The FBI, COINTELPRO and Far-Right Vigilante Networks

by Tom Burghardt

"Over the years, our approach to investigative problems in the intelligence field has given rise to a number of new programs, some of which have been most revolutionary, and it can be assumed that with a continued aggressive approach to these problems, new and productive ideas will be forthcoming. These ideas will not be increased in number or improved upon from the standpoint of accomplishments merely through the institution of a program such as COINTELPRO which is given another name, and which in fact, only encompasses everything that has been done or will be done in the future." J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director, Memorandum, July 15, 1964 [1]

1. COINTELPRO AND THE FAR-RIGHT: THE POLITICAL CONTEXT OF ANTI-CHOICE VIOLENCE

Now that the Christian Right's anti-abortion, "national cultural and holy war"2 has evolved into a campaign of arson, murder and terror, mainstream "feminist" groups tied to the capitalist Democratic Party -- NOW, NARRAL, and The Feminist Majority Foundation -- are demanding that the FBI investigate anti-choice violence.

In the wake of Rev. Paul Hill's assassination of Dr. John Bayard Britton; clinic escort, James Barrett; and the wounding of clinic escort, June Barrett, July 29 in Pensacola, FL, the drumbeat for federal intervention has reached deafening proportions.

Armed U.S. Marshals, FBI agents using "special investigative techniques," and police SWAT teams, however, will neither defend women seeking reproductive health care nor abortion providers; rather, such intervention will transform women's clinics into armed camps. The net result of such a massive show of firepower by the State will not guarantee women's safety at clinics. Neither will such intervention increase women's access to reproductive health care.

Rather, police intervention on such a grand scale, plays into the hands of anti-choice terrorists. They believe that such displays of State power only assist their own propaganda efforts and tend to buttress their assertion that "abortion is murder," and that women who control their bodies are doing something "wrong."

Despite U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno's statement that clinic violence, "is a problem throughout the nation" and that "it is appropriate to address an issue of deep concern,"3 two more women's clinics have been fire-bombed since Rev. Paul Hill's murderous rampage.

A clinic in Falls Church, VA sustained more than $10,000 in damage, July 30, while a Planned Parenthood facility in Brainerd, Minnesota, was burned to the ground on August 10; the Minnesota facility did not perform abortions. During the same period these two clinics were attacked, a right-wing vigilante was arrested in Philadelphia outside a women's clinic; six molotov cocktails were seized from the trunk of his car. Reports of death threats against patients, doctors and health care workers since the Pensacola murders have skyrocketed.

While the State is poised through the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (the FACE law), to legitimize anti-abortion thugs who "sidewalk counsel" and engage in other forms of harassment against women, gangsters such as convicted clinic bomber, Rev. Michael Bray, an endorser of Hill's Defensive Action "Declaration" insist:

"Anyone who truly believes that the slaughter of innocent children is what we have with abortion could go out and shoot an abortionist."4

Similarly, other supporters of the "justifiable homicide" position, go further. According to the Rev. David Trosch, even pharmacists might eventually become targets. "I would see no problem with shooting a pharmacist," who provided a "morning after pill" to women who seek to terminate their pregnancies.5 Trosch, in a July 16 letter that predicted the "massive killing of abortionists and their staffs," pointedly warned that clinic defenders and reproductive rights activists "will be sought out and terminated as vermin are terminated."6

Rev. Trosch and C. Roy McMillan, Executive Director of the Christian Action Group in Jackson, Mississippi, believe that clinic escorts and clinic defenders act as "accomplices," and therefore, are fair game for right-wing, anti-abortion vigilantes.

McMillan, a weapons specialist who served two tours of duty in Vietnam, believes that, "Twenty five years later I have not changed my opinion as to the justification of the U.S. intervention in Vietnam...I assume the enemy I killed were not Christian like me."7

Today, McMillan believes that the killing of unarmed escort, James Barrett, was no more than so-called "collateral damage."8 Apparently, McMillan's ideological fervor will come in handy as he, and other zealots wage "cultural civil war" on the home front.

Recent protests in Jackson/Gulfport, Mississippi targeted Black physician, Dr. Joseph Booker, the sole abortion provider for the entire state. American Coalition of Life Activists (ACLA), a violent front group founded by Andrew Burnett, publisher of "Life Advocate" magazine and Joseph Foreman, a founder of Operation Rescue and current Director of Missionaries to the Preborn (MTP) have vowed to drive Dr. Booker from his practice. Both Burnett and Foreman were signers of Rev. Hill's Defensive Action "Declaration."

Daniel Ware, a Rescue America member, and friend of Paul Hill's, was arrested in Pensacola last March for having a cache of weapons and more than 400 rounds of high velocity ammunition in his car. Ware had vowed to "terminate" abortion providers who had gathered in Pensacola for a memorial service for Dr. David Gunn, assassinated last year by another Rescue America member, Michael Griffin. Although prosecuted for having made statements that he intended "to take out as many child-killers in a Beirut- style massacre," Ware was released after a Florida jury found him not guilty.9

During the Mississippi protests, Ware declared, "If you sow death and destruction, you shall reap death and destruction. If you kill by the sword, then you must be killed by the sword."10

According to a recent Planned Parenthood news conference, anti-abortion leaders, Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, and Matthew Trewhella, a top leader of Missionaries to the Preborn and a Defensive Action supporter, have joined forces with the far-right U.S Taxpayers Party (USTP).

