America
James T. Keane — December 04, 2023
[NOTE: This blogger was a cub reporter when Phil and Dan Berrigan were both in jail after burning military draft files in Catonsville, Maryland in 1968. During the time Phil was in prison, rumors began to spread about him and Elizabeth McAlister. All their antiwar activism aside, these rumors were shocking to activist Catholics, as both had taken religious vows of celibacy, presumably sincerely at the time.
But sometimes love plays irresistible havoc with the firmest vows. When Phil was released from prison (after his Catonsville term) in December of 1972, I was at the press conference and was first to ask the question all were wondering about but no one else had dared to ask aloud: “Phil, what about you and Elizabeth McAlister?”
He deftly dodged the question. But within six months, the public had the answer: the couple was outed as “Legally married,” as described below.
However irregular their courtship might have been (but who, to quote a notable church authority, am I to judge?) they were a model of connubial constancy, til death did them part with Phil’s death in 2002, though there were also repeated partings to serve jail terms for the persistent antinuclear protests which became their renewed calling.]
More than 21 years later, many barrels of ink were employed for the obituaries and assessments of Henry Kissinger’s life and legacy since his death in late 2023 at the age of 100.
However, one story involving the former Secretary of State that might not attract as much coverage is nevertheless one of the most fascinating and revealing tales of its time: the accusation against the “Harrisburg Seven,” a group of antiwar activists, charging that they had formed a conspiracy to kidnap then-Secretary Kissinger in 1970.
In a 1972 trial, the federal government charged the defendants, most of whom were current or former Catholic priests or women religious, with a conspiracy that included the kidnap plot as well as plans to raid draft offices and bomb steam tunnels beneath Washington, D.C.
In November of 1970, F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover first revealed the supposed conspiracy to members of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, saying he had provided Mr. Kissinger with F.B.I. bodyguards to foil any kidnapping attempt.
Attorney General John Mitchell repeated the bombing and kidnapping charges in his January 1971 indictment of the alleged conspirators. At first, the government sought life in prison for the members of the alleged plot, though by May 1971, prosecutors announced they were seeking only five-year sentences and fines.
F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover revealed the supposed conspiracy, saying he had provided Mr. Kissinger with bodyguards to foil any kidnapping attempt.
While Philip Berrigan, S.S.J., [Society of St. Joseph, a priestly order that worked especially with people of color] Elizabeth McAlister, R.S.H.M.[Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary], the Rev. Neil McLaughlin, the Rev. Joseph Wenderoth, Eqbal Ahmad, and Anthony and Mary Cain Scoblick were charged, a number of others were cited in the 1971 indictment as “co-conspirators.”
They included Father Berrigan’s brother and fellow activist, Daniel Berrigan, S.J., and Jogues Egan, R.S.H.M., the provincial superior of Sister McAlister’s Marymount order of women religious. Sister Jogues was briefly jailed for contempt of court for refusing to answer grand jury queries. Amid allegations that the F.B.I. had illegally wiretapped the Marymount order’s phones both at home and in Rome, she was released after three days.
The drastic reduction in the government’s initial ambitions led more than a few commentators to accuse Mr. Hoover and Mr. Mitchell of trying the case in the court of public opinion even though they knew that the charges of attempting to kidnap Mr. Kissinger would never stick.
“The redrawn indictments clearly indicate that the government cannot prove the specific accusations leveled at the defendants by Messrs. Hoover and Mitchell,” the editors of America wrote in a Current Comment in May 1971. “Naturally, they also call into question the prudence and competence of those who authored the original charges.”
The trial began on Jan. 24, 1972, at the U.S. District Court in Harrisburg, Penn., with Judge R. Dixon Herman presiding. The defendants had a star among the lawyers on their side: former United States Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who told the court, “I am shocked that the United States Government should present such flimsy evidence. If I was still Attorney General I would never have permitted it to go before the grand jury, and you should enter a judgment of acquittal.”
The government’s star witness was Boyd Douglas Jr., a former convict described by The New York Times at the time as a “two time loser.” Mr. Douglas had met Father Berrigan in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary when the latter was still imprisoned on a six-year sentence for his role in the burning of draft records as part of the “Catonsville Nine.” (Mr. Douglas was in for pulling a gun on an F.B.I. agent when the agent attempted to arrest him for check fraud.)
