Vietnam Draft Board Raids, Part 2

Summary

Podcast Summary: Stuff You Missed in History Class Episode: Vietnam Draft Board Raids, Part 2
Release Date: April 9, 2025
Hosts: Holly Fry and Tracy V. Wilson
Production: iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction

In "Vietnam Draft Board Raids, Part 2," hosts Holly Fry and Tracy V. Wilson delve deeper into the tumultuous era of the Vietnam War, focusing on the widespread draft board raids that symbolized the intense anti-war sentiment in the United States. This episode builds upon Part 1 by providing a comprehensive examination of the motivations, actions, and repercussions of these raids, highlighting key events and individuals involved.

Background: The Vietnam War and the Anti-War Movement

The Vietnam War, a deeply divisive conflict, galvanized a broad spectrum of American society against the draft and U.S. involvement. The anti-war movement was not monolithic; it encompassed various groups, including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panthers, Martin Luther King Jr.’s supporters, the Asian American movement, and the Chicano Moratorium. As Tracy V. Wilson explains:

"The anti Vietnam War movement in the United States was really broad... It was not all hippies and college kids." ([02:29])

Notable Insight: The movement included Catholic clergy and laypeople, challenging the stereotypical image of anti-war protesters.

The Draft Board Raids

Draft board raids began as acts of protest against the conscription system, escalating from minor vandalism in the mid-1960s to more organized and destructive actions by the late 1960s and early 1970s. Tracy V. Wilson notes the personal toll of these actions:

"A crime makes headlines. People talk about it for a few days, then it disappears. But for the people left behind, their story is just beginning." ([01:16])

Key Incident:

• Milwaukee Raid (September 24, 1968): A group, including four Catholic priests and a member of the Church of Scientology, raided the Selective Service building, destroying approximately 10,000 draft files using homemade napalm while singing hymns. ([05:20])

The Camden 28 Raid

One of the most significant and elaborate draft board raids was carried out by the Camden 28 in Camden, New Jersey, on August 22, 1971. This section details the planning, execution, and fallout of the raid.

Planning and Execution:

• Camden Background: Camden, an industrial hub with declining economic conditions post-WWII, was perceived as having residents disproportionately affected by the draft due to their racial and economic status. ([21:32])
• Raiders: The Camden 28 comprised four Catholic priests, one Lutheran priest, and the remaining members were largely Catholic laypeople, including seven women. ([22:22])
• Execution: Led by Robert "Bob" Hardy, a former Marine who acted as an informant for the FBI, the group infiltrated the Selective Service office, filled 12 bags with draft records, and attempted to destroy them. However, the raid was compromised when FBI agents arrested the participants on-site. ([24:39])

Notable Quote: Bob Hardy’s conflicting portrayal of the raid illustrates the complexity of the situation:

"It's really impossible to exaggerate how inept, undisciplined, and generally unable to pull off this action they were." ([26:31])

Trial and Aftermath

The trial of the Camden 28 was fraught with challenges, including internal disagreements among the defendants and external pressures from the shifting political landscape.

Trial Dynamics:

• Defense Strategy: The Camden 28 employed jury nullification, aiming to persuade the jury that moral and ethical considerations outweighed legal guilt. They integrated broader political issues, referencing the Pentagon Papers and Watergate to highlight government malfeasance. ([38:59])
• Key Testimony: Bob Hardy’s testimony was pivotal, revealing FBI involvement and his betrayal by the authorities. Expert witnesses like Philip and Daniel Berrigan and historian Howard Zinn provided context on civil disobedience and governmental corruption. ([39:26])

Verdict: After 15 weeks, on May 20, 1973, the jury acquitted all 17 defendants on various charges. The verdict was influenced by the effective defense strategy and the evolving public opinion against the war.

"The jury found the defendants not guilty on all counts." ([43:44])

Notable Insight: The trial's outcome is often interpreted as a reflection of the American public's shifting attitudes towards the Vietnam War by 1973, even though the case itself focused more on the legality of the raid and government conduct.

Legacy and Conclusion

The legacy of the draft board raids and the Camden 28 extends beyond their immediate legal outcomes, influencing future activism and shaping the narrative of government accountability.

Post-Trial Impact:

• Activism: Many of the Camden 28 continued their anti-war efforts, with figures like the Berrigan brothers participating in anti-Nuclear Plowshares actions.
• Policy Changes: The draft system eventually ended, and although Selective Service registration was reinstated in 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued pardons for draft evaders, excluding military deserters. ([46:22])

Historical Significance: The Camden 28 raid and subsequent trial encapsulate the intense moral and ethical conflicts of the Vietnam War era, highlighting the lengths to which individuals would go to oppose what they perceived as unjust policies.

Notable Quotes

• Tracy V. Wilson on the Anti-War Movement Diversity:

  "It was not all hippies and college kids... Most, but not all, of the demonstrations we are talking about today were carried out primarily by Catholic clergy and devout Catholic laypeople." ([02:29])

• Bob Hardy on the Raid's Execution:

  "It's really impossible to exaggerate how inept, undisciplined, and generally unable to pull off this action they were." ([26:31])

• Tracy V. Wilson on Jury Instructions:

  "If you find that the overreaching participation by government agents or informers in the Activities as you have heard them were so fundamentally unfair to be an offense to the basic standards of decency and shocking to the universal sense of justice. Then you may acquit any of the defendants to whom this defense applies." ([40:54])

Conclusion

"Vietnam Draft Board Raids, Part 2" provides an in-depth exploration of a pivotal yet often overlooked aspect of the Vietnam War's domestic impact. Through meticulous research and engaging narration, Holly Fry and Tracy V. Wilson shed light on the complexities of protest, government action, and the enduring quest for justice during one of America's most contentious periods.