Planned Parenthood released videotaped excerpts of Terry and Trewhella's speeches to a USTP meeting held in Appleton, Wisconsin last May. The footage had been obtained by clandestine anti-fascist researchers. "We're living in terror," said Pamela Maraldo, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

While one speaker urged conference participants to "arm their children," another asserted that "abortionists should be put to death." The USTP distributed a 100 page manual, "Principles Justifying the Arming and Organization of a Militia." The USTP was founded in 1992 by "New Right" guru, Howard Phillips.11 Early supporters of the organization have included Larry Pratt, President of Gun Owners of America and Julie Makkima, Director of the anti-abortion group, Fortress International.

Meanwhile, night-riding fascists from five separate Ku Klux Klan groups plan to demonstrate outside the Aware Woman Center for Choice, August 20, in Melbourne, Florida. The clinic, targeted by Operation Rescue National's (ORN) 12 week long IMPACT team, paramilitary "boot camp" for "Christian warriors" in 1993, has been under siege for years.

According to J.D. Alder, imperial advisor to a Florida unit of the Klan, said that the group listed Rev. Paul Hill as "the hero of the month." Alder added, "I put an abortionist in the same category as John Wayne Gacy."

Ostensibly, the Klan groups are gathering to protest the presence of U.S. Marshals outside women's clinics. "It's big brother. It's a government who tries to control people through fear and intimidation," said "former" Klansman, John Baumgardner.

However, the real agenda of these racist hyenas was revealed when Alder stated, "We consider abortion to be tantamount to racial suicide because it's primarily white people killing their babies. I am selectively opposed to abortion. I don't care if blacks and Jews have abortions. It is white babies that are our primary concern."12

The convergence of Christian Right Reconstructionist anti- abortion theocrats, far-right vigilante outfits such as the U.S. Taxpayers Party, an organization with extensive ties to the quasi-fascist "posse comitatus" movement of the 1970's, and racist night-riding Klan thugs should not surprise us in the least. Such a fascist united front of terror, has been spawned by a system of class exploitation, racism, sexism, and deadly homophobia -- capitalism.

The bourgeois State, unsurprisingly, will utilize fascist and clerical-fascist gangs such as Operation Rescue, Defensive Action and the Ku Klux Klan to terrorize and crush opposition to the State and their "post-modern" corporate employers.

State intervention by the FBI, BATF, and the U.S. Marshals at women's clinics however, will only serve to marginalize -- and potentially criminalize -- one force that has kept the Christian Right terrorists at bay: community-based, direct action clinic defense groups.

Those, such as Feminist Majority Foundation president, Eleanor Smeal, who call on the FBI "to form a special task force," to investigate anti-abortion terror, consciously delete from history the role played by this repressive agency throughout its existence.13

Far from being a "neutral" investigative agency concerned with uncovering the depredations of organized crime or "domestic terrorism," the FBI has been the vanguard federal force that has targeted labor, minority groups struggling against racism, the women's movement, queer activists and the Left.

The sordid history of the FBI is littered with the bodies of activists murdered to maintain the status quo. During the 1960's, the FBI's role was not to "protect" civil right's workers, but rather, through its utilization of informers and other far-right "assets" inside the Ku Klux Klan, the Bureau actively assisted the K.K.K. in their campaign of racist murder and terror.

Unlike slick Hollywood popularizations of the period, such as Alan Parker's film, "Mississippi Burning," the FBI was instrumental in re-building the Ku Klux Klan in the south,

"...setting up dozens of Klaverns, sometimes being leaders and public spokespersons. Gary Rowe, an FBI informant, was involved in the Klan killing of Viola Liuzzo, a civil rights worker. He claimed that he had to fire shots at her rather than 'blow his cover.' One FBI agent speaking at a rally organized by the Klavern he led, proclaimed to his followers, 'We will restore white rights if we have to kill every negro to do it.'"14

The Bureau's not-so-secret war against the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Communist Party (CP), the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the Black Panther Party (BPP), the American Indian Movement (AIM), the Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), and most recently, the attempted frame-up of Judi Bari and Earth First! span the decades. Will the clinic defense movement be the FBI's next target, the recipient of an "active measures" campaign? The women's liberation movement has been targeted more than once by the Bureau.

During the 1980's as the FBI waged an "active measures" campaign against CISPES, a former FBI informant, Frank Varelli, became disillusioned with the Bureau's attempt to destroy CISPES. Acting on disinformation supplied by the murderous Salvadoran National Guard, false information was forwarded by the FBI to the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The National Guard claimed that one FMLN coalition member, the Armed Revolutionary Group (GAR), "were to promote in North America a strong and violent campaign of agitation and propaganda on behalf of FMLN-FDR, having obtained immediate support from different sectors of North American society. Among the groups providing support were labor unions, Gay Power groups, Pro- Abortion groups, groups involved in the women's liberation movement, and organizations that are opposed to the strengthening of the military forces of the US."15

Although not a shred of evidence existed linking these North American organizations to the GAR, the groups were included in the National Guard communique -- at the direct request of the FBI.

