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MR. WEINGLASS: Now, directing your attention to approximately 6:00 A.M. the following morning, Wednesday, August 28, do you recall what you were doing?
THE WITNESS: I went to eat. I went with Paul Krassner, Beverly Baskinger, and Anita and four police officers--- Paul also had two Chicago police officers following him, as well as the two that were following me. We walked and the four of them would drive along behind us.
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you describe for the jury and the Court what you were wearing at that time?
THE WITNESS: Well, I had cowboy boots, and brown pants and a shirt, and I had a grey felt ranger cowboy type hat down over my eyes, like this.
MR.WEINGLASS: What, if anything occurred while you were sitting there having breakfast?
THE WITNESS: Well, two policemen came in and said, "We have orders to arrest you. You have something under your hat."
So I asked them if they had a search warrant and I said 'Did you check it out with Commander Braasch? Me and him got an agreement"---and they went to check it out with him, while we were eating breakfast.
MR. WEINGLASS: After a period of time, did they come back?
THE WITNESS: They came back with more police officers---there were about four or five patrol cars surrounding the restaurant. The Red Squad cops who had been following us came in the restaurant, four or five police, and they said, "We checked. Now will you take off your hat?" They were stern, more serious about it.
MR. WEINGLASS: What did you do?
THE WITNESS: Well, I lifted up the hat and I went "Bang! Bang!"
They grabbed me by the jacket and pulled me across the bacon and eggs and Anita over the table, threw me on the floor and out the door and threw me against the car, and they handcuffed me.
I was just eating the bacon and going "Oink Oink!"
MR. WEINGLASS: Did they tell you why you were being arrested?
THE WITNESS: They said they arrested me because I had the word "Fuck" on my forehead. I had put it on with this magic marker before we left the house. They called it an "obscenary."
I put it on for a couple of reasons, One was that I was tired of seeing my picture in the paper and having newsmen come around, and I know if you got that word on your forehead they ain't going to print your picture in the paper. Secondly, it sort of summed up my attitude about the whole thing---what was going on in Chicago.
I like that four letter word---I thought it was kind of holy, actually.
MR. WEINGLASS: Abbie Hoffman, prior to coming to Chicago, from April 1968 on to the week of the Convention, did you enter into an agreement with David Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin, Lee Weiner or Rennie Davis, to come to the city of Chicago for the purpose of encouraging and promoting violence during the Convention week?
THE WITNESS: An agreement?
MR. WEINGLASS: Yes.
THE WITNESS: We couldn't agree on lunch.
MR. WEINGLASS: I have no further questions.
THE COURT: Cross-examine.
MR. SCHULTZ: Thank you, your Honor. . . .
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you see numerous instances of people attacking the Guardsmen at the Pentagon, Mr. Hoffman?
THE WITNESS. I don not believe that I saw any instances of people attacking National Guardsmen. In fact, the attitude was one of comradeship. They would talk to the National Guardsmen continuously and tell them they were not the people that they had come to confront, that they were their brothers and you don't get people to oppose {their ways} by attacking them.
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman, the Guards and the troops were trying to keep the people from entering into the Pentagon for two days, isn't that right?
THE WITNESS: I assume that they were there to guard the Pentagon from rising in the air possibly. I mean, who knows what they are there for? Were you there?
You probably watched it on television and got a different impression of what was happening. That is one aspect of myth-making---you can envisualize hoardes and hoardes of people when in reality that was not what happened.
MR SCHULTZ: Did you see some people urinate on the Pentagon?
THE WITNESS: On the Pentagon itself?
MR. SCHULTZ: Or at the Pentagon?
THE WITNESS: There were over 100,000 people. People have that biological habit, you know.
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you symbolically urinate on the Pentagon, Mr. Hoffman?
THE WITNESS: I symbolically urinate on the Pentagon?
MR. SCHULTZ: Yes.
THE WITNESS: I didn't get that close. Pee on the walls of the Pentagon?
You are getting to be out of sight, actually. You think there is a law against it?
MR. SCHULTZ: Are you done, Mr. Hoffman?
THE WITNESS: I am done when you are.
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you ever state that a sense of integration possesses you and comes from pissing on the Pentagon?
