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With the victims arrested and smeared in the press, the FBI set about a nationwide intelligence gathering exercise on environmentalists,and EF! in particular. Under the guise of investigating the bombing, the FBI looked through the letters to the editor files of nine small hometown newspapers, and confiscated letters from environmentalists. They also obtained the telephone records of fourteen EF!ers and compiled a list of 634 out-of-state phone calls we had made. The FBI then investigated each of these 634 phone numbers, gathering information including names, addresses, physical descriptions, places of employment, criminal records, and political associates. Following a report on FBI activities against EF!ers in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, complaints by FBI director Richard Held[dad] about the coverage made their way to the Press Democrat's parent paper, the New York Times, leading to the writers removal as timber reporter.

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huge file, ward churchill AIM:

http://whale.to/b/cointelpro_7.html

3rd w trav, chomsky et al:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/FBI/COINTELPRO_Untold_Story.html

Despite tens of thousands of pages of documentary evidence, the idea that the Bureau would utilize private right-wing operatives and terrorists is a chilling, alien concept to most Americans. Nevertheless, the FBI has financed, organized, and supplied arms to right-wing groups that carried out fire-bombings, burglaries, and shootings. 34

This was the case during the FBI's COINTELPRO in South Dakota in the 1970's against the Oglala Sioux Nation and the American Indian Movement. Right-wing vigilantes were used to disrupt the American Indian Movement (AIM) and selectively terrorize and murder the Oglala Sioux people 35, in what could only be described as a counter-insurgency campaign. During the 36 months roughly beginning with the 1973 seige of Wounded Knee and continuing through the first of May 1976, more than sixty AIM members and supporters died violently on or in locations immediately adjacent to the Pine Ridge Reservation. A minimum of 342 others suffered violent physical assaults. As Roberto Maestas and Bruce Johansen have observed:

Using only these documented political deaths, the yearly murder rate on Pine Ridge Reservation between March 1, 1973, and March 1, 1976, was 170 per 100,000. By comparison, Detroit, the reputed "murder capital of the United States," had a rate of 20.2 in 1974.... The political murder rate at Pine Ridge between March 1, 1973, and March 1, 1976, was almost equivalent to that in Chile during the three years after the military coup supported by the United States deposed and killed President Salvador Allende. 36

To commemorate the 1890 massacre of Wounded Knee, in which 300 Minnecojou Lakota were slaughtered by the U.S. Seventh Cavalry, hundreds of Native Americans from reservations across the West gathered in Wounded Knee, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, during the winter of 1972-73. 37

This situation was already tense due to a series of unsolved murders on the reservation, and a struggle between the administration of the Oglala Sioux tribal president, Dick Wilson, and opposition organizations on the reservation, including AIM. Wilson had been bestowed with a $62,000 Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) grant for purposes of establishing a "tribal ranger group" - an entity which designated itself as "Guardians Of the OgIala Nation" (GOONs). Wilson's "goon squads" patrolled the reservation, unleashing a reign of terror against Wilson's enemies. When victims attempted to seek the protection of the BIA police, they quickly discovered that perhaps a third of its roster - including its head, Delmar Eastman (Crow), and his second-in-command, Duane Brewer (OgIala) - were doubling as GOON leaders or members. For their part, BIA officials - who had set the whole thing up - consistently turned aside requests for assistance from the traditionals as being "purely internal tribal matters," beyond the scope of BIA authority.

On Feb 28th, 1973, residents of Wounded Knee, South Dakota found the roads to the hamlet blockaded by GOONs, later reinforced by marshals service Special Operations Group (SOG) teams and FBI personnel. By 10 p.m., Minneapolis SAC Joseph Trimbach had flown in to assume personal command of the GOONs and BIA police, while Wayne Colburn, director of the U.S. Marshals Service, had arrived to assume control over his now reinforced SOG unit. Colonel Volney Warner of the 82nd Airborne Division and 6th Army Colonel Jack Potter - operating directly under General Alexander Haig, military liaison in the Nixon White House - had also been dispatched from the Pentagon as "advisors" coordinating a flow of military personnel, weapons and equipment to those besieging Wounded Knee. As Rex Weyler has noted:

Documents later subpoenaed from the Pentagon revealed that Colonel Potter directed the employment of 17 APCs [armored personnel carriers], 130,000 rounds of M-16 ammunition, 41,000 rounds of M-40 high explosive, as well as helicopters, Phantom jets, and personnel. Military officers, supply sergeants, maintenance technicians, chemical officers, and medical teams remained on duty throughout the 71 day siege, all working in civilian clothes [to conceal their unconstitutional involvement in this "civil disorder"]. 38

On March 5, Dick Wilson - with federal officials present - held a press conference to declare "open season" on AIM members on Pine Ridge, declaring "AIM will die at Wounded Knee." For their part, those inside the hamlet announced their intention to remain where they were until such time as Wilson was removed from office, the GOONs disbanded, and the massive federal presence withdrawn.

