May 6, 2025 • 59 mins
On the penultimate episode of Divine Intervention, a trial to end all trials goes on for three months. Finally, despite their legal peril, the resistance is able to put the Vietnam War itself on the stand.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
For a show about a bunch of religious people. There's
been very little Bible talk thus far. I have to
admit I've never actually read the Bible, so there's a
huge chunk of modern culture I'm missing. Anytime someone says
a fly in the ointment, a drop in the bucket,
a man after my own heart, setting your teeth on edge,
(00:20):
bite the dust, apple of my eye, or at my
wits end, they are knowingly or not quoting the Bible,
and it makes language that much richer when you're hip
to biblical references like this. One of these phrases is
thirty pieces of silver. It comes from the story of
judas Is Scariot. So Jesus was, contrary to popular assumption,
(00:49):
intensely political, so much so that by passover of his
thirty third year, he was on borrowed time, and one
of his disciples, judas Is Scariot, was seeking working with
the high priests who had it out for Jesus. So
shortly after the last supper, Judas went off and found
a mob, brought them back to a garden where Jesus
(01:10):
was praying, and told them the man I kisses Jesus,
he's the one you should seize Jesus was somehow hip
to this and let it happen because it was all
part of a prophecy. And for his betrayal, Judas was
paid thirty pieces of silver. Betrayal, it turns out, is
(01:32):
an inevitable byproduct of human passion.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
The ultimate cutting point is what happens when you discover an.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Informer Catholic Left historian Charles Meconez.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Because there will be informers sooner or later, you know,
I mean, the government gets to have a vote in
this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
When humans get together, all believing passionately in something, there
will always be conflict.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
And that's where the rubber hits the road.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
In a movement, there will always be betrayal. I'm Brendan
Patrick Hughes, and this is divine intervention, Chapter nine, the
last two words. In Camden, New Jersey, twenty eight people
(02:39):
had staged the last stand with a government that had
learned how to crush dissent. Their raid was supposed to
prove that the American people would always have a voice. Instead,
the morning after the raid, after hours of interrogation in
rooms that had been pre labeled with their names, the
Camden twenty eight went off to jail.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
The women all went to a women's jail, and the
men were all went to Atlanta County Jail.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
I think it was the very day after they ambushed
the Camden twenty eight, Hoover puts out this big public announcement,
we have broken the.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Back of the Catholic left. The morning after the arrest,
j Edgar Hoover and US Attorney General John Mitchell held
a triumphant press conference in which they distributed pre assembled
biographical information on each raider. Hoover said, I guess I
want these people to go to jail for forty six years.
Bob Kanane, he's going to take all his vengeance out
(03:36):
on the Camden people.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
The FBI was convinced that in arresting the Camden twenty.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Eight Bob Weed X Williamson, they.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
Had caught at least some of the media burglars.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
He had them in his clutches and he would see
to it they were locked up for as many years
as possible.
Speaker 5 (03:54):
So what was the Camden twenty eight? But all twenty
eight of us were not even in Camden.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Leanne Mosha was a driver on the night of the raid.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Some people were arrested as co conspirators who were not
even there that night, but they were charged with having
been part of the planning or charged with part of
the previous activities that led to the arrest.
Speaker 6 (04:09):
The newspaper is a constant horror.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Story, Sarahtosi wrote to Patrick and Mary Anne.
Speaker 6 (04:14):
But things are stirring.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
The story was front page news in the New York
Times and had features in Newsweek and Time Magazine. As
the press rolled into Camden, Bob Hardy, the informer who
betrayed them, all spent hours testifying before a grand jury.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
The informer was a complicated, complicated man. He went immediately
to the FBI to tell us what we were doing,
and they said, great, hang in there. He was the
start witness for the prosecution.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
The following day, an indictment was handed down, charging twenty
eight people with seven counts describing forty four over illegal acts.
They faced over six hundred thousand dollars in bail and
a maximum penalty of forty seven years in prison, forty.
Speaker 7 (05:01):
Seven years and one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Fines, which in nineteen seventy one meant they would be
released in the unfathomably science fiction year of twenty eighteen,
Hoover was now riding high on his law enforcement triumph
and he had, shall we say, taken notice of those
raising money on behalf of the Camden defendants.
Speaker 8 (05:23):
Patrick and I. We were getting a lot of bail money,
Jim Carroll and Ann Walsh, everyone was getting as much
bail money together as we can.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Patrick and Mary Anne were spending all their time together
and gathering bail for Camden was the perfect cover to
travel together.
Speaker 8 (05:39):
And Patrick and I took one quick trip down to
Camden to bring the money down. The whole way we
were being followed by the FBI, and we knew it.
I mean you could see them. We'd get out of
the car, they'd get out of the car. It was
so obvious. So after Camden there was a Jane Doe
warrant for my rest. The description, as I understand it
(06:03):
was Paul Kooming's best friend who has long dark hair,
and that would only be one person, which would be me.
Everybody I lived with had been arrested. They were all
on the front page of the Boston Globe.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Because of her kids, Marianne had to be careful, but
she was also harboring a scandalous secret.
Speaker 9 (06:21):
And Miriam was bringing the money to Camden, right Ann Walsh.
Simultaneously she was falling in love with Patrick. I mean
they were about to actually Actually, what I'm talking about
is like so many levels of motivation and stuff like
that going on, and basically it's a big love story.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
If they might stay in a motel for the night
somewhere between Camden and Boston, they would emerge the next
morning and wave at their FBI tails, who would grumpily
hoist their coffee cups and climb into a car. For
a while, these two FBI agents were the only people
in the world who knew of about Patrick and Marianne.
Speaker 8 (07:02):
It is horrifying if you think about being investigated with
the FII. You know, most reasonable people would say it's
a pretty frightening experience.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Hoover had hired a thousand agents just to intimidate the
Catholic left.
Speaker 8 (07:15):
Patrick was very nervous that they were going to go
to his parents, who were you know, they were well
into their seventies at that time.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
And don't forget, these agents had something on Marianne.
Speaker 8 (07:24):
The FBI had gone to my father, and they had
gone to my brother, and they had gone with photos.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Not only was she helping a bunch of criminals in
South Jersey, she was also in and out of motel
rooms with the Roman Catholic priests.
Speaker 8 (07:38):
I think they threatened my brother with a subpoena, for instance,
like that if he didn't tell them everything he knew
about what I was doing, they would subpoena him. It
shook his world. It shook his world. That probably wasn't
the best way in the world for him to have
learned that news.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Her father then cut her out of his life.
Speaker 8 (08:00):
My father disowned me.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
And he and her brother left her on her own
with her scandalous romantic relationship, her criminal friends, and her children.
There's a joke about Irish Alzheimer's that you forget everything
but the grudges. But Marianne, fifty years hence, was the
(08:24):
opposite of that and could now see this situation from
their side.
Speaker 8 (08:28):
Now I really appreciate how awful that had to be
for them and for us. It was almost like a
badge of honor, because at that point there was such
a commitment to ending the war, and this was if
these were the consequences, These were the consequences, and it
(08:49):
was what cleaved the generations. It was those times.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
So Patrick and Marianne wore their badge of honor and
along with Jim Carroll and Walsh and many others, they
pressed on bailing out the Camden twenty eight.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
We were all bailed out because people all across the
country put up the houses.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
They got people to take out second mortgages on their homes.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
And risk their houses just to get us all out
of jail.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
And miraculously they managed to scrounge up the staggering sum
of money needed to get everybody out of jail in Camden.
Everyone was eventually freed and they began their trial prep
in earnest.
Speaker 7 (09:28):
We were caught red handed cookie, so nobody even thought
about trying to comp with the defense that would somehow say,
oh you just misidentification or something. No defense right, So
there was we were there. I put my odds to
success at zero. Because there had never been an acquittal
before any of the Draft Board rate cases. People had
been convicted and sent to prison.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
They were doomed from the start, but nevertheless they persisted.
Soon the Camden twenty eight case was a signed a judge,
Judge Clarkson Fisher. He was a Catholic World War two
that appointed by Nixon to the federal bench. Some of
the defendants thought his assignment was intentionally provocative. A trial
(10:14):
date was set from Monday, February fifth, nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 10 (10:20):
Mary Anne Patrick, the storm bruise on the horizon visible now,
I mean the trial, yes, but so much more than
just that word or reality, but every single level of
my existence and beyond that.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Lawyers had flocked to Camden in the hopes of representing
the twenty eight defendants. They impressed on the twenty eight
the deep shit they were in, the complex legal doctrines,
and the byzantine government maneuvering that would need their expertise.
But the defendants knew this was their only chance to
talk about Vietnam as a context for their motivation, and
(10:57):
because so many judges in previous trial had prevented such testimony,
they realized their only shot at being able to speak
freely was to represent themselves and go pro say so,
they dismissed the hotshot lawyers.
Speaker 5 (11:13):
People made a decision to defend themselves without an attorney,
so it was a bit of a mayhem scenario.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
At the end of the argument, twenty three went pro say,
while five opted for co consul, they would represent themselves.
They would go out with a bang, and they would
attempt to put the Vietnam War itself on the stand.
But two hours west on I seventy six in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
(11:40):
Hoover's pet grand jury project and massive indictment of the
movement had finally evolved into a trial accusing seven Catholic
Left movement people, including Phil Berigan, of conspiracy. Some of
the defendants in the government's conspiracy case were furious at
the Camden people. One Harrisburg defendant described the Camden action
(12:00):
as an activist expression of American individualism and obsession with heroism.
But the Harrisburg defendants had not chosen to use their
trial as a continuation of an action, and had instead
gone into damage control and hired famous lawyers. The trial
of the Harrisburg seven lasted six weeks. The government's star
(12:22):
witness was Boyd Douglas, Bhil Berigan's fellow inmate and confidante.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
So finally the Catholic Left figures out that Boyd Douglas
was the trader in the Harrisburg stuff. The letters which
Boyd Douglas had been carrying out, photocopying, and handing straight
to the FBI. Those were just awful to listen to
in the court room because almost all of us that
was the first time we ever had became aware of
them or heard them.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
And it was these letters that had revealed not only
Dan Berrigan's whereabouts on Block Island which led to his arrest,
but also the Kissinger kidnapping plot, which was what allowed
Hoover to put millions of dollars behind crushing the cap
Flick left. When the prosecution rested, the Harrisburg Seven's lawyer
stood up and, to the astonishment of everyone in the courtroom,
(13:09):
gave a sixteen word defense, your honor. He said, these
defendants shall always seek peace, and they proclaim their innocence
of these charges. The defense rests. The jury deliberated for
seven days. At the verdict, the defendants began emptying their pockets.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Everybody, including the defendants themselves, are expecting that they are gone.
And the vote comes intent to too for acquittal, and
we couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
The Harrisburg Seven were free, but it was a pyrrhic victory.
The Catholic Left movement was all but destroyed, decimated by
legal fees and infighting, with the war winding down and
only the Camden trial left, and one month after the
Harrisburg verdict, Jay Hoover, sworn enemy of the American Left,
(14:03):
died of a heart attack on May twi nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 11 (14:07):
I definitely believe that that defeat ted Glick in that
trial had something to do with him dying so quickly
after that verdict. I'm sure he was really apoplectic about
the fact that everybody got off from that.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
On February fifth, nineteen seventy three, the trial of the
Candon twenty eight finally began.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Yes Zach sam Building. That courtroom is on the third floor,
their draft boards on the fifth floor.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
On that day, Colonel William Noldy, the last combat soldier
to be killed in Vietnam, was buried at Arlington National
Cemetery in Washington.
