'We really beat the government. It's like the ninth wonder of the world that people with our diverse backgrounds could come together and beat the government. But we did.'

WITH HIS wiry build and unfashionably short hair, Donald Perdue looks more like an ironworker than a political radical. In fact, he worked in a South Florida steelyard until July when he traveled 250 miles north to Gainesville to stand trial on charges that he conspired to violently disrupt the 1972 Republican Convention.

The U.S. District Court in Gainesville acquitted Perdue and his seven co-defendants of all charges late in August after the government presented 28 witnesses and the defense had called just one.

"We really beat the government," Perdue said after his acquittal. "It's like the ninth wonder of the world that people with our diverse backgrounds could come together and beat the government. But we did."

When the 24-year-old Perdue returned to his home in Hallandale, Fla., all but three members of Perdue's American Legion post showed up to celebrate the acquittal of their most popular young popular young member.

"That," Perdue told The Crimson last week, "demonstrates exactly why the government spent a million dollars the government spent a million dollars trying to convict us: The Vietnam Veterans Against the War was undoubtedly the most credible anti-war, movement-type organization."

"We were more acceptable to Middle America," Perdue said. "The public believed that we had a right to say what we wanted because we had all been in Vietnam and had put our lives on the line. Middle Americans would listen to us and that scared the government."

Perdue said that after news about the indictment of eight VVAW organizers spread around the country over the summer of 1972, these wellsprings of VVAW support within Nixon's silent majority evaporated.

He said that most Americans tend to pre-judge and accept what they read in the newspapers all too easily, and he cited an Atlanta paper which portrayed the Viet Vets as "mad bombers" and "hoodlums" in front-page headlines. "That type of publicity didn't help our cause very much," he said.

"Although the average American turned against us with closed minds." Perdue added, "college students were usually worse. They were so apathetic that they didn't even bother to listen to us."

Perdue said that the Gainesville Eight argued bitterly among themselves over what strategy the defense should take.

There were three problems, he said. First of all, many of the defendants had never met their co-defendants or were only acquaintances before the original indictments. Second, the political views of the group were diverse and devotion to ideals varied greatly. Several of the eight wanted the get the trial over with the forget the nightmare of the indictment and trial. Most significant, however, was the problem of government infiltration within the VVAW ranks.

"We were infiltrated so heavily that they knew everything we were doing and considering. They knew our opinions as soon as we figured them out with our lawyers. To this day we still don't know all the informers but we know that information is leaked by someone in our group," Perdue explained.

When the majority of the defendants and VVAW executives decided on a passive defense. Perdue said that he and VVAW Florida coordinator Scott Camil were leery about a defense in which they could only attack what the government brought up. Camil and Perdue wanted to attempt to disprove all the testimony of the government witnesses, even though the contradictions were obvious, Perdue said.

Perdue said that he and Camil thought "an active defense would be a good chance to bring out some political lessons for the American people, to show them why we were on trial and what the reasons really were."