenor Square demonstration where Clinton served as a marshal was held on November 15, the day the New Mobe had scheduled the Washington, DC culmination of a multi-day event called the March Against Death, which was supported by the VMC. A UPI wire which ran in various papers the next day summarized the event:
From Tel Aviv to Manila, from London to Sydney, in Kobe, Japan, Buenos Aires and Bonn, antiwar demonstrators massed on the streets and in front of American government buildings to express their support of the second Vietnam moratorium in the United States. . .
Actress Vanessa, Redgrave and folk singers Peggy Seeger and Judy Collins were among the celebrities who joined more than 1,000 antiwar demonstrators in London in a lie-in in front of the U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square. The group, however, was made up largely of American teen-agers and college students studying in England.
The St. Marks church service Rufford and Leppard refer to was another Moratorium-related ceremony held on November 16. According to Richard Stearns, as quoted by Roberts and Cooper in U.S. News & World Report, Clinton organized it to give young Americans an alternative to a more radical event planned by British Marxists. Clinton was spotted at the ceremony by Fr. Richard McSorley of Georgetowns Center for Peace Studies. McSorley, who was on sabbatical visiting antiwar groups around the world, later recalled in his book Peace Eyes:
[On] Nov. 15, 1969, I participated in the British moratorium against the Vietnam War in front of the U.S. Embassy at Grosvenor Square in London. . .
That day in November about 500 Britons and Americans were meeting to express their sorrow at America's misuse of power in Vietnam. . .
The activities in London supporting the second stage of the moratorium and the March of Death in Washington, were initiated by Group 68 (Americans in Britain).This group had the support of British peace organizations, including the Committee on Nuclear Disarmament, the British Peace Council, and the International Committee for Disarmament and Peace.
The next day I joined with about 500 other people for the interdenominational service. . .As I was waiting for the ceremony to begin, Bill Clinton of Georgetown, then studying as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, came up and welcomed me. He was one of the organizers. . .
Late 1969: Clintons Roommates, the KGB, and the Road to Moscow
That December McSorley would again encounter Clinton in Oslo, Norway. Clinton, who had recently spent Thanksgiving vacation in Ireland with his fellow Moratorium protestor Tom Williamson, was now on his way to the Soviet Union, following in the footsteps of his new roommate Strobe Talbott.
Talbott was a Russian affairs scholar and intern journalist for TIME. He had begun visiting Moscow in 1968 and had developed contacts in the USSR. In summer 1969 he was in Moscow acting as a replacement for vacationing TIME Moscow bureau chief Jerrold Schecter. At this time he met Victor Louis (Vitali Yevgenyevich Lui), a KGB disinformation agent and talent spotter who specialized in influencing journalists and planting stories in the Western media.
For the past several years, under the control of KGB General Vyacheslav Kevorkov, Louis had been helping the KGB with damage control by acting as a sort of literary agent supervising the leaking of the memoirs of various former Soviet officials and celebrities, including Joseph Stalins daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva, former Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, and former Premier Nikita Khrushchev. In 1967, with approval from KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov, Kevorkov and Louis began seeking a publisher for Khrushchevs memoirs. Louis first approached Jess Gorkin, editor of Parade magazine, which had run an article on an NBC documentary on Khrushchev that Louis had arranged. Parade turned down the project because it seemed too expensive. Parade chief editor Lloyd Skip Shearer then suggested Louis approach Talbott, his future son-in-law. Louis approached Talbott through Schecter, whom he met at a party in Moscow in August 1968. In fall 1969, Louis broached the idea of TIME publishing Khrushchevs memoirs to Schecter. Schecter secured approval from TIME-LIFE New York news service chief of correspondents Murray Gart, then contacted Talbott to offer him the job of translating Khrushchevs memoirs. Talbott agreed on the condition that he could enlist the help of a Russian friend from Oxford, Yasha Zaguskin, a White Russian emigre who roomed with Boris Pasternaks sister Lydia.
Talbott then began working on the project with Louis, launching a relationship that would last until 1992. However, it was not until 1999 that Schecter met Keyorkov at a CIA conference and learned that Louis had kept the KGB informed of the Khrushchev project the whole time.
In late 1969, after staying with Richard Stearns for a couple weeks in October, Clinton began rooming with Talbott and their friend Frank Aller. Aller, a draft dodger and China scholar, was doing academic work similar to Talbotts, making trips to Switzerland to receive the unpublished notes of Edgar Snow, an academic advocate of the Chinese Communists who was linked to the old Institute of Pacific Relations network. (In 1971 the Chinese government would use Snow to mediate an invitation to Owen Lattimore, making sure there would be no Soviet objections if Lattimore visited China.) Clintons autobiography recalls how he often made Talbott and Aller breakfast while they were doing their work:
After more orthodox conservative forces removed him from power and installed Brezhnev and Kosygin, Khrushchev secretly recorded his memoirs on tape, and arranged, I think through friends in the KGB, to get them to Jerry Schecter, then Time magazines bureau chief in Moscow. Strobe was fluent in Russian and had worked for Time in Moscow the previous summer. He flew to Copenhagen to meet Schecter and get the tapes. When he got back to Oxford, he began the laborious process of typing Khrushchevs words out in Russian, then translating and editing them. On many mornings, I would make breakfast for Frank and Strobe as they began their work.
Schecter similarly recalled meeting Clinton shortly after Talbott got the Khrushchev assignment:
Before leaving London, I also spent a day with Strobe at Oxford and met his long-haired, amiable housemate, Bill Clinton, who prepared omlets for our breakfast. I never asked Strobe how he told Bill about his new assignment.
Talbott was again in Moscow about the same time Clinton was there in 1970, though he insisted he did not travel there with Clinton, a Boston Herald article by Wayne Woodlief and Joe Battenfeld mentions. A dozen other Rhodes Scholars also followed up Talbotts visit to Moscow by going there in 1969-1970, Maraniss article notes.
After Khrushchevs memoirs were published, Khrushchev issued a nuanced denial of their authenticity, Soviet news agencies claimed Talbott was a young sapling of the CIA, and the Soviets refused to allow Talbott back in the country. Western Soviet expert Victor Zorza speculated that both the KGB and the CIAs disinformation departments may have played tug-of-war over the memoirs.
When Clinton later nominated Talbott for Deputy Secretary of State, Talbott was questioned about his relationship with Louis. He initially claimed he met Louis in the 1970s, then under cross-examination he remembered that he had actually first met Louis in 1969.
(Talbotts brother-in-law Derek Shearer later developed numerous Communist and IPS front associations and became one of Clintons closest advisors. Other Shearer family members also became part of the extended Clinton clan.)
Winter 1969-1970: Back in the USSR
Clintons trip to Moscow took him through Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. According to his autobiography, he left for Amsterdam with his artist friend Aimee Gautier. After some sightseeing they had a museum encounter with Rudolf Nureyev, a ballet dancer who had defected from the Soviet Union.
Clinton says he left Gautier in Amsterdam and got on the train for Copenhagen, Oslo, and Stockholm. McSorley saw him at the train station in Oslo. McSorley, who was coming from Uppsala, Sweden, said Clinton had been on the same train.
At Clintons request, McSorley allowed him to come along on a visit to the Institute for Peace Research. They were given a tour by the Institutes Assistant Director and met three conscientious objectors working there. They went on to visit Oslo University, where they lunched with a professor and visited a peace center founded by two actors.
Clinton then went by himself to meet Jim Durham, a friend from Arkansas who was studying in Oslo.
Leaving Norway, Clinton went on by train to Stockholm, Sweden for a couple days, then took an overnight ferry to Helsinki, Finland. There he spent about two days over Christmas with Georgetown classmate Richard Shullaw, whose father J. Harold Shullaw was deputy chief of mission of the US embassy in Finland.