Speaker 12 (14:50):
D c.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
The twenty eight defendants assembled in a packed ceremonial courtroom
and discovered the prosecutor had put a deal on the table.
Speaker 7 (14:59):
The day at the trial when we were supposed to
start the case. They presented us with another offer.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Number one. He had severed eight defendants, including Keith Forsyth,
Leanne Mosha and Sarah Tosi, and it.
Speaker 5 (15:10):
Seemed that there was no rationale. There were people who
were kept in the whole group who were way less
involved than we were. There were people who were more
involved who were severed unclear how they made the decision.
Speaker 6 (15:21):
Dear Mary Anne, this is it. This is no drill.
Speaker 10 (15:25):
The government offered us a deal today like being in Woolworths.
For the next half hour, you can get an ice
cream Sunday for fifty three cents, short interruption in the music,
and then on a package.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
Deal for the twenty eight.
Speaker 10 (15:41):
Oh leo that tastes as good as the seventy nine
cent spread. I couldnot possibly scream loud enough.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Number two a chance for many of them to walk
away with a slap on the wrist and for the
big fish to do relatively little prison time.
Speaker 7 (15:56):
We got an offer deal.
Speaker 10 (15:58):
Drop fifteen defendants, thirteen plead guilty to one charge, any
charge our choice, you see, all must accept or no deal.
Speaker 7 (16:06):
That meant some people would walk, including like people with kids.
And I mean, it was really a big deal, and
we had to talk about it. So they gave us
the courtroom and we had this big Powow all of
us together and discussed whether we should go through with it.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
They met for nearly two hours, and there were strong
arguments for taking the Plea deal.
Speaker 7 (16:26):
And it was really amazing conversation. And I mean some people,
for God's sakes, their lives were everything was in jeopardy.
Think of yourself now, right, You have kids, you have
a partner, you have a job. But it didn't take
long for us all the rehash of conversations we had
as we were planning this action, which was why are
we doing this, what do we want to accomplish, We've
(16:46):
come this far, what should we do?
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Led by the raiders that faced certain jail time, there
was suddenly a groundswell in their ranks to reject the
government deal entirely.
Speaker 7 (16:57):
Basically, I was saying, you know, I'm willing to go
to prison.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
The judge had allowed them to go pro say and
defend themselves. This was the movement's first opportunity to really
put the Vietnam War on trial, and.
Speaker 7 (17:11):
We had decided that the trial was as much a
part of the action as the action itself, because it
was going to be our opportunity to speak publicly about
why we did it.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
They argued that they were all serious activists who'd already
invested a year and a half of their lives and
careers in facing up to the government, and this was
their moment bid risk the maximum jail penalty and take
the case to trial.
Speaker 7 (17:39):
And then when we decided we were all in agreement
that we would go to trial, we would reject their offer.
Even those who could have walked away from it was
so empowering. We all all chanced in a circle and
we knocked on the door to call the US marshall
in to say, tell them we're.
Speaker 6 (17:56):
Ready for trial.
Speaker 13 (18:00):
Do you know the prosecutor was right?
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Oh, I would love to ask you about that.
Speaker 7 (18:04):
It was Donald Trump's brother in law.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Are you kidding me? That is balker.
Speaker 8 (18:10):
I'm telling you.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
The story could write itself.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
That prosecutor John Berry was a formidable opponent and after
they rejected his deal, he was hell bent for leather.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
So it was a three and a half month trial.
Speaker 7 (18:24):
We would have our trial during the day, and then
after the trial we would all go and meet for
a couple hours every friggin every day. I thought to myself,
I never want to go to another meeting for the
rest of my life after that.
Speaker 5 (18:36):
So, while twenty one people went to court every day
for three months, Sarah and I were publishing a newsletter
updates on what was happening in the trial.
Speaker 7 (18:44):
We paid for copies of transcripts and we reviewed those
and talked about stuff, and we talked strategy every night.
You know, what are we doing tomorrow? Who are we calling,
what are they going to do? How are we going
to do it?
Speaker 1 (18:53):
The opening statements took two days because there were twenty
of them. Cookie wrote her, as we kept here in
We are all here, she said, because a war was
waged in into China, not because a crime was committed
in Camden. If we are guilty of anything, then it
is our eagerness to take seriously the value of human
(19:14):
life and to ponder in earnest what the destruction of
thousands of lives must mean. Prosecutor Barry called a string
of eleven witnesses over eighteen court days, nine of whom
were FBI agents, and the defendants noticed a peculiar thing.
(19:34):
When the FBI agents started taking the stand, they were
all insisting that on the night of the arrest they
had not drawn their guns.
Speaker 14 (19:43):
The FBI apparently made some kind of statement that their
weapons were holstered when they arrested the Camden twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
That is a complete lot.
Speaker 7 (19:52):
We were constantly raising it, isn't it true you had
a gun? Though I was cross examining this agent. He's like, no,
we didn't have guns, and I said, you're telling me
you didn't. Argument, I get an objection, and the judge
is saying, you know, what's the basis of your objection?
Talking to the prosecute the US attorney, and my argument was, Judge,
I know he had a gun. I was there, I
saw him.
Speaker 14 (20:12):
So I have not forgotten that, and nor have I
forgiven that the idea that they came in with other
guns and their holsters is bullshit.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
They did not want the image that they had pulled
guns out on us, and they denied one after another.
Their whole testimony became questionable because it seemed so crazy
to think that they wouldn't pull out guns while they're
arresting people.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
The agents were in lockstep on their strategy. Prosecutor Barry
had an astounding level of details to put into evidence.
As the prosecution's case was made, John Barry continually tried
to introduce the defendant's prior bad acts earlier raids they
might have pulled as a way to paint their guilt
(20:54):
to the jury, with or without help from Bob Hardy
in the FBI. But the defendant continually raised objections whenever
he did this, sometimes all leaping to their feet at once.
One hilarious irony throughout the proceeding was that the FBI
had supported this raid, hoping they could catch whoever did media.
But the Camden twenty eight were able to use the
(21:16):
media documents as a basis for their cross examination.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
My favorite thing was cross examining FBI agents after they'd
given their testimony and reading them from the files that
we'd stolen in the media burglery and ask them what
they thought.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
And that's the best part of all. Unbeknownst to everyone
in the courtroom, including his own co defendants, wed X
was one of the media burglars, and brazenly he put
himself forward as the foremost expert in the group on
those particular documents. He argued that if the government wanted
to introduce their prior bad acts, why couldn't he introduce
(21:54):
the governments with the media papers. The judge denied his
motion During one of Cookie Ridolfi's crosses, she and a
co consul came up with a way to illustrate just
how much the FBI, through Bob Hardy, had in fact
donated to the cause of this race.
Speaker 7 (22:11):
FBI provided a lot of supplies, you know, tools and
money and this and that.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
So she used those tools as illustrations in open core.
Speaker 7 (22:19):
Let's pick up everything that he provided and should give
them to the FBI agents one at a time and
say where dis come from? Where disc come from?
Speaker 1 (22:25):
On the floor in front of the jury, she made
one pile of evidence exhibits the FBI had paid for
through Bob Hardy. It had ropes, wrenches, hammers, pliers, crowbars, tape,
glass cutters, walkie talkies, binoculars, and the pile became very large.
And then she made another pile of tools that the
Cannon twenty eight had provided, and it consisted of some
(22:46):
drill bits and a can of VH juice. Cookie pointed
out how similarly the defendants and the FBI had operated
leading up to the raid. And then she turned the
tables on the FBI agent on the stand.
Speaker 10 (23:01):
Would it be.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Fair to say? She asked that the FBI for different reasons.
Was interested in seeing those draft files destroyed.
Speaker 6 (23:11):
The government rested its case on Friday.
Speaker 10 (23:15):
Now it's all getting close verdict consequences. It clutches in
my guts sometimes working hard overworking. But okay, as you know,
loving empowers us to do things that seems so damn impossible.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
But what about Bob Hardy. Ever since the arrest and
his grand jury testimony a year and a half prior,
Bob Hardy had been going through hell. News that he
had snitched to the FBI lost him friends and clients,
and got his tires slashed. People called him names on the.
Speaker 13 (23:55):
Street, and we didn't know to later that he was
actually being paid for information.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
He received a letter from j Edgar Hoover saying, dear
mister Hardy, I want to thank you for what you've done.
You've done in ten weeks what it would have taken
two hundred agents a year to accomplish. Our country is
very grateful. And the envelope included fifty one hundred dollars bills.
(24:22):
This was Bob Hardy's thirty pieces of silver. But then
a month after the arrest, there was a knock at
the door.
Speaker 13 (24:33):
He was on his way out he was taking his
kids out to go get some shoes.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
The Hoover money had loosened things up a bit for
his family, and.
Speaker 13 (24:41):
When he got to the front door, somebody was there,
was a reporter from the Inquirer, and he said, okay,
come on in, and he told the kids to go play.
He would be with them. Shortly, his nine year.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Old son, Billy, began climbing a tree and when a
neighbor yelled at him, in his haste to get down,
he slipped.
Speaker 13 (24:56):
His son fell out of the tree, was a pale
on the fence.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Three spikes went into his son's stomach and he had
to be rushed to the hospital. Father Mike Doyle went
immediately to be with.
Speaker 13 (25:09):
Him, and Michael Doyle went to the hospital to pray
with the child. I mean, Michael just has so much goodness.
You know that he would not let that stop him
from supporting party's family.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
And knowing that he had been the informer, all the people,
all the Canon twenty eight People's supporters, everybody else showed
up in support of Bob Hardy Stanley. I mean that time.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Billy Hardy held on for three weeks before succumbing to
his injuries.
Speaker 8 (25:39):
So he lost I think he was nine.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
His little boy, Mary Anne.
Speaker 8 (25:43):
And of course everyone from the community went to the
funeral and went to the wake and were heartbroken for
him about having lost his child, and he was so
overcome with grief and so overcome. The people obviously completely
forgave him for whatever he did and came and had
enormous sympathy and real condolence for him.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Despite their differences. Bob Hardy asked Father Mike Doyle to
officiate his son's funeral mass.
Speaker 5 (26:14):
Many members of the kim in twenty eight who were
in town at the time went to the funeral offered
support and sympathy to Bob and his wife, which I
think he was agassed at because I mean, he just
sold everybody down the river.
Speaker 13 (26:25):
When that happened. We went and we went in to
the church and was so bizarre. There was like you
know a wedding, you have the grooves side and the brideside.
Well there was the fbi Asian side and our side,
and it was quite a scene.
Speaker 8 (26:38):
But he apparently began to think it was a punishment
for what he had done.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
There is new scholarship about the story of Judas Iscariot,
a Gospel of Judas was discovered in e in the
nineteen seventies. New translations suggests the word betrayer may have
been a bridge too far, and in fact, Judas may
simply have been attempting to hand over Jesus to the
High Priest so that they could broke or some sort
(27:14):
of peace. But after Jesus's capture, Judas quickly became aware
of the High Priest's intentions and tried to return the silver.
This messy version feels more human, and Judas was, above
all a human being. Bob Hardy, you may remember, was
(27:35):
upset after they did the dry run because he had
carefully arranged for his Camden friends like father Mike Doyle,
not to be part of the dry run so they
wouldn't be there when the FBI swooped in to arrest everybody.
