TILT #5

At the end of 1988 I read a pamphlet about the White Rose Collective and the actions of Katya Komisaruk. For those who don’t know yet: Katya wanted to attract people’s attention towards the American contributions in the arms-race and the United States’ hypocrisy in their ‘limitation’-talks by destroying a navigation-system (NAVSTAR) for nuclear missiles and giving a press-conference about it. She got sentenced but her lawyers appealed. The White Rose Collective supported her mentally, juridical and financially and have been informing people worldwide.

It was at the time of the preparation of the appeal that I did a mail-interview with Katya. She was then in a state-prison in Spokane (Washington). Early autum 1989 I got a letter from the WRC sayin’ that Katya had lost the appeal and has to stay imprisoned until April 1991 …

Read on if you wanna know why she deserves our support. In this times of apathy Katya is someone who’s really doing something about what she believes in !!

1. Katya, what made you decide to undertake this action ? Did you take the decision on your own or were you already supported by a group of people (the White Rose Collective) ? Did the WRC already exist before your action ? How did you get in contact with the White Rose Collective ?
2. Did you expect things to turn out this way or did you underestimate the risks ? Did you carefully plan your action or did you just “go off and do it” ?
3. Can you give a short chronical description of your arrestation and trial ?
4. How does your life in jail look like ? Are you treated as the other “criminals” or are you isolated from time ?
5. When was the date of the appeal ? What did you expect of it and what’s the strategy of your lawyer ? What has been the result and how does your future look like ?
6. What’s the White Rose Collective doin’ for you exactly ?

1. Katya, what made you decide to undertake this action ? Did you take the decision on your own or were you already supported by a group of people (the White Rose Collective) ? Did the WRC already exist before your action ? How did you get in contact with the White Rose Collective ?

The WRC has 3 primary locations: San Francisco, Los Angeles and London. However, people all over the world are part of the collective. Really, anyone who works on social change with us and chooses him/herself a member of the collective, is a member. It’s a thoroughly anarchic affair. We welcome people to share our name and graphics, though I, for one, would not work with activists who engage in shooting, bombing or arson (which hurt civilians either accidently or by design). I sympathize with all activists, especially those who fight the system and end up in prison, but I favor nonviolent struggle over armed revolution. Means influence ends and it’s hard to see how killing people can lead to peace and tranquility. After all, once you engage in combat, the people who end up winning are those who were best at being violent, not those who were best at being ethical or peaceful - so they’re not likely to be very good at encouraging or maintaining peace once they’re in power. Nonetheless, I try to contact and support other political prisoners, whether they’ve hurt people or not. Prison is, one must admit, a total bummer. Besides, all prisoners, at some level, are political prisoners. So much of crime is a function of poverty and racism, the result of an ailing society, not the sole responsibility of the individual.

This particular incarnation of the White Rose did not exist before my action. However, the name and purpose was taken from “Die Weisse Rose”, which organised against Hitler. As we see it, the USA is preparing for nuclear omnicide just as Germany once prepared for genocide. Too many people during the Third Reich closed their eyes to what their leaders were doing. By the time activists tried to resist, it was too late and too dangerous. That’s why it’s so important for people in my country to act now, because they only put us in prison, instead of executing us, as the Germans did to Hans and Sophie Scholl. By the way, Hans and Sophie’s sister Inge Aicher-Scholl, wrote us: she was very supportive, which is so kind, considering we took the name of her group without asking first.

Basically, we say that NAVSTAR is illegal, according to the Nuremberg Principles. It’s not legitimate property, so it’s not protected by law and therefore I shouldn’t have been prosecuted for destroying part of it.

2. Did you expect things to turn out this way or did you underestimate the risks ? Did you carefully plan your action or did you just “go off and do it” ?

I planned the action for several years, not so much the details of what I would do, but trying to prepare myself mentally and emotionally for prison. I read books about prisoners, anarchism, philosophy.

I didn’t particularly underestimate the risks of my action. Other antinuclear activists who’ve done similar protests have gotten sentences ranging from 6 months of supervision to 18 years of prison. So you see, it could’ve been much worse. Besides, I was a bit afraid of being shot. Sneaking around in a military base at night isn’t the safest activity. Before I went, I practiced what I would say to the soldiers who caught me, trying to find very calming words and a very soothing voice, so that they wouldn’t panic and shoot me. I’m not big or fierce-looking, which I thought would help in this situation.

I did the action on June 2nd 1987, my trial started on November 10th 1987 (although there were hearings before then) and I was sentenced and locked upon January 11th 1988. Until January, I was at liberty but the police watched me and made me report to them in person and by phone all the time.

Now, of course, they count me seven times a day …

4. How does your life in jail look like ? Are you treated as the other “criminals” or are you isolated from time ?

Lately, I’m learning to play chess. I play with a few of the other prisoners. By and large, the other inmates are very pleasant. As long as I respect them, they respect me. Once I was in a fight, but it came out all right. I studied aikido, which helped. The other prisoners are not particularly politically aware, but they’re not conservative either. Most of them have a healthy disrespect for policemen.

There’s a minimal law library here, and these days I’m studying the legal cases which pertain to attorney malpractice. I hear countless horror stories from the other prisoners about the laziness and poor advise of their former counsel. Admittedly, some portion of these complaints are the result of the client’s excessive expectations concerning their prospects or their lawyer’s prowess. Still, many of the tales must unfortunately be true. Of course, none of my inmates have managed to get or retain any documentation at their attorney’s misdeeds. Not only that, the courts are extremely biased in favor of attorneys: you’d have to go to great lengths, it seems, to prove “ineffective counsel”. Nonetheless, I’m hoping to fight one or two of these battles while I’m here. Just now I’m waiting to see if any of the prisoners can get letters or other documents to substantiate their cases.

