COVERT ACTION: SPIES IN THE MOVEMENT

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INFORMATION BULI.F:TIN
Number 24
$3.00
Inside: Spies in th? Movement
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Editorial
In This Issue
This issue of CRIB examines government infiltrators and
provocateurs who target progressive groups in the United
States. The theme is something of a departure from our usual
international focus, but in many ways it complements our pre-
vious work. For, in fact, the government's covert operations at
home are often mounted against domestic groups which have
demonstrated a global consciousness-which see their work
inextricably linked with movements for change throughout the
world.
Indeed, when President Reagan signed Executive Order
12333 in December 198 I , he expressly gave the CIA the au-
thority to infiltrate-and to disrupt~omestic organizations
concerned with international issues. Now both the CIA and the
FBI insist that citizens groups opposing U.S. foreign policy are
fair game~ven if no wrongdoing is suspected. Constitutional
requirements of warrants and of probable cause have been ar-
rogantly waved aside when the government intones the magic
words, "foreign intelligence."
Another reason this study of infiltration and provocation is
timely and appropriate is the apparent naivete of many progres-
sive people today, especially those too young to have been ac-
tive during the heyday of COINTELPRO and Operation
CHAOS, when the civil rights and antiwar movements were at-
tacked by the FBI and the CIA in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Too many people, it seems, think that the activities described
in this issue of CALB do not occur~r in any event are no
longer prevalent.
History does not bear out such optimism. We hope this issue
will help-not to foster paranoia, but to engender a healthy
realism. We investigate the problems of infiltration and provo-
cation theoretically and historically, and look at a number of
examples, past and present, including the genocidal attacks on
the Native American movement a decade ago (though Leonard
Peltier remains in jail to this day), the infiltration of the
NASSCO steelworkers strike, and the current infiltration of the
sanctuary movement.
A Note on the Hostage Crisis
Whether or not the latest hostage crisis is over when this
magazine is on the stands, a few comments are in order. In
spite of the nation's zeal to retaliate, it is important to under-
stand that the two most sanctimonious parties, Israel and the
United States, have been guilty of equally blatant violations of
international law, and on a far greater scale. Israel, in violation
of the Geneva Convention, has been forcibly relocating inno-
cent citizens of the lands it has occupied, and has been shown
to have engaged in indiscriminate aerial bombardment
throughout Lebanon. The United States, through the CIA, has
trained, equipped, and unleashed terrorist bands in Beirut. Yet
only one side is labeled terrorist.
As Marines are shot in El Salvador, "humanitarian" aid is
given to the contras, in Nicaragua, and the "humiliation" of
the hijacking festers, the rhetoric of the administration is
adopted unquestioningly by the mass media and the Congress.
We fear that the same knee-jerk frustration which sanctioned
the invasion of Grenada in the wake of the Beirut Marine bar-
racks bombing could lead to a full-scale war. We can only
hope that everyone with a sense of conscience will resist such a
move by the White House. ?
Table of Contests
Editorial
2
Leonard Peltier
25
New State Repression
3
?he NASSCO Cas?
30
Sanctuary Movement
12
De Borchgrave and Moon
34
War Against Native Americans
16
Moscow and Moss
36
"Wild Bi11" Janklow
22
Tetra Tech
40
Cover: Native American political prisoner, Leonard Peltier. Credit: Jerry Lower; reprinted with permission of Center for Con-
stitutional Rights.
CovertAction /nformation Bulletin, Number 24, Summer 1985, published by Covert Action Publications, Inc., a District of Columbia Nonprofit Corporation, P.
O. Box 50272, Washington, DC 20004; telephones [phone] and [phone]. All rights reserved; copyright ?1985 by Covert Action Publications, Inc.
Typography by Your Type, New York, NY; printing by Faculty Yress, Brooklyn, NY. Staff: Ellen Ray, William Schaap, Louis Wolf, and B. Lynne Barbee. Board
of Advisers: Philip Agee, Ken Lawrence, Clarence Lusane, Elsie Wilcott, Jim Wilcott. Indexed in the Alternative Press Index. ISSN 0275-309X.
Number 24 (Summer 1985)
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the New State Repression
By Ken Lawrence
Introduction
Political repression manifests itself in three discernible
forms: police brutality, which is widespread, generally random
violence committed by armed agents of the state usually
against members of oppressed communities, nationalities, and
classes; vigilantism, which is violence committed by ostensi-
bly private (non-government) individuals and organizations,
sometimes random but more typically aimed at specific, op-
pressed communities; and secret police activity, nearly always
directed by elite government agencies against carefully chosen
enemies considered political threats to established authority.
There is a definite relationship among these three forms of
repression, and they are often employed in concert. Illegal acts
of terror by Ku Klux Klan or Nazi paramilitary groups, for ex-
ample, are frequently planned and directed by the very law en-
forcement personnel who should prevent them and are execu-
ted by the same people and organizations deemed "subver-
sive" by the authorities. It would therefore be futile to struggle
against one form of repression while ignoring the others.
All three types of repression have undergone important
changes in recent years. Police forces are not what they used to
be. On the one hand they have been militarized to a degree pre-
viously unknown in the United States; on the other hand they
are engaging in public relations campaigns to project the oppo-
site image: the police as surrogate social workers and protec-
tors of children. These developments, along with the introduc-
tion of "beat representatives," whose tasks range from lubri-
cating relations between police and local businesses to low-
level intelligence gathering, have necessarily changed the face
of police brutality.
Racist vigilantes can no longer be safely relied on to serve as
an extension of the state bringing ' `law and order" to areas that
are difficult to govern, because they are increasingly under the
sway of ideological fascists whose organizations-Ku Klux
Klaus, Nazis, Aryan Nations, Posse Comitatus, and many
others-are in opposition to the government for their own
reasons. Under these conditions there are greater risks attached
to the use of these forces than in past years when such terrorists
proclaimed themselves the most loyal Americans. (On the
other hand, some individual vigilantes like Bernhard Goetz
have appeared, generating latent organizational backing but
seemingly acting for reasons of their own.)
*Ken Lawrence is the director of the Anti-Repression Resource Team, which
has prepared a training course for political activists and community organizers
on political repression and police provocateurs. He will soon be on a national
speaking tour on The New State Repression; for information write to ARRT,
P.O. Box 3568, Jackson, MS 39207, or call [phone]. This article is
copyright ?1985 by Ken Lawrence. A slightly different text of The New State
Repression will he available in booklet form from the International Network
Against the New State Repression, 220 South State Street, Suite 232, Chicago,
IL 60604. for $1.50 postpaid.
Striking advances have emerged in the functioning of the
secret police. The resulting changes are most fundamental: the
way they view society and their role in it. It is these new secret
police activities and strategies that we examine first.
The Strategy of Permanent Repression
State repression is as old as what people generally call civili-
zation. Ancient Egypt had armies and police to put down the
Pharoah's subjects who threatened the established order.
Planter (and General) Wade Hampton led his militia against the
largest slave insurrection in U.S. history, in 181 I in Louisiana.
Repression on such a scale is not new, in this country or any-
where else.
Yet there are ways in which today's political repression dif-
fers fundamentally from the repression of the past. The most
basic difference is on the level of stru~e,~~~--not just technol-
ogy, though that too is important-but the general approach of
the state, the outlook of the ruling class.
In the past rulers and their security forces believed that the
normal condition of society was stability and calm, while in-
surgency was thought to be a quirk, an oddity, a pathology.
Certainly they knew that rebellions would break out from time
to time, and they would then have to put them down forcihly,
in order to return to "normal."
The difference today is the rulers' belief that insurgency is
not an occasional, erratic idiosyncrasy of people who arc ex-
ploited and oppressed, but a constant occurrence-perntnnetu
insurgency, which calls for a strategy that does not simply rely
on a police force and a national guard and an army that can be
called out in an emergency, but rather a strategy of per?nutne?n~
repression as the full-time task of the security forces. "This dif-
ference has been theoretically elaborated largely as a conse-
quence of the Indochina War, which gave the strategy its
name: counterinsuri;ency.
When the Black freedom movement erupted in the 1950s
and 1960x, the state's traditional tool of repression, military
violence, proved not to be as effective as in the past. The ac-
tions of Police Chief Eugene "Bull" Connor in Birmingham
and Sheriff Jim Clark in Selma nut only failed to stop the
movement, they actually fanned the flames of insurgency. But
as that movement spread to other sectors of the population, the
main state response was more of the same, culminating in the
police riot in Chicago against protesters at the 1968 Democrat-
ic National Convention.
By the end of the sixties, it was clear to the establishment
that its traditional methods of social control were weakening,
and that its repressive apparatus was insufficient as a backup.
A new approach was needed, one that started from scratch and
challenged some of its own most sacred beliefs about social
order. The person who responded to the need was a British mil-
itary commander, Brigadier Frank Kitson.
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Kitson's 1971 book, Low Intensity Operations, the basic
manual of counterinsurgency method in Western Europe and
North America, describes insurgency as developing through
three stages. The first he calls The Preparatory Period; the sec-
ond, The Non-Violent Phase; the third, Insurgency.
In elaborating The Preparatory Period, Kitson describes
what earlier establishment theoreticians would have called nor-
mality: Nothing is happening, all is calm. But according to Kit-
son, just because you cannot see rebellion does not mean it is
not there. It really is happening. The state's enemies are
gathering their forces; they are knocking on doors, they are
plotting. Sooner or later they will be out in the streets, and the
police have to be ready for them. Right then, during The Pre-
paratory Period when nothing seems to be happening, is the
time when the police must prepare themselves and start pene-
trating the opposition, because something is bound to develop.
Earlier theory, particularly as practiced by J. Edgar Hoover,
was more reactive. Somebody would do something and
Hoover would add them to the list.' Kitson's model is differ-
ent; though we do not know exactly who our enemies are, they
are out there, and the police must go out and find them, infil-
trate, and plant provocateurs.
Some classical descriptions of secret police methods are still
relevant. One of the best, and most pertinent today, is Victor
Serge's What Everyone Should Know About State Repression,
based on documents of the Tsar's secret police, the Okhrana,
which were captured by the Bolsheviks during the Russian
Revolution. The most revealing was a manual on provoca-
tion-how the police should manage agents provocateurs.
Nowhere has the method of employing provocateurs ever been
elaborated as well as in this Tsarist police manual, quoted ex-
tensively in Serge's book.
Despite the promise of high technology, principally com-
puters and electronic surveillance equipment of great sophisti-
cation, human agents remain the essential vehicle of political
repression. In order not only to know what political groups are
thinking and doing, but also to prevent momentum from de-
veloping that would make repression much more costly, the
police put people inside, not simply spying, but playing an ac-
tive role-disrupting, discrediting, misdirecting, and neutraliz-
ing the state's opponents.2
The application of any method of state repression is deter-
mined politically. The old assumption of the U.S. rulers was
that the population was essentially loyal to the state, that the
task was simply to identify insurgents and to expose them as
disloyal. That was the method of the House Un-American Ac-
tivities Committee, the Senate Internal Security Committee,
Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover.
Hoover's best seller Masters of Deceit is a classic of the genre.
But these methods failed miserably in the 1960s. The more
the government tried to "expose" the Black movement as dis-
loyal, the larger that movement grew and the more others
adopted its methods and its vision. Belatedly, the repressive
agencies shifted to a different tack, mainly covert action de-
signed to weaken the movements from within and to wage psy-
1. Hoover's methods are discussed in J. Edgar Hoover's Detention Plan:
The Politics of Repression in the United States 1939-1976. (Full citations for
all works mentioned in the text and footnotes may be found in the Bibliography
which follows the article.)
2. Naturally the police do apply [he new technologies. The Technology of
Pofitical Control is a useful sourcebook on modern repression gadgetry;
another is the collection of documents, pamphlets, and articles supplied in the
United Methodist Voluntary Service packet Repression and Resistance.
4 CovertAction
chological warfare against them from without. The best known
examples are the FBI's Counterintelligence Program (COIN-
TELPRO), and the CIA's domestic disruptions, Operation
CHAOS and Project RESISTANCE.
For these, surveillance was not enough, no matter how
sophisticated the technology. Only the presence of pro-
vocateurs within the movement could create factions and sow
dissension, plant false evidence that could then be used to con-
fuse and alienate supporters or create the basis for criminal
frameups, and make certain that targeted leaders met their ap-
pointments with assassins' bullets. But these methods also con-
tained risks. The type of people who can be hired to carry out
these tasks are usually psychologically unstable, often drawn
from the criminal element. Sometimes they "defect" to the
groups they are supposed to disrupt. Sometimes they feed their
employers false information in order to keep their jobs.
Kitson's approach answered some of these problems, if only
because, by institutionalizing repression as a permanent feature
of capitalist society, his system furnished more opportunities
for the state to recruit, place, and test their agents long before
they were called upon to perform the most extreme kinds of
provocations.
Frank Kitson in Theory and Practice
Frank Kitson was the commander of the British counterin-
surgency force in the North of Ireland for many years, and be-
fore that he was an officer in many of Britain's lost colonial
wars: Kenya, Aden, Cyprus. Most of his examples in the book
Low Intensity Operations are drawn from Britain's war in Ire-
land and the U.S. war in Indochina.
Kitson says the police and the army have to take advantage
of the first stage of popular struggle, The Preparatory Period,
to deploy themselves, to infiltrate the enemy. That is when
people are not on their guard, when the police can get their
spies and provocateurs "in place" so that when open rebellion
develops, as he says it must, agents are already there. Later it
might be difficult or impossible to get them in.
Certain critical decisions must be made during The Prepara-
tory Period, Kitson says:
An excellent example concerns the way the Law should
work. Broadly speaking there are two possible alternatives,
the first one being that the Law should be used as just
another weapon in the government's arsenal, and in this case
it becomes little more than a propaganda cover for the dis-
posal of unwanted members of the public. For this to happen
efficiently, the activities of the legal services have to be tied
into the war effort in as discreet a way as possible which, in
effect, means that the member of the government responsi-
ble for the law either sits on the supreme council or takes his
orders from the head of the administration. The other alter-
native is that the Law should remain impartial and adminis-
ter the laws of the country without any direction from the
government. ... As a rule the second alternative is not only
morally right but also expedient because it is more compati-
ble with the government's aim of maintaining the allegiance
of the population.'
Despite the disclaimer, Kitson's critics have repeatedly shown
that in the counterinsurgency campaigns he himself com-
manded, it was always the first option [hat was chosen.
3. Kitson, Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency, Peacekeep-
ing, p. 69.
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If the counterinsurgency war is to succeed, Kitson says the
police must have a grasp of the insurgents' politics; they must
sort out the different categories of enemies in order to divide
and weaken them. Here is what he says to do in The Non-vio-
lent Phase, the second stage of struggle when people are leaf-
leting and marching, but before The Insurgency begins:
For the purposes of this study no account will be taken of the
simplest method of all, which is to surprise the movement by
the ruthless application of naked force, because although
non-violent campaigns are particularly susceptible to [his
sort of action, it is most unlikely that the British govern-
ment, or indeed any Western government, would be politi-
cally able to operate on these lines even if it wanted to do so.
In practice the most promising line of approach lies in
separating the mass of those engaged in the campaign from
the leadership by the judicious promise of concessions, at
the same time imposing a period of calm by the use of gov-
ernment forces backed up by statements to the effect that
most of the concessions can only be implemented once the
life of the country returns to normal. Although with an eye
to world opinion and to the need to retain the allegiance of
the people, no more force than is necessary for containing
the situation should be used, conditions can be made reason-
ably uncomfortable for the population as a whole, in order to
provide an incentive for a return to normal life and to act as a
deterrent towards a resumption of the campaign.'
The police raids in the early 1980s in the Black community, os-
tensibly searching for Assata Shakur, a member of the Black
Liberation Army who had escaped from prison, were exactly
this kind of harassment. This is an element of strategy; it is not
a quirk, not an accident, and not something to be deferred until
The Insurgency begins.
The third is to associate as many prominent members of the
population, especially those who have engaged in non-vio-
lent action, with the government. This last technique is
known in America as co-optation.`
Kitson's final stage is The Insurgency. Here he says intelli-
gence is the critical element. If it is accepted that the problem
of defeating the enemy consists very largely of finding him,
it is easy to recognize the paramount importance of good in-
formation.?
Kitson's recipe requires a technique he calls pseudo gangs or
cnurtter gongs, which he claims to have invented in Kenya dur-
ing the British war against the Mau Mau. The term itself is an
excellent example of the way repressive forces attempt to
criminalize their political opponents. Kitson would call any
liberation movement a "gang." Hence its false counterpart
under police control is a "pseudo gang."'
He says it is important for these phony opposition move-
ments to develop credibility so that they can effectively con-
fuse, divide, and undermine the authentic organizations, and
4. lhid., p. 87.
5. lhid.
6. Ihid., p. 95.
7. In West Germany, journalists were required, at the risk of losing their
jobs, to refer to the revolutionary organization which called itself the Red
Arniy Fraction as the "Baader-Meinhof gang.' One television newscaster was
fired for using the slightly less pejorative term "Baader-Meinhof group."
so that they can eventually serve as paramilitary auxiliaries to
the security forces. He adds:
There is some evidence to the effect that pseudo gangs of
ultra-militant black nationalists are operating now in the
United States."
One such FBI provocateur based in "hampa, Florida, named Joe
Burton, created organizations all over the United States and
Canada between 1972 and 1975. His home base group in
Tampa was called Red Star Cadre. Most of its far-flung af-
filiates, but not all, presented themselves as Maoist, some were
ostensibly pro-Soviet or pro-Cuban. The FB1 used these front
groups sometimes to disrupt legitimate progressive movements
in the U.S., other times to unify with and spy un them.
One of the things Burton's career exemplifies is thr political
sophistication of the FBI. An FBI control agent would fly
down to Tampa from Chicago to help him compose his politi-
cal literature so its political line would closely match the line of
the targeted organization, in order to achieve the credibility
Kitson considers so important.
That was when the purpose was to spy. Disruption opera-
tions were handled differently. When Burton's assignment
was, for example, to interfere with the attempt of thr progres-
sive United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of Anmri-
ca (UE) to organize a union at the Westinghouse plant in
Tampa, he attacked everyone: they were all denounced as "re-
visionists" no matter what their political lines. This versatility
and familiarity with the minutiae of Marxist doctrine exhihits a
degree of political sophistication that we du nut often associate
with the security forces.
FBI documents released under the Freedom of lnti>rmation
Act indicate that, in the 1960x, a bogus Black liberation or-
ganization in St. Louis was used to misdirect other Black or-
ganizations in the U.S. and, interestingly, to spy un Viet-
namese revolutionaries.
One irony of Kitson's nomenclature is that during the 19hOs
the United States government used actual street gangs, funded
by the Office of Economic Opportunity, to perform some of
the repressive functions assigned by Kitson to "pseudo
gangs." Edward A. Lee's article, "The Lumpenproletariat and
Repression: A Case Study," provides extensive documentation
of the way this was accomplished using the Blackstone Rang-
ers in Chicago.
More recently other organizations have played comparahlr
roles. [n the 1970s the National Caucus of Labor Cununittces
(NCLC), led by Lyndon LaRouche, emerged as an ustensihly
Marxist organization, then began a crusade to disrupt the Icft
with physical violence. Only later did it shed its "Marxist"
garb to reveal its actual neo-Nazi politics. Another vigilante or-
ganization, the Guardian Angels, still manages to confuse
some leftists as a Kitsonian "pseudo gang," even though its
corporate ties and reactionary aims are known. 'i'hcir recent
vigorous support for subway vigilante Bernhard Goev in Nrw
York has helped to expose their true nature.
Louis Giuf~rida: Ronald Reagan's Kitson
The application of Kitson's strategy of repression to thr
United States has been modified to runtixm to the specific re-
quirements of capitalist rule rooted in white supremacy. 1'he
degree to which this policy is class conscious and deliberately
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The racially separated segments of our society, as they have
done repeatedly in the past, have emerged with periods of
sporadic violence. A white man cannot ever be black, red,
or brown, and so long as the white man remains superior in
numbers he will be the represser and the constant target of
the mad dog.