He maintained he wanted to protect his local friends from
the out of town interlopers and that the FBI had
agreed to let his people walk. But on the night
(27:59):
of the arrest, the FBI agent stood down for two
hours while all the raiders, including the local candidates, racked
up more and more charges. Bob Hardy, who believed in
what he had done in the name of justice, now
saw that perhaps he picked the wrong side and began
to waver.
Speaker 5 (28:19):
And so then I think the government didn't know what
the hell to do with him, because he was flopping.
You know, who am my friend? Where do my sympathies lie?
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Hardy met with his FBI handler and told him of
his discontent. The agent told him to keep it to
himself or he might end up hit by a truck
one day.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
And that's the point at which she said, I'm not
doing this. I can't inform on these people.
Speaker 8 (28:44):
And he then turned on the FBI.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
And then the betrayer betrayed those who had betrayed him.
He told father Mike Doyle he wanted to write down
what he knew in order to protect himself and his family.
And a key piece of the puzzle now became clear
to the defendants. Without Hardy, without the FBI, this raid
(29:09):
never would have happened.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
They were not going to do this. They had decided
to quit. I was a provocateur in effect.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
The Canden Crew, you'll remember, had all but given up
when Hardy first entered the action and cajoled them to
keep going. So during the trial, after the prosecution rested
their case. The first outside witness called by the defense
was Bob Hardy.
Speaker 8 (29:40):
So he in the trial testified on behalf of the defendants.
Speaker 10 (29:46):
Mary Anne Patrick. Bob Hardy walked down the street today,
What a dizzy, spiraling crunch, the stench of gas, eerie
street's triumph of tattered files, shot buckles, chains bars. He
takes the stand Tuesday, Robert W. Hardy informer.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
It was the first time in the history of the
United States that a government informer had been called as
a witness by the defense rather than the prosecution.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
You just said, these were the most wonderful people I've
ever known, courageous and gentle and non violent and committed.
He said, Well, when it came to knowing how to
do a burglary, they were really, really hopeless. There you
have it, kind of in the epitaph of the Catholic Left. Wonderful, beautiful, moral,
serious people, but really third rate burglars.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
He testified that when he had offered Keith Forsyth the
gun in his van, it was because the FBI wanted
to find out if they were violent. He testified to
how encouraging the FBI was in his involvement and how
they reimbursed him and paid him for his trouble.
Speaker 10 (30:58):
Bob Hardy bought me a strawberry milkshake in the White
Tower Tuesday after court, trying to look someone in the eye,
and everything is slightly out of focus.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Such was the ballad of Bob Hardy, not a friend
in the world, a betrayer, betrayed, silver pieces scattered across
the temple floor, with only his intentions and best laid
plans and a strawberry milkshake to keep him company. For
(31:33):
the rest of the Camden twenty eighth defense case, they
turned the courtroom into a symposium on the war.
Speaker 5 (31:39):
It was really quite a spectacle and wonderful. A lot
of good testimony, A lot of people came forward. The
judge was incredibly lenient.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Prosecutor Barry vigorously objected to everything that wasn't about the
specific case in Camden, But the judge astoundingly decided he
did not want the jury to be weighing the defendants'
fates in a vacuum.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
He gave them as much leeway as you could possibly
have hoped for.
Speaker 8 (32:05):
After year after year after year after.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Year, you know, objection, your honor sustained objection, your honor,
sustain this is not about the war in Vietnam. It's
about a criminal act. Objection, your honor. The judge said, well,
I'm going to deny your motion, mister prosecutor. I think
we need to hear the context that these people were
doing these things in or it'll be incomprehensible.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
He started to let more and more testimony in, and
sometimes he would let testimony said, but he'd have the
jury excused. Other times he just got so fascinated himself
by the stories that were being told that he was
riveted by what was gone on in the court room.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
This gave them the opening they needed to finally make
the movement's case on behalf of all the raids that
had come before.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
So we were guilty on all charges, and we were
saying we were guilty on all charges by law. But
we presented the argument like a fire department breaking into
a burning building to save people, that this building of
the United States was burning, and we were breaking in
to save lives in Vietnam, to save our own soldiers' lives.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
One of the defendants felt that the best way for
her to testify to her motives was to ask Sarah
Tosi to sing a song on the witness stand by Peter,
Paul and Mary called the Great Mandela. Singing together was
a major part of the Camden twenty eight culture, and
the song summed up perfectly their objections to the war
and the draft.
Speaker 5 (33:34):
Sarah was extremely smart, very thoughtful, cerebral intense. She had
an intensity about her. We sang a lot of duets
when she played her guitar, you know, like Jacquearl songs
and the Great Mandala. I mean we had this like repertoire.
We would sing and people say, oh, Sarah, can you
play a guitar?
Speaker 6 (33:52):
Can you guys sing?
Speaker 1 (33:53):
The judge, of course, had never heard such a proposal
in all his years on the bench, but eventually he
consented to allow Sarah to sing the song from the
stand with the jury absent from the courtroom.
Speaker 10 (34:06):
Mary Anne Patrick, Thursday, I gave something called an order
of proof. I walked the witness stand with my guitar
on my shoulder, and I sang the Great Mandela. The
judge sat to the right, creaking in his chair. The
prosecutors sat in front of me. I sang into their faces.
(34:27):
I sang till those damn walls echoed till the typewriters
stopped in the clerk's office, till heads bowed over the
defense table.
Speaker 6 (34:37):
The prosecutor rose up.
Speaker 10 (34:38):
This is a travesty, he said, Yeah, I sang my
guts out to federal ears.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
The following day, in open court, the judge said that
the performance was respectful and reverential.
Speaker 10 (35:02):
I can't begin to speculate where it's all headed, but
it's spring again. Quiet, rainy evening, encourage revered hoping flows
not easily, but it flows.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Then Paul Koming took the stand. Six of the raiders
had met at his sanctuary at the Paulice Center. The
prosecutor did everything he could in his cross examination to
get Paul to admit to prior bad acts and fill
the government's gaps and knowledge about the Catholic less previous activity.
The defendants then accused Prosecutor Barry of being on a
(35:38):
fishing expedition for incriminating testimony. When he would ask Paul
questions like did you participate in the Boston raid? At once,
the defendants would all leap to their feet. Paul replied,
as far as giving any more information to indict myself
on any other charges. I don't think it is right.
If the Constitution agrees with me, then so be it,
(35:59):
to which the judge said, I take it you are
invoking the Fifth Amendment in not replying to the question,
is that right? And Kooming responded if the Fifth Amendment
says what I said, okay. Weed X, once again throwing
caution to the wind, then stood up and reminded the
judge that he had been prohibited from asking about the
(36:20):
FBI's prior bad acts as revealed by the media papers.
If mister Barry is going to be permitted to ask
specific questions which could lead to indictment of any of
my brothers or sisters, he said, that to me would
represent a travesty of justice. It will indicate, at least
to my own mind, that the American system of justice
is directed only against little people and not against representatives
(36:42):
of the government itself. The Kendon twenty eight then called
Dan Berrigan and Phil Berrigan to the stand, as they
were both finally out of jail, and when Dan was
asked about informers, he responded as follows, even though Judas
was in our midst we weren't allowed to destroy or
harm him. By late April, the defense had two more
(37:05):
witnesses to go. The first was Howard Zen.
Speaker 15 (37:11):
I testified during the Vietnam War and a bunch of trials.
You know, there were all these trials of the you know,
the Baltimore for the Catonsville nine, the Milwaukee fourteen, the
Camden twenty eighth. I testified as a so called expert witness.
Previous trials had taken place in the midst of the war.
By this time, the war was reaching its end. The
(37:34):
anti war movement had become huge, the country had turned
against the war, and I believe that in this atmosphere
the judge was more open to an anti war protest
by the defenders.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
So that made it possible for Howard Zen to get
up there and give his lengthy testimony, which he had
never been allowed to give, at least in front of
a jury before, and every trial he had been asked
to testify in about what the war in Vietnam was
really about.
Speaker 15 (38:04):
They've not committed in just a crime that wasn't simply
breaking an entering. They weren't criminals. They were committing acts
of civil disobedience, and civil disobedience was an honorable tradition
in American history. So that was my job to talk
about the history of civil disobedience. I started with a
Declaration of Independence, which, after all, is you might say,
(38:26):
a manifesto for civil disobedience.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Howard's first point to the jury was that we are
all taught that the law is holy, but this misses
the distinction between law and justice. Law and justice don't
coincide very often, he said, and when a law perpetuates injustice,
it must not be obeyed.
Speaker 7 (38:46):
He testified for at least a day. I mean, it
was long testimony.
Speaker 14 (38:51):
The jurors.
Speaker 7 (38:51):
You could hear a pin drop in that room the
whole time.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Zin then laid out for the jury what had recently
been revealed in the leaked Pentagon Papers. The papers contained
the astonishing revelation that the government had been lying to
the American people for years about this war.
Speaker 15 (39:07):
I spoke to the jury for about five hours telling
them what was in the Pentagon Papers.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Among the more shocking elements of the Pentagon Papers was
this sentence. We must note that South Vietnam, unlike any
of the other countries in Southeast Asia, was essentially the
creation of the United States. Remember how I told you
the US government had installed Cardinal Spelman's handpicked Catholic mystic
friend in Vietnam. This had finally been revealed by the
(39:37):
Pentagon Papers, and Howard Zinn spent the day informing the
jury about it. But in fact, the US interest in
Vietnam's resources had actually begun in the post war nineteen forties.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
And it came down to be in about ten, rubber,
and oil, and that those were three commodities that they
had in Vietnam. The ten could be mine there, the
rubber was grown there, and the oil was already known
to exist in the China Sea off the Vietnamese coast.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Fifty eight thousand young American soldiers had now died in
Vietnam for tin, rubber, and oil.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
And then in the middle of Howard's end's testimony, the
key element happened was that this loud, loud sobbing at
the top of her voice was Bobby Good's mother was
in the audience listening to him.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Bob Good was one of the Camden twenty eight defendants.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Well, Bobby's Goods brother Paul Good, had been killed in Vietnam.
Her mother was in the audience listening to Howard's Inn
and hearing all the faint little threads of hope she
had that her son had died in Vietnam for something
worthwhile totally taken away, and that her son had died
(40:58):
not for the people Vietnam, not for freedom in the world,
but it died because of corporate greed and ten and
oil and rubber. She just sobbed this incredibly powerful sobbing.
It just stunned the whole court. And it wasn't anything
(41:19):
the judge could overrule, you know, And it came from
the audience. But she solved for just for a minute
or two, but it stunned everybody, and nobody dared to
say anything to her or to stop her.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
And then Bob Good's mother, Betty Good, took the stand herself.
Speaker 7 (41:40):
She said, I can't testify. I'm too upset, Bhlah about
did you have to testify? So she gets on the
witness stand, and that was I think truly the highest
moment of the entire tribe.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
She gets on the stand and tells the story about
how what she had just gone through and why she
was crying out loud, and then such agony was because
she realized her son had died in vain, that her
son had died without purpose, without any good purpose.
Speaker 7 (42:08):
And now I find out after listening to professors in
that my boy he went over there not for any
good reason, or moral reason or justified reason, but he
went over there for rubber tin and oil. And I
am so angry that I was ever proud to put
him on that plane.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
And then she turned immediately to the jury and said,
and it's these people that are doing the good. They're
doing what we failed to do. She's talking to the
jury is up here saying we failed. My son Paul
died because I failed to recognize and to stand up earlier.
