Sherrill v. Knight is the case that CNN is using as precedent in its suit against the White House, on the matter of Jim Acosta's press credentials. There's a pretty wild part of that case that I don't think anyone has mentioned. Anyone know about the Rev. TK Forcade? 
Forcade ran something called the Underground Press Syndicate. It was a consortium of underground papers, and in 1970, it was based in NYC, near Union Square.
The UPS concerned itself with, among other things, the ways in which police departments used obscenity and narcotics raids as a pretext for harassing subversive newspapers.
In May, 1970, UPS staff members took a road trip to DC. Forcade was going to speak at a presidential commission on obscenity. They loaded into a stretch limo. One person dressed as a nun, two as Young Lords, etc.
(There are stories about the road trip that involve pot brownies and anti-aircraft ammunition, but that's getting off track.)
Forcade and his compatriots showed up at the commission hearings. Dressed in black clerical garb and a wide-brimmed hat, he read a 1000-word statement in protest of the unfair treatment of radical newspapers.
He then leaned over the rostrum, and reached into a cardboard box.
And then he hurled a cream pie into the face of a commission member.
All things considered, the gentleman took this very well.
(Oh, I forgot to mention that a member of the entourage was playing a cassette of "Ballad of a Thin Man" all through Forcade's speech. Great music supervision there.)
Anyway, it made the papers. All the papers.
Flash forward to late 1971. Forcade had moved to D.C. to cover politics. After some contentious exchanges with the standing committee of correspondents, the mercurial Forcade was eventually approved for Senate and House credentials.
But the Secret Service rejected his subsequent application for a White House press pass. Al Wong, the agent assigned to his case, wouldn’t return Forcade’s calls, and a spokesman for the department would only say that their decision was "on the basis of certain information.”
This, too, made headlines.
An ACLU secretary read Fred Graham's NYT article about Forcade’s plight, and invited him to join journalist Robert Sherrill in a right-of-access lawsuit.
For more than two years, the ACLU attempted to negotiate with the government to obtain credentials for Robert Sherrill and Tom Forcade.
At one point, a letter from the Department of the Treasury (overseeing Secret Service) referred to the NY Times' 1970 coverage of the pie incident. But no one would go on record that this was the reason for the rejection of credentials.
Forcade v. Knight was finally filed in April 1974. By that time, two interesting things had happened:
1. America learned that the Secret Service agent assigned to Forcade's case, Al Wong, had installed the recording system in Nixon’s Oval Office.
1. America learned that the Secret Service agent assigned to Forcade's case, Al Wong, had installed the recording system in Nixon’s Oval Office.
2. Forcade had assembled the first issue of the pro-marijuana magazine HIGH TIMES.
By the end of August, High Times #1 had sold out its print run and Nixon had resigned.
The ACLU lawyer John Shattuck received Forcade’s Secret Service and FBI files in 1975. And by coincidence, Shattuck was scheduled to testify before a House Judiciary subcommittee on surveillance a few days later.
Shattuck included excerpts of Forcade's files as exhibits for the surveillance subcommittee. This is from an informer's report on tensions between Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Forcade. "It was reported Forcade was walking around the building with a gasoline can."
Shattuck revealed that informants had reported on Forcade in Long Island. Federal agents interviewed Forcade’s mailman in Manhattan and a gun salesman in Phoenix, infiltrated political meetings he attended in Miami.
In Madison, Wisconsin, the police department’s “Affinity Squad” had been spying on Forcade and other local activists in conjunction with the Secret Service.
By year’s end, the mayor of Madison unveiled nearly the entire cache of the Affinity Squad’s files—nine thousand pages!—and eventually the city found itself paying out settlements.
Forcade v. Knight was still in court. Forcade dropped out of the case in 1977, and it became "Sherrill v. Knight."
Within a matter of months, the D.C. circuit court made its ruling.
“Notice, opportunity to rebut, and a written decision are required because the denial of a pass potentially infringes upon First Amendment guarantees.”
“Notice, opportunity to rebut, and a written decision are required because the denial of a pass potentially infringes upon First Amendment guarantees.”
[Interlude: this happened since I started writing this thread]
Although neither Forcade nor Sherrill ever tested the ruling of their case, it has had monumental repercussions.
In 1997, @JonWiener1 discovered that the FBI’s surveillance of John Lennon pivoted on information from a Madison informant who was unmasked during the discovery process of Forcade v. Knight.
Further research revealed that the bureau hat privately concluded that Lennon did not, in fact, plan the “revolutionary activities” it had claimed. Twenty years after Forcade v. Knight was settled, the material it unearthed exonerated a Beatle.
Karma is not always instant! Cable News Network v. Trump is not over. Hopefully CNN keeps pushing and the discovery process brings out more.
“I don’t know what’s going on in the White House that they don’t want to let me in,” Tom Forcade said of the Nixon administration, in 1971.
“It must be terrible.”
“It must be terrible.”
Thomas King Forcade (1945-1978) died forty years ago tomorrow.
His legacy reaches in many directions.
Rest in peace.
His legacy reaches in many directions.
Rest in peace.