It is the interaction between these desperately separate seg-
ments of society-between protesters and responding au-
thorities-which has resulted in violence. For these minority
elements, any steps to prevent violence which do not address
the issues of fundamental social and political change are des-
tined to be irrelevant and fated to failure.
The single most violent force in American history, inside
and outside of war, has been a small group of militant
whites; . . . ethnic minorities within the system become the
target.
What we have discussed so far depicts the classic struggle for
social reform.'
Most students of the revolution would agree that "peaceful
dissent" is the first step toward revolution and that this new
trend signals the opening phases of the "new revolution."
These issues, be they social, cultural, political, or econom-
ic, snowball and often appear to the casual observer as being
full of truth and at least justified.
In short-it is fashionable to direct sneers, threats, and even
open hostility toward the policeman. He is, symbolically at
least, everything that is wrong with our society.
WHEN THE NECESSARY RESPECT AND REVERENCE
ARE DESTROYED, VIOLENCE, AS WE KNOW IT,
WILL BE HEROISM.
[T]he remainder of our exploration on this subject will be
limited to "illegal violence' directed at us, officials of re-
sponsible government agencies.
The truth is that expansionist whites in a quest for power and
wealth, largely in the name of the government, systemati-
cally annihilated thousands of Indians and claimed their
heritage, the land, in the name of national progress. . . . the
winners incarcerated the losers and have kept them incarcer-
ated for more than 100 years.
With the exception of the mentally deranged or the intoxi-
cated person, all acts of illegal and criminal violence have
roots somewhere in our present social, economic, or politi-
cal environment.
[Our] mission can be accomplished only if we fully under-
stand that . . . legitimate violence is integral to our form of
government for it is from this source that we can continue to
purge our weaknesses . .. illegal violence has roots which
are attached to emotional situations of political, economic,
or social inequality.
It is necessary for the police executive to treat his occupation
like all other executives. He must do it well but not so well
that he puts himself out of a job. He must reduce crime but
not stop it.
He faces an impossible task of being required by law (actu-
ally or by his own interpretation) to preserve a free and dem-
ocratic society and at the same time he must eliminate crime
and violence. These tasks are totally incompatible."'
9. CSTI, "Civilian Violence and Terrorism; Officer Survival and Internal
Security," pp. 1-2.
10. Ibid., pp. 3-8.
Number 24 (Summer 1985)
Louis O. Giuffrida.
It is not an accident that the man who took charge of indoc-
trinating police with these concepts more than 15 years ago
under Governor Reagan has been brought to Washington by
President Reagan to carry on his work. Yet, aside from charges
of misusing funds that led to a small scandal, Giuffrida has re-
ceived scant scrutiny from the media.
Robin Evelegh's Alternative Strategy
Despite the widespread and continuing application of Kit-
son's strategy on both sides of the Atlantic, it has failed to stem
the tide of insurgency in the place where it has been applied
most diligently and for the longest time, Ireland, and has suf-
fered setbacks elsewhere. It is fitting that the person who en-
tered the debate with the most persuasive critique and propo-
sals to modify Kitson's basic strategy got his start on the same
Belfast battlefield.
Robin Evelegh has written a book which is the basis of the
revised British strategy in Ireland. His approach, together with
Kitson's, has become one of the standard choices available to
secret police in the United States, and the issues he has raised
are a matter of concern in the ongoing ruling class debate over
the various methods of repression.
In Peace-Keeping in a Democratic Sociehv: The Lessons of
Northern Ireland, Evelegh disagrees with Kitson that the gov-
ernment has a choice on how to use the legal system. If the se-
curity forces are so cynical about the law that they use it purely
as a device to manipulate people, they will inevitably disgrace
and discredit it, and if people lose respect for the law, all is
lost, he says.
Kitson wants nearly every police activity to be conducted
secretly, but Evelegh argues for openness as much as possible,
so that what the police really do need to do in secret they can.
There is no need to skulk around in the shadows to obtain in-
formation the police can force people to provide, he reasons.
A community that does not support the Police can be policed
effectively, but it is markedly different from policing a com-
munity that helps its Police. The case is therefore made for
the two fundamental measures necessary to achieve detec-
tion in a population affected by terrorism. These are: to pro-
vide for the compulsory registration and identification of the
population so that the Security forces can know who is who,
what they look like and where they live; and to make the ac-
tive development of informers inside the terrorist ranks by
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the Security Forces not only lawful but as easy as possible."
Although Parliament has given the security forces draconian
powers, Evelegh wants a different emphasis, one that is often
echoed in our country.
What it has not approved are measures that really would
11. Evelegh, Peace-Keeping in a Democratic Society: The Lessons of North-
ern Ireland, pp. 4-5.
make the Security Forces more effective, but which carry a
much lower political price, such as introducing identity
cards or giving the soldier the right to demand the produc-
tion of driving licenses and vehicle documents.'Z
Methods currently in use in the U.S. have reduced the "politi-
cal price" even further than Evelegh envisioned. Media cam-
paigns to frighten parents about the possibility that their chil-
12. Ibid., p. 5.
Reagan, Meese, and Guiffrida:
The Governor
While Ronald Reagan was governor, a series of secret
exercises in repression (called "civil disorder manage-
ment") were held in California. Initially in 1968 they
brought together law enforcement officers from all over the
state. In 1969 and 1970 they added generals from the Penta-
gon, the Sixth Army, and the National Guard; police chiefs,
sheriffs, and lesser officers from many parts of the United
States; Military Intelligence officers, telephone company
executives, and defense contractors.
The code name of these exercises was Cable Splicer.
In his classified orientation address for Cable Splicer II
on February 10, 1969, Governor Reagan started out by say-
ing, "You know, there are some people in the State who, if
they could see this gathering right now, and my presence
here, would decide their worst fears and convictions had
been realized-I was planning a military takeover."
He went on to discuss the events of the previous week
when he had answered anti-war protests by declaring a state
of emergency on the campus of the University of California
at Berkeley: "By calling this State of Emergency we were
able, with the use of the Highway Patrol, to put the forces
on the campus in advance of the trouble to prevent the
trouble from starting. . . . The presence of law enforcement
there in advance of the problem has evidently brought the
order that we have been seeking for a long time. Therefore,
as harsh as it may sound, I will tell you that wherever, from
now on, a situation arises similar to the one at Berkeley that
prompted this action, there will be no delay in declaring a
State of Emergency on that campus wherever it may be to
bring about the same results." [Emphasis added.]
Thus Reagan the Governor anticipated by 15 years the
"preventive" repression policies of Reagan the President
announced by his Secretary of State last year.
The Executive Secretary
In those days Edwin Meese III was Governor Reagan's
executive secretary. He, too, was given to secret
speechmaking and some of his remarks at the evaluation
conference for Cable Splicer III on May 27, 1970 provided
the impetus for the development of the new repression strat-
egy. He told the asssembled generals, law enforcement per-
sonnel, and businessmen:
We can not, as public officials and law enforcement offi-
cers or military personnel, afford to be using the tactics of
the 60s in the era of the 70s. This is why we must have
exercises such as we are engaged in or conferences such
as this to continually reevaluate what we are doing and to
keep ourselves from getting in a rut so that our response
or our preventive activities are not adequate to those on
the other side who are continually picking up new ways
and new methods to disrupt society.. . .
[A] concept that was derived in the 40s and 50s for the
single isolated incidents, in which the police departments
of a particular locale found itself in a situation it couldn't
handle by itself and called upon its neighbors to im-
mediately respond, is not the same situation that we have
for the 1970s where we have the prolonged conflict
which day after day is requiring large numbers of police
officers frequently to be present as an available reserve
force and on occasion to be actually utilized in the con-
trolling of these confrontations... .
So we are committed in California at the present time to a
thorough, in-depth study along with local law enforce-
ment representatives and the various state departments
that are here with us today to looking at the whole mutual
aid concept in regards to funding, in regards to equipment
and in regards to the training and organizational strategies
so that we can come up with the continuation of mutual
aid, because, make no mistake about it, the ability to pre-
vent and control riots and disorders depends upon the full
utilization of local law enforcement. But perhaps we can
do a better job of supporting and assisting that in terms of
financing and in terms of other auxiliary activities that
will make mutual aid a continuing resource we can count
on no matter what the revolutionaries may decide to
throw at us.
Another area is intelligence. This also was talked about a
great deal this morning but there is no question that we
need to improve our ability to coordinate and to obtain a
thorough information gathering system. We have to im-
prove our dissemination so that we have shared informa-
tion on a much wider range and we have to improve our
early warning ability to know what the dissidents are
planning. . . . [W]e have felt that the information gather-
ing and coordinating process is so important that the de-
partments involved in emergency planning have devoted
one staff member each to work together on a regular basis
to share information and to coordinate our information
gathering efforts. .. .
In other words, the things that I have talked about here
and which will be talked about during this conference are
matters where we have to develop new techniques or im-
prove old techniques to keep pace with what's going on
around us, but most of all it requires a commitment of top
policy making officials at all levels of government.
As it turned out, the new repression strategy outlined by
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dren might be kidnapped are followed quickly by a concerted
police/school/corporation (usually McDonald's) offer to help
protect the kids by fingerprinting and photographing them; thus
they are registered with the police long before they have any
idea of the possible consequences. And Selective Service has
purchased lists of young men who signed up long ago at an ice
cream store to receive free treats on their birthdays; the govern-
ment uses the lists to find 18-year-olds who have not registered
for the draft.
The United States has managed to pursue a "two track"
strategy, employing both Evelegh's and Kitson's proposals
simultaneously. At the same time as apparently benign Eve-
legh-type policies are being implemented, such as requiring
every child on welfare to have a Social Security number, the
more draconian Kitson methods are also advancing, mostly
under the banner of counterterrorism.
One can only marvel at the skill with which this campaign
was orchestrated, from the very first days of the Reagan ad-
A Team With Experience
Meese and elaborated by Frank Kitson in Low Intensity Op-
erations did prove more successful than the earlier methods
that Meese had criticized as inadequate. But in the early and
middle 70s it was not possible for the new strategy to be
centralized on the federal level because the very agencies
that would have had to coordinate it were under fire, and a
wave of reform was sweeping the Congress. In 1971 the
Senate's Ervin Committee investigated and exposed the role
of Military Intelligence in domestic spying and received a
promise (not kept) that those activities would cease. Later
the Senate's Church Committee and the House's Pike Com-
mittee investigated the FBI and the CIA, and called upon
them to curtail their dirty tricks, especially those conducted
domestically.
The Commandant
Governor Reagan felt no such constraints, however, so in
May 1971 the California Specialized Training Institute was
established, funded with a seed grant of $425,000 from the
federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. Col-
onel Louis O. Giuffrida was named its commandant.
In "Bringing the War Home" (New Times, November
28, 1975), writers Ron Ridenhour and Arthur Lubow wrote:
The Civil Emergency Management Course Manual at the
San Luis Obispo school is a virtual handbook for the
counterrevolution. Examining the motives behind "revo-
lutionary activity," the manual author finds the causes le-
gitimate, the frustration often well-justified, the "revolu-
tionaries" basically sincere. That is exactly why the
threat is so dangerous. The manual and the course de-
scribe how that threat should be met. The methods? Press
manipulation, computerized radical spotting, logistical
support from other agencies, martial rule. Three days of
preparation lead up to a day-long game, Cable Splicer-
style, based on a hypothetical riot in the mythical town of
Santa Luisa. After seven hours of war, there is a critique
and another work session. A last day is highlighted by
discussions of "reduced lethality weapons" and student
movement infiltation.
Between September 1971 and May 1975, 4,063 officials
of the National Guard, the Army, local police forces, fire
services, city governments, courts, legislatures, utilities,
prisons and private corporations attended this course in
San Luis Obispo. They are the "nucleus of officers . . .
at every level of government" called for in the Cable
Splicer II and the Cable Splicer III After Action Reports.
They came from nearly every state west of the Missis-
sippi and some east... .
The San Luis Obispo school teaches soldiers as well as
commanders. The most well-known alumni of this and
similar programs are the law officers who systematically
slaughtered the Symbionese Liberation Army cohorts of
Patricia Hearst. That televised massacre occurred only
six months after the November 1973 graduation of the
first 40 students at the San Luis Obispo special weapons
and tactics (SWAT) program. SWAT teams are the
Green Berets of the ghettos... .
They are taught not only how to act on the streets but how
to defend their actions in a courtroom. For instance,
trainees are read two examples of testimony by a police
officer who has choked a prisoner. The first explanation
makes the act defensible, the other leaves the officer
culpable.
In 1978 United Press International reported that CSTI "has
graduated over 14,000 students from every state in the
union, as well as from overseas."
Perhaps the only program of its kind in the country, it of-
fers five-day courses on international terrorism and nu-
clear site security, civil emergency management, con-
tingency planning for transportation of hazardous mate-
rials, investigation of violent crime and officer survi-
val....
The institute's director, Louis Giuffrida, in it brief tele-
phone interview, said creation of the institute was "an in-
evitable idea" during the campus turmoil of the late
1960s and early 1970s but its scope has been expanded to
include a variety of natural and manmade disasters. . . .
Dep. Atty. Gen. Michael Franchetti called Giuffrida,
whose background includes a stint at the Army War Col-
lege, "one of the world's experts" on international ter-
rorism.
"I understand he keeps in constant contact with heads of
the Israeli, Italian and German secret services and I know
those are people who are in and out of there quite often to
teach classes," Franchetti said. (Los Angeles Tines, De-
cember 12, 1978.)
Tomorrow the World
Today the governor is President of the United States, the
executive secretary is his Attorney General, and the coin-
mandant heads the Federal Emergency Management
Agency. They have firmly installed in Washington, and
thereby in the whole western world, their version of new
state repression. ?
1
J
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General Sir Frank Kitson, commander of British land
forces, receives briefing, Beirut, October 1983.
ministration when Secretary of State designate Alexander Haig
announced the policy. Since FBI figures showed a steady de-
cline in the number of domestic terrorist incidents, the pretext
was initially international terrorism. Reports of a Libyan hit
team planning to assassinate the President were widely circu-
lated; proof that this story was an intelligence agency hoax re-
ceived little attention. As Congress obediently furnished the
money to establish the new super-secret counterterrorist units
in various branches of the military, Haig's successor, George
Shultz, announced the government's new policy-modeled on
the Israelis'-of preemptive strikes against suspected ter-
rorists." Gradually since then, the rhetoric of government offi-
cials has obliterated any distinction between domestic and in-
ternational terrorism, and strange military forces have begun
making their appearance every time a militant anti-war protest
is held anywhere in the United States.
Ironically, the stoutest resistance to these developments has
come from the upper echelons of the U.S. military who cling to
their traditional view of their mission. They want to fight wars,
not "low intensity operations." They do not want to become
police. But they grudgingly obey; officers from all over the
world, not just U.S. military brass, receive training in "low in-
tensity conflict" at Fort Leavenworth's Command and General
Staff College. Meanwhile, every police force worthy of the
name has been thoroughly militarized with SWAT teams, tacti-
cal squads, helicopter patrols, infrared night vision parapher-
nalia, and the like.
One important difference between Kitson and Evelegh con-
cerns the quality and importance of intelligence. As noted
above", Kitson considers good intelligence of "paramount im-
portance." In a lengthy chapter, he provides a long list of
suggested ways to gather intelligence. One example has the
policeman or soldier in charge
appoint one local inhabitant to be responsible for each street
who would be instructed to appoint an individual to be re-
sponsible for each block and so on down to one individual
responsible for each family."
The "beat rep" programs mentioned above bear a striking
13. See Ray and Schaap, "Pentagon Moves on `Terrorism,' " CRIB Number
22 (Fall 1984), pp. 4-9.
14. Supra, n. 6.
15. Kitson, op. cit., p. 129.
similarity to this suggestion. The most significant point is so
subtle that it could easily be missed, so Kitson emphasizes the
point in his conclusion: Quality of intelligence is unimportant;
quantity is what counts:
It has already been mentioned that peace-time intelligence
organizations prefer using a few high grade sources to a
large number of lower grade ones. But it is evident from the
scenario that the system for developing background informa-
tion works if there is a lot of it to develop. It is not important
that it should be immensely reliable because all that is neces-
sary is something on which to build."
Evelegh's view is a pole apart. For him quality is paramount:
It is difficult for those who have not been concerned person-
ally with countering terrorism to understand the complete
difference in quality and value between general information
from the public and inside information from within the ter-
rorist movement. . . . Once their intentions are known to
the Security Forces, the terrorists have lost the initiative; the
Security Forces can then arrange reception committees for
the perpetrators of acts of terrorism. It is only through inside
informers that a terrorist organization can be exposed to this
extent, and once so exposed it is helpless until it has disco-
vered and removed the informers."
He then gives a detailed prescription for recruiting informers:
What is needed is the ability within the law to induce a ter-
rorist to defect to the Government's side without his former
colleagues knowing that he has done so, in return for indem-
nity for his crimes. We should consider briefly the effect
on a terrorist organization of widespread publicity being
given to official encouragement of defection in return for an
indemnity. Any arrested terrorist will have this "easy way
out" at the back of his mind if the pressures on him seem too
strong. Whenever a terrorist is arrested, his colleagues will
fear that he will defect and must take steps to protect them-
selves from the consequences of this with all the disruption
that such hurried and unforeseen changes must cause.. .. 1e
Inside informers seldom appear of their own volition. They
have to be consciously created, usually from among mem-
bers of the terrorist organization who have been ar-
rested... .
Persuading a terrorist to defect is akin to the wooing of a
woman-with persuasive and even glib arguments on one
side and, on the other initial resistance and vacillation be-
tween the urge to consent and the urge to refuse, and if all
goes well, the development of confidence. Indeed, the inter-
rogator is seeking to achieve a seduction rather than a rape or
a rebuff. .. .
There seem to be five reasons why suspects are induced to
think that it is in their own interests to inform and defect: be-
cause they are tortured, because they are induced to do so by
cash, because they are blackmailed into it as the lesser of
16. Ibid., p. 131.
17. Evelegh, op. cit., p. 68.
18. Ibid., p. 72.
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two evils, because they lose their nerve, and because they
are genuinely converted from their terrorist beliefs to sup-
porting the Government cause.19
Then he tells precisely how to use each of these five
methods-torture, bribery, blackmail, induced cowardice, and
conversion. He says that they all work. Evelegh's appeal was
obviously heard in Westminister, judging by the trials con-
ducted in Belfast and Derry for the past few years based upon
the evidence provided solely by paid perjurers induced to tes-
tify in these very ways, the so-called "supergrasses."
("Grass" is British slang for informer.)
But that strategy has begun to unravel in the Irish context;
even British judges have refused to accept as credible some of
the most important "supergrass" trial evidence, and have re-
leased the defendants. In Italy, however, the induced tes-
timony of the so-called penitenti has had a devastating effect
on the armed revolutionary movement in that country. It is still
too early to know whether its application in the United States
will prove to be significant.20
One important weakness in this aspect of Evelegh's strategy
is that once activists are induced or coerced to betray their
cause, they must be given permanent lifetime protection by the
state, not an easy task at best, and especially complicated when
the informer has become a recognized personality in the media.
A chronic problem for the U.S. Witness Security Program is
that, because so many of the informers are criminals, the effect
of the program is to put the Justice Department in the position
of indemnifying felons, even murderers, in exchange for tes-
timony against others whose alleged "crimes" are minor by
comparison, even to a public which supports the government
and believes the witness.
Evelegh's strategy of repression, like Kitson's earlier, is
being internationalized. A 1978 FBI document is especially in-
teresting in this regard. It says:
Those who made presentations at the FBI International Sym-
posium on Terrorism request that you do not duplicate this
document in any way. Moreover, they request that informa-
tion contained in their presentations not be disseminated out-
side your agency.21
This admonition was taken so seriously that the FBI violated
federal laws and its own regulations in a futile attempt to keep
the document secret. When an FOIA request was filed for this
document, the FBI replied that no such thing existed; fortu-
nately, a copy was already in outsiders' hands by the time of
the request.
