Howard Petrick Case
FT, HOOD BRASS TURN IT OVER TO PENTAGON FOR DECISION
By Lew Jones
The Petrick case was too hot for them. That appears to be what the military authorities at Ft. Hood decided when they suddenly closed the investigation -so far as they. are concerned publicly.
They passed the buck to the Pentagon. And so Pfc. Howard Petrick, the socialist youth who stuck up for his constitutional right to discuss and defend his opinion that the U.S. is completely in the wrong for having gone into Vietnam in the first place and still more wrong in staying there a single day, has become the subject of an extraordinary council of war among the top generals of the Pentagon.
These military strategists and political representatives of the ruling class must decide what to do about an American who believes in exercising the right, guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution, of freedom of speech -- actually exercising that right, not just paying lip service to it, and exercising it where it counts most today, inside the U.S. army.
This abrupt and spectacular turn in the case came as a direct result of the immediate, widespread response to the appeal for solidarity sent out by friends of the courageous GI.
Within days after the case broke in the press, expressions of support were coming in from all over the United States, backing Howard Petrick and expressing admiration for his firm stand in behalf of one of the main principles that guided the American revolutionists of 1776.
The Ft. Hood authorities seem to have been impressed by this response even before the mammoth antiwar demonstrations in New York and San Francisco April 15.
At those demonstrations, the name of Pfc. Howard Petrick became known to hundreds of thousands of persons. In view of the response among these antiwar denonstrators, there was absolutely no doubt that the case would become the most famous since James Kutcher, the legless veteran of World War II, won his right to hold a government job and still maintain his Trotskyist views.
* On April 19, Petrick was informed by the Ft. Hood brass that they were closing the case so far as they were concerned and referring the whole matter to the U.S. Department of the Army in the Pentagon.
The hasty reversal of the witchhunt procedure at Ft. Hood is quite understandable. The question now is -- will the Pentagon take a similar view? This remains to be seen.
The instant support for Howard Petrick was most impressive. It included statements by Dagmar Wilson (Women's Strike for Peace), Staughton Lynd (a wellknown pacifist), Linda Dannenberg (executive secretary of the Student Mobilization Committee), Herbert Aptheker (a leader of the Communist party), and a number of antiwar groups.
A sampling of the first responses, published in the April 24 Militant, takes the better part of a page of the weekly newspaper.
The case at once attracted wide attention because of an unusual number of features.
A member of both the Young Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Workers party, Petrick was drafted into the army last July. His service record was excellent and he was soon well liked by the other GI's.
On March 20 he was granted a leave. He used the time in the most educational and profitable way possible by attending a national convention of the Young Socialist Alliance which was held in Detroit, Michigan.
Upon returning to Ft. Hood, he found that his locker had been searched and his socialist and antiwar literature confiscated.
The same evening he was questioned and provided with a military attorney, who advised him that he faced a possible courtmartial on charges of "subversion," creating "disaffection" and making "disloyal" statements. The lawyer said that the charge of "disloyal" statements carries a maximum penalty of three years' imprisonment for each count.
The free speech issue was clearly posed inasmuch as Pfc. Petrick had never disobeyed an order and his service record was excellent. It was extremely difficult for the army officials to bring any charge against him except having political thoughts they disagreed with and expressing them to other members of the armed forces.
It was expected that charges would be brought against Pfc. Petrick within
days. But in view of the GI's evidently large number of friends in civilian circles, the brass obviously decided to make a tactical retreat.
Indicative of the character of the support being received by Petrick is the statement made by Timothy Wheeler, a youth staff writer for The Worker and a member of the Communist party.
"I regard the interrogation and harassment of Pfc. Howard Petrick as a blatant violation of his rights as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution," said Wheeler. "This is an attempt to stifle the growing antiwar sentiment in the military against the Vietnam war and the draft. His case is one of a growing nunber of cases of revolt against the Vietnamese war in the military and all Ameri-~ cans of good conscience should take immediate steps to support him against this harassment and to defend him in the event of a court-martial.
"Furthermore, this harassment is an attempt to drive a wedge into the peace movement, to divide certain sections from other sections. This attempt must be repudiated by the movement as a whole."
Pfc. Petrick's parents have stood squarely behind him. His father, Nicholas Petrick, a shop steward in the United Electrical Workers Union, made the fol-
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