Hi. Right after tomorrow's mailing I'll be going up to the Bay area for a
few days. The two mailings are a bit longer than usual, but on point.
Ed
Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 09:09:26 -0700
From: "Walter Lippmann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: John T. McTernan obituary NY Times
("In 1967, the Supreme Court agreed with his argument that
a person with an up-to-date passport could travel to any
country that had not been specifically prohibited by the
State Department. (There was then no criminal statute
barring travel to Cuba.")
WALTER NOTES:
(McTernan was the attorney for Helen Travis, whose famous
case reached the US Supreme Court and upheld the rights of
US citizens to travel to Cuba. Thus, the term "travel ban"
which is often used to describe US government policies is
utterly inaccurate. There is no travel ban. There are now
in effect policies which deny the right of US citizens to
spend US funds in Cuba outside of certain defined circum-
stances. And as you can see from this obituary, McTernan's
record was a long and distinguished one and Cuba travel is
but one of the many good causes for which he successfully
argued in court. After leaving membership in the CPUSA,
McTernan never renounced his left-wing political views.
He will be truly missed.
In fact, there is no actual ban on travel to Cuba. Read the Supreme Court
decision in the Travis case (not a long complicated document) here:
(http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=385&invol=491
Walter Lippmann, CubaNews
http://www.walterlippmann.com
======================================================
April 16, 2005
John T. McTernan, Prominent Defense Lawyer
in McCarthy-Era Trials, Dies at 94
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
John T. McTernan, a left-wing legal gunslinger who prowled
the nation to defend people accused of being Communists in
the McCarthy years and who aided unpopular clients like
Angela Davis and Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers, died
on March 28 at a nursing home in Santa Monica, Calif. He
was 94.
His son, Garrett, announced the death.
In a book about the McCarthy years, "The American
Inquisition: 1945-1960" (Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), Cedric
Belfrage listed Mr. McTernan as one of a dozen or so
leftist lawyers who professed not to view the American
justice system as a capitalist charade. These lawyers, Mr.
Belfrage wrote, battled in many courtrooms and legislative
chambers for scant remuneration to defend people and
principles, almost always defined on constitutional
grounds.
Mr. McTernan, who for some time was a member of the
Communist Party himself and won four of the six cases he
took to the United States Supreme Court, was known for
several high-profile cases. One was his defense of 14 of 16
Communist leaders tried in Manhattan in 1952 on charges of
plotting violent revolution.
The Daily Worker, a Communist newspaper, said Mr. McTernan,
who lived for most of his life in the Los Angeles area,
took the case after 200 local lawyers refused it. The Daily
Worker and mainstream New York newspapers covered the trial
extensively.
Former Communist Party members testifying for the
government told of "Aesopian language" in party documents
that they contended was code for overthrowing the United
States government, The New York Times reported. For
example, they said, the phrase "material progress in the
Soviet Union" meant forcible revolution.
Mr. McTernan countered that the party advocated peaceful,
not violent, overthrow, and he ridiculed the notion of
secret codes, Aesopian or otherwise. The judge directed
verdicts of acquittal for two defendants, and said the
performance of Mr. McTernan and his legal team made him
"proud of his profession." The others were convicted.
In 1954, Mr. McTernan defended Clinton Jencks, a union
organizer accused of falsely signing an affidavit saying he
was not a Communist. The star witness in the trial, in El
Paso, was Harvey Matusow, a paid government informer who
after this trial and others admitted falsely accusing
people of being Communists in about 200 cases. The main
issue was whether the government was compelled to share
with the defense an informer's statements to prosecutors.
In his confessional book, "False Witness" (Cameron & Kahn,
1955), Mr. Matusow wrote that he respected Mr. McTernan's
ability to embarrass him. But he bragged it had not been
easy.
"It was my job to checkmate him," Mr. Matusow wrote. "Only
this was dirty chess, and there could be no rematch if I
won."
Mr. Matusow did win. But Mr. McTernan prevailed over the
federal government's lawyer, John V. Lindsay, the future
mayor of New York, when the case reached the Supreme Court
in 1957.
The resulting greater difficulty in trying people accused
of being traitors was later cited by the Justice Department
as a reason it was abandoning prosecutions under the Smith
Act, the principal law it used to hunt Communists.
Another influential case Mr. McTernan took to the Supreme
Court involved three men in Pennsylvania who possessed
books that the state, under its own sedition law, deemed
dangerous. None of the 1,400 lawyers in Allegheny County
would take the case, so Mr. McTernan was summoned from
California. He could not stop the men from being convicted,
but his appeal to the Supreme Court won their release by
overturning the law.
