Paying The Price For Protest -- Prison Awaits 69-Year-Old Jesuit Priest From Tacoma

TACOMA - The old Bible is worn from decades of use. The Rev. William Bichsel turns to it again, thumbing the frayed pages for his favorite passages, the ones about forgiveness, compassion and contrition. Simple prayers for guidance during troubled times.

The Bible will be first on a short list of books Bichsel plans to pack when he heads to prison later this spring.

Bichsel, a Jesuit priest from Tacoma, awaits sentencing for malicious destruction of government property for his part in a 1960s-style protest against the U.S. Army's School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga.

The priest, 69, says his action last September was civil disobedience, not malice. Bichsel dipped his hand in red paint and smeared the welcome sign at the school, while fellow protesters pried letters off the sign.

Earlier this month, a federal jury in Georgia convicted Bichsel and four others on felony charges in the incident. He has not yet been sentenced, but federal guidelines indicate he faces a minimum of one year, and is likely to be sent to a minimum-security prison in May, in time for his 70th birthday.

And a federal judge already handed Bichsel and 24 others, including some clergy members, a maximum six-month sentence and $3,000 fine on a separate misdemeanor conviction for trespassing on the military base last Nov. 16. That action occurred on the eighth anniversary of the slayings of six Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter at the University of Central America in El Salvador.

Bichsel and his fellow protesters have targeted the federally funded School of the Americas because they claim it trained the squads that killed the priests in Central America. School officials deny those claims, and say the school's 50-year mission has been to teach military doctrine and democratization.

But in a stand reminiscent of radical Catholics Daniel and Philip Berrigan, who waged an aggressive war of civil disobedience against the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons and Pentagon spin-doctoring, Bichsel challenges that record. The school has produced alumni responsible for human-rights violations, and must be stopped, he says.

"We had done all the regular things," Bichsel says. "We vigiled, we fasted, we prayed. We lobbied Congress. We spoke, we outreached. . . . Those kinds of things don't really move them so well."

Radical politics

Bichsel (pronounced BIX-sel) is well known in the Seattle-area Catholic community and is no stranger to radical politics.

He has been arrested and served time for protests against the school, the military, and, occasionally, political candidates. Ten years ago, Bichsel startled then-Vice President George Bush during a talk at Seattle University. Bush was extolling the health of the U.S. economy when a lone voice heckled from the audience: "How about all the people who have no place to stay, no place to live, no jobs?"

It was Bichsel in his cleric's collar. Security officers arrested him and dragged him out of the building.

Now Bichsel is ready to be dragged off to prison again. And he says his actions still make a difference. Year by year, the number of demonstrators outside the School of the Americas grows. And this year, the House of Representatives approved the school's funding by a narrow seven votes, he says.

"I can't do anything else but protest," Bichsel says. "I'm trying to stop that violence."

While Catholic officials won't discuss specifics of his case, or the merits of individual acts of civil disobedience, some give Bichsel high marks for sincerity.

"He cares so much about people," says the Rev. Brad Reynolds, executive assistant to the Provincial, who supervises the Jesuit order in the Northwest. "I don't want to paint him as Mother Teresa, because he's not. But he's a good man. Some might not agree to how he's pointing at injustice, but at least he's pointing."

Higher law of God

Bichsel roams through his tiny home, tucked behind Guadalupe House, a transitional shelter for the homeless run by the Catholic Worker organization, searching for a missing piece of his eyeglasses. His bifocals teeter wildly on the tip of his nose. White-haired, bearded and rail thin, he wears blue jeans and a blue sweat shirt speckled with gold stars. Neighbors call out to him when he steps out to the porch.

"Hi, Bix."

"Hi, Father."

He greets them merrily.

Bichsel has spent most of his life here, a block from his childhood home in Tacoma's Hilltop neighborhood, one of the poorest in the city. Bischel and other Catholic Worker members assist mentally ill homeless people and try to integrate them into the community. A wind chime crafted from soda cans clatters on his porch.

