NOTE: The text will come out better if you maximize the screen.Obviously, Judge Eubanks was unmoved by Tucker's argument. He also appeared to ignore the relevance of the following testimony by Tinker security guard Glen Alt, under cross examination by Tucker:
Stephen Jones, the FBI, & the Tinker 12 Entrapment, Betrayal, and Prison: A Vietnam Era Protest Story
Michael P. Wright
Norman, Oklahoma
Copyright 2000, By the Author
All Rights Reserved
E-mail the author
Introduction: Denied a Jury TrialMy political history as a campus radical and antiwar activist during the Vietnam years is reported in numerous documents and publications. For example, in May 1972 The Daily Oklahoman reported that a group of antiwar protesters were arrested at Tinker Air Force base, east of Oklahoma City, and accused of trespass, a petty offense.[1] I was a member of the group. In August of that year, after a defense motion for a jury trial had been denied by U.S. District Judge Fred Daugherty,[2] along with eleven others I was convicted. The eight male members of the group were sentenced to prison terms ranging from four to six months.[3]
The demonstrator who initiated the idea of entering the base and persuading others to do the same was William Lemmer, who later surfaced as an FBI informer. Although arrested at the base with the others, he was allowed to slip away quietly without facing trial.
After the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear our appeal, in December 1973 I began four months of confinement in the federal prison at Seagoville, Texas. [3] One of the attorneys who did a thoroughly incompetent job of representing us was none other than Stephen Jones, who later enjoyed international fame and handsome financial rewards for representing Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Stephen Jones was such a treacherous character that I choke over the phrase "defense attorney" when he comes to mind.
New Base Regulation Created Just for Us
At age 25, in May 1972, I was a graduate teaching assistant in the OU sociology department. On May 4, after giving my class a final exam, I attended an antiwar rally, organized by local activists in the War Resisters League (WRL) and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). The event was scheduled for the front steps of the state capitol building in Oklahoma City. I had been fairly active in antiwar protest at OU from 1966 through the May '70 crisis, but wasn't directly involved in organizing these spring '72 events. I was more of a follower than a leader for the May 4 action. The specific incident being protested was the U.S. mining of Haiphong Harbor.
[Photo at left is Michael Wright in 1969]
After the demonstration at the capitol, I was told that there would be another action at the main entrance gate of Tinker Air Force Base, east of Oklahoma City. I was offered a ride out there, and decided to go along.
About 200 protesters gathered outside the Tinker gate to picket and hand out antiwar leaflets to exiting and entering employees. FBI informants on the OU scene had, of course, penetrated the antiwar organizations and had told authorities that the demonstration would be taking place. Hastily, the day before, the base promulgated a new regulation stating requirements for lawful entry.[3] This was to be used as the pretext for the trespass arrest of about 40 of the protesters who crossed the line.
FBI Informant Bill Lemmer
Two prominent individuals at the Tinker demonstration were VVAW member Bill Lemmer, who had shown up in Norman some time in April, and WRL member Tom Flower, who was 42 years old at the time. A middle-class drop-out who had abandoned his suburban family life and profession to take a second shot at youth, Flower had the worst martyr complex of anyone I had ever met. This man really wanted to go to prison.
Flower was an easy opportunity for Lemmer, who was actually an FBI informant and agent provocateur. I began to suspect this of Lemmer when I noticed that he did not return to Norman after the arrest to assist in organizing the defense. In search of evidence, I asked one of the lawyers involved in our case to inquire as to the circumstances of Lemmer's release from jail. It was determined that he had been released on his own recognizance. I immediately suspected that his FBI contacts had intervened to arrange this favor for him. Word also reached me that the son of an Oklahoma City US Marshall had been told by his father that Lemmer was working with the FBI.
I passed the information about Lemmer along to local VVAW members, who started making phone calls to their national contacts. Fearing that his cover was blown, he confessed his informant role to two VVAW members in Florida in late May. In December 1972 Lemmer was the subject a Harper's article by nationally prominent American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Frank Donner, who had contacted me for information about him.[4,5]
At Tinker Lemmer basically manipulated Flower, who had the trust of the demonstrators, into leading us across the recently-painted white line which guards had warned us not to cross. The announced purpose of the entry was to ask a meeting with the base commander to read a statement against the war. In the midst of all this the MPs came out and ordered us at gunpoint to board buses bound for base security headquarters.