Beginning on March 13, federal forces directed fire from heavy .50 caliber machineguns into the AIM positions. The following month was characterized by alternating periods of negotiation, favored by the army and the marshals - which the FBI and GOONs did their best to subvert - and raging gun battles when the latter held sway. Several defenders were severely wounded in a firefight on March 17, and on March 23 some 20,000 more rounds were fired into Wounded Knee in a 24-hour period.

The FBI's "turf battle" with the "soft" elements of the federal government rapidly came to a head. On April 23, Chief U.S. Marshal Colburn and federal negotiator Kent Frizzell were detained at a GOON roadblock and a gun pointed at Frizzell's head. By his own account, Frizzell was saved only after Colburn leveled a weapon at the GOON and said, "Go ahead and shoot Frizzell, but when you do, you're dead." The pair were then released. Later the same day, a furious Colburn returned with several of his men, disarmed and arrested eleven GOONs, and dismantled the roadblock. However, "that same night... some of Wilson's people put it up again. The FBI, still supporting the vigilantes, had [obtained the release of those arrested and] supplied them with automatic weapons." The GOONs were being armed by the FBI with fully automatic M-16 assault rifles, apparently limitless quantifies of ammunition, and state-of-the-art radio communications gear. When Colburn again attempted to dismantle the roadblock:

FBI [operations consultant] Richard [G.] Held arrived by helicopter to inform the marshals that word had come from a high Washington source to let the roadblock stand ... As a result the marshals were forced to allow several of Wilson's people to be stationed at the roadblock and to participate in ... patrols around the village. 39

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On the evening of April 26, the marshals reported that they were taking automatic weapons fire from behind their position, undoubtedly from GOON patrols. The same "party or parties unknown" was also pumping bullets into the AIM/ION positions in front of the marshals, a matter which caused return fire from AIM. The marshals were thus caught in a crossfire. }:At dawn on the 27th, the marshals, unnerved at being fired on all night from both sides, fired tear gas cannisters from M-79 grenade launchers into the AIM/ION bunkers. They followed up with some 20,000 rounds of small arms ammunition. AIM member Buddy Lamont (Oglala), driven from a bunker by the gas, was hit by automatic weapons fire and bled to death before medics, pinned down by the barrage, could reach him.

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When the siege finally ended through a negotiated settlement on May 7, 1973, the AIM casualty count stood at two dead and fourteen seriously wounded. An additional eight-to-twelve individuals had been "disappeared" by the GOONs. }:They were in all likelihood murdered and - like an untold number of black civil rights workers in the swamps of Mississippi and Louisiana - their bodies secretly buried somewhere in the remote vastness of the reservation.

Of the 60-plus murders occurring in an area in which the FBI held "preeminent jurisdiction," not one was solved by the Bureau. In most instances, no active investigation was ever opened, despite eye-witnesses identifying members of the Wilson GOON squad as killers.

U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Gerald Heaney, after reviewing numerous court transcripts and FBI documents, concluded that the United States Government overreacted at Wounded Knee. Instead of carefully considering the legitimate grievances of Native Americans, the response was essentially a military one.

While Judge Heaney believed that the "Native Americans" had some culpability in the firefight that day, he concluded the United States must share the responsibility. It never has. The FBI has never been held accountable or even publicly investigated for what one Federal petit jury and Judge Heaney concluded was complicity in the creation of a climate of fear and terror on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Other AIM casualties include Richard Oaks, leader of the 1970 occupation of Alcatraz Island by "Indians of All Tribes," who was gunned down in California the following year. Larray Cacuse, a Navajo AIM leader, was shot to death in Arizona in 1972. In 1979, AIM leader John Trudell,preparing to make a speech in Washington, was told by FBI personnel that, if he gave the speech, there would be "consequences." Trudell not only made his speech, calling for the U.S. to get out of North America and detailing the nature of federal repression in Indian country, he burned a U.S. flag as well. That night, his wife, mother-in-law, and three children were "mysteriously" burned to death at their home on the Duck Valley Reservation in Nevada.

