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After more than 45 years I finally got around to writing about my involvement in the nation’s biggest anti-war protest on May Day 1971, which included the most arrests in a single day in U.S. history. What amazes me is how forgotten all these things have become, including the planning, the unique features of the event and the degree to which the Nixon government was working behind the scenes, as this story will show.
When I’ve shared my experiences from that time, it always surprises me how few peers actually recall that this event even happened. Ken Burns included it in his Viet Nam documentary, but it’s still relatively forgotten, as are many of the lessons it contained. One of these is this brief story about the Operation Bent Penny.
What was the Bent Penny Brigade?
Naturally this is the kind of story that would not have come out at that time because this kind of undercover work was undoubtedly going on in a variety of guises and any kind of awareness would have resulted in greater suspicion. We all know about the Plumbers and Watergate.
According to this 2011 story by Charles H. Lutz on the HistoryNet website, Operation Bent Penny was an undercover operation designed to interfere with the upcoming May Day antiwar protests slated for the first days in May 1971.
In the weeks leading up to this particular antiwar gathering there were a number of significant events including a gathering of Vietnam Veterans Against the War in which veterans, including a young John Kerry, discarded their service medals.
Lutz writes that the machinations he was involved in had their origins in the White House. A secret plan was drawn up to disrupt the demonstrations. The plan involved the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) with the aim of showing that the organizers were violating the terms of their special events permits and that there was drug use taking place.
For what it’s worth, it wouldn’t have taken 200 undercover agents to discover that drugs were being used. You…
