Investigations: Costume Party

One bare-chested guest in a beret was ejected for wearing a bandolier of live ammunition. Hirsute Abbie Hoffman stopped twirling his yo-yo long enough to raise his hand and ask gravely “May I go to the bathroom?” Nancy Kurshan, clad as a witch, alternately burned incense and smooched with a brown-bearded, bell-bearing friend. She identified her organization as the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, and intoned:

Peace groups, the international student conspiracy.The Revolution—all are our children. We concocted Chicago from one Bat for peace, Numerous Democratic toads, And a pressure-cooked American flag.

It was a party only to the guests. The host, a subcommittee of the House Un-American Activities Committee, had issued subpoenas instead of invitations in an effort to determine precisely who had concocted Chicago. The purpose of last week’s hearing in Washington, said Subcommittee Chairman Richard Ichord,* was to find out the extent to which the Chicago rumble had been “planned, instigated, incited or supported by Communist and other subversive organizations and individuals,” and to see whether they should recommend that any legislation be enacted by Congress.

Aligned Policies. Apart from the bizarrely costumed and deliberately clownish yippies, a number of friendly witnesses appeared before the subcommittee. HUAC’s research consultant, James Gallagher, said that the Chicago demonstrations during the week of the Democratic Convention were “in line with the policies of Hanoi, Peking and Moscow”—which must mark the first time in years that Moscow and Peking have lined up together. From Chicago itself came two members of the city’s police intelligence unit. Police Sergeant Joseph Grubisic revealed that “captured documents” disclosed plans by the demonstrators to heckle the presidential candidates, harass voters at the polls on Election Day and, finally, to crash the presidential inauguration in Washington next January.

Robert Pierson, an undercover man from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, produced the juiciest testimony. Disguised in goggles and blue jeans and astride a rented motorcycle, Pierson had infiltrated a yippie group known as the Headhunters, and soon rose to the dizzying position of personal bodyguard to the yippie leader, Jerry Rubin. Pierson told how he had attended a yippie party in suburban Chicago where there was plenty of dope and girls, and informed the shocked committeemen, “They drank, took pills and engaged in sex.” As for Rubin Pierson testified, “he said we were to kill the pigs, all the presidential candidates and Mayor Daley. We were to disrupt the city.” Later in a rebuttal, Rubin insisted, “It’s all lies, crazy, vicious lies. Cops are killers, and they see killers in everyone else.”

Shouted Obscenity. The yippies’ lawyers loudly protested testimony that might prejudice grand-jury proceedings against their clients in Chicago and repeatedly demanded the right to challenge or cross-examine witnesses. Ichord turned them down every time on grounds that “this is a legislative proceeding. This is not a court of law.” Between gavel whacks, Ichord warned: “If you’re going to burst out with any more emotional outbursts, please leave the room.” Hoffman asked to be excused because he felt on the brink of an emotional outburst, then shouted an obscenity as the door closed behind him.

By the time the hearings ended, the subcommittee may not have accomplished much in the way of preparing future legislation. But the yippies, in their effort to turn the hearings into a circus, proved more puerile and vulgar than satirical or funny. The gap between the two sides seemed limitless. As the yippies followed Rubin out in one of their periodic protests, South Carolina’s Congressman Albert Watson asked Police Witness Grubisic in puzzlement, “How can you account for people following anyone like that?” Grubisic could only shake his head and reply: “I don’t know, other than that they’re different.”

* The chairman of the full committee, Louisiana Democrat Edwin Willis, was upset late last month in a runoff primary. Willis, 64, attributed his defeat to “Johnson haters.”