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MAKING CONTACT Transcript: #19-99 Tools of Repression: Counter-intelligence and Activism Phillip Babich: Welcome to Making Contact, an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas and important information. This week on Making Contact Kit Gage: The U.S. admits to its having increased its investigation of a range of groups. The U.S. has coolly been investigating environmentalists who it perceives as being a threat. Katia Komisaruk: It’s not infrequent when people are arrested that the prosecutors pile on charges, charges that they couldn’t prove up in court, that are very intimidating when you first get stuck with them. Phillip Babich: As social movements grow in sophistication and strength, so do the forces opposing them. New laws are being passed that grant greater authority to law enforcement agencies to monitor activist organizations. Meanwhile, corporations are acting independently against activism with harsh lawsuits and intelligence operations. On this program, we look at recent measures against advocates of social change and what activists are doing to defend themselves. I'm Phillip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact. Twenty-three years ago, Anna Mae Aquash, an active member of the American Indian Movement, was murdered on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. Her body was dumped in a gully and discovered by a rancher repairing fences in February 1976. Her murderers have never been indicted. The American Indian Movement, or AIM, was targeted by the FBI with its counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO, which was exposed in the early 1970s. Declassified documents clearly reveal that the purpose of COINTELPRO was to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize" black liberation movements and left-wing organizations. One of the FBI tactics was to frame people as informers by planting evidence or telling movement members that other members were informers, in order to create an atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion. The AIM organization fell prey to these tactics and broke off into opposing factions. Anna Mae was murdered in this milieu. Shortly before her death, Anna Mae told her family and friends that she felt her life was in danger. She was a vocal critic of the FBI. But, at the same time, AIM members accused her of being an informant. In 1992, Paul DeMain, editor of News From Indian Country--a national Native issues publication--and other journalists began compiling documents on AIM, the Wounded Knee occupation on Pine Ridge 25 years ago, and the unsolved mystery of Anna Mae Aquash. DeMain describes the extensive efforts by the FBI to go after the American Indian Movement. Paul DeMain: As the Movement moved through 1974 and ‘75, and the FBI does this very intensive program in which it unleashed a couple of hundred FBI agents through each one of their divisions and area offices. There’s something like 32 of them, anywhere from five to 30 people were assigned to these units in their area to focus on a surveillance of the American Indian Movement. Each one of them was required to have at least five informers, according to the rules promulgated under J. Edgar Hoover. So, there was a lot of fake names used as informants, and there was a lot of attempts to co-opt people, and a lot of attempts to analyze people from that basis are they cooperative, would they make a good informant, are they hostile, are they dangerous? Those kinds of things were the evaluative process in the Informant Development Program. That’s what the program was labeled. It wasn’t called "Surveillance to Intercede in Potential Crimes." It was called the Informant Development Program, within the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We’ve got the documents that show that. So, it’s interesting what the FBI had in mind. It’s clear that they employed both informants and operatives within the movement to disrupt it. Phillip Babich: After Congressional hearings in the 1970s, COINTELPRO was officially disbanded. But, federal counter-intelligence programs have continued. In the 1980s, for example, FBI agents infiltrated and disrupted a peace organization called CISPES, the Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. CISPES opposed US foreign policy in Central America, which included funding and training brutal military governments engaged in death squad activity. Kit Gage, Washington representative for the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation, says that the US government has always tried to justify far-reaching counter-intelligence operations by claiming that targeted individuals or organizations are associated with violent activity or connected with foreign organizations that pose a threat to national security. Kit Gage: During the time after COINTELPRO, the US claimed that it scaled back its investigative activities. Nonetheless, as an example that you cited, against people, and it wasn’t just people who were members of the CISPES in Central America organization in the US but it was a whole range of people who were involved in political dissent activity. They disagreed, on a basic level, with US involvement in El Salvador supporting a dictatorship there. And they disagreed with US policy in Nicaragua, in which the US was trying actively to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. Those individuals who were involved in that activity initially