Foreword, by Albert Marcus

The Yuba City Draft Board Murders were, in my view, one of those unfortunate manifestations of violence that have sadly come to characterize our times. Do we need an exhaustive recounting of this tragic moment in our historical collective unconscious? Must we rub our noses in the gory details of their execution? Should we care who may have been responsible? Yes, yes, and yes again.

I remember well that Thursday afternoon in early 1974 when I first heard reports of the bloody hour on the streets of a Northern California town I had never visited. I was in the midst of completing an article I envisioned for Rolling Stone on the decade which had recently come to a close. In one of those odd coincidences our lives are full of, I was listening to a song from the decade before the one I was writing about, that would be the Sixties. The song was Phil Ochs' "I Ain't Marching Any More." Tired of playing records and wanting some background distraction from the inexorable drone of my own typing, I switched over to the radio. To go from the song right to the news report about these killings was, I'll tell you, a shock. My life felt governed by forces beyond my control. The cosmic connections were awesome. The Draft, the War, Protest, Life, Death, Time, Age -I thought of all of these. I remembered Daniel Berrigan and the Beatles, Mark Rudd and Lenny Bruce, Bobby Seales and Elvis, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. I tried to put my images in order. It wasn't easy.

Enough about me. While the events documented here made a sharp impact upon my life at the moment of it immediate occurrence, I must sheepishly classify myself among the multitudes who so easily allowed what happened to slip out of range. I readily admit I failed to follow the subsequent story, now captured forever. I have done my penance by avidly devouring every word and image now included here, and I trust you will do the same. This work has the excitement of a first-rate mystery story and the relevance of this morning's newspaper. I could only put it down long enough to change albums on my stereo.

Combining interviews, reminiscences, news reporting, and a good deal of common sense, Instrument of War brings to the surface the multi-leveled complexity that we call the Yuba City Draft Board Murders. If such an event had to happen, we can he thankful there was someone around as enterprising as Stephen Cornell to document it. This book is smart, if you know what I mean. It will engage you, beguile you, bring back memories, trouble you with weighty issues that cry out for consideration, It will do everything but bore you, except on occasion.

What these events finally mean, I won't presume to conclude. It's for you to do what I had to do. I can't do it for you, as Bob Dylan once said before his regrettable conversion. What I can say is that Instrument of War is destined to become one of those essential cultural artifacts which structure our lives. If it isn't Blonde on Blonde, it's at least Annie Hall. That's the company it deserves.

Remarkably, everything here is true. As I once casually remarked, not only can truth be stranger than fiction, it can be harder to follow. I envy you your first experience of Instrument of War. You won't be the same after going through it.. I'm not.

Oahu

November, 1984