Allowed out of Lewisburg at the time to attend classes at nearby Bucknell University and work in a local library as part of the prison’s work-release program, Mr. Douglas soon became a go-between for the still-incarcerated Father Berrigan and some of his correspondents, including Sister McAlister.
Among the letters was one speculating that they should “kidnap—or, in our terminology, make a citizen’s arrest—of someone like Henry Kissinger.”
Because letters in and out of Lewisburg were read by prison officials, Mr. Douglas had two friends rewrite incoming letters into his school notebook, which guards normally did not check. According to a former associate warden at Lewisburg, the scheme didn’t last long before Mr. Douglas was caught, at which point he agreed to become a paid F.B.I. informant and started turning over the original letters to the F.B.I.
He received over $9,000 from the F.B.I., including a $200 reward for information aiding in the capture of Father Daniel Berrigan on Block Island, R.I., in August 1970, after the latter had led the F.B.I. on a four-month “merry chase.”
Mr. Douglas was not an ideal witness for the prosecution: He had clearly agreed to the smuggling scheme as part of a deal with the government to avoid further incarceration, and his constant cajoling of the accused to come to Lewisburg to meet him and engage in further plotting created the impression of entrapment.
Further, he admitted in his testimony that he gave the defendants Army manuals (provided to him by the F.B.I.) on how to build bombs, and encouraged them to use a gun to kidnap Mr. Kissinger—suggesting that the core of the government’s case was manufactured by the F.B.I. itself.
Among the letters presented as evidence was one from Sister McAlister to Father Berrigan speculating that they should “kidnap—or, in our terminology, make a citizen’s arrest—of someone like Henry Kissinger.” She envisioned releasing Mr. Kissinger—the bête noire of antiwar activists at the time—after a week in exchange for a promise to cease the aerial bombing of North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, as well as the release of “political prisoners.”
Father Berrigan responded to her in a letter from Lewisburg that her plan was “grandiose” and warned that such an action “opens the door to murder.” Mr. Douglas nevertheless claimed that Father Berrigan later told him of plans to recruit a team for the kidnapping.
After the prosecution presented its case, The New York Times later reported that lawyers for the Harrisburg Seven asked the accused if they wanted to pursue an active defense, given the optics of the case for the jury—a group of idealistic antiwar activists with no history of violence, including young priests and a nun, prosecuted for a fantastical crime for which they hardly had the means to commit—and the trial judge’s restrictions on what arguments they could use. Four of the defendants voted to rest and three (including Father Berrigan and Sister McAlister) voted to present a more active defense.
“I felt we ought to face squarely the violent absurdity of this indictment insofar as we could in this suffocating court,” Father Berrigan said in a news conference after the trial. “That we ought to submit to the requirements of truth, even toward the Nixon Administration, and that we owed people an explanation of our lives and resistance.”
In the end, Ramsey Clark did not call a single one of the defendants to testify. Rather, he simply stated, “Your Honor, the defendants shall always seek peace. They continue to proclaim their innocence. The defense rests.”
After 59 hours of deliberations, the jury announced it could not reach a verdict on the conspiracy charge. After a hung jury was declared, the government declined to retry the case. Father Berrigan and Sister McAlister were convicted of a far lesser offense: smuggling letters in and out of prison.
America covered the trial in a long April 1972 essay by Evelyn Joseph Mattern, I.H.M., an Immaculate Heart sister and literature professor from Philadelphia who spent her spring vacation attending the trial, but otherwise gave it far less coverage than secular outlets like Time, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
In their 1971 Current Comment, “Kissinger Kidnap Plot Revisited,” the editors had expressed their disapproval of the government’s conduct in the case but also criticized “some segments of the peace movement” for harboring “a romantic fascination with quasi-terrorist activity.” The “plain people” of the United States, they wrote, “have no stomach for bombing and kidnaping, or even loose talk about such capers, no matter how well-intentioned.”
Father Berrigan and Sister McAlister were later married, and remained staunch antiwar activists in the following decades, with both serving significant prison time for their actions over the years. Father Berrigan died in 2002. His brother, Daniel Berrigan, S.J., died in 2016.