The contents are not surprising; what is significant is the list
of those in attendance. Not only did this symposium convene
high level security officers from West Germany, the Nether-
lands, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, Japan, and Israel,
19. Ibid., pp. 133-136.
20. The U.S. Congress recently passed Senator Denton's "Act for Rewards
for Information Concerning Terrorist Acts" (as part of the security appropri-
ations bill submitted in the wake of the Beirut Marine barracks bombing). It
provides up to a half a million dollars reward for "information . . . leading to
the arrest or conviction, in any country, of any individual or individuals for the
commission of an act of terrorism against a United States person or United
States property...... An "act of terrorism" is defined extremely broadly,
including "a violent act . . . that is a violation of the criminal laws . . . and
... appears to be intended . . . to influence the policy of a government by in-
timidation or coercion.... ..
21. FBI, Proceedings of FBI International Symposium on Terrorism July 6-8,
1978, p. 2.
Number 24 (Summer 1985)
but also it reached down into every significant urban area in the
United States. Nearly every FBI field office, state police de-
partment, and the chiefs or assistant chiefs from the hundred
largest cities and towns in the U.S. were represented. A similar
symposium was held in Puerto Rico.
That was new. Never before had the political duties of police
on every level been so explicitly articulated, so broadly con-
nected, so well organized. It is not just high technology that
has made this possible; it is also the new strategies of perma-
nent repression as articulated by Kitson and Evelegh.
Conclusion
It is important in waging the struggle against repression that
we adapt to the new realities with our own new strategies. We
must discard some of the left's traditional wisdom, particularly
the assumption that the state's relatively tolerant attitude to-
ward protest is permanent and the corollary proposition that the
defense of constitutional legality is sufficient to protect the
political space necessary for the mass protests of the future.
Assumptions about the potential of the progressive movement
must be at least as radical as those of the state, that there does
exist an objective basis for resistance, and that it can and must
emerge. We must take the offensive against the new forms of
repression; we must remain innovative. Though the problems
are difficult, we have achieved the first step in solving them
when we have identified the essential problem. Thwarting the
political police must be as important to us as permanent op-
pression is to the ruling class. ?
Repression Strategies:
California Specialized Training Institute, "Civilian Vio-
lence and Terrorism; Officer Survival and Internal Strategy"
(lecture/syllabus), CSTI: Camp San Luis Obispo, California,
revised August 1974.
Evelegh, Robin, Peace-Keeping in a Democratic Society:
The Lessons of Northern Ireland, C. Hurst & Co: London,
1978.
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Proceedings of FBI Inter-
national Symposium on Terrorism July 6-8, 1978 , FBI: Wash-
ington, 1978.
Kitson, Frank, Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, In-
surgency, Peace-Keeping, Faber & Faber: London, 1971.
Kitson, Frank, Bunch of Five, Faber & Faber: London,
1977.
Anti-Repression Information and Analysis:
Ackroyd, Carol, Karen Margolis, Jonathan Rosenhead, and
Tim Shallice, The Technology of Political Control, Pluto
Press: London, rev. ed. 1980.
Lee, Edward A., "The Lumpenproletariat and Repression:
A Case Study," in Political Discussion, Number 3, Freedom
Information Service: Tougaloo, Mississippi, November 1976.
Ross, Caroline, and Ken Lawrence, J. Edgar Hoover's De-
tention Plan: The Politics of Repression in the United States
1939-1976, American Friends Service Committee: Jackson,
Mississippi, 1978.
Serge, Victor, What Everyone Should Know About State Re-
pression, New Park Publications: London, 1979.
United Methodist Voluntary Service, Repression and Resist-
ance: The System vs. the People, An Information Manual (a
materials packet), UMVS: New York, 1982. ?
CovertAction II
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Operation Sojourner:
Targeting the Sanctuary Movement
By Rachel Oveyn
"When the church has to break the law in order to provide
refuge for homeless people, the struggle for justice has
reached a new stage. Now the pastoral has merged with the
political, service is prophetic, and love is a subversive activ-
ity." (Reverend Sid Mohn, Wellington United Church of
Christ, quoted in National Catholic Reporter, September
14, 1984.)
On January 14 of this year a federal grand jury in Phoenix,
Arizona indicted fourteen North American and two Mexican
nationals including three nuns and three clergymen, all mem-
bers of the sanctuary movement, on 71 counts of conspiracy,
and transporting and smuggling of undocumented ("illegal")
aliens. All sixteen indictees pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Fifty-eight Central Americans, all of whom were associated
with the refugee network, were arrested, forty-three in
Phoenix, Arizona, seven in Seattle, Washington, three each in
Tucson, Arizona and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and two in
Rochester, New York. In addition, the government has named
twenty-seven refugees and twenty-six North Americans as
"unindicted co-consiprators" and indicated that it plans to
subpoena each of these persons to the trial.
The information which led to these indictments and arrests
was obtained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service's
(INS) infiltration into the sanctuary and refugee community
network during the course of a ten-month undercover operation
known as "Operation Sojourner." The indictments and arrests
were based on 4,000 pages of transcripts, documents and per-
sonal papers, and 100 tape recordings, all of which were
covertly procured by two federal agents and two civilian infor-
mants. According to Verne Jervis, a spokesperson for the INS,
the indictments were approved in Washington by Alan C. Nel-
son, head of the INS, and Associate Attorney General D. Low-
ell Jensen.
*Rachel Ovryn is a sociologist and a member of the sanctuary movement. She
recently received a Woodrow Wilson Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship to
write her doctoral dissertation entitled: "The Sanctuary Movement: An Analy-
sis of the Relationship Between Traditional-Cultural Values, Communal Rela-
tions, and Actions of Resistance."
The Sanctuary Movement
The sanctuary movement is a national church-based move-
ment which emerged in March 1982 when several congrega-
tions around the country publicly declared their churches as
"sanctuaries" for people seeking refuge from persecution, tor-
ture, and the violence of civil wars in El Salvador and
Guatemala. Previous to their public declaration of support for
undocumented Salvdoran and Guatemalan refugees, many of
these churches were involved in providing food, bond money,
and legal advice to the refugees who had been apprehended by
the INS and were being held in jails and camps while being
processed for deportation.
As a coordinated whole, the sanctuary movement now in-
volves over 190 congregations with more than 60,000 mem-
bers from many denomenations who have developed an elabo-
rate underground railroad that functions to assist un-
documented Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees in crossing
the border into the United States. In Mexico and the United
States many people provide the refugees with temporary shel-
ter until they can be moved to a place where a congregation has
agreed to offer them permanent refuge. There they are pro-
vided with a base from which to speak to the North American
community. Public testimony is an integral part of the
sanctuary movement, in order to inform North Americans
about the desperate situation of Salvadoreans and Guatemalans
in their homelands and in the United States.
Since its emergence in 1982, the sanctuary movement has
been plagued by a series of actions taken by the federal govern-
ment, particularly the INS, designed to harass and intimidate
the sanctuary community. Clearly, Operation Sojourner repre-
sents the largest and most organized effort launched by the
government against the movement, but it also signals an alarm-
ing change in tactics. Prior to this indictment and discovery of
the infiltration and use of informants, the government had lim-
ited itself to isolated arrests and harassment activity. Among
previous instances of harassing and targeting of the sanctuary
movement are:
? The FBI has repeatedly questioned sanctuary workers in
Milwaukee, Chicago, and South Texas about their involve-
ment in the underground railroad.
? Sanctuary workers in South Texas have reported an in-
crease in border area roadblocks and INS surveillance begin-
Number 24 (Summer 1985)
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ning in 1983, although Border Patrol agents maintain there has
been no change in policy.
? A family living in sanctuary in Davenport, Iowa was
forced to move to Iowa City after church members learned that
the INS was watching them. Shortly afterwards the INS raided
Iowa City for "illegals," a tactic most sanctuary activists felt
was an effort designed to further intimidate the family and their
new congregation.
? On February 17, 1983, a Catholic sister, a Christian
layworker, a reporter with the Dallas Times Herald, and three
Salvadoran refugees were stopped between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m.
by the INS on a back farm road near San Benito, Texas and
subsequently arrested. The two adult Salvadoreans were
charged with illegal entry into the U.S. The nun, layworker,
and reporter were charged with three felony counts: transport-
ing illegal aliens, conspiracy, and aiding and abetting a crime.
The arresting officials carried no warrant for their arrest. The
nun and layworker contested the charges, claiming they had a
legal right and a moral duty to provide sanctuary to refugees
from El Salvador and Guatemala.
On March 13, 1983, a federal grand jury indicted the nun
and layworker, dropping charges against the reporter, Jack
Fisher, who became a witness against the layworker, Stacey
Merkt, choosing not to exercise his First Amendment freedom
of the press privileges. The two Salvadoreans had their charge
of entry without inspection dismissed, a tactic designed to
manipulate them into also testifying against Merkt. When both
refused to testify, they were charged with contempt of court
and incarcerated over the weekend. Later, when they agreed to
testify in Merkt's defense, that testimony purged their con-
tempt and both were freed. Deportation proceedings were com-
menced against one of them. On June 27, 1984 Merkt was
given a suspended 90-day sentence with two years' probation.
(In June 1985 this conviction was reversed by the Court of Ap-
peals.)
? On March 7, 1984, the U.S. Border Patrol detained two
more North American sanctuary workers, Phillip Willis-Con-
ger and Kathryn Flaherty, and four Salvadoran refugees, driv-
ing on the Patagonia road east of Nogales, Arizona. The re-
fugees were detained and the two adult Salvadoreans were
charged with entry without inspection. Copies were made of
personal papers and items found in the knapsacks, bags, and
car. No charges were pressed against Flaherty and charges
against Willis-Conger were later dropped when the judge de-
termined that the Border Patrol agents had no probable cause
for stopping the car. It was recently discovered that informa-
tion found among the personal belongings of Willis-Conger
and Flaherty was used to form the basis of Operation
Sojourner.
? In March 1984, a third arrest occurred in Texas. This time
Jack Elder, the director of Casa Oscar Romero, a shelter spon-
sored by the Roman Catholic Church in San Benito, Texas,
was indicted and charged with transportation of illegal aliens.
At the pre-trial hearing the judge denied 50 of 53 defense mo-
tions and limited the trial to the narrow issue of whether Elder
actually transported the Salvadoreans in furtherance of a viola-
tion of the law. On January 24, 1985, Elder was acquitted by a
jury, even though the court did not allow him to raise as a de-
fense either freedom of religion under the First Amendment or
the principle of international law which prohibits the deporta-
tion of persons to a country where their lives or freedom would
be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, political
opinion, or membership in a particular social group.
Number 24 (Summer 1985)
On December 4, 1984 both Jack Elder and Stacey Merkt
were newly indicted on charges of smuggling, transporting,
and conspiracy. On March 27, 1985 Elder, found guilty of
conspiracy and transporting, was sentenced initially to one
year on each of the three charges to be served concurrently, or
two years' probation with three conditions attached: that he
leave Casa Oscar Romero, that he stop working with Central
American refugees, and that he cease speaking about the
sanctuary movement to the press or the public. The defense
lawyers called the post-trial gag order unprecedented.
Elder refused the probation conditions and was sentenced to
150 days in a half-way house. At present he is still prohibited
from working with refugees and must obtain federal approval
to talk with reporters. Merkt received an 18-month sentence,
179 days to be served in jail and three years' probation, subject
to the same conditions. According to Jim Corbett, one of the
leaders of the sanctuary movement, the case against Elder in-
volved far more than one person helping others around
roadblocks: "The indictment is definitely a targeting of re-
fugee services."
Operation Sojourner
With the institution of Operation Sojourner, the government
intensified its actions against the sanctuary movement, target-
ing a large group of sanctuary workers and using electronic
surveillance and informers. Operation Sojourner is described
as a government "smuggling investigation" which claims to
be focused primarily on the "Central American Refugee Un-
derground Railroad." It involves four informants who were
authorized to tape private conversations by recorders concealed
on their persons, to tap telephones, to photocopy documents
and other materials, to record addresses, to gather personal in-
formation, and to report regularly to the U.S. government in-
formation on the activities and people observed. According to
government documents, Melvin McDonald, the U.S. Attorney
for Arizona, and Donald Reno, his special assistant, were ''ap-
praised daily, and concurred with the proposed plan."
Over a period of at least six months-July through De-
cember 1984-at least two of the government's paid infor-
"Felipe," a Mayan Indian refugee from Guatemala, with
his wife and five children, all masked, at the Wellington
Avenue United Church of Christ, Chicago.
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mants, Jesus Cruz and Jose Morales, entered churches and
homes wearing these bodybugs, lied about their government
affiliation, and gathered information about the activities of the
North and Central Americans indicted on January 14. Infor-
mant Cruz, for example, participated in weekly meetings at the
Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, a Bible study group
at Alzona Lutheran Church in Phoenix, and a worship service
at Camelback Presbyterian Church, spent many nights in the
home of one of the indictees, and attended the wedding of
another.
There are numerous examples of intrusion and eavesdrop-
ping by the informants and the federal government into the
lives of people in the sanctuary and refugee communities, un-
dertaken clandestinely and without a warrant. Government
documents released to date indicate that the government sent
informants into churches, eavesdropping and tape recording re-
ligious activities. Operation Sojourner has produced extensive
tapes and transcripts of church and refugee community meet-
ings, personal conversations between North and Central Amer-
icans, and phone calls from offices and homes. This informa-
tion, obtained clandestinely, is the essential evidence the gov-
ernment will use in its million-dollar prosecution against
people who provide refuge to those who fear persecution and
death in their homelands.
James Rayburn, lead investigator for Operation Sojourner,
has testified that the informant operation was initiated prior to
seeking approval for it from the Attorney General. On March
19, 1984, the government issued regulations which required
authorization to infiltrate "sensitive areas," including ac-
tivities of religious organizations. Rayburn applied for such au-
thorization on April 24, 1984. His application made no men-
tion that informants were to enter church buildings or tape-re-
cord worship services. The application indicated that the infor-
mant operation did not involve an "invasion of privacy." Fi-
nally, the application appeared to seek approval retroactive to
March 27, the date on which the informant operation had actu-
ally commenced. Contrary to regulations, Rayburn never dis-
cussed the guidelines with informants Cruz or Solomon
"Felipe" with sanctuary workers at a send-off service for
the caravan which took him and his family from Chicago to
New England.
14 CovertAction
Graham, gave few instructions to them, and never reviewed
their undercover program in the required detail.
After hearing testimony on the activities of the informants in
the case in May 1985, U.S. District Judge Earl H. Carroll
strongly criticized the government tactics, commenting that the
use of informants "sullied" the legal process. He concluded
that there were other options for obtaining information avail-
able to the government, especially since the sanctuary move-
ment held many public meetings. "There should be little occa-
sion or need for the government to send people, paid to do it
and wired to do it, into places of religious activity . . . the
whole process has been sullied in a sense." This is the first
time that government infiltration and intrusion will be tested in
the First Amendment context of religious freedom.
Clearly, Operation Sojourner signals a new level of harass-
ment by the government against the sanctuary movement and
demonstrates the degree to which the administration finds the
sanctuary movement threatening. According to the U.S. gov-
ernment this "illegal, massive civil disobedience movement of
churches is making a statement of protest against our Govern-
ment's position in Central America."
Sanctuary activists have always understood that their ability
to link social concerns with social action would have an impor-
tant impact on public opinion and thus represent an increasing
threat to the Reagan administration. Many realized that the
likelihood of confrontation with the federal and local au-
thorities was high and that harassment and covert action by the
FBI and the CIA were likely possibilities. They were not sur-
prised when the government intensified its crackdown on the
movement, but all have expressed shock and disgust at the
government's tactics and the depth of the infiltration.
The Effects of Infiltration
The effects of the infiltration have been profound, radiating
beyond the sanctuary movement itself and intQ the religious
community generally. At the pretrial hearings held before
Judge Carroll in May, two Phoenix ministers testified that their
church gatherings had been undermined by the infiltration. In
one case, a Bible studies class was discontinued after
parishioners learned that informant Jesus Cruz had covertly at-
tended the church. James Oines, Pastor of Alzona Lutheran
Church, testified that Bible study classes are no longer held at
his church because some members of the congregation "do not
feel they can come to the church."
Reverend Gene Lefebvre, Pastor of Sunrise Presbyterian
Church in the Phoenix area, spoke of being "chilled" and
"shocked" at learning of Cruz's surreptitious presence during
an ecumenical service at Camelback Presbyterian Church in
Phoenix. Members of his congregation expressed "fear" and
"outrage" at the threat to their confidentiality. A school
teacher not involved in the sanctuary movement became very
upset according to Lefebvre, because she feared the FBI had a
file on her and her chances for new jobs would be hurt.
Sanctuary activists maintain that they have consistently been
open about their activities. The basic principle of the move-
ment is that it is their moral responsibility to provide sanctuary
to refugees and, although this is in violation of U.S. immigra-
tion laws as currently interpreted, their activities are legiti-
mated by other international and domestic laws. They cite the
Geneva Convention of 1939, the Nuremberg principles, the
1968 United Nations protocol on refugees, and the United
States' adoption of that protocol in the 1980 Refugee Act.
Under these laws the U.S. is obliged to provide safe haven to
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those who have a well-founded fear of persecution or who flee
generalized conditions of war in their homelands.
Portrait
of an Informant
According to prosecution documents, Jesus Cruz,
along with three other government informants, infiltrated
the sanctuary and refugee community network beginning
in late April or early May of 1984. Cruz, who has been
described as "looking like a loving grandfather," gained
entry into these communities when one warm day in May
he appeared at the door of an old Catholic church in
Nogales, Sonora, with a truckload of oranges, grape-
fruits, and tangerines to give to the needy. Cruz told
sanctuary workers that he lived in Phoenix, Arizona.
Those who call his house now are told that he has moved
and left no forwarding address.
Around October or November, Cruz began regularly
attending a Sunday night Bible studies group at Alzona
Lutheran Church in Phoenix. Altogether he must have
attended about twelve or thirteen meetings. Reverend
James Oines said people thought of Cruz as a "good-
hearted guy." He kept saying, "Soy voluntario con el
movimiento sanctuario," "I am a volunteer with the
sanctuary movement."
On January 14 it became clear that Jesus and three
others had worked as paid government informants for at
least ten months. One sanctuary activist described meet-
ing Jesus when he first infiltrated the sanctuary move-
ment. "The day I met Jesus down at Sacred Heart I
didn't have any bad feelings about him. I don't like to
have bad feelings about people. There are always people
you like more than others or care to associate with more
than others. He was one that I could have met and really
not cared if I'd ever see him again. But I didn't have any
really bad feelings. Other people were very emphatic
about not liking him. You know he'd come to my house
and visit quite a lot. When people come to my house I al-
ways try to treat them cordially; with him it was no dif-
ferent. I've still got his damn oranges sitting on the
porch. I keep forgetting to throw them out. I hate to look
at them, it annoys me so. . . . oranges and grapefruits,
just sitting there on the porch. Maybe I keep them there
to remind myself of his treachery."
Phil Willis-Conger, one of the indictees and director
of the Tucson Ecumenical Council, described Cruz "like
a nice bubbling kind of guy who mainly wanted to
help." A few days after he was indicted Willis-Conger
told reporters that he was a bit suspicious of Cruz at first
but that the suspicion decreased when Cruz participated
in several activities without any problem. Later that
year, Cruz, posing as part of the sanctuary community,
attended Willis-Conger's wedding, although he had not
been invited.
Reverend Oines spoke for members of the sanctuary
and refugee community when he referred to Christ's
words, telling reporters, "in this case we were as gentle
as doves but not as wise as serpents." ?