Clinton then continued by train through Leningrad to Moscow. In Moscow, where he arrived on New Years Eve, he had booked through the Soviet travel agency Intourist to spend a week at the expensive Hotel National. His autobiography says the only person he knew in Moscow was Tom Williamsons girlfriend Anik Nikki Alexis, a daughter of a French diplomat who was now studying at the Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University, a KGB training ground famed for turning out alumni such as the terrorist Carlos the Jackal. Clinton recalls, One night I took a bus out to Lumumba University to have dinner with Nikki and some of her friends. One of them was a Haitian woman named Helene whose husband was studying in Paris. On the bus back home Clinton says there was only one other passenger, Oleg Rakito, who spoke better English than I did and asked me lots of questions and told me he worked for the government, virtually admitting he was assigned to keep an eye on me.
Perhaps referring to Alexis and her friends, Rufford and Leppard recorded that Clinton visited friends at Moscow University.. Maraniss stated that he met many of the same contacts previously made by Talbott and other Oxford Rhodes Scholars. Roberts and Cooper reported that he spent most of his time visiting with members of an American delegation which was there to discuss an exchange of American prisoners of war with Soviet and North Vietnamese officials. This delegation also made contact with other nations embassies in Moscow. One of the delegates, Charlie Daniels, stayed at the same hotel as Clinton. He remembered that Clinton always seemed to be out of money and hungry, and was often fed by the delegation. In his autobiography Clinton elaborated on his contact with Daniels group:
My most interesting Moscow adventure began with a chance encounter in the hotel elevator. When I got in, there were four other men in the car. One of them was wearing a Virginia Lions Club pin. He obviously thought I was a foreigner, with my long hair and beard, rawhide boots, and British navy pea jacket. He drawled, Where you from? When I smiled and said, Arkansas, he replied, Shoot, I thought you were from Denmark or someplace like that! The mans name was Charlie Daniels. He was from Norton, Virginia, hometown of Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot who had been shot down and captured in Russia in 1960. He was accompanied by Carl McAfee, a lawyer from Norton who had helped to arrange Powerss release, and a chicken farmer from Washington State, Henry Fors, whose son had been shot down in Vietnam. They had come all the way to Moscow to see if the North Vietnamese stationed there would tell the farmer whether his son was dead or alive. The fourth man was from Paris and, like the men from Virginia, a member of the Lions Club. He had joined them because the North Vietnamese spoke French. They all just came to Moscow without any assurances that the Russians would permit them to talk with the Vietnamese or that, if they did, any information would be forthcoming. None of them spoke Russian. They asked if I knew anyone who could help them. My old friend Nikki Alexis was studying English, French, and Russian at Patrice Lumumba University. I introduced her to them and they spent a couple of days together making the rounds, checking in with the American embassy, asking the Russians to help, finally seeing the North Vietnamese, who apparently were impressed that Mr. Fors and his friends would make such an effort to learn the fate of his son and several others who were missing in action. They said they would check into it and get back to them. A few weeks later, Henry Fors learned that his son had been killed when his plane was shot down. At least he had some peace of mind.
The delegation Clinton met sounds like it may have been related to the activities of the Committee of Liaison with Families of Servicemen Detained in North Vietnam (COLIFAM), an antiwar group formed in summer 1969 which negotiated POW exchanges in return for pro-Communist propaganda statements. However this is only informed speculation that has not been verified.
Clinton stayed in Moscow about five days. Several accounts say he left via the Soviet airline Aeroflot, but Clinton says Nikki and her Haitian friend Helene put me on the train.
In either case, Clintons next stop was Prague, Czechoslovakia, where he arrived on January 6, 1970. There he looked up the family of his Oxford friend Jan Kopold. Kopolds family was well-connected in Czech Communist circles. Clinton received a guided tour of Prague from Marie Svermova, the widow of Czech Communist Party hero Jan Sverma, who was Jan Kopolds grandfather. In 1969 the Kopolds ostensibly held dissident political views against the ruling regime, which had grown unpopular among reformers and student activists after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia the previous year.
Clinton stayed in Czechoslovakia through January 12. According to his account, he then went on to Munich, West Germany to visit his friend Rudy Lowe and celebrate Faschingsfest, a Carnival Season festival with costumes similar to Mardis Gras or Halloween.
On January 19 Clinton arrived back at Oxford, according to a letter he wrote the Kopolds four days later. He remained at Oxford into the summer. He spent spring break in Spain with Rick Stearns in April. In late May he was accepted into Yale Law School, and he left for New York on June 26, 1970.
Conclusion: Directions for Further Research
During Clintons 1992 Presidential campaign, much of the above information was publicized, but newspaper articles and government files on the antiwar movement were not available online for cross-referencing, archives documenting Soviet disinformation campaigns and their relation to Victor Louis activities were not as available as they are now, and the background of Group 68 and its role in the fall 1969 Moratorium protests were not explored in depth. Today, with the benefit of online research tools, it may be possible to delve further into the matter.
One possible direction for further research is suggested by the Johnson administrations surveillance of Senator Fulbright and his staff. Given Johnsons relationship with the various segments of the US intelligence community at that time, it is likely that he assigned this surveillance to not only the FBI but also military intelligence and the CIA. Did the surveillance of Fulbrights staff by the FBI or other US agencies generate any information on Clinton? Likewise, did the Soviets have any files on Fulbright which Western intelligence has since obtained?
Did US intelligence surveillance of the VMC or New Mobe generate any information on Clinton?
Did US or UK intelligence monitor Clintons activity in Britain? (Articles on Thomas Culvers courtmartial, described in the appendix below, mention that Air Force intelligence officers photographed protestors at antiwar events near Lakenheath Air Force base and the US embassy there in 1971. Was Clinton also photographed at the antiwar events he participated in near the US embassy in London in 1969?)
Do Soviet archives obtained by Western intelligence, or the East German intelligence files obtained by the CIA, or the extensive Polish intelligence files publicized in 2005, include any information relevant to the relationship between Victor Louis and Strobe Talbott, and Clinton? What about Edgar Snow and Frank Aller?
Is there any information available on the antiwar movement in Oslo relevant to Clintons visit there?
What did Soviet and US intelligence files record about Clintons visit with his friends from Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University?
Were Clintons Czechoslovakian or German contacts mentioned in any of the East German intelligence files that German intelligence requested back from the CIA when Clinton was President?
And finally, is it coincidental or significant that three years after Bill Clinton co-organized a fall 1969 London antiwar demonstration attended by Jessica Mitford, his future wife Hillary took a job interning for Mitfords husband Robert Treuhaft, who like Mitford was a former member of the Communist Party and still active in left-wing political activity?
As in 1992, there are still more questions than answers. But as more information becomes available, the questions keep getting more interesting.
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Appendix: Who Was Group 68?
The involvement of Group 68 in the London Moratorium protests Clinton helped organize is noteworthy and worth some background elaboration. Group 68 was cofounded by Heinz Norden, who had been dismissed from a sensitive US Army position after US intelligence discovered he had a background with Communist Party union and antiwar activity. Like Norden, Group 68 became involved with Communist activity, working closely with Marxist groups organizing antiwar activity among US soldiers.
Cofounder of Group 68: Heinz Norden
Heinz Norden had been born in Britain in 1905 to a family of German descent. After receiving his education in Germany, Norden relocated to the US in 1924 to escape Germanys economic depression. In New York he organized a pair of tenant unions which worked in coalition with the Communist Party on both tenant and foreign policy issues. Nordens Citywide Tenants Council (CWTC) followed the twists of the Soviet party line as World War II approached, opposing US involvement in the war while the Soviets were allied with the Nazis, then doing an about-face after Germany attacked Russia.
Swept up by newfound patriotism, Norden joined the US Army in 1941. He stayed in Germany after the war to work for Army intelligence, editing the official U.S. German-language magazine Heute. In 1947 his tenant organizing background came under scrutiny and he was dismissed from his position. While spending the next few years battling his dismissal in federal court, Norden went into editorial and advertising work that took him to Europe. In 1961 he relocated to Britain, where he came into the orbit of an antiwar network centered around academic celebrity Bertrand Russell.