Led To Expect Temporary Detention and Release
Before I crossed the line I had been told by Flower that the authorities would "probably" respond by detaining us temporarily, taking photos and fingerprints, and then ordering us off the base with a "letter of debarment" telling us not to return under threat of arrest. I knew from an earlier episode at Ft. Sill, in which I was not involved but followed in the news, that this was the usual procedure for bases responding to unwelcome antiwar protesters.
Tom Flower had also gone through this experience at a base in Texas. Desiring to be arrested, after his first appearance he defied the order not to return and went back. The ACLU won a reversal of his conviction for this at the U.S. Supreme Court, even though Flower had made a forbidden second appearance.[6] Frustrated in his effort to be a martyr, he was trying once again at Tinker to realize his goal. The maximum sentence on the charge, a petty offense, was only six months. It appears to me that Flower saw six months as a cheap price for martyrdom and fame.
To my surprise, when we arrived at the Tinker base security building, I learned that we were being arrested and charged with the federal crime of entering a military base for a "purpose prohibited by law or lawful regulation" (Title 18, U.S.C. Sec.1382). The presence of federal Magistrate Charles Jones had been arranged in order to conduct temporary court for arraignment, and bail for most of us was set at $1500. For Flower and others considered to be leaders it was $5000. The statute provides the option of ordering unwelcome visitors to leave the base under threat of arrest if they return, but federal authorities at Tinker chose to arrest us for the first entry.
I was bailed out by my mother the next day, and I didn't care much at all for Flower's jailroom antics. He was howling and going on about how we should have a hunger strike and a "political trial." Hoping to put the government on trial, he was having dreams of being on the witness stand persuading jurors of the wrongfulness of the war and his own moral rectitude for protesting it. Unconcerned about the legal jeopardy in which he had placed others by promoting the false expectation that we would be merely escorted from the base, he was boasting about how he knew Leonard Weinglass, a prominent attorney in Chicago, and he could call him and persuade him to come down and defend us. Weinglass never showed up. Instead, we ended up with Stephen Jones and three other undistinguished local attorneys. Further, there was not even going to be a jury whom Flower could hope to persuade about anything.
There was a group of protesters who did not post bail immediately and remained in jail with Flower. Randy Floyd, a former decorated Marine pilot who flew 99 missions in Vietnam and won two Distinguised Flying Crosses, was in this group. Floyd was also in the 1974 award-winning antiwar documentary Hearts and Minds. He was originally from Duncan, Oklahoma.
Stephen Jones, who was then the American Civil Liberties Union general counsel for Oklahoma, showed up at the jail to solicit the case. Lacking any other counsel and impressed by his ACLU affiliation, the prisoners of course accepted his offer. After they were released from jail I became involved in communication with Jones, and was the treasurer of the Tinker 12 Defense Committee. I still have cancelled checks signed by Jones.
Government Protects Lemmer
It is necessary to explain how it came to be that only twelve were brought to trial in District Court. After the arrest we were each offered the option of either pleading guilty or waiving our right to a jury trial and being tried by the magistrate. Those who exercised either of these options were given fines, probation, and suspended sentences, and the rest of us were bound over for trial in district court. The informant Lemmer , although he was arrested with us and did not exercise either of the two options, was allowed to slip away quietly. They simply deleted his name from the list of defendants ordered to trial, even though he was the main instigator of the act for which I and seven other men ended up going to prison. That was U.S. "justice" during the Vietnam years.
Lemmer's mischief did not end at Tinker. During the summer of '72, while Tinker defendants in his wake were awaiting trial and prison sentences, he gave testimony accusing VVAW members in Florida of plotting to conduct a violent disruption of the Republican national convention, scheduled to take place in Miami Beach that year.[4,7] On the basis of his word federal prosecutors brought criminal indictments against a VVAW group which came to be known as the Gainesville 8. Two defense attorneys for them paid visits to Tinker 12 defendants in order to gain information about Lemmer. Part of their strategy was to attack and undermine his credibility as a witness. In this endeavor they were successful, and, enjoying the benefit of a jury trial, the Gainesville 8 were acquitted of all charges.
