Is the War Over? Dear friends, My name is Robert Malecki and I need your help. I need the help of your members in your organisation. I need the help of all organisations who claim that they stand on the side of poor and working class people. I have been living in exile here in Sweden for over twenty-two years because of my activities during the Vietnam war. If I were to return to the United States I could be put in prison for a very long time and therefore this plea for help. Between the years 1968 and 1972 I publicly took responsibility for the destruction of tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of draft files and orders calling young, mostly poor and working class kids up to be sent to Vietnam. Statements to the newspapers, T.V., and radio usually said "that we would not tolerate sending working class kids off to Vietnam to kill other poor and working class kids". I also took responsibility for the destruction of the international computer network of the Dow Chemical Corp. in Washington D.C. This company produced napalm and Agent Orange for the bombs being dropped on Vietnam. Because of this action and others Dow Chemical stopped its production of napalm. However we were unable to stop the war. In November of 1969 I was caught coming out of a draft board with military files. I was put on trial and sentenced to twelve years in prison. In defense of my actions I took up the Nuremburg trials after the second world war. I said that there was no difference between the Nazi concentration camps and the American bombings of the Vietnamese people. Therefore it was my duty to break national laws, in protesting American war making policy in Vietnam, in order to uphold international laws. This defense was not allowed by the court and I was sent to a maximum security prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvannia. At this prison many others were sitting there because of their activities against the United States government. There were black nationalists, Black Panthers, anti war activists and even some Russian spies! Jimmy Hoffa leader of the powerful Teamsters Union was there, and not in the least, Catholic priests like Phil Berrigan. I sat in this prison twenty-seven months. However my activities against the war in Vietnam did not stop there. One of the more spectacular actions was the time a Russian spy, who claimed that his parents had been killed in Dresden during the second world war, and I proposed publicly to be exchanged for two B52 pilots, alive or dead, because we believed that the Vietnamese struggle for independence was correct. The United States government had not succeeded in silencing the opposition to its criminal war policy and therefore found new ways to try and keep people in prison. Conspiracy trials, that is you did not have to do anything against the government to be put on trial, merely talking about it was enough. One of the big conspiracy trials of the time was the case against Phil Berrigan and other Catholic priests and nuns who according to the government were planning to bomb the White House and attack the B52 bomber planes stationed in Guam in the Pacific Ocean. The key person in this frame-up was an agent sent in by the government to the prison we were in to get the goods on people. I could have been a defense witness in this case. However at the same time as the above was going on I was charged by a "secret grand jury" for conspiracy to bomb public buildings and electric power plants among other crimes. The funny thing about this is that it never happened! Nothing was ever bombed. The White House, planes on Guam, electric power plants, public buildings, was a conspiracy according to the government. In reality we were people who had always taken public responsibility for our actions. At the same time this was going on, Jimmy Hoffa, leader of the powerful Teamsters' Union, received a pardon from Richard Nixon, the president. Was Nixon afraid that Hoffa would join an anti war coalition and bring the working class out against the war? Serious discussions were going on and the possibility was a real threat. I watched Jimmy Hoffa walk out of prison and I believe that his deal with Nixon was a betrayal of poor and working class people. Soon after Jimmy Hoffa disappeared. I wonder who killed him? The government? The mafia? Hmmm! After twenty-seven months in prison I was released on bail pending trial for the above. $25,000 raised by the anti war movement gave me the chance to go underground and come to Sweden. I applied for political asylum and received a humanitarian asylum mainly because the Social Democratic Party under the leadership of Olaf Palme had gone over to the Vietnamese side after Nixon's massive bombings of Vietnam. When Bill Clinton became president I wrote him a letter demanding amnesty. I thought that Clinton who had gone to England and demonstrated against the war would understand my situation. I have waited nearly two years and not received an answer from Bill Clinton. Now I do not intend to wait any longer. I will never say I am sorry for my actions against the war in Vietnam. Millions of people suffered and are still suffering because of the bombings. Tens of thousands have cancer and children are still being born deformed because of chemicals like agent orange! Besides that it was not I who was the criminal, it was people like Richard Nixon who were responsible for the war. I have children and grand children in the United States who I would like to visit. I want the right to return to the U.S., the country of my birth, walk the streets as a free man. People like Bill Calley, leader of the My Lai massacre, are walking free today in the U.S. at the same time people like me can not return home. I have always taken responsibility for my actions publicly in newspapers, T.V., and radio. I do not intend to crawl back to the U.S. begging for forgiveness. However I would accept an amnesty or pardon. The United States government can call it anything they want as long as all the charges against me between the years 1968 to 1973 are dropped. In closing I would like to say that I need your help just as I need the help of all organisations claiming to stand on the side of poor and working class people. Unlike Bill Clinton I could not run off to England during the war in Vietnam. But I still remember the faces of the Vietnamese children running down a highway in Vietnam while napalm was burning holes in their little bodies and I did fight the best way I knew how! Please publish this letter. Send this letter to other people, other organisations, other countries. Send a letter to Bill Clinton. Send a letter to me. Use your imagination. But please help! Demand that the U.S. government take up this matter. Demand that all charges against me be dropped. Demand the right for me to visit the U.S. Ask Bill Clinton if he enjoyed Nixon's funeral? I am feeling like the Japanese soldier who was found on a deserted island in the Pacific Ocean twenty-five years after the second world war. His first question being "Is the war over?" Robert Malecki Bergmastargatan 11B 915 31 Robertsfors Sweden Tel. 0934 10644.