The Last Firebase
August 20, 1997
"Dear President Clinton,
IF YOU WANT OUR 24-HOUR POW/MIA DEMONSTRATION SITE, YOUR BLACK SUITED PARK POLICE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE IT!
This headline in no way means or implies physical threats or resistance to anyone. It simply means that your police are going to have to physically dismantle and confiscate our POW/MIA vigil, because we're not moving.
I am a decorated Vietnam veteran whose five year old son's grandfather, Robert D. Owen, is still missing in Laos and listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. I am Chairman of the nonprofit Last Firebase Veterans Archives Project, a twenty-four hour POW/MIA vigil that has been located adjacent to the Lincoln Memorial since 1986.
The motto of our organization is "Standing vigil until they all come home." It is a reflection of a pledge many of us made to continue a vigil near the Vietnam Veteran Memorial until there has been a true and honest accounting of America's servicemen who were abandoned after the Vietnam War.
To raise the needed funds to operate The Last Firebase vigil twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, Vietnam veterans, activists and POW/MIA family members sell POW/MIA and veteran related T-shirts at the Last Firebase to finance operatinal costs of running the vigil and the publishing of POW/MIA literature we have previously given away free.
Under your administration, the National Park Service recently successfully banned the sale of T-shirts on Park Service land, knowing that without needed funds to operate, the Last Firebase could not continue its vigil.
Two days ago, the Park Service served The Last Firebase with papers declaring that as of Sunday, August 24, activists no longer have the right to sell expressive T-shirts on federal land. This was the result of a recent United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia, ruling, which states that the public does not have a constitutional right to sell expressive materials, in this case T- shirts, on public property.
The court did say, however, that there's nothing to stop citizens from giving T-shirts away free on federal land. In a press release yesterday, which I have attached, The Last Firebase agreed to abide by the court ruling and would no longer sell T-shirts, but would instead sell our printed materials and give the T-shirts away free. The Last Firebase now sells the printed material in order to pay for the free T-shirts. We've just reversed the process.
The Park Service, in true Gestapo style, obviously could not stand that thought, so today they informed us verbally and on paper that as of Sunday, August 24, we no longer have a demonstration site. They said our permits, which we applied for and were approved over a year ago, had been revoked and that we must reapply under new regulations.
The new regulations restrict the size of our demonstration vigil to a point where we can no longer display our POW/MIA information boards or fly the U.S. or POW/MIA flag. The regulation also, according to the Park Ranger who delivered the letter, said that we can only have a four foot table and that it cannot be covered.
The Park Service has created an untenable situation, knowing that no human being can survive unprotected twenty-four hours a day in the sometimes bitter cold, beating rain and unbearable heat of Washington, D.C. The Ranger said that once we are given a new site at some unknown location, we will be able to sell books and bumper stickers, but our permit will be revoked if we are caught with cover over our site, umbrellas included.
President Clinton, two days ago, some English speaking visitors from Russia stopped by the Last Firebase and were making inquiries about our vigil and our T-shirts. When Larry Bice, the Vietnam veteran manning the vigil, told them that the courts, at the prodding of your administration through the National Park Service, had outlawed the right of political activists to sell expressive T- shirts on public land, they were shocked. They said "My God - today, even in Russia, it has become accepted for political activists to sell protest T-shirts on government land."
There is no doubt that Vietnam veterans, activists and POW/MIA family members of the Last Firebase have been and are being singled out for persecution by some vendictive and mean-spirited people serving in your administration.
Despite what the National Park Service has led the national media to believe, we are not street vendors. We are activists with a long history who believe strongly in the use of non violent civil disobedience when forced to that point. One of the activists who your Park Police may be forced to arrest as they dismantle the Last Firebase Sunday is Donna Long. Ms. Long was picked up in Laos in 1988 along with another member of our organization and held in a Lao prison for 41 days because she had been giving out leaflets in Laos inquiring about missing U.S. prisoners of war.
I wish to personally appeal to you to reach out and stop this madness.
Sincerely,
Ted Sampley
173 Airborne Brigade
Vietnam 1965-66
B-36 Mike Force
5TH Special Forces Group
Vietnam 1969-70
cc:
Internet
National Park Police
news media
U.S. Congress and Senate members"
**NOTE FROM AII POW-MIA: The Last Firebase has operated day and night, rain, shine, blizzards and hurricanes since 1986. When the USG went broke some years back, NO ONE from the Parks Service or from Jan Scruggs' The Wall Emergency Fund was available to collect debris and protect The Wall... it was veteran volunteers from the Firebase who stood vigil and collected trash.
As a result of their efforts, one of the best and most comprehensive listings of SEA POW-MIAs was made available... as was the book, The Bamboo Cage, which went without a publisher until Ted decided to privately publish this important work.
Those of you who wish to read more on the Last Firebase, the Three Man Statue debacle and other POW-MIA related history, please go to:
US Veteran Dispatch :: http://www.usvetdsp.com/