Jones' Strange Relationship to the ACLU
Returning to Stephen Jones, it was rather strange that such a character would be involved with ACLU. He had been a research assistant to Richard Nixon in the 60s, and was a Nixon-lover to the core. In a 1974 speech at Oklahoma State University, he defended Nixon and publicly dissented from the ACLU's position that he should be impeached. [8] He was also active in Oklahoma Republican politics, and in this regard had some degree of association with Bill Burkett, the chief federal prosecutor in Oklahoma City. It was Burkett's assistants who were prosecuting us.
In retrospect it appears that Jones was just using ACLU as a means of attracting high-profile cases to build his name recognition. He also seemed to be driven by the ambition of arguing a case before the Supreme Court. This put him in conflict with the obligation to try to win acquittal for his clients in the court of original jurisdiction.
In 1990, when Jones was declaring his intention to run for a U.S. Senate seat, he seemed to be embarrassed about his earlier involvement with ACLU. In an interview with The Daily Oklahoman, he claimed he resigned when the ACLU called for Nixon to resign from the Presidency. [9] He explained his earlier ACLU membership by trivializing and minimizing it. In the early 70s, he said, ACLU membership was "in vogue even among many conservatives." In his biographical summary , Jones does not mention his experience as defense counsel for the Tinker 12.
Silence About Lemmer
After a court order by Judge Daugherty denying our motion for a jury trial, [2] we requested a new judge and were assigned to Luther Eubanks, who hated us deeply, and took pleasure in finding us guilty. The entrapment argument was never developed by our attorneys. I think this was partly because Tom Flower, with his desire for martyrdom, wanted to leave the impression that he had been arrrested because of his deep convictions and moral courage, not because he had been beguiled and manipulated by an agent provocateur. He was in the position to give direct testimony about Lemmer being the first to suggest base entry, but did not offer to do so. I specifically remember attending a defendants meeting where Flower was present. Already convinced that Lemmer was an informant, I asked other defendants whether Lemmer had encouraged anyone to walk across the base boundary. Flower stood silent.
The attorneys were content with that. I suspect that Stephen Jones wanted to avoid offending his Republican political colleagues by raising charges of government misconduct. He preferred a more polite technical defense around such issues as the manner in which the base ordinance had been promulgated. He had his own political ambitions. Oklahoma ACLU Board members at that time included Don Emery, general counsel of Phillips Petroleum Company, and Edith Gaylord Harper, the daughter of E. K. Gaylord, publisher of the very conservative Daily Oklahoman. In 1990 Jones was the unsuccessful Oklahoma Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.
The attorneys did request that Lemmer's address be disclosed in a pre-trial motion shortly before the August trial began. The government response, signed by William Burkett and Jerry Wilson, was to deny that Lemmer was an agent or informant of the government "in the instant case," and provided only his P.O. Box number in Fayetteville, Arkansas, for an address.
Confronting the Prosecutor About Lemmer
I believe that the government officials pursuing our imprisonment were guilty of obstructing justice by letting Lemmer slip away without bringing him to trial. In May I had gone to the court clerk and obtained the records of Lemmer's arrest and release on recognizance bond.
In the fall of '72 I went to the Oklahoma City U.S. Courthouse to confront Jerry Wilson, the ambitious young prosecutor assigned to our case, and waved the Lemmer records in front of him and demanded to know why Lemmer wasn't tried with the rest of us. Wilson became red-faced and furious. OU sociology professor Fred Silberstein was with me for this meeting. Not surprisingly, we left without the benefit of hearing Wilson apologize for the government's reprehensible conduct.
Not long afterwards I read in The Daily Oklahoman that Lemmer had been brought in for a ritual procedure and was given six months' probation and a $100 fine after pleading guilty. [10] The government was trying to cover its tracks. The fact that they found it necessary to go through with this little charade strikes me as implicit admission of misconduct by not bringing Lemmer to trial in the first place, but no officials were ever made to account for it. Regarding Lemmer's role at Tinker, Donner wrote in Harper's: [4]
The arresting officer mentioned by Donner was Doyle Edwards, who also testified that he observed Lemmer and Tom Flower approaching a Tinker AFB colonel and telling him that they had a proclamation to read. Edwards believed it was necessary to keep a close eye on Lemmer. "I stayed close to him at all times after observing his activities outside the base," he said. Edwards' testimony was given at the trial of Tinker defendants who opted to be tried before the magistrate. [11]The Tinker demonstrators, who were tried and convicted last August (eight men received jail sentences: four women were placed on probation), insist that it was Lemmer who originally proposed that they penetrate the base -- the heart of the criminal charges against them. This claim is supported by the testimony of a Government witness, the arresting officer, that Lemmer was 'a potential troublemaker.' He was apparently unaware that Lemmer was a spy; indeed, the Government itself claimed at the trial that Lemmer was not acting as an informer 'in the instant case,' an implausible contention in view of the fact that, although charged with the same offense as the others, he was. . . quickly whisked off by the Bureau on informer business elsewhere.
