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ter at Attisa

One of the convicts in the maximum security “correc-

tional facility” at Attica, N.Y. addressed the ad

hoc

com-

mittee of observers assembled within theprison walls:

“We do not want to rule; we only want to live

.

. but if

any of you gentlemen own dogs, you’re treating them

better than we’re treated here.” On that basic fac t there

is general agreement. Only twelve days before the uprising,

State Correction Commissioner Russell

G.

Oswald sent a

taped message to the 2,000 inmates outlning the steps he

was working on to make conditions more nearly bearable.

“What

I’m

asking for is time,” he told the prisoners, but

time ran out on hi,m. Abouthalf the )prisoners rose n

what amounted ,to tan insurrection which, prudent foresight

suggests, is a harbinger

of

worse to come. They had no

firearms. The assault force, also numbering about 1 000

was heavily armed. When they had done theicwork, thirty-

nine men were dead-nine hostages out of the thirty-eight

that the convicts had seized, and thirty convicts.

Could hisbloody outcome have been avoided? One

can only conjecture, but the consensus among enlightened

observers

is

that t could, Mayor Kenneth A. Gibson

of

Newark termed the suppression “one of the most callous

and b1,atantly repressive actsevercarriedout by a sup-

posedly civilized society on itsownpeople.” Now Gov-

ernor Rockefeller is, calling’ for the formation of a five-

member panel to investigate what happened. It

is

to con-

sist of “some top people in he correctional field.” In

Commissioner Oswald he had a top m’an, who negotiated

with the inm,ates and seems to have made a good impres-

sion on he committee

of

observers. But theGovernor

refused to come to Attica, although his mere presence

in

the town-no one expected him to go inside the prison

walls-might have cooled things

off

sufficiently to enable

an agreement o be reached. And, knowing nothing of

the circumstances, President Nixon expressed his support

of the Rockefeller hard line,

There was undoubtedly a lunatic fringe among the in-

mates-those who demandedheir release to a “non-

imperialist power”-but the great majority of those who

took part in the nsurrectionwere ationalmen. Some

were r a t h a 1 in the sense that all they wanted was better

living conditions nd the respectdue them as human

beings. Otherswere ational n evolutionary sense:

they were ready to die rather than continue to submit to

society’s treatment of them,They died, and hey won.

America’s im’age s further tarnished before the world and,

as Senator Muskie said, “the Attica tragedy is more stark

proof that something is terribly wrong in America.” Thlat

view contrasts with Rockefeller’s statement that he

up-

rising was broughton by “the revolutioncar) tactics of

militants,” and hat he nvestigation would incpde the

role that “outside

forces

would appear to have played.”

Whatever outside forces were involved could not have

moved a thousand men to such desperation.

The Atticamassacre, in one aspect, was a TictoT of

the 6ctough” school of penologists and he reactionary

elements in American society over the modernists. Oswald

never had the support of the Attioa staff, nor

Of

the

tOWnS-

258

people, most

of

whop make their living from the priso

They fayored the former commissioner, who had come

through the ranks and was noted for his toughness. It w

the reactionnary elements that circulateda eport that h

nine hostages had had their throats cut by the convic

and that one had been castrated. This

lie was

nailed

Dr.John F. Edland, the county medical examiner, w

made an impressive appearance on TV.He examined eig

of the bodies and found that all had died from gunsh

wounds. Another medical examiner came to theame

conclusion with regard tQ the ninth victim. The insurre

tionists appearo have been responsible for only ne

death-that of a guard who. was thrown out o a wind

and who died before theattle

in

the prison began.

Canards of his virulent type usually mark unjustifi

action by the guardians

of

law andorder.

At

KentSta

sniper firewasalleged to hmave impelled theGuardsme

to fire on the students. The commanding general fell ba

proved.