Bichsel joined the Jesuits after graduating from Bellarmine High School in 1946. He was assigned to St. Aloysius parish in Spokane and later became a dean in charge of student activities and discipline at Spokane's Gonzaga University. He started the priesthood as a self-described "button-down" about discipline, until he became involved in the civil-rights movement and anti-war actions of the '60s. He also campaigned against the Trident submarine base in Bangor, Kitsap County.

"Bill Bichsel feels he is called . . . and is responding to the higher law of God," says Sister Linda Haydock, a Holy Names nun based in Seattle. "But there is certainly a difference of opinion on what is the best way to bring about change."

"His motives are founded in a deep Catholic faith," responds Jackie O'Ryan, spokeswoman for Catholic Community Services. "He's a fanatic with an agenda. And no matter the political climate, he has remained constant to his radical mission. There is holiness in this."

Bichsel first protested against the School of the Americas in 1994 after hearing a talk by the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest from Tacoma. Bourgeois founded the grass-roots group, the School of the Americas Watch, in 1990, a year after the slaying of the Jesuit priests.

The School of the Americas was established by the U.S. government in 1946 in Panama to improve ties with Latin American governments. The Cold War was in high gear, and democratization was primary on the U.S. policy front. The school moved to Fort Benning, Ga., in 1984. According to numerous published reports, its graduates include Panama's former strongman, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, now in jail for drug convictions, 19 Salvadorans linked to the 1989 slayings of the Jesuit priests, and Roberto D'Aubuisson, who headed El Salvador's right-wing death squads.

But accusations of covert motives are misplaced, says School of the Americas' spokesman Capt. Kevin McIver. Only a handful of the school's 60,000 graduates have been linked to human-rights violations, he says.

"The bottom line is the School of the Americas teaches military doctrine. We teach war-fighting skills and counter-drug fighting skills," he says. "We do not teach people to violate human rights."

But Bichsel and other detractors cite Pentagon documents that show the school used training manuals to teach torture and advocate executions and other forms of coercion against insurgents. Even if its operations are legal, he says, too many of its graduates are connected to human-rights atrocities.

"In Nazi Germany, lots of things were legal but happened to be tremendously immoral, tremendously destructive," Bichsel says. "So unless you step out and cross that line and say, `It's wrong,' you don't really raise the consciousness of anyone."

Through the years, Bichsel has chained the school's doors, poured a vial of his own blood over the welcome sign, and lost 20 pounds during a 40-day protest fast in Washington, D.C. In 1996, he served four months in a federal minimum-security prison in Sheridan, Ore., for trespassing and demonstrating at the school.

Bichsel had hoped the Georgia jury would see last November's protest as an appropriate civil action. Instead, it took the 12-member panel just an hour to find the demonstrators guilty of destroying government property. The verdict left Bichsel feeling overwhelmed and discouraged.

"If you're judged guilty by your peers, you begin to feel guilty," he says. "But then you have to re-focus yourself and ask, `Why am I doing this'?

"What I did was an act of conscience. I could not, I cannot, and I will not do other."

Leniency sought

A consortium of attorneys and Catholics have asked President Clinton and Congress to pardon Bichsel and his 24 fellow protesters, arguing that non-violent demonstrations should not result in prison time. Community-service sentences are more appropriate, says Seattle attorney Debra Hannula.

"We are still putting people in prison for free speech," she says. "People are outraged over the school, but they shouldn't go to jail for expressing their beliefs."

The Jesuit Order has asked the federal court to show leniency in sentencing Bichsel. But Peter Thompson, a Georgia attorney who specializes in activist cases and who defended Bichsel at no charge, has warned the priest to brace for prison.

So Bichsel is getting his books ready and writing an address list of friends and family members.

"I expect to go to jail. I'm trying to share more time with people I know and love. I'm trying to let go of some things I've been involved in here at the Catholic Worker.

"But I don't want to leave it. I want to continue my work."

Lily Eng's phone message number is 206-464-3312. Her e-mail address is: leng-new@seatimes.com