Link News timeline of Roger Priest disloyalty case: 1971
The Servicemen’s Link to Peace Link News provides a biographical sketch and timeline of D.C. area Seaman Apprentice Roger Priest in early 1971. Priest’s charges including soliciting fellow soldiers to desert, urging insubordination and making statements disloyal to the United States following the publication of several issues his alternative GI newspaper OM.
The Link provided publicity, organizing material and coordinated legal assistance to active duty GIs around the country from 1969-71.
The group, headquartered in Washington, D.C., also played a role in the defense of the Presidio 27, prisoners who broke ranks and sat in the grass, singing "We Shall Overcome” in protest of conditions at the military prison and the Vietnam War in October 1968.
Eventually the protest was broken up by military police in riot gear, removing the protesters. one at a time. The group was charged with mutiny, which carried the death penalty.
The first defendants were sentenced to long prison terms of 12-14 years incarceration, but the sentences were overturned on appeal and reduced to short sentences for willful disobedience to a superior officer.
Carl Rogers, head of Link, served on the steering committee of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War In Vietnam—the umbrella group then coordinating Vietnam War opposition.
For a PDF of this 3-page, 8 ½ x 14 information release, see washingtonspark.files.wordpress.com/2020/09/1970-ca-roger...
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmLuExUi
Donated by Robert “Bob” Simpson
Link News timeline of Roger Priest disloyalty case: 1971
The Servicemen’s Link to Peace Link News provides a biographical sketch and timeline of D.C. area Seaman Apprentice Roger Priest in early 1971. Priest’s charges including soliciting fellow soldiers to desert, urging insubordination and making statements disloyal to the United States following the publication of several issues his alternative GI newspaper OM.
The Link provided publicity, organizing material and coordinated legal assistance to active duty GIs around the country from 1969-71.
The group, headquartered in Washington, D.C., also played a role in the defense of the Presidio 27, prisoners who broke ranks and sat in the grass, singing "We Shall Overcome” in protest of conditions at the military prison and the Vietnam War in October 1968.
Eventually the protest was broken up by military police in riot gear, removing the protesters. one at a time. The group was charged with mutiny, which carried the death penalty.
The first defendants were sentenced to long prison terms of 12-14 years incarceration, but the sentences were overturned on appeal and reduced to short sentences for willful disobedience to a superior officer.
Carl Rogers, head of Link, served on the steering committee of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War In Vietnam—the umbrella group then coordinating Vietnam War opposition.
For a PDF of this 3-page, 8 ½ x 14 information release, see washingtonspark.files.wordpress.com/2020/09/1970-ca-roger...
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmLuExUi
Donated by Robert “Bob” Simpson