Published on Tuesday, May 29, 2001 in the Santa Barbara (CA)
Medal of Honor Recipient Now Leads A Life of Civil Disobedience
New Battles to Fight
by Nora K. Wallace
Locked behind barbed wire and confined to a small solitary cell at the Lompoc
Federal Correctional Institution, Charles Liteky struggles daily to live a
life of nonviolence.Yet the 70-year-old former Army chaplain and recipient of
the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War says he's at peace.Liteky, a San
Francisco resident, is two months away from finishing a one-year sentence for
trespassing on federal property. It is his second, and longest, prison term,
resulting from trespassing at Fort Benning, Ga. He and several thousand other
people were protesting the existence of the 55-year-old U.S. Army School of
Americas (SOA), now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation.The institute trains Latin American soldiers in
counter-revolutionary techniques, combat and counter-drug operations, and its
opponents contend graduates -- such as Panama's Manuel Noriega -- are
responsible for human rights abuses, including the death and torture of
civilians."It's an honor to represent people without a voice," said Liteky,
who has also refused to pay taxes since 1986. "People are exploited, killed,
tortured, with the complicity of our government. It infuriates me. I'm
motivated by anger. I wish I had more love .
It's a challenge for anyone committed to nonviolence to come into this
institution."School officials say the current curriculum includes classes on
democracy and human rights, and that the alleged abuses are attributable to
only a minor portion of its tens of thousands of graduates.Despite the recent
name change, protesters say the school's general mission has not changed and
they continue to demonstrate. The Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest and
founder of the protest organization SOA Watch, says, "You don't teach
democracy through the barrel of a gun."Liteky is perhaps one of the best
known of the many people who have been imprisoned for protesting at the
school. While he sits in jail, others stay at the gates of Fort Benning,
holding signs and waging water-only fasts to call attention to their cause.
On Thursday, 24 people were sentenced to terms ranging from probation to one
year for trespassing at the military installation.Liteky admits he'd rather
be on the outside, joining the demonstrations. "No one in their right mind
would want to be here," he said last week in an hour-long interview observed
by a prison administrator. "In a sense, it's God's will. As long as I'm
legitimately led here, I feel at peace."Liteky doesn't consider himself a
leader in the anti-SOA movement, though others do. He acknowledges getting
more attention because of his medal status, but grudgingly accepts it."They
don't give a Medal of Honor to a Martin Luther King, or to the Berrigans
(fellow protesters), who are willing to suffer rather than kill," said
Liteky.He receives tremendous amounts of mail, from people calling him an
inspiration. "They ask why a person who doesn't need to be in jail is in
jail," he said. "I'm here as an expression of faith. Also as a citizen
participating in a democracy I see as a pure sham. We're involved in some
pretty messy stuff all over the world. I feel obligated to protest, to say
no."The path Liteky took to the Lompoc prison was long and circuitous. He is
a man of well-documented contrasts: the son of a career Navy enlisted man, he
was at one time strongly anti-Communist. He volunteered for two tours of duty
in Vietnam, and later resigned from the priesthood largely in opposition to
its celibacy tenet. He then became a full-time peace activist."Following
nonviolence requires a lot more courage than going into the military," he
said.It was in the Army that Liteky experienced the defining moment that
would earn him lifelong notoriety and prestige. In 1967, Liteky -- then
called by his ordination name of Angelo -- was near Phuoc-Lac in Vietnam,
joining a search and destroy mission with the 199th Light Infantry
Brigade.The squad came under intense enemy fire. In what his medal citation
documents as a "magnificent display of courage and leadership," Liteky
administered last rites to the dying, dragged others to safety, and faced
rocket and small arms fire to direct medevac helicopters in and out of the
area. Despite wounds to his neck and foot, he was credited with carrying 23
men to safety, including one man he carried on his chest while moving on his
back to the landing zone. For those efforts, he was awarded the nation's
highest honor for heroism in combat.But almost 20 years later, he became the
second person in history to renounce the medal. He left the decoration at the
base of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., as a protest of the Reagan
administration's policies in Central America. The medal was recovered and is
now displayed at the National Museum of American History. In addition to
leaving behind the medal, Liteky gave up the lifelong $600 monthly pension
given to the 149 living awardees. He said he could not renounce the medal but
keep its trappings."The Medal of Honor is the highest military award," said
Liteky, who in 1986 fasted for almost 50 days to bring attention to his
cause. "It's held up almost like a sacred relic in the church, like a holy
icon. A certain amount of respect goes with that. I get a lot more credit
than I deserve."The change in his life from Vietnam to Lompoc is not lost on
Liteky."I used to call myself a hawk in clerical clothing," he said, wearing
drab beige prison clothing and blue laceless sneakers. "Now I'm a naked dove.
