CALCAV 1968: In the Name of America

 

IN THE NAME OF AMERICA 

 

 

Seymour Melman, a Professor of Industrial Engineering at Columbia University, called me quite out of the blue in June of 1966. He briefly introduced himself, talked about how outraged he was about the War in Vietnam and said he had a matter of “utmost urgency’ he had to speak to me about concerning the war. We agreed to have lunch at the university faculty club the next day.

 

Seymour was a man of passion and brilliance with just a slight dose of academic arrogance. Over lunch he said we needed to find ways to stop that war and that “we” needed to expose United States war crimes in Vietnam in order to affect this end. I confess that “war crimes”, at least in my mind up until that point, seemed always to be an issue with which only the far left was concerned. While I hadn’t given the issue much thought, I knew that neither the Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam Board (CALCAV) nor I wished to get linked to the far left wing of the peace movement. (I was a bit nervous because I had only been at the organization a short three months and did not have a lot of perspective on many things).

 

Melman immediately picked up on my hesitancy.  He spoke about how the “left” had nearly ruined the organization with which he had been identified for many years – The National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, better known as just SANE. He said he wanted no part of the “left” either.

 

He then described his plan.  He pulled out a small folder of about fifteen clippings that were from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and other mainline newspapers and periodicals. He asked if I would read just a couple of the articles, which I did. They each described a different atrocity in Vietnam committed by U.S. Forces. Melman lowered his voice as if all those around us might hear and said, “Dick, it us up to you and me to stop the war crimes in Vietnam that are being committed in our names.” His proposal, in addition to his passion, stirred my interest.

 

Seymour had done his homework before he called me. He had spoken with Richard Falk a Professor of International Law at Princeton. Together they had agreed that a major research task needed to be undertaken. The purpose of the research would be to innumerate violations of specific provisions of international law by citing articles (such as the ones I had just read) that were in violation of a very specific law of war. The articles would only be obtained, Melman pointed out, from mainline and what the public at large considered “reputable” news sources. He concluded by saying that he could easily find qualified graduate students at Columbia to assist with the research.

 

Up until this point in the conversation, I was not clear as to what Seymour wanted me to do?   “Dick,” he argued, “we need to get your board to sponsor this work. We need the moral authority that only a group like CALCAV can give this project.” He said it was imperative that the study not be sponsored by organizations from the pacifist wing of the religious peace movement like the American Friends Service Committee or the Fellowship of Reconciliation because it could be too easily dismissed. 

 

I liked the sound of “moral authority” and thought the idea was at least worthy of consideration by the CALCAV Board.  I asked Seymour if he could give me a one-page summary of his proposal and that I would bring it up at our July board meeting.  Melman said he would be glad to prepare a summary but said he’d really like to be at the board meeting to hear the responses of the board.  I felt he was getting a little pushy and, besides, I had no idea how well known and respected he was to several members of my board.   I agreed to get back to him about his being at the board meeting even as he penciled in the meeting date into his date book.

 

I called John Bennett, who chaired out board meetings (and was President of Union Theological Seminary), and he overcame his somewhat conservative tendencies because of his respect for Dr. Melman.  John approved having Melman at the meeting and his proposal on the board agenda for August.

 

The war crimes discussion dominated the entire board meeting.  How long would a study take?  Is there really enough material that can be cited under specific laws of war, and how much would it cost, were just some of the questions. For me, John Bennett and Rabbi Abraham Heschel expressed the two most interesting concerns. At one point in the discussion Bennett turned to me and asked, “But Dick, if we did this study and it took a couple of years and  cost several thousands of dollars and the war ended before the study concluded, what we would do?” Here was John, already agreeing to the idea of the study but being caught up, as any CEO might, on its completion – or in this case, the cost and timing of its completion.  For me, sometimes too cavalier for the moment, this was simple. “John, if the war ends before we finish, we’ll be thankful and celebrate the end of the war.” While I never did learn whether my simple response satisfied John, we were able to move on.

 

Rabbi Abraham Heschel, another of the CALCAV Co-Chairs, didn’t say much during the early part of the board’s discussion. After nearly an hour of listening, Heschel said he didn’t think the project was a good idea for the organization. His key concern was the way in which such a study of war crimes, accusing the government and the young men and women in Vietnam of being war criminals, would be received by the body politic. Heschel was concerned with backlash.  Although at this time Heschel was being criticized for his stand against the war by colleagues at the Jewish Theological Seminary where he taught, I don’t believe his concern arose from the situation he faced at the seminary.

 

Partly due to Heschel’s persuasiveness and also the hour, the idea was tabled until the next board meeting, to be held in September.

 

Seymour Melman was a willful man. He was not going to be deterred. He met with Heschel twice after the board meeting and, after the second meeting, Heschel called me to say that Seymour had been very persuasive and that he (Heschel) was going to support the research study at the next board meeting.

 

In September the CALCAV Board approved going ahead with study. Over the next eighteen months Seymour and I were going to become very close friends.