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Listen to the full episode on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast platform to gain a comprehensive understanding of these historical events.

Transcript

[Larison Campbell]

In Mississippi, Yazoo clay keeps secrets.

[Mike]

7,000 bodies out there. Or more.

[Larison Campbell]

A forgotten asylum cemetery.

[Mike]

It was my family's mystery.

[Larison Campbell]

Shame, guilt, propriety. Something keeps it all buried deep. Until it's not. I'm Larison Campbell, and this is under Yazoo Clay. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Maria Tremorki]

Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremorki.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry. Together, we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.

[Maria Tremorki]

Each season we explore a new theme. From poisoners to art thieves.

[Holly Fry]

We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures, from legal injustices to body snatching.

[Maria Tremorki]

And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story.

[Holly Fry]

Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

A crime makes headlines. People talk about it for a few days, then it disappears. But for the people left behind, their story is just beginning.

[Mike]

But at night, we hear the garage opening and my son hears it. We freak out. Honestly, I didn't tell my son this, but I felt that was it. From the exactly right network, this is the Knife. Real stories of crime's ripple effects told by those who lived them.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

New episodes every Thursday. Listen to the knife on the iHeartRadio.

[Mike]

App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Are you hungry? Colleen Witt here. And Eating While Broke is back for season four every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network. This season we've got a legendary lineup serving up broke dishes and even better stories on the menu. We have Tony Baker, Nick Cannon, Melissa Ford, October London, Carrie Harper, Howie. Turning Big Macs into big moves. Catch Eating While Broke every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts. Wherever you get your favorite shows, come hungry for season four.

[Holly Fry]

Welcome to Stuff you missed in history Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This is part two of our two part episode on the draft board raids that took place in the United States during the Vietnam War. In part one, we gave an incredibly basic overview of the war and why the US Was involved in it and some of the reasons why people were increasingly opposed to it as the war stretched on. We also talked about some of the earliest incidents of vandalism at draft board offices, which started in 1966 and 1967 as US involvement in Vietnam was escalating but before it had reached its peak. It would be hard to overstate how deeply divisive these issues were and how incredibly polarized the United States was during the Vietnam War. So much so that growing up in the aftermath of it, not even during the actual war, has made me incredibly wary of trying to tackle these subjects in any amount of detail on the show. I kind of feel like no matter what I say, people older than me are going to be very angry. The United States media framed a lot of this discourse about the war as a conflict between hawks who supported the war and doves who opposed it. Opponents were stereotyped as, like, dirty hippies and sanctimonious white college kids who spat on soldiers returning from service. But the anti Vietnam War movement in the United States was really broad. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panthers, and Martin Luther King Jr. Were all vocally opposed to the war. The Asian American movement was deeply connected to the anti war movement, and a lot of Vietnamese Americans did not want the US to be fighting a war in the place that they or their parents or their grandparents had come from. Japanese American young people had been raised by parents who were incarcerated in concentration camps in the United States during World War II, and they campaigned both for redress for their parents and an end to US Imperialism in Asia. The Chicano Moratorium was a march held in Los Angeles that included more than 20,000 Mexican Americans. These are just examples. It was not all hippies and college kids. Most, but not all, of the demonstrations we are talking about today were carried out primarily by Catholic clergy and devout Catholic laypeople. And that's another group that does not really fit in with that stereotype of opponents to the war.

[Holly Fry]

On September 24, 1968, a graduate student took over the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This was a diversion to allow 14 men to break into the Selective Service building without being detected. Four of them were from Milwaukee, and the rest had traveled from somewhere else to participate. They included four Catholic priests and one Catholic brother, and many of the others were Catholic laypeople. One was a member of the Church of Scientology. In photos of the incident, the ones who aren't in clerical attire are mostly wearing suits and ties, and one looks like he might be in a work uniform.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

After removing about 10,000 draft files, they took them outside the building and burned them with homemade napalm. They focused on the files classified as A1, meaning the people who were eligible to be called up at any time. They sang hymns while waiting for the Police to arrive to arrest them.

[Holly Fry]

They were charged with burglary and arson. Twelve of them were tried together and were all convicted, and two who were tried separately were convicted as well. As we talked about in part one, destroying draft cards was illegal under federal law, But a judge threw out a separate federal case because there had been so much publicity that it seemed unlikely that they could ever convene an impartial jury.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

One of the Milwaukee 14, Michael Cullen, was from County Wicklow, Ireland, and he spent nine months in prison before being deported. He was readmitted to the United States in 1991.

[Holly Fry]

So that was one of the draft raids from 1968. Richard Nixon was inaugurated as president in January of 1969. By that point, 31,000Americans had been killed in action in Vietnam, and half of all Americans personally knew someone who had died in combat there. More than half a million American troops were in Vietnam.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Nixon wanted to end the war within a year, but without simply withdrawing troops and abandoning South Vietnam. His administration had shifted from deploying increasing numbers of American combat troops to Vietnam to supporting South Vietnam and building up its own military capacity and also training the South Vietnamese to take over these combat roles. There were also public peace talks and secret behind the scenes negotiations going on.

