As a nation we have allowed our 'Civil Servants' to reduce to mere lip service, a critical element at the very heart of our moral convictions; the taking of "risks" as part of their jobs. Instead, their efforts have evolved toward the protection of their lifestyles and entitlements (lavish pensions, unlimited medical benefits, and organizational and political standing). The upholding of the moral creed our forefathers instilled in the foundation of this great nation has been, surreptitiously, moved to the back burner of job performance priorities. Those now entrusted to guard these valued principles refuse to chance any exposure, political or otherwise, even in the name of our wounded veterans.
How much effort would it have taken for Maj. General George Weightman to walk, less than 100 yards, from his opulent residence to the now notorious "building 18" annex of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center? How much time would it have taken to observe the deplorable conditions our combat injured warriors were left to rot in as they attempted painful recovery? And how much time would it have taken him to simply - do his job - and do something about the unconscionable conditions - before the press and the congress came calling?
Therefore in retrospect, I offer two incidents from recent history as evidence of the deterioration of America’s Civil and Mitary Administrative Services. They represent both a triumph of the human will and an example of the descent of these Services to the present state of - Ineptitude and Moral Cowardice.
June 22, 1933: A Civil Service Day of Pride
The story of the Scottsboro Boys is an almost forgotten saga in the history of America, yet it is a critically important one. For it highlighted the ritualistic social mistreatment of the downtrodden that was once rampant throughout the nation: particularly in the South where race and ethnicity dictated the quality of justice.
On March 21, 1931 in the throes of the Depression, two white mill girls from Huntsville Alabama, Victoria Price 21 and Ruby Bates 17, dressed up in overalls, hoboed their way by train to Chattanooga Tennessee. Finding no jobs available, Price claimed they spent the night in the home of a Mrs. Callie Brochie at an address just off Market Street on North Seventh; later investigation found no such person or address. This was just the beginning of a patchwork of questionable statements and claims made by Price.
Around 10 o'clock on the morning of March 25, 1931, the two females hopped aboard an open top car (gondola) partly filled with gravel, on a freight traveling toward Huntsville. There they met seven white boys and began to fraternize with them. As the train neared Stevenson, halfway to Huntsville, 15 Negroes climbed into the car in which the girls and the white males were traveling.
According to, Price, one of the Negroes she would later identify as Charlie Weems was waving a gun. A fight ensued and the Negroes threw the white boys off the train, with the exception of one, Orvil Gilley, who was afraid to jump for fear of being killed. Whereupon, the two girls were each, allegedly, raped by two teams of six Negroes - with Orvil Gilley as witness.
The deposed white youth informed the stationmaster at Stevenson that the gang of Negroes and the two white girls were on the freight train. The station agent telegraphed ahead to Scottsboro but the train had already passed, so Paint Rock, some 20 miles further ahead, was telegraphed. There an armed posse of officers and townsmen seized nine of the Negroes: the others had left the train before it had arrived at Paint Rock. The youth arrested were charged with sexual assault upon the two girls.
The defense wanted to have all nine boys tried simultaneously, but the state demanded 'four' separate trials. The chief witness was the older of the two girls, Victoria Price. She lauded the attention and played up to the court and jurors, very often-giving contradictory responses to the same questions. Ruby Bates was considered by the prosecution to be a weak witness, and they avoided placing Orvil Gilley on the stand because he was clearly too simple minded. Therefore, the prosecution's entire case rested upon the sole testimony of Victoria Price.
There was, however, a problem with Price's account of what took place on the train: one that clashed with a particular aspect of the medical examiners reports. Price testified that three of the boys held her down, while one of the Negroes, 17-year-old Willie Robeson, raped her for more than ten minutes before ejaculating into her. As it turned out, Robeson was thoroughly riddled with syphilis to the point of blindness. It would have been virtually impossible for him to have sex with her without infecting her, but upon examination Price was found not infected.
The medical examiner, a local doctor, pleaded with the judge not to force him to take the stand and testify, out of fear that his future medical practice in the state would be destroyed. But in a private meeting in the court's men’s room, confided to Judge Horton that neither girl bore any signs of multiple rapes, even though Price did have recent intercourse.