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huge file, ward churchill AIM:

http://whale.to/b/cointelpro_7.html

random eg

Far more explicit was a November 26,1973 teletype from SA Richard Wallace Held's counterintelligence group in Los Angeles- which had handled the lethal repression visited upon the LA-BPP - to Gray, suggesting that "Los Angeles and Minneapolis consider possible COINTELPRO measures to further disrupt AIM leadership." 111 This leaves little doubt that counterintelligence specialists such as the younger Held continued to view their job assignments vis 4 vis AIM in precisely the same terms as they had with regard to organizations such as the BPP two years earlier, even if headquarters had in the meantime forbidden use of the customary vernacular. In a superficial exercise in "plausible deniability" the acting director replied in a December 4 teletype:  

Los Angeles suggested that there appears to be a split between Means and Banks based on [deleted's] dismissal from AIM and suggested possible counterintelligence measures be taken to further disrupt AIM leadership ... Your attention is directed to Bureau airtel to All Offices, dated 4/28/71, captioned "Counterintelligence Programs; IS - RM," setting forth that effective immediately all counterintelligence programs operated by the Bureau were being discontinued." ^112

What seems to have been at issue was Held's telltale use of terminology rather than the sort of tactics he was recommending. Indeed, as Bureau conduct in its use of Douglass Durham and the nature of its other involvement in the Banks/Means trial readily indicate, there is every indication that the FBI had already adopted the methods Held advocated for use against AIM.:{

As was noted above, a far more striking example of this than the utilization of agents provocateurs, disinformation and legal fabrications to neutralize AIM was the Bureau's reliance upon Wilson's GOON Squad to decimate the ranks of organizational members and supporters on Pine Ridge. Deployed in much the same fashion as appears to have been intended for the SAO by Held's LA COINTELPRO Section during 1971 and '72 (see Chapter 6), the GOONs functioned essentially as a reservation death squad. Among their first victims was Pedro Bissonette, the young head of the grassroots OgIala Sioux Civil Rights Organization (OSCRO), who had emerged as an ION leader at Wounded Knee. In the aftermath of the siege, the FBI had offered Bissonette a "deal" wherein all charges would be dropped against him in exchange for his testifying against the AIM leadership. ^113 

He refused, and countered that it was his intention to testify instead to the specifics of the graft and corruption permeating the Wilson administration, and the role of the government in perpetuating the situation. Subsequently, he was accosted by a GOON named Cliff Richards in the reservation-adjacent hamlet of White Clay, Nebraska on the afternoon of October 17, 1973. In the ensuing scuffle, Bissonette knocked his attacker to the ground, then got in his car and drove away. ^114

Although White Clay is outside BIA police jurisdiction, Pine Ridge police/ GOON head Delmar Eastman immediately mobilized his entire force - assisted by several FBI spotter planes - in a reservation-wide manhunt for the "fugitive." 115 At some point between 9 and 9:50 p.m. the same evening, Bissonette was stopped at a roadblock near Pine Ridge village and shot in the chest by a BIA police officer (and known GOON) named Joe Clifford. In Clifford's official report, he had been forced to shoot the victim, who had resisted arrest, jumping from his car brandishing a weapon. He recorded that he'd used a 12-gauge shotgun and that the shooting occurred at 9:48 p.m. Bissonette was pronounced dead on arrival at the Pine Ridge hospital at 10:10 p.m." 116 No weapon attributable to Pedro Bissonette was ever produced by the police. Several witnesses who drove by the scene, however, later submitted affidavits that a pool of blood indicating that Bissonette had already been shot was evident at shortly after 9 p.m., suggesting that the GOONs had delayed the victim's transport by ambulance to the nearby hospital (and medical attention) for approximately an hour, until he bled to death. ^117

^....^

During the spring of 1975, the Northwest AIM Group - including Leonard Peltier, Frank Black Horse (adopted Oglala), Bob and Jim Robideau (both Anishinabes), and Darelle "Dino" Butler (Tuni) -set up a defensive encampment at the request of elders Harry and Cecilia Jumping Bull. The camp, was situated in a strongly pro-AIM area,on a property known as the Jumping Bull Compound, near the village of OgIala. It was referred to as "Tent City" in FBI communications, and became an immediate preoccupation of the Bureau and its GOON surrogates. 131 As was noted in a June 6,1975 memorandum captioned "Law Enforcement on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation:"  

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There are pockets of Indian population which consist almost exclusively of American Indian Movement (AIM) members and their supporters on the Reservation. It is significant that in some of these AIM centers the residents have built bunkers which would literally require military assault forces if it were necessary to overcome resistance emanating from the bunkers. ^132

A later memorandum continued, "To successfully overcome automatic or semiautomatic weapons fire from such 'bunkers' it appears as though heavy equipment such as an armored personnel carrier would be required." ^133 Whether or not the FBI actually believed this to be true, the fact is that no such bunkers ever existed. The alleged fortifications were later disclosed to have been abandoned root cellars and broken-down corrals. However, by then the Bureau had utilized such flights of fancy (or cynicism) as the rationale by which to justify provocation of a major "incident" and then a massive escalation of force by which it intended to destroy AIM and its Pine Ridge support base once and for all.  