In 1959, he convinced the Supreme Court that a lawyer had
been wrongly convicted of violating legal ethics for making
a speech about her client, who was accused of being a
revolutionary, while the trial was going on. In 1967, the
Supreme Court agreed with his argument that a person with
an up-to-date passport could travel to any country that had
not been specifically prohibited by the State Department.
(There was then no criminal statute barring travel to
Cuba.)
John Tripp McTernan was born on Nov. 25, 1910, in White
Plains. His father was a trust deed officer and his mother
a schoolteacher who instilled in her son a love of
education. He graduated from Amherst College and Columbia
Law School, paying his way by winning scholarships and
working odd jobs.
Mr. McTernan's son said he did not know when his father
joined the Communist Party nor exactly when disillusion
with Stalin's Russia provoked him to leave the party. Mr.
McTernan's first job was with the United States Shipping
Board Bureau, an agency in the Commerce Department, and his
second was with the United States Maritime Commission.
He then worked for the National Labor Relations Board,
rising to regional counsel for Northern California. He
moved on to the Office of Price Administration, then joined
a private law firm in 1944.
At the firm, he teamed up with Ben Margolis, who won fame
by spiritedly defending movie-industry figures who had been
blacklisted. The firm paid its bills with labor, personal
injury and product liability cases, but the passion of Mr.
Margolis and Mr. McTernan was defending the needy and the
leftist.
One case they won together involved Anna and Henry Laws, a
black couple in Los Angeles who were evicted from the house
they owned because of a covenant saying it could be
occupied only by whites. The Supreme Court in 1948 ruled
against such restricted covenants.
Another case involved overturning the murder convictions of
23 Mexican-American youths in what were popularly known as
the Sleepy Lagoon killings. Another involved 15 leaders of
the Communist Party in California whose convictions the
Supreme Court reversed on the ground that their subversive
talk was more abstract than dangerous.
Mr. McTernan succeeded in winning Angela Davis, the black
militant and avowed Communist, reinstatement as a professor
at the University of California. He also won an antitrust
case against lettuce growers and Teamsters that paved the
way for the United Farm Workers to represent field workers.
In addition to his son, who lives in Pacific Palisades,
Calif., Mr. McTernan is survived by his wife of 53 years,
Anne, whom he met while defending accused Communists in
Pittsburgh; three daughters, Kathleen McTernan of San
Anselmo, Calif., Deborah McTernan of Felton, Calif., and
Karla K. McTernan of Santa Cruz, Calif.; a granddaughter;
and a great-grandson.
In an interview with The Los Angeles Daily Journal in 2000,
Mr. McTernan said, "I'm still what I'd call a left-winger."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
---
CELEBRATION OF A RADICAL LIFE: JOHN MCTERNAN
A memorial tribute will be held May 1 for legendary attorney John T.
McTernan, who fought many landmark civil liberties and constitutional rights
cases, including several before the U.S. Supreme Court, and whose Papers
are held at the Library. The service will be from 2-5 p.m. at the Kehillat
Israel Synagogue, 16019 Sunset Boulevard, Pacific Palisades. Light
refreshments will be served. RSVP by April 25 to Barbara Hadsell,
626-585-9600 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] The McTernan family
requests that in lieu of flowers, contributions in John's memory be sent to
the Southern California Library, 6120 S. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, CA
90044; and the L.A. Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, John McTernan
Tribute, 8124 W. 3rd Street, Suite 201, Los Angeles, CA 90048.
***
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-04-18-ruzicka-edit_x.htm#
USA TODAY
Posted 4/18/2005 7:52 PM
Aid worker's words - just a week before she was killed
By Marla Ruzicka
Baghdad - (The writer, a 28-year-old humanitarian aid worker from
California,
was killed Saturday in Baghdad when a suicide bomber aiming for a convoy
of contractors pulled alongside her vehicle and detonated his explosives.
Her driver also died. She filed this piece from Baghdad a week before her
death. The facts cited in it have been reported elsewhere as a matter of
public record. However, estimates of the number of civilian deaths in Iraq
vary
widely. Media reports put the number between 17,000 and 20,000 people.)
"In my two years in Iraq, the one question I am asked the most is: "How
many Iraqi civilians have been killed by American forces?" The American
public has a right to know how many Iraqis have lost their lives since the
start of the war and as hostilities continue.