These people today and that are we're putting on trial
(42:46):
had no choice but to do what they did, and
we should be thankful for what they did.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
We should get out of this, she closed. But not
one of us, not one of us, raised our hands
to do anything about it. We left it up to
these people for them to do it, and now we
are prosecuting them for it.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
That testimony just blew everyone away. It blew the judge away,
at bowed the jury away.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
One defendant noticed a tear and Judge Fisher's eye when
Betty Good's testimony was done. By the time it came
to closing arguments, the marshals and the stenographers had all
fallen in love with the Canden twenty eight.
Speaker 7 (43:32):
The marshals, who in the beginning were putting us through
metal defectors, started wearing twenty eight buttons under their lapels.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
The trial had gone on for over three months, and
the Canden twenty eight had made the courtroom something of
a home for the jurors. Father Mike Doyle had the
final closing statement before Prosecutor Barry would give his own.
Father Doyle said, now I don't feel comfortable that John
Barry has the last word. I was thinking about that,
(43:59):
and I was thinking that he doesn't have the last word.
You have the last word. And then I was thinking
about that, and I think you have the last two words.
Then Prosecutor John Berry stood up in no uncertain terms.
He told the jury the defendants had broken the law
(44:20):
and that political motivation cannot be used as a defense.
And when he was done, he thanked the jury, to
whom the fate of the Camden twenty eight would now
be entrusted. When you sit on a jury, the first
thing that happens after both cases rest, before you go
into deliberation is that the judge gives you instructions and
(44:42):
advises you on the meaning of the laws you are applying.
Judge Fisher told the jury regarding the defendants, the law
does not recognize religious or moral convictions or some higher
law as justification for the commission of a crime, no
matter how noble that motive may be. I charge you.
(45:02):
He said that you may not treat the defendants beliefs
with respect to the war in Vietnam or other possible
injustices to which you have heard references as a possible
negation of criminal intent. The defendant's hearts were gradually sinking
as he spoke, and then he dealt the decisive blow
(45:25):
the defendants' motivations in this case, the fact that he
or she was engaged in a protest and the sincere
belief that he or she was acting in a good
cause is not an acceptable legal defense or justification. And
with that they knew their hopes of a hung jury
were basically dashed, and they were all going off to prison.
Speaker 6 (45:59):
Things have a way way of happening.
Speaker 10 (46:01):
Strength comes when it is needed most, and paths have
a way of opening when everything seems lost. If only
we can stay open to living and all the risks
it implies.
Speaker 6 (46:13):
Amen, let it be.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
The jurors deliberated all day Thursday all day Friday, and
were sequestered in a hotel for the weekend because of
the press attention. Some of the defendants stayed up all
night on Sunday and drove to the Jersey Shore to
swim in the ocean for the last time.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Most of us were had given up waiting and gone
to Atlantic City to go swimming, which was a couple
hour drive away. We got a phone call saying that
the jury was ready to give the verdict and we
had to be in the courtroom in a couple of hours.
So we got out of the Atlantic Ocean which we
had just been swimming in, at sunrise and drove a
(46:56):
while the way back and got into the courtroom just
in time to hear the call.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
The jury entered the courtroom at two thirty five pm.
The courtroom was packed with two hundred supporters of the
Canden twenty eight, and there was overflowed down the corridor
and spilling out onto the street.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
We didn't know what was going to happen. The deliberation
went on for quite a while over a weekend Monday.
We all shuffled in there.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
The jury roll was called. All were present. The defendants stood,
linked their arms and bowed their heads. The judge asked
if they had reached a verdict. They had. The first
(47:45):
Candon twenty eight defendant in alphabetical order was a man
named Terry Buckaloo. The foreman would read the verdict on
every count for every defendant. The judge addressed the foreman,
how say you, how do you find the defendant Terry
Edward Buckaloo on count one of the indictment. We find him,
(48:09):
your honor, not guilty.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
The courtroom goes, whoa. And then the second one not guilty,
not guilty, not you know, the the judge goes, you know,
is this going to be not guilty on everything? And
he goes, yes, you run a lot.
Speaker 5 (48:27):
Everybody, just like all counts, not guilty on all counts,
for all defendants. And when that became known, it was
just like mayhem. You know, the moment of the decision
was spectacular, And one of my most vivid memories of
Sarah is that she began singing Amazing Grace in the
courtroom where we're all holding hands, and.
Speaker 15 (48:50):
When the verdict of the jury was announced. People stood
up in the court rope and sang amazing. Grace stood
up with.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
It was quite a.
Speaker 15 (49:03):
Scene and there was a great, great sign of what
the anti war movement had accomplished over the years, and
how this sort of came to a kind of climax
in this courtroom in Camden, New Jersey.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
The judge lingered and the clerks and marshalls joined in
the singing.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
Because they knew that they had been called to an action.
They weren't called to make a decision about whether we
should go to jail or not. They were called to
join in our action to legitimize it and say this
action was a good thing to do under the circumstances.
This was the best American thing we can do.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
We were dancing in the aisles. It was quite incredible.
We were crying, you know when the band, oh, it's
it's farewell party and the Beatles are breaking up, but
they got to have one more bash. That's sort of
what that trial was.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
There was only one restaurant which had a bar in
all of Camden, and so everybody went there, the prosecution
and the judge, the defendants, we all went to the
same place to eat and the drink.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
One of the Catonsville nine raiders had come to Camden
to support the defendants and saw the judge at the bar.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
He pulled up the chair next to the judge at
the bar. Judge says to him, you know what, those
people are not the crooks. The crooks are in Washington.
These people are the heroes. These people are the cream
of the crop. That's what he said about us.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
The New York Times declared the verdict was the first
total legal victory for the anti war movement in five
years of such draft board incidents.
Speaker 15 (50:51):
The interesting thing about the Camden twenty eighth trial, this
was his first trial of all these trials in which
the defendants were quitted. Even though they were caught red handed.
There they were no question about what they had done.
Speaker 3 (51:05):
Despite the fact that we were caught right handed, despite
the fact that we all admitted we did it, and
we all wanted to do it and would do it again,
that jury stood with us and said not guilty because
they had solidarity with what we had done. That was
when the peace movement won in Camden. We finally didn't
(51:25):
just win a case, we won the heart of America.
Over to the fact that the war had got on
too long and was too wrong to continue.
Speaker 15 (51:34):
The American public became aware of the atrocities we were
committing of Vietnam, and after all, American people, like all people,
fundamentally decent when they learned the truth. However, they've been
deceived by the government, by the authorities. When they learned
the truth, they're perfectly willing to change their minds.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
Since that May twentieth, nineteen seventy three, have had that
in my head that if the people know what the
truth is, the people make good decisions. That's what it's
all about.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
If a law is unjust, it must not be obeyed,
whether it be federal law or canonical. Patrick and mary
Anne were deeply in love. They had been inseparable since
the night they kissed. He performed his duties as a
(52:40):
Roman Catholic priest during the day and would sneak off
to Dorchester at night to be with Mary Anne and
Chrissy and Jojo. He could get himself to forget for
long stretches of time that he was betraying his vows
and everyone who attended his liturgies betrayal. It seems when
you're dealing in passionate feelings is as human to love.
(53:01):
Betrayers become betrayed. Patrick knew somewhere in his mind that
this situation could not go on forever.
Speaker 6 (53:13):
I remember there was this moment.
Speaker 8 (53:16):
Patrick went on a trip to I think the Dominican Republic,
and it was the longest we'd have been apart. I
think we were apart for three weeks, and when we
came back together, it was the first time he hesitated.
(53:38):
It was probably the first time he'd had a moment
to step out of it, first of all, where he
could think, like Holy God, because for him, it was
the complete end of a way of life.
Speaker 16 (53:53):
I mean, it was over that way of life.
Speaker 8 (54:04):
We had the conversation and it was really painful, but
I remember saying to him that, honestly, what I really
wanted for him was for him to be happy and
free and liberated, you know, to be who he's really
(54:27):
meant to be. And if that didn't involve me, I
would be heartbroken, but that would have to be the
way it is or was. And he told me later
that for him, that was almost one of the most
(54:49):
extraordinary things that's ever happened to him, Like his experience
of that was that I loved him that unconditionally, which
I did. I did. I wanted him to be who
was meant to be, and I knew I couldn't fathom
(55:14):
life without him. I couldn't fathom. I mean, I cannot
imagine had actually had well, I can because he died,
so I can't imagine. I would have been devastated, absolutely
devastated because I loved him like with my whole I
loved him unconditionally. I loved him with my whole heart.
(55:37):
And for him, I think that was a momentary, it
was like a panic attack because he was about to
give up everything he had just built over the last
ten years of his life, from the seminary through the
police fathers to this moment of walking away from all
of that.
Speaker 1 (55:59):
After that conversation, Patrick knew what he had to do.
Patrick would leave the priesthood and marry Mary Anne. He
would do what was right in his heart, canonical law
be damned. But first he had to tell the people
closest to him, his parents, his seminary brother Jim Carroll,
(56:23):
and the thousand people that came to his liturgy extravaganzas
every Sunday.
Speaker 8 (56:28):
Because the implications were enormous. I mean, I don't mean
to overblow that, but they were enormous for the people
who were impacted.
Speaker 1 (56:34):
And not really knowing how else to do it, Patrick
waited until the end of Mass, where typically there would
be announcements, so he told them that he too had
an announcement, and that he had fallen in love and
that he would be getting married to Mary Anne Woodward.
At first, gasps were followed by a stunned silence, and then.
Speaker 8 (57:01):
And I thought the roof was going to come off
the building.
Speaker 12 (57:06):
People were clapping and shouting and screaming, and it was
I mean, I know, many hundreds of people were really surprised,
and certain obviously certain people weren't surprised.
Speaker 3 (57:22):
But it was a surprise.
Speaker 8 (57:23):
It was a surprise to most and the place went wild.
But they were so joyful, I mean, they were clearly
so happy for him, even though it had huge implications
for the community. I was in the church. It was
in the church, and I remember leaning against like a pillar,
and this woman came over to me and she said, Oh,
(57:45):
there's going to be a lot of wet pillows in
the city of Boston tonight.
Speaker 1 (57:54):
So I told you early on that I wouldn't insert
myself much in this story. But it's here that it
becomes unavoidable. As your host, I have betrayed you. I
just could never figure out the right time to tell
you this. Marianne and Patrick are my mother and father.
(58:23):
Divine Intervention is a production of iHeart Podcasts. It's produced
by Wonder Media Network. It was created and written by me,
your host, Brendan Patrick Hughes. Our robustly proficient producers are
Carmen Borca, Carreo, Abby Delk, Paloma Moreno, Jimenez, Grace Lynch,
and myself. Our editor is Creator of Worlds Grace Lynch
(58:47):
for Wonder Media Network. Our executive producers are Emily Rutterer
and Jenny Kaplan for iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producer is
Christina Everett. The late Sarahtosi was voiced by Carly Pope
and Grace and Other. Music was arranged and performed by
the incredible Morris Miley, Kai Fukuda and friends. The chorus
(59:07):
singing La Cromosa from Mozart's Requiem was crowdsourced from my
friends on social media, arranged by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and
produced by me. Thank you to all the contributors. Our
theme in end credit music was composed and performed by
Down to Earth rock goddess Tanya Donnelly and mastered by
Ben Aerons. Masterer to the Stars. This is Brendan Patrick Hughes.
