Ed Murphy (activist)

Ed Murphy (born August 6, 1945) is an American peace and labor activist and the Executive Director of the Workforce Development Institute. He was a former military intelligence soldier who exposed the CIA's Phoenix Program in April 1970.

Murphy attended a public grammar school and graduated from St Peter's Boys High School, run by the Christian Brothers. When he discerned a vocation to the priesthood, he chose the Paulist Fathers in Baltimore.

He spent his third year in seminary in silence and meditation as a Paulist novitiate without academic classes, radio, TV or newspapers. In July 1966 he left the seminary without being ordained, returning to secular life.

He surrendered his draft deferment and enlisted in the military, to work in Military Intelligence. In January 1967 he attended Basic Training at Fort Gordon, Georgia and then returned to Baltimore for the US Army Intelligence School at Fort Holabird; followed by eight months studying Vietnamese, at the Defense Language Institute, Biggs Field, El Paso, Texas.

Murphy served in Vietnam from May 1968 to May 1969 as a sergeant in the 4th Military Intelligencen Detachment, 4th Infantry Division in Pleiku, where his first recorded statement against the war was made.

Murphy returned to the U.S. and was assigned to the 116th Military Intelligence Detachment in Washington D.C., conducting background checks for those applying for security clearances and was involved in military efforts to “monitor” the peace movement. He completed his military duty on January 15, 1970. The next day he met with Sam Brown, organizer of the Vietnam Moratorium and immediately spoke out against the Vietnam war and use of the military to spy on domestic activities. In January 1970, Murphy returned to Staten Island and became an early organizer of VVAW, Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In May 1970, he appeared at the Overseas Press Club with Michael Uhl and the Citizens Commission of Inquiry to expose the Phoenix Program.

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