[Holly Fry]

At first, the American public didn't really know much about this policy shift. And while Nixon was reducing the number of American troops in Vietnam, overall, people were still being drafted and deployed. So protests against the war and the draft continued. As one example, on May 25, 1969, 15 people broke into a draft board office in a predominantly non white neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, destroying about 50,000 draft records.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

On November 3, Nixon gave a speech outlining the basics of his so called Vietnamization strategy to end the war. He acknowledged that the nation was deeply divided over the war, and he called on a, quote, silent majority to support him in ending it in a way that would bring a just and lasting peace to Vietnam, Meaning he could not just unilaterally decide to withdraw all the troops. Nixon did not give a specific timetable for this, because the timeline for troop withdrawal would have to depend on what was actually happening in Vietnam. But in his words, quote, if the level of enemy activity significantly increases, we might have to adjust our timetable accordingly, Accordingly, also by this point, the war was unpopular in the United States, but the anti war movement was even more unpopular. And Nixon was really willing to put the focus on the protesters if it meant less attention to his military policy.

[Holly Fry]

Four days after he gave this speech on November 7, eight people, including two Catholic priests, a nun and a seminarian broke into draft board offices in the Boston neighborhoods of Jamaica Plain, Dudley, Upham's Corner and Copley Square, which contained records from six different draft boards. They destroyed records for 1A draftees as well as 1Y, which were designated as people who could be drafted in the event of a national emergency. They also damaged or destroyed other registers and documents. These demonstrators also took some of the records to Washington D.C. and destroyed them there and tried to get arrested for their actions. During the second moratorium march, which was held in Washington D.C. on November 15, and which included roughly half a million.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Marchers, the Boston 8 issued a statement in which they described having marched, written letters, conferred with officials and spoken out against the war, capitalist materialism and military control. The statement went on to say, quote, if you feel as we do that marching and demonstrating are unproductive, we encourage you to take responsible action to secure peace and end injustice. We have fashioned hope with our bodies as free people must do. We oppose with our lives genocide in Vietnam and the arms race, exploitive investment abroad, rape of foreign manpower and resources, domestic racism, environmental ruin and militarism in any form, Selective Service lottery or volunteer army.

[Holly Fry]

The raided offices were closed for about a week, and people whose records were in those offices were immune from the next call up. But the records were reconstructed before the one that followed.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

If the Boston Eight ever faced charges, I did not find evidence of it. It's possible they did. But the Boston Globe quoted a US Attorney as saying that they would never be indicted because while they had taken responsibility for the damage, there was just no corroborating evidence they had actually been involved. So the FBI could not justify an indictment. Some of the people who named themselves in the statement were later arrested in conjunction with other anti war demonstrations.

[Holly Fry]

Though just a few days after the Boston 8 raids, the public learned about the My Lai massacre, which had happened several months before, in which US troops had massacred more than 300 civilians. Then, a few months after that, Nixon ordered ground troops to invade Cambodia. Vocal opposition to the war once again rose in the wake of the revelations around the My Lai massacre. And Nixon's invasion of Cambodia accelerated that dramatically. On May 4, members of the Ohio National Guard killed four people and wounded nine others during an anti war rally at Kent State University.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The number of draft board raids peaked in 1970, as all of this was happening and in the months afterward. That February, the Beaver 55 had destroyed an estimated 10,000 draft records in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. On July 2, a group of women Calling themselves Women against daddy Warbucks, raided 15 draft boards in New York City, shredding the paperwork and then throwing it around Rockefeller center like confetti during lunchtime.

[Holly Fry]

Eight days later, on July 10, teams of two or three people broke into Selective Service offices in Little Falls, Alexandria, Winona and Wabasha, Minnesota. Eight of them were captured and became known as the Minnesota 8. Their goal was to destroy as many 1A draft files as possible. This was a somewhat more secular group than some of the others that we've talked about. Many of them were college students and some were classified as conscientious objectors. But religion was still a factor for some of them. One in particular, Francis Kroenke, laid out an argument that what they had done was a necessary act required by Catholic moral responsibility, and that the Selective Service system was unconstitutional and morally unjustifiable. One of the Minnesota Eight entered a guilty plea and got no prison time and the rest served between 14 and 29 months in prison. The last of them was released in January of 1973.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

These were not at all the only raids carried out that year. People broke into draft boards and destroyed records in Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Rhode island and Delaware in 1970 as well. These raids continued into 1971, including in Evanston, Illinois and multiple cities in New York.

[Holly Fry]

On January 25, 1971, Daniel and Philip Berrigan were on the COVID of Time magazine with the headline Rebel Priests. The Curious case of the Berrigans. At the time, the Berrigans were serving their sentence in federal prison. FBI Director Herbert Hoover had claimed they were involved in a wide ranging plot to attack government sites and kidnap Henry Kissinger. Attributed to the east coast conspiracy to save lives. And when the article was written, they and other alleged co conspirators had been indicted for this as well. Philip later faced trial for this, but he was not convicted.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I find the two of them fascinating, but their story is like way beyond apart from the draft board raids, like way beyond the scope of the podcast for the most part. That brings us to the Camden 28, which we will talk about after a sponsor break.

