Professor Stoolpigeon

In 1970, the War Resisters League in New York organized a demonstration at City Hall Park. I was asked to emcee and to burn a giant blow-up of a tax form. Later, a CBS correspondent interviewed me on camera.

"You've just burned that replica of a tax form," he said. "Have you paid your taxes?"

"Yes," I replied, "and I would like to confess right here on network television that I'm a mass murderer, because so much of the tax money I pay to the government goes to the Pentagon for just that purpose. I pay taxes, and that money has gone for dropping napalm on children in Vietnam."

My answer never got on the air.

Three decades later, following the 9/11 attacks, on a radio interview, I talked about "the mass anguish experienced by shell-shocked America and beyond. So much human suffering, for the sake of the nation's karma."

Compared to Ward Churchill, I'm a fucking girlie-man diplomat. When he wrote that the World Trade Center victims were "the equivalent of little Eichmanns"-with the exception of certain politically correct victims-Churchill was saying the same thing as Osama bin Laden when he explained the reason for the attacks.

Defending his position, Churchill says, "It should be emphasized that I applied the 'little Eichmanns' characterization only to those described as 'technicians.' Thus, it was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food-service workers, firemen and random passersby killed in the 9/11 attack. According to Pentagon logic, they were simply part of the collateral damage. Ugly? Yes. Hurtful? Yes. And that's my point. It's no less ugly, painful or dehumanizing a description when applied to Iraqis, Palestinians or anyone else. If we ourselves do not want to be treated in this fashion, we must refuse to allow others to be similarly devalued and dehumanized in our name."

This brings up a phone call I got from a friend of 30 years. I'll call her Atria. She attended Bradley University in Peoria at the same time Ward Churchill did.

"He's a phony radical from way back," she said. "He snitched me out to the police in 1970. He came over to my house one time and-the very first pound of pot that I ever bought-I sold him an ounce. I didn't get arrested, but I had to suffer the wrath of my parents. They just went nuts. It's one of the reasons I moved away from Peoria."

"What do you think was Churchill's motivation?"

"My guess is he's been arrested before, and his fingerprints are probably still in existence. He may have had it expunged. I think obviously they had him on something else. He might've had a felony conviction. And he went around and ratted everybody out. And I wasn't the only one. He was the campus snitch. I'd love for him to be able to say anything he damn well wants, but he's not the authentic article."