And a dove that's vulnerable."After returning from the war, Liteky resigned
his vows in 1975. Five years later, he met Judy Balch, a former Immaculate
Heart of Mary nun. They married three years later. She, too, has been active
in the plight of refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala."I'm more drawn to
the legislative component; he was more drawn to the symbolic witness," Judy
Liteky said.After spending one day in prison years ago -- which terrified her
-- she will not take her protests to the same level, she said. But she
understands that her husband will likely return to prison in the future."The
reasons that got him in there haven't changed enough that he's going to
stop," she said. Until April, Judy was allowed daily 15-minute phone
conversations with her husband, but that was changed to less time. She's
found support through friends and her church, which held a potluck
fund-raiser to help her pay for her trips to Lompoc.Bourgeois, whose
organization is based near Fort Benning, met Liteky 11 years ago, when they
held a water-only fast in protest of the murder of six Jesuits and two women
in El Salvador."His coming into this issue as a veteran, standing vigil at an
Army post, gives Charlie a lot of credibility," Bourgeois said. "People pay
attention to that. They often write us off as a bunch of peace activists. But
when a veteran addresses the issue, they pay a little better attention."In
1990, Liteky received his first prison sentence, after joining his brother
Patrick and Bourgeois to sneak into the School of Americas and squirt a vial
of their blood on portraits of SOA graduates. All three were sent to
prison."What we learned was that they could send us to prison, but they
couldn't silence us," Bourgeois said. "We were able to speak from
prison."When people such as Liteky go to jail, Bourgeois says, "It gives
witness. It energizes others. It pumps new life into the movement."Liteky has
continued his civil disobedience while incarcerated. Confined for more than
nine months at the low-security federal prison camp -- a dormitory-like
setting that included work at a construction site and taking care of a chapel
and Native American sweat lodge -- Liteky was recently transferred to the
minimum-security correctional institution."It compromised my conscience to
stay over there at the work camp," he explained. "Part of the work by inmates
generates money for the system. Since I'm protesting the government, I felt I
should not do anything that supports that system."He is most distressed now
because an appeal of his sentence was dismissed a few months ago, as was a
petition for another hearing. Those developments, he charges, were an
injustice that led him to believe the prison had no "right to incarcerate me.
I was free to leave at any time."In the interest of disclosure, he approached
administrators and told them his conclusion. He thus became targeted as an
inmate plotting escape, and was transferred to the correctional facility."I'm
very much at peace," he said. "I'm following my conscience without
compromise."He will also refuse, he said, to pay the $10,000 fine levied
against him with the trespassing charge."I'll be glad to pay the fine when
the U.S. government obeys the world court and gives reparations for what it
has done," he said.Liteky and his followers have appealed his case to the
Supreme Court, on the basis that his sentence and fine were excessive for the
misdemeanor trespassing offense of civil disobedience.Much of that legal work
is being done free by attorneys and volunteers, including Harvey Harrison, a
Los Angeles literary agent and attorney who met Liteky in January 1999.
"Charlie not only has become a focal point for some SOA Watch attention, but
has also become an ambassador for the fact that the entire criminal system
disregards a tremendous number of cases in accordance with the laws of
sentencing," said Harrison, whose 15-year-old son David also helped
out.Harrison calls Liteky his "hero.""Charlie Liteky's entire life has been
spent sacrificing himself for the benefit of others," Harrison said.With
release on the horizon, Liteky said he spends time thinking about "how to say
'no' next.""I'll probably get into something and be back in prison," he said
of his post-release plans. "I expect that to be part of my life." Copyright
2001 Santa Barbara News-Press
To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