THE WITNESS: I said from combining political attitudes with biological necessity, there is a sense of integration, yes.
MR. SCHULTZ: You had a good time at the Pentagon, didn't you. Mr. Hoffman?
THE WITNESS: Yes I did. I'm having a good time now too. I feel that biological necessity now. Could I be excused for a slight recess?
THE COURT: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we will take a brief recess.
(brief recess)
MR. SCHULTZ: On the seventh of August, you told David Stahl that at your liberated area you---
THE WITNESS: What meeting was this, August 7?
MR. SCHULTZ: That's when you just flew in from New York.
THE WITNESS: Crossing state lines---
MR. SCHULTZ: At this meeting on the evening of August 7, you told Mr. Stahl that you were going to have nude-ins in your liberated zone, didn't you?
THE WITNESS: A nude-in? I don't believe I would use that phrase, no. I don't think it's very poetic, frankly.
I might have told him that ten thousand people were going to walk naked on the waters of Lake Michigan, something like that.
MR. SCHULTZ: You told him, did you not, Mr. Hoffman, that in your liberated zone, you would have---
THE WITNESS: I'm not even sure what it is, a nude-in.
MR. SCHULTZ: ---public fornication.
THE WITNESS: If it means ten thousand people, naked people, walking on Lake Michigan, yes.
MR.KUNSTLER: I object to this because Mr.Schultz is acting like a dirty old man.
MR. SCHULTZ: We are not going into dirty old men. If they are going to have nude-ins and public fornication, the City officials react to that, and I am establishing through this witness that that's what be did.
THE COURT: Do you object?
MR. KUNSTLER: I am just remarking, your Honor, that a young man can be a dirty old man.
THE WITNESS: I don't mind talking about it.
THE COURT: I could make an observation. I have seen some exhibits here that are not exactly exemplary documents.
MR. KUNSTLER: But they are, your Honor, only from your point of view-making a dirty word of something that can be beautiful and lovely, and---
MR. SCHULTZ: We are not litigating here, your Honor, whether sexual intercourse is beautiful or not. We are litigating whether or not the City could permit tens of thousands of people to come in and do in their parks what this man said they were going to do.
In getting people to Chicago you created your Yippie myth, isn't that right? And part of your myth was "We'll burn Chicago to the ground," isn't that right?
THE WITNESS: It was part of the myth that there were trainloads of dynamite headed for Chicago, it was part of the myth that they were going to form white vigilante groups and round up demonstrators. All these things were part of the myth. A myth is a process of telling stories, most of which ain't true.
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman---
Your Honor, Mr. Davis is having a very fine time here whispering at me. He has been doing it for the last twenty minutes. He moved up here when I started the examination so he could whisper in my ear. I would ask Mr. Davis, if he cannot be quiet, to move to another part of the table so that he will stop distracting me.
THE COURT: Try not to speak too loudly, Mr. Davis.
MR. DAVIS: Yes, sir.
THE COURT: Go ahead.
THE WITNESS: Go ahead, Dick.
MR. SCHULTZ: Didn't you state, Mr. Hoffman, that part of the myth that was being created to get people to come to Chicago was that "We will fuck on the beaches"?
THE WITNESS: Yes, me and Marshall McLuhan. Half of that quote was from Marshall McLuhan.
MR. SCHULTZ: "And there will be acid for all" ---that was another one of your Yippie myths, isn't that right?
THE WITNESS: That was well known.
MR. SCHULTZ: By the way, was there any acid in Lincoln Park in Chicago?
THE WITNESS: In the reservoir, in the lake?
MR. SCHULTZ: No, among the people.
THE WITNESS: Well, there might have been, I don't know. It is colorless, odorless, tasteless. One can never tell. . . .
MR. SCHULTZ: The fact is, Mr. Hoffman, that what you were trying to do was to create a situation where the State and the United States Government would have to bring in the Army and bring in the National Guard during the Convention in order to protect the delegates so that it would appear that the Convention had to be held under military conditions, isn't that a fact, Mr. Hoffman?
THE WITNESS: You can do that with a yo-yo in this country. It's quite easy. You can see just from this courtroom. Look at all the troops around---
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, may the answer be stricken?
THE COURT: Yes, it may go out. . . .
