WHO IS BILLY DEAN SMITH?
Billy Dean Smith, a Black Army Private from Watts, California, has been in the stockade at Ft. Ord for over 10 months now awaiting trial for a fragging incident that occurred in Vietnam last March. Two lieutenants were killed and a third was injured. The concrete evidence that the Army has against Billy is a grenade pin and a pair of “suspicious” looking black gloves that were found in the pocket of his field jacket when he was busted. Grenade pins are so common in Vietnam that a lot of grunts make hat bands out of them. The one found in Billy’s jacket was analyzed by CID labs in Japan and found to have no connection with the frag that killed the officers. It’s the circumstantial evidence that the Army wants to convict Billy on. He’s poor, Black, hates the Army, opposes the Vietnam War and thinks fragging is a good way to deal with uncontrollable racist officers. It is for these reasons that the Army has kept Billy in solitary confinement for the past ten months and hopes to put him be