According to Varelli, "Can you imagine if gay rights groups, abortion rights groups, the Equal Rights Amendment groups were known to support a group that had killed more than 20 police and soldiers in a year?" The informant added, "Once the FBI had this data in their files, they could proceed to investigate all these other groups. What is even worse, the FBI knew that this material from the National Guard was strictly disinformation. But they passed the same material along to the Secret Service, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other agencies in the intelligence community without alerting them to the fact that it was completely fabricated."16

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My purpose here is to review the Bureau's history of employing far-right, racist and neo-Nazi operatives in their on-going war against the American Left, including the women's movement. While the "Cold War" may be over, the search for "enemies" continue. Where "threats to national security" cannot be found, they are created; this is the legacy bequeathed by J. Edgar Hoover to the FBI and its current Director, Louis J. Freeh. One can only speculate that the Bureau's "reluctance" to investigate far-right advocates of anti-choice violence, may stem from their utilization of Christian Right "assets" during the 1980's as the Reagan administration and the Bureau prosecuted their own "dirty war" at home to buttress the terrorist Central American death-squad states propped-up by the U.S. Government.

In this writer's view, it is inconceivable that the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), and other federal investigatory agencies, have no knowledge of the interconnections among far and Christian Right terrorists waging their "holy war" against women's rights; a campaign that now spans three decades.

Since 1977, according to the National Abortion Federation (NAF), there have been 128 bombing/arson attacks; 573 incidents of clinic vandalism; 66 attempted bombing/arson attacks; 199 incidents where doctors or health care workers have been stalked; and 197 death threats leveled against patients, physicians or health care workers.17

In the majority of cases, these serious incidents of domestic terror are treated like unconnected acts of mayhem by local, state and federal authorities -- with much complicity by "mainstream" media. Rather, such heinous acts of violence against women are evidence of a broad campaign waged by the direct action anti-abortion movement; a program designed to destroy abortion access through low-intensity war.

As I have written elsewhere, the direct action anti-abortion movement and the broader Christian Right have temporarily ceded the legislative and judicial domain to their opponents. Having lost in the courts and in the legislatures, they have turned to a broad campaign of arson, bombing, selective violence, and once again, murder, against abortion provider's: Randall Terry's "weak link."

I will repeat; as a strategic orientation, low-intensity warfare rests on a simple premise: in order to achieve political objectives by "extraordinary" means, a comprehensive, coordinated set of tactics are required. Such tactics are intended to guarantee that prolonged economic sabotage and the cumulative effects of propaganda, espionage, psychological terror and violence will eventually wear the "enemy" down and achieve the desired goal: destruction of access and the loss of reproductive health care for women.18

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The cases I have chosen to explore present only a partial index of the Bureau's role as agents of repression. The massive infiltration and disruption by the FBI of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the American Indian Movement (AIM) is beyond the scope of the present survey. Suffice it say, the Bureau conspired, with the active assistance and collaboration of local and state police agencies, to destroy these organizations. Between 1968-1971, FBI-initiated terror and disruption resulted in the murder of more than 38 BPP activists. When the smoke cleared in the mid 1970's the Black Panther Party was destroyed, hundreds of activists were in prison, and thousands of lives lay in ruins.19

The same can be said for the FBI's reign of terror in South Dakota during the 1970's, against the Oglala Sioux Nation and the American Indian Movement. A similar pattern of lies, disinformation, selective targeting of activists for harassment, as well as outright political assassination, murder and mayhem initiated by the Bureau, resulted in the weakening of AIM.20

Similar to the lesser-known cases I do survey, the FBI utilized right-wing vigilantes in order to disrupt AIM and selectively terrorize and murder the Oglala Sioux people and AIM activists.21

While we turn our sights and survey the FBI's utilization of far-right "assets," we must remember those who continue to rot in America's dungeons as political prisoners: Geronimo (Ji Jaga) Pratt, Leonard Peltier, and Mumia Abdul-Jamal, as well as countless other class war prisoners of the American nightmare.22

Clinic defense and reproductive rights activists are urged to study the Bureau's history of political violence, the better to be able to recognize the unmistakable signs of political repression.

2. THE FBI, BATF, AND "PRIVATE" INTELLIGENCE NETWORKS

Subversion hunters do not require evidence in order to bolster their paranoid world-view. The contemporary Christian Right, like earlier McCarthyite "red hunters," inhabit a conspiratorial netherworld which permits the discovery -- or fabrication -- of "evidence" for the malignant plot they believe will destroy "God's nation, set upon on a hill," the United States. Sharing much in common with earlier nativist or anti- communist organizations such as the 19th century "Know Nothing Party" or Father Charles E. Coughlin's proto-fascist, National Union for Social Justice, there is an unmistakable thread of racism, sexism and nostalgia for a non-existent middle class "paradise" where "men were men and women knew their place," that link such groups together.

The contemporary hunt for the "Red Menace" has been transmuted by theocratic, clerical-fascist alchemists such as Gary North, Rousas John (R.J.) Rushdoony, and Randall Terry into an insidious plot to destroy the family. Similar to earlier manifestations of nativist paranoia, the search for Christian rightist "fool's gold," relies on an international plot by communists, Jews, Satanists, feminists, environmentalists and homosexuals in order to weave their repressive webs. Thus Christian Coalition President, Pat Roberstson, can write:

"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians."23

The search for endless enemies has a darker side; many of the paranoid declarations of the Christian Right are shared by the FBI and the "private" intelligence agencies who serve them.

