Berrigan Denies Charges of Conspiracy

The Rev. Philip Berrigan and four of his co-defendants denied yesterday they were part of a Washington bomb conspiracy or a plot to kidnap former Harvard professor Henry A. Kissinger '50, President Nixon's advisor on national security affairs.

Berrigan and four others-the Rev. Joseph R. Wenderoth, the Rev. Neil R. McLaughlin, former priest Anthony Scoblick, and Eqbal Ahmad, a fellow at the Adlai Stevenson Institute of Public Affairs in Chicago-accused the Government of using the charges to discredit opposition to the Vietnam war.

The five men were indicted Tuesday along with Sister Elizabeth McAlister, a Roman Catholic nun, by a Federal grand jury in Harrisburg, Pa. At arraignments yesterday in Baltimore, Md., bail was set at $60,000 for Ahmad and $50,000 for the other men. Sister Elizabeth was released without bail.

Attorney William Kunstler visited Berrigan yesterday at the Federal Correctional Institute in Danbury, Conn., where he is serving a six-year sentence for destroying draft records in Maryland. Afterwards, Kunstler issued a statement by Berrigan and said Berrigan viewed the charges as "a colossal blunder" which the government "has stampeded into" because of accusations of a similar plot made last November by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

Hoover charged in Senate testimony that Berrigan and members of the East Coast Conspiracy were conspiring to use kidnapping and sabotage to decelerate the war in Southeast Asia.

Criminal Charges

Professors at the Law School were cautious about discussing the conspiracy charges yesterday. However, one point of agreement was that the case is based on clearly criminal charges and not ideological issues.

"The charges have nothing to do with public expression or public appeal," one senior professor said. "This is not an act motivated by ideological concepts, but it is more a traditional crime of actual behavior."

"The facts sound incredible. They just don't ring true," another professor mused. "I don't see how a conspiracy could conceivably originate in a prison. This almost seems to be a result of Hoover embarrassing the Government last year."

The consensus of the professors was that the outcome of the case will depend entirely on the strength of the Government's evidence.

In a separate statement released after their arraignment in Baltimore, Wenderoth, McLaughlin and Scoblick said, "To attribute kidnapping and bombing to priests who have neither the philosophy nor the resources to support such activities [demonstrates] the desperation of men who have decided to stop at nothing in order to crush the anti-war movement."

The grand jury action alleged a plot to blow up heat tunnels connecting several Federal buildings on February 22, Washington's birthday, then to kidnap Kissinger the following day.

The maximum penalties are life imprisonment on the kidnapping charge, and five to ten years and $10,000 fines on the bombing charges.

Seven other persons were named in the indictment Tuesday as co-conspirators but not as defendants. They are: the Rev. Daniel J. Berrigan, brother of Philip Berrigan; Sister Beverly Bell; Sister Marjorie Ashuman; Thomas Davidson; Paul Mayer, a former priest; and professor William Davidson of Haverford College.