were suspected of being involved in funding guns, funding the military insurgency activity in El Salvador. That was quickly found not to be true. There was no evidence of that. Nonetheless, the government did surveillance activities against people throughout the country in every organization that they could find where there were people involved in First Amendment activity. When this became public, the US said, "Oops, we made a mistake. We shouldn’t have been keeping this investigation open. It violated our own guidelines of how we should do this kind of activity." Phillip Babich: I want to go back to a point you were making: and that is that these groups, whether they were left groups in the ‘60s or left groups in the ‘80s, the government seems to have to make a claim, at least, that they’re connected to some sort of violent activity or some sort of activity that will lead to a violent overthrow of the government. How is that case made typically against these organizations? Kit Gage: Well, in the case of the CISPES investigation, there was one informant who was Salvadoran, who said that he suspected that some individuals in the Texas chapter were involved in gun-running. He was the only source for that information. He also served as a key informant through the whole national process. And no one ever found any corroborating information for that allegation. Nonetheless the investigation, the nationwide investigation, was kept open for almost two years. Phillip Babich: Now, what’s your opinion of that claim? It seems, is it fair to say, that it’s a slippery slope? I mean, anyone could be accused of being connected to some sort of violent activity, isn’t that true? Kit Gage: Oh, absolutely. It was the FBI’s intention, claimed intention, that you try to document those kind of claims, and if you don’t find any corroborating evidence, you close the file. Because, you of course want to follow up on allegations that seem credible, but then, you’ve got to prove them. The proof of how badly that works, is shown precisely from the CISPES investigation - that they don’t listen to their own advice. Phillip Babich: Now, today’s justification for counter-intelligence seems to be terrorism, which also has that violent link to it. Can you talk about terrorism? Kit Gage: Yes, this is a very clear, almost seamless substitute for the old anti-Communism justification for counter-intelligence investigations. The interesting thing about the anti-terrorism effort is in the language. If you look at what the definition of terrorist activity is, it includes very violent heinous activity, but it also can include threats, not actual violent activity, but threats to commit violent activity, which can include property damage, meant to intimidate a government or a people. So, if you think about this around the world, there are hundreds of organizations that are involved in some level of civil strife, civil dissent, in which people have a demonstration, get upset, maybe slash a police tire, maybe a window is broken during a demonstration. Even that small level of admittedly violent activity can be used to justify an anti-terrorism investigation against a particular group, to call that group terrorist, under the law. It’s in the language of the current anti-terrorism law and other earlier criminal law. Then, the U.S. made a choice to go after organizations, as opposed to criminal activity, specific violent activity. It reached a fork in the road and said, "Rather than us prosecute the individuals involved in criminal activity, we want to shut down whole organizations, so we will make them illegal, make any activity related to those organizations - including peaceful humanitarian, First Amendment activities - illegal, punishable not just by deportation of people who are immigrants, but by jail for people in the US who are citizens. Phillip Babich: You know, there are environmental groups that are being labeled "eco-terrorists." And activists who are opposing corporate activities, etc., are occasionally referred to, even in the press, as terrorist or militant. I’m wondering if that’s going to end up with some of these groups on this anti-terrorism list. Kit Gage: As of now, because activists like myself and others beat it back; the current law only includes foreign terrorist organizations, under the banner of outlawing any activity related to them. That doesn’t mean that the US can’t investigate people involved in what it perceives as domestic terrorist organizations, but having anything to do with them is not currently illegal. I am concerned that there is a huge amount of resources out there, having been enabled under the rubric of the anti-terrorism act, more encouraged to go after these domestic groups. I clearly see the chilling effect of language, both in the groups that are directly affected by the anti-terrorism act, people who are active in Middle East issues who may disagree with US foreign policy, but also, I’m having environmental folks talk to me and say, "Well, am I next?" Phillip Babich: And do you think it’s possible they are next? Kit Gage: Sure. The US admits to having increased its investigation of a range of groups. The US has clearly been investigating environmentalists it perceives as being a threat. Phillip Babich: Well, Kit Gage, thanks for joining us. Kit Gage: Absolutely. My pleasure. Phillip Babich: Kit Gage is Washington representative for the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation. Laura Livoti: You’re listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. It you want more information about the subject of this week’s program or you would like to learn how you can get involved with Making Contact, please give us a call. It’s toll free: 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tape and transcript orders. That’s 800-529-5736. Phillip Babich: One example of modern COINTELPRO-type activity directed at environmentalists is the investigation after a car bombing in 1990, according to a lawsuit filed against the FBI and a local police department. On May 24th of that year, two leading organizers of the environmental group Earth First! were on their way to a planning event for an upcoming gathering known as Redwood Summer. Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney had been pivotal figures in a growing movement against the timber industry in the U.S. northwest, challenging logging practices and engaging in civil disobedience and non-violent direct action. As the two activists were resuming their journey in Oakland, California, a pipe bomb rigged with a motion-sensitive triggering device detonated inside the car, sending shrapnel ripping through Bari's body and injuring Cherney who was sitting in the passenger seat. Alicia Littletree: Within 15 minutes, the FBI was on the scene, which raises a big question right there: "Why they there so quickly?" They don’t have any good reason for why. And within three hours, the Oakland police had arrested Judy for transporting explosives, saying that she had actually been carrying the bomb in her car that had been used to try to kill her. Phillip Babich: Alicia Littletree is a member of Earth First! and was living with Judi Bari at the time of her death from breast cancer, in 1997. Although Bari had received several death threats in the weeks preceding the May 24, 1990 explosion, the FBI and Oakland police made Bari and Cherney the prime suspects in the case, alleging that they planned to use the pipe bomb in an escalating eco-war. Investigators claimed that Bari and Cherney must have seen the bomb on the back-seat floorboard because they loaded their musical instruments on top of it. In fact, the FBI's own photographs taken the day of the bombing reveal a different picture. Alicia Littletree: It was very clearly underneath the car seat, and everybody at the scene knew it, because the hole was right there in the middle of where the car seat was. And they could look through the car seat and see the street. A lot the these people were bomb experts and it’s inexcusable for them to have made that kind of a mistake. Of course it wasn’t a mistake, it was deliberate. The other thing is they said that nails that had been taped to the bomb as shrapnel were identical to the nails they found in bags in the back of Judi’s car. And when we actually got to look at these nails, the nails in the bomb were finishing nails and the nails in the bags in the back were roofing nails and sinkers, which don’t look anything alike. There’s no way anybody could have mistaken them for identical. So, that’s basically the core of the lawsuit against them: that this was a deliberate smear campaign, aimed at making Judi and Darryl of Earth First! appear to the public as terrorists. And then of course the goal of that association is to make people fear them, to neutralize their ability to organize in defense of the Redwoods. Phillip Babich: On October 15, 1997, a US district court ruled that a handful of FBI agents and Oakland police officers will have to stand trial in the lawsuit that charges them with false arrest, illegal search and seizure, and conspiracy. According to arrest records and FBI internal documents, the FBI had surveyed Earth First! in California and Arizona prior to the bombing. And, the FBI worked to make connections between Earth First! and suspected eco-terrorist activity. In a setback for the Earth First! case, the US district court has excluded the special agent in charge of the San Francisco FBI office at the time of the bombing, Richard Held, who oversaw the investigation. Held, a COINTELPRO ace, managed the damage control that ensued after the murders of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and chapter president Mark Clark in Chicago on December 4, 1969. Now-released FBI records reveal that the FBI falsified ballistics reports and other evidence. These days, some multinational corporations are reacting to activist campaigns by employing privately organized and funded intelligence operations, according to Sheila O'Donnell, a private investigator who handles cases of violence and intimidation against environmental and social activists. Sheila O'Donnell: In the ‘70s, we saw the FBI joining with the CIA and the local police departments, in particular in DC. But, we have seen this happen all over. And, at some point, there were a number of people fired from the CIA - I think it was 2500 agents. Those agents immediately went into private security. We came to think of that as the privatization of the police function. Now, if you look at the head of any multinational security office, it’s a former FBI or former CIA agent. They’re having these private cops in there, who have the skills and the knowledge and the connections of the FBI and the CIA. I mean, first of all, you don’t teach an old dog new tricks. There are only so many ways to harass people. And so they’ve learned those, using our tax dollars. We have yet to see a former FBI or former CIA agent