[Larison Campbell]

There's a type of soil in Mississippi called Yazoo Clay. It's thick burnt orange and it's got a reputation.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

It's terrible, terrible dirt.

[Larison Campbell]

Yazoo Clay eats everything. So things that get buried there tend to stay buried until they're not. In 2012, construction crews at Mississippi's biggest hospital made a shocking discovery.

[Mike]

7,000 bodies out there or more.

[Larison Campbell]

All former patients of the Old State asylum. And nobody knew they were There it.

[Mike]

Was my family's mystery.

[Larison Campbell]

But in this corner of the south, it's not just the soil that keeps secrets.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Nobody talks about it. Nobody has any information.

[Larison Campbell]

When you peel back the layers of Mississippi's Yazoo clay, nothing's ever as simple as you think.

[Maria Tremorki]

The story is much more complicated and nuanced than that.

[Larison Campbell]

I'm Larison Campbell. Listen to under yazukle on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Mike]

Sonoro and iHeart's Mikeultura Podcast Network present the Setup, a new romantic comedy pod starring Harvey Guillen and Christian Navarro. The setup follows a lonely museum curator searching for love. But when the perfect man walks into his life. Well, I guess I'm saying I like you, you like me. He actually is too good to be true. This is a con. I'm conning you to get the gelato painting. We could do this together. To pull off this heist, they'll have to get close and jump into the deep end together.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

That's a huge leap, Fernando, don't you think?

[Mike]

After you, Chulito. But love is the biggest risk they'll ever take. Fernando's never going to love you as much as he loves this job. That painting is ours. Listen to the setup as part of the Mike Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Maria Tremorki]

Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremarke.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry. Together we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.

[Maria Tremorki]

Each season we explore a new theme, everything from poisoners and pirates to art thieves and snake oil products and those who made and sold them.

[Holly Fry]

We uncover the stories and secrets of some of history's most compelling criminal figures, including a man who built a submarine as a getaway vehicle. Yep, that's a fact.

[Maria Tremorki]

We also look at what kinds of societal forces were at play at the time of the crime, from legal injustices to the ethics of body snatching, to see what, if anything, might look different through today's perspective.

[Holly Fry]

And be sure to tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in custom made cocktails and mocktails inspired by the stories. There's one for every story we tell.

[Maria Tremorki]

Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Mike]

I'm Camila Ramon, Peloton's first Spanish speaking cycling and tread instructor. I'm an athlete, entrepreneur, and almost most importantly, a pareo enthusiast.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Mike]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports Network. The draft board raid that led me to this episode was the Camden 28 raid on August 22, 1971. By this point, there had been hundreds of break ins at draft boards all around the United States. As we've said, not all of them had been carried out by people who were motivated by their faith, specifically by Catholic religious convictions. But when those religious convictions were a factor, getting arrested was usually part of the plan. And so was going to trial and being convicted and receiving some kind of sentence. While some people were fined, a lot of people were incarcerated. So by 1971, almost four years into these raids, some of the most committed, active people in the Catholic Left movement either were or had been in prison. There were often other people who were willing to take smaller risks with smaller possible consequences, but there were just not as many people still prepared to be imprisoned for months or years in these draft board actions. Also, people had been protesting US Involvement in Vietnam since the war had started or since the American involvement in the war had started. And these protests had been growing for years, but there still did not seem to be any end to the war anywhere in sight.

[Holly Fry]

So a group of people started planning a raid in which they would try to take all of the records from the draft board office in Camden, New Jersey. Camden is across the Delaware river from Philadelphia, and in the 1830s, it became connected to New York City by rail. It grew into an important industrial manufacturing and shipbuilding center over the 19th and 20th centuries.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

But the city had gone into a major economic decline after World War II, as two of its major employers, RCA and Campbell's Soup, started decentralizing their operations. The third major employer, New York Ship, also started losing business as newer, more modern shipbuilding facilities were built in other parts of the country.

[Holly Fry]

About 20% of the city's population moved away between 1950 and 1970. This was part of the post war white flight to the suburbs, meaning that the city's demographics shifted over those years, becoming more predominantly black and Hispanic because of a range of economic factors. Poverty, a lack of housing, and a lack of job opportunities all became serious problems in the city. The people who planned the raid on the draft board office in Camden were white, but they saw the residents of the city as disproportionately at risk from the draft and at higher risk while serving in Vietnam because of their race and economic status. They also saw a connection between the country's spending on military and war and the systems of poverty at work in Camden.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The Camden 28 included four Catholic priests and one Lutheran priest, and most of the rest were Catholic laypeople. People seven were women. The draft board office that they raided was located on the upper floor of a building that also included courtrooms, actually the same courtrooms where they would later stand trial and the post office.

[Holly Fry]

Initially, they cased the building from the outside. But one of them, Robert Hardy, known as Bob, decided to try to get inside to find out exactly where the draft files were and what they would need to do. Once they got into the building, he took one of the others with him, and he walked in and said that he wanted to learn about how the draft system worked. That would seem suspicious to me, but the staff was apparently very happy to show him.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Hardy wound up being instrumental in planning this raid. In fact, both he and other members of the group said they had pretty much abandoned the whole idea before he got involved. He was a former marine and a contractor. He had some of the tools that they would need, and he already knew how to use them. They decided to enter through a fire escape, and he worked out where to put the ladder to avoid setting off an alarm. He also provided the ladder, which participants practiced scaling against another building. And he taught them how to drill through a window to break through it without shattering it.

