NEW YORK CITY-If you're a criminal then you have certain rights. But if you're a "subversive"-forget it. That was the blunt testimony of former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent Arthur Greene in court here on May 15.
Greene had been called as a trial witness by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and Young Socialist Alliance (YSA), who are suing the United States government and its agencies for $40 million damages in compensation for illegal acts against them. The Trotskyists are also seeking an injunction to bar further illegal government activity against them.
Greene's job was to break in to the YSA national and local offices in New York. In court he openly admitted to carrying out between seventy-five and ninety such "entries" in the period 1960-66. But then he ran into a problem, because Judge Thomas Griesa insisted on a little background information.
The judge wanted to know how FBI agents were trained to acquire information. Which methods were considered proper, and which improper? Didn't you need search warrants before breaking into private premises?
Greene replied that, yes, when investigating criminal matters they were told that a search warrant was required. But he didn't "recall such instructions" in relation to domestic security. He understood that the FBI's authority here came from the executive powers of the president, starting with Roosevelt in the late 1930s.
This was pretty serious stuff. So the judge asked what evidence of illegal activity had been uncovered. Did the FBI find that the SWP was planning to throw bombs, organize kidnappings, embark on sabotage, or similar activities?
Well, said Greene, "one of our highest objectives was to ascertain if the party was in violation of a federal statute in regard to its connections with the Fourth International, whether it be the original Voorhis Act or subsequent federal statutes." The Voorhis Act, passed in 1940, makes disclosure of membership lists compulsory for any organization with international affiliations; as a result, the SWP does not pay dues to or cast decisive votes in the Fourth International, although it otherwise collaborates to the fullest degree possible.
Greene's story about the Voorhis Act keeps cropping up whenever government agents take the stand. And the judge feels he's being taken for a ride.
'They never prosecuted anyone'
When FBI official Charles Mandigo took this line the previous day, Judge Griesa could hardly conceal his impatience: "Nobody would even contend that you have to have a forty-year-long surveillance of the SWP and YSA in order to determine whether they violated the Voorhis Act or the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and it is quite clear that the FBI didn't have the slightest interest in those subjects. They never prosecuted anybody for it."
This was not Mandigo's first time on the stand. He initially testified in April in connection with an affidavit he had prepared summarizing the FBI's findings. After Mandigo explained that a file had been opened on the SWP in early 1940, Griesa asked: "Well, what would you be looking for? Would you be just looking for, among other things, any specific acts as distinct from just ideas?"
Mandigo replied: "Well . . . basically this directive was to conduct strictly intelligence investigations of subversive activities to determine if people's acts were, in some way—could lead to encroachment on the Constitution." "Subversive activities being defined as what?" asked Griesa. And Mandigo just could not answer this apparently simple question. Time and again he tried to slide around it. Eventually the judge exploded: "I won't permit the witness to testify. If he won't answer questions, he can go away."
Shoddy cover-up
The extent to which the FBI pursues its cover-up was revealed when Mandigo took the stand again on May 14. SWP leader George Breitman had already ridiculed many of the so-called facts in the original affidavit. But the FBI's supposed trump card is a second affidavit prepared by Mandigo which is so secret that it can't even be shown to the SWP and YSA lawyers.
It is kind of difficult to expose something you can't even read-although Mandigo's testimony that he was just as "thorough and careful" in preparing the secret affidavit as the public one certainly has not strengthened the FBI's case! But when he took the stand for the second time he really blew it in spectacular fashion.
Mandigo had been forced to produce the files from which he compiled his public affidavit. That was bad enough for the defense, exposing a series of lies and distortions. But then SWP attorney Margaret Winter came to an alleged statement made by SWP leader James P. Cannon in 1950. Mandigo really began to sweat. "I inadvertently took that statement out of a classified document," he told the court. That's all very well, said Griesa, but the allegation has been made publicly. What do you base it on? "We can't disclose classified information," bleated the defense attorney. "Well, you are going to disclose it to me right now," retorted Griesa.
It then turned out that the report had reached the FBI at about fourth-hand. Hearsay evidence does not carry much weight in law, and as the judge commented, "how many hearsays have we got there?"
But Mandigo's woes were still not over. Confronted with an alleged statement by SWP leader Joseph Hansen, he confessed that this was another "inadvertent" inclusion from classified material. Again the judge demanded to see the relevant document. And this time he was even more mystified, because the statement allegedly came from a speech at a public meeting. How come it was classified, Griesa asked the defense attorneys. After hurriedly conferring, they announced that the FBI was in the process of declassifying it!
But how did this "classified" material come to be in Mandigo's public affidavit? Well, he explained, the document was classified after he reviewed it! So another shoddy cover-up was exposed.
'Who's on the side of this government'
But if events in court sometimes resemble high farce, what lies behind them is deadly serious. Former FBI agent Greene really spelled out what the government means by "subversive activities" when he explained that the FBI "would want to know who is on the side of this government and who was not."
The implications of this are staggering. It is no secret that only a quarter of the American electorate voted for Reagan. Polls show less than 20 percent support for Washington's intervention in El Salvador. And the latest budget proposals, which include cuts in retirement benefits, are cutting into Reagan's limited support still further.
What is more, the opposition to the administration is increasingly coming out onto the streets. Every demonstration, whether its specific focus is El Salvador, nuclear power, the racist killings in Atlanta, the Equal Rights Amendment, the rail cutbacks, or the miners' strike, becomes a general outburst against the way society is ordered today.
All these people are "subversives" according to Greene's definition. And other developments confirm this was no slip of the tongue.
Just days before the SWP suit opened, FBI agents Mark Felt and Edward Miller were pardoned by Reagan after being convicted of illegal break-ins in the early 1970s.
According to acting White House press secretary Larry Speakes, Reagan "clearly felt... that the decision of the jury and the decision of the court was not correct." But as the attorney who led the case against Felt and Miller commented, this amounted to overturning "the central proposition of democracy: that the government is second to the people and its powers are limited by the Constitution."
Reagan's statement explained that "America was at war in 1972." That is not formally true: no such bill had ever passed Congress, nor had the American people voted to go to war. But it is true in one important sense: the American government was and is waging war on the democratic rights of its people.
In response to the socialists' legal challenge against this offensive, the government attorneys have tried to question the "loyalty" of the SWP and YSA. But that accusation, like others, has really rebounded on them. As SWP leader Barry Sheppard put it in court: "We regard ourselves as very loyal to the people of the United States. For example, we regard those who were opposed to the Vietnam War as more loyal to the people of the United States than those who prosecuted it."
The U.S. government has no such loyalty. On the contrary, as this trial has shown, it tries to trick and cheat the people of the United States on every possible occasion. This government is the "executive branch" of the wealthy few who run this society, and it is loyal only to them.
Every day the trial goes on is an education in how the capitalist class rules—and how working people can fight back. In that sense, getting out the facts about this case is a historic opportunity to advance the socialist cause today.
May 16, 1981