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Central Intelligence Agency8
MEMORANDUM
SUBJECT: International Connections of US Peace GroupsIII
We have continued tolose watch on the international connections of individuals and groups active in the US peace movement. During the two months since our last review of thisthere have been no major developments on the peace front nor has any new information come to light that would lead us to alter thereached in our original study.**
Contacts and communications on thepeace network appear to have dropped off sharply from the peak levals reached around the time of the world-wide protest demonstrations in October and the second session of thewar Crimes Tribunal* in December. The only noteworthy events so far this year involving
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ficers elected to transfer to US militaryhe "Defense Committee" organized by DeLlinger and Tom Hayden in November (see our reporto "encourage the release" of POHs
and "defend" their rights presumably was instrumental in the negotiations with Hanoi, but no evidence of this has come to hand.
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Hanoi also kept in touch with peaceinvolved in other enterprises. Forits women's front sent messages to women's peace organizations in Western Europe and the US (Women Strike for Peace) urging all-out support for former Representative Jeanette Rankin's peace march in Washington.
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The much ballyhooed "Vietnam Congress" held in west Eterlin in mid-February was largely an all-German show. Despite speculationumber of leading lights among US peaceincluding Dellinger and Stokelyattend, no major US leader turned up. American participation was limited to SNCC activist Dale Allen Smith and four little-noted members of Studentsemocratic Society.
Ralph Schoemoan's activities seem to haveignificant new turn.
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I The special target of Schoenman's efforts since his arrival here reportedly has been the Black Power movement, and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in particular. His objective apparently is to involve militant negro elements actively in the anti-Vietnam war agitation and to forge organizational links between the two movements. He hopes to achieve this by convincing the racist organizations that their struggle forand the struggle against the war have the same adversary and are fundamentally the same struggle.
9. This is not an entirely new tack for Schoenman. His marked Trotskyite tendencies have predisposed him as much toward revolutionary struggle as toward peace. He has been an exponent of the "war of liberation"articular admirer of Che Guevara and the doctrines of Castro. Stok-ely Carmichael's visionThird world"itself from white oppression is one which
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is not only congenial to Schoenman's way ofbut one which can be readily adapted to the Vietnam cause.
10. Schoenman claims to have carried histo all the major Black Power strongholds in the US and to hove been accepted by at least some militant groups. Much of this can be put down to Schoenman's tendency to exaggerate and to inflate his own importance. It would be surprising if moreew Black Power advocates found either Schoenman himself or his ideas very appealing. Asideew internationally oriented leaders, tho militant Negro movement has shown little intareat in peace issues. Their concern over Vietnamis limited to such areas as the draft and racial discrimination in the services. Many Negro activists would, of course, be quite willing to use Schoenman, his funds, and his extensiveto serve their own ends.
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11. Schoennan's missionary work among the Negro militants reportedly has produced several
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12. In addition, Schoenman and John Wilson of SNCC have been involved in the establishmentcommission" whose purpose will be to draw the various black communities into the warmovement. The composition and tactics of the commission, which will be staffed largely by SNCC personnel, are to be worked outo be held at some time in the future, possibly the national conference on "Blacks Against the Draft and In Resistance to the war" which Schoenman and SNCC leaders reportedly have been planning for April.
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Original document.
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