Several hundred ‘thousand Americans are nmates

American prisons. At Attioa, 85 percent were Negro

shouted on TV, hated “niggers.” Society locks them

to get rid of them-the “correctional” label is a arce

Even eparatedas they areby incarceration in numero

state and federal penitentiaries, they constitute, mora

and even physically, a. formidable orce. To return o

Senator Muskie’s evaluation: the rebellion shows that “

have reached he point where men would rather die th

live another day in America.” The only solution, he sa

was “a genuine commitment of our vast resources to t

human needs of all the people.”

humane but stupid. The observers invited into the pris

by the insurrectionary inmates see Tom Wicker’s supe

ly evocative dispatches to The New YorkTimes

September

14

and

15)

were imlpressed y the tacti

on this excuse and clung to it long after it had been d

or Puerto Ricans; in the custody of guards who, as o

Failure o heed such words would benot only

skill, the poise and the single-mindedness of thedefian

men.’ These prisoners were politicalized, using the er

here not primarily with respect to whatever ideologi

convictions they may have held,

b u t

in he sense that th

were aware of themselves ,as a considerable group shari

common experiences and goals. The uprising atAttica

very little resembles prison riots of the past, when goad

men suddenly began beating

on

their cell bars,hurlin

their food to the mess hall floor and screaming obscenit

at their jailers. This was group action, not mass hyster

It is the latest, but not in all probability the last, ma

festation within a penitentiary offlhat for lack of a bet

term is called today black nationalism. But Attica was n

aracist movement; blacksandPuertoRicans were p

dominant in the resistance,

as

they predominate n he

prison, but many whites stood with them. It was a cl

action-the class of the disinherited.

When men who have nothing discover that they ha

oneanother, they combine nto units thatare incalculab

sionate men must be heeded. American prisons have nev

been institutions; they have always been receptacles. B

prisoners are not garbage. It

is

bad enough-indeed, it

probably wicked-that

we

deprive them of their freedom

formidable. That

is

why the words

of

sane land comp

TEE

NATION/Sepiernber

27 I9

7/18/2019 September 9, 1971


on if

we also take from them all hope of

future, we may expect Attica to become the name for

new kind

of

war. CommissionerOswaldknew that

Nixon

no doubt, fade into the recesses of history with their

Public Relations

The death of Nikita Khrushchevcalls attention once

in

which news

is

handled

the ,Soviet Union. The Russian leadership seems intent

sabotaging its

own

nterests in the public-relations field.

ternal'public relations have,

of

course, different objec-

ih one

is

largely in privatehands.However,

to

the degree to which the affairs of

a

be capitalist or , Communist, can be

of

the world. As a rule, the less

is known, the more will be fabricated by foreign

not expect candor from any govern-

nt-we did not,need the Pentagon Papers to prove that

secrecyanddeceit can be carried to he point of

and that seems to be the Soviet way of managing

There is,

first

the factor of speed. Everybody races to

news in print and on the air. Everybody, that is, except

over the

some forty-eight hours before the Soviet authorities

h i s

death. Many Russians isten to foreign

and they learned there what heirown radio did

is

as if the Soviet Government were

on building up as big a Russian audience as possi-

or Radio Liberty, Radio Free 'Europeand other

By his contempt for the tempo of modern cornmunicai

whichgoes back almost to the founding of the

communism has thrown away a great many of its

It does not need the dregs of Madison

i t certainly could make use of some of the

of American journalistic and

relations echniques.

Then, the funeral. State funerals are one form of

whereby the masses are dazzled and persuaded

is not only necessary but beneficent, and

of a sacramental character, It was not to be

t Brezhnev, Kosygin and the others who had

hchev into a nonperson (though one com-

bly situated) would use him for one of these mortuary

and though he wasquietly buried, it was

assomeAmerican commentators said,

in

a second-

e cemetery-he just didn't rate a niche in the Kremlin

Still,his treatment by the Central Committee and

of Ministerswas on the shabby side.They

was not signedbyhis former colleagues, as

icial obituaries usually are, nor was the government

a t

the services.

The trouble withSoviet public relations

is

that every-

is that

As

Harry

news.

NAmoWSepiernber

27,

1971

IN

THIS

ISSUE

September 27

197Z

EDITORIALS

258

ARTICLES

262 Capitol Hill:

The

Big

Rock-Candy Mountain

Tristram

Coffin

264 The Presidency:

Why

a

Black Man Should Run

268 Pugliese vs. Jones

Laughlin:

Howard Romaine

Conscience of

a

Steelworker

Barbara and John Ehrenreich

271 Defying

the ,

Dollar:

Latin America Slams the Door

Penny Lernoux

BOOKS 0

THE ARTS

276 Bulgakov: The Last Year of

Leo Tolstoy Tiugh McLean

277

Svevo: Further Confessions of

Zen0 Charles

am

Markmann

.

