BACK | NEXT | HOME

Continued from prev...

The Alternative Community in Buffalo, 1965-76

A. Rich Salter . . . A Sociology Student Encounters the Secret Police (1965)

By Elwin H. Powell

 

Why would the State spy on Rich Salter? In 1965 everyone ‑ liberals, professors, the press ‑ laughed about peace demonstrations, insisting the government did not take them seriously. Yet here was the FBI snooping around campus, looking for the organizers of the April March on Washington. In May came an urgent call from the Secret Service: "Mr. Salter, we have reason to believe you are a danger to the President of the United States! ‑ In June Salter's visa was denied. On August 30th, 1965 the Immigration Division of the U.S. justice Department in Buffalo held a hearing on the Salter case. Rich testified under oath with his attorney present. Let me quote from the typescript of the hearing:

 

Question (Mr. Edgecombe), "What organizations have you belonged to while you have been a student at the University?

 

Answer (Mr. Salter), "Sociology Club; Campus Hockey Club; Students for a Democratic Society . . . and I pledged a fraternity but I did not join it.

 

Q. Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Americans for Democratic Action?

 

A. No.

 

Q. . . . of the Communist Party of Canada . . . CPUSA . . . Peoples Socialist Party of Canada . . . United Jewish People's Order Mutual Benefit Society? The Progressive Labor Party? . . . The Socialist Workers Party? . . . The Workers World Party? . Youth Against War and Fascists (sic) (YAWF)? . . . W.E.B. Dubois Club of America? . . . Socialist Youth League of Canada? . . . Student Nonviolence Coordinated Committee (sic)? ,

 

No to all questions; he had scarcely heard of most of these organizations; of course Rich and I knew of YAWF but categorized their people as paranoid because they said the FBI had us under surveillance for antiwar activity. The interrogation continues:

 

Q. did you at any time make a statement during the course of demonstrations in Buffalo or Washington that you would like to punch President Johnson in the nose if you had the opportunity?

 

A. No, I didn't. The same answer I gave the Secret Service to the same question.

 

Q. Did you say that we would be better off if Johnson, if something happened to Johnson so that Vice President Humphrey would take his place because he was more sympathetic to our cause?

 

A. No, I didn't.

 

Q. Are you now President of the Students for a Democratic Society branch at the University?

 

A. Yes.

 

Q. This office has received anonymous telephone calls complaining about your organization, assistance and participation in a number of demonstrations in this area and Washington, D.C. That again is our reason for our inquiry today. Do you understand that?

 

A. I didn't know until this moment that there were anonymous telephone calls, so I can't answer that question.

 

Q. I am sure that you fully understand that when (Immigration) Service does receive complaints they must look into them?

 

Mr. Richard Lipsitz, attorney for Mr. Salter, ". . . you have to perform your duty and we understand, but we don't understand that anonymous telephone calls should be the basis of any investigation on the part of a law enforcement agency."

 

Anonymous phone calls? Who even knew Rich was an immigrant? Or cared? Couple of ‑years later I checked it out with my right wing contact, a defector from the John Birch Society. Did they call immigration or the FBI about Rich Salter? No; they were only interested in promoting private enterprise. Now eleven years later we do know the FBI is into composing anonymous letters to newspapers and mailing anonymous literature to college officials ‑ this we know from Bill Kovach's "Stolen Files Show FBI Seeks Black Informers; Agents Ordered to Organize High Level Infiltration of Radical Groups," New York Times, (April 7, 1971, p. 22.) So in 1965 the FBI called Immigration about Rich Salter? Or maybe Immigration called itself? Doesn't really matter, since immigrants have no rights: the Supreme Court ruled in the 1890s that the constitution protected "only citizens, not persons."

 

The Salter transcript continues:

 

Q. . . . on Page 13 of the Spectrum, April 2 ... contains a photo of you with a bull horn ... Isn't it true that on one occasion you spent all night at a teach‑in in Norton Union and that you were one of the speakers until about 4:00 in the morning?