Norden, Bertrand Russell, Tariq Ali, and Clinton
As an editor, Norden had worked with Albert Einsteins estate executor Otto Nathan on the 1960 book Einstein on Peace, which featured a preface by Russell. Russell, who had been active in the antiwar movement since World War I, had recently been circulating a manifesto with the late Einsteins name on it to promote various groups and events disseminating nuclear disarmament propaganda.
Russell soon became a leading influence on the Vietnam antiwar movement in Britain and the US. In April 1963 a letter published by Russells in the New York Times accusing the US of using napalm and chemical warfare in Vietnam prompted US antiwar leaders A.J. Muste and David Dellinger to publicly refer to Vietnam for the first time, during an Easter anti-nuclear demonstration. This action, which departed from the current party line of SANE and other US antiwar groups, was one of the earliest Vietnam War protests in the US. (The earliest seems to have been some protests by Young Socialist Alliance demonstrators at Berkeley in March 1962.) Russell sent a taped greeting to another early US antiwar protest, the Vietnam Day Committee (VDC) Teach-in at Berkeley in May 1965.
In 1963 Russell had also formed the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, which accused the US and its allies of war crimes in Vietnam. Russell echoed these allegations on North Vietnamese radio broadcasts to US troops in May 1966, calling for an International War Crimes Tribunal to investigate alleged US war crimes in Vietnam. The Tribunal, which began under the aegis of Russells Foundation and spun off into an independent entity, was sponsored by the Stockholm Conference on Vietnam (aka World Conference on Vietnam), a Soviet front group set up by World Peace Council chairman Romesh Chandra, a KGB agent. Attendees at the second session of the Tribunal included Wilfred Burchett, a journalist named as a KGB agent in sworn Senate testimony.
Russells Tribunal interacted with American antiwar groups. In 1969 it became the inspiration for a pair of US counterparts: the Citizens' Commission of Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes (CCI); and the Winter Soldier Investigation (WSI), organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). In June 1971 CCI and VVAW sent representatives to a gathering of Russells Tribunal in Oslo, with a detour through Moscow along the way.
Russells American allies also included Americans in Britain. In 1967 a group of antiwar Americans in Britain organized the Stop It Committee: Americans in Britain for United States Withdrawal from Vietnam. (The choice of name apparently reflected planning for the Stop the Draft Week demonstration at the Pentagon in October 1967, which also spawned a Stop the Draft Week Committee.) The committee formed part of a Trotskyist-controlled coalition called the Viet Nam Solidarity Campaign (VSC), which was financed by Russell and directed by Russells secretary Ralph Schoenman. On St. Patricks Day in 1967 the VSC organized the Battle of Grosvenor Square, a violent attack on the US embassy in London.
The VSCs most vocal spokesman was former Oxford Union debate club president Tariq Ali, who also represented Russell at events sponsored by his Tribunal. In 1968 Ali joined the International Marxist Group (IMG), the British section of the international Trotskyist group the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI). He would later head the Transnational Institute (TNI), the European affiliate of IPS. He was a leading figure in the antiwar movement in Britain at the time Clinton arrived there.
Rufford and Leppards Times article noted that it was at Oxfords Union debating society, which Ali had presided over, where Clinton's eyes were opened to the depth of feeling provoked by Vietnam. Rufford and Leppard quoted Ali describing Group 68 as being on the soft wing of his hardline coalition. Ali insisted that Clinton was not a major figure in his coalition and that he could not find any records mentioning Clinton as one of the Americans leading marches.
The American Antiwar Network in Britain, Group 68, and Clinton
During the 1968 US Presidential campaign, the American antiwar community in Britain formed Americans Abroad for McCarthy, a committee to support antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy. McCarthys campaign did not survive the Democratic National Convention, and Americans Abroad for McCarthy was renamed Group 68: Americans in Britain for United States Withdrawal from Southeast Asia (preserving a modified version of the full name of the Stop It Committee). Norden cofounded Group 68 and chaired the organization from 1968 to 1973.
Group 68 survived McCarthys unsuccessful campaign by diversifying into other activities, such as organizing protests, disseminating propaganda, and supporting draft resisters and antiwar GIs.
In these efforts Group 68 worked with a coalition of British antiwar groups that included the British Peace Council, a UK affiliate of the WPC. As McSorley notes, the British Peace Council supported the November 1969 antiwar ceremony where he saw Clinton acting as an organizer. McSorley also refers to the Committee on Nuclear Disarmament, possibly referring to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), an anti-nuclear group Russell cofounded.
Clintons fellow Rhodes Scholar Alan Bersin specified that Clintons organizational function was contacting Americans in London. This fits with Groups 68s roots in the Stop It Committee and Americans Abroad for McCarthy, which served the function of coordinating American antiwar activity in Britain.
Group 68 After Clinton: 1970-1978
The character and connections of Group 68 are further illuminated by consideration of the groups activity after Clinton left Oxford for Yale in 1970.
In 1971 Group 68 joined Berrigan brothers lawyer Paul ODwyer in championing the cause of Captain Thomas S. Culver, a US Air Force JAG legal officer facing courtmartial. Culver had come from a pacifist family and had been opposed to the Vietnam War before enlisting, but he had not seen his legal duties as contributing to the war effort. He was court-martialed after he participated in antiwar activity near Lakenheath Royal Air Force base during a May 31, 1971 assembly attended by several hundred US Air Force personnel.
Many of the demonstrators belonged to the GI antiwar group PEACE (People Emerging Against Corrupt Establishment), which had branches at eight US Air Force bases in Britain. PEACE had been founded at a June 1970 antiwar meeting organized by actress Vanessa Redgrave, a member of the Trotskyist group the Workers Revolutionary Party. It was mentioned above that Redgrave participated in the November 1969 Moratorium demonstrations Clinton attended. Redgrave financed PEACE, and she participated in the May 1971 event that occasioned Culvers court-martial.
Culver was providing legal counsel to PEACE members participating in the event. He and his fellow protestors attempted to create a precedent establishing a loophole in laws against soldiers demonstrating in uniform. They did not wear their uniforms, and they attempted to claim they were not actually demonstrating but only petitioning. They stayed on the fringes of the crowd and avoided banners and speeches, and instead went silently to the US embassy in separate small groups to turn in an antiwar petition.
Culver lost his case, and he was convicted of participating in the demonstration and of inciting others to do the same. He was sentenced leniently to a $1,000 fine, avoiding the maximum possible sentence of four years hard labor and a dishonorable discharge. At the time of his sentencing he planned to leave the Air Force to become a lawyer for servicemen in the UK. Following announcement of his sentence, PEACE held an August 1 demonstration protesting the Air Forces policy.
Heinz Nordens papers on Group 68 include a folder on the World Assembly for the Peace and Independence of the Peoples of Indochina, a WPC-sponsored conference held in Paris in February 1972. The assembly was attended by representatives of the US Communist Party and its antiwar coalition, the Peoples Coalition for Peace and Justice (PCPJ), including representatives of VVAW. Following this event, Group 68 joined l50 other groups in organizing the Vietnam Vigil to End the War, a year-long daily protest in front of the US Embassy in London.
In 1973 Group 68 took up the cause of Captain Michael J. Heck, a US Air Force pilot facing courtmartial. Like Culver, Heck came from a pacifist family and had been opposed to the Vietnam War prior to his enlistment. Facing the prospect of being drafted, he joined officers candidate school in the hopes of avoiding combat, but to his dismay he ended up getting assigned to B-52 bombing missions. He grudgingly flew 175 bombing missions, but after Christmas 1972, Heck informed his superiors that he refused to fly any more. In February 1973, shortly after the signing of the Vietnam peace agreement in Paris, the Air Force accepted the resignations of Heck and another pilot who had recently refused a bombing mission, Dwight J. Evans, Jr. Following his resignation, Heck told reporters that he was discharged under undisclosed other than honorable conditions and planned to appeal with help from his ACLU counsel, Marvin Karpatkin.