278 Bloom:TheRingers

in the

Tower Martinebowitz

279 Letter from a

Dog

with

Mange (poem) Thomas Rabbitt

280 Hamburger:

The

Truth of

Poetry Grace Schulman

281 Grier and

Cobbs:

The esus Bag Paul Roazen

282

Theatre Haro ld Clurman

284

Music Davidamilton

285 Art

-

Lawrence Alloway

JAMES J STORROW Jr.

Publisher

Editor

CAREY McWlLLlAMS

Executive Editor

ROBERT H A T C H

Associate Publishor

GIFFORD PHILLIPS

LiteraryEditor

EMlLECAPO UYA

Copy Editor MA RI ON HESS- Poetry EditorLLENLANZ:

Theatre,

HAROLD

CL UR MANj Ar t, L AWRkNCELLOWAY'

Music DAVIDAMIL T O N; Sclo nce CARL DREHER. A d v e r t h i

Manaber,MARY SIMON; ClrculationManager,

ROSE

d. GREEN.

,

Editorial Asroclate. ERNEST GRUENING

Washington ROBERT SHERRILL- London RA YM ON D WILLIAMS:

Paris CLkhlD E BOURDET; Borh

C.

LMERY;anberra, C.

P.

The Nat io n is lu bl ls he d weekly [except biweekly In July and Augu t)

Arsoclates, Inc.

333

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Avenue, New York

N. Y. 10074.

Tal:

CH

by th? Na tio n ornpany and opyright 1971 in the U.S.A.

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NATION

Vol u me 213

No.

9

259

7/18/2019 September 9, 1971


” Schwattz said in

The

New York Times with all his faults

Khrushchev was a giant of a man ut fame is fleeting,

and people

in

the streets of Moscow were indifferent when

they were told of his death. As to the judgment of history,

Kosygin and his colleagues can do little about that. Proba-

bly all their efforts’ o keep Khrushchev out of the limelight

will come to naught, and theywill be forgotten long

before he is.

Fopked

Tongue

’

American Indians‘ hought hey had a good thing going

‘ with the

Nixon

Administration. Nearly every Indian leader

in the country applauded when, in’July 1970, the Presi-

dent spelled out his Indian policy to the Congress. Mr.

Nixon pledged that he would make every effort to achieve

greater self-determination for American Indians and to

involve them more significantly in their own affairs.

To Indian leaders, fettered since their people fell under

federal trusteeship by

a

bureaucratic and paternalistic

Bureau

of

Indian Affairs, it was about time. Mr. Nixon’s

new Commissioner of Indian Affairs, -Louis Bruce, strode

forth briskly in pursuit of the new mandate, lacing the

BIA with a cadre of Indians-many of them young. And

as

Indian involvement quickened, Indian approval

deepened.

However, skepticism based

on

decades of broken white

promises did not vanish instantly, and most Indian lead-

ers, even though they saw the makings of a‘ new order in

Indian affairs, stood by to see whether at testing time Mr.

Nixon really meant it.

Testing time is here and many Indians are concluding

he didn’t-or that, if he did, his policy

is

being undercut

and sabotaged by his own Department of the Interior.

The Nixon Administration began really to tumble out of

Indian favor in late July, but the disenchantment began

before that. Early this year, when Interior Secretary Rogers

C.

B.

Morton took office,he brought in an old friend,

Wilma Victor, as his special adviser

on

Indian affairs.. At

abopt the same time,he made William Rogers special

Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs

m

the Department

of the Interior. Neither appointment was popular, and

Wilma Victor in particular is anathema to Indian leaders.

She is considered bymost Indian tribal chairmen to be

an “old, old, old line bureaucrat,” the veryepitome of

the paternalism that has enraged Indians for years.

When John 0 Crow,

a

veteran of thirty years in the

BIA,

was

then appointed Deputy Commissioner of Indian

Affairs,withpowersof veto over the commissionerhim-

self, Indians on the reservations were convinced that the

policy

of

self-determination was dead,

As

one of his first

acts,

Mr.

