Word: ellsbergs
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...Angeles, is a direct threat to the anti-war movement and to the constitutional rights which have traditionally allowed such movements to exist. Even if it were being conducted under more restrained and strictly legal circumstances, the investigation would appear repugnant to the many who feel that Daniel Ellsberg's action was fully justified. As it is, the grand jury's activity has amounted to an uncalled-for inquisition of Ellsberg's friends and associates...
...factor operating in the government's favor, of course, is its near-absolute control over the grand juries themselves. Ellsberg could never have summoned a grand jury to examine the Vietnam policy decisions of the U.S. government, but Washington can assemble innumerable grand juries to investigate Ellsberg. This point may seem superfluous, but it is important to remember that in calling the jury, the government also determines the locale and, therefore, the likely circumstances of the trial proceedings. The indictees in the alleged Kissinger-kidnap plot could have been tried appropriately in New York or Danbury or in any other...
...probable that government prosecutors will continue to question Ellsberg's academic colleagues in the Cambridge area, and equally likely that their goal is no better defined than general information-gathering for their own purposes. If that is the case, those who are subpoenaed to appear before the jury should not consent to testify, and it is worth nothing that those who are approached by the FBI are under no legal obligation to talk. With the government's perversion of basic rights through indiscriminate use of the grand jury system, it seems only just that members of the academic community should...
...government's first actions was to subpoena Ellsberg's bank record to determine whom, if anyone, he had paid to xerox the documents. The jury then took up other matters while the Justice Department official handling the case, Paul C. Vincent, travelled to Los Angeles to interrogate Ellsberg's in-laws and other associates before the grand jury there. These sessions turned up nothing. Then, returning to Boston, Vincent initiated subpoenas against several academics who are widely thought to have had nothing to do with the leak of the secret study; the three who have so far been called...
That the government has subpoenaed many of these people for as-yet-undefined purpose is best illustrated by its treatment of three witnesses: Samuel Popkin, an assistant professor of Government at Harvard, and two of Ellsberg's in-laws. In each case, the witness refused to answer any question beyond routine formalities of name and address. At that point, Vincent could have offered each witness immunity from prosecution in the case; if the witness still refused to answer, he would have been jailed. But it is likely that the government would grant immunity only if it knew precisely what information...