MR. FORAN: May it please the Court, counsel, ladies and gentlemen of the jury: The recognition of the truth, which is your job, is a very strange thing. There is a real difference between intellectualism and intelligence. Intellectualism leaves out something that intelligence often had and what it really is is a kind of a part of the human spirit. You know many men will be highly intellectual and yet they will have absolutely terrible judgment.
When you stop and think of it. among the twelve of you there is certainly somewhere in excess of four hundred years of human intelligence and instinct, and that is a lot, and that is important. . . .
Much of the concept of the assault by the defendants on the Government's case is: Would anybody do some of these wild things? Most people wouldn't. But those defendants would.
Some of the things that the Government's witnesses testified that some of these defendants did were pretty wild things, and it would be hard to believe that most people, most decent people, would ever do anything like it. Is it so hard to believe that these men would do it?
Has any one of you, for instance, noticed how in the last few days as we reach the end of the case and it comes before for decision, the sudden quieting in the courtroom, the sudden respect, the sudden decency that we see in this courtroom? For that, are we to forget the four-and-a-half months of what we saw?
The defendants in this case---first of all, they kind of argued in a very strange way that there was no violence planned by these defendants at the Democratic Convention.
Since they have no evidence that violence wasn't planned, the way they argue it is that they say Bock, Frapolly, and Oklepek and Pierson lied. They state that they lied categorically. They said, "Because Bock, Frapolly, Pierson, and Oklepek were undercover agents for the police or newspapers, and therefore, they cannot be honest men.
Now how dare anybody argue that kind of a gross statement? Some of the bravest and the best men of all the world, certainly in law enforcement, have made their contributions while they were undercover. That statement is a libel and a slander on every FBI agent, every Federal narcotics agent, every single solitary policeman who goes out alone and unprotected into some dangerous area of society to try to find out information that is helpful to his government. It is a slander on every military intelligence man, every Navy intelligence man who does the same thing.
There is something that is very interesting, and I bet you haven't noticed it.
The August 9 meeting, you remember that meeting was at Mobilization headquarters. There was a lot of talk and a lot of planning at that meeting. Frapolly, Bock, and Oklepek were all there. So were Dellinger, Davis, Hayden, Weiner, Froines, and Hoffman.
All three of the Government witnesses testified that the march routes to the Amphitheatre were discussed. All agreed that the dangers of the march routes were discussed. All agreed that mill-ins in the Loop were planned during that week: disruptions, blocking cars driving down the street, smashing windows, shut the Loop down, generally make havoc in the Loop area, setting small fires---and, by the way, it all happened.
All of those things that I just mentioned happened on Wednesday of Convention week, and all of them happened in the downtown area right at Michigan and Balbo.
You know, they were saying, "What did they plan that happened?" Well, everything. That was a pretty good shot on the first big meeting.
In addition to the defendants, who else was there at that meeting? Bosciano, Radford, Baker, Steve Buff, and about eight other people. Where are they? If Bock and Frapolly and Oklepek were lying, why weren't they in here testifying that something else was said at that meeting, or that Davis was telling the truth about what he said was said at that meeting. Where are they?
Buff took the witness stand, and they didn't even ask him about the meeting. They didn't even ask him.
The reason that none of the friends and pals of these defendants that were at those meetings didn't come in here and testify or, if they did, ignored the meetings, was because Bock, Frapolly and Oklepek were telling the truth, and if they talked about those meetings on the witness stand, they would have no choice, they would either have to back Bock and Frapolly and Oklepek or they would have to lie. They were at those meetings planning and organizing for the violence that they were going to instigate and incite in Chicago.
And when all that organizing and planning was completed, the time to start the execution of the plan had arrived.
The first thing they had to do is they had to keep this crowd of people getting excited, getting into trouble, but not so much trouble that they would run into a mass arrest situation before Wednesday because they needed the crowd on Wednesday if they were going to have their big confrontation.
And so what they decided---and stop and think of it, remember at the beginning of this case they were calling them all by diminutive names, Rennie and Abbie and Jerry, trying to pretend they were young kids. These are highly sophisticated, highly educated men, every one of them. They are not kids. Davis, the youngest one, took the witness stand. He is twenty-nine. These are highly sophisticated, educated men and they are evil men.
(laughter)
THE COURT: Mr. Marshal.
MR. FORAN: What they have in mind they need to be sophisticated for and they need to be highly educated for because what they have in mind is what Davis told you he had in mind. It is no judgment of mine. Davis told ' you from that witness stand after two-and-a-half days of the toughest cross-examination I was ever involved in because he was so smart and so clever and so alert, but at last he told you "Revolution. Insurrection." And he told you---I am not---you heard it right from the witness stand.
And so these sophisticated men decided that the first thing that they had to do was to test the police. They had to find out what they could do, where they would be stepping too far, you know, where they would run into trouble.
So the first march they had on Sunday they sent the whole--most of them went down opposite the Hilton Hotel. They had an orderly legal march, legal picketing, and there was absolutely no trouble.
