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Earth First! Car Bombing

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Earth First! Car Bombing Timber Wars Judi Bari Common Courage Ress Monroe, Maine The Earth First! Car Bombing kicked in. "I won't talk to you without a lawyer," I The Earth First! mumbled, and drifted back into unconsciousness. Now, three and a half years later, even the FBI Car Bombing has given up saying that Darryl Cherney and I bombed ourselves. They slandered us all over the Earth First Journal, national press, declaring us guilty of transporting February 1994 the bomb that was used to try to kill us. But in the end, they were unable to produce any evidence against us, and the district attorney refused to Part I press charges. Still, no serious investigation of the bombing was ever conducted, and the bomber The Set-Up remains at large. I knew it was a bomb the second it exploded. I In the wake of this outrageous treatment, felt it rip through me with a force more powerful Darryl and I filed a lawsuit against the FBI and and terrible than anything I could imagine. It blew Oakland Police, charging them with false arrest and right through my car seat, shattering my pelvis, other civil rights violations. Last month, in a strong- crushing my lower backbone, and leaving me ly worded 3-0 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals instantly paralyzed. I couldn't feel my legs, but des- turned down the FBI's third and last attempt to get perate pain filled my body. I didn't know such pain the case thrown out of court. We are now headed for existed. I could feel the life force draining from me, trial, and through the court procedures we have got- and I knew I was dying. I tried to think of my chil- ten access to police photos, reports, and deposi- dren's faces to find a reason to stay alive, but the tions, and gained the release of 5,000 pages of FBI pain was too great, and I couldn't picture them. I files on the case. As we peel back the layers of lies wanted to die. I begged the paramedics to put me and deception surrounding this case, we can begin out. to reconstruct what really happened. I have had I woke up in the hospital 12 hours later, groggy plenty of time now to ponder the magnitude and and confused from shock and morphine. My leg was horror of this attack. And I think it' important for all in traction, tubes trailed from my body, and I was Earth First! activists to know the story. absolutely immobile. As my eyes gradually focused, I made out two figures standing over me. They were COINTELPRO cops. Slowly I began to understand that they were trying to question me. "You are under arrest for pos- The events surrounding the 1990 bombing can session of explosives," one of them said. And even in only be explained in the context of COINTELPRO, J. this devastated condition, my survival instincts Edgar Hoover's Counterintelligence Program to, in his words. "disrupt, misdirect, isolate and neutral- TIMBER WARS The Earth First! Car Bombing ize" radical groups in the U.S. The techniques of activists murdered and movements destroyed, broke COINTELPRO include infiltration, surveillance. into the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, and liber- agent provocateurs, disinformation campaigns, fake ated the files. In 1975, the Senate Judiciary com- documents, and framing or assassinating political mittee conducted a congressional Investigation and leaders. find the FBI's COINTELPRO activities to be illegal, The FBI operation against Earth First! in involving massive violations of constitutional rights. Arizona was a classic example of COINTELPRO tac- The FBI claims to have discontinued COINTEL- tics (see Mark Davis's articles in the last two EF! PRO after this exposure. Yet in the bombing case I Journals). Agent provocateurs infiltrated the group find not only the resurgence of COINTELPRO, but and misdirected them into doing an action they also the privatization of COINTELPRO. Not just the would not have done on their own, then busted FBI, but now the private corporations as well, are them for it. The FBI also attempted to frame Dave using the same counter-intelligence tactics that Foreman, and certainly succeeded at neutralizing were declared illegal in the 1970's to try to discredit him a s a spokesman and inspirational figure in and destroy Earth First! in the 1990's. Earth First! The man in charge of my case at the FBI was The Uzi Photo Richard Held, director of the San Francisco FBI The effort to disrupt Ukiah Earth First! and office. Held has a 25-year history as one of the prin- paint me as a terrorist began in November of 1988, ciple operatives of COINTELPRO. He is known for one and a half years before the bombing. At that producing fake documents, including death threats time, a man named Irv Sutley came to Ukiah to and insulting letters and cartoons, and sending attend an abortion clinic defense that I had orga- them back and forth between different factions of nized with Ukiah EF! and other local groups. We the Black Panther Party in order to terrorize or were truly outrageous at that demo, singing our enrage the leaders and destabalize the group. Held newly written song, "Will the Fetus Be Aborted" to was personally involved in the framing of Black the Operation Rescue thugs. Panther Geronimo jiJaga (Pratt) and American I knew Irv, although not well, from my earlier Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier, both of work in the Central America movement in Sonoma whom have been in jail for decades for crimes they County. Irv was traveling with a good friend of mine, did not commit. I cannot describe the cold terror of and after the demonstration we all went back to waking up in the hospital, crippled for life, and find- Darryl's house. We talked about our recent success- ing out that Richard Held was accusing me of blow- ful blockade of Cahto Wilderness, in which I had ing myself up with my own bomb. been arrested for vehicular trespass. We smoked COINTELPRO was publicly exposed in 1971 dope and fantasized about imaginary actions, when Black Panther sympathizers, tired of seeing including creating an oil spill in our pro-oil con- TIMBER WARS The Earth First! Car Bombing gressman Doug Bosco's back yard swimming pool. indeed taken out the ad. Around that time, Irv After a while, Irv opened the trunk of his car Sutley called me up and asked me to sell him some and showed us that he was carrying a modified Uzi marijuana. But, while I may have been stupid submachine gun, which he told us was legal. We enough to pose for joke photos with an Uzi, I was took turns posing for photos with the gun, laughing not stupid enough to sell marijuana. I refused to get and trying to look tough. Irv placed the gun in my him the dope, and I was not busted. hands, showed me how to hold it, and arranged it The Uzi photo did not go to waste, though. so my Earth First! shirt was clearly visible. Shortly after the bombing, the Ukiah Police released About a month later, unknown to me a t the it to the press, and it was printed in all the large time, the Ukiah Police received a copy of the photo mainstream newspapers as "proof' that I was a ter- of me holding the Uzi, along with a letter from an rorist. anonymous informant. The letter combined half- truths and outright lies to make me look like a ter- Timber Industry Violence rorist. It read: During the years leading up to the bombing, I joined Earth First to be able to report illegal Earth First! in Northern California had grown activities of that organization. Now I want to steadily in both size and prestige. We were every- establish a contact to provide information to where, blocking log trucks, sitting in trees, protest- authorities. The leader and main force of earth ing at the mills, or taking over the Board of Forestry First in Ukiah is Judi Bari. She is facing a tres- dressed as animals. We saved Cahto Wilderness. We passing charge in connection with the Earth saved Trout Creek. By 1989, during EF! National First sabotage of a logging road in the Cahto Tree-Sit Week, we were able to pull off six strong Peak area. She did jail time in Sonoma County for blocking the federal building to support the actions in one week in the Redwood Region, with Communist government in Nicaragua. Bari and local watershed groups providing support, and the Ukiah Earth First are planning vandalism EF!ers showing up to block logging in a new location directed at congressman Doug Bosco to protest each day. offshore oil drilling. Earth First recently began Meanwhile, side by side with the Earth First! automatic weapons training.. work, we were building alliances with progressive timber workers to oppose the corporations. We The letter went on to offer to set me up for a formed IWW Local # 1, affiliated with the radical marijuana bust. The police were instructed to take Wobblies union, and started signing u p timber out a coded ad in the local newspaper if they were workers and representing them in workplace issues. interested. We checked the archives of the local We publicly denounced the timber corporations, not paper years later when we were investigating all this, and sure enough, we found that the police had only for their treatment of the forest, but also for their treatment of their employees.
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