BOMBING CASE UPDATE
Summer
2001
The trial in Earth
First!ers Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney’s civil rights lawsuit against the FBI
and Oakland Police (OPD) begins October 1, 2001. Here is an update of what
we’ve been doing on the legal front to get ready.
The “Motion for Justice”
With less than three months
left before trial, the legal team is taking one last shot at bringing notorious
COINTELPRO operative Richard W. Held back into the case, along
with other top FBI supervisors. (In 1997, Judge Wilken ruled inexplicably that
Held and the others had immunity from prosecution.) The unconventional motion
— the actual title is “Plaintiffs' Status Report and Motion for Revision of
Orders”— dubbed the “Motion for Justice,” asks Judge Wilken to revisit
some earlier decisions in order to restore the FBI agents, and the integrity of
the case as it comes to trial. This would also eliminate the need for an
individual appeal after the trial regarding Held, who was in charge of the San
Francisco office of the FBI at the time of the bombing, and a second trial just
for him.
Restating what would appear
to be clear evidence of Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Held’s direct knowledge
and involvement in the bombing “investigation,” the motion argues that
Wilken’s 1997 ruling giving immunity to Held and three other supervisors
distorted the central meaning of the case: that the FBI’s framing of Judi Bari
and Darryl Cherney as bombers was right in line with the overall FBI policy
of political disruption. Without the higher-ups, the abuses in the bombing case
can be dismissed as the actions of a few rogue agents, instead of deliberate,
historically documented FBI “counterintelligence.”
Also pending in the Motion
for Justice is a request for Judge Wilken to force the FBI to turn over the many
blacked-out and “missing” documents that have been withheld, including the
names of alleged informants. In particular, the judge is asked to unravel the
long-standing mystery about a purported tip the FBI claims they received soon
before the Oakland blast that Earth First “heavy hitters” were going to be
involved in a bombing. Most likely, the FBI just made up the tip after the fact
to justify the quick arrest. But, in the event that they did have a tip
that there was going to be a bombing, the chilling implications of FBI prior
knowledge and cover-up are something we want to get to the bottom of.
Our request for full
disclosure comes in the wake of the FBI’s failure to turn over key evidence
and documents in two high-profile cases; the 1964 church bombing by Ku Klux
Klansmen that killed four young black women in Birmingham (see attached Op-ed by
Bill Baxley), and the case of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. The delay of
McVeigh’s execution triggered ongoing Senate hearings on the need for
oversight of the FBI. Now, we’re asking the judge to order an independent
review of the FBI’s files on the bombing of Judi Bari.
Air Force Blows Up
Subarus in New Mexico
The FBI, too, has been busy
preparing for trial. They hired the Air Force Safety Center at Kirtland AFB to
conduct a series of tests in order to reconstruct the 1990 explosion in Judi
Bari’s car.
The Air Force bombers
reached the same (false) conclusion as the FBI agents at the scene of the
Oakland blast--that the bomb was on the back seat floorboard when it exploded.
Never mind that these “unbiased” experts determined there were dozens of
variables that could substantially change the outcome of their experiments, or
that they utterly failed to reproduce the damage to Judi’s car. Indeed,
we’ve managed to stay in court this long precisely because the police’s own
photos show the bomb was unmistakably underneath the driver’s seat when
it detonated, and that the FBI agents and Oakland Police must have been lying
when they said it was visible in the back seat.
The Air Force bomb experts
did all sorts of high-tech computer simulations, and blew up pipe bombs in
controlled environments to see what happens when they go “boom!” But in each
of the four Subarus they bombed in their field study, with test bombs both under
and behind the driver’s seat, they used different amounts of explosives. By
changing two key variables at once, it is impossible to say whether it was the
location or amount of explosives that caused the different results. They readily
admitted that there were dozens of other variables that could have dramatically
changed the damage to the cars. For instance, they could only guess at the
original explosives mixture. And they placed sandbags in the driver’s seat,
which would react very differently than a human body to the impact of a bomb.
Amazingly, the Air Force
tests ignored the two most reliable pieces of evidence for determining the
location of the bomb: Judi’s injuries and the telltale “end cap impact
points” in the bombed car itself. Their report states incorrectly that Judi
had “back and hip injuries.” In fact, Judi’s shattered pelvis, pulverized
coccyx, and massive internal injuries demonstrate the bomb blew up directly
beneath her. Most stunning, while the experts acknowledge that pipe bomb end
caps blow straight off in a trajectory, they ignored the indentations left by
the impact of the end caps against the driver’s door and the inside frame of
Judi’s car--proof that the bomb blew up under the seat.
It seems incredible that at
trial the FBI is actually going to stand by their original lie that the bomb was
on the back seat floorboard, where they say Judi and Darryl would have seen it.
It even contradicts the testimony of their own bomb expert from the FBI lab. We
hope the jury finds it incredible, too.
Discovery Goes On, and
On...
You’d think that ten years
would be enough time to prepare for trial, but inevitably we’re in a race to
the finish line. After endless delays by the OPD and FBI lawyers, Darryl Cherney
was finally deposed in December, 2000. The defendants also subpoenaed members of
the lawsuit support team, and several other friends and allies who will be
witnesses for our side at trial. They’ve questioned our expert witnesses, too,
including Professor Howard Zinn, who is set to testify at trial about the
FBI’s long and shameful history of repression aimed at social movements.
Meanwhile, we’ve taken the
opportunity to question some notorious timber industry people, namely Pacific
Lumber president John Campbell and former Louisiana Pacific Corporation security
chief Frank Wigginton. Among other issues, we asked them about their role in
creating the climate of violence that preceded the bombing, as well as their
meetings with the FBI after the blast where they turned over their files on
environmentalists to investigators. We’ve called even more FBI agents, and
lots of other law enforcement officers from agencies like the Alameda County
Sheriffs, the Berkeley Police, and the Oakland Fire Department.
Each deposition offers juicy
little revelations, all of which together will become the basis of our case this
October. Bit by bit we come closer to trial, to exposing to FBI’s illicit
political policing, and hopefully to finding out who built and placed that bomb
in Judi’s car on the eve of Redwood Summer in 1990. Thank you for persevering
with us on this long road toward justice for Judi Bari.
If you haven't
seen it already, please read the July 13, 2001 Earth
First! Letter to Friends and Supporters which accompanies this update. Also,
please read the Op-Ed piece by the former Attorney General of Alabama asking "Why
Did the FBI Hold Back Evidence" in the Alabama church bombing murders,
which was included in the July 2001 mailing.
The Official Judi Bari Web Site