The Bureau and affiliated federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies are riddled with agents who have much in common with earlier witch hunters. Today however, "The Witch's Hammer" of the 16th century, used by the notorious Spanish Inquisition to burn women alive, has been replaced by the "Information Digest," of John and Louise Rees, or similar publications of the far-right, such as the John Birch Society's "The New American," or Lyndon LaRouche's "Executive Intelligence Review."

Countless "private" sources for intelligence gathering are used by the Bureau to justify massive COINTELPRO-style operations. Included here, are the publications of the Council for Inter-American Security (CIS); the American Security Council (ASC); Western Goals, founded by the late Rep. Larry McDonald, a top leader of the John Birch Society; the organization of neo- fascist, Lyndon LaRouche; and the massive intelligence network of Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.24 I will profile three of these entities.

INFORMATION DIGEST: John Rees is a journalist who emigrated to the United States from Britain in 1963. He was fired from the "London Daily Mirror," when officials at the paper discovered Rees' had used his professional standing to obtain unethical gratuities from London hotels and restaurants.25

Rees moved to Newark, New Jersey and launched "New Careers," a program designed to provide jobs for black residents. City officials however, discovered that Rees had overcharged the city $7,500 for services. They also blocked payment for another $12,000 to a job training firm for which Rees was a consultant.26

Moving to Chicago in 1968, Rees next worked as an undercover informant for the Chicago Police Department, infiltrating and targeting groups opposed to the Vietnam war. At the time, the FBI dismissed Rees as "an opportunist who operates with self- serving interest." However, Rees continued to trade spurious information to state police agencies across the country.27

During the early 1980's, trading on his relationship with Rep. McDonald and Western Goals, Rees began writing a column for the Moon-owned "Washington Times." It was during this period that he began to sell political disinformation to the FBI.28

Rees was the author of the slander-filled, "The War Called Peace," which targeted the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), charging that the group was "thoroughly- penetrated by the Moscow-line Communist party." Rees' brand of political yellow-journalism, was widely-reported by the "New York Times," and other media outlets. His false allegations, innuendos, and slander were used by the Reagan administration to discredit the nuclear freeze movement.29

Rees' booklet was incorporated in FBI files and passed to the State Department. In 1982, the State Department included WILPF on its index of "communist-fronts," on the basis of Rees' disinformation.30

Apparently, the collaboration between the Bureau and John Rees was of long-standing duration. The nature of the relationship with the former "self-serving opportunist" and the Bureau surfaced during a lawsuit initiated by the National Lawyers Guild. Rees' wife, S. Louise Rees, had infiltrated the NLG, working as a secretary. An assistant United States Attorney in New York testified that: "Some federal agencies received information...from John Rees or S. Louise Rees or both, sometimes in the form of "Information Digest," and from time to time they were compensated by the FBI for furnishing information."31

WESTERN GOALS: Founded in 1982, by Rep. Larry McDonald, a top leader of the John Birch Society and a board member of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). Before his death in 1983, aboard KAL flight 007, shot down over the Soviet Union, McDonald described the purpose of the Foundation as defending the United States against Marxist subversion and terrorism. McDonald wrote,

"In the field of Marxists, terrorism and subversion, Western Goals has the most experienced advisors and staff in the United States... The Foundation has begun the computerization of thousands of documents relating to the internal security of our country and the protection of government and institutions from Communist-controlled penetration and subversion."32

One of the key figures of Western Goals was John Rees. Using falsified documents passed by the Salvadoran National Guard, Rees penned an article for the Birchite publication, "The Review of the News." Rees' article found its way into the FBI's files and served as their pretext to target CISPES.33

Other key Western Goals figures included former U.S. Army Major General John "Blackjack" Singlaub, the North American Director of the World Anti-Communist League. Founded in 1967, WACL has been described as the "Fascist International." The League's members have included arch-conservatives, reactionaries, a number of former Nazis and Nazi collaborators.

Among its regional affiliates in Central America were, Mario Sandoval Alarcon, a former Guatemalan vice president known as the "Godfather of the death squads," and cashiered Salvadoran Army Major, Roberto D'Aubisson, described by former U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador, Robert White, as a "pathological killer."34

League members were invited to Taiwan's Political Warfare Cadres Academy for training in counter-insurgency and police techniques. Many members also traveled to Argentina for training in police torture techniques by members of the Argentine military during the "dirty war" which annihilated the Argentine Left, "disappearing" more than 25,000 people during the 1970's.35

After McDonald's death in 1983, Singlaub, Rees and others continued Western Goals' primary mission: destroy the North American Left through a campaign of slander and political disinformation. Their publications were routinely routed to the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), and other U.S. intelligence agencies.36

In 1983, a portion of the public-private intelligence interchange surfaced when Los Angeles Police Department intelligence division detective, Jay Paul, was found to have removed more than 180 boxes of files from division headquarters. The files contained extensive dossiers on West Coast political activists. Environmentalists, opponents of nuclear power, legal Left groups and political parties found their way into Paul's house as well as his wife's law office in Long Beach.37