My other project, besides chess, is juggling. I’m a klutz, but I have great faith in the value of repetition (in Russian they say, “Pofterrenye mat’ oochyenye”: repetition is the mother of learning). I believe practice makes adequate, if not necessarily perfect. You’d think that would apply to international diplomacy, too, but apparently not …

The food here is not very healthy or very good, though there’s lots of it. However, they don’t like you to try to take it out of the dining room. If you get caught stealing food, the guards make you do ten or twenty hours of unpleasant work, like rubbing floors. They also put people in the “hole’, an isolation cell, for breaking rules. Most of the guards are stupid and hostile. One or two are humane, but they’re a small minority. I try to ignore them all.

5. When was the date of the appeal ? What did you expect of it and what’s the strategy of your lawyer ? What has been the result and how does your future look like ?

An appeal is a lengthy and mysterious legal procedure. It seems designed to take so long that the defendant will have already served her entire sentence before the appellate court decides whether she should be locked up in the first place.

These are the steps we’ve been through. We submitted a “brief” explaining that was unfair about the trial (we weren’t allowed to argue about the legitimacy of the evidence, just the legality of the judge’s decisions). Then the prosecutor supplied a reply brief. Then we turned in a rebuttal to the prosecutor’s brief. Each of these had a page-limit (50 for the first two and 25 for the third) and a deadline, imposed by the court. The entire business has taken most of a year. Some of the delay was normal, some of it wasn’t. The prosecutor, for instance, got a 30-day extension on her reply brief, because she went off on a vacation abroad. Next, on November 2nd, each side had 30 minutes to present oral arguments to the appellate panel (three federal judges). Finally, the panel either affirms the trial court’s decisions, or else the panel remands the case, so that it can be tried again. They make take months to issue their decision. Their vote does not need to be unanimous, merely two out of three. If the appellate court denies Judge Rea’s rulings, they will presumably let me out of prison, while we go through another trial. If they affirm the lower court’s decisions, we can still appeal to the Ninth Circuit, en banc. This means appealing to eighteen of the appellate judges in the nine-state western area, rather than just the three who were chosen for the panel. We don’t have an automatic right to be heard en banc, however, and only four cases in a thousand are given such hearings.

Following are the main arguments we made in our briefs:

A. There are four elements in the crime of destroying government property (18 U.S.C. § 1361). These are: an item which was legitimate property was destroyed; that item was worth over $ 100.000; that item was owned by the US; and the person destroying the item did so with the intent to break the law. The first and last elements are the ones in contention. The prosecution was supposed to have the responsibility of proving each of them. Before the trial, Judge Rea gave an order which disallowed evidence about international law and about the nature of the NAVSTAR computer. This kept us from arguing whether the computer was truly property in the legal sense, that is, not just a physical object, but one entitled to protection of law (our country has signed treaties which outlaw weapons systems of the type that involve NAVSTAR). We weren’t able to explain that my intent wasn’t criminal, either; there was no way to discuss it without referring to the idea that NAVSTAR is contraband, according to international treaties. One can intend to interfere with an illegal device, feeling that one is upholding the law, not breaking it. The upshot of all these restrictions was that the prosecution never had to prove its case regarding property and intent. The judge’s order bypassed an argument. This is the equivalent of telling the jury how to decide the case, a “directed verdict”.

B. The judge initially forbade us to talk about motive, but once the prosecutor “opened the door” - giving her version of why I acted - we should have had equal time to give our version.

C. The sixth amendment of the Constitution guarantees one the right to present evidence in one’s defense and to cross-examine witnesses. This right is especially protected when the evidence concerns the specific elements of the offense. Obviously, I didn’t get to present either my own testimony or that of experts on NAVSTAR and international law. In addition, we didn’t get to cross-examine the prosecution’s witnesses concerning: a) the purpose of NAVSTAR or b) the messages I’d written on the computer about international law. We also didn’t get to present evidence to counter a press release which the prosecution had edited to look like a “confession”.

D. We asked Judge Rea to instruct the jury that they could convict me of trespassing ( a misdemeanor), if they didn’t feel there was sufficient evidence of my committing a felony. He refused. This violates the legal principles governing “lesser included offenses”. All we can do is wait. Frankly, I don’t think we can afford to be too optimistic because the judges are naturally quite conservative (you don’t get to be a judge by being a radical) and they’re likely to base their decision on political concerns, not justice.

They do publicity, legal work, fund-raising, correspondence, leafletting, public speaking, vigils, civil disobedience. Some of it is in connection with me and some of it is simply carrying on the work of waking people up, teaching them about nuclear strategy, and first strike weapons. There is little that people can do for me personally, now that I’m in prison. Generally, my only need is money for postage. You have no idea how many people I’m corresponding with !

As you could read in the beginning, Katya lost her appeal, the White Rose Collective has now been disbanded but, that doesn’t mean we have to forget everything about what happened. You can support Katya mentally, perhaps send her some money or at least something she might like. Some of you might know that I put out a benefit-tape to raise money for Katya’s case. Since Katya has decided not to pursue the appeal any further (hopefully she’ll be free in 1991 or sooner), the money that was raised will be used to support similar disarmement-activists. So we’ll send it to Disarm … - New York, USA. Concluding I’d like to thank Ron Boyer and Jesse Grant for their help.