Some Observations
In preparation for this article, several sanctuary activists
were asked to reflect on the effect of the government's infiltra-
tion into the movement and the presence of informers on the
movement generally and on them personally. They spoke of
how there has been a conscious decision, influenced by key
leaders in the movement, not to allow the government's ac-
tivities to change the openness which has always characterized
the sanctuary movement. They all agree that this openness is
fundamental to their firm belief that their actions are right and
that they have a moral and a legal obligation to continue this
ministry.
On the other hand, one activist said, " . . . because of our
background, we don't know how to incorporate these new feel-
ings of distrust and suspicion and fear of informants into the
decision making processes. Not just on a formal level but on a
day-to-day basis. For instance, when someone comes to our
meeting that no one knows, no one in the room is willing or
feels comfortable enough to confront that person and ask them
who do you know and why are you here. To ask for a recom-
mendation. So for a long time there were a lot of things we
simply didn't discuss at the meetings. We'd deal with them pri-
vately after the meetings were over, with people we felt we
could trust. It took months until we finally decided to restruc-
ture the meetings. Now the meetings are closed and anyone
who does not have a specific role to play at the meeting is sim-
ply not invited."
Another added, "We don't feel good about this; though it's
more efficient to work with small groups of people, we want
very much to make room for new volunteers. I feel I've
changed a lot since we learned of the infiltration. I always liked
the fact that I am an open, trusting spontaneous person. Those
ar the qualities that make me realize my moral responsibilities
to others, in this case the refugees. But now I find myself much
less willing to be open."
"That's so true," said one woman who is currently involved
in crossing refugees. "Things have changed because of the in-
filtratioin; there's no question about it, relationships are more
tense. We try to subdue our fears and repulsion concerning
spies and continue to act openly, but now when we leave meet-
ings we ask ourselves who was it this time'?
"Most of us have accepted the reality of getting arrested.
You know I think our fear is almost more of spies than of being
arrested. It's that awful feeling of betrayal. There's always fear
if you're crossing because the risk of arrest is more immediate.
But it's a different kind of fear than the feeling that someone is
going to betray you. The idea that someone like Jesus Cruz,
who worked with us, knew why we were in this, heard the tes-
timonies of the refugees, took them to Christmas dinner, could
actually be gathering evidence against us is really sickening.
This I don't understand and it's impossible to know where it
comes from."
The power of the government to use informers, including
those wired for sound, has been approved in other contexts by
numerous judicial decisions. However, the courts have never
addressed the use of this type of intrusive investigation in areas
where religious freedoms are concerned. While government in-
filtration has been approved in the political context, this is the
first time it has been addressed in the religious context. One
might argue that there should not he any difference between the
two, but because of the U.S. Constitution and the special place
that religion holds in our society, there may be a principle de-
veloped in this case that says the government cannot do it. ?
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The Covert War
Against Native Americans
By Ward Churchill's
There is a little considered aspect of the covert means
through which the United States maintains its perpetual drive
to exert control over the territory and resources of others. It
concerns, however, matters internal rather than external to the
geographical corpus of the U.S. itself. It seems appropriate to
quote a man deeply involved in the struggle for African libera-
tion, Kwame Toure (formerly known as Stokley Carmichael).
In a speech delivered at the Yellow Thunder demonstrations in
Rapid City, South Dakota, on October 1, 1982, he said:
We are engaged in a struggle for the liberation of ourselves
as people. In this, there can be neither success nor even
meaning unless the struggle is directed toward the liberation
of our land, for a people without land cannot be liberated.
We must reclaim the land, and our struggle is for the land-
first, foremost, and always. We are people of the land.
So in Africa, when you speak of "freeing the land," you are
at the same time speaking of the liberation of the African
people. Conversely, when you speak of liberating the
people, you are necessarily calling for the freeing of the
land.
But, in America, when we speak of liberation, what can it
mean? We must ask ourselves, in America, who are the
people of the land? And the answer is-and can only be-
the first Americans, the Native Americans, the American In-
dian. In the United States of America, when you speak of
liberation, or when you speak of freeing the land, you are
automatically speaking of the American Indians, whether
you realize this or not. Of this, there can be no doubt.
Those in power in the United States understand these princi-
ples very well. They know that even under their own laws
aboriginal title precedes and preempts other claims, unless
transfer of title to the land was or is agreed to by the original
inhabitants. They know that the only such agreements to which
they can make even a pretense are those deriving from some
371 treaties entered into by the U.S. with various Indian na-
tions indigenous to North America.
Those in power in America also know very well that, in con-
solidating its own national landbase, the United States has not
only violated every single one of those treaties, but that it re-
mains in a state of perpetual violation to this day. Thus, they
know they have no legal title-whether legality be taken to
*Ward Churchill is an active member of the American Indian Movement who
works at the University of Colorado. He was the author of "Soldier of For-
tune's Robert K. Brown," in CAB Number 22.
imply U.S. law, international law, Indian law, natural law, or
all of these combined-to much of what they now wish to view
as the territoriality of the United States proper.
Finally, they are aware that to acquire even a semblance of
legal title, title which stands a chance of passing the informed
scrutiny of both the international community and much of its
own citizenry, the U.S. must honor its internal treaty commit-
ments, at the very least. Herein lies the dilemma: In order to do
this, the U.S. would have to return much of its present geo-
graphy to the various indigenous nations holding treaty-defined
and reserved title to it (and sovereignty over it). The only alter-
native is to continue the violation of the most fundamental
rights of Native Americans while pretending the issues do not
exist. Of course, this is the option selected-both historically
and currently-by U.S. policy-makers.
The Native American Movement
It is precisely from the dynamics of this situation that overt
liberation organizations such as the American Indian Move-
ment (AIM), the International Indian Treaty Council, and
Women of All Red Nations were born. Insofar as their strug-
gles are based in the reaffirmation of the treaty rights of North
America's indigenous nations, theirs is a struggle for the land.
In essence, their positions imply nothing less than the literal
dismantlement of the modern American empire from the inside
out.
The stakes involved are tremendous. The "Great Sioux" or
Lakota Nation alone holds clear treaty rights over some 5% of
the area within the present 48 contiguous states. The
Anishinabe (Chippewa) are entitled to at least another 4%. The
Dine (Navajo) already hold between 3% and 4%. Most of
California has been demonstrated to have been taken illegally
from nations such as the Porno and Luisano. Peoples such as
the Wampanoag, Narragansett, and Pasamaquoddi-long be-
lieved to have been exterminated-have suddenly re-
materialized to press treaty-based and aboriginal claims to
much of New England. The list is well over 300 names long. It
affects every quarter of the contemporary United States.
Vast Natural Resources At Stake
Today, more than 60% of all known U.S. uranium reserves
are under reservation lands, and another 10-15% lies under
contested treaty areas. Similarly, approximately one-third of
all minable low-sulphur coal lies under reservations, while the
figure easily exceeds 50% when treaty areas are lumped in.
With natural gas, the data are about 15% under reservations,
15% under contested lands. The same holds true for oil. Al-
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most all American deposits of minable zeolites are under reser-
vation land. Very significant strategic reserves of bauxite, cop-
per, iron, and other crucial minerals are also at issue.
Giving all this up-or even losing a modicum of control
over it-is an obviously unacceptable proposition to U.S. pol-
icy makers and corporate leaders. In order to remain a super-
power (in both the military and economic senses of the term),
the U.S. must tighten rather than relax its grip upon its "as-
sets." Hence, given its priorities, America has had little choice
but to conduct what amounts to a clandestine war against
American Indians, especially of the AIM variety.
The Propaganda War
In pursuing such a policy the U.S. power elite has replicated
the tactics and conditions more typically imposed on its col-
onies abroad. First, there is the matter of "grey and black
propaganda" through which U.S. covert agencies, working
hand in glove with the mainstream media, distort or fabricate
information concerning the groups they have targeted. The
function of such a campaign is always to deny with plausibility
public sympathy or support to the groups in question, to isolate
them and render them vulnerable to physical repression or liq-
uidation.
As concerns AIM, grey propaganda efforts have often cen-
tered upon contentions (utterly unsubstantiated) that the "In-
dian agenda" is to dispossess non-Indians of the home-owner,
small farmer or rancher type living within the various treaty
areas.' In terms of black propaganda, there have been a number
of highly publicized allegations of violence which, once dis-
proven, were allowed to die without further fanfare. This has
been coupled to "leaks" from official government sources that
AIM is a "terrorist" organization.'
The propaganda efforts have, in large part, yielded the de-
sired effect, souring not only the average American citizen's
perception of AIM, but-remarkably-that of the broader
U.S. internal opposition as well. The latter have been so taken
in upon occasion as to parrot the government/corporate line
that Indian land claims are "unrealistic," "not feasible," and
ultimately a "gross unfairness to everyone else.''
Repression and Liquidation
With the isolation of Native American freedom fighters ef-
fectively in hand, the government's clandestine organizations
have been free to pursue programs of physical repression with-
in America's internal colonies of exactly the same sort prac-
ticed abroad. At one level, this has meant the wholesale jailing
of the movement's leadership. Virtually every known AIM
leader in the United States has been incarcerated in either state
or federal prisons since (or even before) the organization's for-
mal emergence in 1968, some repeatedly. This, in combination
with accompanying time spent in local jails awaiting trial, the
high costs of bail and legal defense, and the time spent under-
going a seemingly endless succession of trials, is calculated
both to drain the movement's limited resources and to cripple
1. This flies directly in the face of the formal positions advanced by AIM and
associated groups working on treaty land issues. AIM has consistently held
that it seeks lands held by the U.S. and various state governments (such as Na-
tional and State Parks. National Forests and Grasslands, Bureau of Land Man-
agement areas, etc.) as well as major corporate holdings within the treaty
areas. Small landholders would be allowed to remain and retain their property
under "landed immigrant provisions" or. in some cases, naturalization.
2. This is based on testimony of a single informer at a hearing at which the
AIM leadership was denied the right to cross-examine or to testify.
Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, killed execution-style on Pine
Ridge during the winter of 1975. A victim of a whisper
campaign initiated by the FBI infiltrator Durham, desig-
ned to isolate her from other AIM people, she had been
warned by Special Agent David Price that she would not
live out the year unless she cooperated with the Bureau.
its cadre strength.'
Even more directly parallel to the performance of U.S.
covert agencies abroad is physical repression conducted at
another level, that of outright cadre liquidation. For example,
in the post-Wounded Knee context of South Dakota's Pine
Ridge Lakota Reservation, independent researcher Candy
Hamilton established that at least 342 AIM members and sup-
porters were killed by roving death squads aligned with and
supported by the FBI. (The death squads called themselves
GOONs, "Guardians of the Oglala Nation.") This was be-
tween 1973 and 1976 alone.
In proportion to the population of the reservation, this is a
rate of violent death some 12 to 14 times greater than that pre-
3. To cite hut one example of this principle at work Despite a ceasefire agrce
ment assuring non-prosecution of AIM and traditional Indian people relative to
the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation, the FBI proceeded to amass more than
300,000 separate file entries for judicial use against the people in question
Russell Means, an occupation leader. was charged with more than I40 sepa
rate offenses as a result; his trials encumbered the next three years of his life,
before he went to prison for a year. There are manv such cases.
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vailing in Detroit, the so-called "murder capital of America. "
In a more political sense, it is greater than the violent death rate
experienced in Uruguay during the anti-Tupamaro repression
there, in Argentina under the worst of its succession of juntas,
or in El Salvador today. The statistics are entirely comparable
to what happened in Chile in the immediate aftermath of
Pinochet's coup.
As is currently the case in El Salvador, where the Reagan
administration contends that the police are too understaffed and
underequipped to identify and apprehend death squad mem-
bers, the FBI-which is charged with investigating major
crimes in reservation areas-pleaded "lack of manpower" in
solving the long list of murders involving AIM people. (The
FBI saturation of the Pine Ridge area was greater on a per
Profile of an Informer
The Death of Jancita Eagle Deer
On April 4, 1975 a 23-year-old Indian woman died in a
hit-and-run "accident" on a lonely back road in Nebraska.
The following information is compiled from AIM investiga-
tions which eventually broke the Nebraska officials' cover-
up, which had initially convinced us that neither Douglass
Durham nor William Janklow was involved in the death of
the woman, Jancita Eagle Deer. As it turned out, the appar-
ent cover-up was for other reasons, related to wealth and
power, but there is good reason to believe Durham was in-
volved.
Around 1:00 p.m. on April 4, 1975 Jancita was picked up
at the home of her brother, Alfred Eagle Deer, near Valen-
tine, Nebraska (just south of the Rosebud Reservation).
Eagle Deer said the car was a late '60s blue Chevrolet, dri-
ven by a dark-haired man he didn't know or get a good look
at. At about 9:15 p.m. that day, Jancita's body was
examined by a coroner's physician, Dr. Donald J. Larson.
No autopsy was performed. "Massive injuries," as a result
of being hit by a car, was the reason given for death. In a
later interview, Dr. Larson told me he thought it possible
she had been beaten, hit over the head or injured when she
fell or jumped out of a moving car.
Jancita had been hit and killed by a local teenager from a
well-off family. Terry L. Scott, 17, was the driver of the car
that killed her and sped on. The initial cover-up was to pro-
tect him and a 16-year-old passenger. In later interviews, I
established that she had been standing in the east-bound
lane of a deserted road six miles east of Aurora [Nebraska],
facing the oncoming car, weaving and looking disheveled,
apparently trying to flag down the boys' car. They struck
her and sped on.
At a nearby farmhouse, they called for help--help for
themselves. Young Scott's influential father arranged for
the boys to be checked into a local hospital. Dr. Larson
went there first, to treat them for "shock and hysteria," and
to give them a blood alcohol test. Apparently, he neglected
to record blood alcohol percentage readings, only the fact
that they "were not intoxicated or on drugs." After taking
care of "the boys" (for whom he expressed great sym-
pathy), he examined Jancita's body "grossly," as he
explained it to me, at the Higbee Mortuary, where Hamilton
County Sheriff W. G. Schultz had had her body taken.
*These are edited excerpts from "Secret Agent Douglass Durham and the
Death of Jancita Eagle Deer," a pamphlet by Paula Giese published by the
North Country Anvil, Minneapolis, Minnesota; copyright ? 1976 by Paula
Giese; reprinted with permission.
When AIM investigators were finally able to learn some
details, Yankton AIM coordinator Gregg Zephier went to
the spot, along with Alfred Eagle Deer. They found that the
sheriff and his deputies had not bothered with much inves-
tigating. One of Jancita's shoes and some items from her
purse had been flung to the roadside when her body had
been hurled 145 feet by the impact. They remained where
they had fallen.
There were no skid marks indicating an attempt to stop or
swerve to avoid hitting Jancita. There were also no charges
lodged against "the boys," a fact which embittered Eagle
Deer, who had once served a prison sentence [in Nebraska]
for running a stop light.
In mid-July I received a call at the AIM office. The voice
sounded like a lawman, but the person wouldn't identify
himself. "I understand you are interested in Doug Durham
and are investigating the death of a young Indian girl, Jan-
cita Eagle Deer. You might like to know that the license of
the car that picked her up the afternoon of April 4 was
checked. The car belongs to Durham's father." The caller
would give no further information and hung up.
In October of 1975 I accidentally learned a few more
facts. Missing from Jancita's things, and not found in
AIM's very careful roadside search, was Jancita's small
black address book. She always carried it and was very
careful with it. The FBI contacted her in-laws several times
looking for it. Since she had it with her when she left her
brother's house, it may be assumed the dark-haired driver of
the blue Chevy has it, or has turned it over to his real mas-
ters, who seem perhaps to be the CIA rather than the FBI.
Second, there was a break-in at Jancita's in-laws' house a
week after her death. Nothing of value was taken, but Jan-
cita's papers appeared to have been gone through. Missing
from these papers is a letter of introduction Durham origi-
nally brought with him in 1974, ostensibly from Jancita's
foster father, saying "trust this man, do as he tells you." In
retrospect, the in-laws believe that Douglass Durham, an
accomplished burglar, performed the break-in. But, as one
of them later put it, "What can we do? These people have
so much power."
Doug Durham Was No Ordinary Undercover Cop
After high school, from 1956 to 1959, Douglass Durham
served in a "special" Special Forces team under CIA direc-
tion. He was trained in demolitions, sabotage. burglary, and
other skills useful in clandestine warfare. From 1959 to
1961 Durham was "sheepdipped"-apparently stationed at
the CIA base in Guatemala as just another adventurous ci-
vilian. He worked with the CIA's secret army of gusanos
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capita basis than anywhere else in the country during this
period.4)
4. To date, of the murders documented by Hamilton, none has been solved. On
the other hand, the FBI experienced no such personnel problems in identifying
and "bringing to justice" AIM people accused of murder. The most famous
example is that of Leonard Peltier, accused of killing two FBI agents on Pine
Ridge in 1975; pursued in what the Bureau itself termed "the biggest manhunt
With hair grown long and died black, FBI infiltrator
Durham became known as one of the more "militant
(violence-prone) members" of the American Indian
Movement in 1974.
(Cuban counterrevolutionaries), at gun-running, sabotage,
and helping with air support for the Bay of Pigs invasion of
1961.
After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Durham became a Des
Moines, Iowa, patrolman and immediately got involved in
burglary, prostitution, and taking bribes-for which he was
investigated several times. Apparently he was using various
"ethical short circuits" which he had been trained in; one of
his former police supervisors told AIM investigators that he
reprimanded Durham by telling him "Des Moines isn't
Cuba." What is practiced in the provinces of the empire is
(supposed to be) a no-no among citizens of the mother
country.
Durham's involvement in prostitution-"running" a
string of "girls" from a cafe called Why Not?-led to bitter
quarrels with his wife. In July 1964 he beat her brutally; she
died on July 5. Durham was investigated for second-degree
manslaughter and, in the course of the investigation, was
examined by a police psychiatrist. What immediately led to
the examination was that three weeks after his wife's death,
he married one of the Why Not? girls. The psychiatrist pro-
nounced Durham a violent schizoid, "unfit for office in-
volving public trust," and recommended commitment and
treatment at a mental institution.
The police were not anxious for another scandal. (A few
years previously there had been a large shakeup in Des
Moines.) So Durham was allowed to make a deal-he was
not prosecuted or committed, but he was supposed to com-
mit himself for treatment. He was fired, with this under-
standing, in October of 1964. From then on, until he be-
More to the point than this transparent rationale for inaction
is the case of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash. A young Micmac
woman working with AIM on Pine Ridge, Aquash was told
in history," and convicted in what turned out to be a sham trial, Peltier is cur-
rently serving a double life sentence. (See, "The Ordeal of Leonard Peltier."
by William M. Kunstler, in this issue.)
came involved in "political work," he moved rapidly up in
the Midwest hierarchy of organized crime.
He operated several restaurants fronting for Mafia inter-
ests. These were centers for gambling, large drug deals, and
burglary rings. Durham also ran a sort of safecrackers and
alarm foilers school, using his CIA-gained skills. He had
several medium sized aircraft of his own (one a twin-engine
Cessna) and access to jets belonging to the Iowa National
Guard, which operates a large airbase in Des Moines. He
was investigated for large-scale heroin smuggling, pander-
ing, receiving stolen goods, and convicted in an odd Mafia/
political case in 1971.
"I was considered (by local law enforcement officials) to
be head of the largest criminal organization in the state of
Iowa," he boasted to AIM attorneys in tape-recorded, wit-
nessed interviews conducted March 9-12 [19751 in
Chicago.
AIM exposed Douglass Durham as an FBI informer (he
called himself an "operative") at a nationally covered press
conference on March 13, 1975. Durham appeared at the
press conference and confirmed his role, giving the names
of agents Ray Williams and Robert Taubert (Minneapolis)
and David Hedgecock (Des Moines) as his supervisors. He
presented the public image of a staunch law enforcement of-
ficial who had been won over during the period he had been
with AIM, starting March 20, 1973, when he entered
Wounded Knee with phony press credentials, and then infil-
trated Iowa AIM back home in Des Moines. ?
A transformed Durham, as he appeared before the
House Internal Security Committee in 1975, the only
"movement" witness allowed to testify on AIM.
