Students for a Democratic Society and the Weatherman Underground Association

Microfilm LB 3610 .F35 | FBI File

[Calpernia]

Scope: Covering the years1962-1977, this file provides descriptions of anti-war rallies and materials produced by the Students for a Democratic Society. It also has detailed information on the protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, a "defining moment" of the SDS. "The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a progressive, radical reformist student group, grew from the ranks of the League for Industrial Democracy (LID), whose own student group, the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID) had become all but defunct by the end of the 1950s. . .Under new Field Secretary Robert Alan Haber, University of Michigan graduate student, SDS established a national office in New York and began to organize itself as a fringe political group within American academe by the end of the 1961-62 school year." "SDS had been monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as early as 1962, but SDS involvement in the April 1965 Student March on Washington against the Vietnam War caught the Johnson administration off guard and the order to monitor SDS activities followed swiftly. The Bureau investigation centered in Chicago, where SDS had established its national office at 1103 E. 63rd Street, in the heart of the ghetto." "The FBI could find no hard evidence of outside influence or control of SDS, even though many of its leaders were espousing the radical thinking of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro and Che Guevara. Because SDS had none of the traditional hall marks of foreign control or influence, they were classified as part of what became known as the 'New Left.'" From the Introduction of the Guide to the collection

This collection also includes information on the Weatherman Underground Organization, a faction that came out of the SDS and was of interest to the FBI. The guide to the collection also provides some information on this group.

Subject Categories: To find more information on this topic in our library, search under these subject headings in the WebCat:

Students for a Democratic Society (U.S.)

Students for a Democratic Society (U.S.) -- History

Weatherman (Organization)

Student movements -- United States

Student movements -- United States -- History -- 20th century -- Sources

[Fedora]

Student Mobilization Committee (SMC)

The SMC was controlled entirely by the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA). Every SMC office was run from top to bottom by SWP/YSA members.

This is important, since the SMC was one of the leading sponsors of Kerry's anti-war demonstrations.

This is a most key point IMO. The SMC spinoffs the National Peace Action Committee (NPAC) and People's Coalition for Peace and Justice (PCPJ) were the two main organizers of the protests that included Dewey Canyon III.

[Calpernia]

From: barbara winslow Purplewins@compuserve.com
Subject: Re: National Student Association

Look at Ramparts magazine in the'60's. Ramparts exposed the NSA/CIA
connection. I'm not sure of the date - 1966-67 or so.
___________________________

[2]

From: J_Andrew@ACAD.FANDM.EDU (John Andrew)
Subject: Re: National Student Association

Thanks for the reply. I look forward to seeing your work on NSA -
as you indicate, there is VERY little out there, and when I was working on
Young Americans for Freedom I had great difficulty even finding references
to manuscript materials. I sort of stumbled onto the material in the ADA
microfilm, but it turned out to be exactly what I had been looking for with
respect to YAF and SDS at the NSA meetings in the early 1960s. All of it
primary material. I am curious, though - where else did you find NSA
files? I understand that there are some in the Allard Lowenstein Papers,
but where else? And when will your stuff be appearing? where?
Cheers,
John Andrew

John Andrew email: J_ANDREW@ACAD.FANDM.EDU
Department of History fax 717-399-4413
Franklin and Marshall College
Lancaster, PA. 17604-3003

[Fedora]

I have notes on a POW in Vietnam that was tortured by Cuba.

I didn't know that; but I knew the North Vietnamese were sending advisors to Cuba to help train the Weathermen, and I'd assume the Black Panthers as well. The VVAW was also sending members to Cuba via the Venceremos Brigade, which if I recall correctly Hillary had links to as well.

[Fedora]

">>>former SDS leader Carl Oglesby
?????
Him? "

Yep, that's him! He helped organize the first teach-ins which jump-started the national antiwar movement.