In a news conference at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in March 2002,
Gen. Tommy Franks said, "We don't do body counts." His words outraged
the Arab world and damaged the U.S. claim that its forces go to great
lengths to minimize civilian casualties.
During the Iraq war, as U.S. troops pushed toward Baghdad, counting
civilian casualties was not a priority for the military. However, since May
1, 2003, when President Bush declared major combat operations over and
the U.S. military moved into a phase referred to as "stability operations,"
most units began to keep track of Iraqi civilians killed at checkpoints or
during foot patrols by U.S. soldiers.
Here in Baghdad, a brigadier general commander explained to me that
it is standard operating procedure for U.S. troops to file a spot report
when they shoot a non-combatant. It is in the military's interest to
release these statistics.
Recently, I obtained statistics on civilian casualties from a high-ranking
U.S. military official. The numbers were for Baghdad only, for a short
period, during a relatively quiet time. Other hot spots, such as the Ramadi
and Mosul areas, could prove worse. The statistics showed that 29 civilians
were killed by small-arms fire during firefights between U.S. troops and
insurgents between Feb. 28 and April 5 - four times the number of Iraqi
police killed in the same period. It is not clear whether the bullets that
killed these civilians were fired by U.S. troops or insurgents.
A good place to search for Iraqi civilian death counts is the Iraqi
Assistance Center in Baghdad and the General Information Centers set up
by the U.S. military across Iraq. Iraqis who have been harmed by Americans
have the right to file claims for compensation at these locations, and some
claims have been paid. But others have been denied, even when the U.S.
forces were in the wrong.
The Marines have also been paying compensation in Fallujah and Najaf.
These data serve as a good barometer of the civilian costs of battle in both
cities.
These statistics demonstrate that the U.S. military can and does track
civilian casualties. Troops on the ground keep these records because they
recognize they have a responsibility to review each action taken and that it
is in their interest to minimize mistakes, especially since winning the
hearts and minds of Iraqis is a key component of their strategy. The
military should also want to release this information for the purposes of
comparison with reports such as the Lancet study published late last year.
It suggested that since the U.S.-led invasion there had been 100,000
deaths in Iraq.
A further step should be taken. In my dealings with U.S. military officials
here, they have shown regret and remorse for the deaths and injuries of
civilians. Systematically recording and publicly releasing civilian casualty
numbers would assist in helping the victims who survive to piece their lives
back together.
A number is important not only to quantify the cost of war, but as a
reminder of those whose dreams will never be realized in a free and
democratic Iraq.
Marla Ruzicka was founder of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in
Conflict. In 2003, she organized surveyors across Iraq to document civilian
casualties. Before that, she managed a similar project in Afghanistan that
helped to secure assistance from the U.S. government for civilian victims.
***
RADIO INTIFADA - Voices from Kolkata to Casablanca
Voices of struggle, Voices for change
Thursday, April 21, 2005, 3-4 pm
KPFK 90.7 fm; and streaming live a@ www.kpfk.org
Third Anniversary Special: Palestinians and Right of Return
Three years ago, on April 24, 2002, SWANA aired its first Radio Intifada
broadcast, which focused on Palestinian refugees and their right of return
to their homeland.
Now, three years later, we return to the theme of refugees and the right of
return, contextualizing the issue and discussing recent developments, as
explored at the third annual Right of Return conference held recently at
UCLA. The program will also feature music of Marcel Khalife, David Rovics
and Iron Sheikh.
Guests include:
Jaber Suleiman, a refugee from Ein el-Hilweh camp in Lebanon, is the
co-founder of Aidoun (Returnees). He formerly worked as a researcher/
writer with the Planning Center in Beirut, Lebanon.
Lara Kiswani, long-time activist with the Students for Justice in Palestine,
UC Davis and the Third World Forum, is a founding member and current
National Program Director of the National Council of Arab Americans.
Elias Rashmawi, longtime Sacramento area activist, is the national
coordinator of the National Council of Arab Americans (NCA) and member
of the national steering committee of the Free Palestine Alliance (FPA).
Co-produced and co-hosted by Michael Shahin and Sherna Gluck, SWANA
(South and West Asia and North Africa) of KPFK.
We urge our listeners to support the programs produced by other community
collectives: American Indian AirWaves (Weds 3pm), Global Voices for Justice
(Weds 2-3 pm); Some of Us Are Brave (Thurs 2-3pm) and Spanish language
programs of CRC (Monday to Thursdays 9-10:30pm)
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