![["IMAGE"]](http://members.aol.com/someswtguy/edwards.jpg)
The fact that Lemmer was acting in accordance with the will of federal authorities by leading us onto the base to set up the arrest is indicated by the trial testimony of Glen Alt, who testified that base authorities had been advised that demonstrators "would be probably trying to enter the base" on May 4. Additionally, Colonel George Malone, Chief of Security at Tinker, testified that he had informed his subordinates that demonstrators were going to try to enter the base.
[Photo at right is of Doyle Edwards arresting Lemmer at Tinker AFB.]
More evidence of the government's intention to precipitate an arrest by counting on Lemmer to lead demonstrators onto the base that day is found in the fact that Magistrate Charles Jones had left his office in the Oklahoma City federal courthouse on May 4 in order to be present to greet us with an arraignment proceeding after we were delivered to base security headquarters. He was already there and had set up shop by the time of our arrival. In reality, of the group arrested at Tinker on that day there was only one member who had a prior plan to enter the base, and that person was William Lemmer, FBI informant and agent provocateur.
Lemmer had a history of entrapment activity while working as an FBI informant. In his confession, he told VVAW members that he had "counseled, aided, and abetted" a teenager in a plan to blow up a campus landmark known as Old Main, and had taught the youth how to make and place the bomb. Consequently, in October 1971 FBI agents and city police arrested 19-year-old Mark Vanciel with a Molotov cocktail. Vanciel was sentenced to jail until his twenty-first birthday. [7]
Trashing the Sixth Amendment: No Jury for Us
In my high school government class I had studied the U.S. Constitution, and was taught to believe that the right to a jury trial in all criminal cases was absolute and could never be taken away. In the Bill of Rights, the language of the Sixth Amendment is very direct on this point:
The general lesson of my experience during the Vietnam years is that these "rights" are very precarious in the United States, and can be compromised away in the course of conducting repression against those who seriously challenge the entrenched powers who rule this country. It boils down to the chilling fact that if such rights are dispensible for those who attempt to exercise them in a meaningful fashion, they really do not exist for any of us.In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury . . .Ruling that defendants accused of petty offenses do not deserve jury trials, District Judge Fred Daugherty concluded with this language in his order denying our motion for a jury: [2]
Briefly summarized, Daugherty's opinion was that it was not worth the money to respect the defendants' interest in a jury trial. To this day, it remains an incredible outrage that the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review this ruling by Daugherty when it denied our appeal petition.Because of the court's interest in the orderly administration of justice and the practical problems confronting the court in a case with multiple defendants, the advantages of an expeditious and relatively inexpensive adjudication by the court outweigh the benefits which might accrue to the defendants from a jury trial.
[Go here. for a more detailed discussion of Daugherty's ruling denying a jury trial.] The Trial
The district court trial of the Tinker 12 took place in Oklahoma City during August of 1972, with Judge Luther Eubanks presiding. At the trial, the government convinced the judge, who in the absence of a jury was able to be trier of both fact and law, that all defendants had entered the base for an "unlawful purpose." The "unlawful purpose" was to defy the base regulation, amended in anticipation of our appearance and prohibiting unauthorized entry. Prosecutor Jerry Wilson stated in his opening remarks that "the defendants. . .did enter Tinker Air Force Base, a military reservation, for a purpose prohibited by a lawful regulation, that is, they entered without the base commander's permission." [12]
In her closing argument, co-counsel Arlene Tucker lampooned the government's position with the comment that the "prosecution has pointed out that there is circumstantial evidence that the defendant, and the others, did, indeed, enter for the purpose of entering. . ." She continued:
. . .but we all know that circumstantial evidence is sufficient only if consistent with guilt and inconsistent with any other reasonable hypothesis. There is here another credible and reasonable explanation for the defendants' presence on the base, and it is not based upon hypothesis, but on evidence gathered from the government's own witness, and that is they entered the base for the purpose of seeking an audience with the Commanding Officer. Colonel Malone testified to this. . .
