Chapter 9: The Last Two Words

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, 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

The ultimate cutting point is what happens when you discover an.

Informer Catholic Left historian Charles Meconis.

Because there will be informers sooner or later, you know, I mean, the government gets to have a vote in this kind of stuff.

When humans get together, all believing passionately in something, there will always be conflict.

And that's where the rubber hits the road.

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 had staged the last stand with a government that had learned how to crush dissent. Their raid was supposed to

The women all went to a women's jail, and the men were all went to Atlanta County Jail.

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 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 Knane he was going to take all his vengeance out on the Camden people.

The FBI was convinced that in arresting the Camden twenty.

Eight Bob Weed X Williamson, they.

Had caught at least some of the media burglars.

He had them in his clutches and he would see to it they were locked up for as many years as possible.

So what was the Camden twenty eight? But all twenty eight of us were not even in Camden.

Leanne Mosha was a driver on the night of the raid.

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.

The newspaper is a constant horror story.

Sarahtosi wrote to Patrick and Mary Anne.

But things are stirring.

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.

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.

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 seven years and one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

In 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.

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.

Patrick and Mary Anne were spending all their time together and gathering bail for Camden was the perfect cover to travel together.

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 was Paul Kooming's best friend who has long dark hare and that would only be one person, which would be me.

Because of her kids, Marianne had to be careful, but she was also harboring a scandalous secret.

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.

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.

It is horrifying if you think about being investigated by the FII. You know, most reasonable people would say it's pretty frightening experience.

Hoover had hired a thousand agents just to intimidate the Catholic left.

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.

And don't forget, these agents had something on Marianne.

The FBI had gone to my father, and they had gone to my brother, and they had gone with photos.

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.

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.

Her father then cut her out of his life.

My father disowned me.

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 opposite of that and could now see this situation from their side.

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 was what cleaved the generations. It was those times.

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.

We were all bailed out because people all across the country put up their houses.

They got people to take out second mortgages on their homes.

And risk their houses just to get us all out of jail.

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.

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.

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 date was set from Monday, February fifth, nineteen seventy three.

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.

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.

People made a decision to defend themselves without an attorney, so it was a bit of a mayhem scenario.

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, Hoover's pet grand jury project and massive indictment of the movement had finally evolved into a trial accusing seven Catholic

So finally the Gotholic 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 became aware of them or heard them.

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,

Everybody, including the defendants themselves, are expecting that they're gone. And the vote comes intent to too for acquittal, and we couldn't believe it.

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, died of a heart attack on May twi nineteen seventy two.

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.

On February fifth, nineteen seventy three, the trial of the Candon twenty eight finally began.

Yes s Zach same building. That courtroom is on the third floor, their draft boards on the fifth floor.

On that day, Colonel William Noldy, the last combat soldier to be killed in Vietnam, was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington.

D c.

The twenty eight defendants assembled in a packed ceremonial courtroom and discovered the prosecutor had put a deal on the.

Table the day at the trial when we were supposed to start the case. They presented us with another offer.

Number one. He had severed eight defendants, including Keith Forsyth, Leanne Mosha and Sarah Tosi, and.

It 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.

Dear Mary Anne, this is it. This is no drill.

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 deal for the twenty eight oh leo that tastes as good as the seventy nine cent spread. I couldnot possibly scream loud enough.

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.

We got an offer deal.

Drop fifteen defendants, thirteen plead guilty to one charge, any charge our choice, you see, all must accept or no deal.

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.

They met for nearly two hours, and there were strong arguments for taking the Plea deal.

And it was really amazing conversations. 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 come this far, what should we do?

Led by the raiders that faced certain jail time, there was suddenly a groundswell in their ranks to reject the government deal entirely.

Basically, I was saying, you know, I'm willing to go to prison.

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.

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.

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 did risk the maximum jail penalty and take the case to trial.

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 were so empowering. We all all tand in a circle and we knocked on the door to call the US marshall in to say, tell them we're ready for trial.

Do you know the prosecutor was right?

Oh?

I would love to ask you about that.

It was Donald Trump's brother in law.

Are you kidding me? That is boker.

I'm telling you. The story could write itself.

That prosecutor John Berry was a formidable opponent and after they rejected his deal, he was hell bent for leather.

So it was a three and a half month trial.

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.

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.

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?

The opening statements took two days because there were twenty of them. Cookie wrote her as with kipt here. We are all here, she said, because a war was waged in Indo, 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 life and to ponder in earnest what the destruction of thousands of

The FBI apparently made some kind of statement that their weapons were holstered when they arrested the Camden twenty eight.

That is a complete lot.

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. I'm 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.

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.

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.

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 defendants prior bad acts, earlier raids they might have pulled as a way to paint their guilt 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.

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 burglary, and ask them what they thought.

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 the governments with the media papers. The judge denied his motion.

FBI provided a lot of supplies, you know, tools and money and this and that.

So she used those tools as illustrations in open core.

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?

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, probars, 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 drill bits and a can of VH juice. Cookie pointed out how similarly the defendants and the FBI had operated

The government rested its case on Friday.

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.

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 street, and.

We didn't know to later that he was actually being paid for information.

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. This was Bob Hardy's thirty pieces of silver. But then a month after the arrest, there was a knock at the door.

He was on his way out. He was taking his kids out to go get some shoes.

The Hoover money had loosened things up a bit for his family, and.

