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58 C O R N E L L A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

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AAnn aalum explores the life of Alan Berkman ’67, aa physician who spent years behind bars for crcrimes committed in the name of revolution

lum explores the life of Alan Berkman ’67, physician who spent years behind bars for imes committed in the name of revolution

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BY BETH SAULNIER

A l a n B e r k m a n ’ 6 7 a n d S u s a n M o k o t o f f R e v e r b y ’ 6 7 g r e w u pt o g e t h e r i n M i d d l e t o w n , N e w Y o r k , a n d w e r e c l a s s m a t e s a t C o r n e l l — b u t t h e i r l i v e s o n t h e H i l l a n d a f t e r w a r d c o u l d

s c a r c e l y h a v e b e e n m o r e d i f f e r e n t . I n c o l l e g e , B e r k m a n — a nE a g l e S c o u t a n d N a t i o n a l M e r i t S c h o l a r — p l a y e d f o o t b a l l , w a sp r e s i d e n t o f h i s f r a t e r n i t y , a n d m a j o r e d i n z o o l o g y w i t h a n e y et o w a r d m e d i c a l s c h o o l . R e v e r b y , a n I L R s t u d e n t , w a s a n a r d e n ta n t i w a r a c t i v i s t w h o j o i n e d t h e r a d i c a l g r o u p S t u d e n t s f o r aD e m o c r a t i c S o c i e t y ( S D S ) a n d o r g a n i z e d a d r a f t c a r d b u r n i n g .A f t e r g r a d u a t i o n , h e r r é s u m é b e c a m e m o r e e s t a b l i s h m e n t : s h ee a r n e d a P h D i n A m e r i c a n s t u d i e s f r o m B o s t o n U n i v e r s i t y ,j o i n e d t h e f a c u l t y a t W e l l e s l e y C o l l e g e , g o t t e n u r e , a n d b e c a m ea p r o m i n e n t h i s t o r i a n o f m e d i c i n e .B e r k m a n w e n t t o p r i s o n .I t ’ s m o r e c o m p l i c a t e d t h a n t h a t , o f c o u r s e . B e r k m a n w a s n o

o r d i n a r y i n m a t e , a n d h i s c r i m e s w e r e a s i d e a l i s t i c a s t h e y w e r e i n f a m o u s . A m e m b e r a n d s u p p o r t e r o f a n t i g o v e r n m e n t r e v o l ut i o n a r y g r o u p s i n t h e S e v e n t i e s a n d E i g h t i e s , B e r k m a n — b y t h e na p h y s i c i a n w i t h a n M D f r o m C o l u m b i a — w a s c h a r g e d w i t ha b e t t i n g o n e o f t h e e r a ’ s m o s t n o t o r i o u s r o b b e r y - h o m i c i d e s . H e j u m p e d b a i l a n d w e n t o n t h e r u n f o r y e a r s , c o m m i t t e d o t h e r f e l o n i e s w h i l e u n d e r g r o u n d , w a s a p p r e h e n d e d , a n d e v e n t u a l l ys p e n t n e a r l y a d e c a d e i n p r i s o n . ›

B e r k m a n ’ s F B I

In June, the University of North Carolina Press is publishing Reverby’s book about Berkman. Entitled Co-conspirator for Justice, it’s her attempt to make sense of a life that started off with great prom-ise, took one startling detour after another, and ended all too soon. “I hope readers see that people can make political choices for the right reasons, but with the wrong strategies—and that they can overcome that and become different people at differ-ent moments in their life,” says Reverby, who retired from teaching at Wellesley in 2016 and is now a professor emerita. “People change over time and should be given another chance; not everybody is going to be who they were at twenty. Here’s a really brilliant,

complex man—and here’s his story.”Reverby and Berkman were more acquaintances than friends;

they both grew up Jewish in what was then the predominantly gentile, white, working-class city of Middletown, located about seventy miles northwest of New York City. Reverby attended Berkman’s bar mitzvah and was his lab partner in bio class; when she was editor of their high school newspa-per, she hired him as sports editor. Once they got to Cornell, they mostly lost touch aftereconnect when Berkman—

r their first year, though they’d who had a car—would give her

rides home for break. “I really knew him as a kid, then as an adolescent in college—I never knew him as a man,” she says. “I was completely fascinated by the fact that so many of us were politicized at Cornell in that time period, but he was not. How could he have been untouched, almost until the end, by everything that was going on?”

