Monday, 31 March 2014
Sunday, 30 March 2014
Defence of the Realm
Notice to mail sender warning that content referring to Zeppelin raids has been censored under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914.
(1) His Majesty in Council has power during the continuance of the present war to issue regulations as to the powers and duties of the Admiralty and Army Council, and of the members of His Majesty's forces, and other persons acting in His behalf, for securing the public safety and the defence of the realm; and may, by such regulations, authorise the trial by courts martial and punishment of persons contravening any of the provisions of such regulations designed—
(a) To prevent persons communicating with the enemy or obtaining information for that purpose or any purpose calculated to jeopardise the success of the operations of any of His Majesty's forces or to assist the enemy; or
(b) To secure the safety of any means of communication, or of railways, docks or harbours; in like manner as if such persons were subject to military law and had on active service committed an offence under section 5 of the Army Act.
(2) This Act may be cited as the Defence of the Realm Act, 1914.
Saturday, 29 March 2014
Victoria Nuland
Full transcript of the telephone talk between the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nulandand the US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt (posted on YouTube on Feb 6, 2014):
Victoria Nuland (V.N.): What do you think?
Geoffrey R. Pyatt (G.P.): I think we are in play. The Klitchko piece is obviously the most complicated electron here, especially the announcement of him as Deputy Prime Minister. You have seen my notes on trouble in the marriage right now, so we are trying to get a read really fast where he is on the staff. But I think your argument to him which you’ll need to make, I think that’s the next phone call that you want to set up is exactly the one you made to Yats (Yatsenuk’s nickname). I’m glad you put him on the spot. <…> He fits in this scenario. And I am very glad he said what he said.
V.N.: Good. I don’t think Klitsch (Klitschko’s nickname) should be in the government. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea.
G.P.: Yeah, I mean, I guess… In terms of him not going into the government… I’d just let him stay out and do his political homework. I’m just thinking, in terms of sort of the process moving ahead, we want to keep the moderate democrats together. The problem is gonna be with Tyahnibok and his guys. And, you know, I am sure that is part of what Yanukovych is calculating on all this.
V.N.: I think Yats is the guy. He has economic experience and governing experience. He is the guy. You know, what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnibok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week. You know, I just think if Klitchko gets in, he’s going to be at that level working for Yatsenuk, it’s just not gonna work…
G.P.: Yeah, yeah, I think that’s right. Ok, good. Would you like us to set up a call with him as the next step?
V.N.: My understading from that call that you tell me was that the big three were going into their own meeting and that Yats was gonna offer in this context, you know, a «three plus one» conversation or a «three plus two» conversation with you. Is that not how you understood it?
G.P.: No. I think that was what he proposed but I think that knowing the dynamic that’s been with them where Klitchko has been the top dog, he’ll show up for whatever meetings they’ve got and he’s probably talking to his guys at this point. So, I think you reaching out directly to him, helps with the personality management among the three. And it also gives you a chance to move fast on all this stuff and put us behind it, before they all sit down and he explains why he doesn’t like it.
V.N.: Ok. Good. I am happy. Why don’t you reach out to him and see if he wants to talk before or after.
G.P.: Ok, I will do it. Thanks.
V.N.: I can’t remember if I told you this or if I only told Washington this: when I talked to Jeff Feltman this morning he had a new name for the UN guy – Robert Serry. I wrote you about it this morning.
G.P.: Yeah, I saw that.
V.N.: Ok. He’s gotten now both Serry and Ban ki-Moon to agree that Serry will come on Monday or Tuesday. That would be great I think to help glue this thing and to have the UN help glue it and, if you like, fuck the EU.
G.P.: No, exactly. And I think we’ve got to do something to make it stick together because you can be pretty sure that if it does start to gain altitude that the Russians will be working behind the scenes to try to torpedo it. And again the fact that this is out there right now, I am still trying to figure out in my mind why Yanukovych <…> that. In the meantime there is a Party of Regions faction meeting going on right now and I am sure there is a lively argument going on in that group at this point. But anyway, we could land <our toast> jelly side up on this one if we move fast. So let me work on Klitschko and if you can just keep… I think we just want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing. The other issue is some kind of outreach to Yanukovych but we probably regroup on that tomorrow as we see how things start to fall into place.
