| We were claiming that once we said, "No, we didn't knowingly harbor fugitives; no, we didn't have knowledge of a felony being committed," our personal lives were our personal lives. If you have the right to ask me everything about what Lena Paley (Susan Saxe] said and I said on the night of October 3, 1974 when she and I went out to X bar and drank beer for three hours, then I must surrender any privacy that would attach to that relationship. To say that the law has a right to everyone's evidence is not to say the law has the right to the sum total of their knowledge, their personal acquaintances, lifestyles, and everything else. It was quite a bit easier going to jail knowing that we were protecting our privacy - and possibly that of others - from the abuse and arrogance of those agencies. It was a principle I felt at one with. When it's a matter of sitting in jail and having the choice every day to testify and leave, ambivalence would be just crushing. Being locked up in some place that you don't have the key to is truly something you can know only when you've been through it. |