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman, in the afternoon on that Thursday you participated in a march, and then you laid down in front of an armored personnel carrier at the end of that march, at 16th or 19th on Michigan, laid down on the street?
THE WITNESS: Was that what it was? I thought it was a tank.
It looked like a tank.
Do you want me to show you how I did it? Laid down in front of the tank?
MR. SCHULTZ: All right, Mr. Hoffman. Did you make any gestures of any sort?
THE WITNESS: When I was laying down? See. I went like that, lying down in front of the tank.
I had seen Czechoslovakian students do it to Russian tanks.
MR. SCHULTZ: And then you saw a Chicago police officer who appeared to be in high command because of all the things he had on his shoulders come over to the group and start leading them back toward Grant Park, didn't you?
THE WITNESS: He came and then people left---and went back to the park, yes.
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you say to anybody, "Well, you see that cat?", pointing to Deputy Superintendent Rochford. "When we get to the top of the hill, if the cat doesn't talk right, we're going to hold him there, and then we can do whatever we want and the police won't bother us." Did you say that to anybody out there, Mr. Hoffman?
MR. WEINGLASS: That's the testimony of the intelligence officer, the intelligence police officer of the Chicago Police Department.
THE WITNESS: I asked the Chicago police officers to help me kidnap Deputy Superintendent Rochford? That's pretty weird.
MR. SCHULTZ: Isn't it a fact that you announced publicly a plan to kidnap the head pig---
THE WITNESS: Cheese, wasn't it?
MR. SCHULTZ: ---and then snuff him---
THE WITNESS: I thought it was "cheese."
MR. SCHULTZ: ---and then snuff him if other policemen touched you? Isn't that a fact, sir?
THE WITNESS: I do not believe that I used the reference of "pig" to any policemen in Chicago including some of the top cheeses. I did not use it during that week. . .
MR. SCHULTZ: You and Albert, Mr. Hoffman, were united in Chicago in your determination to smash the system by using any means at your disposal, isn't that right?
THE WITNESS: Did I write that?
MR. SCHULTZ: No, did you have that thought?
THE WITNESS: That thought? Is a thought like a dream? If I dreamed to smash the system, that's a thought. Yes, I had that thought.
THE COURT: Mr. Witness, you may not interrogate the lawyer who is examining you.
THE WITNESS: Judge, you have always told people to describe what they see or what they hear. I'm the only one that has to describe what I think.
MR. WEINGLASS: I object to any reference to what a person thought or his being tried for what he thought. He may be tried for his intent.
THE COURT: Overrule the objection.
THE WITNESS: Well, I had a lot of dreams at night. One of the dreams might have been that me and Stew were united.
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman, isn't it a fact that one of the reasons why you came to Chicago was simply to wreck American society?
THE WITNESS: My feeling at the time, and still is, that society is going to wreck itself. I said that on a number of occasions, that our role is to survive while the society comes tumbling down around us; our role is to survive.
We have to learn how to defend ourselves, given this type of society, because of the war in Vietnam, because of racism, because of the attack on the cultural revolution---in fact because of this trial.
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman, by Thursday, the twenty-ninth, the last day of the Convention, you knew you had smashed the Democrats' chances for victory, isn't that a fact?
THE WITNESS: No. My attitude was it was a type of psychic jujitsu where the people smash themselves--or the party wrecks themselves. The same way this trial is.
MR. SCHULTZ: By Thursday there was no doubt in your mind when you saw the acceptance speech that you had won, and there would be a pig in the White House in '69?
THE WITNESS: Well, that was our role in coming here, to nominate a pig. That pig did win. He didn't actually---which one did?
MR. SCHULTZ: And you went out for champagne, and you brought it back to Mobilization headquarters and toasted the revolution, you did just that, right?
THE WITNESS: We drank some champagne. It was warm, warm champagne.
MR. SCHULTZ: And toasted to your success, to your victory, isn't that right?
THE WITNESS: We toasted to the fact that we were still alive.
That was the miracle as far as I saw it, is still being alive by that last Thursday.
MR. SCHULTZ: That's all, your Honor.
THE WITNESSS: Right on!
THE COURT: Have you finished your cross-examination?
MR. SCHULTZ: Yes, I have.
THE WITNESS: Right on! |