All the evidence indicated that had a group of these defendants appeared in an automobile a week before May 4, they would have been granted such entry. . .they were treated differently because, as the security officer testified, an informer had told the base that there would be a large demonstration and that people would enter and that they must be on guard. . .the action of the defendants is reasonable and credible in light of their purpose, because they, like all other Americans, have been taught that the free and informed communication of ideas is a right and a very real duty.
![["IMAGE"]](mike69.jpg)
The judge's emotional frenzy of hostility towards the defendants was so severe that he was unable to maintain a consistent posture about the significance of important trial issues. During the trial, Steven Jones stated that the defendants had no intention to enter the base prior to their arrival at the gate. Judge Eubanks' reply was that "it doesn't make a hill of beans of difference whether they intended to go in there the day before, five minutes before, one minute." In contrast, when announcing his guilty verdict, after a brief deliberation, the judge had this to say:Q. Mr. Alt, as a normal procedure, if someone wished admittance to the base and had no I.D. card and they stopped at your gatehouse, what would you advise them to do?
A. I would advise them to go to the proper identification office to get temporary identification.
Q. Did you give that advice to any of the demonstrators?
A. No, I didn't.
It appears that, at the time he was deciding to find us guilty, the question of our prior intentions made a "hill of beans" of difference after all. Because of his earlier remarks during the trial, our attorneys had been discouraged against presenting testimony from defendants to allow us to define and make a record of our own purposes and intentions on May 4.I find, beyond any doubt from all the circumstances in this case, that all of the defendants, together with the others who were earlier charged, deliberately and by some prearrangement, congregated out there near gate two for the express and avowed purpose of creating either a confrontation or entering onto Tinker Air Force Base [emphasis added].
The Outrageous Behavior of Stephen Jones
There were numerous irregularities in the manner in which Stephen Jones treated the Tinker 12 defendants. When he entered our case, it was of course our impression that he was representing us for ACLU, not as a private attorney. Still, he was collecting money from us. He said it was just for "expenses." This seemed problematic to me.
In the fall of 1972 I contacted the national ACLU office and inspired their interest in our case. I had conversations with Melvin Wulf and John Shattuck, who later corresponded with me when I was in prison. They ended up writing an amicus curiae brief to support our appeal to the 10th Circuit.
In one of my conversations with them, I raised the question of whether Jones was representing us for ACLU or as a private attorney. They said without ambiguity that ACLU does not charge its clients any fees. "If he's taking money from you, then it's not an ACLU case," I was told. I still have in my files a memo from Jones in which he informed Tinker defendants that he must collect $800, or else he was going withdraw from the appeal. I also have cancelled checks signed by Jones.
This was the first of several ethical violations by Jones. He left us with the impression that he was taking the case for ACLU, but in reality he was doing it as a private attorney. This leads to the second ethical violation. I learned from an attorney in 1997 that it is a violation of ethics to show up at a jailhouse and solicit a case, unless it is being being done as a public interest case. It seems that Jones was "acting as ACLU attorney" when he showed up at the jail to solicit the case, but later quietly eased into the role of private attorney when it came to the matter of assessing fees. This kind of slippery behavior is one of Jones' hallmark character flaws.
The worst was yet to come. In January 1973 we lost the appeal to the U.S. 10th Circuit Court, and afterwards the defendants decided to ask the national ACLU to take over our case for an appeal to the Supreme Court. They agreed to do so. When the national ACLU called Jones to request our records, he refused to cooperate. Instead, he threatened to walk out on every ACLU case pending in Oklahoma if they took our case away from him. The cowardly national ACLU yielded to this threat. They did not have the strength to say, "Look, Jones, your clients have the right to fire you, and that's exactly what they have done." Our interests were compromised away.