Crow announced the transfer

of

William H.

Veeder, the BIA expert on ndian water rights, from

Washington to Phoenix, Ariz. At, hat point, patience

snapped. Mr. Veeder is unpopular with Interior officials

for his sharp criticism of government water policy; and for

the same reason he

is

a special favorite with Indian leaders.

His transfer, which he has refused to obey, was interpreted

as a certain threat to Indian water and land rights.

No less than ten Indian organizations, including the

National Congress of American Indians and the new

National Tribal Chairmen’s Association, passed esolu-

26

COMING NEXT WEEK

“Juror No. 4” by Edwin Kennebeck

A young editor, one of the twelve jurors who

found the NewYork Black Panthers innocent on

all counts, describes the atmosphere

of

the court

room, the quality of the evidenceand the state o

mind

in

America that combined to produce thi

months-long trial of a phantom conspiracy.

,

I

tions condemning Crow and upholding Veeder. They

a letter to President Nixondemanding an audience

the matter. The issue became red hot earlier this mont

Window Rock, A r k , the capital of the Navajo Nat

The National Tribal Chairmen’sAssociationmet

launched a major assault on the Department of the

terior and on the Administration’s departure from it5a

nounlced policy.

Peter MacDonald, theyoung chairman of the Nav

Nation, led the assault. He charged that the Departmen

the Interior-and particularly Rogers, Victor and Crow

were bent on destroying Indian rights. “Do we need

be told more explicitly who the enemy is? It is the Dep

ment of the Interior. We can never survive

so

long

as

remain the captive of a hostile department. . .Right n

we are prisoners of war and the Department of the Inte

is holding us, Commissioner Bruce and his entire B

ashostages until we turn over

our

remaining land

resources.”

Mr. MacDonald proposed that the BIA be remo

immediatelyrom the Department

of

the Interior

put into receivership n the Executive office of the Pr

dent himself. The tribal leaders present passed a un

mous resolution backing the MacDonald proposal. It

gone out o all 230 American Indian tribes, They h

thirty days to respond, If-a majority of the tribes appro

a full-scale Indian revolt will be in progress.

Interior Department officials have only added to Ind

unanimousbjectionso John Crownd the pleas

keep Veeder in Washington, The Interior Departm

could have forestalled the Indian uprising if

it

had quie

removed Crow and retained Veeder, as Indians had

peatedlyasked. It wouldhave eassured Indians that

government cared about whatheyhought. But

Rogers himselfhas aidhe thinks John Crow is

hell of a man” and “just what is needed at the BIA no

suspicions by their stiff-necked refusal to heed the alm

Bugs

for

Rent

In many cities across he country, if you want someo

tele#one tapped, or a microphone installed to pick up

conversations at home or n his office, all

you

need d

look in the classified telephone directory. Among

services offered, such as polygraph tests, “expert shad

ing,”“witnesses for all purposes,” bodyguards (inclu

man-and-dog teams), you may find “sophisticated e

tronic audio detection,” “surveillancespecialistsutilizin

the latest electronic aids,” etc. In

some

cities the of

are more discreet:

a

mere mention of “electronic devic

is deemed sufficient-and safer.

THE

NATION/September 27 1

7/18/2019 September 9, 1971


Apparently n ot all he telephone companies’ lawyers

are aware of the fact, but such advertising is in violation

f Section 18

of

the Omnibus Crime ControlandSafe

Streets Ac t of 1968. This section makes it a crime, punish-

ble ‘b y a fine

of

10 000 and/or imprisonment for five

other device, where such advertisement

the use of su ch device for hepurposeof the

urreptitious interception of wire or oral communications.”

t

is necessary that the person placing the advertisement

hould know or have reason to

know

that such advertise-

gn comm erce. Th e advertising of such devices is not

itself llegal: wha t the statute forbids is the advertising

f espionage services employing them.