(59:30):
Thank you for listening to Divine Intervention.
For a show about a bunch of religious people. There's
been very little Bible talk thus far. I have to
admit I've never actually read the Bible, so there's a
huge chunk of modern culture I'm missing. Anytime someone says
a fly in the ointment, a drop in the bucket,
a man after my own heart, setting your teeth on edge,
(00:20):
bite the dust, apple of my eye, or at my
wits end, they are knowingly or not quoting the Bible,
and it makes language that much richer when you're hip
to biblical references like this. One of these phrases is
thirty pieces of silver. It comes from the story of
judas Is Scariot. So Jesus was, contrary to popular assumption,
(00:49):
intensely political, so much so that by passover of his
thirty third year, he was on borrowed time, and one
of his disciples, judas Is Scariot, was seeking working with
the high priests who had it out for Jesus. So
shortly after the last supper, Judas went off and found
a mob, brought them back to a garden where Jesus
(01:10):
was praying, and told them the man I kisses Jesus,
he's the one you should seize Jesus was somehow hip
to this and let it happen because it was all
part of a prophecy. And for his betrayal, Judas was
paid thirty pieces of silver. Betrayal, it turns out, is
(01:32):
an inevitable byproduct of human passion.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
The ultimate cutting point is what happens when you discover an.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Informer Catholic Left historian Charles Meconez.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Because there will be informers sooner or later, you know,
I mean, the government gets to have a vote in
this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
When humans get together, all believing passionately in something, there
will always be conflict.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
And that's where the rubber hits the road.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
In a movement, there will always be betrayal. I'm Brendan
Patrick Hughes, and this is divine intervention, Chapter nine, the
last two words. In Camden, New Jersey, twenty eight people
(02:39):
had staged the last stand with a government that had
learned how to crush dissent. Their raid was supposed to
prove that the American people would always have a voice. Instead,
the morning after the raid, after hours of interrogation in
rooms that had been pre labeled with their names, the
Camden twenty eight went off to jail.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
The women all went to a women's jail, and the
men were all went to Atlanta County Jail.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
I think it was the very day after they ambushed
the Camden twenty eight, Hoover puts out this big public announcement,
we have broken the.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Back of the Catholic left. The morning after the arrest,
j Edgar Hoover and US Attorney General John Mitchell held
a triumphant press conference in which they distributed pre assembled
biographical information on each raider. Hoover said, I guess I
want these people to go to jail for forty six years.
Bob Kanane, he's going to take all his vengeance out
(03:36):
on the Camden people.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
The FBI was convinced that in arresting the Camden twenty.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Eight Bob Weed X Williamson, they.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
Had caught at least some of the media burglars.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
He had them in his clutches and he would see
to it they were locked up for as many years
as possible.
Speaker 5 (03:54):
So what was the Camden twenty eight? But all twenty
eight of us were not even in Camden.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Leanne Mosha was a driver on the night of the raid.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Some people were arrested as co conspirators who were not
even there that night, but they were charged with having
been part of the planning or charged with part of
the previous activities that led to the arrest.
Speaker 6 (04:09):
The newspaper is a constant horror.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Story, Sarahtosi wrote to Patrick and Mary Anne.
Speaker 6 (04:14):
But things are stirring.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
The story was front page news in the New York
Times and had features in Newsweek and Time Magazine. As
the press rolled into Camden, Bob Hardy, the informer who
betrayed them, all spent hours testifying before a grand jury.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
The informer was a complicated, complicated man. He went immediately
to the FBI to tell us what we were doing,
and they said, great, hang in there. He was the
start witness for the prosecution.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
The following day, an indictment was handed down, charging twenty
eight people with seven counts describing forty four over illegal acts.
They faced over six hundred thousand dollars in bail and
a maximum penalty of forty seven years in prison, forty.
Speaker 7 (05:01):
Seven years and one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Fines, which in nineteen seventy one meant they would be
released in the unfathomably science fiction year of twenty eighteen,
Hoover was now riding high on his law enforcement triumph
and he had, shall we say, taken notice of those
raising money on behalf of the Camden defendants.
Speaker 8 (05:23):
Patrick and I. We were getting a lot of bail money,
Jim Carroll and Ann Walsh, everyone was getting as much
bail money together as we can.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Patrick and Mary Anne were spending all their time together
and gathering bail for Camden was the perfect cover to
travel together.
Speaker 8 (05:39):
And Patrick and I took one quick trip down to
Camden to bring the money down. The whole way we
were being followed by the FBI, and we knew it.
I mean you could see them. We'd get out of
the car, they'd get out of the car. It was
so obvious. So after Camden there was a Jane Doe
warrant for my rest. The description, as I understand it
(06:03):
was Paul Kooming's best friend who has long dark hair,
and that would only be one person, which would be me.
Everybody I lived with had been arrested. They were all
on the front page of the Boston Globe.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Because of her kids, Marianne had to be careful, but
she was also harboring a scandalous secret.
Speaker 9 (06:21):
And Miriam was bringing the money to Camden, right Ann Walsh.
Simultaneously she was falling in love with Patrick. I mean
they were about to actually Actually, what I'm talking about
is like so many levels of motivation and stuff like
that going on, and basically it's a big love story.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
If they might stay in a motel for the night
somewhere between Camden and Boston, they would emerge the next
morning and wave at their FBI tails, who would grumpily
hoist their coffee cups and climb into a car. For
a while, these two FBI agents were the only people
in the world who knew of about Patrick and Marianne.
Speaker 8 (07:02):
It is horrifying if you think about being investigated with
the FII. You know, most reasonable people would say it's
a pretty frightening experience.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Hoover had hired a thousand agents just to intimidate the
Catholic left.
Speaker 8 (07:15):
Patrick was very nervous that they were going to go
to his parents, who were you know, they were well
into their seventies at that time.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
And don't forget, these agents had something on Marianne.
Speaker 8 (07:24):
The FBI had gone to my father, and they had
gone to my brother, and they had gone with photos.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Not only was she helping a bunch of criminals in
South Jersey, she was also in and out of motel
rooms with the Roman Catholic priests.
Speaker 8 (07:38):
I think they threatened my brother with a subpoena, for instance,
like that if he didn't tell them everything he knew
about what I was doing, they would subpoena him. It
shook his world. It shook his world. That probably wasn't
the best way in the world for him to have
learned that news.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Her father then cut her out of his life.
Speaker 8 (08:00):
My father disowned me.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
And he and her brother left her on her own
with her scandalous romantic relationship, her criminal friends, and her children.
There's a joke about Irish Alzheimer's that you forget everything
but the grudges. But Marianne, fifty years hence, was the
(08:24):
opposite of that and could now see this situation from
their side.
Speaker 8 (08:28):
Now I really appreciate how awful that had to be
for them and for us. It was almost like a
badge of honor, because at that point there was such
a commitment to ending the war, and this was if
these were the consequences, These were the consequences, and it
(08:49):
was what cleaved the generations. It was those times.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
So Patrick and Marianne wore their badge of honor and
along with Jim Carroll and Walsh and many others, they
pressed on bailing out the Camden twenty eight.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
We were all bailed out because people all across the
country put up the houses.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
They got people to take out second mortgages on their homes.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
And risk their houses just to get us all out
of jail.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
And miraculously they managed to scrounge up the staggering sum
of money needed to get everybody out of jail in Camden.
Everyone was eventually freed and they began their trial prep
in earnest.
Speaker 7 (09:28):
We were caught red handed cookie, so nobody even thought
about trying to comp with the defense that would somehow say,
oh you just misidentification or something. No defense right, So
there was we were there. I put my odds to
success at zero. Because there had never been an acquittal
before any of the Draft Board rate cases. People had
been convicted and sent to prison.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
They were doomed from the start, but nevertheless they persisted.
Soon the Camden twenty eight case was a signed a judge,
Judge Clarkson Fisher. He was a Catholic World War two
that appointed by Nixon to the federal bench. Some of
the defendants thought his assignment was intentionally provocative. A trial
(10:14):
date was set from Monday, February fifth, nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 10 (10:20):
Mary Anne Patrick, the storm bruise on the horizon visible now,
I mean the trial, yes, but so much more than
just that word or reality, but every single level of
my existence and beyond that.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Lawyers had flocked to Camden in the hopes of representing
the twenty eight defendants. They impressed on the twenty eight
the deep shit they were in, the complex legal doctrines,
and the byzantine government maneuvering that would need their expertise.
But the defendants knew this was their only chance to
talk about Vietnam as a context for their motivation, and
(10:57):
because so many judges in previous trial had prevented such testimony,
they realized their only shot at being able to speak
freely was to represent themselves and go pro say so,
they dismissed the hotshot lawyers.
Speaker 5 (11:13):
People made a decision to defend themselves without an attorney,
so it was a bit of a mayhem scenario.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
At the end of the argument, twenty three went pro say,
while five opted for co consul, they would represent themselves.
They would go out with a bang, and they would
attempt to put the Vietnam War itself on the stand.
But two hours west on I seventy six in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
(11:40):
Hoover's pet grand jury project and massive indictment of the
movement had finally evolved into a trial accusing seven Catholic
Left movement people, including Phil Berigan, of conspiracy. Some of
the defendants in the government's conspiracy case were furious at
the Camden people. One Harrisburg defendant described the Camden action
(12:00):
as an activist expression of American individualism and obsession with heroism.
But the Harrisburg defendants had not chosen to use their
trial as a continuation of an action, and had instead
gone into damage control and hired famous lawyers. The trial
of the Harrisburg seven lasted six weeks. The government's star
(12:22):
witness was Boyd Douglas, Bhil Berigan's fellow inmate and confidante.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
So finally the Catholic Left figures out that Boyd Douglas
was the trader in the Harrisburg stuff. The letters which
Boyd Douglas had been carrying out, photocopying, and handing straight
to the FBI. Those were just awful to listen to
in the court room because almost all of us that
was the first time we ever had became aware of
them or heard them.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
And it was these letters that had revealed not only
Dan Berrigan's whereabouts on Block Island which led to his arrest,
but also the Kissinger kidnapping plot, which was what allowed
Hoover to put millions of dollars behind crushing the cap
Flick left. When the prosecution rested, the Harrisburg Seven's lawyer
stood up and, to the astonishment of everyone in the courtroom,
(13:09):
gave a sixteen word defense, your honor. He said, these
defendants shall always seek peace, and they proclaim their innocence
of these charges. The defense rests. The jury deliberated for
seven days. At the verdict, the defendants began emptying their pockets.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Everybody, including the defendants themselves, are expecting that they are gone.
And the vote comes intent to too for acquittal, and
we couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
The Harrisburg Seven were free, but it was a pyrrhic victory.
The Catholic Left movement was all but destroyed, decimated by
legal fees and infighting, with the war winding down and
only the Camden trial left, and one month after the
Harrisburg verdict, Jay Hoover, sworn enemy of the American Left,
(14:03):
died of a heart attack on May twi nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 11 (14:07):
I definitely believe that that defeat ted Glick in that
trial had something to do with him dying so quickly
after that verdict. I'm sure he was really apoplectic about
the fact that everybody got off from that.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
On February fifth, nineteen seventy three, the trial of the
Candon twenty eight finally began.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Yes Zach sam Building. That courtroom is on the third floor,
their draft boards on the fifth floor.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
On that day, Colonel William Noldy, the last combat soldier
to be killed in Vietnam, was buried at Arlington National
Cemetery in Washington.