With the Vietnam War ending, Group 68 changed its name in 1974 to Concerned Americans Abroad (CAA). CAA remained active until 1978, working with other leftover antiwar groups, such as the VVAW offshoot Vietnam Veterans Against the War/Winter Soldier Organization (VVAW/WSO). CAA also partnered with antiwar elements of the US Democratic Party, which organized voters in Britain as Democrats Abroad (UK) and sent a representative to the 1976 Democratic National Convention. CAA and its allies campaigned for a range of causes which included the release of political prisoners, amnesty for draft dodgers, the impeachment of President Nixon, the abolition of the CIA, and the defense of renegade CIA agent Philip Agee and his journalist colleague Marc Hosenball (now with Newsweek), who were facing deportation proceedings for disclosing classified information about UK signals intelligence operations. Recent disclosures have confirmed that at this time Agee was cooperating with Soviet and Cuban intelligence to expose CIA operations.
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The War Called Peace: The Soviet Peace Offensive. Foreword by Congressman John Ashbrook. Afterword by Helmut Sauer, member of the West Germany Bundestag. Alexandria, Virginia: Western Goals, 1982.
Vietnam Moratorium Committee
Browning, Frank. On the Inside, Looking Out. The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review. Volume 3, Issue 4; Oct 31, 1996, 35.
Clinton, Hillary. Living History. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003.
Frisby, Michael K. Clinton challenged on Vietnam: TV host prods him on antiwar effort. Boston Globe. October 9, 1992, 1.
Golden, Daniel. Mixners Moment: In its crusade to end the ban on homosexuals in the military, the traditionally antiwar gay and lesbian movement is fighting for an unlikely cause. And David Mixner has become its equally unlikely leader. Boston Globe. June 6, 1993, 14.
Hanoi John: Kerry and the Antiwar Movements Communist Connections. wintersoldier.com. http://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/staticpages/index.php?page=Fedora3
Mixner David. Stranger Among Friends. New York: Bantam Books, 1996.
United States House of Representatives, House Committee on Internal Security. Subversive Involvement in the Origin, Leadership, and Activities of the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, and its Predecessor Organizations. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970.
Wilkie, Curtis. Red-baiting reflects strain of desperation. Boston Globe. October 7, 1992, 12.
October 15, 1969 London Moratorium
Soviets Hail Protest. The San Antonio Light. October 16, 1969, 8.
World Capitols Protest in Sympathy. The Morning Herald (Hagerstown, MD). October 16, 1969, 2.
November 15, 1969 London Moratorium
Nixon Consults Viet Advisers. The San Antonio Light. November 16, 1969, 5A.
Protestors March In Many Cities. Ogden Standard-Examiner. November 16, 1969, 2A.
November 16, 1969 London Moratorium
McSorley, Richard, S.J. Peace Eyes. Washington, DC: Center for Peace Studies, 1978.
Jones, Arthur. McSorley and his famous friend go way back: Georgetown University's Richard McSorley National Catholic Reporter. July 28, 1995.
Strobe Talbott and Victor Louis
Andrew, Christopher M and Vasili Mitrokhin. The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
Schecter, Jerrold and Leona. Sacred Secrets: How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History. With foreword by Strobe Talbott. Washington, DC: Brasseys, 2002.
Talbott, Strobe. The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy. New York: Random House, 2002.
Timmerman, Kenneth R. Strobe Talbott: Russia's Man in Washington. American Spectator. April 1998.
United States Senate. Nomination of Strobe Talbott, of Ohio, To Be Deupty Secretary of State. Congressional Record. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, February 22, 1994, S1541-S1553.
Frank Aller and Edgar Snow
Farnsworth, Robert M. From Vagabond to Journalist: Edgar Snow in Asia, 1928-1941. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1996.
Hamilton, John Maxwell. Edgar Snow: A Biography. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988.
Klehr, Harvey, John Earl Haynes, and Kyrill M. Anderson. The Soviet World of American Communism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
Long, Kelly Ann. Helen Foster Snow: An American Woman in Revolutionary China. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2006.
Newman, Robert P. Owen Lattimore and the Loss of China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
Snow, Edgar. Journey to the Beginning. New York: Random House, 1958.
Snow, Helen Foster. My China Years: A Memoir New York: Morrow, 1984.
Thomas, S. Bernard. Season of High Adventure: Edgar Snow in China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Federal Bureau of Invesigation. Files for American POWs/MIAs in Southeast Asia. Online at http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/powsmias.htm
Heinz Norden and Group 68
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Viet Nam Solidarity Campaign and Stop It Committee
Attention Getter [photo]. The Coshocton Tribune. December 5, 1967, 1.
Days In The Life: The Battle of Grosvenor Square (film). Blast! Films for BBC Two. 2003.
Die britische Protestindustrie. From Tatsachen und Meinungen: Die Neue Linke: Theorie--Utopie--Praxis, Bern: Verlag SOI, 1969, 56ff. Reprinted online at http://www.infopartisan.net/archive/1967/266740.html
McGillivray, Don. American embassies get a break The Brandon Sun. June 25, 1968, 4.
Vietnam Day in London. The Anderson Herald. October 23, 1968, 4.
Wearing Skeleton Masks. . . [photo over unrelated article Nuclear Scientist Detained In Cuba]. El Paso Herald-Post. August 19, 1967, A5.
Zaroulis, Nancy and Gerald Sullivan. Who Spoke Up: American Protest Against the War in Vietnam, 1963-1975. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1984.
Americans Abroad for McCarthy
Expatriates in Politics. Albuquerque Journal. August 18, 1968, A10.
Thomas Culver
AF Court Convicts Capt. Culver. The Stars and Stripes. July 18, 1971, 9.
Captains Trial Judge Sees High Court Test. The Lawton Constitution. July 8, 1971, 3C.
Convicted U.S. Captain Fights For Servicemen, Women, Too. The Lawton Constitution. July 15, 1971, 7C.
Court-Martial Fines US Captain $1,000 In London War Protest. The Fresno Bee. July 14, 1971, A3.
GIs To Demonstrate Against Ban on Antiwar Protests. The Press-Courier. August 1, 1971, 3.
Horvitz, Michael. Anti-War Officer Crusades For Womens Liberation, Too. The Daily Mail. July 17, 1971, 12.
Lakenheath Hearing Opens: Berrigan Lawyer Advises AF Capt. The Stars and Stripes. June 12, 1971, 29.
Military Angers Officer. Corpus Christi Times. July 12, 1971, 2.
Reese, Mary Ann. AF Captain Seeks To End Restriction. The Stars and Stripes. June 9, 1971, 27.
---------------------. Culver Restricted At Lakenheath: Captain Faces Charges For Antiwar Activity. The Stars and Stripes. June 10, 1971, 27.
People Emerging Against Corrupt Establishment
Vanessa Gave $3,000 to GI Peace Groups. The Stars and Stripes. August 3, 1971, 2D.
Michael Heck
Bombing Fallout. TIME. January 22, 1973.
Committee is formed to protect pilot. The Anniston Star. January 15, 1973, 2.
Esper, George. Pilots refused to fly missions; Air Force accepts resignations. Journal-News. February 10 1973, 1.
Family says B52 chief very religious. Greeley Daily Tribune. January 11, 1973, 10.
BTTT reading marker
Clinton might have indeed been poor and hungry but it appears he had enough to travel extensively, air travel in those days was not cheap either.
Wonder where he got the money ?
Somewhere there is a picture of the bent one on the steps of the Krimlin, burning our American flag. I seen it during his first campaign. Does anyone have that picture? I'd love to have it.
This is why there's significance in the question of whether he travelled to Prague by air, as some reports claimed, or by train, as he claims. Even if he went by train, this raises an issue. According to him, "Nikki and her Haitian friend Helene put me on the train". "Nikki" would be Anik Alexis, his friend from Patrice Lumumba University, an interesting source of funding.
I don't have a picture of that. I remember the controversy from his first campaign but don't remember if I actually saw a picture or just heard there was one.
Jane Pauley: Sam Donaldson, with a question for Governor Clinton.
