Click here for Full Issue of EIR Volume 4, Number 51, December 19, 1977 COUNTERINTELLIGENCE The Case Of The George Jackson Brigade On June 20, 1976, the Seattle Police Department raided immediately dismantled. As documented here, the very a Seattle appartment as part of their ongoing in­ same organizations backing the suit against the vestigation into the terrorist George Jackson Brigade, Seattle Police Department are up to their ears in finding components of timing devices, diagrams of bankrolling the George Jackson Brigade, providing the public buildings, and a "hit list," which included names printing presses, legal defense funds, and, in some cases, of U.S. Labor Party members and others. With this the "safe houses" for Brigade members that ensure the evidence in hand, the entire Brigade, but especially the existence of terrorism in this country. above-ground support networks that protect the terror­ The Coalition on Government Spying (CGS) is itself ists, of which the apartment's occupants, Paul ZiiseJ, part of the national organization under a similar name, Helene Ellenbogen and Wayne Parker are top figures, the Campaign to Stop Government Spying. The CGS in could have been dismantled. Seattle works in conjunction with the Institute for Policy They weren't, and the prospect of continued terrorist Studies of Washington, D.C., the Center for National attacks by the Brigade looms even larger. In the past 12 Securities Studies. Locally the Coalition is composed of months, the Brigade has been directly responsible for the the Seattle Left Bank Collective, the National Lawyers I.c,'. deaths of two policemen, two Brigade members, the Guild, EI Centro de la Raza, and the American Friends wounding of one policeman and numerous innocent . Service Committee. bystanders by George Jackson Brigade bombings. The Coalition and the publicity from its lawsuit against Having failed to complete the job of rounding up the the Seattle Police Intelligence Unit have prompted the George Jackson Brigade, the Seattle Police D�partment Seattle City Council to begin hearings in January that Intelligence Unit is now trying to save its own neck will consider legislation to hamstring the police's efforts against a multi-million-dollar civil damages suit brought in locating and detaining George Jackson Brigade against it by the Coalition on Government Spying for members. once and for all. The CGS intends to use its maintaining files ;on organizations and individuals asso­ anticipated success in restricting police counterterrorist ciated with the Brigade's "radical" support networks. capabilities in Seattle to wage similar battles against the This offensive against the police department occurs in law enforcement agencies of Philadelphia, New York, the midst of a renewed terrorist spree by the Brigade and Los Angeles, for starters. They will simultaneously including 5 bank robberies and several bombings since mount a campaign in the U.S. Congress for federal May, 1977. legislation. Seattle Police and the FBI have stated that only two The stated intentions of the Coalition in the Seattle actual Brigade members remain at large. The others, lawsuit demonstrate the inadequacies of any locally Edward Mead, and Mark Edwin Cook are serving jail defined antiterrorist efforts by municipal law en­ sentences, and Bruce Seidel died in a shootout with forcement officials. What is at stake here is not a local police. The support networks however are stilI actively phenomenon, but the national and international networks involved in recruiting new footsoldiers to carry out the which make terrorism possible. terrorist dirty work. Two recent arrests provide an op­ There can be no other explanation for the fact that the portunity once again to finish off the terrorist network: three occupants of the apartment raided on June 20 are • On Nov. 4, 1977, Rita Brown was arrested while not only stilI on the streets but, in fact, playing leading casing a bank and promptly extradicted to Oregon to roles in shaping the defense of George Jackson Brigade face charges in connection with several other bank terrorists and in suing the Seattle Police for destruction robberies. of their intelligence files. Paul Zilsel is the head of the • On Nov. 19, 1977, the Los Angeles Police Department Seattle Left Bank Collective Bookstore, the official and the FBI arrested five people identified as members center for the release of all Brigade communiques. of the Weather Underground shortly before they were to Helene Ellenbogen is known to have personal ties to the set off a bomb at the offices of a California State Senator. West German Red Army Fraktion (RAF - the "Baader­ Three of those arrested, Clayton van Lydegraf, Thomas Meinhof gang"), having worked with the