[Calpernia]

From: Ted Morgan epm2@lehigh.edu
>To all,
>if the VVAW was not formed until 1967, to what extent were there
>protests against the war by GI's before then? Was it organised or
>simply a growing movement that needed codification in 67? Also is
>anyone has any statistics on the official membership of the VVAW I
>would be grateful. In particular, did memebership and support
>increase dramatically after the Tet offensive?
>Regards,
>C. Davidson
>Davidson-CA@ulst.ac.uk

Well, one notable event --that had spin-offs within the military-- was the
refusal in June, 1966 of the so-called "Fort Hood Three" (three Army privates)
to report to duty in Vietnam as ordered. They became something of a cause
celebre. There are plenty of good sources on their action & subsequent
events; cf. for example, Tom Wells' "The War Within."
Ted Morgan

---

Department of Political Science
Maginnes Hall #9
Lehigh University
Bethlehem, PA 18015

epm2@lehigh.edu
phone: (610) 758-3345
fax: (610) 758-6554

(2)
From: Aaron M Brenner amb18@columbia.edu

Check out: Richard Moser, The New Winter Soldiers: GI and Veteran Dissent
in the Vietnam Era (Rutgers) and Fred Halstead, Out Now!. Halstead also
has a book/pamphlet on early U.S.-based GI protest. Also, check out VVAW's
website. They're still going strong. Ben Chitty, East Coast coordinator,
just gave a fabulous talk to my Vietnam War class today at Marymount
Manhattan College. His speech suggested that Tet was indeed a turning
point for GIs. VVAW had some 25,000 members in 1971 or so.

(3)
From: Kim Heikkila Kimberly.L.Heikkila-1@tc.umn.edu

To C. Davidson --

There was a fairly loosely-organized antiwar movement among GIs even prior
to 1967, known as the GI movement. It seems to have been spawned, in part,
by the influence of black nationalism that made its way into the military
via black GIs. Socialist groups, such as the Young Socialist Alliance,
were also actively "infiltrating" the military so as to stir up opposition
to the war and the military. There have been debates over the extent to
which GIs participated in this movement, how serious/effective it was, when
it began, etc. Though it too seems to have picked up in the later 1960s,
especially after Tet, some have been able to trace its origins to the early
60s when fairly isolated incidents of GI resistance to the war were
cropping up (doctors refusing to serve in the war arena, etc.).

My research relative to this has focused on female GIs and their
involvement in the GI movement as represented in the underground GI press.
The University of WI, Madison/WI State Historical Society has a large
collection of the underground papers on microfilm. There were 150-200
papers in operation at various points, so there clearly was some widespread
affinity for the antiwar (which evolved into a more general anti-military)
position; however, most of the papers I looked at seemed also to date
mostly from the later 1960s. I could give you a longer spiel on the papers
and the movement, but don't know if this is what you're looking for.

Some books/articles that I used in my research that may be germane include:

Barbara Tischler, "Breaking Ranks: GI Antiwar Newspapers and the Culture
of Protest," Vietnam Generation 2.1 (1990);

James R. Hayes, "The War Within a War: Dissent in the Vietnam-Era
Military," in Vietnam Generation, 2.1 (1990).

David Cortright wrote a book (1970-1 I think) called _Soldiers in Revolt_
that gives a more contemporary view of the resistance movement.

More recent scholarship indicates that involvement in the movement among
GIs was quite widespread. See David Cortright and Max Watts, _Left Face:
Soldier Unions and Resistance Movements in Modern Armies_ (New York:
Greenwood Press, 1991); they based their findings on two official military
reports on soldier dissent (I think they were completed in 1970 or so and
are available via ILL; that the military was commissioning these lengthy
report suggests a movement significant enough to warrant official concern).

Richard R. Moser, The New Winter Soldiers: GI and Veteran Dissent During
the Vietnam Era (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996); he
contends that the GI movement can be termed a mass movement.

I also was able to find some articles in official military journals (like
_Armed Forces Journal_, for example) that talked about the dissent among
the troops, all the while trying to dismiss its severity and potency --
but, again, those articles were late 60s, early 70s.

I hope this helps. If you want more info, please feel free to contact me
b/c.

Kim Heikkila

Graduate Student
Program in American Studies, University of Minnesota
heik0012@gold.tc.umn.edu

[Fedora]

"Look at Ramparts magazine in the'60's. Ramparts exposed the NSA/CIA connection. I'm not sure of the date - 1966-67 or so."

