In his own HUAC appearance, Tom Hayden similarly stressed the central role that youth culture played in undermining the authority of institutions ranging from the Chicago police force to HUAC itself. Hayden rather smugly declared that, despite the committee’s illusions of power, the young people of America had already won on the battleground of culture: “Politicians of the kind like Dean Rusk, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, these people are in a sense already finished, because they can’t exercise any authority; they have no respect from wide sections of the American people. Richard Nixon does not even believe that Beatles’ albums should be played. He believes that drugs are the curse of American youth.” Hayden’s easy transition between political figures like Nixon and rock bands like the Beatles reflected the widely held notion, in antiwar circles, that youth culture’s popularity foretold permanent changes in the American political landscape and, specifically, in the ability of the U.S. Army to fill its ranks with willing young draftees.5
HUAC members were not impressed. As Davis’s testimony concluded, Representative Albert Watson angrily interrupted him to declare, “You have nothing but contempt for this committee, for the President, Secretary Rusk, and everything else!”6 To Watson and other committee members, coffeehouses were part of a sinister conspiracy, hatched by the same dangerous radicals who had allegedly incited riots in Chicago, to indoctrinate loyal GIs. HUAC members refused to believe that American soldiers might organize political activity on their own. And no amount of evidence could convince them otherwise.
Three years after HUAC’s initial investigation into GI coffeehouses, government concern about a perceived crisis in the U.S. military came to a peak. Colonel Robert L. Heinl, a retired Marine colonel and frequent contributor to military publications, helped fan the flames of institutional alarm when his widely read and influential article “The Collapse of the Armed Forces” was published in Armed Forces Journal in June 1971.7 Heinl documented a series of disturbing phenomena, including increased incidents of racial violence, drug abuse, “fraggings” (murder of superior officers), political activism, desertion, and general insubordination. The article’s near-hysterical tone and sensational claims (Heinl characterized rebellious black soldiers as “headhunters” out for white blood) set off a flurry of media attention in the months following its publication. The piece even garnered an official reaction from the Department of Defense, which conceded “problems” but downplayed Heinl’s often pessimistic conclusions.8
Responding to Heinl’s article and the resulting media fallout, in October 1971 the renamed Committee on Internal Security9 initiated an investigation of “civilian subversion” of the U.S. military. The committee chair, Representative Richard Ichord (D-Mo.), opened the proceedings by reading a statement titled “Contributing Factors to the Morale Crisis in the Armed Services,” cataloging the many distressing symptoms of the now widely recognized crisis in the armed forces. Ichord acknowledged that the unpopularity of the war in Vietnam had taken a dramatic toll on military morale but insisted that the war alone was not enough to explain the nearly mutinous situation described by Heinl and other observers. As was perhaps predictable, Ichord suggested that dark forces on the Left were in fact responsible: “One aspect of this morale situation which has not been widely revealed or understood is the matter of attempted subversion of the men in uniform by militant extremists of the far left. These include, of course, those with Marxist-Leninist leanings who actually seek a Communist victory in Asia and hope to promote an American defeat or, at least, a humiliation of this country and its military forces.”10
Ichord’s statement included a specific definition of the GI movement that suggests the committee’s almost willful misunderstanding of the larger political and cultural context that contributed to its existence: “The ‘GI Movement’ is the term used by the radical left to refer to that aspect of the antiwar movement directed against the military. . . . The available facts indicate that the GI movement exists primarily outside the military and is essentially a civilian movement.”11 Ignoring the thousands of young soldiers who participated in one form or another, choosing instead to see the GI movement as the product of outside agitation by enemies of the state, Ichord and the rest of the committee imagined an exaggerated scenario that reduced a complex phenomenon to an anticommunist talking point.
