Word: berrigan
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...letters, if they are authentic, indicate that Sister Elizabeth wrote to Berrigan "in utter confidence" on Aug. 20, 1970, that she had attended a meeting in Connecticut at which a plan "to kidnap -in our terminology make a citizen's arrest of-someone like Henry Kissinger" was discussed. He was picked "because of his influence as policymaker yet sans Cabinet status, he would not be as much protected as one of the bigger wigs," and because "he is a bachelor, which would mean if he were so guarded, he would be anxious to have unguarded moments where he could...
Passionate. According to the Government, a reply by Father Berrigan termed the project "brilliant but grandiose." Kidnaping any more than just Kissinger, said this letter, would require too much manpower. Continued the letter: "Why not grab the Brain Child, treat him decently but tell him nothing of his fate -or tell him his fate hinges on release of political] people or cessation of air strikes in Laos. Then have batteries of movement people-Brain Child blindfolded-engage him on policy. Get it filmed and recorded. One thing should be implanted in that pea brain-that respectable murderers like himself...
...tone of the letters is warm. At one point, the Berrigan letter addresses Sister Elizabeth as "love," and the Government is known to possess other letters of a more passionate and poetic character. How did the Government get these letters? They were carried in and out of the prison by Boyd Douglas, 30, a prisoner serving time for passing bad checks, pointing a gun at an FBI agent, and violating his parole on a previous fraud conviction. Douglas was trusted enough by prison officials to be allowed to leave his cell daily to attend history and political science classes...
...doing was illegal, he protected himself by copying each letter he handled on a campus duplicating machine. The letters were in double envelopes. The outer envelope was addressed and mailed to acquaintances of Sister Elizabeth in New York, who then conveyed the inner envelope to the nun. Letters to Berrigan were handled similarly-mailed to friends Douglas had made on the Bucknell campus. He picked them up from his friends, duplicated them, and normally also had coeds copy them into his course notebooks, which would be less conspicuous if prison guards searched him. He usually retained the originals and kept...
...Violence. One theory of how Douglas became an informer was that guards became suspicious that he might be carrying letters when they found a letter in Father Berrigan's cell. The FBI confronted Douglas, and he turned over his copies. He then proceeded to deliver future letters to the FBI. It seems likely, however, that the defense will contend that Douglas was not discovered passing the letters, but that he was planted at Bucknell by the FBI as an informer on campus radicals. So far, defense attorneys will only say, as did Leonard Boudin last week, that release...