Despite the questionable validity of Price’s testimony, on April 8, 1933 one of the defendants, Hayward Patterson, was convicted of rape by an all white jury, and was scheduled to die in the electric chair on June 16. A motion for a new trial by the defense delayed his electrocution.
On June 22, 1933, Judge Horton granted the defense's motion for a new trial on the grounds that Patterson's conviction was against the weight of the evidence. This was a bold decision for a white lawmaker to render from the bench in the South of that period, and particularly in consideration of his family background.
James Horton was born in 1878 to a father who was an Alabama probate judge, planter and former slaveholder; his mother was the daughter of a Confederate general. Early on in his career Horton gave up the pursuit of a medical degree, opting instead for a law degree, which he received from Cumberland University in Lebanon Tennessee in 1899. He immediately entered private practice, but left it in 1910 for a six-year career in the Alabama legislature, and in 1922 he was elected to the post of circuit judge. When the Scottsboro cases were transferred to his Decatur courtroom in 1933, Horton was in the fifth year of his second term.
Horton's decision to set aside the verdict and death sentence of Hayward Patterson, in spite of warnings that ordering a new trial for Patterson would end his career, was an incredible act of courage and principle. The following are excerpts from Judge Horton's opinion in which he explains his reason for granting a new trial:
"This is the state's evidence. It corroborates Victoria Price slightly, if at all, and her evidence is so contradictory to the evidence of the doctors who examined her that it has been impossible for the court to reconcile their evidence with hers..."The court will not pursue the evidence any further.
"As heretofore stated the law declares that a defendant should not be convicted without corroboration where the testimony of the prosecutrix bears on its face indications of improbability or unreliability and particularly when it is contradicted by the evidence.
"It is therefore ordered and adjudged by the court that the motion be granted; that the verdict of the jury in this case and the judgment of the court sentencing this defendant to death be set aside and that a new trial be and the same is hereby ordered."
James E. Horton
Circuit Judge
In a 1966 interview, when questioned about the wisdom of his verdict in relation to the devastating effect it had on his judicial career (he never held public office again), Horton quoted what he said was the phrase often-repeated in his family: "fiat justicia ruat colelum" - let justice be done though the heavens may fall. James Horton, an American of heroic professional dedication, principal and conviction, died in 1973 at age 95.
November 23, 1970: America's Day of Shame
On November 23, 1970 at approximately 8:00 P.M, via WBSM radio news of New Bedford Mass, the world learned of the plight of Lithuanian seaman, Simonas "Simas" Kudirka, a radio operator on the Soviet fishing factory trawler the Sovetskaya Litva. Just hours earlier, the young seaman leapt almost 14 feet to the deck of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter, Vigilant, as the two ships were side by side a mere 800 yards off of Martha's Vineyard.
The young seaman's bold quest for freedom would quickly mushroom into world grabbing headlines. For it was not his escape that was the focus of attention, but the manner in which the commander of the American ship was ordered to handle the situation. Reports revealed that the sailor had thrown a pack of cigarettes over to Lt. Douglas Lundberg the Vigilant's operations officer. Inside was a message in broken English:
"My dear comrade, I will up down (Simas did not know the English for 'jump') of Russians ship and go with you together. If it possible please give my signal I keep a sharp lookout = Simas"
Quartermaster Jim Fowlie, age 23 at the time, was on the Vigilant's bridge when Lundberg caught Simas' message. Fowlie said: "We were tied alongside the Russian factory ship for fishing talks between the U.S. and the then Soviet Union. Both crews were talking as best as can be expected due to the language barrier. I was on the bridge when a Russian sailor started talking to me, saying 'I want asylum."
According to author Algis Ruksenas’ exhaustively researched nonfiction book, “Day of Shame”, there was confusion about who was to make the call on whether Simas Kudirka’s defection would be successful. His request for asylum came while the American delegation was in a meeting onboard the Soviet vessel. This allowed the Vigilant’s commander, Ralph Eustis, time to contact the Coast Guard’s First District Office in Boston to seek instructions on how to handle the defector.