[Comment: Here’s Wikipedia’s take on the romance:
According to McAlister’s daughter, Frida Berrigan, the two met “at a funeral in 1966”,[5] although there are accounts that Berrigan and McAlister moved in the same circles from 1964, on.[2][4] In early 1969, Phil Berrigan and McAlister married by “mutual consent”. At this time, Berrigan was awaiting sentencing for pouring blood on draft files in the US Customs House in Baltimore, in the “Catonsville Nine” protest.[1][3][6]
Harrisburg Seven
While Berrigan was in federal prison for his involvement in the Catonsville Nine,[7] McAlister and Berrigan communicated clandestinely via a fellow inmate, Boyd Douglas, who was allowed furlough for work release.]
[NOTE: 1968 Catonsville Maryland incident
On May 17, 1968, the Nine [antiwar protesters, including the Berrigan brothers] went to the Catonsville office of the Selective Service [near Baltimore] on Frederick Road. They restrained an employee while gathering records into wire bins,[3] One SSS employee, Mary Murphy, attempted to save the draft records but was restrained by one of the Nine.[4] They then took the bins to the parking lot and set fire to them.[3] They then recited the Lord’s Prayer and explained to news crews that they were protesting the Vietnam war. Three hundred and seventy-eight draft records were destroyed.[5] ] ] Both Berrigan brothers were later jailed for this action. Phil and Elizabeth corresponded often while thus separated.
[Boyd] Douglas was an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and turned over the contents of Berrigan and McAlister’s letters to the authorities. These letters, which seemed to include plans to kidnap Henry Kissinger (the material was deliberately taken out of context), led to the prosecution of McAlister, Berrigan, and five others, known as the Harrisburg Seven.[8]
[NOTE: Leaks from the letters also contained hints of personal intimacy which, while textually rather less than salacious, were quite scandalous and out of bounds between celibacy-vowed Catholic clergy.]
Excommunication and marriage
Berrigan had spoken and written about the importance of celibacy to activists, but abandoned his previous position against romantic entanglements for McAlister.[9] McAlister and Berrigan were married (witnessed commitment) in January 1972 while Berrigan was in prison.[5]
Following his parole, on May 28, 1973, they were legally married and were then excommunicated by the Catholic Church,[1] though their excommunication was later lifted.[10] McAlister had three children with Berrigan: Frida, Jerry, and Kate. McAlister and Berrigan continued their activism, serving jail time for their civil disobedience. During their twenty-nine year marriage, Berrigan and McAlister spent a total of eleven years separated by prison.[5][11]]
A personal note [by James Keane]: When my grandfather, Michael Keane, a former mounted policeman in New York, died in August 1970, his funeral drew a large crowd to Incarnation Church in Washington Heights. The funeral program included art by Sister McAlister, who was in the same Marymount religious order as my aunt, Ellen Marie Keane, R.S.H.M.
Years later, a relative of the family told my parents that on the way into the church for the funeral he had seen two men he recognized as former classmates from Fordham Prep parked on the street. When he stopped to say hello, they shooed him away in a hurry: They were F.B.I. agents, staking out the funeral in case Father Daniel Berrigan (then eluding the FBI and his own Catonsville Nine prison term, appeared.
The Guardian
Henry Kissinger dies celebrated, but why? His achievements have long since crumbled
Click to see figure caption
‘All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure.” So said Enoch Powell – yet to this famous aphorism, Henry Kissinger, cold war strategist, US secretary of state, counsellor to 12 American presidents and alleged war criminal – who has died aged 100 – is a notable exception.
The man who invented shuttle diplomacy, promoted the concept of hard-eyed realpolitik and pursued fleeting mirages of detente between hostile superpowers paradoxically lived a life of multiple professional failures that ended happily, marked by generally high international regard.
Kissinger was, throughout his long career, a champion for an American global hegemony that is now unravelling. He and his emulators gave to imperialism a new, post-colonial face, pursuing perceived national interest regardless of the costs – which were principally levied on others.
And yet the three pillars of Kissinger’s achievement – the opening to communist China in 1979, a less confrontational relationship with the Soviet Union, and the quest for common ground between Israel and the Arabs – were built on weak foundations that subsequently crumbled.
Spiriting Richard Nixon to Beijing in 1972, where he met Mao Zedong, was seen as a breathtaking feat at the time. The manoeuvre, a not-so-subtle attempt to outflank the Russians, became known as “playing the China card”. In theory anyway, it piled pressure on the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev.
