February 7, 1975

Charles Crowley, a key prosecution witness against five Attica defendants, has admitted that he had given false testimony against them because he was terrorized by police and prison guards.

Crowley, a Black former prisoner, said he testified to "save my life." He told a Jan. 22 pretrial hearing that after the Attica rebellion he was sodomized by guards with a nightstick, threatened repeatedly with knives and a gun, shown the body of a Black prisoner killed in the Attica massacre, and "made to crawl around on the floor and shout 'white power' and kiss their feet."

As a result of the torture, Crowley said he agreed to "back up" stories fed to him by state officials implicating four of the five men now on trial in connection with the deaths of two other prisoners.

Crowley's admission further exposes the Attica indictments for what they are—a massive frame-up to prosecute the victims of Attica rather than the real criminals.

Sixty-two people have been indicted on 1,400 different felony counts since the Attica rebellion. All of them were prisoners at Attica at the time of the uprising. Not one state trooper or prison official who was responsible for the massacre at the prison has been indicted. And the biggest criminal of them all—Rockefeller—has been promoted from governor of New York to vice-president of the United States.  
 

February 6, 1950

President Truman followed up his brazen declaration that the decision on making the H[ell]-Bomb was "his and his alone" by issuing on Jan. 31 the fateful order to go full speed ahead with the mass production of the Hell-Bomb.

What does the decision relating to the Hell-Bomb actually involve? It involves directly the lives of millions of people, if not all of them. It is the millions of civilians in all cities, big and small, in this country and throughout the world, who are the real targets of the Hell-Bomb whose major effectiveness, like that of the A-Bomb, lies in destroying not military objectives or forces but primarily civilians, cities, and industrial installations.

And the Hell-Bomb is merely the second installment in the frantic atomic armaments race. There will follow inescapably the third, fourth, and other installments, each spelling out more infernal destruction than the one before.

The Hell Bomb itself, with its unlimited blast potential, spells out the total annihilation of any and all cities, any and all inhabitants. How is it that such a life-and-death decision is made by a single individual?

The American people have now been told not only to accept a course that may lead to universal suicide, destroying civilization and perhaps the planet itself: the Hell-Bomb decision involves directly all their democratic liberties as well.

When it comes to the complete surrender of their lives and the liberties, who must and should decide if not the people themselves? All these issues intimately linked with the Hell-Bomb are more than ever before concentrated in the question of who shall decide on whether there shall be peace or war.  
 
 
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