Berkman himself traced the dawn of his political awakening to a lecture in Bailey Hall his senior spring in which black power activist Stokely Carmichael passionately denounced white supremacy, the draft, and the Vietnam War. As Reverby writes: “This straight-laced fraternity president, who started his college years amused by William F. Buckley and racist jokes, may not have left Cornell a convert to antiracist radicalism, but his views were changing.” It was during med school at Columbia that Berkman’s politics radically evolved, spurred not only by opposition to the war but by his experiences treating patients from poor, minority neighborhoods in the city. He eventually started providing medical care and

training to members of the Weather Underground—the mili-tant left-wing group (an offshoot of SDS) that espoused violent revolution—whose adherents committed arson, bombings, and other crimes in the name of opposing the war and overthrow-ing the government.

In October 1981, with the aim of financing their revolu-tionary activities, members of the (by then dormant) Weather


THROUGH THE YEARS: Berkman (from top) in his bar mitzvah portrait; with Reverby in the yearbook photo for their high school honor society; with a guest at a Cornell fraternity party; and in his orientation photo at Columbia medical school

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Underground and the Black Liberation Army stole $1.6 million from a Brink’s truck in Rockland County, killing one of the driv-ers and two police officers during the heist and ensuing getaway. One of the robbers was badly injured when she accidentally shot herself in the leg—and Berkman secretly tended to her wounds, cadging supplies from the hospital where he worked. After word of his involvement came out, he was subpoenaed by a federal grand jury as a witness in the case; he refused to comply and spent months in jail for contempt. He was later charged in the robbery as an accessory after the fact—making him (accord-ing to his lawyers) the first U.S. physician to face such charges since Samuel Mudd, who set John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg after the Lincoln assassination.

Rather than stand trial, Berkman jumped bail in February 1983 and went underground. It meant leaving his family behind; for the next several years he’d have only sporadic and furtive contact with his wife (a Columbia classmate and fellow activist) and their young daughter. While on the run, he robbed a Connecticut supermarket at gunpoint, steal-ing more than $20,000 for the revolutionary cause. His time underground (see excerpt) lasted until May 1985, when he and a compatriot were captured in Pennsylvania. As the New York Times later noted: “In their car, agents found a pistol and a shotgun and keys to a garage with 100 pounds of dynamite, false identity cards for federal agents, and more than 275 counterfeit

B Social Security cards.” PARALLEL LIVES: Reverby

(above), now a professor emerita at Wellesley. Left: Her senior portrait in the 1967 Cornellian.

erkman was tried in federal court on numerous charges, including weapons possession—the abet-ting charge was eventually dropped—and convicted

on all counts. He served eight years in prison, during which he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, a form of lymphoma from which an uncle had died. Some of the most harrowing passages in Reverby’s book chronicle Berkman’s desperate attempts to get adequate care behind bars—including a poignant scene when he shows an inex-perienced and overwhelmed prison doctor how to palpate a cancerous lump in his armpit. In what Reverby calls a life or death moment, Berkman was passing out from septic shock when he had the presence of mind to bite down on his IV ‘So many of us were politicized at

Cornell in that time period, but he was not,’ says Reverby. ‘How could he have been untouched, almost until the end, by everything that was going on?’

line, setting off an alarm that brought staff to his bedside. “I learned that like ‘military justice,’ ‘prison medicine’ is an oxymoron,” says Reverby, one of the many friends and acquain-tances who were tested as a potential bone marrow donor for Berkman. “I was horrified, because it was clear that—as Alan himself said in an interview on ‘60 Minutes,’—if he hadn’t been a physician, he would have died.”

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While behind bars, Berkman provided medical advice to fellow inmates, work that earned him the moniker “Brother Doc” (also the title of his unpublished prison memoir, an invalu-able resource for Reverby). After his release in 1992, Berkman returned to New York City and the practice of medicine—he’d never lost his license—eventually joining the public health faculty at Columbia. He became not only a passionate advocate for poor, underserved patients but a driving force in providing treatment to people with HIV/AIDS, particularly those from ›

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m a r g i n a l i z e d g r o u p s . A f t e r e n d u ri n g m u l t i p l e c a n c e r r e c u r r e n c e s , h ed i e d i n 2 0 0 9 a t t h e a g e o f s i x t y - t h r e e . “ P h y s i c i a n , f u g i t i v e , f e d e r a l p r i s o n e r ,c l i n i c i a n t o t h e h o m e l e s s , a d v o c a t e f o rA I D S p a t i e n t s , e p i d e m i o l o g i s t , ” t h eT i m e s s a i d i n h i s o b i t u a r y . “ T h a t w a st h e a r c o f A l a n B e r k m a n ’ s c a r e e r . ”R e v e r b y s t a r t e d r e s e a r c h i n g

