HARRUBURG AFTERMATH

...In the margins of investigative reports on the FBI's search for him, Hoover would scrawl in blue ink, 'This subject must be apprehended at the earliest time possible' or 'Why aren't we making more progress on this?' " I would say that knowing what was in private FBI reports is pretty good reporting...

...Herbert Mitgang of The New York Times editorial board wrote his own reflections about the Harrisburg trial in the June issue of The Progressive...

...I recall sitting next to O'Rourke in a Harrisburg church one evening where there was an antiwar panel and asking him what he planned to do...

...I am sure they filed more than their publications allowed—the same goes for the television reporters, but did anyone ever see Walter Cron-kite, Eric Sevareid, Harry Reasoner, Howard K. Smith, David Brinkley, or John Chancellor on the scene...

...Their conclusion is that "the President of the United States, who frequently reminded his countrymen that he was a lawyer, chose to ignore Hoover's blatant violation of the Bill of Rights . . . the Nixon Administration prosecuted in a vain attempt to show the FBI director had his facts right . . . when a nation permits itself to be so corrupted, the portents for a system of laws—not men—are ominous...

...Where Nelson and Ostrow shine is in fleshing out details, such as the fact that Hoover was infuriated by the priest...

...If it were not so ridiculous, and serious, was anything funnier in retrospect than a dozen FBI agents disguised as birdwatchers to spot Daniel Berrigan on Block Island...

...And in The Harrisburg 7 and the New Catholic Left, William O'Rourke, who reported the trial for The Nation, personalizes the meaning of the trial with such fine writing that he reminded me of Rebecca West's great courtroom reportage...

...the harrisburg 7 and the new catholic left,by William O'Rourke...

...William O'Rourke's book, The Harrisburg 7 and the New Catholic Left, is, in my opinion, a discovery, not so much about the facts of the trial but about what the antiwar priests and nuns of today mean to Catholic youth...

...264 pp...

...O'Rourke is a liberated man and, I suspect, a more deeply moral man as a result of his encounters with the Catholic Left and the brilliant attorneys involved in the case—Leonard Boudin, Diane Schulder, Ramsey Clark, Paul O'Dwyer, Terry Lenzner, William Cunningham...

...Jack Nelson and Ronald J. Ostrow of The Los Angeles Times' Washington bureau, in The FBI and the Berrigans, disclose many details about the Justice Department and the late J. Edgar Hoover that should be required reading for all who believe in "This Is Your FBI...

...This he has now done brilliantly...

...He stands in sharp contrast to the Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents, also Catholics, who are (or at least some) guilt-ridden and confused by their roles as gumshoes in hot pursuit of the religious leaders they were brought up to respect...

...After reading these two valuable books, students of the trial will realize that the television networks—commercial and educational—and the majority of the country's newspapers and magazines failed to inform their audiences adequately...

...Their summary of the trial, and particularly of the major effort of the FBI and Justice Department, makes The FBI and the Berrigans a book for the record...

...There is modesty in the way Nelson and Ostrow credit The Los Angeles Times—rather than themselves—for disclosing that the Government's case depended heavily on Boyd F. Douglas, Jr., the prison informer who turned over the letters between Father Philip Berrigan and Sister Elizabeth McAlis-ter to the FBI...

...There are so many passages in The Harrisburg 7 and the New Catholic Left worth quoting that the only satisfactory solution is to read the book in its entirety...

...Certainly no national security secrets were encased in birdwatcher binoculars...

...Nelson and Ostrow tell of the massive manhunt by the FBI to capture the Berrigans, looking under the beds and in the broom closets of convents and churches...

...He murmured something about trying to write about the trial's meaning in a personal way...

...6.95...

...To tell it all on the tube or in print would have meant a daily putdown of the Government and seemingly taking the side of the defendants...

...Thomas Y. Crowell...

...with his book he can be called one of the country's finest young writers...

...His most recent book is an antiwar novel, "Get These Men Out of the Hot Sun...

...For essentially the trial was of the Nixon Administration, its Attorney General and G-man, and its favorite war...

...Around the Federal courthouse in Harrisburg, there were some good reporters...

...O'Rourke weaves a little of his own conventional upbringing into the story and gives the trial an important dimension...

...reviewed by Herbert Mitgang Not enough can be written about the trial of the Harrisburg 7 because it is a story that encompasses almost everything of serious importance in the United States today: the Vietnam war, the Nixon Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal courts, the jury system and the prisons, the Catholic Church and the new Catholic Left, attitudes toward dark-skinned people (the one non-Catholic defendant, Eqbal Ahmad), attorneys of conscience, resistance in the streets, and humanity in America...

...In the end, a Harrisburg jury in Republican country would not buy the Nixon-Mitchell-Hoover case built on wiretapping and planted prison spies, and the Government was left with nothing but egg on its collective face...