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outright during the fall of 1975 by federal agent David Price
(who was involved in the assassinations of Mark Clark and
Fred Hampton in Chicago in 1969, and who has been involved
more recently in paramilitary operations against the Republic
of New Afrika) that, "You'll be dead within a year."
Aquash's body was found less than six months later, dumped
in a ravine in the northeast quadrant of the reservation. A
pathologist hired by the government determined her death as
being due to "exposure." An independent pathologist readily
discovered she had died as a result of a .38 calibre slug enter-
ing the back of her head at pointblank range.
Nor is Pine Ridge the only locale in which this clandestine
war has been conducted. Richard Oaks, leader of the 1970 oc-
cupation of Alcatraz Island by "Indians of All Tribes," was
gunned down in California the following year. Shortly thereaf-
ter, Hank Adams, a fishing rights leader in Washington state,
was shot in the stomach. Larry Casuse, a Navajo AIM leader,
Douglass Durham's use of Jancita Eagle Deer was quite
obviously part of a much broader strategy to maim and dis-
credit the American Indian Movement. He told both Jancita
and her mother-in-law that he planned to have her charge
William Janklow with rape in the South Dakota State
Capitol at Pierre, despite jurisdictional and other statutory
proscriptions to such a move. His stated rationale was that
this would be a bargaining counter by which AIM might
ease legal pressure Janklow was bringing on Sarah Bad
Heart Bull, Bob High Eagle, Kenneth Dahl, and others
charged in the 1973 "Custer Courthouse Riot" which fol-
lowed the murder of Sarah's son Wesley by white thugs in
Custer, South Dakota.
In actuality, Durham's move-which was ultimately
blocked by AIM leader Dennis Banks-would have oc-
curred at precisely the time when Janklow was accruing
considerable public sympathy as a result of AIM's "smear
campaign" against him. An action such as that proposed by
Durham would thus have greatly strengthened Janklow's
hand in dispensing vigilante "justice" to AIM members.
Balked in this undertaking, Durham promptly flew to the
West Coast where he spent several days attempting to re-
cruit AIM personnel to come to South Dakota to kidnap
Janklow in order that he be tried by a "people's court" and/
or offered as an exchange for incarcerated AIM members.
This plan, too, was blocked, this time by Los Angeles AIM
coordinator, Kenny Loudhawk.
The score Durham felt he had to settle with California
AIM for having thwarted his Janklow scheme was apparent-
ly accommodated on October 17, 1974 when the FBI ar-
rested Paul Skyhorse and Richard Mohawk (both Los
Angeles AIM members) at an Indian education conference
in Phoenix. The two were charged with the trumped-up
murder of a cab driver near Beverly Hills. The fine hand of
the infiltrator was clearly brought to bear when he showed
up on the scene to investigate the situation on behalf of the
AIM National Office, in order to recommend the extent and
type of support the national organization should extend.
(Movement legal resources were extremely limited at the
time, as the "Wounded Knee Trials" of hundreds of AIM
members-trials Durham was merrily pushing along from
his position on the inside-were in full swing.)
Durham reported to the AIM leadership that the situation
in Los Angeles had "deteriorated seriously," that Skyhorse
was shot to death in Arizona in 1972. In 1979, AIM leader
John Trudell was preparing to make a speech in Washington,
DC. He was told by FBI personnel that, if he gave his talk,
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 "mysteriot . ly" burned to death
at their home on the Duck Valley Reservation in Nevada.
Conclusion
What has been related here is but a tiny fraction of the full
range of events-facts intended only to illustrate the much
broader pattern of covert activities directed against the Ameri-
can Indian Movement for well over a decade. It is hoped that
the reader will attain a greater appreciation for the similarities
between the nature of U.S. clandestine operations abroad and
and Mohawk were "scum, not AIM'," probably guilty as
charged, and suggested that the national organization "to-
tally disassociate itself from their crime." His advice was
followed.
It was not until after Durham was exposed as an FBI infil-
trator that AIM reexamined its position on Skyhorse and
Mohawk who, by that time, had already spent a year in jail
with neither bail nor tangible legal support. Eventually,
lawyers Leonard Weinglass, Wendy Eaton, Skip Glenn,
Diane Orr, and Jack Schwartz took up the case, filed a civil
rights suit against the prosecution and the FBI, and won ac-
quittal for the two AIM members. However, by then each
had spent four years in a cell and neither ever returned to ef-
fective movement work.
Durham's last act of subversion directed against AIM
may actually have occurred some time after his cover was
blown, after he had testified before the House Internal Secu-
rity Committee on "AIM terrorism," and after he had gone
on the stump for the John Birch Society. In May 1976 a
memo on FBI letterhead was released from Bureau Head-
quarters in Washington. Called "The Dog Soldier Memo,"
it read in part:
AIM members who will kill for the advancement of AIM
objectives have been training since the Wounded Knee
incident in 1973. . . . These Dog Soldiers, approxi-
mately 2,000 in number, . . . are undergoing guerrilla
warfare training experiences. . . ...
It then went on to note that AIM was planning to blow up
the South Dakota State Capitol building, snipe at tourists
traveling to the Black Hills, assault the South Dakota State
Penitentiary in Sioux Falls, and engage in an array of other
guerrilla attacks.
Although then FBI Director Clarence Kelley later admit-
ted under oath that the Bureau lacked a shred of evidence to
back the accusations contained in this memo, it had been
distributed to all FBI field offices and a number of police
departments around the country. As Bruce Ellison, a Rapid
City AIM lawyer, notes, "That memo had Doug Durham's
signature all over it. These were the sorts of activities he'd
always unsuccessfully promoted while he was inside AIM,
the same things he testified to as being facts before the In-
ternal Security Committee and it's all said in exactly the
same fashion that he always said it." ?
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those conducted here at home; the parallels are not always as
figurative as is commonly supposed.
Further, it is hoped that the reader might become more at-
tuned to the "why" of such seemingly aberrant circumstances:
that the liberation struggle of Native Americans fits well within
the more global anti-imperialist struggles waged elsewhere, as
the quotation from Kwame Toure indicates. AIM presents the
Although Douglass Durham was certainly the most ef-
fective and notorious of the FBI's infiltrators and pro-
vocateurs used against AIM, he was by no means the
only one. For example, in Washington in 1972, the indi-
vidual above, calling himself "John G. Arellano,"
joined the AIM-initiated "Trail of Broken Treaties" ef-
fort which led to the occupation of the Bureau of Indian
Affairs building.
According to Peggy Simpson of the Associated Press,
"When the Indians were inside the BIA, Arellano was
among the more vocal and visible protesters. He stood in
front of the building and jeered at his fellow police offi-
cers. He menaced bystanders with a table leg and other
weapons he had fashioned from broken furnishings." As
AIM leader Russell Means recalls it, Arellano was "one
of those 'right on' type guys, always pushing for a con-
frontation and urging people to fight to the death."
Later, he successfully infiltrated the residual negotiat-
ing team left behind when AIM departed Washington
and was instrumental in bringing about the false arrest of
movement negotiator Hank Adams on a charge of pos-
sessing stolen government documents (which Arellano
had loaded into Adams's car).
According to Donald Baker of the Washington Post,
Arellano's regular employment was as a narcotics detec-
tive for the Metropolitan Police when not engaged by the
John Trudell, the last president of AIM. On February 12,
1979 his wife Tina, three children, and mother-in-law were
burned to death in their sleep, an apparent reprisal for an
anti-FBI speech made by Trudell a few hours earlier.
same sort of threat to the U.S. status quo as do land-hased
movements in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle
East. Hence, the governmental/corporate response to it has
been the same-and for the same reasons-as that employed
against the Third World.
This situation, so little known in America, has been recog-
nized in locations as diverse as Nicaragua, Vietnam, Libya,
Iran, Cuba, Mozambique, Ireland, Palestine, and Switzerland,
through the work of the International Indian Treaty Council. It
is high time that it was fully realized by those among the broad
progressive opposition within the United States itself.' ?
5. For those who desire further and more detailed information, the following
are recommended as excellent additional readings:
Brandt, Johanna. The Life and Death of Anna Mac Aquash," James
Lorimer and Co., Toronto: 1978.
Johanssen, Bruce, and Roberto Macstas. "Wasi'chu: The Continuing In-
dian Wars," Monthly Review Press, New York:1979.
Matthiessen, Peter, "In the Spirit of Crary Horse," Viking Press, New
York: 1983.
Messerschmidt, Jim, "The Trial of Leonard Peltier.'' South End Press,
Boston: 1983.
Wyler, Rex, "Blood of the Land: The U.S. Government and Corporate War
Against the American Indian Movement," Everest House Publishers. New
York: 1983.
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The Strange Case
of "Wild Bi11" Janklow
By Ward Churchill
... joining the marine corps,
he learned the tricks of his trade.
to walk around quietly,
and carry a hand grenade.
to all you tourists who are
south dakota bound, remember
wild bill janklow just might
turn you right around.
-Jim Page, 1979.
William "Wild Bill" Janklow is the current governor of
South Dakota. In 1955, at the age of 16, he was convicted of
the sexual assault of a 17-year-old woman. As a juvenile of-
fense, this conviction carried little weight under U.S. law.
However, in 1966, while working as the tribal attorney for
the Rosebud Sioux, Janklow-aged 27-was accused of rap-
ing his children's 15-year-old babysitter, Jancita Eagle Deer.
Adult sexual offenses being more grave than this earlier re-
corded exploit, Janklow used his capacity as head of reserva-
tion legal services to stave off the filing of formal, federal
charges. He then resigned his position and left tribal jurisdic-
tion.
Having progressed through the "mainstream" South Dakota
legal system during the intervening seven years, Janklow had
achieved status as the state's Deputy Attorney General by the
time of the 1973 American Indian Movement (AIM) occupa-
tion of Wounded Knee. Opting to run for Attorney General the
following year, he undertook a campaign of hardline pro-
secutorial assault upon AIM members designed to win him the
advantage of local headlines and support of South Dakota's
virulently anti-Indian white citizenry.
AIM countered this offensive when organization member
Douglass Durham discovered the old Rosebud rape files. AIM
leader Dennis Banks secured the filing of charges and brought
the case before tribal judge Mario Gonzales. Durham, mean-
while, had located Jancita Eagle Deer in Iowa, where she had
resided since dropping out of high school shortly after the 1966
incident.
Durham was able to persuade Eagle Deer to return to the
Rosebud in order to testify at the upcoming trial; Janklow re-
fused to enter tribal jurisdiction either to stand trial or even to
answer questions concerning the charges. Gonzales then issued
a warrant for the arrest of the South Dakota Deputy Attorney
General on charges of rape and obstruction of justice. Durham
and Eagle Deer apparently became lovers; in any event she be-
came his traveling companion. And, South Dakota being South
Dakota, Janklow won his election bid by a landslide.
Janklow's Justice
In his new capacity as Attorney General, Janklow intensified
his anti-AIM campaign, winning a good deal of federal ap-
proval for his efforts, and focusing his most lethal attentions on
Dennis Banks (who had showcased the rape charges), rather
than on Douglass Durham (who had discovered and pushed
them). Said Janklow, "The way to deal with Dennis Banks is
with a bullet between the eyes."
Regardless of his political stance, Janklow was and is a
trained attorney, possessed of the usual legalistic logic accom-
panying the profession of law. His omission of Durham from
his personal "hit list," particularly given Durham's close re-
lationship with the only witness who could categorically link
him to the act of rape, seemed odd at the time. It was soon to
be less so.
During the January 1975 AIM takeover of the Alexian
Brothers Abbey in Wisconsin, it came out that Durham was a
paid ($1,000 a month, cash) FBI informant. Since 1973, based
largely on his superior performance in sniffing out the informa-
tion about Janklow and in locating Eagle Deer, he had been
selected to serve as head of AIM security. In this capacity, he
had been privy to many of the private defense team meetings
during the so-called "Wounded Knee Trials" of Russell
Means and Dennis Banks.
Although the AIM leadership was acquitted in the trials, it
remains true that no effort has ever been made to bring the pro-
secutors or responsible FBI officials to court on what amounted
to flagrant perjury and contempt of court, as well as obvious at-
Jancita Eagle Deer (center), reputedly raped by William
Janklow when a teenager, was killed in 1975 under mys-
terious circumstances after becoming the traveling com-
panion of FBI undercover agent Douglass Durham.
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tempts at miscarriages of justice. Both the government's
lawyers and the FBI denied under oath to the trial judge that
they had infiltrated the defense team.
Meanwhile, Durham dropped out of sight, with Eagle Deer
in tow. Her body turned up in a roadside ditch in Nebraska in
March 1975. While the official Nebraska State Police account
lists cause of death merely as "hit-and-run," even their autop-
sy report indicates she had been beaten sometime shortly be-
fore being run over. Douglass Durham was never questioned in
the matter of his companion's death. Rather, he was called as
the sole witness before the House of Representatives' Internal
Security Committee's "investigation" of AIM during the sum-
mer of 1975 to provide evidence that "the American Indian
Movement is a terrorist organization." From there, he went on
a national speaking tour arranged by the John Birch Society
and endorsed by William Janklow, who had decided to run for
governor.
Freed of the spectre of Eagle Deer's possible testimony
against him in court, Janklow proceeded to secure a conviction
against Dennis Banks-before an all-white jury-on charges
of "rioting" in the face of a police assault upon AIM in Cus-
ter, South Dakota in 1973. Faced with a prison sentence under
Janklow, Banks went underground. When he surfaced again, it
was in California where the circumstances surrounding his case
were deemed enough to warrant Governor Jerry Brown's
granting of sanctuary from extradition to South Dakota. (See
sidebar.)
In the meantime, Janklow was possibly repaying certain
debts to his clandestine benefactors by utilizing a federal ploy
to dispose of other AIM thorns in the government's flesh. Not-
ably, this centered upon the utilization of one of the FBI's "all
purpose witnesses," a clinically unbalanced Lakota woman
named Myrtle Poor Bear.
The major gambit was to bring AIM leaders Richard Mar-
shall and Russell Means to trial for the 1974 slaying of a
Lakota named Robert Montileaux in a bar in Scenic, South
Dakota. The feds provided Poor Bear to "identify" the assail-
ants as Marshall and Means while Janklow's prosecutors duly
built a case around her "eyewitness" testimony. When it came
out in court that Montileaux himself had stated, shortly before
dying, that his killers did not include Russell Means, Means
was acquitted. Marshall, on the other hand, is now serving a
life sentence in a South Dakota state prison.
The "Eyewitness"
Poor Bear was also used as an "eyewitness" in the federal
cases brought against Bob Robideau, Dino Butler, and
Leonard Peltier, the AIM members accused of killing two FBI
agents on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation in June of
1975. Robideau and Butler were tried first, in Cedar Rapids,
Iowa. They were acquitted, based upon general FBI miscon-
duct in their case, including the fabrication of virtually all of
Poor Bear's testimony (she turned out to have been 50 miles
away at the time of the shootings, and never to have seen either
of the slain FBI agents or any of the defendants).
Nonetheless, the FBI was able to utilize affidavits signed by
Poor Bear (as an eyewitness to the deaths of its agents) in se-
curing extradition of Leonard Peltier from Canada. Thecredibil-
Harry Belafonte, Dennis Banks, and Douglass Durham (left to right) outside the Federal Building during a break in the
"Wounded Knee Trial" of Banks and Russell Means in 1975. In his capacity as head of AIM security, while in the employ of
the FBI, Durham infiltrated the defense strategy meetings of the defendants.
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ity of these affidavits was directly reinforced by the earlier
showing of Poor Bear as a witness against Richard Marshall in
South Dakota. Later it was revealed that the FBI held another
affidavit signed by Poor Bear, not submitted to the Canadians,
contradicting everything she said in the affidavits which were.
Poor Bear eventually went on record recanting everything
she had ever said regarding AIM's "criminal activities," in-
cluding not only her testimony about Means, Robideau, But-
ler, and Peltier, but about Marshall as well. In her later ver-
sion of what happened, she asserted that she was held incom-
municado for an extended period of time in a motel room near
the Pine Ridge Reservation by a pair of FBI agents named
Price and Wood. The agents explained to her that she would
"end up like Annie Mae" (Anna Mae Aquash, the Micmac
woman assassinated on Pine Ridge in 1975, reputedly at the
behest of agent Price) unless she testified to certain things in
court. The agents then informed her of the details about which
she was to testify, including those involved in the testimony
she was to provide in the non-federal Marshall/Means trial.
First as Attorney General, and then as Governor of South
Dakota, William Janklow has been successful in blocking a re-
trial of Richard Marshall, and forestalling inquiries into the na-
ture of his office's relationship to FBI misconduct during the
critical period. (For recent developments in the Peltier case,
see "The Ordeal of Leonard Peltier," by William M.
Kuntsler, in this issue.)
Over the years, the purposes of the secret war waged by the
FBI and the Attorney General of the state of South Dakota
against AIM have become clearer. For example, during 1975-
76, the head of the federally imposed puppet government at
Pine Ridge, Richard Wilson (head of the local death squads,
known as "GOONs"), signed over approximately one-eighth
of the reservation-without tribal consent-to the U.S. Park
Dennis Banks
Janklow's vendetta against Dennis Banks did not end
in the mid-1970s. His attempts to force extradition from
California continued through the decade. By 1980,
Janklow's frustration over Jerry Brown's refusal to
honor what he considered to be little more than legally
sanctioned murder resulted in the South Dakota gover-
nor's taking an unprecedented step: In retaliation he
began "deporting" South Dakota's felons to California,
saying, "If Brown wants our criminals, he can have
them all."
Brown's successor, George Deukmejian, proved more
accommodating to Janklow. Forced underground again,
Banks moved to the Onondaga Reservation in New York
State where he lived under the protection of the tribal el-
ders for about two years. Then, on September 13, 1984,
in order to expand his political activities beyond the con-
fines of the Onondaga Reservation, Banks surrendered to
South Dakota authorities at Rapid City.
On October 8, in the Custer County courthouse, after
a day-long presentation in which some two dozen wit-
nesses testified about Banks's value to both the Indian
and the white communities, he was sentenced to three
years' imprisonment. Banks has recently been transfer-
red to a minimum security installation, and his full re-
lease is expected by early 1986. ?
Service. The ceded area is believed to be rich in uranium and is
suspected of being used to accommodate a high-level nuclear
waste dump. The AIM people would have resisted such a land
transfer. It was therefore necessary to tie them up in other mat-
ters or simply liquidate them.
Similarly, as governor of South Dakota, William Janklow
has proved most accommodating to the sort of corporate pene-
tration of the state which its inhabitants-red and white alike-
have historically resisted. Only in appearing as the whites'
savior from the "red menace" has Janklow been able to
achieve a status which allows him to convert the area into what
has been termed a "national sacrifice area." Under his hand-
ling, it has been estimated that a combination of energy extrac-
tion and the demands placed upon South Dakota's feeble
ground water resources by industry will have rendered the
western half of the state uninhabitable by the turn of the cen-
tury.
Conclusion
William Janklow is the only known sex offender (and ac-
cused rapist) now occupying a U.S. governor's office. Had it
not been for the intervention of the FBI in the form of its under-
cover agent, Douglass Durham, it seems possible that Janklow
would have gone to the state prison rather than to the state
capitol. Conversely, had it not been for the unabashed coopera-
tion of Attorney General William Janklow, the reign of terror
perpetrated by the FBI against the American Indian Movement
would have been much more difficult to pull off.
On the basis of such symbiosis does the success of covert ac-
tion depend. Not only the Indians, but the citizens of the entire
state of South Dakota are now paying the price of this situa-
tion. Increasingly, however, we must all pay unless something
is done, and done quickly, to prevent a recurrence. 0
South Dakota Governor William "Wild Bill" Janklow
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the Ordeal of Leonard Peltier
By William M. Kunstler *
On June 26, 1975, FBI Special Agents Jack R. Coler and
Ronald A. Williams were shot to death during a fire fight with
members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) on South
Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. At the same time,
Joseph Stuntz Killsright, a young Native American, was also
Joe Stuntz Killsright, 18, the third fatality of the Oglala,
South Dakota fire fight on June 26, 1975, in which FBI
agents Williams and Coler died. Killsright was targeted by
Durham as a particularly committed AIM member, and his
death was never even investigated by the Bureau, leaving
open the question whether he was summarily executed by
federal agents.
killed. Subsequently, the four oldest Indian males said by the
Bureau to have been present at the scene-Robert E.