Sam Donaldson: Governor Clinton, this week the big story has been your 1969 trip to Moscow, and your involvement in antiwar activities. Some have ven suggested that while in Moscow, you had meetings with KGB agents. Isn't it fair to say that you haven't really told the American people the full story?
Bill Clinton: Sam, this kind of attack shows how desperate the Bush campaign has become. Yes, I did go to Moscow by train in 1969. And while on the train, I struck up a conversation with a man in the seat next to me. He gave me a package to take to Moscow and instructed me to leave it folded in a newspaper in a kiosk across from Lenin's tomb. I've explained this many times. Yes, the KGB did subsequently pay my way through law school, but that was the last contact I had with the KGB until years later when Hillary and I were having problems, and it was a KGB agent, Nikolai Kuznetsov, who let me stay at his place for a while until we patched things up.
Sam Donaldson: But isn't it true that during one of the peace demonstrations you burned an American flag in Red Square?
Bill Clinton: I tried to burn an American flag once. I didn't like it. It gave off toxic fumes, so I didn't inhale.
Ross Perot: Can I say something here?
Jane Pauley: Mr. Perot.
Ross Perot: I think that's just sad.
The Clintons Terrorist Ties
Arkansas Connections: A Time-line of the Clinton Years by Sam Smith - 1990 ON
Clinton's Pardons List: Information From Answers.com
How Hillary Nuked Nixon
The Clinton Files
Clinton timeline.
August 19, 1964 - Clinton registers for the draft
—[Washington Post Sep 13 92]
September 1964 - Clinton, age 18, enters Georgetown University
—[The Comeback Kid, CF Allen and J Portis, p. 20]
November 17, 1964- Clinton is classified 2-S (student deferment). This will shield him from the draft throughout his undergraduate years.
-—[Wash Post Sep 13 92]
February 16, 1968 - "The Johnson administration unexpectedly abolished graduate deferments."
—[Wash Post Sep 13 92]
March 20, 1968 - Clinton, age 21, is classified 1-A, eligible for induction, as he nears graduation from Georgetown.
—[Wash Post Sep 13 92]
Comment: Bill Clinton was the only man of his prime draft age classified1-A by that draft board in 1968 whose pre-induction physical examination was put off for 10.5 months. This delay was more than twice as long as anyone else and more than five times longer than most area men of comparable eligibility.
—[Los Angeles Times Sep 02 92]
Summer 1968 - Political and family influence keeps Clinton out of the draft. Robert Corrado — the only surviving Hot Springs draft board member from that period — concluded that Clinton's draft statement (the long delays) was the result of "some form of preferential treatment." According to the Times, "Corrado recalled that the chairman of the three-man draft panel ... once held back Clinton's file with the explanation that 'we've got to give him time to go to Oxford,' where the semester began in the fall of 1968.
Corrado also complained that he was called by an aide to then Senator J. William Fulbright urging him and his fellow board members to 'give every consideration' to keep Clinton out of the draft so he could attend Oxford.
Throughout the remainder of 1968, Corrado said, Clinton's draft file was routinely held back from consideration by the full board. Consequently, although he was classified 1-A on March 20, 1968, he was not called for his physical exam until Feb 3, 1969, while he was at Oxford.
Clinton's Uncle Raymond Clinton personally lobbied Senator Fulbright, William S. Armstrong, the chairman of the three-man Hot Springs draft board, and Lt. Comdr. Trice Ellis, Jr., commanding officer of the local Navy reserve unit, to obtain a slot for Clinton in the Naval Reserve.
Clinton secured a "standard enlisted man's billet, not an officer's slot which would have required Clinton to serve two years on active duty beginning within 12 months of his acceptance." This Navy Reserve assignment was "created especially for the Bill Clinton at a time in 1968 when no existing reserve slots were open in his hometown unit."
According to the LA Times, "after about two weeks waiting for Bill Clinton to arrive for his preliminary interview and physical exam, Ellis said he called (Clinton's uncle) Raymond to inquire - 'What happened to that boy?' According to Ellis, Clinton's uncle replied - 'Don't worry about it. He won't be coming down. "It's all been taken care of.' "
—[LA Times Sep 02 92]
Fall 1968 - Because of the local draft board's continuing postponement of his pre-induction physical, Clinton is able to enroll at Oxford Univ.
—[Wash Post Sep 13 92]
February 2, 1969 - While at Oxford, Clinton finally takes and passes a military physical examination.
—[Washington Times Sep 18 92]
April 1969 - Clinton receives induction notice from the Hot Springs AR draft board. Clinton however claims that the draft board told him to ignore the notice because it arrived after the deadline for induction.
—[Wash Post Sep 13 92]
June-July 1969 - Clinton receives a second induction notice with a July 28 induction date and returns home.
—[Wash Times Sep 18 92]
July 11, 1969 - Clinton's friend at Oxford, Cliff Jackson, writes, "Clinton is feverishly trying to find a way to avoid entering the Army as a drafted private. I have had several of my friends in influential positions trying to pull strings on Bill's behalf."
— [LA Times Sep 26 92]
Clinton benefited from yet another lobbying campaign in order to evade this induction notice. "Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton, who has said he did not pull strings to avoid the Vietnam-era draft, was able to get his Army induction notice canceled in the summer of 1969 after a lobbying effort directed at the Republican head of the state draft agency." Arrangements were made for Clinton to meet with Col. Williard A. Hawkins who "was the only person in Arkansas with authority to rescind a draft notice. ... The apparently successful appeal to Hawkins was planned while Clinton was finishing his first year as a Rhodes scholar in England. Clinton's former friend and Oxford classmate, Cliff Jackson — now an avowed political critic of the candidate — said it was pursued immediately upon Clinton's return to AR in early July 1969 to beat a July 28 deadline for induction."
— [LA Times Sep 26 92]
Comment: Jackson's statement is contrary to Clinton's repeated assertions that he received no special treatment in avoiding military service. "(I) never received any unusual or favorable treatment." [LA Times Sep 02 92]
Clinton admitting to being in USSR in 1969 or 1970.
August 7, 1969 - Clinton is reclassified 1-D after he arranges to enter the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas.
—[Wash Post Sep 13 92]
According to Cliff Jackson, Clinton's Oxford classmate, Clinton used the ROTC program to "kill the draft notice, to avoid reporting on the July 28 induction date, which had already been postponed. And he did that by promising to serve his country in the ROTC, number one, to enroll in the law school that fall ... and he never enrolled."
—[Wash Times Sep 17 92]
Comment - Clinton's admission into the ROTC program again runs contrary to his repeated statements that he received no special treatment in order to evade military service. Col. Eugene Holmes, commander of the University of Arkansas ROTC program, said Clinton was admitted after pressure from the Hot Springs draft board and the office of Senator J. William Fulbright (D-AR).
Again, Clinton was receiving preferential treatment. In addition, records from the Army reveal that Clinton was not legally eligible for the ROTC program at that time. Army regulations required recruits to be enrolled at the university and attending classes full-time before being admitted to an ROTC program.
Fall 1969 - Clinton returns to Oxford for a second year. Clinton was supposed to be at the Arkansas Law School. However, according to Cliff Jackson, "Sen. Fulbright's office and Bill himself continued to exert tremendous pressure on poor Col. Holmes to get him [Clinton] to go back to Oxford."
—[Wash Post Sep 13 92]
September 14, 1969 - The Arkansas Gazette, published in Little Rock, headlined a draft suspension was reportedly planned by the President.
Comment - The article, citing a source, said Selective
Service reforms when implemented, would only permit the conscription of 19-year-old men. In addition, the source said "the Army would send to Vietnam only enlistees, professional soldiers, and those draftees who volunteered to go." The source contended that these reforms, combined with troop withdrawals, "would put pressure on the Congress to enact draft legislation already proposed by the President ... and set up a lottery to conscript only 19-year-old men," the Gazette reported.