[Holly Fry]

The day after he was approached about being part of this raid, Hardy had also started informing on them to the FBI. He told agents he was concerned about what they were doing and thought the FBI should put a stop to it. He was against the war and the draft, but also against tactics like destroying draft records. According to his sworn affidavit, FBI agents asked him to monitor what was happening with the group and keep them informed, assuring him that they would prevent the raid from happening, they would make their arrests during a dry run, and that none of the people involved would face jail time.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The FBI did not stop the Camden 28 during their dry run. And in the early hours of Sunday, August 22, several of them broke into the Selective Service office and filled 12 large bags full of draft records, throwing them out the window. But before they could leave the building, FBI agents arrived on the scene and arrested them. A total of 28 people were ultimately arrested. Some who had been part of the break in were there right that at that moment, and the rest who had helped with the planning and preparation.

[Holly Fry]

It didn't take long for people to figure out that Bob Hardy had tipped off the FBI, among other things. As everyone else was taken into custody, no one could figure out where he was. According to Hardy, the FBI had paid him the equivalent of his usual daily wage while he was acting as an informant. He said the FBI had provided the walkie talkies they used to communicate during the raid. The FBI reimbursed him for that ladder and all the other tools and equipment the Camden 28 used, and even for the gas for his van that he used to drive them around. Hardy had been updating the FBI about their progress daily.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Hardy's affidavit about this in a lot of points was not very flattering. In his characterization of the Camden 28, he wrote, quote, it's really impossible to exaggerate how inept, undisciplined, and generally unable to pull off this action they were. They wouldn't keep to schedules and they kept making simple matters complicated. At the same time, he did write this while trying to make the argument that the raid would not have happened without him or without the FBI. And in the same statement, he described the Camden 28 as, quote, the finest group of Christian people I have ever been associated with. And he described the raid as the best cooperative effort that he had ever experienced.

[Holly Fry]

Understandably, many of the rest of the Camden 28 felt immensely betrayed by Hardy's actions. But on September 10, less than a month after the raid, Hardy's nine year old son Billy fell from a tree and landed on a fence and he was seriously injured. He died on October 3rd. Some of the Camden 28 really rallied around Hardy during all of this. In a 2007 documentary about the raid, some of the members talked about encouraging others to forgive Hardy in this moment, because if they didn't, they would regret having not done so. Later, the Reverend Father Michael Doyle, one of the Camden 28, led Billie Hardy's funeral mass.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Back at the beginning of part one of this episode, we mentioned that two of the Camden 28 had been involved in the break in into the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. That was Keith Forsyth and Robert Williamson, although that was not known until much, much later way after all of this. At the time, nobody knew the identities of the people who had broken into the FBI office in media. But media and Camden were only about 20 miles apart, and the FBI believed that the media perpetrators were among the people planning the raid in Camden. So it appears that one of the reasons the FBI allowed this raid to continue and even enabled its happening was with the hope of using all of this to apprehend the people who were responsible for the break in in media.

[Holly Fry]

We will talk about what happened when the Camden 28 went to trial after we pause for a sponsor break.

[Larison Campbell]

There's a type of soil in Mississippi called Yazoo clay. It's thick, burnt orange and it's got a reputation.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

His terrible, terrible dirt.

[Larison Campbell]

Yazoo clay eats everything. So things that get buried there tend to stay buried until they're not. In 2012, construction crews at Mississippi's biggest hospital made a shocking discovery.

[Mike]

7,000 bodies out there or more, all.

[Larison Campbell]

Former patients of the old state asylum, and nobody knew they were there.

[Mike]

It was my family's mystery.

[Larison Campbell]

But in this corner of the south, it's not just the soil that keeps secrets.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Nobody talks about it. Nobody has any information.

[Larison Campbell]

When you peel back the layers of Mississippi's Yazoo Clay, nothing's ever as simple as you think.

[Maria Tremorki]

The story is much more complicated and nuanced than that.

[Larison Campbell]

I'm Larison Campbell. Listen to Under Yazu Clay on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Mike]

Sonoro and iHeart's Mikeultura Podcast Network present the Setup, a new romantic comedy podcast starring Harvey Guillen and Christian Navarro. The Setup follows a lonely museum curator searching for love. But when the perfect man walks into his life. Well, I guess I'm saying I like you, you like me. He actually is too good to be true. This is a con. I'm conning you to get the delato painting. We could do this together. To pull off this heist. They'll have to get close and jump into the deep end together.

[Holly Fry]

That's a huge leap, Fernando, don't you think?

[Mike]

After you, Chulito. But love is the biggest risk they'll ever take. Fernando is never going to Love me as much as he loves this job. Chulito. That painting is ours. Listen to the setup as part of the Microsoft Dura Podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Maria Tremorki]

Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremarke.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry. Together we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.

[Maria Tremorki]

Each season we explore a new theme, everything from poisoners and pirates to art thieves and snake oil products and those who made and sold them.

[Holly Fry]

We uncover the stories and secrets of some of history's most compelling criminal figures, including a man who built a submarine as a getaway vehicle. Yep, that's a fact.

