RANT
Here's another script from my most recent bit of radio
commentary on
KEOS.
On May 24, 1990 a bomb exploded in a car driven by Judi Bari and
Darryl Cherney, two members of the environment organization
Earth First!. They had been organizing a protest called Redwood
Summer, a large campaign of nonviolent protests against corporate
timber interests clearcutting redwood forests. The Oakland
Police - at the request of the FBI - immediately arrested the two
and charged them with being terrorists injured by the accidental
explosion of their own bomb. Two months later - after a steady
stream of press conferences in which the police and the FBI made
claim after claim of evidence proving their guilt - the District
Attorney refused to file any charges. Why? A total lack of
evidence.
During the interim the incident was hysterically played up in
the usual nutbar outlets as proof that those evil environmentalists
were indeed the bloody terrorists they'd been warning them about.
Rush Limbaugh probably soiled himself in cackling glee, chanting
"I told you so" over and over with the supposed proof that the
environmentalists were indeed the environazis he'd been calling them
for years. Even after Bari and Cherney weren't charged with
anything, they were still attacked as guilty, no doubt having escaped
arrest and conviction only because of some combination of bad luck
on the police's part and evil lawyer tricks on theirs.
If that were all there were to it then it'd be just another propaganda
victory for the reactionary hatemongers as well as another overzealous
attempt by the Feds to co-opt a political movement disliked by
their corporate buddies. But it wasn't. It turns out - in
evidence culled from the FBI's own files - that agents falsified
evidence against Bari and Cherney, suppressed exonerating evidence,
and conspired with Oakland police to aattempt to frame them.
Take the explosion itself, for instance. Press releases stated that
it was a bomb constructed by Earth First to be used against the timber
industry, and that it accidentally exploded while being transported
on the back seat floorboard.
Documents written by the FBI's chief bomb expert - not released until
years after the incident - reveal that the bomb had been completely
hidden under the driver's seat, that it had a motion trigger as well
as a timer, and that it had functioned exactly as designed rather than
exploding accidentally.
The obvious next question is, of course, if they didn't make the bomb
then who did? Well, not only did the FBI - knowing that they weren't
guilty - attempt to frame them, it also refused to investigate real
clues about the incident. For instance, they didn't even bother to
attempt to identify fingerprints found on the bomb. And the more time
that passes - nearly a decade now - the less likely it is for a crime
to be solved.
Why the crude frame job that only a complete idiot would think would
survive any sort of rational scrutiny? After all, it would be just a matter of
time before the frame-up was discovered. Given the political circumstances
in California in 1990, in turns out that time was just
what one possible suspect needed. On the ballot for the 1990
fall election was Proposition 130, which would have banned unsustainable
liquidation logging and clearcutting. The forest industry obviously
opposed it, to the point of hiring a PR firm to conduct a multi-million dollar
campaign to attempt to paint and thus smear the issue as the Earth First!
initiative. A major tactic was to spread phoney Earth First! flyers
calling for violence and sabotage against the lumber companies.
The bomb exploded a week or so after they began spreading the flyers.
A great deal of outrage and hatred was expressed against Earth First! as
the propagandists and the police successfully combined to make the frame-up
stick just long enough. Proposition 130 failed.
Judi Bari died of cancer in 1997, but a lawsuit she launched against
those who framed her and attempted to kill her is still alive.
posted by Steven Baum
3/15/2000 04:10:41 PM |
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