I think Warren Hinckle was the "Ramparts" editor who produced a lot of exposes of the intelligence community back then, assisted by "ex-agents" of the Victor Marchetti/Phillip Agee variety.

[Fedora]

Good resources in that post. Yes, by the time Kerry was in Vietnam in '68-'69, there was already an effort by the antiwar movement to organize within the military. One of Kerry's associates in Vietnam, Donald Droz, had a wife back home, Judy, who was involved in the '68 McCarthy campaign and antiwar protests. Droz wrote home saying he and Kerry were planning to protest the war when they got back from Vietnam.

[Calpernia]

Lowenstein and the VVAW both come up in the National Archives under something called the Plumbers Task force? I'm not sure what I'm looking at though.


http://www.archives.gov/research_room/independent_counsel_records/watergate/plumbers_task_force.html

[nopardons]

bttt

[nopardons]

bttt

[Fedora]

The Plumbers would be the team organized by the Nixon White House staff and led by E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy sent to investigate Daniel Ellsberg and other antiwar leaders. Ellsberg had leaked the Pentagon Papers, so to plug the "leak" they sent the "plumbers", hence the name.

[Calpernia]

Is it me? Or does the left wing groups seem to be organized the same as the Islamic tribes under Al Qaeda? Al Qaeda being the umbrella for finances and intelligence.

What is the umbrella for the left groups?

[PhilDragoo]

Allard K. Lowenstein eulogized by Pat Schroeder, had substantial African activiy on behalf of CIA.

He would serve Ted Kennedy as advisor until his shooting March 14, 1980 by associate Dennis Sweeney veteran of SNCC.

[Fedora]

Well, during the Soviet era the Communist Party had an overt, above-ground apparatus and a covert, underground apparatus. The above-ground apparatus was the open party members--the people the CP would put up as Presidential candidates and so forth. These were linked covertly to the underground apparatus--spies, liaisons with KGB agents at the UN, liaisons with front groups and infiltrators of non-Communist organizations on the left, etc. The financial conduit supporting this was centered around Armand Hammer and some of his associates, notably Samuel Rubin whose foundation helped fund the Institute for Policy Studies, a key link between the above-ground and underground parts of the network. Rubin's daughter, Cora Weiss, shows up in connection with the Mobe and many related groups. The Mobe and New Mobe were the umbrella for a while, at least within the antiwar movement (to restrict the discussion to that, as the Communist apparatus also branches off in a lot of other directions--left-wing religious groups linked to the antiwar movement, legal groups like the ACLU and National Lawyers Guild, far-left caucuses in Congress, etc.). During the Reagan administration old elements of the New Mobe reformed under the umbrella of the Nuclear Freeze Movement. Then with the Gulf War they resurfaced among opponents of Iraq sanctions, with Ramsey Clark taking a lead role. If you look at the network of people around Ramsey Clark you find a lot of links to Vietnam-era antiwar figures. That's only scratching the surface of your question, but I hope that addresses it somewhat.

[Calpernia]

So the pentagon papers I was just reading indicated this was a mass set up by the French. There must be more to that.

I think I'm too tired to go back to that now. I will bookmark that for tomorrow. AFTER I vote.

[Calpernia]

come read this

[Fedora]

So the pentagon papers I was just reading indicated this was a mass set up by the French.

I hadn't considered that possibility. I've been focusing on the role played by JFK/LBJ holdovers in leaking the Papers. McNamara farmed a lot of Pentagon research out to researchers with a Harvard liberal-type background.

I'm getting tired here, too, so more on this later, maybe. Good thread!

[PhilDragoo]

Armand Hammer's father Julius helped found CPUSA in 1919. Armand was protected by the Senators Gore Sr. and Jr., and gave them their property and Occidental Petroleum stock.

KGB Active Measures made a special project of the Nuclear Freeze and our boy John F. Kerry made it a special project of his as well.

[nopardons]

I know all that,but it's good that you posted it.

[dennisw]

Cora Weiss brings back old memories. My mother belonged to SANE which was run by her in the 1950s. Was a nuclear disarmament organization.