From his letter to Col. Holmes, Bill Clinton said "....Finally, on Sept. 12 I stayed up all night writing a letter to the chairman of my draft board,......I never mailed the letter, but I did carry it on me every day until I got on the plane to return to England.". It is very probable that Bill Clinton was in the United States and well aware of the above proposal on Sep 14, 1969. Bill Clinton was 23 years old.
September 19, 1969 - "President Nixon, facing turmoil on college campuses, suspended draft calls for November and December of 1969 and said the October call would be spread out over three months."
—[Wash Post Sep 13 92]
The President also indicated that if the Congress did not act to establish a lottery system, he would remove by executive order the vulnerability to the draft of all men age 20 to 26.
Comment - Again, Clinton was 23 years old.
September-October 1969 - "At some point, Clinton decided to make himself eligible for the draft and said in February 1992 his stepfather had acted in his behalf to accomplish this. Newsweek, attributing the information to campaign officials, said this all happened in Oct 1969. Clinton spokesperson Betsey Wright ... said she believed it took place in September. The difference is potentially significant. ... If Clinton did not act to give up his deferment until October, he could have known he faced no liability from the draft until the following summer, that he could take his chances with the lottery and find alternative service if he got a low number."
—[Wash Post Sep 13 92]
October 1, 1969 - "Nixon announced that anyone in graduate school could complete the full year."
—[Wash Post Sep 13 92]
Comment - Clinton is now safe from the draft through June 1970.
October 1969 - President Nixon suspends call-up of additional draftees until a draft lottery is held in December.
October 15, 1969 - Clinton organized and led anti-war demonstrations in London.
— [Wash Times Sep 18 92]
Comment - According to McSorley, Clinton's demonstrations "had the support of British peace organizations" such as the British Peace Council, an arm of the KGB-backed World Peace Council.
October 30, 1969 - Clinton is reclassified 1-A, eligible for induction.
—[Wash Times Sep 28 92]
Comment - "Clinton said he put himself into the draft by contacting his draft board in September or October and asking to be reclassified 1-A. ... It is not clear, however, whether that occurred at Clinton's urging or whether his failure to enroll at University of Arkansas automatically cancelled his 1-D deferment."
Clinton has never produced any evidence to substantiate his claim that he initiated his reclassification.
November 16, 1969 - Clinton organized and led anti-war demonstrations in London.
December 1, 1969 - Clinton draws #311 in the first draft lottery.
—[Wash Times Sep 18 92]
Comment - Clinton was virtually assured that he would not be drafted because of the high lottery number.
December 3, 1969 - While still in England, Clinton writes to Lt. Col. Eugene Holmes, , commander of the University of Arkansas ROTC Program and states, "From my work I came to believe that the draft system is illegitimate ... I decided to accept the draft in spite of my beliefs for one reason - to maintain my political viability."
Clinton's ROTC Letter As Entered in Congressional Record (Page: H5550) 7/30/93
As usual, Fedora ROCKS!
I think you were the one who first pointed out the VMC connection to me, waaay back in 2004 :-)
Actually, it was NW_Arizona_Granny that pointed it out to me when I made this thread:
Vets refuse to forgive Kerry for antiwar acts
She posted in there that she remembered Clinton going to Russia and she gave the approximate years.
After I found that I made the Clinton timeline.
Regardless, I can't make great threads like you. I can only copy and paste :)
And you are on my copy and paste list for this evening.
Of to check on my dinner. ciao!
Thanks for the ping.
Thanks, nw_arizona_granny! :-)
Of interest. For reference.
bookmark for later
Good stuff and a useful reminder who the klintoons are. I assume hillary was doing her bit to help bring down Nixon suring this time?
"during" not "suring"
Post in haste.....
You are both awesome!
Aww, thanks! :-)
great moments in the history of white trash.
Thank You!
Dear Col. Holmes,
I am sorry to be so long in writing. I know I promised to let you hear from me at least once a month, and from now on you will, but I have to have some time to think about this first letter. Almost daily since my return to England I have thought about writing, about what I want to and ought to say.
First, I want to thank you, not only for saving me from the draft, but for being so kind to me last summer, when I was as low as I have ever been. One thing that made the bond we struck in good faith somewhat palatable to me was my high regard for you personally. In retrospect, it seems that the admiration might not have been mutual had you known a little more about me, about my political beliefs and activities. At least you might have thought me more fit for the draft than for ROTC.
Let me try to explain. As you know, I worked in a very minor position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I did it for the experience and the salary but also for the opportunity, however small, of working every day against a war I opposed and despised with a depth of feeling I had reserved solely for racism in America before Vietnam. I did not take the matter lightly but studied it carefully, and there was a time when not many people had more information about Vietnam at hand than I did.
I have written and spoken and marched against the war. One of the national organizers of the Vietnam Moratorium is a close friend of mine. After I left Arkansas last summer, I went to Washington to work in the national headquarters of the Moratorium, then to England to organize the Americans here for demonstrations October 15 and November 16.
Interlocked with the war is the draft issue, which I did not begin to consider separately until early 1968. For a law seminar at Georgetown I wrote a paper on the legal arguments for and against allowing, within the Selective Service System, the classification of selective conscientious objection, for those opposed to participation in a particular war, not simply to "participation in war in any form."
From my work, I came to believe that the draft system itself is illegitimate. No government really rooted in limited, parliamentary democracy should have the power to make its citizens fight and kill and die in a war they may oppose, a war which even possibly may be wrong, a war, which in any case, does not involve immediately the peace and freedom of the nation. The draft was justified in World War II because the life of the people collectively was at stake.
Individuals had to fight, if the nation was to survive, for the lives of their country and their way of life. Vietnam is no such case. Nor was Korea an example where, in my opinion, certain military action was justified but the draft was not, for the reasons stated above.
Because of my opposition to the draft and the war, I am in great sympathy with those who are not willing to fight, kill, and maybe die for their country (i.e. the particular policy of a particular government) right or wrong. Two of my friends at Oxford are conscientious objectors. I wrote a letter of recommendation for one of them to his Mississippi draft board, a letter I am more proud of than anything else I wrote at Oxford last year. One of my roommates is a draft resister who is possibly under indictment and may never be able to go home again. He is one of the bravest, best men I know. His country needs men like him more than they know. That he is considered a criminal is an obscenity.
The decision not to be a resister and the related subsequent decisions were the most difficult of my life. I decided to accept the draft in spite of my beliefs for one reason only, to maintain my political viability within the system. For years I have worked to prepare myself for a political life characterized by both practical political ability and concern for rapid social progress. It is a life I still feel compelled to try to lead. I do not think our system of government is by definition corrupt, however dangerous and inadequate it has been in recent years. (The society may be corrupt, but that is not the same thing, and if that is true we are all finished anyway.)
When the draft came, despite political convictions, I was having a hard time facing the prospect of fighting a war I had been fighting against, and that is why I contacted you. ROTC was the one way in which I could possibly, but not positively, avoid both Vietnam and the resistance. Going on with my education, even coming back to England, played no part in my decision to join ROTC. I am back here, and would have been at Arkansas Law School because there is nothing else I can do. I would like to have been able to take a year out perhaps to teach in a small college or work on some community action project and in the process to decide whether to attend law school or graduate school and how to begin putting what I have learned to use.
But the particulars of my personal life are not near as important to me as the principles involved. After I signed the ROTC letter of intent I began to wonder whether the compromise I had made with myself was not more objectionable than the draft would have been, because I had no interest in the ROTC program itself and all I seem to have done was to protect myself from physical harm. Also, I had begun to think that I had deceived you, not by lies--there were none--but by failing to tell you all of the things I'm telling you now. I doubt I had the mental coherence to articulate them then.
At that time, after we had made our agreement and you had sent my 1D deferment to my draft board, the anguish and loss of my self regard and self confidence really set in. I hardly slept for weeks and kept going by eating compulsively and reading until exhaustion brought sleep. Finally, on September 12 I stayed up all night writing a letter to the chairman of my draft board, saying basically what is in the preceding paragraph, thanking him for trying to help in a case where he really couldn't, and stating that I couldn't do the ROTC after all and would he please draft me as soon as possible.
