The Harrisburg Seven were a group of religious anti-war activists led by Philip Berrigan. The "Seven" were Berrigan, Sister Elizabeth McAlister, Rev. Neil McLaughlin, Rev. Joseph Wenderoth, Eqbal Ahmed, Anthony Scoblick, and Mary Cain Scoblick.[1]
The group became famous when they were unsuccessfully prosecuted for alleged criminal plots during the Vietnam War era. Six of the seven were Irish Catholic nuns or priests. The seventh was Eqbal Ahmad, a Pakistani journalist, American-trained political scientist, and self-described "odd man out" of the group.[2] In 1970, the group attracted government attention when Berrigan, then imprisoned, and Sister Elizabeth McAlister were caught trading letters that alluded to kidnapping National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and blowing up steam tunnels.[3]
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Father Berrigan was serving time in the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary, in central Pennsylvania. Boyd Douglas, who eventually would become an FBI informant and star prosecution witness - was a fellow inmate. Douglas was on a work-release at the library at nearby Bucknell University. Douglas used his real connection with Berrigan to convince some students at Bucknell that he was an anti-war activist, telling some that he was serving time for anti-war activities. In fact, he was in prison for check forgery.[4]
Douglas set up a mail drop and persuaded students to transcribe letters intended for Berrigan into his school notebooks to smuggle into the prison. (They were later called, unwillingly, as government witnesses.) Douglas was the chief prosecution witness. Librarian Zoia Horn was jailed for nearly three weeks for refusing to testify for the prosecution.[5]
U.S. Attorneys charged the Harrisburg Seven with conspiracy to kidnap Kissinger and bomb heating tunnels. They filed the case in the city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Activist attorney and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark led the defense team for their trial during the spring months of 1972. Unconventionally, he didn't call any witnesses in his clients' defense, including the defendants themselves. He reasoned that the jury was sympathetic to his Catholic clients and that that sympathy would be ruined by their testimony that they'd burned their draft cards.[6] After an extraordinarily long deliberation, the jury remained hung and the defendants were freed.
Douglas testified that he transmitted transcribed letters between the defendants, which the prosecution used as evidence of a conspiracy among them. Several of Douglas' former girlfriends testified at the trial that he acted not just as an informer, but also as a catalyst and agent provocateur for the group's plans.[7]
There were minor convictions for a few of the defendants, based on smuggling mail into the prison; most of those were overturned on appeal.
The trial gained some notoriety for the use of scientific jury selection - use of demographic factors to identify unfavorable jurors - to keep the defendants from being convicted.[8]