Kristina Berster might be technically innocent until proven guilty, but in the public’s opinion she was a terrorist until proven otherwise. The Vermont trial of an alleged “terrorist” revealed the danger of guilt by association and how disinformation creates a false narrative.
By Greg Guma
Chapter Four
The Defendant Speaks (sort of)
She had attempted to cross the border from Canada, she explained, due to a mixture of fear and hope. She’d been seeking refuge from a “counter-terrorist” fever in her homeland. “I wanted to start a new life,” she said, “to live openly once again, to have a legal existence. I was no longer able to go on with life underground.”
As a student at the University of Heidelberg almost a decade earlier she had been part of the anti-war movement and joined an alternative therapy project. The purpose of the Socialist Patients Collective was to “find out the reasons why people feel lonely, isolated and depressed and the circumstances which caused these problems,” she explained. But in June 1971, as a political crackdown on dissent swept West Germany, members of the group were accused of criminal association, based on the testimony of a police informer who later recanted.
Kristina spent six months in detention, including three months in solitary confinement. In 1972, she was finally released. But a year later she faced another trial. At this point she went underground and left the country. The next years were spent in Holland, North Africa, the Middle East, and France. But after German industrialist Hans Martin Schleyer, a former SS official by the way, was killed after his kidnapping she realized that it wasn’t safe for her in Europe either.
In 1978, after the death of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in Italy, leaving the continent felt like a matter of survival. Stern magazine, Germany’s version of Life, had printed the pictures of 34 “most wanted terrorist suspects.” Kristina made the list.
“Everyone arrested as an alleged terrorist is detained for between two and three years in complete isolation,” she told the court. Before she could say more, the prosecution objected. The testimony was stricken, and the judge banned further statements on the political aspects of the case.
William Gray’s cross examination had a different objective. By using phone logs, asking why she left Europe, and about the origins of her fake passport, he was probing for prior contact with Ray, the New York City boutique owner who had helped her reach the border. Gray’s questions implied the possibility of a conspiracy; in other words, the FBI’s scenario. This “simple border case” was really a vehicle to publicize a so-called plot linking foreign terrorists and US activists. Conviction on a minor border violation would not be enough.
During her second day on the stand Kristina was asked about her help getting into the US. The instructions had come from Chilean refugees living in Paris. This intrigued Gray. But he was even more eager to know where she had lived during her underground years, a line of inquiry she and her lawyers wanted to avoid. She had stayed in Libya and South Yemen, Middle East countries out of favor with the US, and her answers might prejudice the jury. But taking the Fifth would undermine her credibility.
The judge urged the lawyers to strike a deal. Their agreement was that the countries be referred to as A and B. Berster would simply admit that she felt safe during the time she spent there.
On re-direct Bill Kunstler probed her decision to leave France — not just where and who, but why. The answer was blocked. Neither Gray nor the judge wanted testimony about her fear of persecution.
“Mr. Gray opened that door,” snapped Kunstler.
“No, he hasn’t,” the judge shot back. They were close to the confrontation that had looked inevitable since the opening moments.
A day earlier, Kunstler had issued a warning when Coffrin let Gray ask about her underground years. “All right, Judge. You are opening it,” Kunstler said.
“I am not controlling this,” the judge replied. It was a strange admission.
“All right, as long as you are on notice that now we are going full blast,” countered Kunstler. To which the judge replied hotly, “You may not be allowed to go full blast.” That was also a warning.
Kunstler shifted to another line of questioning. Why didn’t Kristina think it was wrong to enter the country secretly? It was a direct extension of questions Gray had already asked. He objected anyway.
Kunstler prowled the chamber, flashing angry glances at the prosecutor and the judge. Circling the prosecution table he returned to the podium and pounded on his notes. “I want to get to her state of mind, and why she thought she was not wrong.”
Coffrin wouldn’t budge: No testimony on West Germany would be admitted. Kunstler was boiling mad. Shouting, he charged that the judge had ruled consistently against the defense. If the jury had been watching, the outburst might have resulted in a contempt citation. But they had already been taken out.
A decade after the Chicago 8 trial, William Kunstler hadn’t lost his power to provoke. This time around, his powerful yet studied rage led to a private conference in which the judge merely reamed him out for “impugning” the integrity of the court.
By the following day, Coffrin’s attitude had softened. Kristina would be allowed to explain why she felt that her actions had not been wrong. “I had been accused, originally, unjustly of things I had not done,” she explained. “I was wanted for associating with people suspected of terrorism, and I knew that other people suspected and in jail had died under mysterious circumstances.”
Gray objected, but the testimony continued. About lying to border officials, she said, “I was afraid of being detained, checked out. If police agents found out I would be deported right away and I wouldn’t get to contact lawyers and ask for asylum.”
But why pick the US? “I spoke the language,” she said. “It had customs and culture similar to Europe. I thought the US was independent of Germany. I thought I could find understanding and support for my situation, since this country has a long tradition of accepting refugees.”
When Kristina left the witness stand the defense rested its case. There was much she hadn’t been permitted to share. Yet she had said enough to raise questions about the prosecution’s case. Specifically, her testimony poked holes in the conspiracy charge and left the impression that an essentially innocent woman had been forced to hide her identity for five years. As he saw it, US Attorney Gray felt he had to challenge both her memory and her honesty.
It worked out differently. Two of the government’s rebuttal witnesses ended up, under oath, contradicting their own statements. They’d been called to show that Kristina had unimpeded and frequent contact with a lawyer during her first 24 hours in custody. She had testified that she wasn’t permitted calls for more than a day.
Donald Peck, the stoic Border Patrol agent who had questioned her until early morning, at first testified that he had allowed Kristina to call a lawyer immediately. Cross examination revealed that his own report of the incident, filed soon after the arrest, showed a multi-hour delay. He couldn’t explain the discrepancy.
Next, James Aamodt, an Immigration agent on hand the morning after her arrest at the Swanton police headquarters, talked about Kristina’s calls to and from attorneys. She had denied the calls. Aamoldt, who had since become Case Officer for the prosecutors, said there had been three. Once again cross examination revealed a different story.
Aamodt eventually admitted that, despite what he had written in a report to the US Attorney, she had only one conversation, at most. Several other calls from lawyers had been received, but they hadn’t been allowed to speak with the prisoner.
Borderline perjury didn’t dampen the prosecution’s hunger to impeach the defendant. Nor did it lead them to admit there was some special government interest in the case. Neither the FBI nor West Germany was influencing their strategy, the lawyers still insisted. But conflicting reports had trickled out.
Before the trial, Gray and his assistant had spent almost a week at Justice Department briefings, including two meetings with Attorney General Griffin Bell. During the case they received calls from the West German consulate, whose spokesman described the New York office as “swamped” with work on the Berster case.
German media was intrigued from the start, and sent correspondents to cover the trial’s opening days. Later Stern magazine hired two German translators from Vermont to collect as much information as possible and bring it back personally to the Hamburg office. Press outlets in West Germany continued to label Kristina a terrorist accomplice, claiming that they had obtained a photo of her in a French airport with the sister-in-law of a terrorist.
If it existed, the airport evidence wasn’t used or even mentioned in court. It might have been a lie, or perhaps a hint that Kristina had been under surveillance even before she arrived in Canada.
