Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (June 25, 1973)
Porter takes Eachus-FBI issue to national prosecutor By SCOTT SPITTAL Of The Emerald Ron Eachus may never be called before a Senate investigative committee, but the release of an FBI file concerning him to a local broadcaster may bring a whiff of the Watergate-political espionage stench to Eugene. The leak of Eachus’ file to former Eugene Broadcaster Ray Camay of KPNW (Camay now edits the Valley News) prompted former Congressman Charles Porter to write to an old friend and classmate, the special investigator for election mispractices (Watergate), Archibald Cox. Porter brandished the reply Thursday at the Demo Forum. He said Cox promised to have his staff in vestigate the matter, and if the results warrant, perhaps bring criminal charges. “There may be a prosecution by Mr. Sidney Lezak (the U.S. Attorney for Oregon),” said Porter. The file on Eachus, former Emerald editor and ASUO president, was compiled by the FBI in con junction with Eachus’ 1969 trip to Hand with a radical peace group. An FBI agent gave the file to Camay during a period in 1969 when Camay was broadcasting editorials against Eachus’ actions and the peace movement in general. Subsequently, the file found its way into the hands of the Emerald, which reported the existence of the file this April. Porter said he had also talked to Sen. Dan Inouye (D - Hawaii) and that Rep. Phil Burton (D - Ca) is querying the FBI as to whether it is common policy for an FBI agent acting on his own to release a file to a newsman. Porter called the release of the file “regret table-we should go after it in court” and stated he 1 knew of only one other similar incident — J. Edgar I Hoover’s leak to Southern newspapers of a dossier | on Martin Luther King’s sex life. Porter made his remarks in the context of a rambling talk he delivered on how he believes America is “proceeding down the road to a police . state.” He said that the recent developments about Watergate only serve to underline the growing danger of mushrooming executive power. He cited presidential impoundment of funds, the bombing of Cambodia against the express wishes of Congress, and Nixon’s “misuse of secret police” as the “most fearsome aspects in the development of a police state.” He also cited “lack of public disclosures” and the present system of campaign funding as in dicators of what he believes is an American government trend towards a police state. Porter spoke following the news of Cox’s intention to consider filing extortion charges against the Committee to Re-Elect the President. Blaming the trend on an increasing sense of moral decay in the higher levels of government, Porter said “It’s a small step from cover-ups, burglaries, buggings, preventive detention and political espionage to where the government will knock on someone’s door in the middle of the night and march him away.” “If you can justify one, you can justify the other.” Photo bv Phil Waldstein Ron Eachus According to Ben Holman, director, the Community Relations Service (CRS) is an unusual organization . “There is no agency in Washington that operates exactly like ours,” he says. Holman recently gave this account of the role of the CRS. The CRS is a government agency with a social goal. It operates out of the Justice Department. Four out of five of the organization.'s top officials are from minority groups. Developed nine years ago as a result of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the CRS is an organization created to help control racial tensions and reduce discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin (not, however, on the basis of sex). It deals with ap proximately 200 racial conflicts each year. The organization is a simple one, according to Holman. “There simply isn’t any red tape” he says. Problems brought to the CRS offices by mail or by phone are responded to im mediately. The CRS relies heavily on the use of both mediation and con ciliation. Conciliation is mainly a temporary measure to reduce the tensions of the situation, while mediation is more permanent. When CRS members hear of a situa t ion or conflict in which they might want to intervene, such as a prison riot, a case of a policeman shooting a Black man, school desegregation problems, they first assess the situation. They determine the magnitude of the crisis, and whether the grievance is long standing or the result of a par ticular event or series of events. They determine which law enforcement agencies are in volved and how the local officials are reacting to the situation. They examine the lines of communication between the adversaries in the conflict and determine what demands, if any, are being made. From there, they attempt to determine whether the difficulties are those which CRS is authorized to deal with and if they can be helped by CRS, whether the resources are available to solve the problem, whether an agreement once made, can be implemented. Also, if mediation is used, the CRS attempts to discover whether onflicting parties will negotiating parties to agree to predetermined conditions of negotiation and to put the results of the negotiations in writing. CRS tries to set up mechanisms to avoid new conflict. Although the CRS does not have enforcing or policing power, it can refer cases of discrimination to other branches of the govern ment. Some of the negotiations too, can be self-enforcing. Prison officials who break the terms of met with schools to form a school contingency plan. It set up a citizen’s information center to help parents who were frightened or threatened or simply uninformed about the situation. CRS encouraged clergymen to make their resources available; it aranged for workshops to prepare teachers to deal with the problems that the switch would provide. The organization’s CRS: an unknown federal agency that cools off domestic hot spots By Gale Rohde of the Emerald accept them as mediators and whether the parties will keep an agreement, once they make it. Mediators share negotiations, clarify the issues, and act as a third party in termediary between the con flicting parties. They arrange meetings among adversaries, help to list - the resources available to solve the problem, consult with and advise the law enforcement agencies with an eye to reducing violence. The CHS intervenes in and constructively redirects the discussions, clarifies and helps everyone to understand the nature of the conflict. CRS also helps the conflicting parties with self-policing and internal discipline. The CRS tries to get the their agreement risk having a riot on their hands. Holman gave two examples of actual cases in which the CRS was involved. One was on the tension in Prince Georges County as a result of a court decision to desegregate the schools. Another was the Wounded Knee situation. Prince Georges County, Holman said, has had a history of racial violence. When the decision to desegregate the schools came out, there seemed to be a great probability of violence. CRS set up a con ciliation task force. It developed a county-wide contingency plan to coordinating the groups and agencies involved. It met with the leaders of both sides in order to find ways to avoid violence. It workers acted as observers and monitors of the situation. In this way, the probability of a violent situation was decreased. On February 27, about 250 Indians, many of them members of AIM, the American Indian Movement, occupied Wounded Knee, S.D. They demanded a change in their tribal govern ment, as well as complaining about treaty violat ions and corruption in the Bureau of In dian Affairs (BIA). TheCRShad 50 people there and were often, according to Holman, the only commuication link between the opposing forces. The 50 CRS members policed cease fire agree'ment, clarified grievances and ser.cd as intermediaries in channeling food supplies. CRS officials acted as escorts in and out of Wounded Knee for various people. And it was finally the CRS to whom the Indians agreed to surrender their arms. It was a complicated operation because there were so many conflicting sides. There were three sets of blockades. The CRS had to deal with Richard Wilson, the official tribal chief, the FBI and marshalls and the AIM forces. Richard Wilson had threatened to kill the first CRS official that appeared on the scene and refused to let anyone but FBI members through his blockade. The job of the FBI was prin cipally to uphold law and order and not necessarily to avoid violence. AIM members were very careful about whom they would let behind their lines. They wouldn’t let anyone in unless they knew them personally or unless they were certified by CRS. Although AIM occupied the Wou nded Knee area for more than 70 days before they surrendered their arms, Holman popnted out that only two people lost their lives. Very few people seem to have heard of CRS. Holman says that CRS didn’t really want to be well known. CRS people were afraid that if their viewpoint were known their effectiveness with people of different beliefs would be impaired. Now, however, due to a threatened cutback in funds, proposed by the President and already passed by the House, the CRS has decided to change its policy. CRS is threatened with having its staff of 341 cut down to 103. Out of 42 field officers, only 10 will remain. The 6.8 million dollar budget will be cut to 2.8 million doll ars. The CRS members seem to hope that if the organizations function and its actioras become better publicized, people will recognize its worth and seek to maintain it.