standing outside the scene of an attack. But I can tell you, as soon as any activist stands up and says a corporation is at fault, the next thing we see is a harassment campaign. Phillip Babich: Harassment through the legal system is another tactic used to intimidate activists. Some observers point to the prosecution of a daring civil disobedience action in September 1998, as a current example. Every three years, the World Energy Council, an international organization that represents oil, gas, and mining interests in approximately 100 countries, convenes a Congress. In 1998, the event was held in one of the petroleum capitals of the world, Houston, Texas. This presented an opportunity for activists based in the United States to call on industry leaders to address ample evidence of global climate change and to consider significantly reducing fossil fuel consumption. Recent findings by a United Nations-sponsored scientific panel suggest that burning more than just 25 percent of the known gas and oil deposits on the planet may trigger the worst effects of climate change. Nonetheless, the oil and gas industries spend over $150 billion dollars annually on new exploration and spend relatively little on developing renewable energy sources, according to Project Underground, a mining and oil industry watch group. The World Energy Council is much less concerned about climate change. In fact, according to the director of studies and policy development for the WEC, the energy industry expects the world to use as much oil as has been used since the beginning of time over the next century, in its most "environmentally-oriented scenario." Danny Kennedy, director of Project Underground, and four other activists presented the World Energy Council with a different scenario at its Houston congress. Danny Kennedy: The message is, "Stop New Oil Exploration." We had a 1500 foot banner stitched by friends which had that slogan on it and had a beautiful image of a drilling rig from the cover of our report, Drilling to the Ends of the Earth, which sort of spans the globe basically and is taking up the last corners of the earth. And that was stretched out in this very fine parachute silk, which we climbed up a crane with, and then went out on the arm of the crane, about 750 feet and deployed it at about 9 o’clock one morning. We actually climbed the crane at about 4 a.m. It was a beautiful demonstration because it was right smack in their face. It was right across the street from the Houston convention center and the new baseball stadium being constructed in Houston. There was no way they were going to get away and not see it. The reading of it was right there in front of them. Phillip Babich: The stunt was successful, but they got arrested. At the Harris County jail, Kennedy and the other activists were strip-searched and verbally harassed. He says that poor treatment at the jail was doled out equally to activists and non-activists alike. But, the criminal charges were notably severe. Danny Kennedy: The city came down and charged us initially with second degree felonies for what’s called criminal mischief, a fairly strange and obscure crime. Basically, they were alleging that we had intentionally damaged the business of the company that was constructing the baseball stadium and, in so doing, we were liable for ‘criminal mischief’ charges by the city. They posted bond for us at $200,000 per person. There were five of us jailed, a million dollars bond. If you were caught for homicide or suspected of homicide in Houston, you’re likely to be bailed out at $20,000. They were clearly treating us differently in terms of the charges and, when interviewed, the attorney general originally said that he would investigate and see if he could find a way to charge us with first degree felonies, which would have given our minimum sentence 20 years to life. Katia Komisaruk: Its not infrequent when people are arrested that the prosecutors pile on charges, charges that they couldn’t actually prove up in court, but are very intimidating when you first get stuck with them. Phillip Babich: Katia Komisaruk is a lawyer who has been involved in activism for almost twenty years. Katia Komisaruk: For example, conspiracy is always a felony. I’ve had people arrested for conspiracy to block the sidewalk, which is a silly infraction. When you’re in jail on a conspiracy charge, it’s often much harder to get out, because bail is higher or sometimes not available. And to counteract that, people can use solidarity tactics to push the authorities them out of jail and then to the charges, once they’re in court. Phillip Babich: In Houston, the oil industry is enormously powerful. Kennedy says he could find no direct evidence that oil executives were pulling strings to see to it that he and the other activists were handed stiff sentences. But, he did find out that the company constructing the baseball stadium was Brown and Root, one of the major oil services companies in the world, which has built pipelines throughout Latin America and roads in the Persian Gulf region. And, it probably didn't help matters that the president of the World Energy Council is Don Jordan. He's the CEO of Houston-based Reliant Energy, a multi-billion dollar electric and gas company. Danny Kennedy: One of the prisoners said to me, laughing his head off, when I told him what we’d done, you see, we kept on turning up in the newspapers every day with a new dimension on it, and he said, "You’ve come