Internal LAPD investigators learned that the information removed by Paul had been transmitted via computer directly into the database of the Western Goals Foundation, controlled by John Rees. It was subsequently learned by investigators that Paul's activities had been approved by a former Intelligence Division captain.38

Among the material that Paul supplied to Rees were lists of demonstrators arrested in Florida and California and a confidential LAPD domestic security report.39 It was learned that Rees had published some of this material in a Western Goals publication as well as his own "Information Digest." The information was also passed to federal, state and local police agencies around the country.40

Additionally, selected materials were passed to board members of Western Goals, some of whom were involved with Lt. Col. North's criminal "enterprise" to aid the Nicaraguan contra terrorists.41

Key players of the U.S. Christian Right, including Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were instrumental allies of the Reagan State Department's illegal "Public Diplomacy" operation which targeted the American people with propaganda and disinformation; all in the name of "stamping out Marxist subversion."42

THE UNIFICATION CHURCH: Perhaps the most prominent American off-shoot of WACL was Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. A destructive religious cult that purports that "Our Master," Rev. Moon is a reincarnation of Jesus Christ sent to rid the world of communism, Moon's empire was a key element of the FBI's "active measures" campaign against CISPES.43

Operating through a front-group, the campus-based Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (CARP), Moon activists began plying the Bureau with information that it obtained through its infiltration of CISPES chapters throughout the country.44

CARP supplied the FBI with information on CISPES leaders and activists. Bureau files contained hundreds of entries and names provided by Moon's theocratic network. The 48 pages of CARP materials released by the FBI, contain only a small portion of the Bureau's CARP index. Pointedly, the FBI refused to release any of the entries held in the Bureau's main file on the Moon organization.45

Bureau informant, Frank Varelli, stated that "The Moonies were a major support group." Varelli reported that in 1982, agents in the FBI's Washington Field Office trained a Moon contingent to hold a demonstration in support of Salvadoran President, Jose Napoleon Duarte.46

Other FBI-initiated "active measures" campaigns, recalling earlier COINTELPRO operations, utilized "private" Moon "assets" for a national campaign of political harassment and disruption. Varelli's FBI handler, Special Agent Daniel Flanagan, would regularly go to the SMU campus in Dallas once a month to pay the Moonies for their support services to the FBI. Moon cadres would start fights on the SMU campus whenever CISPES held a rally or demonstration. After a series of violent incidents, CISPES moved off campus. Such scenarios were duplicated across the country.47

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Inside the FBI there is a core of agents with authoritarian, if not quasi-fascist tendencies, who are integral to the far- right network of spies and political operatives that continue to operate with impunity. Across the decades, such agents freely pass back and forth between government service and employment as security consultants and union-busters. As we will see below, in the two case studies I present as evidence of the Bureau's employment of far-right and neo-Nazi "assets," J. Edgar's Hoover's legacy lives on. Knowledge of this deadly partnership between the FBI, BATF, state and local police agencies and the violent fringe of the far-right, is of vital importance to the women's movement today.

3. RIGHT-WING VIGILANTES AND THE STATE: THE SECRET ARMY ORGANIZATION (SAO)

Despite tens of thousands of pages of documentary evidence of on-going State repression by the FBI, the idea that the Bureau would utilize "private" right-wing operatives and terrorists is a chilling, alien concept to most Americans. During the Red Scare period, 1918-22, and during the 1920's and 1930's, the FBI made considerable use of Pinkertons and "off- the-shelf" vigilante groups, in order to destroy labor and radical organizations.

The FBI has systematically utilized "private" right-wing operatives in order to carry out their fundamental mission: to maintain the power and profits of their corporate employers. One notorious case is the Secret Army Organization (SAO).

The Secret Army Organization was a surrogate of the FBI. An ex-Bureau informant, Nanda Zocchino, writing in the "Los Angeles Times," recounted how,

"...the Bureau had created and financed this 'crypto- fascist' group in San Diego during 1969-70. During the early- 1970's the SAO engaged in a range of activities including burglary, mail thefts, bombings, assassination plots and attempted murder."48

According to Zocchino, the SAO's criminal activities were supervised directly by the FBI. A second informant attached to the San Diego Bureau office, Howard Berry Godfrey, has substantially corroborated Zocchino's story of State-directed terror against the Left.49

The Citizens Research and Investigation Committee (CRIC), documented that the SAO was established specifically, "...to use violence against radicals and, at its peak had cadres in eleven western states."50

According to CRIC's chilling report, a primary target of the SAO was San Diego State University economics professor, Peter G. Bohmer. The professor had received more than forty death threats before SAO operative, George M. Hoover, fired a 9mm pistol into his home on the night of January 9, 1972.51

Although Bohmer was not at home that evening, the SAO assassin, wounded a house-guest, Paula Tharp, in the right elbow, permanently disabling her. Despite the fact that the attempted murderer was accompanied by FBI-infiltrator Godfrey, who informed his handler, Special Agent Steve Christianson, Hoover was not arrested for more than six months.52

The FBI's primary motivation in "chilling out" their terrorist "assets" was not the serious injury to Ms. Tharp, but the sense that they were "losing control" of the SAO. They became alarmed by the bombing of San Diego's Guild Theater on June 19, 1972. Hoover and eight other SAO members carried out the raid, allegedly "without the Bureau's knowledge."53