After this Jones ignored our case and turned over the task of writing the Supreme Court petition to his intern, a law student named David Lee. He did an absolutely horrible job. I looked at his draft, and I could tell that it was way beneath professional quality. It was also seen by law student and Lawyers' Guild member Jim Drummond, who agreed with me about its unsatisfactory quality.
With the filing deadline approaching, in July 1973 the national ACLU had to rewrite the petition under conditions of extreme duress. Going down to the last minute, it had to be flown by helicopter to Washington, or else we would have gone to prison right then. Even after Jones' treachery and neglect, the national office indulged him by allowing his name to be included on the ACLU petition as counsel. Once again we see that the ever slippery Jones, even though he had earlier charged us fees, now appeared to be representing himself as an ACLU attorney on our case.
Sex Discrimination in Sentencing
In December 1973 we were ordered to begin our prison terms. One thing deserving emphasis is that, of the 12 defendants found guilty in District Court, only the eight men received prison sentences. The women were given probation and fines. [3] There was no reason for this other than simple sex discrimination. Discriminatory sentencing was of course argued in the appeal, but the 10th Circuit judges were not persuaded. One of the government lawyers stated during oral arguments that he was there at the demonstration, and said that the eight men were "the leaders." This was a fabrication. In reality only Flower and Floyd were in a leadership position. This statement also contradicted the behavior of the government in setting larger bails for the men considered to be leaders at the time of the arrest. I was not amongst them.
One person conspicuously absent from the group entering prison in December was Tom Flower. Unwilling to allow the possibility that the Supreme Court would once again obstruct his chance for martyrdom by reversing our conviction, he dropped out of the appeal after the Tenth Circuit decision and surrendered to U.S. marshalls to begin his jail sentence.
After release from prison I was of course encumbered by a criminal record as I went about my employment search. Although the "crime" was on record only as a petty offense, I confronted the rumor that I was a "convicted felon." This rumor was even used against me during the late '80s, when Neal Leader, working then in the Oklahoma Attorney General's office, treated it as fact while telling me why he believed me unqualified to offer expert information on a case involving Oklahoma interests and being argued before the US Supreme Court. This and other false accusations circulating about me, such as the ones published by Fielding Haas, [13] were among several factors guaranteeing that I would spend my entire young adulthood in poverty and chronic underemployment.
As for David Lee, years after his inept performance as Jones' intern in the Tinker matter I remember reading his name in the newspaper, when he was an assistant in the Oklahoma Attorney General's office. He was helping to manage their death penalty cases.
Stephen Jones and Timothy McVeigh
After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Jones became the court-appointed attorney for Timothy McVeigh. During the McVeigh trial, the fact came out that Jones had nailed the government for than $10 million in court-appointed fees for his defense of McVeigh, who was convicted and executed. Jones was milking it for all it was worth. I figured it was his strategy to stretch it out, make it last as long as possible with delaying maneuvers, and maximize the revenue.
McVeigh himself was quite unsatisfied with Jones' conduct as defense attorney, and refused to allow Jones to continue to represent him for appellate proceedings after the 1997 Oklahoma City bombing trial. In August 2000, McVeigh's new attorneys Dennis Hartley and Nathan Chambers were petitioning the federal court for a new trial and were accusing Jones of various kinds of misconduct including deception. Among their accusations was that Jones concealed from the trial judge the fact that McVeigh wanted to replace him a month before the trial began. Jones himself was present at the hearing and spoke to reporters. The Daily Oklahoman reported: [14]
No mention was made in the article of any attempt to contact the former subordinates Jones was blaming for the hoax. It did, however, call attention to the fact that Jones had published a book about the bombing case. Bearing that goal in mind during the trial and preliminary proceedings, Jones' interest in inspiring as much publicity about himself as possible becomes obvious. See the Boulder Weekly for an account of Jones' opportunism in the McVeigh case.Jones said a key reason McVeigh wanted Jones removed was the publication of articles that said he had confessed to his role in the bombing. Information for the articles was part of the defense attorneys' material and was a hoax, Jones said, but it was leaked by subordinates who were fired. . .In 1997, McVeigh's defense team said the confession was faked to try to secure an interview with the possible suspect in the attack.
