***  Paaeifc  ***
Presidio   27  Court-; arti«!   (Cont'd.)
The trial, of course
on and is inmany ways dep
(The only way I can descr
chael Gentile in dress gr
a courtroom after three s
weeks is by comparing him
gar in a business suit,
that much at home.  The U
States Army may not know
fir,ht guerillas in jungle
they're past asters at b
courage in a labyrinth of
and enaless lours of shee
, drags
ressing.
ibe Mi-
eens in
olid
to a cou-
he looks
nited
how to
s, but
uryinq
legaiese
r tedium.)
On the other hand, a lot is
getting out that hasn't in the ear
lier versions of this play.  It is
,of course, pure drama, and largely unrelated to the real-life people who were there on October 14,
and now sit, slouch and smoke together before us in the docket.
To say nothing of the real-life
events.
Terry hallinan is tough, aggressive, a sort of emotional
piledriver.  Like his famous and
brilliant father, he is arrogant
and utterly, witherin«-ly contemptuous of the entire system he confronts.  The strategy never calls
for narrowing issues or isolating
one evil from another: Regardless
of which point is being made, it
is connected to everything else,
from the defendants* childhood to
the moral bankruptcy of the Vietnam .-Jar and American imperialism.
The apparent assumption is that
you've got to write off the 3oard
and play it to the press, history
and the Congressional Investigating Committee.  Unlike his father Vincent, Terry is young and not
too experienced and doesn't always seer, to be in touch with the
courtroom dynamic.  One thinff is
certain:
no Jew ever had more
The defense strategy seems to be
two-r-ronped.  ^irst, he is advancing a complicated--and seemingly
tailor-made--psychological defense
based on'hirresistible impulse",
"diminished responsibility", and th
the fact that some fifteen private
and several Army psychiatrists
Have evaluated all the men and
fouro them disturbed and/or unfit
for military service.  r'e also alleges, of course, that all these
circumstances were either caused or
aggravated by life under the miserable stockade conditions
murder of prisoner -manch
a nd
precedinp tve sit-down.
the
the Prie:ay
In fact,
Dr. Lawrence Levitin, the first of
the. fourteen psychiatrists who will
testify, ülaced the defendant he
had examined in a "transient psychotic state" the morning'of October- 14th, adding that the condition was analogous to battle fatigue and was alleviated once the
pressure (conditions in stockade
and fear of more hunch-style deaths)
were removed.)
Th
callinj
^en, too, hallinan is
into play Article 138 of the Non-
Uniform Code of '"'ilitary Injustice, the cist of which is that a
has a rig'-'t to seek a re-
arievances from a higher
soldre
dress
of
superior officer if His immediate
superior is
plai.pt.
unresponsive to a com
There have
al minor but ult
victories.  Firs
officer, or judg
psychiatrists to
lie's subpoenaed
quest (it was a
ing that he sie1*'
a few davs into
who were guards
Stockade on Octo
them all the i"ay
Chutzpah than this Irish rogue.
the atrial.
T"
already been sever-
irately valuable
t, !'agan ( the lav/
e) has allowed the
testify.  Second,
at hallinan1s re-
reversal of a rul-
t on and reversed
the trial) two men
in the ^residio
her 14th--one of
from Viet Nam for
-,-*,. rrv ra'raVed*