B e r k m a n ’ s l i f e e i g h t y e a r s a g o , w h e ns h e w a s i n v i t e d t o g i v e t h e m a j o ra n n u a l l e c t u r e f o r t h e A m e r i c a nA s s o c i a t i o n f o r t h e H i s t o r y o f M e d i c i n e a n d r e a l i z e d h e ’ d m a k ea c o m p e l l i n g s u b j e c t . S h e r e a c h e do u t t o B e r k m a n ’ s w i d o w , w h o g a v e h e r a c c e s s t o h i s p a p e r s , a n d s h es o o n r e a l i z e d s h e h a d t h e m a k i n g so f a b o o k . ( R e v e r b y h a d p r e v i o u s l yp u b l i s h e d t w o b o o k s o n t h e n o t o r io u s T u s k e g e e s t u d y , i n w h i c h A f r i c a n

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A m e r i c a n m e n w e r e l e f t w i t h u n t r e a t e d s y p h i l i s f o r d e c a d e ss o d o c t o r s c o u l d o b s e r v e t h e c o u r s e o f t h e d i s e a s e ; i n 2 0 1 0 s h em a d e g l o b a l h e a d l i n e s f o r u n c o v e r i n g a c a s e f r o m t h e F o r t i e s i nw h i c h A m e r i c a n r e s e a r c h e r s h a d p u r p o s e l y i n f e c t e d p r i s o n e r si n G u a t e m a l a w i t h v e n e r e a l d i s e a s e s t o s t u d y t h e i r t r e a t m e n t . )S h e g o t i n t o u c h w i t h o l d f r i e n d s f r o m C o r n e l l a n d M i d d l e t o w n ,i n c l u d i n g B e r k m a n ’ s g i r l f r i e n d f r o m h i s h i g h s c h o o l a n d c o l l e g ey e a r s , w h o ’ d k e p t a l l h i s l e t t e r s . S h e u l t i m a t e l y i n t e r v i e w e dn e a r l y 1 0 0 p e o p l e , i n c l u d i n g s o m e o f B e r k m a n ’ s f e l l o w r e v ol u t i o n a r i e s — t h r e e o f w h o m s h e s p o k e t o b e h i n d b a r s — a n dm e m b e r s o f h i s f a m i l y . “ T h e r e ’ s a n o l d j o k e t h a t t h e d i f f e r e n c eb e t w e e n a n t h r o p o l o g y a n d h i s t o r y i s t h a t w i t h h i s t o r y , y o u r

i n f o r m a n t s a r e u s u a l l y d e a d — b u t i n t h i s c a s e , p e o p l e w e r es t i l l a l i v e , ” R e v e r b y o b s e r v e s . “ S o m e w o u l d n ’ t t a l k a b o u t t h e u n d e r g r o u n d ; t h e F B I i s s t i l l l o o k i n g f o r t w o p e o p l e .Y o u h a v e t o b e r e a l l y c a r e f u l a b o u t h o w y o u w r i t e a b o u t t h i s p e r i o d . T h e r e ’ s a l w a y s a t e n s i o n b e t w e e n w h a t y o u o w e h i s t o r y a n d w h a t y o u o w e t h e p e o p l e y o u ’ r e w r i t i n g a b o u t , w h o s e l i v e s y o u ’ r e e x p o s i n g . ”

W h e n B e r k m a n w a s s t i l l i n p r i s o n , R e v e r b y p e n n e d a n i t e m a b o u t h i m f o r t h e i r c l a s s ’ s 2 5 t h R e u n i o n h i s t o r y .T h e l a s t t i m e s h e s a w h i m i n p e r s o n w a s a t t h e i r 3 5 t h , w h e n s h e a s k e d h i m t o s p e a k a t a s e s s i o n s h e h a d o r g an i z e d o n t h e e f f e c t o f t h e V i e t n a m W a r o n t h e i r c l a s s , a n d t h e y d r o v e t o g e t h e r f r o m M i d d l e t o w n t o I t h a c a a n d b a c k . “ W i t h m y o t h e r b o o k s , I f e l t l i k e s o m e o n e e l s e m i g h t h a v ew rw r i t t e n t h e m — b u t I ’ m r e a l l y t h e o n l y p e r s o n w h o c o u l d h a v e