Speaker 12 (14:50):
D c.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
The twenty eight defendants assembled in a packed ceremonial courtroom
and discovered the prosecutor had put a deal on the table.
Speaker 7 (14:59):
The day at the trial when we were supposed to
start the case. They presented us with another offer.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Number one. He had severed eight defendants, including Keith Forsyth,
Leanne Mosha and Sarah Tosi, and it.
Speaker 5 (15:10):
Seemed that there was no rationale. There were people who
were kept in the whole group who were way less
involved than we were. There were people who were more
involved who were severed unclear how they made the decision.
Speaker 6 (15:21):
Dear Mary Anne, this is it. This is no drill.
Speaker 10 (15:25):
The government offered us a deal today like being in Woolworths.
For the next half hour, you can get an ice
cream Sunday for fifty three cents, short interruption in the music,
and then on a package.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
Deal for the twenty eight.
Speaker 10 (15:41):
Oh leo that tastes as good as the seventy nine
cent spread. I couldnot possibly scream loud enough.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Number two a chance for many of them to walk
away with a slap on the wrist and for the
big fish to do relatively little prison time.
Speaker 7 (15:56):
We got an offer deal.
Speaker 10 (15:58):
Drop fifteen defendants, thirteen plead guilty to one charge, any
charge our choice, you see, all must accept or no deal.
Speaker 7 (16:06):
That meant some people would walk, including like people with kids.
And I mean, it was really a big deal, and
we had to talk about it. So they gave us
the courtroom and we had this big Powow all of
us together and discussed whether we should go through with it.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
They met for nearly two hours, and there were strong
arguments for taking the Plea deal.
Speaker 7 (16:26):
And it was really amazing conversation. And I mean some people,
for God's sakes, their lives were everything was in jeopardy.
Think of yourself now, right, You have kids, you have
a partner, you have a job. But it didn't take
long for us all the rehash of conversations we had
as we were planning this action, which was why are
we doing this, what do we want to accomplish, We've
(16:46):
come this far, what should we do?
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Led by the raiders that faced certain jail time, there
was suddenly a groundswell in their ranks to reject the
government deal entirely.
Speaker 7 (16:57):
Basically, I was saying, you know, I'm willing to go
to prison.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
The judge had allowed them to go pro say and
defend themselves. This was the movement's first opportunity to really
put the Vietnam War on trial, and.
Speaker 7 (17:11):
We had decided that the trial was as much a
part of the action as the action itself, because it
was going to be our opportunity to speak publicly about
why we did it.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
They argued that they were all serious activists who'd already
invested a year and a half of their lives and
careers in facing up to the government, and this was
their moment bid risk the maximum jail penalty and take
the case to trial.
Speaker 7 (17:39):
And then when we decided we were all in agreement
that we would go to trial, we would reject their offer.
Even those who could have walked away from it was
so empowering. We all all chanced in a circle and
we knocked on the door to call the US marshall
in to say, tell them we're.
Speaker 6 (17:56):
Ready for trial.
Speaker 13 (18:00):
Do you know the prosecutor was right?
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Oh, I would love to ask you about that.
Speaker 7 (18:04):
It was Donald Trump's brother in law.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Are you kidding me? That is balker.
Speaker 8 (18:10):
I'm telling you.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
The story could write itself.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
That prosecutor John Berry was a formidable opponent and after
they rejected his deal, he was hell bent for leather.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
So it was a three and a half month trial.
Speaker 7 (18:24):
We would have our trial during the day, and then
after the trial we would all go and meet for
a couple hours every friggin every day. I thought to myself,
I never want to go to another meeting for the
rest of my life after that.
Speaker 5 (18:36):
So, while twenty one people went to court every day
for three months, Sarah and I were publishing a newsletter
updates on what was happening in the trial.
Speaker 7 (18:44):
We paid for copies of transcripts and we reviewed those
and talked about stuff, and we talked strategy every night.
You know, what are we doing tomorrow? Who are we calling,
what are they going to do? How are we going
to do it?
Speaker 1 (18:53):
The opening statements took two days because there were twenty
of them. Cookie wrote her, as we kept here in
We are all here, she said, because a war was
waged in into China, not because a crime was committed
in Camden. If we are guilty of anything, then it
is our eagerness to take seriously the value of human
(19:14):
life and to ponder in earnest what the destruction of
thousands of lives must mean. Prosecutor Barry called a string
of eleven witnesses over eighteen court days, nine of whom
were FBI agents, and the defendants noticed a peculiar thing.
(19:34):
When the FBI agents started taking the stand, they were
all insisting that on the night of the arrest they
had not drawn their guns.
Speaker 14 (19:43):
The FBI apparently made some kind of statement that their
weapons were holstered when they arrested the Camden twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
That is a complete lot.
Speaker 7 (19:52):
We were constantly raising it, isn't it true you had
a gun? Though I was cross examining this agent. He's like, no,
we didn't have guns, and I said, you're telling me
you didn't. Argument, I get an objection, and the judge
is saying, you know, what's the basis of your objection?
Talking to the prosecute the US attorney, and my argument was, Judge,
I know he had a gun. I was there, I
saw him.
Speaker 14 (20:12):
So I have not forgotten that, and nor have I
forgiven that the idea that they came in with other
guns and their holsters is bullshit.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
They did not want the image that they had pulled
guns out on us, and they denied one after another.
Their whole testimony became questionable because it seemed so crazy
to think that they wouldn't pull out guns while they're
arresting people.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
The agents were in lockstep on their strategy. Prosecutor Barry
had an astounding level of details to put into evidence.
As the prosecution's case was made, John Barry continually tried
to introduce the defendant's prior bad acts earlier raids they
might have pulled as a way to paint their guilt
(20:54):
to the jury, with or without help from Bob Hardy
in the FBI. But the defendant continually raised objections whenever
he did this, sometimes all leaping to their feet at once.
One hilarious irony throughout the proceeding was that the FBI
had supported this raid, hoping they could catch whoever did media.
But the Camden twenty eight were able to use the
(21:16):
media documents as a basis for their cross examination.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
My favorite thing was cross examining FBI agents after they'd
given their testimony and reading them from the files that
we'd stolen in the media burglery and ask them what
they thought.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
And that's the best part of all. Unbeknownst to everyone
in the courtroom, including his own co defendants, wed X
was one of the media burglars, and brazenly he put
himself forward as the foremost expert in the group on
those particular documents. He argued that if the government wanted
to introduce their prior bad acts, why couldn't he introduce
(21:54):
the governments with the media papers. The judge denied his
motion During one of Cookie Ridolfi's crosses, she and a
co consul came up with a way to illustrate just
how much the FBI, through Bob Hardy, had in fact
donated to the cause of this race.
Speaker 7 (22:11):
FBI provided a lot of supplies, you know, tools and
money and this and that.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
So she used those tools as illustrations in open core.
Speaker 7 (22:19):
Let's pick up everything that he provided and should give
them to the FBI agents one at a time and
say where dis come from? Where disc come from?
Speaker 1 (22:25):
On the floor in front of the jury, she made
one pile of evidence exhibits the FBI had paid for
through Bob Hardy. It had ropes, wrenches, hammers, pliers, crowbars, tape,
glass cutters, walkie talkies, binoculars, and the pile became very large.
And then she made another pile of tools that the
Cannon twenty eight had provided, and it consisted of some
(22:46):
drill bits and a can of VH juice. Cookie pointed
out how similarly the defendants and the FBI had operated
leading up to the raid. And then she turned the
tables on the FBI agent on the stand.
Speaker 10 (23:01):
Would it be.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Fair to say? She asked that the FBI for different reasons.
Was interested in seeing those draft files destroyed.
Speaker 6 (23:11):
The government rested its case on Friday.
Speaker 10 (23:15):
Now it's all getting close verdict consequences. It clutches in
my guts sometimes working hard overworking. But okay, as you know,
loving empowers us to do things that seems so damn impossible.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
But what about Bob Hardy. Ever since the arrest and
his grand jury testimony a year and a half prior,
Bob Hardy had been going through hell. News that he
had snitched to the FBI lost him friends and clients,
and got his tires slashed. People called him names on the.
Speaker 13 (23:55):
Street, and we didn't know to later that he was
actually being paid for information.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
He received a letter from j Edgar Hoover saying, dear
mister Hardy, I want to thank you for what you've done.
You've done in ten weeks what it would have taken
two hundred agents a year to accomplish. Our country is
very grateful. And the envelope included fifty one hundred dollars bills.
(24:22):
This was Bob Hardy's thirty pieces of silver. But then
a month after the arrest, there was a knock at
the door.
Speaker 13 (24:33):
He was on his way out he was taking his
kids out to go get some shoes.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
The Hoover money had loosened things up a bit for
his family, and.
Speaker 13 (24:41):
When he got to the front door, somebody was there,
was a reporter from the Inquirer, and he said, okay,
come on in, and he told the kids to go play.
He would be with them. Shortly, his nine year.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Old son, Billy, began climbing a tree and when a
neighbor yelled at him, in his haste to get down,
he slipped.
Speaker 13 (24:56):
His son fell out of the tree, was a pale
on the fence.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Three spikes went into his son's stomach and he had
to be rushed to the hospital. Father Mike Doyle went
immediately to be with.
Speaker 13 (25:09):
Him, and Michael Doyle went to the hospital to pray
with the child. I mean, Michael just has so much goodness.
You know that he would not let that stop him
from supporting party's family.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
And knowing that he had been the informer, all the people,
all the Canon twenty eight People's supporters, everybody else showed
up in support of Bob Hardy Stanley. I mean that time.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Billy Hardy held on for three weeks before succumbing to
his injuries.
Speaker 8 (25:39):
So he lost I think he was nine.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
His little boy, Mary Anne.
Speaker 8 (25:43):
And of course everyone from the community went to the
funeral and went to the wake and were heartbroken for
him about having lost his child, and he was so
overcome with grief and so overcome. The people obviously completely
forgave him for whatever he did and came and had
enormous sympathy and real condolence for him.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Despite their differences. Bob Hardy asked Father Mike Doyle to
officiate his son's funeral mass.
Speaker 5 (26:14):
Many members of the kim in twenty eight who were
in town at the time went to the funeral offered
support and sympathy to Bob and his wife, which I
think he was agassed at because I mean, he just
sold everybody down the river.
Speaker 13 (26:25):
When that happened. We went and we went in to
the church and was so bizarre. There was like you
know a wedding, you have the grooves side and the brideside.
Well there was the fbi Asian side and our side,
and it was quite a scene.
Speaker 8 (26:38):
But he apparently began to think it was a punishment
for what he had done.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
There is new scholarship about the story of Judas Iscariot,
a Gospel of Judas was discovered in e in the
nineteen seventies. New translations suggests the word betrayer may have
been a bridge too far, and in fact, Judas may
simply have been attempting to hand over Jesus to the
High Priest so that they could broke or some sort
(27:14):
of peace. But after Jesus's capture, Judas quickly became aware
of the High Priest's intentions and tried to return the silver.
This messy version feels more human, and Judas was, above
all a human being. Bob Hardy, you may remember, was
(27:35):
upset after they did the dry run because he had
carefully arranged for his Camden friends like father Mike Doyle,
not to be part of the dry run so they
wouldn't be there when the FBI swooped in to arrest everybody.