In the wake of this escalating series of right-wing terrorist incidents, and the ensuing public outcry, San Diego police raided the homes of SAO members. The police netted a huge cache of "illegal explosives, handguns and rifles, including an unpacked case of M-16 rifles. The market value of these weapons was estimated at more than $60,000."54

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Frederick Hetter discovered during a subsequent investigation "that [FBI infiltrator] Godfrey supplied 75% of the money for the SAO" in order for the terrorist army to acquire the weapons.55

Further evidence of the leading role played by the Bureau for launching the SAO was revealed by "San Diego Door" reporters, Doug Porter and Ric Reynolds. Their investigation revealed that Godfrey had also infiltrated the radical Message Information Center under an assumed name, as well as the Movement for a Democratic Military. The FBI's point man, Godfrey, was also assembling a list of "priority people" in the Peace and Freedom Party; a legal, socialist party with ballot status in California.56

Drawing on their extensive experience and expertise as a repressive arm of the U.S. Government, the FBI's paid informant was well-placed to assign targets to the fascist SAO for "neutralization."57

In the wake of Watergate, the Church Committee in the U.S. Senate and the Pike Commission in the House, uncovered a systematic campaign by the FBI to neutralize and disrupt movement building and organizing by a broad array of socialist, left, anti-war, black, native American, queer and women's groups.

While witness after witness testified to the chilling effects of murderous programs such as COINTELPRO, the FBI had accomplished their primary mission.

By 1976, the broad movements created by the radical upsurge of the 1960's had been destroyed. COINTELPRO, "given another name," continued to operate; standard practice in the advanced capitalist "democracies."

4. THE FBI, KU KLUX KLAN, AND AMERICAN NAZI PARTY: THE GREENSBORO MASSACRE

Another case which, after all, "only encompasses everything that has been done or will be done in the future," occurred in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1979. On November 3, 1979, a terrorist posse organized by Klansmen and neo-Nazis murdered five members of the Communist Workers Party (CWP) in broad daylight. Their "crime" had been to organize a "Smash the Klan" demonstration in Greensboro among the city's heavily black and working class mill workers. CWP members were also union organizers and activists who had upset "the fundamental order of things."58

An essential component for the operation organized by night- riding Klan killers was U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) agent, Bernard Butkovich. The BATF agent, a Vietnam veteran and demolitions expert undercover in the local branch of the American Nazi Party, helped the fascists obtain automatic weapons. After the smoke cleared and five people lay dead, the BATF "asset" assisted the Klansmen and Nazis in making their escape.59

This anti-communist death squad, had been recruited, organized and led on its mission of murder by an FBI infiltrator, Edward Dawson. Dawson was also a paid informant for the Greensboro Police Department.60

Dawson reported to his handlers that eighty-five Klansmen meeting in near-by Lincolnton had expressed their intent to counter-demonstrate on November 3.61

The night-riders had stated they intended to arm themselves for their counter-demonstration and that Klan leader, Virgil Griffin, was actively calling out Klansmen from other states to participate. It was also rumored that fascists and neo-Nazis from the Winston-Salem area had obtained a machine gun and other weapons. They planned to come to Greensboro on November 3, "in order to shoot up the place."62

Dawson reported to Greensboro detective Jerry Cooper, that Klansmen and neo-Nazis were assembling at the home of a local Klan member and that they were armed. Grand Dragon, Virgil Griffin was present.63

The police/FBI informant had received a copy of the parade route the day before the CWP-initiated march; a map had been supplied by Detective Cooper. Dawson had driven over the parade route three hours earlier with a contingent of out-of-town Klansmen. Dawson also alerted Cooper that the Klansmen and neo- Nazis possessed three handguns and nine long-barrelled rifles, including automatic weapons supplied by BATF agent, Bernard Butkovich.64

Prior to the beginning of the CWP's march and demonstration, Cooper and other police officials drove by the house where the Klansmen and neo-Nazis were assembling. They jotted down some license plate numbers and then declared a lunch break -- at approximately 10 a.m.!65

Less than an hour later, Cooper, trailing behind the fascist caravan reported, "shots fired" and then "heavy gunfire;" however the tactical squad assigned to monitor the march were still out to lunch.66

Two other officers responding to a domestic disturbance call, noted the absence of patrol cars usually assigned to the area. They arrived at the Morningside projects, the site of the CWP march. Officer Wise later reported having received a most unusual call from the police communications center. The officers were asked how long they anticipated being at their call; they were subsequently advised to "clear the area as soon as possible."67

Moments later, five demonstrators lay dead, murdered in broad daylight by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party.68 According to anti-racist researcher, Michael Novick, the Greensboro massacre "set the tone for neo-Nazi organizing by the KKK and other white supremacists in the ensuing decade."69

A subsequent civil suit brought against the neo-Nazis, the Klan and the Greensboro police resulted in a partial award to the surviving family members murdered by the fascists. However, the FBI and BATF agents walked away scott-free.

FBI Director William Webster, labelled the charge of federal complicity "utterly absurd," even though the killers had been recruited, organized and led on their murderous rampage by Bureau informant, Edward Dawson and that automatic weapons supplied by BATF agent, Bernard Butkovich, were used in the deadly attack.70

As we have seen, however, this is simply standard operating procedure; what Noam Chomsky has termed, the "demonstration effect" for those who dare to challenge the hegemony of U.S. corporate elites and their fascist and clerical-fascist allies.