Remember Davis back at that August 9 meeting, "We'll lure the McCarthy kids and other young people with music and sex and try to hold the park." And all of this was done the first night. The first night they carried out that plan. But to carry out the big plan they had to generate more heat the next day so that by Wednesday the psychological training ground of this crowd and the psychological torture of the police, that combination would have reached the proper mix for what they had in mind for Wednesday night.
Say you are in the park after 11:00 p.m., and the law says you are supposed to go; a policeman says, "Leave." You say, "Hell, no." He has only two choices, doesn't he? He either has to walk away from you and not enforce the law, or he has to use whatever physical force is necessary to make you leave.
So, he reaches down-say he takes you by the arm. Then what do you do? You scream, "Let me alone! Let me alone! Police brutality!" And you start wrestling around. Then he had again only two choices. Either he had to physically subdue you right there on the spot, or he had to get help in order to carry you out.
MR. KUNSTLER: There is no evidence of that at all, your Honor. Mr. Foran is making up a story here. I object, your Honor.
THE COURT: I overrule your objection. You may continue, sir.
MR. FORAN: If the police get tough and wrongfully---and it is wrong for a policeman to say, "This man is not going to go," so he cracks him, that is wrong. He shouldn't do that. But say he does it, which they do, policemen do that, then the crowd takes that as total justification to attack the police with rocks and bottles. and to say, "We are defending ourselves."
The technique is simple, and it can fit any situation, and you have seen it fit situations in this courtroom.
Somebody violates the regulation of this courtroom, and the marshal asks him to leave, and he won't, so he takes him by the arm, "Aaaaccchhh! Dirty rotten marshal!" And that had happened, and that is the way it is done, and it is done. You know, this is done in complicated situations and in simple situations.
Monday night in Lincoln Park as the curfew approached, there was Rubin, "Arm yourselves with anything you can. Now is the time to make our stand." Earlier, he had been doing the same thing. That is the night they built the barricade, just like they planned on August 9.
It was a rough night in the park. There was gas. Davis is there on the bullhorn. He is shouting encouragement to the crowd to "Fight the pigs" and "Hold the park," committing a criminal act, by the way, inciting a crowd. He had just left his cohort, Hayden, downtown. who had been arrested near the Hilton . . . .
Rubin, as usual, was in the park on Tuesday. He gives a speech to the crowd telling them to take this country away from the people who run it. "Take to the streets in small groups," just as he told Pierson that the Viet Cong had done, and he finished up his revolution exhortation with, "See you in the streets."
These are criminal acts. They are urging people to violence.
Seale followed on the podium with a wild speech telling the crowd to "Get their pieces and barbecue that pork." And we are supposed to wonder, you know, it doesn't mean what it means. That is what the argument is. "It doesn't mean what it means." Of course, you know what it means. "You get your gun and you kill a policeman." That is what is means. It is as obvious as anything from the context of the speech. You heard the whole speech. To say anything else is ridiculous. It is calling black white.
Up at the park, again, Tuesday night, over and over again, the police were saying, "Clear the park. Clear the park." Finally, at 12:30 A.M., the police moved forward again, and again they were met with a hail of missiles. This time, Froines was right up in the front line, throwing rocks and stones himself.
The police really let them have it with tear gas that night. They had a dispenser, and there was a lot of gas, and the crowd got out quickly. I don't know, maybe that is a better way, but I don't know. There was a lot of gas. It is a temporary bad feeling, but at least nobody gets hurt. Maybe it is a better way.
The battle plan that had been talked about by Davis on August 9, was almost ready. Young people had been moved into the park. They fought and resisted the police.
And now the time had come to start shifting the scene down to the downtown area, and just as they planned, the Hilton area was going to be the focus of the next action.
The crowd was pretty heated and pretty militant, and it gad been whipped up really in Lincoln Park, starting way back on August 13 with all of these things, wit at crazy snake dancing, and with the skirmish lines. To be trained in karate is something because karate is a vicious thing. If you are any good at it, you can kill somebody with it. It is a vicious way to fight.
The police had been taunted and insulted and attacked until the weak ones among them, and there are plenty of weak policemen, were losing their professionalism. and they were ripe to be driven into joining some of these participants in rioting.
And then they have that meeting in Mobilization headquarters the next morning where they set it up with a kind of---well, it is a combination of "the massive action with the cutting edge of resistance." They used it successfully at the Pentagon and they were now going to transfer it into the practicalities of Chicago.
Dellinger, Davis, Hayden, Froines, Weiner and Rubin all leave to do their various jobs.
The meeting started at the Bandshell. Dellinger was running the public show up on the stage and Davis was giving instructions to his marshals out behind that refreshment stand, those marshals who, as Froines said, were a lot better street fighters than they ever were what marshals are supposed to be.
He says "Disperse the police. Reduce their effectiveness."
Others of the militant group were seen preparing their vicious, filthy weapons--- bags of urine, pointed sticks, sharpening tiles.
