Scapegoated

Last month a Vietnamese peacemaker and a U.S. Christian entered federal prison to serve 15-year sentences for their efforts to promote U.S.-Vietnamese reconciliation. The final appeal of the 1978 convictions of David Truong and Ronald Humphrey on charges including espionage and the unauthorized use of government information was turned down in January by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"From one generation to the other in my family everyone has been in jail for political reasons," David Truong explained. His father had been sent to jail by President Thieu after coming in second as a peace candidate in Vietnam's 1965 elections.

With his father in prison, Truong began working in the U.S. for an end to the Vietnam War. His quiet diplomacy, humility, and keen insight made him one of the most respected anti-war lobbyists on Capitol Hill.

After 1975 David pressed for reconciliation between the U.S. and his homeland. Though never a partisan during the war, he sent relevant information on postwar reconstruction and normalization of U.S.-Vietnamese relations to friends in Paris, where negotiations on that subject were under way.

Ronald Humphrey, a United States Information Agency (USIA) employee, had married a Vietnamese woman while serving in that country. The war's abrupt end left Humphrey's wife, Kim, and her four children in Vietnam, unable to leave. Humphrey made determined efforts to be reunited with her, including helping Truong's activities to promote diplomatic reconciliation between the two countries.

Toward this end, he gave Truong various materials and documents from USIA, including some classified cables. Before passing them on he cut off the "confidential" and, in two cases, "secret" labels. Truong included these with materials he was sending through a courier to his friends in Paris. The courier, however, was a CIA agent.

The information in the classified cables was so inconsequential that one Justice Department official admitted that the government "looked...foolish trying to relate diplomatic gossip to the national defense." Even the government's chief prosecutor in the case recently stated that Truong "was not a guy who was out, I'm convinced, to do in the government of the United States."

During the Vietnam years, classified material didn't just leak out. It gushed from government officials to the press, usually in attempts to convince a skeptical media that policies in Vietnam were justified. And other times bureaucrats personally opposed to the war leaked information damaging to official Vietnam doctrine.

Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were so enraged by the leak of the information that they had begun the bombing of neutral Cambodia in 1969 that they had the phones of administration officials and journalists wiretapped. These actions laid the initial groundwork for Watergate.

But the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate spawned attempts to curb sweeping presidential powers in national security matters, and by 1977 the Carter administration had seized on the Truong-Humphrey case to reassert those executive rights. Without any court warrant, but with the personal approval of Jimmy Carter, Truong's apartment was bugged, his telephone tapped, and Humphrey was placed under secret surveillance by television.

The Truong-Humphrey conviction marks the first time evidence from such warrantless surveillance has been successfully used in court. Such actions are now legal if the government claims national security is involved. The Truong-Humphrey case goes far toward legalizing executive actions frequently termed impeachable offenses during the Nixon-Watergate era.

Beyond the damage to the Bill of Rights is the profound injustice now being suffered by David Truong and Ronald Humphrey. Truong is guilty of wanting to establish peace with Vietnam, a diplomatic reconciliation still vehemently opposed by the U.S. government.

Ron Humphrey was converted during his ordeal. In 1979 he and his Vietnamese wife, finally reunited, were baptized and joined Calvary Baptist Church in Arlington, Virginia. There he has been active in youth work and inner-city projects among the poor.

Ron also worked with Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship. Colson told Sojourners, "Ron Humphrey is serving a 15-year term just because former Attorney General Griffen Bell and the Carter administration wanted to make a point about unauthorized leaks. They did, and Humphrey was the scapegoat. I know about how such things work....The American Christian community should mobilize itself to seek his early release."

The real crimes of Vietnam are repressed, while Truong and Humphrey are treated as criminals. The diplomats who designed and executed the war reign today in Washington. David Truong and Ronald Humphrey, the latest casualties of Vietnam, need our prayers and fellowship.