I never mailed the letter, but I did carry it with me every day until I got on the plane to return to England. I didn't mail the letter because I didn't see, in the end, how my going in the army and maybe going to Vietnam would achieve anything except a feeling that I had punished myself and gotten what I deserved. So I came back to England to try to make something of the second year of my Rhodes scholarship.
And that is where I am now, writing to you because you have been good to me and have a right to know what I think and feel. I am writing too in the hope that my telling this one story will help you understand more clearly how so many fine people have come to find themselves loving their country but loathing the military, to which you and other good men have devoted years, lifetimes and the best service you could give. To many of us, it is no longer clear what is service and what is dis-service, or if it is clear, the conclusion is likely to be illegal.
Forgive the length of this letter. There was much to say. There is still a lot to be said, but it can wait. Please say hello to Colonel Jones for me. Merry Christmas.
Bill Clinton
Fulbright, ping
As September approached, Bill Clinton fails to enroll at the University Arkansas and returns to England around mid-September of 1969. It is quite clear that major changes in the draft would be forthcoming in the next few days or weeks. Clinton's appearance at Oxford was unexpected and he had to sleep on the floor in his friend's room.
In October and again in November 1969 Clinton organized and led anti-war demonstrations in London, England with the support of the British Peace Council, which was backed by the World Peace Council who was a front for the KGB.
October 30, 1969 Clinton was automatically reclassified to 1-A eligible for induction, after he failed to enroll at the University of Arkansas. Bill Clinton today, claims he volunteer for the draft but has no proof. Regardless, by this time a freeze was put on the draft until the lottery was established.
The Selective Service Lottery was held on December 1, 1969. Clinton's birthday draws number 311 in the first lottery. This high number guarantees Clinton will not be called up for the draft.
Two days later Clinton writes his infamous ROTC letter to Col. Holmes thanking him for saving him from the draft.
More on Tariq Ali:
While studying at the Punjab University, he organized demonstrations against Pakistan's military dictatorship. Ali's uncle was chief of Pakistan's Military Intelligence. His parents sent him to England to study at Exeter College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. He was elected President of the Oxford Union debating club.
His public profile began to grow during the Vietnam War, when he engaged in debates against the war with such figures as Henry Kissinger and Michael Stewart. As time passed, Ali became increasingly critical of American and Israeli foreign policies, and emerged as a figurehead for critics of American foreign policy across the globe. He was also a vigorous opponent of American relations with Pakistan that tended to back military dictatorships over democracy.
Active in the New Left of the 1960s, he has long been associated with the, New Left Review. He was drawn into involvement with revolutionary socialist politics through his involvement with The Black Dwarf newspaper and joined a Trotskyist party, the International Marxist Group (IMG) in 1968. He was recruited to the leadership of the IMG and became a member of the International Executive Committee of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International.
During this period, he was an IMG candidate in Sheffield Attercliffe at the Feburary 1974 UK general election and was co-author of, Trotsky for Beginners. In 1981 the IMG dissolved when its members entered the Labor Party and was promptly proscribed. Ali then abandoned activism in the revolutionary left and supported Tony Benn in his bid to become deputy leader of the Labor Party that year.
In 1990, he published the satire Redemption, on the inability of the Trotskyists to handle the downfall of the Eastern bloc, which contains parodies of many well-known figures in the Trotskyist movement.
His book, Bush in Babylon, criticizes the WOT by President George W. Bush. The book portrays the war in Iraq as a failure. An atheist who grew up around Muslims, Ali believes that the new Iraqi government will fail.
He currently lives in London with his partner Susan Watkins, editor of the New Left Review. He has three children: Natasha, Chengiz and Aisha.
Tariq Ali
New Left Review
The Black Dwarf:
The Black Dwarf was a political and cultural newspaper published between May 1968 and 1972 by a collective of socialists in the United Kingdom. It is often identified with Tariq Ali who edited and published this newspaper until 1970, when the editorial board split between Leninist and non-Leninist currents.
The Leninists, including Ali and other members of the International Marxist Group, went on to find the Red Mole.
The Black Dwarf published a special edition in autumn 1968 devoted entirely to the Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara, in a translation first published by Ramparts in the United States. Included is an introduction by Fidel Castro. This edition appears to be in response to a version of the diaries being published by "some publishers in league with those who murdered Che".
The fuse often comes in ways that are unpredictable. The big fuse which stopped the Vietnam War was the inability of the United States to win that war -- the fact that it was suffering defeats on the battleground, and the body-bag factor. Sometimes when I'm arguing with hard-core fundamentalists, Islamic ones, I [ask] what threatened the Pentagon more: a few idiots throwing bombs on it, a building which can be repaired within two weeks? Well, I think that did not threaten anyone. It's just an act of stupidity, foolishness, politically. Compare that to the seventies when you had a quarter of a million GIs who had fought in the war -- veterans on their crutches, with their medals, marching outside the Pentagon and chanting that they wanted the Vietnamese to win. What affects them more? Obviously, the latter, because that shows that the core of that state apparatus is infected with ideas which challenge the empire. Ultimately, that has got to be the route.
I've been reading about this lately, that when the United States occupied the Philippines at the end of the nineteenth century, a group of intellectuals led by Mark Twain, and Henry James, and William James, and Thomas Dewy, and the cream of the American intelligentsia, organized the Anti-Imperialist League. There was a massive gathering in Chicago in 1898 or '99, and within a year and a half, it had a quarter of a million members. So, that's necessary for educational purposes.
What is necessary for what you are asking is a political party, because if these movements, whether it's the Anti-Imperialist League or anything like it, are not reflected on the level of politics, then they will be ineffective, in my opinion. What is very noticeable is that this giant antiwar movement which erupted before the war in Iraq, which is unprecedented in world history, wasn't reflected on the level of politics. The anti- Vietnam War movement was. I remember vividly the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under William Fulbright putting pressure to get the truth, and a whole wave of politicians, Democratic politicians, challenging the official view. Since 9/11, it's been the silence of the lambs. They've given up, the Democrats, you feel. And sooner or later, if they can't do it, something will have to emerge in this country which does reflect the view of a sizable section of the people. Unless that happens, I think we're doomed. We have to find ways of doing that.
Fascinating stuff! I couldn't stop reading.
Thanks! (...I think. Yet another source for vivid nightmares.)
Tracing the origin of Fulbrights antiwar views reveals an intriguing ancestry for Clintons views. Fulbright had not initially opposed the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was originally viewed as a measured, flexible alternative to full-scale escalation in Vietnam. But after a major increase in US ground deployment in summer 1965, and after Fulbrights relationship with President Johnson became strained over Dominican Republic policy that September, he began questioning Johnsons Vietnam policy.
At this point Fulbright began researching Asia intensely. He read a number of books about the Far East over a trip to Australia that December. He came back complaining about the history of British imperialism in China and declaring there would be hearings on Vietnam. He opened hearings the next month. He subsequently began sending his assistants James G. Lowenstein and Richard M. Moose to Southeast Asia for regular fact-finding missions that formed the basis of periodic Senate reports. (In 1969 Fulbright, Lowenstein, Moose, and Fulbrights assistants Carl Marcy and Norvill Jones would begin advising former Pentagon employee Daniel Ellsberg on how to go about leaking the Pentagon Papers, a set of classified military documents on the Kennedy-Johnson administrations Vietnam policy.)
Ping to correction in #33.
Thanks for the Ali stuff.
Thanks, I'll get it updated on my contact lists.
You are welcome.
You are both wonderful, for keeping the information alive.
Calpernia, is the thread you listed, the one that has the relative and information, on the special camp that Clinton attended in
the C. country?
I am not up to reading all 300 posts, to find it.
At first I was stunned by "Clinton's" admission that the KGB paid his way through law school.
Then I saw that it was a transcript of Saturday Night Live.
Still, good satire has an element of truth to it, as they say.
Sorry for any inconvenience! One typo always seems to creep in somehow. . .
Someone else who read it told me they thought it was real at first, too, LOL! :-)
Thanks for the ping!