During its five-day investigation, the committee was chiefly concerned with the GI coffeehouse network, identifying it as the most obvious base of operations for the radical Left’s plans to infiltrate the armed services. Heinl’s article, the source of so many of the committee’s allegations, had explicitly characterized the coffeehouses in this manner, referring to them as institutions that “ply GI’s with rock music, lukewarm coffee, antiwar literature, how-to-do-it tips on desertion, and similar disruptive counsels” and asserting that most of these coffeehouses were in fact sponsored by “a communist front organization.”12 If radical outsiders were responsible for the problems in the military, the committee assumed, the nation’s growing network of GI coffeehouses would be the place to root them out.
In its final report, spanning more than 1,200 pages, the committee collected testimony transcripts, visual materials, clippings from the underground GI press, and dozens of photographs depicting GI coffeehouses, mug shots of GI organizers, and surveillance photos of various GI movement events. Despite the massive scope of the investigation, however, the committee’s report contained few substantive conclusions about the nature of the GI movement and its possible relationship to the military’s well-publicized morale problem. Committee members seemed curiously obsessed with Marxism, in one case asking a witness nearly a dozen detailed questions about the types of books she found on a coffeehouse shelf. As the committee itself admitted in its final report, these details did not come close to proving any kind of criminal subversion. That an antiwar coffeehouse would stock Marxist literature on its shelves was simply not as shocking in 1971 as it might have been a decade earlier.13
On the last day of its investigation, the committee interviewed several military officials who offered a decidedly different interpretation of the military morale crisis. Rowland A. Morrow, an investigatory director from the Department of Defense, explained that, by the department’s own estimations, the actual influence of radical politics on GIs was minimal, despite the committee’s assumptions about outside indoctrination. When committee members repeatedly asked why the coffeehouse network had not been more aggressively policed by military and government authorities, Morrow pointed out that GI coffeehouses were public spaces and that visiting one was not, in and of itself, an act of subversion. Committee members were frustrated by the Department of Defense’s seeming passivity toward what they considered a treasonous coffeehouse network and expressed their hope that federal action could shut the coffeehouses down.14
“FUCK THE ARMY”: FIGHTING IT OUT ON THE LOCAL LEVEL
In addition to these congressional investigations, every GI coffeehouse project experienced some form of official or unofficial harassment, intimidation, or investigation throughout the network’s existence. As the network’s chief source of financial support, the United States Servicemen’s Fund spent most of its resources defending the network from these attacks. Costs could range from the relatively small expense of replacing broken windows and smashed stereo equipment at the Oleo Strut in Killeen, Texas, to the considerably larger sums required to defend the owners of the UFO coffeehouse in Columbia, South Carolina, from criminal prosecution in 1970. In the case of the USSF’s attempt to open a coffeehouse in Muldraugh, Kentucky, outside Fort Knox, in 1969, for example, the price of responding to harassment became prohibitive to the entire project and provided a stark lesson on the confluence of repressive forces, both public and private, then rising in opposition to the antiwar movement’s activity within the military.
At Fort Knox, an antiwar movement had been growing among GIs since July 1968, when four soldiers produced and distributed the first issue of Fun Tr