On the afternoon of June 25, 1975, SAs Ronald Williams and Jack Coler, accompanied by BIA police officers (both Oglalas and known GOONs) Robert Ecoffey and Glenn Little Bird, entered the Jumping Bull Compound, ostensibly searching for a 19-year-old Oglala AIM member, Jimmy Eagle, on what they said were charges of "kidnapping, aggravated assault, and aggravated robbery."134 When they were told Eagle wasn't there and hadn't been seen in weeks, they left, but shortly picked up three Dine (Navajo) teenagers from the AIM camp - Norman Charles, Wilfred 'Wish" Draper and Mike "Baby AIM" Anderson - hitchhiking along Highway 18, which runs between Oglala to Pine Ridge village. Williams and Coler questioned the three, not about Eagle, but about who else was residing in Tent City. The three were then released and returned to camp. ^135

Before mid-morning, June 26, local residents knew that something ominous was in the offing. Indians in and around the village of Oglala noted large numbers of paramilitary personnel - GOONs, BIA police, state troopers, U.S. Marshals, and FBI SWAT teams - massing in the area. 136 Around 11:30 a.m. SAs Coler and Williams returned to the Jumping Bull property. They were allegedly sent to serve an arrest warrant on Jimmy Eagle. However, it is clear they'd already ascertained he was not there and, in any event, the warrant for his arrest was not issued till July 7. 137The agents drove past the buildings of the compound proper and directly toward the AIM camp. They stopped their cars, got out, and began firing their weapons. Members of the camp, believing themselves to be under attack from GOONs, returned fire. 138 This was apparently the cue for the prepositioned reinforcements to arrive; radio transmission logs from SA Williams indicate that he and his partner expected reinforcements to be immediate and massive once the firefight had been initiated.139 Unfortunately for them, three teenagers who had been breakfasting in the compound quickly positioned themselves to cover the route intended by the relief force. 140 Using .22 caliber squirrel rifles, the youngsters shot out the tires of the first two backup cars - driven by SA J. Gary Adams and Fred Two Bulls, a BIA policeman and known GOON. Confronted with these meager potshots, Adams and Two Bulls promptly retreated, abandoning Coler and Williams. 141 Not until 6 p.m., when federal forces had swelled to over 250 men, including aSWAT unit airlifted in from the Bureau's training facility at Quantico,Virginia, and a vigilante force headed by South Dakota Attorney General William Janklow, 142 did the FBI finally mount an assault. ^143 By this point, Williams and Coler were long since dead, and the Indians who had been in the AIM camp that morning had - other than a Coeur D'Alene named Joe Stuntz Killsright who had been killed, ostensibly by a long range shot fired by BIA police officer Gerald Hill ^144 - made their escape.

Although the deaths of Coler and Williams were probably an unintended consequence, the provocation of the firefight achieved its intended objective: the public justification for a truly massive paramilitary assault on AIM and the Pine Ridge traditionals. As is shown in the accompanying memo from R.E. Gebhardt to J.E. O'Connell, dated June 27,1975, the FBI's top COINTELPRO specialist, Richard G. Held - assigned as the Bureau's Chicago SAC, but already prepositioned in Minneapolis - immediately assumed control over the RESMURS ("Reservation Murders") investigation.Among those accompanying Held to South Dakota was "public information specialist" Tom Coll who immediately undertook a series of sensational press conferences in which he pronounced that the agents had been "lured into an ambush" by AIM and attacked from a "sophisticated bunker complex" where they were wounded and "dragged from their cars" before being "riddled" by "15-20 rounds each" from "automatic weapons." In Coll's accounts, Williams and Coler died while disabled and "begging for their lives." Both agents were "stripped," as part of their "executions," according to Coll. ^145 Although literally none of this was true - a matter well known to Bureau investigators at least a day before the first press conference presided over by Tom Coll - such stories produced the lurid headlines necessary to condition public sentiment to accept virtually anything the FBI wished to impose upon AIM. 146 An additional advantage of Coll's media ploy was that it caused a senate select committee planning to investigate those FBI operations already directed against AIM to be indefinitely postponed, "under the circumstances. " 147 It was a week before FBI Director Clarence Kelley quietly "corrected" this welter of disinformation, offered in the finest COINTELPRO style. ^148