 

A. Yes, it is true.

 

Q. Did you organize this group that left from the University to travel to Washington by bus?

 

A. Yes, I was one of the organizers . . .

 

Q. Who were the principal organizers?

 

Mr. Lipsitz, the lawyer, objects, but Rich says,

 

A. "It isn't a secret, you can go to the campus and find out for yourself; you can come to any open meeting. The people you are interested in would be David Gardiner; John Coe; Bill Mayrl; Bill Harrell; Sid Willhelm and Elwin Powell.

 

Q. On May 8, you participated with about 70‑75 other persons in the march from the University of Buffalo to Niagara Square in downtown Buffalo. Is that correct?

 

A. Yes. (My thought eleven years later: does the police establishment keep a more accurate count than the press? The press did not credit us with 75 people that day.)

 

Mr. Edgecombe the interrogator is saying that "on May 25, 1965 1 myself observed you participating in demonstrations in front of this building on the Court Street side (in Buffalo) protesting the hearings of the House Committee on Un‑American Activities at Chicago. Do you admit that you were so engaged? ‑

 

A. Oh, sure. And then,

 

Q. I have before me a book or publication published by the Sociology Group of the University of Buffalo, which I obtained, or which our Record Searcher obtained at the University of Buffalo and it is the summer edition 1965, No. 1. Do you have anything to do with that publication?

 

A. I have an article in that publication.

 

Q. I have noted that on page 25 through page 33 your article apparently appears entitled, "A New Imperialism". Is this your article?

 

A. Yes, it is.

 

Q. Most people reading this article would consider it to be highly critical of the United States Government and the present administration of the United States Government; isn't that true?

 

A. (After consultation) Again, I would have to say that the article speaks for itself; I don't know what most people think. It would be hard for me to answer that.

 

Q. Your article in CATALYST, and some of the statements you have made indicate that your feelings go much deeper than merely criticism of the United States Government's activities in Viet Nam. Isn't that true?

 

A. Again, whatever I have said and whatever I have written have to speak for themselves, Mr. Edgecombe.

 

Q. Did you ever say at one time in connection with the students march on Washington that you might be put in a concentration camp?

 

A. I don't recall ever having said that.

 

Q. How do you suppose a student would be treated in your native country of Canada?

 

A. I don't know.

 

Q. Is there anything further that you wish to add to this statement?

 

A. No, nothing at all.

 

The power of the State. . . or its impotence, which is revealed in the case of Rich Salter? 2,000 or 4,000 people demonstrate against the Vietnam War (bombing of North Vietnam commenced February 7th) . . . college "kids" hold an all night teach‑in . . . 80 people demonstrate against HUAC . . . a mildly socialist, i.e. social‑democratic, organization, SDS, is established on campus . . . these developments are sufficient to evoke an inquisition. These tiny gestures a danger to the State?

 

So Rich Salter's name went into the Computers of the Secret Service. In 1964, 9,000 names from the FBI files were sent to the Secret Service for further investigation." By the 1970s, according to Terry Pollack, the Secret Service list of dangerous people numbered at least 100,000 and included among them Tony Randall, Marlon Brando, Carl Reiner, Groucho Marx, Joe Namath, Joe Louis, Coretta King, Ralph Abernathy, Muhammad Ali, Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Julius Hobson, Walter Fauntroy, Marion Barry, Jesse Jackson, Floyd McKissick, Roy Innis, James Farmer, Stokely Carmichael, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis and Congressman Adam Clayton Powell."'

 

Do the Intelligence Agencies really care about what people write? Did they read Rich's article on the New Imperialism, showing that the State, not the Capital is the source of imperialist expansion today? And what did they do with Rich's article and that whole good issue of Catalyst? Is it filed away in the stacks of the new J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington? Great social history will be written when the FBI archives are opened: they still have unpublished papers of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, confiscated in 1918.

 

BACK | NEXT | HOME

All Material Copyright ©Reserved 1976-2001. Please request permission before reprinting.