UPDATE
Tom Flower's Earlier Antics in Texas
For more information about Flower, I reviewed a 1972 MA thesis about him and his conduct in Texas. The title is The Tom Flower Affair: a Case Study of a Political Trial , by Marian M. Sturdivant, May 1972 (St. Mary's, San Antonio). The thesis was written before the Tinker arrest, and was about Flower's earlier experience at Ft. Sam Houston in Texas. He had also been arrested there for trespass during an antiwar protest. Flower was convicted at the trial level, but the conviction was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Sturdivant concluded that there was no evidence that Flower's protest had any effect on the broader context of American politics. "The Vietnam War continued as before," she said. She quoted prosecutor James Kerr, who observed that "Flower derived great personal satisfaction from his courtroom behavior at sentencing." His attorney Maury Maverick "remarked that Flower's prestige in the eyes of his contemporaries was enhanced by the entire process." She continues (p. 68):
Additionally, she concluded that the Flower trial did not exert any favorable influences on the dynamics of American political life (pp. 68-69). "On the contrary," she said, "...its effect on the restructuring of the American political process could result in a less open, less democratic process" (p. 69).One commentator has stated relative to the new left scene: "It is very clearly the case that fear of arrest and jail is regarded not only as an occupational hazard but an honor and an opportunity." It seems clear that Flower derived great symbolic satisfaction from his "day in court" -- it represents a sort of badge of courage. Despite this personal satisfaction, however, Flower's use of the judicial process as a public forum, per se, was functionally unproductive.
Finally, she says that the Flower affair had unfavorable results, in terms of Flower's own stated goals, but it did provide him with "personal satisfaction" (p. 71).
Sturdivant's writing is quite consistent with my judgment that Flower had a deep desire for celebrity martyrdom. The Texas episode nourished this desire to some extent, but he craved more attention and personal satisfaction. This is why he was so easily manipulated by Lemmer at Tinker, and brought others down with him, even while the conviction from Texas was still under appeal.
______________________________________________________________
About Michael Wright
Go here for information about Michael Wright's education and professional history.
Related Memoirs
During my imprisonment at Seagoville, Texas, the acting warden told my
mother in a letter that
the prison staff did not view me as "criminally-
oriented."
During the May 1970 (Kent State) crisis,
Oklahoma's Governor Dewey Bartlett was bound and determined to have his own Kent
State at the University of Oklahoma.
John Neal
FBI Political Informant and Rat Fink
Another FBI Dirty Trick.
Five Police Cars in Pursuit of a Mirage.
References
1. "Young Protesters Irk Some Parents, The Daily Oklahoman May 6, 1972,
p. 1.
2. United States v. Floyd, et al., Order on "Motion and Demand for Jury Trial," U.S. District Court, Western District of Oklahoma, Cr. 71-175, July 11, 1972.
3. Michael Vitt, "U.S. Justice Strikes Again," [editorial] The Oklahoma Daily (University of Oklahoma), December 7, 1973.
4. Frank Donner, "The Confession of an FBI Informer," Harper's, December 1972,
p. 54-62.
5. As gratitude for my providing information about Lemmer, Donner mentioned me in the
acknowledgements of his book The Age of Surveillance (Alfred Knopf, 1980).
6. Flower v. United States, 407 U.S. 197 (1972).
7. John Kifner, "Informant Appears Key to U.S. Case Against 6 Antiwar Veterans,"
New York Times , August 14, 1972
8. Stephen Jones, "The Case Against Presidential Impeachment," Oklahoma Bar Association
Journal Vol. 45, No. 8, February 23, 1974.
9. David Zizzo, "GOP Challenger Insists He Can Defeat Boren," The Daily Oklahoman October 21, 1990, p. 1
10. "Tinker Protester Given Six Months," The Daily Oklahoman , October 28, 1972.
11. United States v. Richard Dennison, et al., Transcript of Testimony of Doyle Edwards,
Case No. J-72-156-191, U.S. District Court, Western District of
Oklahoma, June 1, 1972.
12. All quotations from the trial are from the official transcript of U.S. v. Floyd, et. al,
No. 72-175-Criminal, U.S. District Court, Western District of Oklahoma, August 16-17, 1972.
13. Fielding Haas, "NCCR Members Exposed," [letter] The Oklahoma Daily (University of Oklahoma), September 20, 1975.
14. Robert E. Boczkiewicz, "McVeigh's Appeal Alleges Deception," The Daily Oklahoman ,
August 18, 2000, p. 1.