But in the longer term, it was post-revolutionary China, not the US, that benefited immensely from this first, tentative engagement and the subsequent, rapid and unparalleled economic, business and investment boom.
Deng Xiaoping, seizing power in 1978 after Mao’s death two years earlier, took full advantage of normalisation to begin to build the global superpower that today rivals and, some say, existentially threatens Kissinger’s American hegemony.
It would be absurd to blame him for modern China’s transformation into an aggressive, expansionist predator with scant regard for democracy and human rights. On the other hand, President Xi Jinping, whom he met in July, is clearly following the Kissinger model.
Detente with the Soviet Union, and a raft of nuclear arms control treaties undertaken by Nixon’s Republican successors, Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush (both advised by Kissinger), are conventionally viewed as additional feathers in the his cap.
But the eventual Soviet collapse and the ending of the cold war in 1989-91 – the key, triumphalist aim of western policymakers who took their cue from Washington – visited humiliation upon the Russian people.
Rather than help Moscow’s new leaders build a functioning, prosperous democratic state, Bush and then Bill Clinton cashed in on the “peace dividend” and, in Vladimir Putin’s view, broke their word about Nato enlargement to the east. In retrospect, this was a doom-laden failure.
Whether Putin is a student of Kissinger-ian pragmatism and realpolitik – the two men met in the Kremlin in 2017 – is an open question. What is plain is that Russia’s present leader is deeply familiar with the “China card” trick.
Weeks before the invasion of Ukraine in February last year, Putin and Xi held a summit meeting at which they declared a “no limits” partnership. The tables had turned. Now it was the US that was diplomatically wrongfooted.
China: a bigger problem than ever, challenging US leadership and values around the world. Russia: a bitterly resentful, resurgent power now once again threatening peace in Europe. Both are legacies of Kissinger’s world and the maximalist thinking that often informed his actions.
It is hardly necessary to cast a glance at the appalling suffering in Gaza, and or hear the grief of Israeli relatives of more than a thousand people who died on 7 October, to know that the successes of American Middle East peace-making, under Kissinger and since, are mostly illusory.
For sure, Kissinger helped mediate an end to the Yom Kippur war in 1973. But the basic conundrum – how may Jews and Palestinians live side by side in a disputed land – remains fundamentally unaddressed 50 years on. And the abiding perception of American political one-sidedness unfairly favouring Israel dates back to his time in office.
In lasting so long and continuing to contribute to foreign policy debates, Kissinger became a unique witness to the conflicts, travails and triumphs of what came to be known as the American century – the US-dominated, post-1945 international order.
But in many respects, he seemed, Canute-like, to resist, and stand in opposition to the rising tide of world affairs, which increasingly emphasised the importance of national self-determination and human rights.
His support for the murderous military coup in Chile in 1973 that overthrew the elected government of Salvador Allende, and ushered in the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, still stands out as a dreadful monument to the myopic, destructive American neo-imperialism of that era.
US support for violent cold war nationalist groups amid proxy wars with the Soviet Union, such as Unita in Angola or later, the Contras in Nicaragua, and Washington’s propping up of the worst kind of African and Middle Eastern dictators – because it supposedly suited US geopolitical interests – were policies that owed much to Kissinger’s thinking.
And then there was Vietnam. Although Kissinger is credited with helping to end the war, what he bequeathed, not unlike Donald Trump in Afghanistan, was a broken, shattered country that swiftly succumbed to a totalitarian takeover, rendering previous sacrifices futile.
For some who can remember it, Kissinger will never be forgiven for the secret carpet-bombing of neutral Cambodiain 1969-70, as part of the Vietnam campaign. Kissinger reportedly told the US air force to strike “anything that flies or anything that moves”. About 50,000 civilians were killed.
His actions were examined in Christopher Hitchens’ 2001 book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, which accused him of committing numerous war crimes. But as the decades rolled by and he gradually assumed the role of eldest elder statesman, such horrors – and all his multiple failures – were mostly set aside.
Kissinger was a man of a different age. It would be good to believe that, with him, that age has passed.
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Simon Tisdall is a foreign affairs commentator. He has been a foreign leader writer, foreign editor and US editor for the Guardian.