[Maria Tremorki]

We also look at what kinds of societal forces were at play at the time of the crime, from legal injustices to the ethics of body snatching, to see what, if anything, might look different through today's perspective.

[Holly Fry]

And be sure to tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in custom made cocktails and mocktails inspired by the stories. There's one for every story we tell.

[Maria Tremorki]

Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Mike]

I'm Camila Ramon, Peloton's first Spanish speaking cycling and tread instructor. I'm an athlete, entrepreneur, and almost most importantly, a Perreo enthusiast.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And I'm Liz Ortiz, former pro soccer player and Olympian.

[Mike]

And like Kami, a Perreo enthusiast.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Come on, who is it? Our podcast, Hasta Bajo is where sports, music and fitness collide and we cover it all, the Arriva Hasta Abajo sit downs with real game changers in the sports world like Miami Dolphins CMO Priscilla Shumate, who is redefining what it means to be a Latina leader.

[Maria Tremorki]

It all changed when I had this.

[Mike]

Guy come to me. He said to me, you know, you're not Latina enough.

[Maria Tremorki]

First of all, what is that?

[Mike]

My mouth is wide open. Yeah. History makers like the Sukar family, who became the first Peruvians to win a Grammy. It was a very special moment for us. It's been 15 years for me in this career. Finally, things are starting to shift into a different level. Listen to Astavajo on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports Network. A year and a half passed between the arrest of the Camden 28 and the trial. Initially, prosecutors planned to try everybody together, which was a huge Challenge for the defendants. That's just a lot of people. And on top of that, the Camden 28 was not one unified, coalesced organization. It was more like several smaller groups of closer knit people, which then had some connections among one another. Some were Catholic clergy, but most of them were laypeople. And everybody had different priorities and different responsibilities going on in their lives. They did not have anything close to unanimous agreement on a lot of really important questions, like whether they should accept a plea deal if they were offered one, or what their goals should be at the trial. Like did they want to focus on winning so that they could hopefully avoid jail time, or did they want to have what had become known as a movement trial or a political trial, Making the trial itself part of their anti war advocacy, not just keeping it in the news, but making their testimony an anti war act.

[Holly Fry]

They were really all over the place on everything from how to raise money for bail to how and how much to prepare for the trial. Eventually, an organization called the Camden 28 Defense Committee formed to help coordinate, raise funds and support the defendants. This included holding regular rallies that were part anti war demonstrations, part fundraising and support for the defense. Once the trial started, the defense committee also made sure there were always lots of supporters in the gallery.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In the 18 months that passed between the raid and the trial, public opinion in the United States had continued to turn against the war and against the Nixon administration. The New York Times had started publishing excerpts from the Pentagon Papers a couple of months before the break in at the Camden office. These top secret documents had been leaked to the press. And they revealed all kinds of details about the US involvement in Vietnam and in Southeast Asia, more broadly, going all the way back to the Truman administration. These reports and the decision to publish them were really controversial. But a lot of the details that they contained were also very damaging to the government's reputation. Also, the Watergate break in took place during the period between the draft board break in and the trial. And that led to an enormous scandal for Richard Nixon.

[Holly Fry]

Eventually, the prosecution decided to sever 10 of the defendants from the Camden 28 trial. These were people who had been accused of being involved in the planning and coordination, but not the actual break in. One other defendant accepted a plea deal. The remaining 17, which included four Catholic priests, were all tried together. Two defendants were charged with conspiracy, and the rest with conspiracy, breaking and entering and destroying draft records.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The prosecution really thought it had an open and shut case. The people who had broken into the draft office had been caught red handed, and others had acknowledged what they had done. They had photographs, they had recorded conversations from those walkie talkies that the FBI had given to Bob Hardy. The prosecution also argued that these were not hapless amateurs, but experienced anti war demonstrators and they expected Bob Hardy to be a key witness. It just really did not seem like it was going to be difficult at all to get a guilty verdict.

[Holly Fry]

But according to Hardy's account, he had been assured that the authorities were going to stop the raid before it happened, and that any charges the Camden 28 might face wouldn't lead to prison time if they were convicted. Now they were facing the possibility of lengthy prison sentences. He felt completely betrayed by this and like it just wasn't what he had agreed to. In March of 1972, Hardy filed a motion for the case to be dismissed which read in part, quote, the substantive crimes were committed because the government wanted them committed and made their commission possible. They were committed by and or with the indispensable assistance of the government. Without the action, expertise and material support of the FBI informer, the conspiracy would have remained abandoned.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This motion to dismiss was denied, but Hardy instead became a witness for the defense. He helped to build a case that the raid would not have happened without his involvement and support, and that he would not have been involved had the FBI not directed him to keep on working with the group and provided him with the money and the supplies to do it.

[Holly Fry]

The resulting trial was in many ways unconventional. In a lot of the political trials or movement trials that evolved over the 1970s, people often defended themselves. This was the case for a lot of the Camden 28. Although some of the defendants did have attorneys, There were three attorneys involved with the trial and many of the defendants acted as one another's co counsels.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The defense pursued a strategy of jury nullification, that is that the jury would find the defendants not guilty in spite of their established guilt because of the moral and ethical questions surrounding the case. To successfully do this, the defense would need to prove misconduct on the part of the government and also convince the jury that an acquittal was the only moral and just thing to do.

