This Week in People’s History, June 20 . . .
June 20, 1988 (35 years ago). In a classic example of the U.S. government's practice of making a show of obeying the law, but then refusing to actually do so, the chief of the CIA's Costa Rica station, Joseph Fernandez, is indicted for his role in the illegal and secret plot to provide weapons to Nicaraguan Contras. The Contras were attempting to overthrow the revolutionary government of Nicaragua. The U.S. Congress had passed a law forbidding any U.S. government assistance to the Contras, but the Reagan administration was secretly providing the aid anyway in what later became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Fernandez, the CIA station chief, was implicated in the pro-Contra conspiracy, but when he was questioned, he lied and destroyed evidence. He was indicted on four felony counts of obstruction and false statements. His indictment is the first time ever a CIA station chief had been charged with crimes committed in the course of his official duties. As the pre-trial investigation of the case showed, Fernandez was obviously guilty as charged -- he followed orders and lied repeatedly government investigators to conceal the Reagan administration's illegal activities and keep the CIA's role in the Iran-Contra scandal under wraps. But despite an open-and-shut case, Fernandez never came to trial. The U.S. Attorney General took the unprecedented step of intervening in the case by refusing to declassify "secrets" about the CIA's illegal activities, with the result that the judge threw the indictment out in December 1989. (Not long after that, Fernandez set up a consulting firm, Guardian Technologies International, with fellow Iran-Contra conspirator Oliver North for a partner.) https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/pro…
June 21, 1898 (125 years ago). At the beginning of the Spanish-American War, the U. S. Navy attacks the Spanish garrison on Guam, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. No one on Guam was aware that the U.S. and Spain were at war, so the Spanish offered no resistance. With the Navy in control, Guam becomes the very first U.S. overseas territory, and the U.S. becomes the world's newest imperial regime. Within five years, the U.S. had acquired or was in the process of acquiring Samoa, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and the Philippines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_Guam
June 22, 1978 (45 years ago). The American Civil Liberties Union wins a major legal case defending the rights protected by the First Amendment, but the victory is controversial and is even condemned by some progressives. Thousands of ACLU members quit the organization in protest. The case is controversial because the ACLU was defending the right of the Nazi Party of America to demonstrate in a town with a majority Jewish population including hundreds of Holocaust survivors. The Nazis planned to hold banners of their political slogans outside the Skokie, Illinois, town hall, while wearing Nazi uniforms complete with swastikas. Before the demonstration, the Skokie government asked a court to issue an injunction that would forbid the demonstration. The Nazis asked the ACLU to represent them in the hearing. After months of court proceedings the courts agreed that the Nazis had a First Amendment right to hold a peaceful demonstration. At the last minute, the demonstration was moved to downtown Chicago at the Nazis' request. It went off peacefully and without trouble. https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/rights-protesters/skokie-case-h…
June 23, 1971. Daniel Ellsberg, the man who made the Pentagon Papers public, turns himself in for arrest and is released without bail. That evening, CBS News airs a 30-minute interview with Ellsberg, during which he says, "Americans now bear major responsibility, as I read this history, for every death in combat in Indochina in the last 25 years, and that's one million to two million people." The interview receives wide publicity, including a page-one New York Times story over this headline: "Ellsberg, on TV, Blames U.S. for 25 Years of War." The transcript of the Ellsberg interview is here: https://www.nytimes.com/1971/06/24/archives/transcript-of-ellsberg-inte…
June 24, 1763 (260 years ago). The British Army tries to start a smallpox epidemic among unfriendly Native Americans in western Pennsylvania. The British decision to use biological warfare comes about after the British victory over the French in what is called the French and Indian War. While the war was going on, the British induced the region's Native Americans to abandon their alliance with the French in exchange for a British promise to give the Native Americans control of their territory if the French were defeated. When the British broke their promise and refused to leave, the outraged Native Americans besieged the British stronghold at Fort Pitt, where Pittsburg is now located. They attempted repeatedly to persuade the British to abandon the fort. At a negotiating session on June 24, 1763, the fort's commander gave the Native Americans gifts of friendship, some of which were meant to be deadly. "We gave them two blankets and a handkechief out of the [fort's] Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect," the commander wrote in his journal. https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smallpox-blanke…
June 25, 2013 (10 years ago). In an outrageous and logic-chopping 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court declares that part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is unconstitutional. To reach that decision, the court had to reverse the decisions of two lower courts in the same case. In essence, the Supreme Court decided the law was unconstitutional because it was based on 40-year-old facts, ignoring the truth that there is nothing intrinsically false about an old fact. The bipartisan, independent, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights noted that in the five years following the decision, at least 23 states had reduced access to the ballot box by closing polling places, reducing early voting, purging voter rolls and imposing new voter identification laws. The commission chair said people "continue to suffer significant and profoundly unequal, limitations on their ability to vote ... That stark reality denigrates our democracy and diminishes our ideals. This level of ongoing discrimination confirms what was true before 1965, when the Voting Rights Act became law and has remained true since 1965: Americans need strong and effective federal protections to guarantee that ours is a real democracy." https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/how-shelby-county-…
June 26, 1893 (130 years ago). Illinois Governor John Altgeld pardons three men, Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe and Michael Schwab, who had been convicted in 1886 for the Haymarket bombing in Chicago. At the same time, Altgeld releases a detailed, 17,000-word explanation for his decision, calling the pardoned men victims of "hysteria, packed juries, and a biased judge" and noting that the state "has never discovered who it was that threw the bomb which killed the policeman, and the evidence does not show any connection whatsoever between the defendants and the man who threw it." The three are immediately released from prison. http://www.illinoislaborhistory.org/labor-history-articles/governor-joh…