The mood of those militants in that crowd was shown real quickly when that flag came down to half-mast. When that flag came down and those six policemen went in to arrest the man, they were grossly attacked by that crowd.
And the honesty of the defense is pointed out most clearly by the argument of counsel that they were throwing their lunches at the police and that these were picnickers throwing lunches at the police. These weren't picnickers unless those picnickers eat rocks and bottles for lunch.
Rubin in his volatile way had been caught up in the excitement and he was in there pitching, "Kill the pigs. Kill the pigs."
But Dellinger and Davis were a lot cooler than that. They let them continue for a while. It went on for about fifteen minutes and then they cooled it down because it was still daylight and things were---you know, it wasn't quite ready yet. And that's when Davis got hit. Look at this picture in the jury room. He's got a cut on his head and he's bleeding some and he's smiling and he looks very alert and he doesn't look like he's going to fall unconscious to me.
The thing that you have got to recognize is that you have to tie the Bandshell back to that meeting Wednesday morning. Exactly what was planned at that meeting Wednesday morning happened at the Bandshell.
A diversionary march was set up by Dellinger. Another action was set up by Dellinger. As I said earlier, I think like a ventriloquist he used Tom Neumann. Neumann's name had been talked about that morning at that meeting at the Mobilization office as one of the speakers. Neumann was one of the men. The plan was made there at that meeting.
You can gather a whole bunch of people, most of them don't want to riot, but maybe want to protest, maybe want to get in on the act, maybe want to have some fun, maybe want to fight policemen. You gather enough people together, and you have some people who are dedicated to causing public disorder for serious purposes. You don't need a big crowd. And that is what these people always try to do. They tried to shift it off on all youth. They are talking about our children.
There are millions of kids who, naturally, if we could only remember how it is---you know, you resent authority, you are impatient for change, you want to fix things up. Maybe you are very sensitive and you feel the horrors of racism which is a real cancer in the American character, there is no question about that. You feel a terrible frustration of a terribly difficult war that maybe as a young kid you are going to have to serve in. Sure, you don't like things like that.
There is another thing about a kid, if we all remember, that you have an attraction to evil. Evil is exciting and evil is interesting, and plenty of kids have a fascination for it. It is knowledge of kids like that that these sophisticated, educated psychology majors know about. They know about kids, and they know how to draw the kids together and maneuver them, and use them to accomplish their purposes. Kids in the 60s, you know, are disillusioned. There is no question about that. They feel that John Kennedy went, Bobby Kennedy went, Martin Luther King went---they were all killed---and the kids do feel that the lights have gone out in Camelot, the banners are furled, and the parade is over.
These guys take advantage of them. They take advantage of it personally, intentionally, evilly, and to corrupt those kids, and they use them, and they use them for their purposes and for their intents. And you know, what are their purposes and intents?
Well, they tell you, these men tell you this, and this is what troubles me, that some of the things you can really taste.
What is their intent? And this is their own words: "To disrupt. To pin delegates in the Convention hall. To clog streets. To force the use of troops. To have actions so militant the Guard will have to be used. To have war in the streets until there is peace in Vietnam. To intimidate the establishment so much it will smash the city. Thousands and thousands of people perform disruptive actions in Chicago. Tear this City apart. Fuck up the Convention. Send them out. We'll start the revolution now. Do they want to fight? The United States is an outlaw nation which had broken all the rules so peace demonstrators can break all the rules. Violate all the laws. Go to jail. Disrupt the United States Government in every way that you can. See you in Chicago."
And these men would have you believe that the issue in this case is whether or not they really wanted permits.
Public authority is supposed to stand handcuffed and mute in the face of people like that and say, "We will let you police yourselves"? How Would public authority feel if they let that park be full of young kids through that Convention with no policemen, with no one watching them? What about the rape and the bad trips and worse that public authority would be responsible for if it had?
They tried to give us this bunk that they wanted to talk about racism and the war and they wanted a counter-convention. They didn't do anything but look for a confrontation with the police. What they looked for was a fight, and all that permits had to do with it was where was the fight going to be, and that's all.
And they are sophisticated and they are smart and they are well-educated. And they are as evil as they can be. . . .
Riots are an intolerable threat to every American and those who lead others to defy the law must feel the full force of the law." You know who said that? Senator Bob Kennedy said that, who they tried to adopt.
"In a government of law and not of men, no man, no mob, however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy the law."
Do you know who said that? John Kennedy.
The lights in that Camelot kids believe in needn't go out. The banners can snap in the spring breeze. The parade will never be over if people will remember, and I go back to this quote, what Thomas Jefferson said, "Obedience to the law is the major part of patriotism." These seven men have been proven guilty beyond any doubt. They didn't attack the planning they were charged with. They did not say it didn't happen. The are guilty beyond any doubt at all of the charges contained in the indictments against them.
You people are obligated by your oath to fulfill your obligation without fear, favor, or sympathy. Do your duty.