Another star performer the Chicago SAC brought along was Norman Zigrossi, a young counterintelligence protege whose mission it was to replace ASAC George O'Clock in Rapid City for the duration of the anti-AIM campaign. ^149 The elder Held's son, Los Angeles COINTELPRO section head Richard W., was also involved in RESMURS from the outset, as is evidenced in the accompanying June 27,1975 memo from O'Connell to Gebhardt. As is revealed in the accompanying July 26 memo, he had by that date joined his father at Pine Ridge, a locale in which the experience he had acquired while heading the Bureau's counterintelligence campaign against the LA-BPP (see Chapter 5) could be deployed against AIM, and his background overseeing SAO attacks against the left in southern California (see Chapter 6) might be used in connection with the GOONs. Actually, the younger Held probably arrived in South Dakota earlier, as is evidenced by the fact that RESMURS communications - such as the accompanying June 30, 1975 memo from B.H. Cook to Gebhardt - suddenly adopted the practice of referring toRichard G. Held as "Dick" [dad?]  in order to distinguish him from his namesake.

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http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/FBI/COINTELPRO_Untold_Story.html

In deposition in the Bari case, OPD intelligence division chief Kevin Griswold admitted that his department keeps files on over 300 political groups and individuals in the Bay Area. Griswold said the Oakland Police have spied on EF! since 1984, and had their own informant inside EF! who reported back to Griswold on plans for upcoming demonstrations. This even though EF! is not based in Oakland and was not active there prior to the Bari bombing. Griswold said he shares information from his spies with the FBI. Encouraging and tapping into political spying operations run by local police like Oakland's was one of the key ways the FBI got around the Attorney General's guidelines that barred the bureau from purely political spying.

The special agent in charge of the FBI's San Francisco office at the time of the bombing was Richard W. Held, a 26-year veteran of the FBI's COINTELPRO "dirty tricks" campaigns against the Black Panthers, American Indian Movement and Puerto Rican independence activists.

Under deposition under oath in the Bari case, Held claimed he was unaware of the details of the Bari-Cherney case, and implied that it was not important enough to merit his attention. But files in the San Francisco FBI office contained a memo from Washington ordering his office to provide weekly reports on the Bari case so that headquarters could respond to the "numerous inquiries" they were getting from the media. Held's testimony was also contradicted by FBI agents under his command who said in their depositions that they briefed him daily on the case.

The unraveling of the frame-up of Bari and Cherney may have brought an early end to Held's 25-year FBI career. It is a strong tradition in the FBI not to embarrass the bureau. Held announced his early resignation from the FBI in May of 1993, the day before Bari held a press conference with the newly released Oakland Police crime scene photos exposing the FBI lies about the location of the bomb. Held told reporters he resigned because he expected reassignment to a new post and didn't want to move his family. His father, Richard G. Held, had risen to the high post of Deputy Director of the FBI, and Held's career track was headed for the top as well. He told reporters his mother cried when he told her he was resigning, so clearly Held's FBI career was very important to him and his family, and it seems unlikely he would end it early just to avoid a relocation.

Other cases have come to light where the FBI allegedly used bombs to frame radicals twenty years before the Bari bombing. FBI agent provocateur David Sannes was used to get radicals in Seattle to use bombs so that they could be arrested and discredited. When he learned that the FBI wanted him to set up one bomber to die in a booby-trapped explosion, he refused to go along and went public.

AMERICA'S SECRET POLICE:FBI COINTELPRO in the 1990s (This report was written by Noelle Hanrahan in association with the Redwood Summer Justice Project, which pursues Judi Bari's and Darryl Cherney's civil rights case against the FBI and Oakland Police.)

On April 22, 1970, as 22 million Americans rallied across the country on the first Earth Day celebration, FBI agents in over 40 cities were ordered to spy on and infiltrate these events. Senator Edwin Muskie, himself a victim, remarked from the floor of Congress that this surveillance was "a dangerous threat to fundamental constitutional rights." The power of the environmental movement and the challenge it posed to business-as-usual made it an instant target for FBI suppression.

Twenty years later on May 24, 1990, a shrapnel-wrapped car bomb went off under noted Earth First! activist Judi Bari's car seat, nearly killing her and injuring fellow organizer Darryl Cherney. Even more frightening to Bari, as she woke up in the hospital intensive care unit under armed guard, was the realization that a major FBI "counterintelligence" operation against Earth First! was underway.

Within minutes of their arrival on the scene of the blast, the FBI was falsely characterizing nonviolent environmental organizers Bari and Cherney as "terrorists". Within hours, the Oakland Police Department had arrested and detained them for transporting explosives. It was not enough that the two leaders had been physically blown up; the FBI immediately began to orchestrate a disinformation campaign designed to discredit and imprison these activists and destroy Earth First!