5. CLINIC DEFENSE AFTER PENSACOLA

The search for "endless enemies" by the FBI and other government agencies will continue; of this we can be certain. It is critical that grass roots organizations continue to defend women's clinics and health care providers from the deadly attacks of the Christian Right. The clinic defense movement, if it is to remain a vital source of strength and empowerment for women -- and by its heroic example of militant mass struggle, to all who fight against every vestige of capitalist oppression -- must begin an active campaign that directly challenges and defeats the Christian Right.

Any "partnership" with repressive government agencies, however provisional, would be a grave political error with consequences impossible to foresee.

Even before the smoke cleared in Pensacola, however, the drum-beat of violence-baiting and specious comparisons between "extremists on both sides of the abortion issue," have begun to reverberate in the bourgeois press.71

As with other cases of institutional state repression cited in this report, the media played a pivotal role in legitimizing attacks by the FBI and other federal agencies on radical and progressive movements.72 By uncritically presenting Bureau disinformation as unadulterated facts, despite evidence to the contrary, the media are witting and unwitting accomplices for the FBI's on-going COINTELPRO operations against the Left.

Progressive researcher, Chip Berlet, has described this as a process he terms "paradigm shift."73 Through "paradigm shift," progressive organizations are transformed into shadowy terrorist networks by the media. Oftentimes, political disinformation on groups targeted for repression is passed to the media by reactionary right-wing opponents or state agencies themselves; the ubiquitous "unnamed government sources."

According to Berlet's definition, "The perceptual shift from dissent to criminality first goes public with unsubstantiated allegations and conclusions in the media of the reactionary and paranoid political Right. Eventually, the right-wing media attempt to re-frame the public's perception of the dissident group as subversive or criminal spills over into more mainstream media...The dissidents are seen as non-rational, unstable, alien, and capable of odious crimes because of their zealous mindset. Lists of potential crimes are discussed, and finally actual crimes are blamed on the political movement. Ideas that were once merely marginalized are thus criminalized...In some cases, the re-framing is so successful that there is widespread sentiment supporting the attacks. When this process of re- framing is successful, paradigm shift has occurred."74

BACORR and Refuse & Resist! representatives who recently traveled to Florida were continually quoted out of context while the primary source material they distributed, linking national leaders and Pensacola anti-abortion activists, went unreported.75

They were followed and harassed by local and federal law enforcement officials, while the anti-abortionists were given unlimited access to patients outside the Pensacola Women's Medical Services clinic.76

According to an article appearing in the "New York Times," their correspondent, Sam Howe Verhovek, portrayed BACORR and Refuse & Resist! activists as "fanatics" and "zealots;" that is as "non-rational, unstable, alien," according to Berlet's definition.77

Though Mr. Howe Verhovek and other Times' correspondents had interviewed BACORR members and were well-aware of evidence in their possession linking "former Klansman" John Burt, Paul Hill and other anti-abortion activists to a plot to stalk and harass Dr. Britton prior to his assassination, this material was ignored. Mr. Howe Verhovek offered instead, a piece of unvarnished slander as a substitute for an investigation of the complex interconnections among anti-abortion cadres.

According to Howe Verhovek's hit-piece, "At a rally sponsored by a coalition of abortion-rights groups...one speaker pointedly refused to disavow violence against anti-abortion demonstrators."78

The speaker, a member of Refuse & Resist! had actually drawn the comparison between a battered woman defending herself against her batterer, and women who defend themselves from physical attacks directed at them by anti-abortion zealots. Thus, self- defense, is transformed, in typical "Times'" fashion, into offensive violence!79

While we cannot control the political disinformation of the bourgeois media, we must continue to be clear as to our goals -- unrestricted access to reproductive health care for women. The tactics we select in order to achieve this goal must reflect the actual contours of the struggle as it is waged today.

Self-defense is a right of all oppressed people. Just as we would urge a woman about to raped to use whatever force is necessary to deter a rapist, we would also counsel clinic defenders, patient escorts or health care providers to defend themselves from attacks launched by anti-abortion thugs. To countenance anything less is political suicide -- and morally indefensible.

In this regard, we would be well-advised to look to other historical parallels -- to the history of fighting fascism, for example -- with such knowledge in hand, clinic defense activists will draw the necessary conclusions.

THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES... REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!