Robideau, Darelle Dean Butler, James T. Eagle, and Leonard
Peltier-were indicted jointly for the murder of the agents. No
one was ever charged with Killsright's death.
In July of 1976, after a lengthy trial, Robideau and Butler,
who had pleaded self-defense, were acquitted by an all-white
jury in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where their case, as well as that of
*William M. Kunstler is Vice-President of the Center for Constitutional Rights
in New York City and, along with Bruce Ellison, John J. Privitera, and Vine
DeLoria, counsel for Leonard Peltier.
Peltier, had been transferred because of local anti-Indian pre-
judice in South Dakota. The Justice Department then decided
to dismiss the charges against Eagle, the youngest of the four,
who had not been present at the shootout, "so that the full pro-
secutive weight of the Federal Government could be directed
against Leonard Peltier." The latter, who, following his indict-
ment, had fled to Canada, was shortly to be extradited from
that country on the basis of three affidavits obtained by the FBI
from one Myrtle Poor Bear who swore that she had seen him
shooting the agents. The Government was later forced to admit
publicly that all of these documents were false, a concession
that led one federal appellate court to characterize their use as
"a clear abuse of the investigative process by the FBI."
On April 18, 1977, Peltier was convicted of the murders of
the agents by a jury in Fargo, North Dakota, where, much to
the surprise of the Cedar Rapids judge, his case had been mys-
teriously shifted. Peltier was eventually sentenced to two con-
secutive terms of life imprisonment. Upon appeal, his convic-
tions were affirmed with the reviewing court finding that, al-
though "[T]he evidence against [him[ was primarily cir-
cumstantial," the "critical evidence" was the testimony of
one Evan Hodge, a Washington-based FBI firearms identifica-
tion specialist. Agent Hodge told the jury that Government
Exhibit 34-B, a .223 caliber shell casing found in the open
trunk of Coler's car, just a few feet from his body, was ex-
tracted from 34-A, an AR-15 rifle attributable to Peltier, but
The body of Killsright lies in the mud at the scene of the
Oglala fire fight; the circumstances of his death have never
been clarified. He is photographed wearing an FBI field
jacket apparently donned after he was last seen alive by
other AIM people.
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that he could reach no conclusion as to whether the gun had ac-
tually fired the bullet from that casing because of damage to its
firing pin and breech face surfaces. Since the pathologists who
had conducted the autopsies of the victims opined that the
agents had each been killed by a high velocity, small caliber
weapon, such as an AR-15, fired at close and point-blank
range, Hodge's testimony was extremely damaging to Peltier
and was characterized by the prosecutor in his summation as
"the most important piece of evidence in this case."
The Discrepancies Come to Light
Long years after the trial, Peltier obtained, through the Free-
dom of Information Act (FOIA), a number of documents relat-
ing to the FBI's ballistics examination. One, an October 2,
1975, teletype from Hodge to the FBI resident agency at Rapid
City, South Dakota, the field office in charge of the overall in-
vestigation, stated that a comparison between the .223 casings
found at the shootout scene, referred to in FBIese as RES-
MURS, and Peltier's AR-15 had revealed that the weapon in
question contained "a different firing pin than that in [the] rifle
used at [the] RESMURS scene." On the strength of this report,
an appellate court last April ordered Judge Paul Benson, who
had presided at the Fargo trial, to conduct an appropriate
evidentiary hearing as to "the meaning of the October 2, 1975,
teletype and its relation to the ballistics evidence introduced at
Peltier's trial."
The hearing took place in Bismarck, North Dakota, on Oc-
tober 1-3, 1984. Hodge, the only witness produced by the gov-
ernment, testified that, by the time of the October 2nd teletype,
he had only been able to examine seven of the 136 or so .223
RESMURS casings submitted to him for comparison. In fact,
he hadn't gotten around to looking at 34-B, which he had re-
ceived on July 24, 1975, until late December of 1975 or early
January of 1976, more than a half-year after the Pine Ridge
The FBI at Pine Ridge: 1973-1976
Special Agent Richard Held was in charge of the FBI
field office at Rapid City, South Dakota, the office covering
Pine Ridge, during the period of the Bureau's reign of terror
there. For such an operation, he was a man of unmistakable
talent and substantial experience.
In 1968 and 1969, Held was in charge of the Chicago, Il-
linois field office. While there, he displayed a special inter-
est and flair for developing projects geared to penetrating
and destabilizing the city's chapter of the Black Panther
Party. On December 4, 1969, the primary leaders of the Il-
linois Panthers, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, were assas-
sinated in their sleep by law enforcement personnel.
Ostensibly, the "arms raid" which resulted in the execu-
tion of Clark and Hampton (and led to the subsequent rapid
disintegration of the Illinois Panthers) was conducted by a
special squad working directly for then State's Attorney Ed-
ward Hanrahan. However, tactical control of the unit which
did the killing was held by a mysterious individual named
"Daniel Groth," who could not be accounted for through
State's Attorney police rosters.
Groth disappeared in the immediate wake of the lethal
raid and was never heard from again. It has always been
speculated that the name was a cover for an FBI agent on
special assignment from Held to coordinate Hanrahan's hit
team. For his part, Held also dropped out of sight-being
reassigned according to the FBI's "normal rotation
schedule"- when it was established in early 1970 that both
Clark and Hampton had been drugged by an infiltrator ear-
lier in the evening of the deaths. They had thus presented
unconscious and totally immobilized targets to the firing
squad.
Little is known of Held's activities from the point he de-
parted Chicago until he emerged again in Rapid City some
three years later. Once there, however, he quickly built up
his cadre from its customary level of three Special Agents to
more than fifty, including a special eleven-man SWAT
team assigned full time to the tiny village of Pine Ridge
(nominal "capital" of the Reservation). He also developed
a rapid deployment system whereby additional agents could
One of the UH-1B helicopters used by the FBI to con-
duct Vietnam-style operations against AIM on Pine
Ridge during 1974-75, the height of Durham's activities
as a provocateur.
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confrontation and some three months following his receipt of
the AR-15. However, he freely admitted that he was constantly
being importuned by Rapid City to test every .223 casing for-
warded to him against any AR-15 associated with the June 26th
incident, and that any such casings found near the bodies of the
agents should have been examined on a priority basis, given
the pathologists' opinion that Coler and Williams had been
shot at close range. His failure to do so promptly, he
explained, was due to a number of factors: the large volume of
work associated with the RESMURS investigation, his neces-
sary absences from Washington in connection with other FBI
business, and the fact that only he and one assistant were avail-
able for firearms identification purposes.
While Hodge was on the stand, Peltier's attorneys were
given an opportunity, for the first time, to look at the handwrit-
ten notes of his RESMURS work. In doing so, they noticed
that his key report-the one stating that the extractor marks on
34-B matched Peltier's AR-15--contained what looked like
different handwriting than that of either Hodge or his assistant.
Accordingly, just before the hearing's end, he was asked
whether a third person had worked on the RESMURS ballis-
tics, and replied that he was "sure" that none had. He also
stated that he was "positive" that the writing on the report in
question was indeed that of his assistant, because "I know he
was the only other person making notes on this case."
The defense then asked Judge Benson for permission to have
all of Hodge's notes examined by a handwriting expert. After
listening to strenuous objections by government counsel, who
claimed that this request was a complete waste of time and
money, the court, with obvious reluctance, granted Peltier's
motion. The original notes were to be examined by an expert
selected by the defendant's attorneys at the FBI laboratory in
Washington, D.C., in the presence of a representative of the
government, and the results, if positive, to be made part of the
be immediately incorporated into his force from area offices
in Minneapois and Denver.
This gave Held the greatest concentration of agents to
population ever assembled over an extended period. All in-
dications are that the full weight of this concentration was
directed at the American Indian Movement personnel func-
tioning on and around Pine Ridge in the wake of the
Wounded Knee occupation of 1973. In the three years
which followed, more than 300 AIM members and support-
ers were shot (some on more than one occasion); of these,
approximately 70 are known to have died.
Of course, Held required a tactical commander for his
ambitious and far-flung field force (which included, at vari-
ous times, not only the FBI, but also U.S. Marshals, Bureau
of Indian Affairs Police, South Dakota State Police, Na-
tional Guard, an Indian GOON squad, a white vigilante or-
ganization headed by then South Dakota Attorney General
William Janklow, and elements of the U.S. Army). This
task apparently fell to a previously unknown agent named
David Price who arrived in Rapid City shortly after Held.
Coincidentally, Price bore a rather striking physical re-
semblance to the mysterious Mr. Groth from Chicago.
Working with a junior partner named William Wood, whom
he seems to have been training in the peculiar methods of
political repression, Price coordinated the on-line FBI pre-
sence on Pine Ridge during the critical period, appears to
have served as the coordinating liaison under which Dickie
Wilson's GOONs carried out their campaign of outright ter-
ror, and personally conducted the extorting of perjured tes-
timony against Richard Marshall and Leonard Peltier from
people such as Myrtle Poor Bear. He is also the individual
who threatened Anna Mae Aquash with death prior to her
execution-style slaying in 1975.
By 1976, with the AIM leadership in exile or facing inter-
minable trials, and with the organization's ranks thoroughly
decimated, the FBI dismantled much of its Rapid City ef-
fort. Held was "rotated" again, only to appear once more
in 1981 in charge of the Detroit area office, where he is still
busily conducting operations against the Republic of New
Afrika. The whereabouts and activities of David Price are at
present unknown (as are those of other major federal actors
in the Pine Ridge horror such as Douglass Durham, who is
covered by the Witness Protection Act).
William Wood, Price's trainee, was assigned to the
Rapid City field office once again in 1982, during the height
of the AIM confrontation with federal authorities concern-
ing the occupation of Yellow Thunder Camp in the Black
Hills. While there are at present no signs of the FBI's re-
peating anything on the scale of its 1973-1976 South Dakota
performance, Wood's presence can only be taken as a sign
that the possibility is there-and waiting. ?
Federal marshals operating on Pine Ridge in mid-1973.
Aside from resident GOONs, BIA police, and the mar-
shals, direct assistance accrued to the FBI's campaign of
repression from the South Dakota State Police and Na-
tional Guard, as well as advisers from the U.S. Army's
82nd Airborne Division. According to Rex Weyler in his
book Blood of the Land (Everest House, 1982, p. 80),
the latter were commanded by General Alexander Haig.
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hearing record.
After taking care of some housekeeping details, the judge
then closed the hearing. An hour later, all counsel were sud-
denly asked to return to the courtroom. At that time, the gov-
ernment, claiming that it had "stubbed its toe," recalled Agent
Hodge who testified that, after leaving the stand, he had shown
the report in question to his assistant who, unknown to the de-
fense, had been brought to Bismarck, and had been informed
by him that the handwriting was not his. Hodge further said
that he did not know the identity of the person who had written
the document.
Judge Benson, visibly affected by these disclosures, then or-
dered the government to turn over to defense counsel copies of
all of the RESMURS ballistics notes. He also directed that it
attempt to determine just who had written the report at issue.
Finally, he adjourned the hearing, pending whatever additional
evidence developed from the new turn of events. The Bureau
later forwarded copies of the ballistics notes to Peltier's attor-
neys, as well as the name of one William Albrecht, Jr., who it
claims was the laboratory trainee who wrote the key report
about the matching of the crucial .223 casing and the AR-15 at-
tributed to Peltier.
Albrecht's deposition was taken in Washington, D.C., on
January 7, 1985. Albrecht, now an FBI special agent, said that
Hodge, his unit chief, had told him, shortly after returning
from the Bismarck hearing, that "it was important to deter-
mine who had prepared" the note in question. Hodge had been
"ecstatic" and "even hugged me" when Albrecht said that he
had written it. The note had to have been written "after the
29th of October, 1975, because that was my first day in the
unit. "
RESMURS had been the first case he had worked on after
being assigned to the laboratory as "an agent examiner
trainee." He recalled that he had worked on this case with
Hodge and one Joseph Tardowski "who, at that time, was Mr.
Hodge's technician." There were four such trainees in 1974,
and one of them, a Special Agent Reedman, had also been in-
volved in the RESMURS investigation.
He admitted that the deaths of two FBI agents would have
had "a high priority" in the firearms unit and would have been
"of personal interest since it is a fellow agent." Such a case
would have created "a very strong interest on the part of the
office of origin" as well. However, a decision was made on
the part of the laboratory not to compare ejector marks on the
.223 RESMURS casings and the test firings from the Wichita
AR-15, even though they could have had "some value . . . in
the lab."
In February 1985, a brief asking for the granting of a new
trial was submitted by Peltier's attorneys to Judge Benson. On
May 24, in an outrageous decision, the Judge decided that the
new evidence would not have influenced a jury in any way and
denied Peltier's motion for a new trial. His attorneys noted that
they would again appeal to the Eighth Circuit.
The Frameup
From the moment that Hodge testified at his trial, Peltier has
strenuously contended that the ballistics evidence against him
was fabricated to ensure a conviction. Knowing that the Myrtle
Poor Bear extradition affidavits had been falsified and that the
1979 nine-month federal prosecution of Dennis Banks and
Russell Means, co-leaders of the AIM occupation of Wounded
Knee a year earlier, had been dismissed because of massive
Leonard Peltier, currently serving a double life sentence for the 1975 murders of two FBI agents on Pine Ridge. He was con-
victed largely on the basis of ballistics evidence which FBI internal memos reveal the Bureau knew to be false, even at the
time, and the "eyewitness" identification of Special Agent Fred Coward, supposedly made at 800 yards through a 7x rifle
scope and amid severe heat shimmers by an individual who had never seen Peltier before. FBI memos, obtained under the
Freedom of Information Act, indicate that the Bureau's experts knew such an identification was impossible before the tes-
timony was given. Peltier had been targeted as "an important AIM leader" by infiltrator Douglass Durham.
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FBI misconduct, he was understandably suspicious of Hodge's
damning testimony. This was particularly so in light of the lat-
ter's laboratory report of October 31, 1975, which stated that
"none of the ammo components at RESMURS" could be as-
sociated with Peltier's weapon.
The intensity of the FBI's determination to hold someone ac-
countable for the loss of its two agents can best be seen in the
Bureau's agonized frustration after the acquittals of Butler and
Robideau. On July 19, 1976, three days after the end of the
Butler-Robideau trial, Director Clarence M. Kelley called
Rapid City and requested the field office's analysis "as to pos-
sible reasons why the jury found defendants . . . not guilty."
The reply broadly hinted that the Iowa trial judge had, in a
number of his significant rulings, been partial to the defense.
Three weeks later, the first of a spate of top- and middle-
level conferences took place at Bureau headquarters. The pur-
pose of this and future such meetings was "to . . . discuss
what can be done by the FBI to assist the government in [the]
presentation of [the Peltier] case at trial." Between August 6,
1976, and the beginning of the defendant's trial in Fargo in late
March of 1977, at least six similar conferences were held.
While it is patently impossible, given the small percentage
of existent documentation reluctantly released by the FBI in re-
sponse to Peltier's FOIA suit, to know everything discussed or
decided at these meetings, it is not difficult to make some
reasoned guesses as to some items on their agendas. For exam-
ple, one of the reasons advanced by Rapid City for the Butler-
Robideau acquittals was the statement of the jury's foreperson,
as reported in the Cedar Rapids Gazette the day following the
verdicts, that "the Government did not produce sufficient evi-
dence of guilt . . . [it] did not show that either of the defen-
dants did it." Based on this interview, the Bureau came to the
conclusion that "ITlhe jury apparently wanted the Government
to show that Robideau and Butler actually pulled the trigger at
close range."
What better way to supply the missing link in Peltier's case
than to connect his weapon with a shell casing found near
Coler's body, the bullet from which could have been responsi-
ble for his death'? In this case, a little fabrication could go a
long way to obtain the conviction the FBI so desperately
sought, and an agency that had stooped to the withholding and
doctoring of its files as well as the subornation of perjury in the
Means-Banks prosecution was certainly not above suspicion in
this respect. In fact, in ordering the Bismarck evidentiary hear-
ing, the appellate court emphasized that what it referred to as
the "discrepancy" in the October 2nd teletype, particularly as
it related to "a different firing pin," raised questions about
"the truth and accuracy of Hodge's testimony regarding his in-
ability to reach a 'conclusion' on the firing pin analysis and his
positive conclusion regarding the extractor markings.''
On June 25, 1984, three months before the Bismarck hear-
ing, four Soviet Nobel Prize winners, physicists Pavel A.
Cherenkov, Nikolai G. Basov, and Aleksandr M. Prokhorov,
and mathematical economist Leonid V. Kantorovich, signed
an appeal to President Reagan on Peltier's behalf. In it, they
cited his case as "a typical example of politically motivated
persecution of Americans who are fighting for human rights
. . . " Putting aside their rhetoric, the laureates, on the face of
the record in Peltier's prosecution, shared the appellate court's
expressed concern with "the truth and accuracy of Hodge's
testimony." If anything, the hearing, with its startling conclu-
sion, raised the spectre of another tragic miscarriage of Ameri-
can justice.
Number 24 (Summer 1985)
FBI agent operating on Pine Ridge during the sum-
mer of 1975.
During the period of FBI military-type saturation of
the reservation, Bruce Johansen and Roberto Maestas,
authors of Wasi'chu (Monthly Review Press, 1979) have
observed: "The political murder rate at Pine Ridge be-
tween March 1, 1973 and March 1, 1976 was almost
equivalent to that in Chile during the three years after a
military coup supported by the United States deposed
President Salvador Allende." Johansen and Maestas also
note, "Using only documented political deaths, the
yearly murder rate at Pine Ridge Reservation . . . was
170 per 100,000. By comparison, Detroit, the reputed
'murder capital of the United States,' had a rate of 20.2
per 100,000 in 1974. . . . In a nation of 200 million per-
sons, a murder rate comparable with that of Pine Ridge
between 1973 and 1976 would have left 340,000 persons
dead for political reasons in one year, 1.32 million in
three. "
As of this writing, hone of the homicides at issue here
have been "solved" by the FBI even though, "by the
end of May 1975 the FBI had sixty agents on or near the
reservation" (ibid.), the highest per capita ratio of agents
to citizens anywhere in the U.S. The Bureau's perfor-
mance in apprehending the murderers of AIM activists
should be contrasted to the speed barely two weeks-
with which it compiled a list of those it held responsible
for the deaths of its agents at the Oglala fire fight, and
the effort-including an international dragnet-it ex-
pended in catching them.
--Ward Churchill
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The NASSCO Case:
A
Case Study
in Infiltration and Entrapment
By Frank Holowach *
The U.S. Federal Prison Camps in Lompoc, California and
Safford, Arizona are a long way from the bustling shipyards of
San Diego. On August 1, 1983 three young men watched the
gates of these facilities swing shut on them. What did the three
have in common? They were union activists, shipyard work-
ers, and they were beginning six-month sentences for conspir-
acy to bomb a power transformer and possession of destructive
devices. There was one other similarity-the three had been set
up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Shipyards
Their story begins in San Diego at the National Steel and
Shipbuilding Company-NASSCO to its 7,000 employees.
Building naval destroyer tenders and 200,000-ton oil tankers is
heavy, dirty, and dangerous work. Welding fumes, rickety
scaffolding, falling objects, intense heat, and mind-numbing
noise are the constant features of life in a shipyard, and
NASSCO was especially hazardous. In 1976 five men died in
separate accidents; serious disabling injuries averaged 45 a
month; and the company was repeatedly cited and fined by the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The seven
labor unions at NASSCO were weak and ineffective, as evi-
denced by NASSCO's having the lowest wages of any West
Coast shipyard. In short, the situation was ripe for change.