avel Adventure (the “FTA” initials making a sly reference to the ubiquitous GI movement catchphrase “Fuck the Army”). By the summer of 1969, dozens of Fort Knox GIs were meeting with a growing number of civilians at several off-post locations, and as the group became larger, participants recognized the need for a stable meeting place; a GI coffeehouse seemed the logical extension of the GI-civilian alliance forming in Muldraugh and nearby Louisville, Kentucky. On August 30, 1969, the Fort Knox Coffeehouse opened in tiny Muldraugh and was immediately set upon by city authorities. The day after opening, local police raided the coffeehouse and took the names of every person inside. The following day, the city of Muldraugh passed a law requiring new businesses to be subjected to a “detailed police investigation” in order to obtain an operating license. By September 5, the city attorney had convinced the building’s landlord to revoke the coffeehouse’s lease, and sheriff’s deputies officially shuttered the coffeehouse just six days after it opened its doors.15
The organizers of the Fort Knox Coffeehouse refused to back down, and the coffeehouse reopened less than a month later after a large rally of GIs and civilians in downtown Muldraugh. Through the entirety of the coffeehouse’s tenure in Muldraugh, though, a number of local groups waged a relentless battle to drive its organizers away. Over the final months of 1969 and into 1970, extralegal intimidation, including physical violence, combined with a concerted campaign of police harassment made operation of the coffeehouse virtually impossible. On two separate occasions, unknown parties lobbed firebombs through the coffeehouse windows (there was minimal damage), and both civilian and GI coffeehouse staff were routinely arrested when distributing leaflets and newspapers near the post or in town. In March 1970, a group of antiwar civilians and GIs who had been leafleting in the parking lot of a local burger restaurant were attacked by several men with bats and clubs; after the men stole a camera, beat a civilian organizer, and vandalized the car of a coffeehouse staff member, the police arrived to quell the violence. The men with clubs fled; police arrested the three bloodied GI organizers for disorderly conduct.16
The relentless arrests took a substantial toll on the Fort Knox Coffeehouse’s financial resources. In the fall of 1969, when six coffeehouse organizers were indicted in city court for “operating a common nuisance where evil and ill disposed people frequent,” their bail was set at $1,500 each (the equivalent of nearly $10,000 today). Authorities were surprised when the activists were able to pay the considerable sum, perhaps explaining why city police arrested four additional staff members the following day and collected another set of comparable bonds, further undermining the coffeehouse’s chances of survival in Muldraugh. But the unfair treatment seemed to strengthen solidarity among the GIs and civilians who frequented the coffeehouse; when the entire civilian staff was in jail on October 30, 1969, twenty active-duty soldiers risked their own arrests by taking over its operation for the evening.17
After the campaign of arrests and intimidation of civilian staff, GIs at Fort Knox took a more dominant role in the coffeehouse’s everyday operation and, perhaps more important, in the coordination of antiwar activities in town and on post. Ultimately, though, defending the coffeehouse from harassment drained the resources and morale of GI and civilian antiwar organizers at Fort Knox. By April 1970, the coffeehouse was closed completely, with those civilian organizers not in city jail moving on to work at other GI projects around the country.18 At Fort Knox, antiwar GIs would continue their activism against the war, most notably by continuing to publish Fun Travel Adventure, but without the support of an off-post coffeehouse and its staff of civilian activists.
The repression and harassment of local GI projects was unsurprising to GI organizers and their supporters, who had anticipated intense resistance. But many organizers were still taken aback by the degree of hostility and hatred some of the local GI projects provoked. At the Oleo Strut coffeehouse in Killeen, Texas, the civilian and GI staff, in their reports to national antiwar organizations, repeatedly reported their feelings of isolation and alienation from the Killeen community, whose citizens often expressed open hostility to the coffeehouse’s presence. The coffeehouse was a frequent topic of discussion on the Killeen Daily Herald’s editorial page, which seemed to delight in printing venomous letters from local citizens voicing animosity toward everything the coffeehouse stood for.