He maintained he wanted to protect his local friends from
the out of town interlopers and that the FBI had
agreed to let his people walk. But on the night
(27:59):
of the arrest, the FBI agent stood down for two
hours while all the raiders, including the local candidates, racked
up more and more charges. Bob Hardy, who believed in
what he had done in the name of justice, now
saw that perhaps he picked the wrong side and began
to waver.
Speaker 5 (28:19):
And so then I think the government didn't know what
the hell to do with him, because he was flopping.
You know, who am my friend? Where do my sympathies lie?
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Hardy met with his FBI handler and told him of
his discontent. The agent told him to keep it to
himself or he might end up hit by a truck
one day.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
And that's the point at which she said, I'm not
doing this. I can't inform on these people.
Speaker 8 (28:44):
And he then turned on the FBI.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
And then the betrayer betrayed those who had betrayed him.
He told father Mike Doyle he wanted to write down
what he knew in order to protect himself and his family.
And a key piece of the puzzle now became clear
to the defendants. Without Hardy, without the FBI, this raid
(29:09):
never would have happened.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
They were not going to do this. They had decided
to quit. I was a provocateur in effect.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
The Canden Crew, you'll remember, had all but given up
when Hardy first entered the action and cajoled them to
keep going. So during the trial, after the prosecution rested
their case. The first outside witness called by the defense
was Bob Hardy.
Speaker 8 (29:40):
So he in the trial testified on behalf of the defendants.
Speaker 10 (29:46):
Mary Anne Patrick. Bob Hardy walked down the street today,
What a dizzy, spiraling crunch, the stench of gas, eerie
street's triumph of tattered files, shot buckles, chains bars. He
takes the stand Tuesday, Robert W. Hardy informer.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
It was the first time in the history of the
United States that a government informer had been called as
a witness by the defense rather than the prosecution.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
You just said, these were the most wonderful people I've
ever known, courageous and gentle and non violent and committed.
He said, Well, when it came to knowing how to
do a burglary, they were really, really hopeless. There you
have it, kind of in the epitaph of the Catholic Left. Wonderful, beautiful, moral,
serious people, but really third rate burglars.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
He testified that when he had offered Keith Forsyth the
gun in his van, it was because the FBI wanted
to find out if they were violent. He testified to
how encouraging the FBI was in his involvement and how
they reimbursed him and paid him for his trouble.
Speaker 10 (30:58):
Bob Hardy bought me a strawberry milkshake in the White
Tower Tuesday after court, trying to look someone in the eye,
and everything is slightly out of focus.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Such was the ballad of Bob Hardy, not a friend
in the world, a betrayer, betrayed, silver pieces scattered across
the temple floor, with only his intentions and best laid
plans and a strawberry milkshake to keep him company. For
(31:33):
the rest of the Camden twenty eighth defense case, they
turned the courtroom into a symposium on the war.
Speaker 5 (31:39):
It was really quite a spectacle and wonderful. A lot
of good testimony, A lot of people came forward. The
judge was incredibly lenient.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Prosecutor Barry vigorously objected to everything that wasn't about the
specific case in Camden, But the judge astoundingly decided he
did not want the jury to be weighing the defendants'
fates in a vacuum.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
He gave them as much leeway as you could possibly
have hoped for.
Speaker 8 (32:05):
After year after year after year after.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Year, you know, objection, your honor sustained objection, your honor,
sustain this is not about the war in Vietnam. It's
about a criminal act. Objection, your honor. The judge said, well,
I'm going to deny your motion, mister prosecutor. I think
we need to hear the context that these people were
doing these things in or it'll be incomprehensible.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
He started to let more and more testimony in, and
sometimes he would let testimony said, but he'd have the
jury excused. Other times he just got so fascinated himself
by the stories that were being told that he was
riveted by what was gone on in the court room.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
This gave them the opening they needed to finally make
the movement's case on behalf of all the raids that
had come before.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
So we were guilty on all charges, and we were
saying we were guilty on all charges by law. But
we presented the argument like a fire department breaking into
a burning building to save people, that this building of
the United States was burning, and we were breaking in
to save lives in Vietnam, to save our own soldiers' lives.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
One of the defendants felt that the best way for
her to testify to her motives was to ask Sarah
Tosi to sing a song on the witness stand by Peter,
Paul and Mary called the Great Mandela. Singing together was
a major part of the Camden twenty eight culture, and
the song summed up perfectly their objections to the war
and the draft.
Speaker 5 (33:34):
Sarah was extremely smart, very thoughtful, cerebral intense. She had
an intensity about her. We sang a lot of duets
when she played her guitar, you know, like Jacquearl songs
and the Great Mandala. I mean we had this like repertoire.
We would sing and people say, oh, Sarah, can you
play a guitar?
Speaker 6 (33:52):
Can you guys sing?
Speaker 1 (33:53):
The judge, of course, had never heard such a proposal
in all his years on the bench, but eventually he
consented to allow Sarah to sing the song from the
stand with the jury absent from the courtroom.
Speaker 10 (34:06):
Mary Anne Patrick, Thursday, I gave something called an order
of proof. I walked the witness stand with my guitar
on my shoulder, and I sang the Great Mandela. The
judge sat to the right, creaking in his chair. The
prosecutors sat in front of me. I sang into their faces.
(34:27):
I sang till those damn walls echoed till the typewriters
stopped in the clerk's office, till heads bowed over the
defense table.
Speaker 6 (34:37):
The prosecutor rose up.
Speaker 10 (34:38):
This is a travesty, he said, Yeah, I sang my
guts out to federal ears.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
The following day, in open court, the judge said that
the performance was respectful and reverential.
Speaker 10 (35:02):
I can't begin to speculate where it's all headed, but
it's spring again. Quiet, rainy evening, encourage revered hoping flows
not easily, but it flows.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Then Paul Koming took the stand. Six of the raiders
had met at his sanctuary at the Paulice Center. The
prosecutor did everything he could in his cross examination to
get Paul to admit to prior bad acts and fill
the government's gaps and knowledge about the Catholic less previous activity.
The defendants then accused Prosecutor Barry of being on a
(35:38):
fishing expedition for incriminating testimony. When he would ask Paul
questions like did you participate in the Boston raid? At once,
the defendants would all leap to their feet. Paul replied,
as far as giving any more information to indict myself
on any other charges. I don't think it is right.
If the Constitution agrees with me, then so be it,
(35:59):
to which the judge said, I take it you are
invoking the Fifth Amendment in not replying to the question,
is that right? And Kooming responded if the Fifth Amendment
says what I said, okay. Weed X, once again throwing
caution to the wind, then stood up and reminded the
judge that he had been prohibited from asking about the
(36:20):
FBI's prior bad acts as revealed by the media papers.
If mister Barry is going to be permitted to ask
specific questions which could lead to indictment of any of
my brothers or sisters, he said, that to me would
represent a travesty of justice. It will indicate, at least
to my own mind, that the American system of justice
is directed only against little people and not against representatives
(36:42):
of the government itself. The Kendon twenty eight then called
Dan Berrigan and Phil Berrigan to the stand, as they
were both finally out of jail, and when Dan was
asked about informers, he responded as follows, even though Judas
was in our midst we weren't allowed to destroy or
harm him. By late April, the defense had two more
(37:05):
witnesses to go. The first was Howard Zen.
Speaker 15 (37:11):
I testified during the Vietnam War and a bunch of trials.
You know, there were all these trials of the you know,
the Baltimore for the Catonsville nine, the Milwaukee fourteen, the
Camden twenty eighth. I testified as a so called expert witness.
Previous trials had taken place in the midst of the war.
By this time, the war was reaching its end. The
(37:34):
anti war movement had become huge, the country had turned
against the war, and I believe that in this atmosphere
the judge was more open to an anti war protest
by the defenders.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
So that made it possible for Howard Zen to get
up there and give his lengthy testimony, which he had
never been allowed to give, at least in front of
a jury before, and every trial he had been asked
to testify in about what the war in Vietnam was
really about.
Speaker 15 (38:04):
They've not committed in just a crime that wasn't simply
breaking an entering. They weren't criminals. They were committing acts
of civil disobedience, and civil disobedience was an honorable tradition
in American history. So that was my job to talk
about the history of civil disobedience. I started with a
Declaration of Independence, which, after all, is you might say,
(38:26):
a manifesto for civil disobedience.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Howard's first point to the jury was that we are
all taught that the law is holy, but this misses
the distinction between law and justice. Law and justice don't
coincide very often, he said, and when a law perpetuates injustice,
it must not be obeyed.
Speaker 7 (38:46):
He testified for at least a day. I mean, it
was long testimony.
Speaker 14 (38:51):
The jurors.
Speaker 7 (38:51):
You could hear a pin drop in that room the
whole time.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Zin then laid out for the jury what had recently
been revealed in the leaked Pentagon Papers. The papers contained
the astonishing revelation that the government had been lying to
the American people for years about this war.
Speaker 15 (39:07):
I spoke to the jury for about five hours telling
them what was in the Pentagon Papers.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Among the more shocking elements of the Pentagon Papers was
this sentence. We must note that South Vietnam, unlike any
of the other countries in Southeast Asia, was essentially the
creation of the United States. Remember how I told you
the US government had installed Cardinal Spelman's handpicked Catholic mystic
friend in Vietnam. This had finally been revealed by the
(39:37):
Pentagon Papers, and Howard Zinn spent the day informing the
jury about it. But in fact, the US interest in
Vietnam's resources had actually begun in the post war nineteen forties.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
And it came down to be in about ten, rubber,
and oil, and that those were three commodities that they
had in Vietnam. The ten could be mine there, the
rubber was grown there, and the oil was already known
to exist in the China Sea off the Vietnamese coast.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Fifty eight thousand young American soldiers had now died in
Vietnam for tin, rubber, and oil.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
And then in the middle of Howard's end's testimony, the
key element happened was that this loud, loud sobbing at
the top of her voice was Bobby Good's mother was
in the audience listening to him.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Bob Good was one of the Camden twenty eight defendants.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Well, Bobby's Goods brother Paul Good, had been killed in Vietnam.
Her mother was in the audience listening to Howard's Inn
and hearing all the faint little threads of hope she
had that her son had died in Vietnam for something
worthwhile totally taken away, and that her son had died
(40:58):
not for the people Vietnam, not for freedom in the world,
but it died because of corporate greed and ten and
oil and rubber. She just sobbed this incredibly powerful sobbing.
It just stunned the whole court. And it wasn't anything
(41:19):
the judge could overrule, you know, And it came from
the audience. But she solved for just for a minute
or two, but it stunned everybody, and nobody dared to
say anything to her or to stop her.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
And then Bob Good's mother, Betty Good, took the stand herself.
Speaker 7 (41:40):
She said, I can't testify. I'm too upset, Bhlah about
did you have to testify? So she gets on the
witness stand, and that was I think truly the highest
moment of the entire tribe.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
She gets on the stand and tells the story about
how what she had just gone through and why she
was crying out loud, and then such agony was because
she realized her son had died in vain, that her
son had died without purpose, without any good purpose.
Speaker 7 (42:08):
And now I find out after listening to professors in
that my boy he went over there not for any
good reason, or moral reason or justified reason, but he
went over there for rubber tin and oil. And I
am so angry that I was ever proud to put
him on that plane.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
And then she turned immediately to the jury and said,
and it's these people that are doing the good. They're
doing what we failed to do. She's talking to the
jury is up here saying we failed. My son Paul
died because I failed to recognize and to stand up earlier.