What could make nonviolent environmental organizers the targets of repression? Back in May 1990, Earth First! in the redwood region was gearing up for "Mississippi Summer in the California Redwoods," a bold call that would draw thousands of activists to Mendocino and Humboldt counties. Earth First!'s fierce, grassroots, pro-labor campaign of mass nonviolent civil disobedience was determined to stop corporate timber's liquidation of the old-growth forests. Even in the face of the attempted assassination of the key organizers and a well-orchestrated FBI disinformation campaign, thousands came to Redwood Summer, bringing national attention to the destruction of the redwood forest ecosystem. It is a testimony to the power of the movement mobilized by Judi Bari that today, eight years later, protests to save the old growth forests are more dynamic than ever.

 "It is absolutely foolish to suggest that the FBI was involved in anything that would obstruct justice."--Richard W. Held, FBI"These guys are professional liars, who have raised selective memory loss to an art form."--Judi Bari, Earth First!

FBI Legacy 

From the moment of its birth in 1908 as the Justice Department's "Bureau of Investigation," a key part of the FBI's mission has been to suppress political dissent. In the early years they used deportations and the career-destroying Palmer raids to target union leaders and communists. Burglary, blacklisting, infiltration, and disruption became standard operating procedure. Later, when the Supreme Court ruled that the Smith Actspecifically could not be used to target communists, the FBI took it undercover, developing its "counterintelligence" program dubbed COINTELPRO. In the words of then-director J. Edgar Hoover, COINTELPRO was designed to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" groups whose views the FBI deemed threatening to the status quo.

Richard W. Held: Constitutional Assassin

Richard W. Held was Special Agent-in-Charge of the San Francisco FBI Office 1985-1993 during its extensive COINTELPRO operations against Earth First! Of all the COINTELPRO operatives, Richard

Wallace Held's past is particularly brutal and haunting. 

Held began his career in 1968 in the Los Angeles office of the FBI. He quickly became the lead agent in the "racial matters" squad which focused on what the FBI called "black extremists". Just one year later he was involved in targeting Los Angeles Black Panther Party leader Geronimo ji jaga (Pratt) for "neutralization." Framed for a murder he did not commit, Geronimo spent 25 years in state prison. He was released in 1997 after a judge overturned his conviction based on prosecutorial misconduct. The key witness in the case, Julius Butler, was an informant for the FBI, LAPD, and the L.A. District Attorney's office; that information was kept secret during Geronimo's trial. An uncanny ability to lie under oath, commonly referred to as "testa-lying," is a trademark of rogue law enforcement professionals. Under oath in a deposition for Geronimo's federal appeal, Held remarked on his relationship with Julius Butler: "I think that it may have been relevant, your honor, depending on what the contact was at the time and what else I knew, because I don't recall really knowing much about the case at all anyway." In fact, Held was coordinating COINTELPRO operations in L.A., and Geronimo was at the top of the "Key Black Extremists" list.

Even more damning, Held was the control agent for informant Julius Butler. In two-and-a-half years, Held recorded contact and meetings with Butler 33 times. Contrast Held's repeated denials of knowledge and responsibility with the cold, hard facts, including this from a 1/28/70 memo by Held to the FBI Director: "I request Bureau approval ... to attack, expose, and ridicule the BPP... operation number one is designed to challenge the legitimacy of the authority exercised by Elmer Gerard Pratt."

After a few years in Washington, DC as a headquarters intelligence supervisor, Held was back in the field on the Pine Ridge Reservationthree days after the firefight between federal agents and the American Indian Movement (AIM) during which two FBI agents and an Indian man were killed. An FBI memo dated 7/26/75 to the Washington Bureau's Intelligence Division notes, "Supervisor Richard Wallace Held arrived at Pine Ridge, South Dakota Indian Reservation Command Post on 6/29/75, to assist in the RESMURS investigation. He was assigned three important phases of this investigation; namely, the correlation of Bureau-wide informants into the investigation; the establishment of the confidential fund; and the coordination of all intelligence information as it relates to the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the RESMURS investigations... throughout the country ..."

Held's work contributed to the framing of noted political prisoner Leonard Peltier, and to covering up the truth about the agents' deaths and the still unsolved killings of 70 AIM supporters on the Pine Ridge Reservation during the extensive FBI's operations.

From 1979 until 1985, Held was Special Agent-in-Charge of the San Juan, Puerto Rico office. There he presided over a politically-oriented paramilitary campaign against the Puerto Rican Independence movement, creating files on 74,000 individuals. In his last operation in Puerto Rico, Held led 300 FBI agents and U.S. marshals in raids all over the island, trashing office and homes and arresting scores of activists. One advocate of Puerto Rican independence said the raids made "even the desire for independence a crime." Held left Puerto Rico in 1985 to head the FBI's San Francisco, California field office.

