page_title: Movement for a Democratic Military
section_title: Harassment, Attacks and Police Infiltration
hierarchical_section_title: Movement for a Democratic Military / Harassment, Attacks and Police Infiltration
caption_attribution_description: English: Published in The Door, an underground newspaper in San Diego, CA on January 25, 1973.
context_page_description: The Movement for a Democratic Military was an antiwar and GI rights organization during the Vietnam War. Initially formed in late 1969 as a merger of sailors from San Diego and marines from the Camp Pendleton Marine Base in Oceanside, CA, it rapidly spread to a number of other cities and bases in California and the mid-West, including San Francisco, Long Beach Naval Station, El Toro Marine Air Station, Fort Ord, Fort Carson and the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. Heavily influenced by the Black Panther Party and the Black militancy of the times., it became one of the more radical GI organizations during that era and was investigated in 1971 by the House Committee on Internal Security. As with much of the GI movement during this era, chapters had a high turnover as members were transferred, discharged and disciplined by the military. By late 1970 several chapters had splintered or disbanded, but the group's name and demands proved popular within the GI resistance movement overall. Some chapters continued through 1971 and 1972 and one until 1975.
context_section_description: Several of the MDM chapters and their affiliated GI coffeehouses experienced legal and non-legal harassment from the pro-military towns where they were located and even violent attacks from right-wing organizations. In one instance, the Green Machine coffeehouse near Camp Pendleton was shot up on April 29, 1970 with 45 caliber machine gun fire, wounding one of the marines inside in the shoulder. A clandestine paramilitary right-wing group called the Secret Army Organization was suspected. Another involved the San Diego Chapter on February 8, 1970. According to the lawyer and author Mark Lane, the San Diego Police and Navy Shore Patrol
  "smashed down the door of a San Diego store front ... to break up a peaceful meeting of Marines, Sailors and civilians." This was preceded by "several hours of terror on the streets in the vicinity by the local and military police during which civilians were threatened and detained by the cops and GI's were taken into custody, physically pushed around and finally arrested on non-existent charges."
  The San Diego MDM chapter was reported to have been infiltrated by as many as four undercover police agents during 1970, including San Diego Policemen Randy Curtis and John Paul Murray. Murray achieved a considerable amount of local notoriety when he was exposed as an agent because he had become one of the leading members of San Diego MDM. He had gained a reputation for advocating more militant and sometimes illegal actions, including inciting violent confrontations with the police and supplying weapons to the Oceanside MDM chapter. He was even accused of attempting to talk some local activists into blowing up the San Diego - Coronado Bridge. Several women supporters of MDM accused the married Murray of lying to and sleeping with them. One member of the San Diego chapter of the antiwar group Concerned Officers Movement recalled Murray being so convincing as the committed antiwar activist that he ironically helped convince him to file as a conscientious objector. There were so many undercover agents infiltrating antiwar and activist organizations that from 1972 to 1973 the San Diego underground newspaper The Door published eleven Undercover Agent Trading Cards, each showing a different police agent. In 1978, the Los Angeles Times published a list of almost 200 organizations that had been under surveillance during the early 1970s by the Los Angeles Police Department. One of these was the Movement for a Democratic Military.
caption: John Paul Murray Agent Trading Card - The Door 25Jan1973
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