 

Following Seymour’s lead, CALCAV agreed to appoint two Columbia University graduate students to carry out the research: Melvyn Baron and Dodge Ely. Seymour supervised the work of Melvyn and Dodge. He and I met almost monthly at the faculty club to discuss issues arising from the research, funding of the work and, toward the end, identification of a publisher, marketing the book and the time and place to release the study.

 

As the weeks grew into months, and I was able to review clippings that were being gathered by Baron and Ely, I became more and more aware of how important the work was that Seymour had led us into. Whether the actual release of the study would help end the war was certainly, in my mind, problematic, but I became increasingly convinced that, for the nation’s soul sake, it was the right work for our organization to be doing.    

 

Fundraising for this project was not easy. Some would-be donors resisted supporting the effort because it wouldn’t, in their view, help end the war. Others didn’t believe there was enough “bad stuff” to actually make a strong case that the United States military had systematically violated the laws of war.  On the other hand, we did receive support from a number of individual donors, many of them from the Jewish community. Rabbi Balfour Brickner, a good friend and member of the CALCAV Board, introduced me to Irving Fain, a prominent Providence businessman.  Mr. Fain, who gave generously to the project, believed that when members of the Jewish community would say “never again” to the atrocities of World War II, that our nation’s violation of international law in Vietnam was a place where Jews had to take a stand.

 

Baron and Dodge where zealots at their task. They put in long hours reading and copying material from many sources. It was also the case that Seymour Melman had to rein them in on more than one occasion, as they wanted to include gory reports from sources too far to the left in the political spectrum.

 

After about a year into the research, Seymour and I proposed to the CALCAV board the steps we anticipated in producing and marketing the book. Richard Falk, from an international law prospective, and Melman would contribute introductory essays to the book. Up to fifty religious leaders from around the country would be invited to sign the Commentary, the first essay in the book that would outline the moral issues raised by the study and what could be done. We explained to the board that we had a number of publishers that we intended to approach to print the book. We assumed that the book would be kicked-off in a national press conference somewhere in New York City or, perhaps, Washington. After a brief discussion, the board approved the direction that we had proposed.

 

It was March of 1967 when we began to look for a publisher. We should have been, but were not, prepared for the responses we received from the several publishers we approached. The book wouldn’t have an audience, it would be too dense and complicated to appeal to readers, and it “didn’t fit into the plans” of at least two companies we approached. The nation was a few years away from turning against the war and the idea of a publisher producing a book on American criminal activity in Vietnam was seen as risky business at best.

 

After all of the hard work, were we going to have a study on crimes of war that no one was going to see?

 

After some reflection, Seymour and I agreed that if the only way to get the study published was to find our own private printer/publisher, that is what we would need to do. In mid-June of 1967, as our researchers were concluding their work and securing the necessary permissions for reprinting copyrighted material, I was able to identify a possible printer in Annandale, Virginia – The Turnpike Press.  A Quaker friend had told me about the press and its Quaker owner, David Scull.  Seymour and I met with David in Virginia and promptly agreed that Annandale would be our publisher.  David Scull, personally, turned himself inside out on behalf of our book. He spent many nights and weekends making sure that the book was error free. Fortunately, we were able to secure the additional funds required to print the first 20,000 copies of 419-page volume.

 

With a publisher in hand, we tried to find a distribution channel by approaching book-marketing consultants who worked in this field. We were not successful for some of the same reasons that we were unable to find a commercial book publishing company. Finally, in desperation, we made arrangements to have the American Friends Service Committee, through its network of fourteen offices, distribute the book (in addition to us selling the book out of our office). The irony of this decision, after Seymour not wanting the sponsoring agency to be pacifist in its orientation, was painfully evident to us. 

 

In January of 1968, at a packed press conference at the Church Center foe the United Nations in New York, the book, In the Name of America was released.   Bennett, Heschel, Melman and Richard Falk spoke to the findings and significance of the study.  Two days earlier, I had shipped copies of the book and our press release to a group of five individuals at the Pentagon.   At the press conference, this enabled us to give the names of those at the Pentagon who had the study so that the press could follow up on the story by getting their reaction.

 

The press conference went well and the next day it was front-page news in the New York Times and over a dozen other newspapers around the country. Our office phone rang off the hook with book orders.  In about six months we ordered another 10,000 copies of the book from Annandale.

 

For me, the highlight of all this work came in a conversation with anti-war friend Father Phillip Berrigan. Berrigan had been involved early on in anti war protests. But in May of 1968, just months after the study was released, Berrigan and a group of colleagues broke into the selective service offices in Catonsville, Maryland and took draft files outside the building and burned them. All were arrested, went to trial and then to jail. The protest sent a shock wave around the nation. Catholic Priests burning draft files?  Several years later, after he had been released from jail, in a casual conversation over coffee in Washington Phillip told me that “that book, In the Name of America, is what convinced me that I had to do more to oppose the war than simply going to demonstrations.”

--  Rev. Richard Fernandez