In 1974, Senator Ted Kennedy, acting under the authority of the Senate Judiciary Committee called upon The United States Attorney General to provide him with a list, a complete and final list of all individuals under indictment for failing to comply with a duly issused induction notice. The Attorney General was forced to comply with the Senator's demand. It was agreed that the list would be a final "rollcall", if you will. If an individual's name was on the list, they were officially charged with the crime and subject to prosecution. If someone's name was NOT on the list however, they were as free as the wind and able to re-enter the United States without fear of prosecution. With the draft over and no chance of any other young men inccuring the Selective Service System's or The Justice Department's wrath, no one else could be indicted for draft evasion...Therefore such a list could be prepared.

Once Senator Kennedy received the list from the Attorney General, his office freely distributed copies of it to our organizations in Canada. I received a copy of that list from Senator Kennedy's office and it contained a total of 8000 names. My name was on the list. Some of the names on the list however dated back to World War 2 and The Korean War. The Senator asked that the list be updated to include only Vietnam War violators. The Attorney General complied. The United States Justice Department then issued a directive to drop all charges and to cease all proceedings against any individual whose name did not appear on that final list. I received a copy of the amended list. It contained 6000 names. My name was NOT on it. I remember dropping down into my chair and going over every single page of that list one page at a time. I don't recall how many pages there were but it was a stack as thick as a phone book. I remember I called Katie in Toronto to cross reference our lists. My name was not on her copy of the list either. It took a while for it to really set in but then somewhere that afternoon it hit me...I was a free man once again. Poof! It was all over. How did this happen? I have but one possible and plausible scenario.

In the course of day to day life with The Council as the end grew near, there was really less and less work for myself and the others to do. In fact, the others were eventually "let go" until I was the last man standing. There were no new refugees so we were pretty much just tying up loose ends here and there. Sometime during this period I concluded that this would be an excellent time for me to look into my own personal situation regarding where exactly "I" stood with the US Government. I knew that I had been indicted years before, hell, I had a copy of the indictment framed and hanging on my office wall next to a framed copy of my induction notice. I also knew that there were warrants outstanding for my arrest. Still, there I sat with all of the resources of The Council at my disposal... and, I knew, both in my heart and in my mind, that I would NEVER accept any form of amnesty from the United States Government that required my conceding that I had been wrong in my stance against the war.

So, I contacted The United States Attorney in Norfolk, Virginia, James Oast. Mr. Oast apparently cared not in the slightest for me. He, I was later to learn, was not going to let me get away with it. I was his cause "celeb". He was bucking for a political career and I was his chance at the headlines. He and I exchanged heated letters regarding my case, actually, for quite some time. (I still have the letters. They're kind of like a scar.) Of course all of this was taking place while Senator Kennedy was seeking the list from the United States Attorney General. When the first list came out, of course nothing changed between Mr. Oast and myself. However, when the second list appeared, and my name was missing from it, EVERYTHING changed between Mr. Oast and myself. I, of course, immediately contacted him and if I do say so, gave him a lesson in the law. Apparently, at that point, I knew more about this particular avenue of it than he did. A short time passed and Mr. Oast finally responded to my challenge. Suddenly, James Oast was my humbled, public servant, whether he wanted to be or not.

The only conclusion that I have drawn from all of this is that during my mini-war with Mr. James Oast, the man who really wanted to get me, Mr. Oast inadvertently became my benefactor by having my files in his possession instead of them being in the central filing area or where ever they "should" have been. (Remember, this was back in 1975 BC? Before Computers.) Anyway, apparently when some clerk or whoever went to gather up all of the files related to selective service law violators from the Norfolk, Virginia area to submit to the United States Attorney General's Office for inclusion in the final list for Senator Kennedy, my files were evidently no where to be found. I can only assume that they were in the possession of Mr. Oast. And since I certainly can't imagine him "throwing" the fight...I believe that the only logical conclusion is the one I propose. If this was the case, then it only serves to show that big brother was already too big for its' britches even back then. Nonetheless, and regardless of the mystery surrounding the moment, I had now gone from fugitive to freedom in the blink of an eye. It was an overwhelming occasion in my life. I remained in Montreal for several months after all of this took place, primarily to tidy up things with The Council. Then I made plans to return to the United States.