Paul Soglin: Former Madison Mayor Recalls Sterling Hall, Vietnam Protests

Paul Soglin, the former mayor of Madison and a prominent antiwar activist, is very familiar with the history, riots and the explosion that took place on the UW-Madison campus in the 1960’s and ’70’s. He said that the first demonstrations against the Vietnam War, in Madison, took place in mid-October of 1963. The civil rights and the anti-nuclear war advocates came together to form the anti-Vietnam War movement as we know it today.

“We believed the premise of the war was incorrect, namely that we had to be there to stop communism,” said Soglin. “As it turned, we were correct.”

Soglin elaborated and said that the war was predicated on the domino theory, the idea that if one country fell to communism all the other countries around it would eventually fall to communism. This theory was applied to Vietnam and the other Southeast Asian nations around it.

American involvement in the war between North and South Vietnam escalated as a result of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964, following the incident that had happened just days before. The USS destroyer Maddox had been part of the military’s DESOTO patrols, the area’s US naval fleet designated for covert signal interception for intelligence collection in hostile waters.

On Aug. 2, 1964, it was attacked by North Vietnamese forces but only sustained some damage as US carrier Ticonderoga provided air support so Maddox could withdraw from the altercation.

After an alleged second attack on the USS Maddox, President Lyndon Johnson’s request to Congress for permission to defend forces in Southeast Asia was unanimously under the assumption that the president would return for Congress’ permission for further escalations into the war.

Soglin said that protests against this decision and other escalations took place in various forms and places around the campus and Madison. There would be rallies on the steps of the Capitol building, protests in front of Bascom Hall. Some would be focused on a particular event or concept, like the Dow Chemical Company. Dow chemical manufactured both Napalm and Agent Orange for military use in the Vietnam War.

According to Soglin, the AMRC did research in conjunction with the mathematics and physics departments involving warfare, and this led to a series of protests against it.

Soglin said that the four men, known as the “New Year’s Gang,” who bombed the AMRC were not very well-known amongst most of the antiwar protesters. He said that Leo Burt and David Fine wrote for the Daily Cardinal, the campus’ student newspaper, but they also weren’t well known or recognized by people in the antiwar movement.

Soglin said the destruction of property and human life was horrific, and that the New Year’s Gang had no right to bomb the AMRC on behalf of the antiwar movement. The movement had been completely thrown off of trajectory by the bombing.

Soglin’s reaction to the bombing was anger toward the bombers, but another was the thought that the antiwar movement had to “take greater control” of other members. He was already concerned about the couple dozen people who would get out of hand at what would start out as peaceful protests. Soglin spoke about passive resistance, obstruction modeled after Gandhi’s protests in India and civil rights era sit-ins. However, he believes that violence is “crossing the line.”

“That was something that is a challenge today,” said Soglin. “In the protest following the murder of George Floyd, we saw many people stepping out of line… they would start engaging in violent acts.”

When asked about a popular rumor that a police vehicle had surveilled the Ford Econoline van full of explosives on its way to the campus, Soglin clarified that there was no credibility ever established in that account. It was simply a rumor, just as there are rumors that Leo Burt, the member of the New Year’s Gang that never was apprehended, had actually been a government agent saboteur.

However, Soglin said the rumor that Burt was acting as an agent saboteur for the FBI’s counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO, designed to infiltrate, discredit, and destabilize fringe political movements around the country. He said that this is possible given the fact that he was never caught, especially when they had been stopped by the police while on the run up north and let go by the skin of their teeth.