I was on the faculty of the National War College in 1998, when key congressional Republicans and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh Shelton, invited President Bill Clinton to the college for a “closed-door briefing” on new requirements for military procurement and military pay.  Over the previous six years, Clinton had been an easy mark for the Pentagon because he typically yielded to the political right-wing leaders of the Congress (e.g., Rep. Newt Gingrich and Senator Jesse Helms) as well as to the military brass on defense spending and on opposition to such important arms control and disarmament issues as the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention. More

I have seen the police at their best and at their worst. The worst was when two New York cops tried to frame me for disorderly conduct after they overheard me accusing them of taking bribes. The one guy punched me after piling me into a police car and pushing me into the 9th precinct, where, in the 1960s, Blacks got beaten up a lot. That afternoon, he came to my cell. Unlike the crazy person he was when he arrested me, he was polite. He said if I pleaded guilty, I would only have to spend a weekend at the notorious Rikers Island. Unlike Blacks who couldn’t afford bail, I had resources. I got a lawyer who saw to it that I wouldn’t spend one day in jail, nor did I pay a fine. As I started for home from the court, where the Blacks and browns in the courtroom encouraged my testimony–they knew the deal–I noticed that smirks on the faces of the two cops who arrested me had disappeared. More