NOTES

1. Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, "Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement," South End Press, Boston, MA, 1990, pp. 61-62

2. Betsy Powell, President, California Pro-Life Council, fund-raising letter, August 1993; cited in: Tracey Jeffreys- Renault and Jerry Sloan, "WITHOUT JUSTICE FOR ALL: A Report on the Christian Right in California and Beyond," Planned Parenthood of Sacramento Valley, Public Affairs Dept., 2415 K Street, Sacramento, CA 95816-5001, 1993, pp. 29-30

3. David Johnston, "Federal Agents Sent to Protect Abortion Clinics," NEW YORK TIMES, Tuesday, August 2, 1994, p. A-1

4. Mimi Hall, "Abortion foes deny there's a conspiracy," USA TODAY, Friday, August 5, 1994, p. 3A

5. Gene Owens, "Abortion: call to arms," THE MOBILE PRESS, Tuesday, August 2, 1994, p. 1A

6. Kathy Kemp, "Priest calls for deadly force against abortion," BIRMINGHAM POST-HERALD, reprinted, SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER, Tuesday, August 2, 1994, p. A-1

7. C. Roy McMillan, "Two former killers in this house...and we sleep fine. Thank you," LIFE ADVOCATE, Portland, OR, February 1994, p. 34

8. David Tortorano and Renee Busby, "25 on list support killing," THE MOBILE PRESS, Tuesday, August 2, 1994, p. 4A

9. "Abortion activist may have planned killing," ASSOCIATED PRESS, reprinted, SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER, Thursday, March 17, 1994, p. C-24

10. "Abortion Protesters Target Mississippi Doctor," REUTER, August 8, 1994

11. United States Taxpayers Party (USTP); brochure in author's possession

12. "Klan Broadens Anti-Abortion Plans, REUTER, Saturday, August 20, 1994

13. Connie Cass, "Terror plot probe in clinic slayings," ASSOCIATED PRESS, reprinted, SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER, Saturday, July 30, 1994, p. A-1

14. Michael Novick, "BLUE BY DAY, WHITE BY NIGHT: Organized White Supremacist Groups in Law Enforcement Agencies," People Against Racist Terror (PART), PO BOX 1990, Burbank, CA 91507, Revised and Updated, February 1993, p. 3

15. Ross Gelbspan, "Break-ins, Death Threats and the FBI: The Covert War Against the Central American Movement," South End Press, Boston, MA, 1991, pp. 71-72

16. ibid.

17. "Incidents of Violence & Disruption Against Abortion Providers," National Abortion Federation, Washington, DC, August 10, 1994

18. Tom Burghardt, "LOW-INTENSITY WARFARE: An Anti-Abortion Strategy of Terror," Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights, San Francisco, CA January 1994, p. 1

19. Churchill and Vander Wall, op. cit.

20. ibid.

21. ibid.

22. For Further Information on Political Prisoners in the United States, contact: Partisan Defense Committee (PDC), PO BOX 99, Canal Street Station, New York, New York 10013, (212) 406- 4252

23. Pat Robertson, undated fund-raising letter, summer 1992; cited in Kate Cornell, "The Covert Tactics and Overt Agenda of the New Christian Right," COVERT ACTION QUARTERLY, Washington, DC, Winter 1992-1993 (Number 43), p. 51

24. For further background on: Council for Inter-American Security (CIS) and American Security Council (ASC), see Russ Bellant, "THE COORS CONNECTION: How Coors Family Philanthropy Undermines Democratic Pluralism," Political Research Associates, Cambridge, MA 1990; for further background on Lyndon LaRouche, see Dennis King, "Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism," Doubleday, New York, 1989; for further background on Rev. Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church's relationship to the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), see Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, "Inside the League," Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, 1986

25. Gelbspan, op. cit., p. 79

26. ibid.

27. ibid., p. 80

28. ibid., p. 82

29. ibid., p. 83

30. ibid.

31. ibid., p. 82

32. ibid., p. 77

33. ibid., p. 45

34. Anderson and Anderson, op. cit., multiple references

35. ibid. pp. 56-57

36. Gelbspan, op. cit., p. 78

37. ibid., p. 169

38. ibid., p. 170

39. ibid.

40. ibid.

41. ibid., p. 171

42. Sara Diamond, "SPIRITUAL WARFARE: The Politics of the Christian Right," South End Press, Boston, MA, 1989, pp. 165, 168-169

43. Gelbspan, op. cit., p. 75

44. ibid.

45. ibid., p. 76

46. ibid.

47. ibid.

48. Churchill and Vander Wall, op. cit., p. 182

49. ibid.

50. ibid.

51. ibid.

52. ibid.

53. ibid.

54. ibid.

55. ibid.

56. ibid.

57. ibid.

58. Novick, op. cit., p. 4

59. Churchill And Vander Wall, op. cit., p. 182

60. Frank Donner, "PROTECTORS OF PRIVILEGE: Red Squads and Police Repression in America," University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990, p. 360

61. ibid.

62. ibid.

63. ibid.

64. Novick, op. cit. p. 4

65. Donner, op. cit., p. 361

66. ibid.

67. ibid.

68. ibid.

69. Novick, op. cit., p. 4

70. Churchill and Vander Wall, op. cit., p. 181

71. Staff reports, "Denouncing violence, Burt called 'murderer,'" PENSACOLA NEWS JOURNAL, Tuesday, August 2, 1994, p. 3A

72. Churchill and Vander Wall, op. cit.

73. Chip Berlet, "Re-Framing Dissent as Criminal Subversion," COVERT ACTION INFORMATION BULLETIN, Washington, DC, Summer 1992, (Number 41)

74. ibid., p. 36

75. Laura Weide, Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights, San Francisco, CA, personal communication

76. ibid.

77. Sam Howe Verhovek, "10 Years of Anger and Strife Over Abortion in Pensacola, NEW YORK TIMES,Saturday, August 6, 1994, p. 1

78. ibid., p. 5

79. Weide, op. cit.