w r i t t e n t h i s b o o k , ” s h e s a y s . “ I t ’ s p a r t l y b e c a u s e I g r e wu p w i t h h i m a n d w e ’ d b e e n a t C o r n e l l t o g e t h e r , s o I h a d a c c e s s t o t h a t . A n d I w a s p o l i t i c a l l y c l o s e e n o u g ht o w h a t h e w a s d o i n g , b u t n o t i n h i s g r o u p . S o I h a d t h e i n s i d e r e x p e r i e n c e b u t t h e o u t s i d e r d i s t a n c e , a n da l s o t h e k n o w l e d g e t o d e a l w i t h a l l o f t h e m e d i c a l s t u f f . T h a t ’ s w h y I t h o u g h t , I r e a l l y h a v e t o w r i t e t h i s b o o k —a n d I h a v e t o g e t i t d o n e b e f o r e , G o d f o r b i d , s o m e t h i n gh a p p e n s t o m e . W r i t i n g a b o u t A l a n , y o u h a v e t h i s r e a ls e n s e o f , ‘ T o m o r r o w , y o u m a y n o t b e h e r e . ’ ” n

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a b o u t , w h o s e l i v e s y o u ’ r e e x p o s i n g . ’

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A C T I V I S T : B e r k m a n s p e a k i n g a t a 1 9 9 8 d e m o n s t r a t i o n i n N e w Y o r k C i t y . B e l o w : H i s a p p r e h e n s i o n a n d i m p r i s o n m e n t m a d e n a t i o n a l h e a d l i n e s .


The FugitiveAn excerpt from Co-conspirator for

Justice describes life on the run

Alan’s descent into the political underground began on February 4, 1983, with a subway ride to New York’s Grand Central Station. In

the men’s room he changed his clothes. After he had done several evasions (changing subway lines, duck-ing into differing buildings) and before a comrade went to meet him, he had to make sure that he was not followed. He used fake identification to regis-ter at a hotel. He went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, then to a parking garage where a car was waiting. Scrunched down in the back seat, he was whisked away. A comrade greeted him on the other end in Austin, Texas.

Over the next two and a half years, Alan and his comrades would work very hard to determine what it meant to be a clandestine revolutionary group in 1980s America. Alan was clear on where he stood at the time: “I believed violence was necessary. I was equally convinced that revolutionary change must be an assertion of life, optimism, and respect for humanity and not primarily an act of destruction.”

There was a method to life underground. It began with the creation of a new identity. At a time before chips in credit cards and cross-checked electronic lists, assuming a new identity took ingenuity, time, and paper. Friends who worked in hospitals obtained blank birth certificates, and a small special Polaroid

camera and laminating machine could be either stolen or bought in the still-thriving hidden econ-omy in fake driver’s licenses and other “official” documents. Silk-screening equipment could forge motor vehicle inspection stickers, blank social secu-rity cards, and licenses of various kinds. Comrades who worked in car rental offices or retail stores compiled names and information from licenses, checks, and credit cards to reuse someone else’s identity, and others whose jobs involved typeset-ting did the printing. Libraries held old newspapers replaced fairly routinely at government offices with a where the obituaries of dead babies of the “right” “new” one from the name and birth date on a newly age could be used to create the identity of some- obtained birth certificate. Then a road test could be one who did not exist. Claims of a “lost” license were taken under a new name.

Anyone who watched the hundreds of spy films that came out during the Cold War years, or read the stories on the underground printed in multiple alternative newspapers, or talked to other clandes-tine comrades would know in general what to do to disappear. Alan’s comrades passed around, or memorized, packets of information of how to “go under.” While he never wrote about the details, he did later tell a hometown reporter, “When I first went underground, I was more nervous. And then I understood there’s a science to being clandestine. In some ways Big Brother was not everywhere, if I was careful. I became less nervous.” Both his medi-cal school training and his experience in high school theater proved useful in lessening that anxiety.

New to the life of a clandestine revolutionary, they all had to figure out how to live and survive undetected. This required a simple disguise, since the money for plastic surgery was not available. With dark hair and male-pattern balding Alan had two choices: dyes and wigs. Without a beautician comrade, the drugstore dyes took their toll. The first time Alan tried to make his dark hair lighter, his bald-ness contrasted with his bleached and brassy hair. Even his comrades “rolled on the floor laughing” at how ridiculous he appeared in hair covered in what was known, at least in their circles, as “underground orange.” Others in their group straightened their curls or wore makeup for the first time since they were teenagers, if they had ever worn it at all. After the disaster of the hair dye, Alan had to settle for cheap brown and black wigs that barely stayed on his head

FELLOW TRAVELERS: Berkman (far right) and his co-defendants during their trial on federal conspiracy charges, which followed his years underground and subsequent apprehension. Top right: Reverby’s book.

but at least made him appear less bald. Gone too were his characteristic mustache and short beard. ›

M AY | J U N E 2 02 0 63

‘ When I first went underground, I was more nervous,’ Berkman later told a reporter. ‘And then I understood there’s a science to being clandestine.’