By 1977 a group of young, radical activists within Iron
Workers Local 627, the largest union in the yards, had been
swept into office in a popular demand for better safety condi-
tions. I was among that new leadership and served as Assistant
Chief Shop Steward on the day shift. The revitalized union led
a vigorous campaign for safety, one which immediately
showed results. The deaths stopped; the serious accident rate
nosedived; wages were increased and even layoffs were re-
versed.
These victories were not easily won, however. Most im-
provements were gained through work stoppages, grievance
procedures, and the vigilant supervision of a dedicated core of
activists and shop stewards. Rodney Johnson, Clyde "Mark"
Loo, and David Boyd were leaders in those fights.
Rodney Johnson and Mark Loo were members of the Com-
munist Workers Party (CWP). Johnson, a 22-year old shipfitter
from the ghetto of Oakland, was a slow-talking but tough or-
ganizer of the union's Black Caucus. Loo, a college-educated
Chinese-American pipefitter, had been elected shop steward in
his union, Machinists Lodge 389. David Boyd was a quiet,
white Vietnam War veteran with no political background, who
served as assistant shop steward on the same ship as Loo. The
three were friends. Johnson and Loo made no attempt to hide
their politics and Boyd, a self-described "redneck from Ok-
lahoma," respected the radicals' dedication and commitment
and came to sympathize with their views. As stewards, Boyd
and Loo both carried out their union work on Hull 413, the des-
troyer tender U.S.S. Cape Cod, a 14-story seagoing factory
being constructed on the inclined building ways. There they
fought to rectify ventilation problems and fire hazards, often
under dramatic conditions. In June 1980, 26 men were over-
come by fumes in the nuclear materials area of the ship. Boyd
and Loo entered the area and pushed and shoved the workers
out. Three months later the same area would become a death
trap.
NASSCO management did not take kindly to the resurgence
of union strength and used a variety of tactics to curb the grow-
ing militancy. Some shop stewards were offered foreman posi-
tions, others were harassed or suspended. Company inves-
tigators, aided by detectives from the local police "Red
Squad," took more than 400 photographs of the radicals and
other union leaders. On at least one occasion, according to a
former company official, management personnel considered
using thugs to assault me and another union official.
Increasing tensions in the summer of 1980 led to a series of
union protests after a shop steward was suspended for allegedly
using "insubordinate language." A raucous but non-violent
demonstration was held at the launching of the U.S.S. Cape
Cod on August 1, 1980, where the Undersecretary of the Navy
had his speech cut short by an army of 200 hardhats chanting,
"Politicians lie while workers die!"
NASSCO struck back swiftly. Seventeen union leaders and
activists, including me, were summarily fired. (A total of 32
would eventually be dismissed, including Loo, Johnson, and
Boyd.) The workers were furious and demanded a wildcat
strike. The Battle of National Steel had begun.
The strike began the next morning and was 90 percent effec-
tive. All work in the gigantic complex ground to a halt. The
company and the San Diego police were caught off guard and
made no attempt to break the strike. Morale was high and the
battle cry of "No union, no work" summarized the strikers'
determination to win back the jobs of their union leaders. Rod-
ney Johnson, Mark Loo, and David Boyd were picket captains,
highly visible on the strike line.
*Frank Holowach was a union organizer and official at the NASSCO shipyards
from 1976 to 1980. This article is based on his forthcoming book,
"Strongback," which details the struggle of the shipyard workers against
company union busting and government entrapment.
The Super-Militant
Another figure easily noticed was a burly, long-haired,
bearded man in a cowboy hat and denim jacket. Looking like a
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cross between a biker and a rodeo fan, this loud, imposing
striker could be seen working the picket line bellowing,
"Lights out at NASSCO!" He sported a death's head tattoo on
his forearm and he eagerly attached himself to the leadership
group, acting as a self-appointed bodyguard. Ramon Barton
claimed to be from Rhodesia, "or Zimbabwe, depending on
your viewpoint." He had been involved in the union protest
and had been fired with us. At first impression he was typical
of many shipyard workers-coarse, militant, deeply commit-
ted to the union.
Barton stuck in people's memories. Reporters remembered
him as the loudest and most violent-sounding on the picket line
and several workers recalled being approached by him and
urged to throw Molotov cocktails at the company offices. On
the second day of the strike over a hundred police moved in
and attacked the picket lines, beating and arresting several
workers. Given the rage many people felt, Barton's militant
urgings did not seem out of place. But he was more prepared
than most; one striker remembered seeing him with a large can
full of rocks to throw at the police.
We called off the strike after the third day when the com-
pany agreed to a speedy arbitration. Barton meanwhile esca-
lated his wild talk, suggesting tying propane cylinders to the
gas tanks of company executives' cars, stuffing shotgun shells
up exhaust pipes, and planting bugs in NASSCO's offices. At
every step he was rebuffed. During meetings of the fired work-
ers, he was repeatedly asked to tone down his talk and to help
work at building public pressure to force our being rehired. In-
stead he further attached himself to the union leaders and to the
CWP members. Rodney Johnson recalls, "Barton was always
talking crazy, but he was actually very intelligent. He'd been
to college and was not the crude biker he appeared to be. Be-
sides we didn't want to stereotype him. We kind of felt a re-
sponsibility to keep him out of trouble since he'd been fired
with us, but he was always pushing for more action."
David Boyd was also feeling frustrated by the legal tactics.
When Barton produced a book which described various
methods of manufacturing stink bombs, Boyd and the CWP
members expressed interest. The book, "The Poor Man's
James Bond," had been purchased by Barton months earlier
from Soldier of Fortune magazine and also contained plans for
constructing bombs. Within hours, we later learned, Barton
was on the phone to a company official, warning that "they've
got a book on building bombs."
This was Barton's first confirmed conversation with
NASSCO executives. In others, he forecast sensational con-
spiracies to murder officials and vandalize homes, though no
evidence of such plots ever emerged. He passed on secret
union strategy plans for the upcoming arbitrations. He asked
for money, a new job, and relocation, "in case I ever testify,"
strange talk coming from the only person urging that crimes he
committed.
Company Man
Had Barton been working for the company all along?
NASSCO and Barton both deny that allegation, though cir-
cumstantial evidence certainly suggests it. The 250-pound wel-
der had been hired under unusual circumstances-he paraded
in front of the offices with a sign saying, "I'm tired of wel-
fare-I want to work." Later, he was called to the office be-
cause his excessive absenteeism had left him eligible for termi-
nation. After a closed-door meeting with a company represent-
ative, the matter was dropped and it was shortly thereafter that
Barton's interest in the union began. At that time, NASSCO
had been using similar techniques to develop sources within
the union.
Equally unclear is exactly when Ramon Barton began work-
ing for the police and the FBI. One officer from the San Diego
Red Squad gave the date August 3, 1980 as the start of their in-
vestigation, though he later retracted the date, saying it was "a
slip of the tongue." Both the police and the FBI finally as-
serted that Barton was turned over to them by NASSCO on Au-
gust 22. The date is significant because August 3 was the day
after the ship-launching demonstration, before the book about
bombs surfaced.
Whenever he started his work as an informer, Barton carried
it out with enthusiasm. He was ideologically well suited to the
job. Born in South Africa (not Zimbabwe), Barton had come to
the U.S., been dishonorably discharged from the Army, and
drifted through an association with the John Birch Society. He
later told a reporter that the real basis of his involvement was
his hatred of communism.
Union demonstration. Provocateur Ramon Barton holds "Indict NASSCO" sign (left, in cowboy hat); author Frank
Holowach holds "Stop Union Busting" sign (center); Rodney Johnson stands immediately behind Hollowach (center, in
white tee shirt); David Boyd holds sign (top right); as does Mark Loo (bottom left).
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Barton worked to bind himself further to his targets. He
joined in a demonstration where company offices were spray-
painted, going further than anyone, painting obscenities, and
threatening a NASSCO security official. After that, he con-
stantly referred back to how he put his "ass on the line" and
proved himself. He kept up his reports to the company.
Meanwhile, NASSCO, the police, and the FBI were not sit-
ting idle. On the morning of August 22, a meeting was held at
the shipyard offices. Present were local Red Squad detectives,
FBI agents, the president of NASSCO, three company vice-
presidents, and lesser officials. The purpose of this meeting
was to discuss radical elements in the shipyard, though as of
that date no crimes had been committed or discussed except by
Barton. (During the eventual trial of "the NASSCO Three,"
the knowledge of this meeting was suppressed for weeks and
even after its disclosure, no one who had been there could pro-
duce any notes of what had happened or remember much about
it.) Nevertheless, two hours after the meeting San Diego police
detectives, with FBI agents looking on, met secretly with Bar-
ton in a local restaurant. From that date on, Barton pushed
hard.
From August 24 to 30, David Boyd purchased chemicals for
making stink bombs. He later testified that Barton mocked
him, saying "smoke bombs and stink bombs are like spray-
painting, just playing like children. This is what we need,"
pointing to a picture of a pipe bomb in the book he had pro-
vided. During this last week of August, Barton urged Boyd to
buy pipe and to check on the price of gunpowder.
Then, on September 2, 1980, tragedy again struck the ship-
yard. Two young machinists, Michael Beebe and Kenneth
King, were killed by poison gas leaking from a faulty hose in
the nuclear area of the U.S. Cape Cod. For David Boyd, it was
a crushing blow. The men died in the same area that he and
Mark Loo had shut down three months previously because of
noxious fumes. Now, with so many union leaders fired, there
had been no one to prevent such a recurrence.
The Provocateur Strikes
Barton moved. He steered the distraught Boyd into a discus-
sion of bombing a shipyard power transformer in retribution
for the deaths. Rodney Johnson and Mark Loo, who had earlier
rejected such talk, went with Barton and Boyd to inspect the
transformer. By now the two leftists were also ready to listen.
More materials were purchased, this time with FBI agents
observing and photographing. Barton himself bought the tim-
ing device (a pocket watch) and a tank of propane gas. Unbe-
knownst to the others, on September 8 Barton was outfitted by
the FBI with a small transmitter, the microphone taped to his
chest and the antenna running down his leg. He drove to
Boyd's house; the tapes speak for themselves:
Barton: Well, looks like, you know, we're the ones that are
gonna have to do it, Dave.
Boyd: I just don't know. I'm still not into this like I used to
be. I just don't have the same drive.
Barton: I know. I'm scared, you know.
Boyd: I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. . . . So
you do blow up something into a big deal, ah . . . those guys
are gone. To me that's the end of the problem 'cause they're
not going to get any in there to take their place.
Barton: It's going to be all right, man.
Boyd: No, it ain't.
Barton: It's gonna be just fine, you watch, man.
32 CovertAction
Boyd: Ain't gonna accomplish a damn thing.
Barton: It's a heavy commitment, man . . . that's for sure.
But it's going to be all right. . . . You just gotta keep con-
vincing yourself of that.
Later that day they were joined by Johnson and Loo and the
first bomb was built. Throughout the process, Barton's voice is
heard, instructing, advising, encouraging.
As far as bombs go, it was a complete dud. The next day,
with an FBI surveillance plane overhead and a transmitter in
Barton's van, the four drove out to the desert to test the device.
It would not explode-not by timer, not by electric charge, not
by gunshot, not by being burned in gasoline. At one point, the
tape picks up their feelings:
Loo: A fine bunch of terrorists we'd make, huh?
Boyd: The thing is, you don't make a terrorist overnight, by
reading a book. You've got to experience things.
Loo: Yeah, I guess so.
Boyd: But we're learning what doesn't work.
Johnson: Well, we don't want to be terrorists anyway.
On the 10th and 11th a second bomb was built, this time
with the pipe supplied by Barton. By now, though, Johnson
and Loo were having second thoughts about their involvement.
They approached Boyd, found him equally concerned, and de-
cided jointly either to convince Barton to stop or to tell him
they were all quitting.
That attempt occurred on September 12 at a potluck dinner
for the fired workers. Barton was furious; he called the three
"chickens" and "sellouts" and stomped out.
There remained the problem of what to do with the second
bomb. Rodney Johnson visited David's house and disarmed
the device, making it impossible to detonate. Still, the compo-
nents would have to be destroyed. They agreed to get rid of it
all in the desert on September 16.
Barton, unable to convince the others on political grounds,
used his ultimate weapon, friendship. He bore down on David
Boyd, pleading that the plot continue:
Barton: It's going to be all right, man. Just remember
that. . . . I convinced myself. It's going to be all right.
Boyd: This is it for me after this. I'll quit. I'll call it quits.
Barton: You gotta make a showing, that's all, man. What do
you think the people in the yard are going to react to, huh?
Boyd: This whole thing's a farce anyway.
Barton: It'll bring them right up, though.
Boyd: No it won't. . . . So what? Why bring them up? What
the hell for?
Barton: `Cause if you quit now, man, you can't quit now,
man. You know, then we'd just stand to lose too much.
Boyd: We've already lost.
Barton: No.
Barton urged one other thing that day. He pushed David to
get Rodney Johnson to bring a gun on the desert trip. Knowing
the arrests were planned, one can only speculate why Barton
and the FBI wanted their suspects armed, but luckily Johnson
did not bring one.
The arrests came on September 16 when SWAT teams
halted Barton's van on its way to the desert. The case of the
NASSCO Three became a cause celebre, and the defense team
began to piece together the elements of entrapment.
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San Diego police confront the NASSCO strikers.
Some Questions
Several interesting facts emerged in the trial. One, Barton
never recorded any conversations with Johnson or Loo alone.
It was clear that he was best at manipulating Boyd, and the
other two were only captured on tape during meetings of all
four together. Second, when the three defendants told Barton
at the potluck dinner that they wanted out, no tape was made,
supposedly because of a malfunction in the recorder. However,
a renowned acoustic phonetician testified for the defense that
his investigation showed that tape to have been "tampered
with, modified, or altered." The government produced no ex-
perts to rebut this claim.
Third, this question was never answered: Why, if the crime
had been completed as of September 9 when the first bomb was
built, with a witness present and the conspiracy on tape, did the
FBI wait another full week before making the arrests? The ob-
vious answer was that they hoped Barton could ensnare more
people, preferably union leaders, in his plot. Barton did in fact
approach me and another union official about the need for
more militant tactics, to no avail. And the FBI, in their initial
interrogation of David Boyd, offered him leniency in exchange
for incriminating evidence against union leaders.
Last, there was one compelling piece of evidence which an-
swered any question whether the defense's version of events
was merely self-serving fabrication. On September 16, when
he was arrested and before he knew that Barton was an in-
former or that the conversations had been taped, David Boyd
told the FBI the same exact story. The FBI did not bother to re-
cord that statement; neither did they deny it.
The three were convicted because, in the words of many
jurors, they were morally innocent but technically guilty. Ap-
peals were denied, sentences were served, and Barton was
given money and a new identity. But the case of the NASSCO
Three can still be both instructive and ominous.
Some Lessons
Some basic lessons exist as to how three young men came to
be pushed into felonies. The most elemental of these for pro-
Number 24 (Summer 1985)
gressive people to realize is that such things do happen. Police,
federal agencies, even private employers do use such methods,
with varying degrees of sophistication. The window dressing
about respecting the rights of citizens and only investigating
crimes in progress is just that-fluff for public consumption.
The reality is quite different, and under the second Reagan ad-
ministration can only get worse.
It is important to note how repressive tactics are introduced
and accepted. Wiretapping legislation was first justified by the
need to fight organized crime. Most people felt the Mafia was it
valid target, yet it was the civil rights and anti-war movements
that were subjected to the most wiretapping. Entrapment strate-
gies where crimes are induced by government agents were em-
ployed in a big way in Operation Abscam against politicians
suspected of bribe taking, and few can sympathize with a
crooked politician. But this strategy, as we have seen, is quick-
ly enlarged beyond mere "sting" operations. Indeed, there is
potentially a wide opening for similar misconduct in the pro-
posed anti-terrorism laws scheduled for congressional debate
this term.
On the other hand, it is useful to put these policies into per-
spective. The FBI spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, used
scores of agents, and wielded an impressive array of technol-
ogy in the NASSCO case. They used a Bureau aircraft be-
cause, according to an FBI report. "the CWP is known to use
counter-surveillance techniques." At times, Barton was
equipped with two transmitters, one taped to his chest and
another inside his cowboy boot. Barton's phone was fitted with
a taping device. Multi-vehicle surveillance was commonplace.
Yet much of this technology was prone to breakdowns and the
sheer overkill bordered on the ridiculous. An example occurred
when a group of strikers, including some CWP members, as-
sembled in a restaurant parking lot to picket a company execu-
tive's house. The FBI fed the license numbers of every car in
the parking lot into their computers and produced a list entitled
"32 Suspected CWP Members in San Diego." A more accu-
rate heading would have been "Tourist Families Passing
Through Town." True, it was chilling to listen to the 24 hours
of tapes made of unsuspecting people, and activists should be
careful; things said in jest or to humor a man like Barton sound
very different later and look even worse in a transcript. But in
general it is still the human element-in this case the company
spy turned government informer--on which entrapment cases
must be built.
Of course it is easy to say in hindsight that no one should
have got involved in the bomb plot, and in fact such participa-
tion, even though it lasted only four days, is unjustifiable. But
that is to miss the most masterful aspect of the government's
entrapment-the use of psychological manipulation. The frus-
tration felt at legal tactics, the tremendous, overpowering grief
at the needless deaths of two fellow workers, the pull of
friendship on a lonely man, the wounding charges of "selling
out''-all these combined to form a certain set of cir-
cumstances where rational people got caught in irrational acts.
Had a government agent not supplied the idea, the blueprints,
the technical expertise, and the needed encouragement, it is
doubtful that any of this would have happened.
Four years have passed since the Battle of National Steel.
The injustice still confronts us. If communists, or union mili-
tants, or minorities of any kind can be led down the road of
government entrapment, everyone's freedom is threatened. We
must learn from cases like this, and use all our legal and politi-
cal means to eradicate such perversions of justice. ?
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Arnaud de Borchgrave
Boards Moon's Ship
By Louis Wolf and Fred Clarkson *
On March 20, 1985 the public was informed that Arnaud de
Borcligrave was the new editor-in-chief of Reverend Sun
Myung Moon's newspaper, the Washington Times. Media
analysts knew at once that Washington's already shrill rhetoric
would be reaching new heights.
Even before Ronald Reagan took office, de Borchgrave had
ready access to the President-elect. On December 16, 1980,
they met for a "very lengthy conversation" about disinforma-
tion, propaganda, and de Borchgrave's recommendations for
White House media strategy, nationally and internationally.
That strategy must have paid off; de Borcligrave told the New
York Times, "The Washington Times is the first thing Ronald
Reagan reads each morning. He called me up and told me so."
(May 26, 1985.)
A Joining of Causes
De Borcligrave, like others who have made it big in Moon's
News World Communications, Inc. (which includes the Wash-
*Fred Clarkson is a free-lance journalist based in Washington, DC. He wrote
"Pak in the Saddle Again," in CA/B Number 20 and "`Privatizing' the War,"
in CAIB Number 22, both of which deal with Moon enterprises and their rela-
tion to Reagan administration policies, including Central America.
ington Times, the New York Tribune, and its Spanish edition,
Noticias del Mundo), was gradually integrated through a vari-
ety of Moon functions and front groups. In 1982 he was a fea-
tured speaker at Moon's annual "World Media Conference" in
Seoul, South Korea. He also spoke at the 1984 World Media
Conference in Tokyo, joining former Interior Secretary James
Watt (a member of the Washington Times editorial board), Na-
tional Review publisher William Rusher, and Kathryn
McDonald (widow of Congressman Larry McDonald), on a
panel about "media ethics."
De Borchgrave attended a "special conference" for jour-
nalists in Seoul, in November 1984, sponsored by Moon's
political arm, the Confederation of the Associations for the Uni-
fication of the Societies of the Americas (CAUSA). He was
keynote speaker at the CAUSA USA national conference in
San Francisco, March 4-8, 1985, where his topic was disinfor-
mation.