[Holly Fry]

The defense also needed the right jury to be able to pull this off. So there was a lot of research into potential jurors paired with a very careful jury selection process. This was a fairly new strategy which had been employed in only a couple of trials and is now known as scientific jury selection.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This also only really worked because the judge, u. S. District court judge Clarkson Fisher, was pretty permissive in what he allowed the defendants to do. The defendants were allowed to give testimony about their opposition to the Vietnam War and to bring in details about things like the Watergate scandal and the Pentagon Papers and those documents that had been stolen in the raid on the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, which were a big part of shutting down cointelpro. None of this was directly related to what had happened at the draft board, but the defense used it to establish a pattern of dishonesty and malfeasance on the part of the US Government. Defendants also gave their thoughts on greater social and political questions. During the trial. One of them showed slides of burned out villages in Vietnam juxtaposed with destroyed buildings in Camden. In his opening statement, Father Michael Doyle asked rhetorically whether a place as troubled as Camden should exist in a nation as rich as the United States.

[Holly Fry]

Opening statements started on February 27, 1973, and since there were so many people acting as attorneys, there were a lot of statements. Overall, the defendants tried to create an atmosphere of an almost spiritual community during the trial. Like the defendants, who were also acting as one another's attorneys, introducing themselves and saying hello and calling each other brothers and sisters or celebrating whoever's birthday, it was in the courtroom. They also took questions directly from the jurors, which was another new thing in U.S. legal proceedings. The defendants, whose cases had been severed from the rest were still present in the courtroom almost every day. And over the course of the trial, the Camden 28 became a lot more coalesced than they had ever been before it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Bob Hardy appeared as a defense witness on April 10 and was questioned for the next three days, building a narrative about how much of his involvement in the raid had been facilitated and encouraged by the FBI. During a cross examination, an FBI inspector had also confirmed that he had been paid about $7,500, both for his work as an informant and for various tools and travel expenses that he was reimbursed for.

[Holly Fry]

Philip and Daniel Berrigan were among the expert witnesses. Historian Howard Zinn, who had also testified in the trials of other draft board readers, was another expert witness, giving an overview of the history of colonialism in Southeast Asia and civil disobedience in the United States. There was also testimony by some of the defendant's parents, including Betty Good, mother of Bob Good, Another of her sons. Paul Good, had been killed in Vietnam, and she gave wrenching testimony about his death.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This trial lasted for 15 weeks. When it was time for the jury to deliberate, Judge Fisher gave them instructions that included this quote. If you find that the overreaching participation by government agents or informers in the Activities as you have heard them were so fundamentally unfair to be an offense to the basic standards of decency and shocking to the universal sense of justice. Then you may acquit any of the defendants to whom this defense applies.

[Holly Fry]

The jury deliberated for four days partway through. The foreman had to be replaced. Apparently her family had been telling her they thought the jury should find the defendants guilty. And based on all their pressure, she did not want to be the one to deliver the verdict.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

At this point, the defendants thought they might be winding up with a hung jury. There had been one juror in particular who had asked a lot of questions during the trial. And some of those questions really seemed to imply that he was in favor of the war. But on May 20, 1973, the jury found the defendants not guilty on all counts. To my knowledge, the remaining 10 defendants were never tried. I could not find any mention of them eventually going to trial. And this also did not reveal any connections or lead to any prosecution. For the people who had broken into the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. That investigation was closed in 1976, and the identities of the people who were involved remained unknown until 2014, when five of them agreed to have their identities revealed.

[Holly Fry]

Although there had been a lot of testimony about the Camden 28's moral opposition to the war, the case itself really wasn't about whether the war was just or whether the US Was right to be fighting it. The judge's instructions to the jury had also put the focus on the actions of the government in relation to the raid, not the war. But this verdict is often read as a referendum on the public's attitudes about the Vietnam War. In the spring of 1973.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

By the time the trial ended, the draft had ended as well. The last U.S. troops had also left Vietnam. That happened on March 23rd of 1973. Two years later, the U.S. suspended Selective Service registration. Although it resumed in 1980. Still today, male U.S. citizens and male immigrants to the United States are required to register within 30 days of turning 18. With, with few exceptions, President Jimmy Carter issued a blanket pardon for the people that had evaded the draft during the Vietnam War, but not to people who had deserted the military. On his first full day in office.

[Holly Fry]

The people who were part of all these various draft raids all went on to have their own lives, with many of them continuing their anti war activism. The Berrigan brothers, who both had long and complex lives beyond this, became founding members of the anti Nuclear Plowshares movement, whose activities included damaging warhead nose cones and pouring blood onto files at a General Electric nuclear missile facility in king of Prussia, Pennsylvania in 1980.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Nixon's remarks in his Silent Majority speech that we referenced earlier focused on the idea of removing U.S. troops in a way that would leave South Vietnam able to defend itself. And In January of 1973, the U.S. and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam had signed peace accords, but the fighting there had continued. By April of 1975, the US had started evacuating non essential personnel from Vietnam and had brought people from the more remote areas of Vietnam into the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon. An effort was also made to evacuate South Vietnamese orphans called Operation Babylift. We talked about that in an installment of six Impossible episodes in June of 2018.