On December 12th, 1969 Bill Clinton travels to Norway where he meets with various peace organizations. He later travels on to Moscow on December 31, 1969 and stays for a week. One should remember that Moscow was still supplying North Vietnam with missiles that were used to shoot down American planes along with technicians and military advisors. Some of these advisors participated in the interrogation of American POW's.
Colonel Eugene Holmes a highly decorated officer of the United States Army, who survived the Bataan Death March and three and a half years of imprisonment as a POW during the Second World War, wrote the following notarized letter on September 7, 1992.
Col. Holmes Notarized Statement
As Entered in Congressional Record (Page: H5551) 7/30/93
September 7, 1992. Memorandum for Record:
Subject: Bill Clinton and the University of Arkansas ROTC Program:
There have been many unanswered questions as to the circumstances surrounding Bill Clinton's involvement with the ROTC department at the University of Arkansas. Prior to this time I have not felt the necessity for discussing the details. The reason I have not done so before is that my poor physical health (a consequence of participation in the Bataan Death March and the subsequent three and a half years interment in Japanese POW camps) has precluded me from getting into what I felt was unnecessary involvement. However, present polls show that there is the imminent danger to our country of a draft dodger becoming Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. While it is true, as Mr. Clinton has stated, that there were many others who avoided serving their country in the Vietnam war, they are not aspiring to be the President of the United States.
The tremendous implications of the possibility of his becoming Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces compels me now to comment on the facts concerning Mr. Clinton's evasion of the draft. This account would not have been imperative had Bill Clinton been completely honest with the American public concerning this matter. But as Mr. Clinton replied on a news conference this evening (September 5, 1992) after being asked another particular about his dodging the draft,
"Almost everyone concerned with these incidents are dead. I have no more comments to make".
Since I may be the only person living who can give a first hand account of what actually transpired, I am obligated by my love for my country and my sense of duty to divulge what actually happened and make it a matter of record.
Bill Clinton came to see me at my home in 1969 to discuss his desire to enroll in the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas. We engaged in an extensive, approximately two (2) hour interview. At no time during this long conversation about his desire to join the program did he inform me of his involvement, participation and actually organizing protests against the United States involvement in South East Asia. He was shrewd enough to realize that had I been aware of his activities, he would not have been accepted into the ROTC program as a potential officer in the United States Army.
The next day I began to receive phone calls regarding Bill Clinton's draft status. I was informed by the draft board that it was of interest to Senator Fullbright's office that Bill Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar, should be admitted to the ROTC program. I received several such calls. The general message conveyed by the draft board to me was that Senator Fullbright's office was putting pressure on them and that they needed my help. I then made the necessary arrangements to enroll Mr. Clinton into the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas.
I was not "saving" him from serving his country, as he erroneously thanked me for in his letter from England (dated December 3, 1969). I was making it possible for a Rhodes Scholar to serve in the military as an officer. In retrospect I see that Mr. Clinton had no intention of following through with his agreement to join the Army ROTC program at the University of Arkansas or to attend the University of Arkansas Law School. I had explained to him the necessity of enrolling at the University of Arkansas as a student in order to be eligible to take the ROTC program at the University. He never enrolled at the University of Arkansas, but instead enrolled at Yale after attending Oxford. I believe that he purposely deceived me, using the possibility of joining the ROTC as a ploy to work with the draft board to delay his induction and get a new draft classification.
The December 3rd letter written to me by Mr. Clinton, and subsequently taken from the files by Lt. Col. Clint Jones, my executive officer, was placed into the ROTC files so that a record would be available in case the applicant should again petition to enter the ROTC program. The information in that letter alone would have restricted Bill Clinton from ever qualifying to be an officer in the United States Military. Even more significant was his lack of veracity in purposefully defrauding the military by deceiving me, both in concealing his anti-military activities overseas and his counterfeit intentions for later military service. These actions cause me to question both his patriotism and his integrity. When I consider the caliber, the bravery, and the patriotism of the fine young soldiers whose deaths I have witnessed, and others whose funerals I have attended.... When I reflect on not only the willingness but eagerness that so many of them displayed in their earnest desire to defend and serve their country, it is untenable and incomprehensible to me that a man who was not merely unwilling to serve his country, but actually protested against its military, should ever be in the position of Commander-in-Chief of our armed Forces.
I write this declaration not only for the living and future generations, but for those who fought and died for our country. If space and time permitted I would include the names of the ones I knew and fought with, and along with them I would mention my brother Bob, who was killed during World War II and is buried in Cambridge, England (at the age of 23, about the age Bill Clinton was when he was over in England protesting the war). I have agonized over whether or not to submit this statement to the American people. But, I realize that even though I served my country by being in the military for over 32 years, and having gone through the ordeal of months of combat under the worst of conditions followed by years of imprisonment by the Japanese, it is not enough. I'm writing these comments to let everyone know that I love my country more than I do my own personal security and well-being. I will go to my grave loving these United States of America and the liberty for which so many men have fought and died. Because of my poor physical condition this will be my final statement. I will make no further comments to any of the media regarding this issue.
Eugene Holmes
Colonel, U.S.A., Ret.
September 1992
It is quite apparent to myself that Bill Clinton was a "Draft Dodger" and freely associated with known enemies of the United States.
As I have previously indicated, Bill Clinton went to the extreme and used everything available to him to avoid the draft. During those War Years, many college students used any means possible including demonstrations and the burning of their draft cards to stay out of the military. If everyone had put as much time and effort into serving their Country and doing their duty, perhaps there would have been a different outcome. Too many people concentrated on their own personal well being as individuals, instead of working for the good of our Country.
When clinton was dodging the draft, he disappeared in Russia for up to a year.
clinton says "he does not remember the year".
It was my thought, that he went for a week or two, in a normal trip, paid for by Russia.
He then returned to Russia and vanished, I have thought always that he was one of the people who went into the training camps to be trained in being a spy, or terrorist.
I have known of the camps and the fact that Americans went there, since the mid 1970's.
There are many who think that is where our missing POW's went, they were used to train the spies.
There were towns set up that looked like American towns, these were used for training the sleepers that would come to America.
Someone wrote a fiction book called "Charm School", that is about the training camps.
But my info did not come from the book, as when I read it, it made me laugh, that I wasn't smart enough to take the truth and turn it into fiction.
Back in the 1970's and before the Monthly issues of the Reader's Digest Magazine, published the truth from all over the world.
Much of the info on Russia is in those early issues.
The last few years, it is all yuppie crap, to me.
Plus up until 1970, I was around the military, so heard some
stories, that others did not.
155 posted on 09/08/2004 3:18:40 AM EDT by nw_arizona_granny
"Seven months ago an intelligence professional, whose credentials are
impeccable, told me something quite alarming. He told of a taped
conversion between two Czech Communist officials. They were
discussing a young American college student — Bill Clinton — who
was then visiting Prague. They mentioned that he was expected to
attend a meeting at a certain place which was reserved for the
recruitment of Communist bloc agents."
This is a humongous posting.
Thank you, as always, you come up with the missing pieces.
At your link, post 248 is another that I was looking for recently,
"The American POW's that were taken to Russian prison camps".
They were used as the foundation for the book "Charm School",
about training Russians to live/pass as Americans.
Thanks for your work.
Bump for weekend read.
Thanks for the heads-up!
Outstanding piece on Clinton. I always knew the SOB was an active Communist sympathizer, but your article really exposed the extent of his involvement. His association with Fullbright and Group 68 proves that his foray into the radical Left was no accident and in turn, shaped his future political connections and actions as President. (ChinaGate among them).
Outstanding piece on Clinton. I always knew the SOB was an active Communist sympathizer, but your article really exposed the extent of his involvement. His association with Fullbright and Group 68 proves that his foray into the radical Left was no accident and in turn, shaped his future political connections and actions as President. (ChinaGate among them).
(I reposted this due to a reply to the wrong individual...oops!)
OUTSTANDING! (as usual) BTTT!
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