WRL Homepage • WRL Programs • WRL Literature • WRL Actions • WRL Employment • About WRL
|
Homepages: | |
|
The
Judi Bari Verdict: By Bill Weinberg
Awarding $2.9 million to the estate of the late Judi Bari and $1.5 million to Darryl Cherney, the jury found four FBI men and three Oakland police officers liable for First and Fourth amendment violations. Cherney told the San Francisco Chronicle, “The American public needs to understand that the FBI can’t be trusted. Ten jurors got a good, hard look at the FBI and they didn’t like what they saw. It’s not about the money.” Robert Bloom, attorney for Bari and Cherney, said the ruling “shows what the FBI did then, it shows America what the FBI does now.” The jury found that six of the seven defendants violated civil rights by arresting the activists, conducting searches of their homes, and carrying out a smear campaign in the press, calling Earth First! a terrorist organization and calling the activists bombers. [Editors’ note: See also “FBI Labels Peace Group ‘Terrorists’”] Two of the Oakland officers named in the suit said they were heavily influenced by FBI agents who arrived at the scene of the bombing and told them the two victims were tied to domestic terrorism. FBI agents, in turn, maintained the Oakland police pushed for the swift arrests. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken denied a government request for dismissal, rejecting claims by government attorneys that remarks at a rally organized by supporters of Cherney and Bari tainted the jury’s deliberations. The defendants included current and former FBI agents Frank Doyle, John Reikes, Phil Sena and Stockton Buck; Oakland police Sgt. Robert Chenault, retired Oakland police Sgt. Michael Sitterud and former Oakland police Lt. Mike Sims. Two retired FBI agents were dropped from the case by Wilken, citing lack of evidence. Only one defendant, Buck, was cleared of all wrongdoing. The jury also failed to find that the FBI and Oakland police engaged in a conspiracy against the plaintiffs. But Cherney was ecstatic at the verdict. “We lived for years under the cloud of suspicion—Judi died without ever being officially exonerated,” he told the Chronicle. “We waited a long time for the chance to show our innocence. I hope now that we will finally get an investigation into who really committed the bombing. I think the government owes us an apology. They have owed us an apology for 12 years.” A statement from the Bari/Cherney defense committee said, “This verdict is a referendum against the FBI’s gross interference with people’s right to dissent at a time when Attorney General Ashcroft, FBI Director Mueller and the Bush administration are arrogating huge power to themselves and the FBI to spy on legitimate groups and organizers and infringe the constitutional rights of the public.” Blaming
the Victims Bari woke up in the hospital with a fractured pelvis and pulverized tailbone. She also found that she and Cherney, who had suffered a facial cut, were under arrest—on charges of making the bomb. Simultaneously, her home, Cherney’s home and the Oakland house where they were staying were ransacked by the FBI. From the first, the FBI and Oakland police focused on Bari, Cherney and Earth First! in their investigation of the bombing. The voluminous evidence pointing to the timber industry was completely overlooked. Bari had long been receiving death threats from anti-environmental paramilitary groups made up of timber workers, with names like the Sahara Club (a play on Sierra Club). One threatening letter even showed her own face in the cross-hairs of a rifle. The previous year, her car—with her young daughters Lisa and Jessica on board—had been rammed from behind by a logging truck, totaling the car and sending Bari and the kids to a hospital with minor injuries. In the course of Redwood Summer—which continued despite the bombing—another bomb (which turned out to be a dud) was planted at the Earth First! office in Arcata. (A fundamentalist zealot calling himself the Lord’s Avenger had also sent a letter to a local newspaper threatening Bari after she helped organize a counter-protest against an anti-abortion campaign at a Planned Parenthood Clinic in Ukiah, CA.) Bari later wrote: “I cannot even describe the terror of finding myself in agony in the hospital, crippled for life, reading headlines like “Bomb Made at Bari’s House,” and fearing that I would spend the rest of my life in jail and not get to raise my two small children.” After six weeks, the Alameda County DA decided not to press charges against Bari and Cherney. Originally told she would never walk again, Bari surprised her doctors by walking in a matter of months, albeit with a cane. But the true perpetrators of the bombing remained at large. In May 1991, one year after the blast, Bari and Cherney launched their suit against the FBI for violating their civil rights. The suit especially targeted the FBI’s San Francisco chief Richard W. Held who headed the investigation, a veteran of “dirty tricks” campaigns against the Black Panthers, American Indian Movement and Puerto Rican independence struggle. In 1997, Judge Wilken removed Held from the case on grounds of government immunity. But the discovery process in the suit proved that the FBI was up to dirty tricks again—this time against Earth First! The FBI initially said they hadn’t been watching Bari and Cherney. But documents released in the case (first released completely blacked out and only released legibly after the judge so ordered the FBI) proved otherwise. There were surveillance reports for the months leading up to and following the bombing—but those for the month of bombing were mysteriously “missing.” The evidence also points to possible collusion between FBI agents and the actual perpetrators of the bombing. Defendant Doyle was the agent in charge of the 1990 bomb scene and the relief supervisor of Squad 13, the joint terrorism squad made up of FBI and Oakland officers that collected extensive files on political groups in the Bay Area. Reikes was the head of the FBI terrorist squad who came to Oakland Police headquarters the day of the bombing to give an inflammatory briefing on Earth First! Sena was already engaged in a secret investigation of Earth First! and concocted a fake informant tip. Sims was an Oakland homicide lieutenant in charge of other officers investigating the bombing and the decision maker for the arrests of the activists. Sitterud was charged with ignoring evidence at the scene and concocting information to implicate the activists. Chenault was charged with writing the first fraudulent search warrant affidavit. It was also revealed that the same agents who investigated the bombing had one month earlier led a “bomb school” on a Louisiana Pacific clearcut in Eureka, where they practiced detonating and investigating car bombs. On videotape, FBI instructor Frank Doyle told other agents at the Oakland bomb site, “This is the final exam.” On March 2, 1999, Judi Bari died at her home in Mendocino County, of breast cancer that had metastasized to her liver. Cherney carried on the case. For more on the Judi Bari case, see www.judibari.org. Journalist Bill Weinberg is the author of Homage to Chiapas (Verso, 2000, coming out this summer in paperback) and the creator of and lead reporter for the online newsweekly, “WW3 Report” (www.ww3report.com). |
WRL Homepage • WRL Programs • WRL Literature • WRL Actions • WRL Employment • About WRL
n
June 11, a federal jury in Oakland, CA, awarded $4.4 million in damages
to two Earth First! activists who were injured in a 1990 car-bomb blast.
The jury agreed with plaintiffs’ arguments that FBI agents and Oakland
police violated the activists’ constitutional rights by focusing on them
as suspects in the blast.