to Mecca and insulted Mohammed." Phillip Babich: Ultimately, the charges were reduced to a misdemeanor. Danny Kennedy: Had it not been that we were well-organized and well-covered in the media sense, I don’t think we would have got the support we had and would have went down. You know, potentially gone down for a long time. But the precedent that we found in the books, with similar facts, was quite scary when we went back to Houston to appeal our case. It went like this: a woman in ‘82 had daubed some slogans on Exxon’s building walls, and she had been jailed for two years for that, with the same criminal mischief charge. So, simply for graffiti, someone has already been sent to jail for a couple of years. We, fortunately, because of the attention we were getting, garnered the support of a very prominent lawyer in Houston. He, in turn, attracted more lawyers with high degrees and caliber and all that and Court TV also expressed interest in filming it for us. We were going to become the next Oprah in the beef industry battle, or something like that. And, I think, smartly, the Harris County D.A. decided that it was a battle they weren’t willing to fight. Katia Komisaruk: You can’t necessarily avoid being given extra charges by the authorities, but what you can do is negotiate to make those charges go away, so that everybody is charged the same. Phillip Babich: Attorney Katia Komisaruk holds trainings on how to respond nonviolently in an arrest situation during civil disobedience actions. She also does such trainings with an emphasis on how to use solidarity tactics to protect each other and to negotiate with authorities when people are in jail or court. Katia Komisaruk: The authorities often imagine that, in large protests or movements, there’s somebody in charge and if you could just yank them out of the picture, then everybody would be all scatterbrained and go away or be easy to push around. In most of the movements I worked in, it’s quite decentralized; and people work in small groups and make their own decisions. There isn’t, in fact, some sort of pyramidal structure. But, nonetheless, the authorities try to find out who’s in charge and disappear them or give them major charges and get them all tied up in legal battles. So, what people can do is use the power of numbers to protect those who are singled out. Because they are seen as leaders or because they’re people of color or have just been louder and more abrasive than the rest. Phillip Babich: Sheila O'Donnell has written a draft of a handbook for community activists titled, "Common Sense Security." She advises that, as movements become stronger and more sophisticated, the State, corporations and right-wing groups have also refined their techniques to stop the work of activists. She says that caution and common sense security measures, in the face of these concerted efforts, are therefore prudent and necessary. Sheila O'Donnell: I think everybody has to be concerned, you know. Just because one person is targeted, they’re not targeted personally, they’re targeted because of what the community is doing. I think it’s wrong to think of it as being personal. It is the group’s responsibility. The group needs to stand tall with that person, whoever it is who’s harassed, who’s targeted, because if they don’t, then that person becomes much more vulnerable. It’s really critical that organizations talk about security and talk about what it is that everyone needs to be conscious of and what everybody needs to be doing. Paranoia is so easy to create, it’s so easy to grow like a mushroom. I think the truth of it is that we don’t know if there’s an informant in the room. We don’t know if there’s a wiretap on the phone. If there’s a good wiretap, you’ll never hear it. Katia Komisaruk: Now, one thing that activists sometimes do at meetings, is, at the beginning of a meeting, say: "Will all law enforcement officers and journalists please stand up and identify themselves?" Phillip Babich: Katia Komisaruk. Katia Komisaruk: Who in their right mind would? There’s no law that says that law enforcement, or undercover law enforcement or journalists, do have to identify themselves. It would be silly for them to do so. It doesn’t protect what is said at the meeting. I think you just have to accept the fact that infiltration happens and that the best solution is to work in decentralized groups. Involve large numbers of people but allow people to operate autonomously within non-violence guidelines. Phillip Babich: That's it for this edition of Making Contact - a look at current counter-intelligence tactics. Thanks for listening. Special thanks this week to Stephanie Welch who helped write and produce this program. We had production assistance from Lisa Huran, Courtney Malone and Margot Schrire. Lori Townsend provided recorded portions. Laura Livoti is our managing director. Peggy Law is executive director. Our production assistant is Shereen Meraji. Norman Solomon is senior advisor. Our national producer is David Barsamian. And I'm your host and managing producer Phillip Babich. If you want more information about the subject of this week’s program, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts. That’s 800-529-5736. Making Contact is an independent production. We’re committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. If you have suggestions for future programs, we’d like to hear from you. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter Trio. ‘Bye for now. |