In May 1971, a local minister, Reverend Daniel Deutsch of Trinity Lutheran Church, wrote a letter to the Herald to defend the Oleo Strut, arguing that the arrest of ten activists outside the coffeehouse represented an assault on individual liberties: “It is with deep regret that we are now witnessing here in Killeen the repression of individual freedom and expression that is pervading our country. It is tragic that people cannot dress differently, wear their hair differently, or hold and express unpopular views without being harassed and even arrested for simply being different. I would willingly wager a good sum that ten well-dressed, well-groomed businessmen standing in front of a business establishment in the same area would not even have received a passing glance from the arresting officers.”19
Deutsch’s letter created a major stir. For several weeks, the Herald printed outraged responses from Killeen citizens who were incensed by Deutsch’s support of the Oleo Strut. “If Brother Deutsch will stroll by the Oleo Strut almost any evening, he will hear some of the most obscene language and absolute profanity he will ever hear. He will also see signs displayed that are not very decent, if not absolutely obscene and anti-Godly and anti-American,” declared Pastor Don Scott of Northside Baptist Church. Killeen resident Coy W. Hilbert asked, “Is it really an issue of hair and dress? Wouldn’t it be more a matter of morals? Does God condone filth, adultery, stealing, slander, willfully breaking laws, etc.? Killeen has been plagued with all of these. . . . Freedom and the rights of good moral people are suffering due to the acts of so-called ‘freedom marchers.’”20 Some writers aimed their anger directly at antiwar GIs themselves, blaming them for disrupting the war effort and hoping that military policy changes would eliminate dissent in the future. As one of these writers, who signed her letter “Mrs. Marion Jones, Army wife, and proud of it,” angrily declared, “The whole damned bunch of these soldiers do not rate the privilege of shining the boots of one serious-minded, well-behaved American soldier. The sooner we get an all volunteer Army and can dispose of this garbage, the sooner the whole Army will begin to be respected by the civilian population again.”21
For their part, the editors of the Killeen Daily Herald often took the opportunity to reinforce this contempt for the Oleo Strut, characterizing antiwar and counterculture activities as anomalies in an otherwise loyal, patriotic military town. To the chorus of disapproving citizens, the paper added its own voice: “The sight of police dragging antiwar protestors to the city jail on charges of violating the parade ordinance is a new experience for this military community. . . . The pictures of bearded youths laying on the sidewalks and being dragged to jail by police are a sorry spectacle. We have watched these conflicts in other cities, but it brings special embarrassment when they happen in Killeen, where men in uniform have learned that peace cannot always be won by collapsing on the ground.”22
The Oleo Strut was not alone in confronting local hostility. In rural Mountain Home, Idaho, where soldiers from nearby Mountain Home Air Force Base began meeting in early 1971 at a converted theater called the Covered Wagon, the public campaign against the coffeehouse seemed to come from every level of the local population. Mark Lane, one of the Covered Wagon’s civilian organizers, described the mood in Mountain Home in the months after the coffeehouse opened:
During the past year, hostility from some quarters toward the Wagon grew so intense that the local newspaper published letters urging physical attacks upon the Wagon and its members. A number of members were subsequently attacked, the doors and windows of the coffeehouse were smashed on 20 different occasions, [and] a member of the City Council, speaking at a council meeting, voiced approval for the attackers
, insisting they were “just doing their thing.” My own life has been threatened. . . . One minister prayed at a regular Sunday morning service for God to destroy the Covered Wagon. Not a single church has opened its doors to our members in Mountain Home, and some have literally slammed their doors in the faces of GIs.23
In the fall of 1971, the intimidation of the Covered Wagon became even more intense when a group of local men severely beat a patron inside the coffeehouse. Days later, vandals broke into the premises overnight, leaving the words “This is just a warning” spray-painted on the walls. Finally, on November 21, 1971, six months after opening, arsonists burned the Covered Wagon to the ground. The coffeehouse’s intentional destruction was never investigated by town authorities.24
The Covered Wagon’s burning produced an outpouring of support from national antiwar organizations, most notably the USSF, which helped raise funds to rebuild the destroyed theater building. In letters asking for support, which appeared in national newspapers and magazines, the USSF depicted the Covered Wagon as a vital resource for antiwar GIs in the region, highlighting the diverse services offered by the coffeehouse and stressing the importance of civilian support of the GI movement: “The Covered Wagon was an old theater which GIs converted, with many hours of hard work, into a meeting place for their off-base activities. These include publication of their newspaper, The Helping Hand, military counseling on GI rights, women’s meetings, political education sessions, music groups, and work with local people, such as The Idaho Migrants Program. In short, the project, which offers an alternative to the daily abuses of the military system, used the coffeehouse as its center. . . . We feel the GI Movement must have the support of all people who desire a quick end to the war in Indochina.”25 The USSF’s fund-raising campaign helped contribute to the Covered Wagon’s reopening in another location just weeks after the theater was burned down, and over the next several years the Mountain Home GI movement made a significant local impact.26
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