These people today and that are we're putting on trial
(42:46):
had no choice but to do what they did, and
we should be thankful for what they did.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
We should get out of this, she closed. But not
one of us, not one of us, raised our hands
to do anything about it. We left it up to
these people for them to do it, and now we
are prosecuting them for it.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
That testimony just blew everyone away. It blew the judge away,
at bowed the jury away.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
One defendant noticed a tear and Judge Fisher's eye when
Betty Good's testimony was done. By the time it came
to closing arguments, the marshals and the stenographers had all
fallen in love with the Canden twenty eight.
Speaker 7 (43:32):
The marshals, who in the beginning were putting us through
metal defectors, started wearing twenty eight buttons under their lapels.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
The trial had gone on for over three months, and
the Canden twenty eight had made the courtroom something of
a home for the jurors. Father Mike Doyle had the
final closing statement before Prosecutor Barry would give his own.
Father Doyle said, now I don't feel comfortable that John
Barry has the last word. I was thinking about that,
(43:59):
and I was thinking that he doesn't have the last word.
You have the last word. And then I was thinking
about that, and I think you have the last two words.
Then Prosecutor John Berry stood up in no uncertain terms.
He told the jury the defendants had broken the law
(44:20):
and that political motivation cannot be used as a defense.
And when he was done, he thanked the jury, to
whom the fate of the Camden twenty eight would now
be entrusted. When you sit on a jury, the first
thing that happens after both cases rest, before you go
into deliberation is that the judge gives you instructions and
(44:42):
advises you on the meaning of the laws you are applying.
Judge Fisher told the jury regarding the defendants, the law
does not recognize religious or moral convictions or some higher
law as justification for the commission of a crime, no
matter how noble that motive may be. I charge you.
(45:02):
He said that you may not treat the defendants beliefs
with respect to the war in Vietnam or other possible
injustices to which you have heard references as a possible
negation of criminal intent. The defendant's hearts were gradually sinking
as he spoke, and then he dealt the decisive blow
(45:25):
the defendants' motivations in this case, the fact that he
or she was engaged in a protest and the sincere
belief that he or she was acting in a good
cause is not an acceptable legal defense or justification. And
with that they knew their hopes of a hung jury
were basically dashed, and they were all going off to prison.
Speaker 6 (45:59):
Things have a way way of happening.
Speaker 10 (46:01):
Strength comes when it is needed most, and paths have
a way of opening when everything seems lost. If only
we can stay open to living and all the risks
it implies.
Speaker 6 (46:13):
Amen, let it be.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
The jurors deliberated all day Thursday all day Friday, and
were sequestered in a hotel for the weekend because of
the press attention. Some of the defendants stayed up all
night on Sunday and drove to the Jersey Shore to
swim in the ocean for the last time.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Most of us were had given up waiting and gone
to Atlantic City to go swimming, which was a couple
hour drive away. We got a phone call saying that
the jury was ready to give the verdict and we
had to be in the courtroom in a couple of hours.
So we got out of the Atlantic Ocean which we
had just been swimming in, at sunrise and drove a
(46:56):
while the way back and got into the courtroom just
in time to hear the call.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
The jury entered the courtroom at two thirty five pm.
The courtroom was packed with two hundred supporters of the
Canden twenty eight, and there was overflowed down the corridor
and spilling out onto the street.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
We didn't know what was going to happen. The deliberation
went on for quite a while over a weekend Monday.
We all shuffled in there.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
The jury roll was called. All were present. The defendants stood,
linked their arms and bowed their heads. The judge asked
if they had reached a verdict. They had. The first
(47:45):
Candon twenty eight defendant in alphabetical order was a man
named Terry Buckaloo. The foreman would read the verdict on
every count for every defendant. The judge addressed the foreman,
how say you, how do you find the defendant Terry
Edward Buckaloo on count one of the indictment. We find him,
(48:09):
your honor, not guilty.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
The courtroom goes, whoa. And then the second one not guilty,
not guilty, not you know, the the judge goes, you know,
is this going to be not guilty on everything? And
he goes, yes, you run a lot.
Speaker 5 (48:27):
Everybody, just like all counts, not guilty on all counts,
for all defendants. And when that became known, it was
just like mayhem. You know, the moment of the decision
was spectacular, And one of my most vivid memories of
Sarah is that she began singing Amazing Grace in the
courtroom where we're all holding hands, and.
Speaker 15 (48:50):
When the verdict of the jury was announced. People stood
up in the court rope and sang amazing. Grace stood
up with.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
It was quite a.
Speaker 15 (49:03):
Scene and there was a great, great sign of what
the anti war movement had accomplished over the years, and
how this sort of came to a kind of climax
in this courtroom in Camden, New Jersey.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
The judge lingered and the clerks and marshalls joined in
the singing.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
Because they knew that they had been called to an action.
They weren't called to make a decision about whether we
should go to jail or not. They were called to
join in our action to legitimize it and say this
action was a good thing to do under the circumstances.
This was the best American thing we can do.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
We were dancing in the aisles. It was quite incredible.
We were crying, you know when the band, oh, it's
it's farewell party and the Beatles are breaking up, but
they got to have one more bash. That's sort of
what that trial was.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
There was only one restaurant which had a bar in
all of Camden, and so everybody went there, the prosecution
and the judge, the defendants, we all went to the
same place to eat and the drink.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
One of the Catonsville nine raiders had come to Camden
to support the defendants and saw the judge at the bar.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
He pulled up the chair next to the judge at
the bar. Judge says to him, you know what, those
people are not the crooks. The crooks are in Washington.
These people are the heroes. These people are the cream
of the crop. That's what he said about us.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
The New York Times declared the verdict was the first
total legal victory for the anti war movement in five
years of such draft board incidents.
Speaker 15 (50:51):
The interesting thing about the Camden twenty eighth trial, this
was his first trial of all these trials in which
the defendants were quitted. Even though they were caught red handed.
There they were no question about what they had done.
Speaker 3 (51:05):
Despite the fact that we were caught right handed, despite
the fact that we all admitted we did it, and
we all wanted to do it and would do it again,
that jury stood with us and said not guilty because
they had solidarity with what we had done. That was
when the peace movement won in Camden. We finally didn't
(51:25):
just win a case, we won the heart of America.
Over to the fact that the war had got on
too long and was too wrong to continue.
Speaker 15 (51:34):
The American public became aware of the atrocities we were
committing of Vietnam, and after all, American people, like all people,
fundamentally decent when they learned the truth. However, they've been
deceived by the government, by the authorities. When they learned
the truth, they're perfectly willing to change their minds.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
Since that May twentieth, nineteen seventy three, have had that
in my head that if the people know what the
truth is, the people make good decisions. That's what it's
all about.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
If a law is unjust, it must not be obeyed,
whether it be federal law or canonical. Patrick and mary
Anne were deeply in love. They had been inseparable since
the night they kissed. He performed his duties as a
(52:40):
Roman Catholic priest during the day and would sneak off
to Dorchester at night to be with Mary Anne and
Chrissy and Jojo. He could get himself to forget for
long stretches of time that he was betraying his vows
and everyone who attended his liturgies betrayal. It seems when
you're dealing in passionate feelings is as human to love.
(53:01):
Betrayers become betrayed. Patrick knew somewhere in his mind that
this situation could not go on forever.
Speaker 6 (53:13):
I remember there was this moment.
Speaker 8 (53:16):
Patrick went on a trip to I think the Dominican Republic,
and it was the longest we'd have been apart. I
think we were apart for three weeks, and when we
came back together, it was the first time he hesitated.
(53:38):
It was probably the first time he'd had a moment
to step out of it, first of all, where he
could think, like Holy God, because for him, it was
the complete end of a way of life.
Speaker 16 (53:53):
I mean, it was over that way of life.
Speaker 8 (54:04):
We had the conversation and it was really painful, but
I remember saying to him that, honestly, what I really
wanted for him was for him to be happy and
free and liberated, you know, to be who he's really
(54:27):
meant to be. And if that didn't involve me, I
would be heartbroken, but that would have to be the
way it is or was. And he told me later
that for him, that was almost one of the most
(54:49):
extraordinary things that's ever happened to him, Like his experience
of that was that I loved him that unconditionally, which
I did. I did. I wanted him to be who
was meant to be, and I knew I couldn't fathom
(55:14):
life without him. I couldn't fathom. I mean, I cannot
imagine had actually had well, I can because he died,
so I can't imagine. I would have been devastated, absolutely
devastated because I loved him like with my whole I
loved him unconditionally. I loved him with my whole heart.
(55:37):
And for him, I think that was a momentary, it
was like a panic attack because he was about to
give up everything he had just built over the last
ten years of his life, from the seminary through the
police fathers to this moment of walking away from all
of that.
Speaker 1 (55:59):
After that conversation, Patrick knew what he had to do.
Patrick would leave the priesthood and marry Mary Anne. He
would do what was right in his heart, canonical law
be damned. But first he had to tell the people
closest to him, his parents, his seminary brother Jim Carroll,
(56:23):
and the thousand people that came to his liturgy extravaganzas
every Sunday.
Speaker 8 (56:28):
Because the implications were enormous. I mean, I don't mean
to overblow that, but they were enormous for the people
who were impacted.
Speaker 1 (56:34):
And not really knowing how else to do it, Patrick
waited until the end of Mass, where typically there would
be announcements, so he told them that he too had
an announcement, and that he had fallen in love and
that he would be getting married to Mary Anne Woodward.
At first, gasps were followed by a stunned silence, and then.
Speaker 8 (57:01):
And I thought the roof was going to come off
the building.
Speaker 12 (57:06):
People were clapping and shouting and screaming, and it was
I mean, I know, many hundreds of people were really surprised,
and certain obviously certain people weren't surprised.
Speaker 3 (57:22):
But it was a surprise.
Speaker 8 (57:23):
It was a surprise to most and the place went wild.
But they were so joyful, I mean, they were clearly
so happy for him, even though it had huge implications
for the community. I was in the church. It was
in the church, and I remember leaning against like a pillar,
and this woman came over to me and she said, Oh,
(57:45):
there's going to be a lot of wet pillows in
the city of Boston tonight.
Speaker 1 (57:54):
So I told you early on that I wouldn't insert
myself much in this story. But it's here that it
becomes unavoidable. As your host, I have betrayed you. I
just could never figure out the right time to tell
you this. Marianne and Patrick are my mother and father.
(58:23):
Divine Intervention is a production of iHeart Podcasts. It's produced
by Wonder Media Network. It was created and written by me,
your host, Brendan Patrick Hughes. Our robustly proficient producers are
Carmen Borca, Carreo, Abby Delk, Paloma Moreno, Jimenez, Grace Lynch,
and myself. Our editor is Creator of Worlds Grace Lynch
(58:47):
for Wonder Media Network. Our executive producers are Emily Rutterer
and Jenny Kaplan for iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producer is
Christina Everett. The late Sarahtosi was voiced by Carly Pope
and Grace and Other. Music was arranged and performed by
the incredible Morris Miley, Kai Fukuda and friends. The chorus
(59:07):
singing La Cromosa from Mozart's Requiem was crowdsourced from my
friends on social media, arranged by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and
produced by me. Thank you to all the contributors. Our
theme in end credit music was composed and performed by
Down to Earth rock goddess Tanya Donnelly and mastered by
Ben Aerons. Masterer to the Stars. This is Brendan Patrick Hughes.
(59:30):
Thank you for listening to Divine Intervention.
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