His appointment as Washington Times editor-in-chief twelve
days later came as no surprise, since his new bosses are
CAUSA executives. The president of the News World Com-
munications conglomerate (NWC) and Moon's trusted chief
executive officer, Bo Hi Pak, is also the President of CAUSA
International. Pak visits the Times offices regularly, exercising
tight control over finances. NWC associate publisher Phillip
Sanchez was recently appointed CAUSA USA president, re-
placing retired Air Force General and special operations war-
rior E. David Woellner (see CAIB Number 22), who was pro-
moted to executive vice-president of CAUSA International and
director of CAUSA World Services. Expanding upon an al-
ready ambitious worldwide agenda, CAUSA International is
seeking to establish regional operations centers in places it sees
as "crisis points:" Costa Rica, Thailand, Pakistan, and Kenya.
Sanchez (Nixon's Ambassador to Honduras and Ford's Am-
bassador to Colombia) came into the CAUSA hierarchy
through Moon's think tank, the Washington Institute for Val-
ues in Public Policy.
The Moon conglomerate has continued to function normally
despite the 1984 jailing of Rev. Moon for tax evasion; he is due
to be released this August.
Making His Mark
Since assuming his new post, de Borchgrave has been as-
siduously making his own mark. Within days of arriving at the
plush Times offices, he announced a complicated (and highly
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unlikely) $1 million reward for information leading to the ar-
rest, trial, and conviction of fugitive Nazi war criminal, Josef
Mengele. The catch was that the information had to be given
directly to de Borchgrave, not to any law enforcement offi-
cials, raising questions about the Moon empire's real inten-
tions. Those questions were reinforced by the Times's de-
cidedly cool reaction to initial reports alleging the discovery of
Mengele's body in Brazil.
In May, de Borchgrave announced in a full-column front-
page editorial the launching of a "worldwide fundraising
drive" called the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund to raise $14 mil-
lion in "humanitarian aid" for the contras in Nicaragua, be-
cause the White House had failed to sway Congress in the first
vote. Former Treasury Secretary, millionaire William Simon
(see CA/B Number 21), heads the fund board with former U.N.
Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick; conservative writer and head
of the Committee for a Free World, Midge Decter; and fellow
of the rightwing American Enterprise Institute, Michael
Novak. In the name of the imprisoned Rev. Moon, Bo Hi Pak
kicked in the first $100,000.
De Borchgrave inherited a paper with deserved credibility
problems, not least of them the turnabout of founding editor
James Whelan. He had insisted repeatedly during his tenure
that the Unification Church did not control the Times. But in
July of 1984, after he was fired by Bo Hi Pak over a reported
salary dispute, he charged that Pak wanted to assume "full
control" of the paper. A few days later, Whelan announced
that the Times was "firmly in the hands of top officials of the
. .. Unification Church movement." A senior Times execu-
tive corroborated Whelan's disclosure about Pak's control:
"He can close down the paper tomorrow if he wanted to."
(Washington City Paper, July 27, 1984.)
The Times has consistently lied to its readers and advertisers
about its circulation, inflating the numbers in order to make
the Moonie paper seem more influential, while avoiding the
standard audit to which legitimate papers submit for verifica-
tion. Under both Whelan and his successor Smith Hempstone,
circulation claims ranged up to 125,000 and hovered around
100,000. Then in April 1985, to Bo Hi Pak's consternation, de
Borchgrave was forced to disclose independent audit figures in
a back-page business section item, before they appeared in
another paper. The March Washington-area circulation was
just over 75,000 (including many copies given away free),
a
Bo Hi Pak visiting Rev. Moon at Danbury Prison.
Number 24 (Summer 1985)
with an additional 8,608 copies of their spectacularly unsuc-
cessful "national edition," beamed by satellite to four cities,
Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
While the Washington Times budget is kept secret, knowledge-
able estimates suggest that upwards of $150 million has been
sunk into Moon's media enterprises.
Still Proud of Spy Ties
Arnaud de Borchgrave is a driven man, consumed by his
mania that disinformation is being foisted on the world by
forces ranging from the KGB in Moscow, through the interna-
tional communist conspiracy, to the myriad of peace, anti-in-
tervention, and anti-nuclear groups and individuals in the
United States and Europe. This was the gist of a five-part April
Times series (since recycled in the New York Tribune), "The
Network," about some of the national organizations opposed
to U.S. policies in Central America.
In 1978, two years before he was fired by Newsweek (in part
for keeping dossiers on fellow employees), he told a CA/B
editor that he considered his "key, best sources of informa-
tion" in the world the heads of "intelligence services in Wash-
ington, London, Tel Aviv, and Pretoria, each of which I stay in
close contact with." Despite such open reliance on close intel-
ligence ties, de Borchgrave claims coyly nowadays that he
spurned two CIA recruitment approaches.
He and some 26 others, including two former CIA directors
and three former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are on
the board of a secretive body known as the U.S. Global Strate-
gy Council, yet another CAUSA operation, although the Moon
links are not known to many of its members. Since 1982 he has
also been an active participant in an ad hoc, restricted access
"communications net" first called World Strategy Forums,
which in late 1983 became the World Strategy Network. This
Network includes several dozen conservative specialists in
strategic affairs, in and out of government, from military, in-
telligence, economic, and other sectors, who meet occasion-
ally to "promote the exchange of facts and ideas, and to foster
collaboration on behalf of shared goals and objectives." It
hopes to "bring facts and solutions to the attention of
policymakers in the Executive Branch and Congress."
The driving force behind the group is its coordinator, former
CIA Deputy Director Ray S. Cline; the titular co-chairs are
Claire Boothe Luce, former Ambassador and longtime patron-
ess of the right, and Morris I. Leibman, former head of the
American Bar Association's Committee on Law and National
Security-itself a project first conceived by the Association of
Former Intelligence Officers (see CA/B Number 11), which
sold the idea to the ABA.
During a 1984 radio interview by the USA [United Students
of America] Foundation, a rightwing student coalition head-
quartered at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, de Borch-
grave expounded on his zealous concern over disinforma-
tion. Speaking of "indirect warfare" by the Soviet Union and
other enemies of the "Free World," he said that the danger of
nuclear war is not a reality, but something "which Soviet dis-
information has been very successful in convincing us is a real
danger and that the person really responsible for all of this is
Ronald Reagan."
Asked whether the United States engages in disinformation,
de Borchgrave said that present and former U.S. officials try-
ing "in a free society . . . to put the best face possible" on
what they are doing or did in government is not disinformation.
"That is called management of the news." ?
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Moscow Rules Moss's Mind
By Fred Landis
Eleanor Mondale was angry. "Are you calling my father a
KGB agent?" she demanded, waving a magazine at me.
Eleanor Mondale is Walter Mondale's daughter; the magazine
was Inquiry, for which I had written a lengthy book review of
The Spike, by Robert Moss and Arnaud de Borchgrave. I ar-
gued that The Spike was one of a series of CIA-inspired books,
movies, and TV specials which had artificially created a wave
of patriotism which would sweep Ronald Reagan into office.
Eleanor did not give a fig for Robert Moss, the CTA, or the
thrust of my article. Her finger pointed to a paragraph where,
sure enough, Walter Mondale was made out to be a KGB
agent. "That is Robert Moss's line, for chrissake, not mine," I
explained. The point of the quote had been to show the absur-
dity of The Spike's ultra-right message. Daniel Schorr used the
article on the Cable News Network; it was read on the Pacifica
Radio Network; Andrew Kopkind incorporated it into a piece
for The Nation.
The Spike was the Mein Kampf of renegade intelligence
agents intent on avenging Jimmy Carter's purge at the CIA
under Stansfield Turner. Aiding Moss in this effort was the
3000-member Association of Former Intelligence Officers
(AFIO) and two think tanks run by Moss's friends: the
Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies
(CSIS) and the Heritage Foundation. Ronald Reagan read The
Spike on the campaign trail and when he entered the White
House he brought the ideas and personnel of those think tanks
with him. Many of the old boy network of spies at AFIO were
back at the CIA.
Eventually a common financial source was found behind the
network of intelligence-connected think tanks, books, and
*Fred Landis, a frequent contributor to CAB, is a Professor at San Francisco
State University, where he teaches a course on the CIA and the media. This ar-
ticle is copyright ? 1985 by Fred Landis.
36 CovertAction
movies: the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation, controlled by
CIA groupie Richard Mellon Scaife. Scaife had met Moss in
England where he and the CIA had set up several propaganda
operations for which Moss was a chief correspondent. In the
period leading up to the 1980 elections, Scaife's foundation had
disbursed some $100 million to scare America back onto the
Right track.
Instant Best Sellers
Robert Moss is back on the best seller list with Moscow
Rules. It provides a closing to a literary and political circle
which began in 1975 with Chile's Marxist Experiment, on the
KGB plot to take over South America, followed by The Col-
lapse of Democracy, on the KGB plot to take over Europe.
That was followed by The Spike, on the KGB plot to take over
the United States, which was in turn followed by Death Beam,
on the KGB plot to take over the world. Most recently, Moss
had authored, again with de Borchgrave, Monimbo, on a
Cuban plot for Black revolutionaries to take over the United
States with Cuban and Soviet aid.
There was a monotonous regularity to these instant best sel-
lers. They came out every two years, uncovered some KGB
plot to take over some strategic real estate, and the date was al-
ways 1985. They were guaranteed best seller status because
everybody from the Conservative Book Club to Accuracy in
Media gave out free copies. Retired spooks held press confer-
ences to inform us that Moss's novels were more than just fic-
tion. Dozens of news stories were planted by CIA and Israeli
intelligence to support independently the allegations in Moss's
books.
Well, here we are in 1985 and the "Free World" has not
collapsed-undoubtedly saved by Moss's timely exposes. In
fact, in Moscow Rules it is the Soviet Union that collapses!
Early in his career Moss complained that there was no con-
servative International. "[T]here is no unabashedly conserva-
tive government in any major Western country. There is a
Socialist International and a Communist International, but
there is no Conservative International." Since those words
were written, "unabashedly conservative governments" have
been installed in several of the Western nations where Moss
has focused his literary efforts and a conservative international
of sorts has been formed in the working relations of the intelli-
gence services of those conservative administrations. Moss is
the most visible of the Young Turks around the CIA who
helped to provoke these changes.
Moss is the most visible because, in addition to his primary
activity as an intelligence agent, he also plays at journalism,
rightwing terrorism booster, 'political intrigue, and character
assassination, and is, in general, a spreader of gratuitous mali-
cious mischief.
Moss's Career
To me, Robert Moss is a combination of Ronald Merrick
from "The Jewel in the Crown" and Joseph Goebbels. Like
Merick, Moss began his career by being involved in a particu-
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larly odious crime in a far off country. This crime is important
because it illustrates the abuse of power endemic in covert op-
erations and the moral character of individuals attracted to this
line of work. Like Goebbels, Moss learned to exploit new
means of communications and anticommunism as a cover for
helping to install his rightwing allies in power.
In 1971, the CIA's Station Related Mission Directives for
Chile specified under priority "B" that friction be created be-
tween the socialist regime in Chile and the military dictatorship
in Argentina by planting "black propaganda" to the effect that
Allende was encouraging the establishment of a communist
guerrilla training camp on the border. Instructions were given
to the CIA station in Santiago to plant this story in several key
media in order to launder it for replay in Chile. One of the most
influential was the Economist of London.
The correspondent for the Economist in Chile was Robert
Moss. He found an agronomy student, Jose Gregorio Liendo,
working in a remote area bordering Argentina, elevated him
into the Che Guevara of Chile, and bestowed upon him the title
of "Commander Pepe." This fabrication was such a success
that it led to the arrest and execution of the non-existent
"Pepe"-but the real Liendo-at the time of the military
coup. Moss took a 20-hour flight from London to Santiago,
and continued all the way to the town of Valdivia to interview
"Pepe" before he was executed. This interview, replete with
sarcasm for the hapless Pepe and his wife, was included by
Moss in the last chapter of his CIA-financed book, Chile's
Marxist Experiment.
Moss learned an intoxicating lesson in Chile, that an intelli-
gence-connected journalist can create political events instead
of merely reporting them. When he arrived in Chile he found
an upper class that was demoralized and accepted as inevitable
the triumph of the left. Moss observed and participated in a
situation wherein the vanguard of opposition to the Allende
government was led by CIA journalists. They planted false
stories calculated to revive the right, alarm the middle class,
unite and mobilize the military, and unite all in opposition to
the government.
The KGB Plots
Upon his return to Britain, Moss became a speech writer for
Margaret Thatcher and spread the same message to the British
upper class that he had in Chile: There is nothing inevitable
about the political decline of the wealthy; your will has been
undermined not by inevitable historical trends but as the result
of a KGB plot. The nature of the True Plot varies: a combina-
tion of KGB disinformation spread through the liberal media,
KGB penetration of labor unions in order to paralyze produc-
tion in war, KGB seduction and blackmail of liberal politicians
using communist Mata Haris, KGB terrorist collaboration with
the Irish Republican Army, KGB planting of moles or deep
cover operatives at the top of British Intelligence and the gov-
ernment, and most sinister of all, Soviet peace initiatives
which would lead to the disarming of the West.
This is put into book form because it is difficult to cram all
these propaganda themes into a newspaper article. Such books,
incidentally, smear liberal politicians, which is why new Moss
books are often released before major elections in the U.S. or
Britain.
Moscow Rules
The title of his latest work is both a self-flattering allusion to
John LeCarre and a statement of its major theme: He who con-
Number 24 (Summer 1985)
trols Moscow rules the Soviet Union. The first chapters of
LeCarre's best work, Smilev's People, focus on the strictest se-
curity rules, known as "Moscow Rules." In Moss's version,
the KGB and Communist Party are overthrown by a Red Army
seizure of a few key buildings in Moscow.
According to the dustcover, Moss has interviewed all the top
recent defectors from the U.S.S.R. That, presumably, is how
he "knows" the layout of every room in KGB and GRU head-
quarters. The Soviet Union, oddly enough, seems like an open
book to Moss. But despite this patina of verisimilitude, the plot
to seize Moscow seems rather familiar; it is in fact the same
plan used by the Chilean military in Chile's Marxist Experi-
ment to overthrow the government there. Now, one coup may
be similar to another, but somehow taking over the Soviet
Union would seem to require more than surrounding the equi-
valent of the Presidential Palace, as was done in Santiago.
Moss's seizure of the telephone exchange is accomplished by
an elevator operator at a Moscow tourist hotel; anxiety in the
Kremlin over the lack of phone communication with key Army
units is handled by the reassuring presence of a general. Tanks
surround the Kremlin, the Party bosses surrender, and oppres-
sed workers pour out into the streets carrying icons. Vid-
eotapes are made of "the cars, the lovenests, the caches of
black market goods. We'll show all of it on TV. The Secret
Lives of Party Bosses."
The curious thing is not that these events actually occurred
in Chile, which they did not; it is that every CIA-financed hook
about the overthrow of Salvador Allende claims that they did.
In a review of The Spike (CAIB Number 10, p. 43), 1 stated that
the communists, "charges Moss, are actually following blue-
prints for the seizure of power based on the Chilean model,
`blueprints for Communist takeovers that have been issued
from Moscow.' " My argument then and now is that exactly
the opposite is the case: Moss and his friends in the CIA, MI-6,
and Mossad have been using bogus KGB plots as a cover for
domestic covert support of the political right, following the
blueprint used by Moss in Chile.
Borrowed Scenes and Sexual Stereotypes
This CIA flack jets around the world in a trenchcoat, smok-
ing Cuban cigars and projecting the aura of a man just back
from the front with secret information. On a recent New York
radio interview Moss gushed, "I like the smell of cordite," a
sentiment expressed by the hero of Moscow Rules.
Moss is a moral, intellectual, and physical coward. Most of
his information is bogus and spoon-fed. His familiarity with
Soviet weapons was not gained at personal risk on the front
lines anywhere; it was delivered on a silver platter from CIA
Headquarters. His characters are cardboard, and when they
possess any life, it is often because Moss has lifted the descrip-
tion from LeCarre. He once had a good explanation of the
function of counterintelligence; but it was taken from the
memoirs of CIA veteran Joseph B. Smith. He once made a
humorless reference to the Chilean military not possibly being
a threat to the U.S., unless one considered the possibility that
they might want to bomb Teddy Kennedy's home. That was
lifted from a National Review article by Jeffrey Hart.
Moss has confided to interviewers that the ideas for sex
scenes come from asking his and Arnaud de Borchgrave's
wives. One wonders which one provided the ridiculous idea for
the heroine's suicide in Moscow Rules. When Tanya is sent to
the Gulag, she avoids a fate worse than death by deliberately
falling on a chain saw: "He saw her switch on the saw, set it on
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the ground, and lower herself, as if she was about to do
pushups. Or make love."
As far as the sexual predilections of Russian intelligence fig-
ures are concerned, Moss is equally graphic. A "goon from
SMERSH" rapes a girl "seven or eight at most." The former
head of the NKVD, is described as "Beria, that twisted sadist,
lover of underage girls." In Death Beam, the head of the KGB
was described as "that geriatric pedophile Krylov." And in
The Spike, every leftist woman is a nymphomaniac.
There is something heavily negative, if not obscene, about
Moss's books. The following are the free associations on a
single page following mention of the Communist Party: "hard-
ness," "death and disaster," "weary," "muddy,"
"panicky," "dead," "alone," "burden," "brood," "resent-
ment," "killed," "grieving," "automaton."
Not that Moss's worldview is entirely negative. At the end
of Moscow Rules, the hero, having liberated the Soviet Union,
states: "I want to believe that our dirty work will permit you to
see the sun tomorrow." This is the same hero who is set off on
his lonely quest by a mentor who advises him, "The only way
to beat them is to know their methods, to lie, to cheat, to make
compromises, to be absolutely ruthless."
Moss's "Heroes"
What does one say about a "hero" who begins a book with a
transparent rationalization for dirty tricks and ends the same
way? In previous novels, the central character was Robert
Hockney, a composite of Seymour Hersh, David Halberstam,
and other liberal journalists, who gradually sees the light and
metamorphosed into a hardened cynic like Robert Moss. In
Death Beam, Robert Hockney is the leader of a pack of gung
ho vigilantes from the CIA, MI-6, and Mossad. The group is
often morbid and deeply depressed about their work. But when
Moss gets to feeling this way about his sordid profession, he
heads for his spiritual retreat in Jamaica, the home of the late
Ian Fleming. This is where Fleming wrote most of the James
Bond stories. Bond was pure fantasy, never weighted down by
some preachy message, which Moss finds all wrong: "The rot
had set in, he believed, when Ian Fleming had been persuaded
that it was passe to depict Soviet spies as villains, and had sent
his unlikely hero, James Bond, to do battle not with the Rus-
sians but with a sinister private organization. . .. " In Doctor
No, Bond can often be found leisurely scanning the reactionary
Jamaica Daily Gleaner over breakfast, which reflected Flem-
ing's daily routine. Moss also finds this all wrong. The idea, as
expressed in The Spike, is to plant stories. And, in fact, Moss
busied himself planting false stories in the Gleaner to discredit
the socialist government of Michael Manley. The Gleaner
plants caused such a scandal that the Jamaican Press Associa-
tion organized a Commission of Inquiry at which this author
and others testified. The Gleaner carried a humorous
"obituary" for Robert Moss. Around that time Moss switched
to fiction, the advantages of which are expressed in The Spike
by Robert Hockney's wife: "That's what you should be doing.
Writing fiction. It's a damn sight more profitable and a hell of
a lot safer." ?
SECRET
CONTENDERS
The Myth of Cold War
Counterintelligence
By Melvin Beck
Introduction by Thomas Powers
The first in-depth analysis of the world of counter-
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Detailed index; photographs, 192 pp.
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DEADLY DECEITS
My 25 Years in the CIA
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After 25 years in the field, in Vietnam, Thailand,
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WHITEWASH!
Philip Agee on the CIA
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