The Killing Of Allard Lowenstein by Christopher Sharrett

              VOLUME I V , NUMBER 12
PENN JONES' T H E
CONTINUING
INQUIRY
JULY 22, 1980
The Killing of Allard Lowenstein
by Christopher Sharrett
The death of Al Lowenstein last March and the
more recent attempt on the life of Vernon
Jordan (an incident closely resembling the
King assassination, complete with shooters in
a vacant lot) form a morass of new leads re­garding
possible attempts to derail the cur­rent
campaigns by political leaders. Lowen­stein
was a Kennedy insider and one of the few
persons to gain the Senator's ear on questions
dealing with the RFK assassination. Jordan
was a Carter supporter and a crucial figure in
a time of unrest for many blacks. The most
..*^plexing case at the moment is the Lowen-
^cein death, mainly because of his reputation
as one of the most crusading researchers on
the RFK as well as the JFK assassinations, and
also because of the strange circumstances of
his killing by alleged assassin Dennis Sweeney.
What follows is second-hand information, largely
because the facts in this case are still very
fuzzy and confirmation on many points is diffi­cult.
The chief sources of information are
conversations I have had with people in the
New York area familiar with Lowenstein's
career; various past articles on SDS, SNCC and
the National Student Association; a particularly
crucial article by Teresa Carpenter in The
Vi11 age Voice.^ One point that seems obvious
in studying this case is the need to investi­gate
the career of Allard Lowenstein as much
as the motivation of Dennis Sweeney in kill­ing
him.
As per custom, the early press accounts of as­pects
of Sweeney's background and Lowenstein's
public role were inaccurate. The media claim­ed
that Sweeney was a "disgruntled legal client"
ojA Lowenstein; reports also called Lowenstein
:^ activist in the Dump Johnson movement of the
1960s, failing to mention anything about his
much more controversial position as RFK re­searcher
throughout the 1970s. Accounts also
claimed Sweeney was a stranger to Lowenstein,
when in fact the two men had a relationship
going back to the early 60s. Of course the
burning question for researchers is whether or
not this was in some sense a political murder.
According to the Voice article, rumors some­how
began circulating in New York immediately
after the killing that Sweeney was an assassin
"working his way" through the Kennedy campaign
with the intention of eventually killing Ted
Kennedy himself. The reasoning behind this
is cloudy, but there are some crucial points
which may put interested researchers on the
right track in understanding this case.
Although Dennis Sweeney could be called a
disturbed loner at the time of the Lowenstein
murder, he once had a totally different image.
He was known to the New Left in the early 60s
as a very ardent campus activist at Stanford
University and a tireless civil rights worker.
Sweeney took part in some of the freedom rides
and in one instance survived a bombing in Miss­issippi
while working on an integration case.
It was during his student days at Stanford that
Sweeney first met Al Lowenstein, when the latter
served as Visiting Professor of Political
Science for a year. Lowenstein had long since
made a name in activist circles, beginning in
the early 50s when he was the first president
of the National Student Association. At
Stanford Lowenstein was still passionately in­volved
in activist causes and prone to be
something of a guru to his followers; contrary
to the campus temperament in the 60s, Lowen­stein
wanted tight organization and a certain
amount of discipline in political activity.
Similarly, Sweeney wanted to catch Lowenstein's
attention as a model organizer: he wanted to
be the chief protege and have a one-on-one
relationship with a man rapidly becoming his
idol. Lowenstein was apparently amenable to
this after a period of watching Sweeney. In
fact, Lowenstein cultivated the friendships with
a number of young men involved in the civil
rights movement to the point that he was accused