[Holly Fry]

Saigon ultimately fell to the North Vietnamese army on April 30, 1975, leading to a massive effort to evacuate remaining diplomats, embassy staff, and other Americans who were still in Vietnam. Since other routes of evacuation had been blocked, the one way remaining out was by helicopter from the US Embassy. US Ambassador Graham Martin ordered the evacuation of South Vietnamese officials and staff as well. Ultimately, about 5,500 Vietnamese people were evacuated from South Vietnam, but thousands more had tried to get a spot aboard departing helicopters and were not able to. In 1976, Vietnam unified as one nation under the Communist Party of Vietnam, which is the nation's sole legal party Today.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

There's a pretty new book about the Camden 28. I think it came out last year. It's called Spiritual Criminals by Michelle M. Nickerson. I only read a couple of chapters of it leading into this because there was like one particular area that I felt like I needed another perspective on, but those chapters were really good. So if you want to check that book out, it exists.

[Holly Fry]

Do you have some listener mail? Now that we have wrapped up this.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Rather large topic, it's such a large topic. We'll talk about more about how big it is on Friday. I do have it. This is from Sammy. They wrote and said hi Holly and Tracy. I just listened to your episode on Exum, Attorney at Law in the Saturday Classic on the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. I was tickled to hear that Exum started as a stenographer and clerk since I am currently a court clerk looking into stenography. Clement's connection to the Lost Cause is very interesting to me since the most important part of stenography is maintaining an accurate and honest record of events. But it is just like an attorney to pick out the word states rights and leave behind to own slaves when defending their point, even if it's a bad one. Most people know that court reporters slash stenographers, type really fast and transcribe hearings. What many don't know is that the steno machine is a shorthand keyboard that's completely different from a standard QWERTY keyboard and uses different letter combinations to type phonetically and syllabically. This allows for typing speeds as fast as 200 words per minute. When most people can type 40 words per minute, it's much easier to keep up with people talking that way. For example, the word keyboard would look like this on a steno machine. Sammi has then put in kind of a little it's two lines with letters broken out over the two lines and only some of them line up with each other. It's a little hard to describe, but like the top line is K and then a space, AO and then a space and E and then at the bottom there's some space and then PW and then space and then AO and then a bigger space and then R and then a space and then D. Sonography isn't as sought out as a career anymore. Screw you AI. But its applications are so important. Not only do stenographers transcribe legal and medical hearings, they also provide closed captioning services to deaf and hard of hearing folks. Anyways, thanks for this show and all that you do. And of course obligatory cat pictures attached. Binks mostly black tuxedo, the only one not related. Bebop mostly white tuxedo, jet all black valentine multicolor jet and bebops Mom. All my best wishes Sammy. Thank you so much Sammy for this this email. I did not really know that about the the tools that stenographers use to keep all their typing. I did kind of think that they typed just really fast.

[Holly Fry]

Also, I see your cowboy bebop naming convention. I see it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Which I love that show.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

These are some adorable cats. Oh my goodness, just so much. They're all loungy. Except for one who looks like this kitty cat might attempt to eat a part of a Christmas tree. I'm not sure that's actually what's going to happen, but if this were my cat, I'm thinking that cat is about to jump up and grab the end of the Christmas tree frond.

[Holly Fry]

This has just given me fresh fear in my soul as I have been talking about our ill behaved new cats lately. I'm like oh man, Christmas is going to be a disaster.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Oh goodness, goodness. Now I'm kind of wondering, should there be an episode on the steno machine? Maybe. I don't know. So thank you so, so, so much, Sammy for this email and these cat pictures. We always love cat pictures. If you don't have cats or dogs or any other pet animals, you don't have to worry about that. You can send pictures of a bird you saw or a flower you saw outside or some other random thing or no picture, it's fine. But we do love all the pictures that folks send and so thank you so, so, so much, Sammy. If you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcast, we are at historypodcastheartradio.com and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff youf Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartrade radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Larison Campbell]

In Mississippi, Yazoo clay keeps secrets.

[Mike]

7,000 bodies out there or more.

[Larison Campbell]

A forgotten asylum cemetery.

[Mike]

It was my family's mystery.

[Larison Campbell]

Shame, guilt, propriety. Something keeps it all buried deep until it's not. I'm Larison Campbell, and this is under Yazoo Clay. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Maria Tremorki]

Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremarke.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry. Together, we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.

[Maria Tremorki]

Each season we explore a new theme, from poisoners to art thieves.

[Holly Fry]

We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures, from legal injustices to body snatching.

[Maria Tremorki]

And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story.

[Holly Fry]

Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

A crime makes headlines. People talk about it for a few days. Then it disappears. But for the people left behind, their story is just beginning.

[Mike]

But at night, we hear the garage opening and my son hears it. We freak out. Honestly, I didn't tell my son this, but I felt that was it. From the exactly right network. This is the Knife. Real stories of crime's ripple effects told by those who lived them.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

New episodes every Thursday. Listen to the knife on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Mike]

Are you hungry? Colleen Witt here, and Eating While Broke is back for season four. Every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network. This season, we've got a legendary lineup, serving up broke dishes and even better stories. On the menu we have Tony Baker, Nick Cannon, Melissa Ford, October London, and Carrie Harper Howey turning Big Macs into big moves. Catch Eating while broke every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network. IHeartRadio Apple Apple Podcast. Wherever you get your favorite shows, come hungry for season four.