| We were claiming that once we said, "No, we didn't knowingly harbor
fugitives; no, we didn't have knowledge of a felony being committed," our personal
lives were our personal lives. If you have the right to ask me everything about what Lena
Paley (Susan Saxe] said and I said on the night of October 3, 1974 when she and I went out
to X bar and drank beer for three hours, then I must surrender any privacy that would
attach to that relationship. To say that the law has a right to everyone's evidence is not
to say the law has the right to the sum total of their knowledge, their personal
acquaintances, lifestyles, and everything else. It was quite a bit easier going to jail
knowing that we were protecting our privacy - and possibly that of others - from the abuse
and arrogance of those agencies. It was a principle I felt at one with. When it's a matter
of sitting in jail and having the choice every day to testify and leave, ambivalence would
be just crushing. Being locked up in some place that you don't have the key to is truly
something you can know only when you've been through it. |
