[…]
Noam Chomsky: The Pentagon demonstration was preceded [on Friday] by a smaller one at the Justice Department, where participants pledged to support resistance to the war, and a collection of returned draft cards was turned in to the department. I had brought them from Boston, where they had been returned in a moving ceremony at the Arlington Street Church.
[…]
NC: I was with a group of somewhat older people, suits and ties. While gathering near the Pentagon, facing a line of soldiers, we took turns with the mike.
[…]
NC: I happened to be speaking when the soldiers suddenly put on gas masks and started advancing forward to clear the crowd. Everyone sat down. Not knowing what to do, I kept talking — to the strangest-looking audience I’ve ever faced. Marshals took or dragged everyone to waiting vans. My audience of gas masks passed by me and I kept talking to a wall of the Pentagon, which I’m sure was most responsive. Until my turn came.
[…]
NC: Most of those arrested were young, uncertain, tense. The emotional pitch was high [in the jail in Occoquan]. There were some calls for actions that could have caused major problems. Mailer intervened quietly, decisively, with a touch of low-keyed and effective mockery, helping to restore a mood of serious dedication and to avert self-destructive militancy, an intervention of no small significance.