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.

Old son, Billy, began climbing a tree and when a neighbor yelled at him, in his haste to get down, he slipped.

His son fell out of the tree, was a pale on the fence.

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.

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.

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.

Billy Hardy held on for three weeks before succumbing to his injuries.

So he lost I think he was nine.

His little boy, Mary Anne.

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.

Despite their differences. Bob Hardy asked Father Mike Doyle to officiate his son's funeral mass.

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 aghast at, because I mean, he just sold everybody down the river.

When that happened. We went and we went in to the church and was so bizarre. There was like, you know, a wedding and have the grooves side and the brideside. Well there was the FBI Asian side and our side, and it was quite a scene.

But he apparently began to think it was a punishment for what he had done.

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 of peace. But after Jesus's capture, Judas quickly became aware of the High Priest's intentions and tried to return the silver.

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?

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.

And that's the point at which she said, I'm not doing this. I can't inform on these people.

And he then turned on the FBI.

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 never would have happened.

They were not going to do this. They had decided to quit. I was a provocateur in effect.

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.

So he in the trial testified on behalf of the defendants.

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.

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.

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 an epitaph of the Catholic Left. Wonderful, beautiful, moral, serious people, but really third rate burglars.

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.

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.

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 the rest of the Camden twenty eighth defense case, they turned the courtroom into a symposium on the war.

It was really quite a spectacle and wonderful. A lot of good testimony, a lot of people came forward. The judge was incredibly lenient.

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.

He gave them as much leeway as you could possibly have hoped for. After year after year after year after year, you know, objection, your honor sustain. 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.

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.

This gave them the opening they needed to finally make the movement's case on behalf of all the raids that had come before.

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. This building of the United States was burning, and we were breaking into save lives in Vietnam, to save our own soldiers' lives.

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.

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.

People say, oh, Sarah, can you play your guitar?

Can you guys sing?

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.

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. I sang till those damn walls echoed till the typewriters stopped in the clerk's office, till heads bowed over the defense table.

The prosecutor rose up.

This is a travesty, he said, Yeah, I sang my guts out to federal ears.

The following day, in open court, the judge said that the performance was respectful and reverential.

I can't begin to speculate where it's all headed, but it's spring again, quiet, rainy evening, and courage revered. Hoping flows not easily, but it flows.

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 fishing expedition for incriminating testimony. When he would ask Paul questions like did you participate in the Boston raid? At once,

I testified during the Vietnam War and a bunch of trials. You know, there were all these trials of the you know, the Baltimore four, 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.

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.

They'd not committed in just a crime that wasn't simply breaking an entry. 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, a manifesto for civil disobedience.

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.

He testified for at least a day. I mean, it was long testimony.

The jurors.

You could hear a pin drop in that room the whole time.

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.

I spoke to the jury for about five hours telling them what was in the Pentagon Papers.

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 Pentagon Papers, and Howard Zinn spent the day informing the

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.

Fifty eight thousand young American soldiers had now died in Vietnam for tin, rubber, and oil.

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.

Bob Good was one of the Camden twenty eight defendants.

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 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.

And then Bob Good's mother, Betty Good, took the stand herself.

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.

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.

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.

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 had no choice but to do what they did, and we should be thankful for what they did.

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.

That testimony just blew everyone away. It blew the judge away, It blewed the jury away.

One defendant noticed a tear in 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 Camden twenty eight.

The marshals, who in the beginning were putting us through metal defectors, started wearing twenty eight buttons under their lapels.

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, and I was thinking, but 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

Things have a way way of happening.

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.

Amen, let it be.

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.

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 while the way back and got into the courtroom just in time to hear the call.

The jury entered the courtroom at two thirty five pm. The courtroom was packed with two hundred supporters of the Candon twenty eight, and there was overflowed down the corridor and spilling out onto the street.

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.

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 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, your honor, not guilty.

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.

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 when the verdict of the jury was announced, people stood up in the court rope and sang amazing grace. They stood up with.

It was quite a 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 the courtroom in Camden, New Jersey.

The judge lingered and the clerks and marshalls joined in the singing.

Because they knew that they had been called to an action. They weren't called to make a decision about what that 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.

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, when the Beatles are breaking up, but they got to have one more bash. That's sort of what that trial was.

There was only one restaurant which had a bar in all of Camden, and so everybody went there, the prosecution, the judge, the defendants, we all went to the same place to eat and the drink.

One of the Catonsville nine raiders had come to Camden to support the defendants and saw the judge at the bar.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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

I remember there was this moment.

Patrick went on a trip to I think the Dominican Republic, and it was the longest way have been apart. I think we were apart for three weeks, and when we came back together, it was the first time he hesitated. 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.

I mean, it was over that way of life.

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 meant to be. And if that didn't involve me, I would be heartbroken, but that would have to be the

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, and the thousand people that came to his liturgy extravaganzas every Sunday.

Because the implications were enormous. I mean, I don't mean to overblow that, but they were enormous for the people who were impacted.

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.

And I thought the roof was going to come off the building.

People were clapping and shouting and screaming, and it was I mean, I know, many hundreds of people were really surprised, and obviously certain people weren't surprised.

But it was a surprise.

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, there's going to be a lot of wet pillows in the city of Boston tonight.

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. Divine Intervention is a production of iHeart Podcasts. It's produced by Wondermedia Network. It was created and written by me,