Provocation à la FBI

Let us introduce to our readers a fascinating character—Prince Crazy, also known by his more mundane name of George Demmerle. Prince Crazy, tottering into the advanced age of 39, was known as a “character” in New Left, hippie, and East Village circles. Wherever the talk went far and fierce about the need for bombs and burnings, there Prince Crazy stood out for his “revolutionary” boldness. No one could outdo him in his verbal readiness to smite the Establishment with fire and sword. The young people with whom he associated thought him somewhat strange but still… everyone, these days, is supposed to do his own thing.

When a group of four people, including Sam Melville and Jane Alpert, was arrested several months ago on charges of bomb-throwing, Prince Crazy, as you might expect, was one of them. Soon, however, it became clear that he was not going to have to rot in jail, like Melville, or flee the country, like Alpert. For he was an FBI agent who, with his loose mouth, had helped entrap desperate people with loose minds. It may have been the prospect of his testimony that led the other defendants to enter a plea of guilty.

• Interviewed in the New York Post, May 25, 1970, Prince Crazy described his activities as spying—and about the picture he gives of the political circles in which he distinguished himself—one doesn’t know whether to cry or to laugh. He gained the confidence of far-left groups, he reports, ...