Lester Pines: A Bomber’s Defense Attorney Recalls Sterling Hall

Lester Pines was between his sophomore and junior years at the University of Wisconsin- Madison in the summer of 1970, when the bombing occurred. Five years later, he was admitted to practice law in Wisconsin. Six years later, David Fine’s family hired him to represent the fugitive in the first part of the federal criminal process, the initial appearance and arraignment.

Like many other young people during the time, Pines also opposed the Vietnam War. He said it was an “unwinnable” war and that it was “built on a web of lies” leading back to the Johnson administration.

One of the biggest lies he cites about the Vietnam War was President Nixon’s “secret plan to end the war in Vietnam,” which resulted in the continuation of the war.

The nation was divided in the early turmoil of the war. In the end, however, even Nixon’s Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird, had come to oppose the war and deemed it foolish.

“I can’t deny that ideologically, I believed that the war never should have taken place,” said Pines. “But I was not a proponent of domestic violence as a meant of opposing the war.”

As far as referring to the bombing done by the four men, including David Fine, called “The New Year’s Gang,” as “domestic violence,” Pines said that “domestic terrorism” wasn’t terminology used at the time. He also said that it could be characterized as “terrorist activity,” however the object of the bombing was not random terrorism and not intended to injure, and certainly not to kill Rober Fassnacht, a graduate student who was killed in the bombing.

“The death of Robert Fassnacht was not intentional in any way,” said Pines. “It could have been a foreseeable consequence of such a bomb, but there was no intent to cause death in order to terrorize people.”

Pines said that the objective of the bombing was to destroy a research building, the Army Math Research Center, that was aiding in the war by providing information to a University of Michigan project called Project Michigan.

According to Pines, Project Michigan’s goal was to assist the Department of Defense in more accurately aiming the missiles that came out over Grumman F-14 Tomcat fighter jets.

Pines acknowledged that the bombing resulted in a decrease of demonstrations in opposition to the war and that there was no reasonable doubt to prove in the cases of David Fine and Dwight Armstrong that he was involved in.

Pines expanded upon the political climate during the Vietnam War. He said that the escalation through the invasion of Cambodia and the murder of the students at Kent State caused “the level of militancy” to rise. He attributes this rise in militancy to the formation of radical groups such as Weather Underground. He also noted that the bombing and invasion of Cambodia led to the rise of the communist regime Khmer Rouge, which then resulted in the genocide of 2 million people.

As far as the refuge on the lam, Leo Burt, Pines said that his personal opinion is that Burt is in Canada and has established a new identity. He said that Burt “will never be found- if he’s even still alive.”

Pines said that he kept in contact with David Fine and visited him a couple of times while he was serving his prison sentence. He also said that he recently got back into contact with him over Facebook after many years of having no contact with him. He said that he’s also talked to Karl Armstrong over the years.

Pines said that he hopes the legacy of the bombing is to teach future generations to be civically active at the youngest age possible and to continue that civic activity on a constant basis in local, state and national politics. He emphasized the importance of only electing people of, not just good, but excellent moral character.

He said to not be complacent in lies, that lies are the destruction of the democratic process.

“In the years since the Vietnam War, we have suffered from leaders who are liars,” said Pines. “We went to war in Iraq on the lie that there were weapons of mass destruction. Now we have a former president, who is not running for president again, who makes Pinocchio look like the most honest person ever. There are no such things as alternative facts.”

Pines also said that the legacy of the Vietnam War is one that exists within class division in the U.S. today. He cited that being found in the fact that the burden of miliary service falls largely on young people who are not going to college or don’t have the means to go. He had been a beneficiary of draft deferment, and because of that he observed that years from 1968 to 1972 were “not normal” on the University of Wisconsin campus.