third occupant Michael Justensen and Judith Emily Bissell, had used of the apartment, Wayne Parker, in smuggling the Seattle as a base of operation since the early 1970s, when memoirs of RAF member Michael "Bommi" Baumann, Justensen and Bissell were members of the Seattle liber­ into the· United States for translation into English. The ation Front. resulting book, published by Pulp Press, is a "how-to" The tragic irony of the Seattle situation is that it serves manual on urban terrorism and widely circulated as a model to the rest of this nation's law enforcement throughout V;S. underground terrorist networks. Parker community as to what is in store if the concentric circles is also a writer for Open Road, an anarchist publication of "radical support" for terrorism - reaching into based in Vancouver; British Columbia. federal agencies and national institutions - are not The question to be answered is, "who is protecting EXECUTIVE INTELLIGENCE REVIEW COUNTERINTELLIGENCE 1 © 1977 EIR News Service Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. these people?" Once the problem of terrorist activities is Evans' plan for Washington State was to replace approached in that way, not only will the police have a prisons with community-based, mini-centers and vastly fighting chance to do their job, but another facet of expand programs like the University of Washington's current terrorist deployments will rapidly emerge. It is LAMP program where convicted felons served out their no mere coincidence that the agencies and individuals in sentence by enrolling in a University curriculum. By these terrorist support networks interface in a fun­ 1972, these programs were already under the control of damental way with the environmentalist movement. the National Lawyers Guild and heavily infiltrated by the These radical networks are, in fact, molding a new Maoist Revolutionary Union, which used the halfway fascist movment, which will justify the use of terrorist houses as recruiting centers. deployments in a specifically "anticapitalist," "anti­ In mid-1973, Seattle was the site for Con-Vention, a two­ industrial" context of a broader push for "soft energy" day affair bringing together enlightened corrections development. officials with "reformed" ex-convicts. Held at the The Seattle radical community has been reshuffled in headquarters of El Centro do la Raza, a Chicano com­ the past six months to reflect this "new revolutionary" munity center, Con-Vention was co-sponsored by the bent; Ellenbogen and Zilsel are emerging as leading Office of Seattle Mayor Wes Uhlman, Seattle Central spokesman at antinuclear protests. The shift is also Community College, Seattle University, the State suggested by minor bombings of Washington State in­ Department of Institutions, the Washington State Parole dustrial firms by the "Environmental Protection Unit of and Probation Department, the Prisoners Coalition, the the New World Liberation Front." The modus operandi University of Washington, and the Seattle Public of the bombings is strikingly similar to that of the Defenders Office. In attendance were Washington State George Jackson Brigade. Attorney General Slade Gordon and three individuals who would later become notorious for their activities as George Jackson Brigade terrorists - Mark Edwin Cook, I. Origins of the George Jackson Brigade Edward Mead, and Bruce Seidel. Any doubts that the George Jackson Brigade would not Beginning in about 1972, the prison systems of have been created but for this massive government­ California, New York, Washington, and Massachusetts backed and foundation-funded prison operation are laid became experimental laboratories for the creation of to rest by examining the history of Edward Mead. Mead, domestic terrorist groups through programs run under 34 years old, is now serving time in Walla Walla prison the auspices of the Justice Department's Law En­ for an attempted robbery of a bank in Tukwila, forcement Assistance Administration. Through the use Washington by the George Jackson Brigade on Jan. 23, of behavior modification and "small group" brain­ 1976. During the attempt, two policemen and one of his washing - with a heavy infusion of "radical" ideology accomplices, Bruce Seidel, were killed in a gun battle. from prison reform and prisoner support networks - the Mead's history of convictions for armed robberies and U.S. prison population became the manpower pools for similar crimes date back 15 years, but while serving time groups like the Black Liberation Army, the Symbionese in MacNeil Island Federal Penitentiary in the early 1970s Liberation Army, the New World Liberation Front, the he came into contact with prison reform networks and Sam Melville/Jonathan Jackson Brigade, and the