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HUNTER v. BRYANT Stevens, J., dissenting

scheming to assassinate the President.2 Such a theory is of course absurd, but this absurdity does not mean that Bryant was threatening to harm the President. A vast gap separates the conclusion that a letter warning of an assassination threat is preposterous or delusional and the conclusion that the letter, itself, constitutes a threat by the author. Even if a delusional warning may serve to identify the author as mentally unstable and justify appropriate surveillance of his activities, such legitimate concern does not transform a delusional warning into a threat. As I suggested at the outset, the confusing set of facts may well have justified a trained officer in coming to the conclusion that a mentally unstable person might pose a threat to the President’s well-being. No matter how reasonable such an officer’s belief may have been, that kind of suspicion is not a substitute for a reasonable determination that the evidence established probable cause to arrest. 2

The National Council of Churches has at times come under attack for allegedly supporting subversive activity. In 1983, for example, such charges were leveled against the National Council of Churches in a segment of the television program “60 Minutes” and in an article appearing in the Reader’s Digest, Isaac, Do You Know Where Your Church Offerings Go?, Reader’s Digest, Jan. 1983, pp. 120–125. The president of the National Council of Churches responded to media reports by stating: “ ‘[T]he National Council of Churches is not a worldwide socialist conspiracy. [It] does not supply arms to communists, revolutionaries, or anyone else. The National Council of Churches does not believe in the violent overthrow of any government.’ ” Christian Science Monitor, May 5, 1983, p. 3 (reporting speech of Bishop James Armstrong, president of the National Council of Churches). For reports of criticism of the National Council of Churches closer in time to the incident at issue here, see, e. g., Los Angeles Times, Apr. 27, 1985, pt. 2, p. 5, col. 1 (reporting statement by Peter Reddaway of London School of Economics that “ ‘[w]ittingly or unwittingly, the NCC is deeply involved in concealing and distorting the truth about the Soviet Union . . .’ ”); id., Apr. 25, 1985, pt. 5, p. 1, col. 2 (reporting statement by associate professor of history at Seattle Pacific University that the National Council of Churches “has done a disservice to Christians in the Soviet Union by ‘buying the Soviet line’ as handed to them by official Soviet church leaders . . .”).