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CAUSE AND EFFECT: Berkman (center) was among thprisoners depicted in a 1990 mural. Top: Reunited withis wife and daughter after his release.

Everything that is taken for granted in daily life under normal conditions had to be painstakingly acquired,’ Berkman said, ‘often at considerable risk.’

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For those underground, finding a place to live and paying for it was essential. If they had not all come from the financially precarious working class, they were certainly part of it now. “Every resource, every-thing that is taken for granted in daily life under normal conditions had to be painstakingly acquired, often at considerable risk,” Alan would relate. Clothes were mainly found in thrift shops and Salvation Army stores. The grocery chain Stop and Shop was jokingly referred to as “Stop and Grab” or “Stop and Steal.” Cars were shared, often in need of repair, and the bane of their existence when they broke down repeatedly. Apartments in working-class and poor neighborhoods could be paid for monthly or weekly, with money orders or cash. In such areas,

where transience was more common and households more fluid, fewer questions were asked.

To draw less attention to themselves, they often lived alone or in pairs, but they met up frequentlyfor meals. They invented kin and became cousinsto one another. After a short time in Texas, Alanspent most of his next few years in the working-class Connecticut town of Bridgeport, in the poorer sections of nearby New Haven and Hamden, andother places in parts of Pennsylvania, Baltimore,and the Washington, D.C., area.

Alan and his comrades knew they were primarily on their own, or would have to make contact withother small groups of revolutionaries in their hidden settings. It became paramount to develop ways tokeep themselves together, yet separate enough sothat not everyone could be picked off after a single arrest. Communication had to happen without cellphones, internet, thumb drives, or cloud computing, none of which yet existed. Instructions, surveillance notes, and position papers had to be written by hand or typed, then filed.

What was not written down was transmitted verbally and individually, since conference calls were not an option. The key to much of their connect-ing was public pay phones, since these were much more anonymous than landlines, and less likely to be subject to what the police and FBI called “trap and trace,” a system of listening devices that told the authorities who was being called and from where. To avoid the possibility of the pay phones being caught in this web, they had to be found on safe corners, and hours were spent driving to phone locations far from where cadre members lived or worked. Calls had to be made to set up calls, and often they failed. Alan sometimes got angry when no one picked up at the other end. It never seemed to cross his mind that maybe he had gotten the times or numbers wrong.

For Alan, paid work as any kind of health worker was impossible. The FBI had sent out what they labeled a “fugitive circular letter” to over 60,000 “convalescent, nursing, and rest homes, telephone answering services, ambulance services, medical laboratories, hospitals, and medical clinics nation-wide” to make sure they could find him if he tried to work. It was one thing to fake a driver’s license, but doing this for a medical license and an easily checked work history would have been impossible. Instead Alan spent much time trying to keep up with his medicine, reading every medical journal he could obtain from his friends or in libraries. He had become his comrades’ doctor, able to diagnose and treat small ills.

Sustaining the group’s spirits and lives in the underground required new kinds of family life. Everything was shared, and individuals were given “allowances” from collective monies. Eating out was too obvious and expensive. Alan, who had never cooked much, learned to be a chef. Practice

improved his skills, but his comrades recalled disas-

trous early efforts, such as his infamous clams,

spaghetti sauce, and cream cheese. There were rules to invent and learn, as they

lived in what [one comrade] described as a

“hyperaroused state” of constant carefulness and

commitment. As Alan put it, “Every movement [was] filled with paranoia and [a] heightened sense of alertness.” Simple mistakes, leaving a photo in a

print-shop camera at work, or touching a newly made license without gloves and thereby leaving

fingerprints, could easily bring disaster.

Edited and condensed from CO-CONSPIRATOR FOR JUSTICE: THE REVOLUTIONARY LIFE OF DR. ALAN BERKMAN by Susan M. Reverby. Copyright © 2020 by Susan M. Reverby. Used by permission of the University of North Carolina Press.


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