However, Rear Admiral William B. Ellis, commander of the First Coast Guard District was at home recuperating from a difficult surgery. This left the First District’s Chief of Staff, Fletcher W. Brown in charge. Brown had full authority to make the call on the situation and it was his job to do so. But Brown was a career officer who was known to harbor an aversion to risk taking, and he didn't want a decision that might blow up in his face, career wise, to be his and his alone to bear.
So despite the admiral's illness Brown consulted with him by telephone in his sick bed. Ellis, in discomfort and under partial sedation, ordered Brown to have Kudirka – returned - for asylum. Brown interpreted the command in the reverse; that mix-up was only the first in a series of events that led to Kudirka’s recapture, on an American ship, at the brutal hands of the KGB.
Cmdr. Eustis struggled with personal instincts born of moral conviction and service, which was between keeping Kudirka and Admiral Ellis' related order to return him. As an outside preparation, he’d outfitted the defector in a Coast Guard-issue life vest. His hope was that the Lithuanian would jump overboard and be plucked from the water by a waiting rescue ship, thereby automatically gaining asylum.
"It had been communicated to the whole ship's crew that if he hit the water, we would have to give him asylum and things would have ended there," relates Al Lanctot, a 19-year-old seaman on the bridge of the Vigilant at the time of the incident. “It was a terrible lesson to the whole crew, but our orders came directly from the First Coast Guard District.”
In the meantime, the Soviets made a formal request that Simas Kudirka be returned. After almost five hours of intense negotiations between Cmdr. Eustis, his senior officers, their Soviet counterparts and the KGB, they had to relent, and seven Soviet crewmen was allowed 'onboard' the Vigilant to remove the defector.
Upon being made aware of his ultimate fate, Kudirka scrambled desperately throughout the ship in a futile attempt to evade capture. The following graphic account given by Quartermaster Jim Fowlie and Lt. Douglas Lundberg of Kudirka's pursuit by the Soviets on an American ship is heart wrenching.
"I was assigned to guard him (Kudirka) and there were several Russian sailors running all over the ship," Fowlie said. "He was finally returned to the Russian ship by force."
"Everything you have heard about the KGB is accurate, they are ruthless, " said Lanctot. "We (the Vigilant's crew) watched as they stormed the ship searching for him, and we were told not to interfere. They caught him but somehow he freed himself and ran to the fantail of the ship pleading for help."
The KGB team sent to bring Kudirka back to the Soviet ship was characteristically brutal, administering karate chops, kidney punches and numerous kicks and blows to the defenseless defector."
Near death and unable to stand without support he was still securely on the Vigilant - as was the KGB detachment that had beaten him, when the Vigilant updated the district office. They ordered the officers to return Kudirka and the other Soviets to the Sovetskaya Litva and to break off engagement, which they reluctantly did.
President Richard M. Nixon, vacationing at Camp David, did not hear of the incident until he happened upon it in a newspaper. Angered and appalled by what he had read, he condemned the act as "completely contrary to every principle this country stands for, and contrary to international procedures."
Simas Kudirka survived his failed defection attempt and, as it turned out, his mother was an American citizen, so he was eventually able to come to America.
Only The Morally Strong Should Serve
Due to the increasing danger of the times we can no longer afford the luxury of allowing those who will only do the minimum, to serve in positions where at any moment they may be called upon, by the dictates of a crisis, to expose themselves to the ‘risk factor’ in order to do what they know is 'right.'
We tend to pay far too generously from the never-ending pool of civic ‘wealth’ - namely, Civil Service benefit and retirement packages. These golden taxpayer gifts urge their recipients to invest more time in protecting than in performing their jobs. From schoolteachers, to postmen, to policemen, to the Department of State and the Coast Guard First District Chief of Staff, these large benefit packages tend to make moral cowards of them all. At present, we suffer a severe shortage of citizens in our civil corps of the caliber of Circuit Court Judge James E. Horton.
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