On the 40th anniversary of the 1981 hunger-strike, John McNally from California tells the remarkable story of Dr Frank Forster who was persecuted in the United States for supporting the Irish prison struggle
AN Irish-born physician in Southern California was arrested as an alleged felon on the eve of Queen Elizabeth's visit to Santa Barbara in 1983. Dr. Frank Forster was singled out because US President Ronald Reagan had invited the Queen to his Western White House, and it was feared the outspoken Irish Nationalist had planned a protest.
Using methods deemed illegal today, law enforcement went to extremes to entrap the doctor. His medical offices were bugged, and undercover officers posing as patients attempted to trick the doctor into illegally prescribing drugs. Dr. Frank Forster was charged with 18 felonies in a chilling case of persecution and injustice, bureaucratic bungling, and malice.
Born in 1928 in Tipperary, Ireland, Francis John Patrick Forster won a scholarship to University College Dublin in 1947 and graduated in 1954 with a Doctoratus in Medcina (MD). After working for several years in a hospital in London, England, and three years as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps with the British Army in Germany, he emigrated to the United States in 1965 and became a US citizen. Frank settled in Santa Barbara with his wife Maidie and three children, where he was a popular and well-respected physician of internal medicine.
SOLIDARITY: Members of Irish Northern Aid from Southern California picketing a concert by Black Watch in Los Angeles in the mid-eighties
During the Vietnam War, Frank observed young men being drafted who could have received medical deferments. So, in 1970, he published A DOCTOR'S GUIDE TO THE DRAFT explaining the legal, medical exceptions to the Selective Service in easy-to-understand language, which he claimed saved thousands of young men's lives. This made Frank unpopular with the conservative ruling class that cities like Santa Barbara have under their facade of liberal politics.
Dr Forster's publication on medical exemptions for the Vietnam War
After Bobby Sands died on hunger strike, Frank started an Irish Northern Aid chapter in Santa Barbara to counter British propaganda by informing his fellow Americans of the true nature of the Anglo-Irish conflict and Irish political prisoners' suffering. He ran an ad in the local paper using ‘Captain Moonlight’ as his nom de guerre and quickly had over 100 members and supporters. Dr. Forster was an effective writer and compelling speaker, holding numerous public talks, promoting letter-writing campaigns, guest spots on local radio shows, and led protests outside British-owned businesses. On Tuesday evenings, he hosted Irish language classes at his Junipero Street home.
Frank was most pleased with his Irish Northern Aid Saint Patrick's Day blood donation drive in 1982, netting 27 pints of blood and the party that night at his house, which attracted scores of guests. During Frank's initial legal proceedings, as many as 200 supporters crowded into Santa Barbara's courthouse to whom Forster, wearing his Easter Lily pin, would address in Irish.
Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 as president saw Santa Barbara teeming with Secret Service agents. Frank was at the top of the list of security risks whenever President Reagan was in town, and it wasn't unusual to discover the guy next to me at the bar was an agent.
After one of many letters to the editor penned by Frank condemning the British injustices in the North of Ireland, he was warned by a writer for the SB News-Press that someone at the Sherriff's office was out to get him. The police and courts, the real levers of power, were staunch conservatives who targeted Forster for his liberal politics but claimed their investigations of the doctor were merely coincidental. Years later, I asked a senior Santa Barbara police official why they went after Frank Forster. He said the word on the street was the doctor gave narcotics to anyone in a response typical of upholding the police blue line. The primary local orchestrator of the conspiracy against Frank was Santa Barbara County Sherriff John Carpenter, whose obituary states, "one of the highlights of his career was the time he spent getting to know Former President Ronald Reagan while providing security at the Reagan Ranch." Forster had been under investigation for over two years before the Queen's visit, so although the catalyst for his arrest, they were already out to get Frank who had long been a vocal supporter of liberal causes. In 1980 the Sherriff and the Medical Quality Assurance Board repeatedly sent undercover agents into Dr. Forster's medical office posing as patients attempting to trick the doctor into illegally prescribing drugs using deceptive undercover tactics that today are expressly illegal. The unsubstantiated arrest warrant was signed by one of California's worst Judges, according to an investigative magazine California in 1984.
And District Attorney Tom Sneddon (who also failed to convict Michael Jackson) was relentless. The case against Dr. Forster was so weak his defense attorney used the undercover agent's own recordings to prove his innocence. Frank won each case, but the District Attorney appealed, sending the doctor to three courts for over two years. After his arrest, Frank hired an electronics expert to sweep his offices for bugs, and two sophisticated devices were found of the type not generally used by local law enforcement, the expert told him. These were the ones the CIA and FBI employ.
Dr Forster's publication on the 1981 hunger-strike
The Medical Board took Dr. Forster's name off the list of doctors who receive referrals and put him on a list of doctors who had "Accusations" against them, making his career in medicine tenuous. An Irish-speaking spy infiltrated his Irish Northern Aid Chapter. The Immigration and Naturalization Service questioned his son Peter's citizenship status, and a car tried to run Frank down when leaving his office one evening. His private practice closed because he had to spend so much time in court. He used up his retirement savings and had to sell his house to pay attorney's fees, and the only job he could find was at a prison hospital over 100 miles from Santa Barbara. But still, the DA and Medical Board hadn’t completely cleared Forster, possibly to frustrate Forster's counter lawsuit.
The winter of 1983 was one of the worst on record, and Santa Barbara's harbor silted up, preventing the Queen’s yacht Britannia from entering. Low clouds full of rain minimized visibility to where she couldn't see the lovely coastal mountains for which Santa Barbara is famous. Nevertheless, Reagan insisted she makes the harrowing drive up a windy road in the middle of a downpour to his Rancho del Cielo (Ranch in the Sky).
Although under investigation for years, Frank's arrest a few weeks before the Queen's scheduled visit in 1983 was probably to thwart any embarrassment to President Reagan from protesting Irish radicals.
No protests were planned for the Queen in Santa Barbara anyway, Frank organized a vigil outside the Sheraton Hotel where the press were staying to demonstrate to the news media the bias of the reporting on the Anglo-Irish conflict. But this, too, was pretty much a wash-out because of the torrential rain. Helen Thomas from UPI felt sorry for Frank and invited him in for a cup of coffee.
Forster sued the US Government for $10,000,000, was offered a $50,000 settlement which he turned down, and in the end, lost his case because he missed a filing date, according to his son Peter.
Soured by the experience, Frank left public politics but continued to show support for the Irish people. In 1992 he took out a full-page ad in the Irish American Unity Conference's program for our annual convention in which Bruce Morrison was a keynote speaker. Morrison played an integral part in President Clinton’s involvement in the Irish Peace Process, and we hope President Biden selects him to be our US Special Envoy to Ireland.
As a lifelong member of Alcoholics Anonymous, he helped hundreds of others obtain sobriety, but Frank was, unfortunately, a smoker, dying of emphysema at his home in Ojai, California, in 2004. His family spread his ashes in his favorite place in Ireland, Miltown Malbay's Spanish Point.