Obviously, if a detective agency mentions bugging and

ire-tapping devices

in

its advertising, itsntent is to

equipm ent or its client’s purposes, whether

industrial spying, matrimonial cases or whatever. The

on the

d hat it is a violation of federal law, or simply

t is contrary to company policy. B ut so far most of

if not reckless,

n this respect, and probably

will

continue to be permissive

sent through the mails or n nterstate or

i

Meanness

I, ,According to the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of

969 miners disabled by black lung are entitled to Social

. A ccording to the- Social Security Ad-

to find out whether a man does

from the disease is to take ‘an X-ray of his

,alon g with a breathing test; but experts on black

h g outside the government-including Dr. Donald L.

asmussen, director

of

the Cardiopulmonary Laboratory

Appalachian R egional Hospital in Beckley,

W.

Va.,

e inadequate for disclosing the presence

severity of the malady. “Many, many miners have

of compensation,” says Dr. Ras-

simplest

and

least costly ,testing procedures

approach to this complicated problem.”

Now a group of twelve disabled miners from Harlan,

and Floyd Counties in eastern Kentucky have filed

Washington, D.C. against the Secretary of Health,

an attempt to eliminate the

as the test of whether or not a man has black lung.

of

these men have been given blood gas tests, with

NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS

Because of

postal

regulations,

The

Nation’s mail-

ing list must be arranged according to Zip Codes.

Therefore-with any correspondence about address

changes, renewals, etc.-please enclose the address

label from your Nation.

If

you don’t have a label, be

,sure to include your Zip number, and

be sure it

s

’correct.

Without it , we cannot h d our name plate .

1

m

NAmoN/Sepiember

27 1971 I

results showing that they are totally disabled. In eastern

Kentucky, where Social Security designates which institu-

tions and doctors m ay examine miners who claim to have

black lung, 78 per cent of the applications are denied.

In

Pennsylvania, where the state gives free medical tests

to ailing miners, Social Security has urned down only

33 per cent of the claims. There is something inexpressi-

bly mean about

a

government that

will

force men sick of

an incurable &seas-ontracted because that governm ent ~

does not enforce its own health standa rds in the mines-

to

sue

for the money the law

says

they have earned with

their ruined lungs.

Church and

‘Defense’

Church State the monthly magazine published by

Americans United for the Separation

of

Church and State,

has made a serious charge in its September issue against

the Defense Intelligence A gency (D IA ) ‘,graduate school.

This school trains middle-level miIitary intelligence officers

for service in Vietnam and elsewhere. According to

Church State, more than half the faculty of DIA are

Roman Catholics.

This might notbe

so

serious if the war in Vietnam,

did not have religious overtones and origins. Upper-class

Vietnamese are largely Catholic, and American interven-

tion after theFrench urrender was arranged through

Cardinal Spellman, Joseph P. Kennedy , and other prorni-

nent Catholics-although of course non-Catholics were

also instrumental in getting us into that disastrous venture.

T he first President of Vietnam under American auspices

wasNgo Dinh Diem, a RomanCath olic previously re-

siding in a Catholic institution and later assassinated when

the Americans no longer foundhim useful. Evennow,

Buddhist and Rom an CathoIic viewpoints are sharply at

variance

in

Vietnam. Thus indoctrinating American

in-

telligence personnel with a Catholic viewpoint is a very

serious matter.

This situation came to light when two DIA faculty

members, Gilbert

P.

Richardson, a Protestant, and Abra-

ham H. Kalish, a Jew, complained to the inspector general

in charge of DIA. affairs, that information

on

religious

affiliations of staff members was solicited and held by the

agency. Even the religion of an offic eis parents was re-

corded. The complaint was made nMay1969,and in

November the Civil Service Commission ordered DI A to

stop recording this type of information. Investigation re-

vealed that not only w ere) more th an

50

per cen t of the

D IA staff Catholics b ut hat 100 per cent

of

the In-

formation Service Center personnel were

-

of thesame

denomination.

Predictably, R ichardson ‘a n d Kalish were fired, i n

September 19 70 and April 1971 respectively. Richardson

has been fighting his dismissal, and he

Church Q

State

article says that at a closed Civil Service Commission

hearin g in Jun e of this year i t came out’that both of the

officers who signed Richardson’s dismissal form, and the

DIA appeals examiner who ruled against him, are Roman

Catholics.

I t would seem that, in the interest of the Church as

well

as

that of DM this unsavory situation should be

cleared

up

without further delay.

261

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september 9, 1971

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