Held Turns His Sights on Earth First! 

In the year before the car bombing of Bari and Cherney, a shocking and classic political disruption campaign was conducted against Earth First! in Northern California. In the months just prior to Redwood Summer, the disruption was intense. Bari, Cherney and other Earth First! organizers received over 30 death threats from March to May, 1990. Fake Earth First! press releases were circulated in the community and to the press, falsely connecting the Earth First!ers with violence and sabotage. Local law enforcement refused to investigate the death threats, signaling their tolerance for violence against environmentalists. "If you turn up dead, Judi," Mendocino County Sheriff's Sgt. Steve Satterwhite told Bari, "then we'll investigate."

The FBI's very act of blaming Bari and Cherney for the bombing that nearly killed them, and their repeated feeding of damaging and bald-faced lies to the press about evidence in the case, are both classic components of a "counter-intelligence" campaign. The FBI's own files refer to the use of informants, yet even now the full scope of their actions remains hidden.

Coincidence or COINTELPRO? 

In depositions in Bari's and Cherney's civil rights lawsuit, FBI agents repeatedly denied that there was an investigation against Earth First! in California prior to the bombing. Yet, documents at first withheld and blacked out, then later released, show that the FBI field reports written at the time of the bombing stated Bari and Cherney were "subjects of an investigation in the terrorist field." 

The Arizona FBI Sting Operation In 1988, a major FBI sting operation was launched against Earth First! in Arizona. In a cynical attempt to discredit and criminalize Earth First!, the FBI spent $3 million and employed over 50 FBI agents, extensive wiretaps, body wires and overt entrapment in order to arrest Arizona Earth First!ers for conspiracy to down power lines.

At the heart of Operation THERMCON (short for "Thermite Conspiracy") were undercover FBI agent/provocateur Michael Fain and informant Ron Frazier, who infiltrated a group of environmental activists in Prescott. Though unsuccessful, the FBI worked long and hard to entrap these individuals into using explosives to down power lines. Apparently the FBI sought to involve Earth First! with explosives in order to create a sensational case against them. This would serve to discredit Earth First! and provide justification to conduct illegal investigations and operations against the political and First Amendment activity of the environmental movement nationwide. Busted on May 30, 1989, in the Arizona desert, four people were caught with a cutting torch attempting to disable a power transmission tower leading to a pumping station of the central Arizona project (CAP). CAP is a billion dollar pork barrel project to carry Colorado River water uphill across hundreds of miles of desert to water the lawns of Phoenix and Tucson. Judi Bari laughingly called this, "the only joint FBI-Earth First! action ever to take place." Undercover FBI agents picked the target, drove the truck, and taught the activists to use an acetylene torch. The FBI paid informant Ron Frazier $54,000 cash in exchange for implicating the Earth First!ers, and granted him immunity from prosecution for various crimes.  

"The first lesson in activism is that the person that offers to get the dynamite is always the FBI agent," joked Judi Bari.

FBI Lies Exposed 

It was in the context of such a massive undercover operation against Earth First! that the FBI terrorist squad responded en masse to the bombing of Bari and Cherney in May of 1990. Special Agent John Conway, who was one of the main case agents assigned to the bombing, had also handled the San Francisco FBI office's substantial field work on the Arizona "THERMCON" sting.

It is striking that after failing in a major COINTELPRO operation to tie Earth First! with explosives in Arizona, the FBI again tried to smear and defame nonviolent environmental activists as terrorists by falsely charging Bari and Cherney with transporting the bomb that was meant to kill them.

In his deposition in the Bari/Cherney lawsuit, Held insists that he was completely out of the loop and unaware of the case, even though other FBI agents contradict his testimony and have said that they briefed him on a regular basis.

Key Questions Remain 

Were Judi Bari, Darryl Cherney or Earth First! subjects of an ongoing investigation in "the terrorist field" as agents claimed in FBI reports? If so, where are the files? Was this investigation authorized? Were they under FBI surveillance when they were bombed? What doesthe FBI know about who bombed Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney? And finally, why have they never made any attempt to catch the real bomber?

In search of answers to these questions, the Redwood Summer Justice Project will continue to expose secret FBI operations against Earth First! as we pursue the civil rights lawsuit against the FBI and the Oakland Police.

(This article refers to the actions of FBI Special Agent Richard Wallace Held. For clarification, his father Richard G. Held was Associate Director of the FBI.)

COINTELPRO: The FBI's Secret War Against Democracy  - Between 1987 and 1990, in a conspiracy to entrap and "pop Dave Foreman [founder of Earth First!] to send a message," the FBI spent $3 million, used 50 agents and conducted more than 1000 hours of wiretaps. A key informant was paid a total of $54,000.

Sources available on request. To order more copies of"AMERICA'S SECRET POLICE"contactRedwood Summer Justice Project at the address below

To be placed on the mailing list to receive updates on Judi Bari's lawsuit against the FBI, or to make a tax deductible contribution to help fund the lawsuit, please contact:

REDWOOD SUMMER JUSTICE PROJECT

P.O. Box 14720, Santa Rosa, CA 95402

Phone (707) 887-0262 or FAX (707) 887-0865

email: RJF at judibari.org

.

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	   COINTELPRO: THE FBI'S SECRET WAR AGAINST DEMOCRACY
---


	This article refers to the actions of FBI Special Agent
	Richard Wallace Held. For clarification, his father Richard
	G. Held was Associate Director of the FBI.

								*

   * Between 1987 and 1990, in a conspiracy to entrap and "pop
	Dave Foreman [founder of Earth First!] to send a message,"
	the FBI spent $3 million, used 50 agents and conducted more
	than 1000 hours of wiretaps. A key informant was paid a
	total of $54,000.

   * 1981-1990, activists opposed to the U.S. foreign policy in
	Central America (as well as a dozen U.S. Senators and
	Congressmen) were subject to FBI harassment. The FBI's
	"investigation" of CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the
	People of El Salvador) involved 59 field offices and 200
	incidents of death threats, intimidation, and break-ins.

   * In August 1985, Richard W. Held led 300 FBI agents and U.S.
	marshals in raids throughout Puerto Rico, trashing offices
	and homes and arresting scores of activists. The FBI's
	overall operations resulted in the creation of files on
	74,000 individuals.

   * In 1975, Richard W. Held was involved in the FBI's cover-up
	of the 70 deaths of American Indian Movement supporters at
	Pine Ridge in South Dakota. On the scene after an FBI
	operation which resulted in the deaths of two FBI agents and
	one Indian man, Held helped lay the groundwork for the
	framing of AIM leader Leonard Peltier for murder. Peltier
	remains wrongfully imprisoned to this day.

   * On April 27, 1970, Richard W. Held requested and received
	permission from J. Edgar Hoover to "neutralize" actress Jean
	Seberg. Held placed an anonymous letter with a Hollywood
	gossip columnist regarding the parentage of Seberg's unborn
	child. On August 7, 1970, Seberg, nearly 7 months pregnant,
	attempted suicide. On August 23rd, she gave birth
	prematurely to a baby girl. Weighing less than 4 pounds, the
	baby died. Seberg's transgression? Her support of the Black
	Panther Party.

   * Beginning in 1970, FBI agent Richard W. Held, an architect
	of COINTELPRO vs. the Black Panthers in L.A., helped
	orchestrate the 25-year false imprisonment of Geronimo ji
	jaga (Pratt). Held and others engineered the frame-up of
	Geronimo by withholding critical information that the
	prosecution's key witness, Julius Butler, was an FBI
	operative.

   * On Dec. 4, 1969, Chicago police and the FBI assassinated
	Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Hampton, who was
	alive but wounded after the initial assault, was then
	executed at close range. William O'Neal, an FBI informant,
	provided a detailed floor plan of Hampton's apartment; he
	was paid $30,000.

   * In 1963, the FBI turned their attention to Martin Luther
	King, Jr., and sought to destroy him through a campaign of
	wiretaps and harassment. In one incident, the FBI confronted
	King with a compilation of secretly recorded tapes,
	threatening to release them to the press if King did not
	commit suicide before accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.

   * From 1943-63, the federal civil rights case Socialist
	Workers Party v. Attorney General documents decades of
	illegal FBI break-ins and 10 million pages of surveillance
	records. The FBI paid an estimated 1,600 informants
	$1,680,592 and used 20,000 days of wiretaps to undermine
	legitimate political organizing.

							  * * *

	Sources available on request. To order more copies of
	"AMERICA'S SECRET POLICE," to be placed on the mailing list
	to receive updates on Judi Bari's lawsuit against the FBI,
	or to make a tax deductible contribution to help fund the
	lawsuit, please contact: contact Redwood Summer Justice
	Project at the address above.

	AFIB EDITOR'S NOTE: Noelle Hanrahan through her tireless
	efforts through the Prison Radio Project has helped
	transform the case of imprisoned journalist, former Black
	Panther and MOVE supporter Mumia Abu-Jamal, into an
	international human rights issue. She is currently the
	publicist for the Redwood Summer Justice Project. Much
	respect Noelle!

	For more information on the Prison Radio Project write:
	radiocq@sirius.com

							  * * *

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