V.N.: So on that piece, Jeff, when I wrote the note Sullivan’s come back to me V.F.R., saying you need Biden and I said probably tomorrow for an atta boy and to get the details to stick. So, Biden’s willing.
G.P.: Ok. Great, thanks.
The EU Response
Deputy Secretary General EE AS External Service Helga M. Schmid (H.S.) and Jan Tombinsky (J.T.), EU Ambassador to Ukraine (rendering, starting 0:04:13 on the tape):
H.S.: Jan, it’s Helga once again. I’d like to tell you one more thing, it’s confidential. The Americans are beating about the bush and saying that our stand is too soft. They believe we should be stronger and apply sanctions. I talked to Cathy (Cathrene Ashton – OR) and she agrees with us on the matter we were discussing last time. We will do it but we must arrange everything in a clever way.
J.T.: You know we have other instruments.
H.S.: The journalists are already talking that the EU stand is “too soft”. What you should really know is that we are very angry that the Americans are beating about the bush. Maybe you tell the US Ambassador and draw his attention to the fact that our stand is not soft, we’ve just made a hard-line statement and took a tougher stance… I want you to know that it would be detrimental to our interests if we see in the newspapers that «The European Union does not support freedom». Cathy will not like it.
J.T.: Helga, we do not compete in a race. We should demonstrate that this situation is not a competition in diplomatic toughness. I’ve just heard about the opposition’s new proposal to the president. I’ll write Cathy about it right now.
H.S.: Ok.
P.S. Awkward attempts to question “morality” is such revelations sound especially hypocritical from a global spying power that monitors and controls most of the mobile phone and internet users activities, taps the phone lines of world leaders, and oversees the world’s most far-reaching wire-tapping program.
AP's Paul Haven asked Victoria Nuland about Cuba's complaint regarding the U. S. Interests Section in Havana recruiting dissidents and then teaching them how to use computers and then providing them computers to undermine the Cuban government.
Nuland replied:
"We are absolutely guilty of those charges. The U. S. Interests Section in Havana does regularly offer free courses in using the Internet to Cubans who want to sign up. We also have computers available for Cubans to use. Obviously this wouldn't be necessary if the Cuban government didn't restrict access to the Internet and prevent its own citizens from getting technology training."
[Exact quotation; Paul Haven; AP; Nov. 2, 2012]
Friday, 28 March 2014
Grenada, The New Jewel Movement and the Assassination of Bob Marley
Since he was elected Prime Minister of Jamaica in 1972, Michael Manley pursued a socialist agenda intended to redistribute wealth by nationalizing the country's major export industries. His agenda proved to be financially unsustainable, as his policies deterred foreign investment in Jamaica. Manley was also aggressively opposed by the CIA and American business interests, as had happened to similar reformist governments in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and multiple other countries throughout the Americas. Beginning in 1974, he was also opposed by the more conservative Edward Seaga of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), and the two politicians hired local gangsters to help them increase their hold on power.
Ironically, the idea for the One Love Peace Concert came from two such gangsters from rival political factions, who happened to be locked up in the same jail cell together and who both wanted to alleviate the violence. Claudius 'Claudie' Massop (JLP) and Aston 'Bucky' Marshall (PNP) decided that the best means to bring the country together was to use music as a uniting factor and organize a major concert.
Quickly realizing that Bob Marley, living in exile in London, was a critical element upon which their success depended, Massop flew to London after being released from jail to convince Marley to perform at the event. Marley accepted the invitation, and the concert was Marley’s first performance in Jamaica since the "Smile Jamaica" concert held days after he was shot in 1976.
"Just let me tell you something (yeah), to make everything come true, we gotta be together.
(Yeah, yeah, yeah) and through the spirit of the Most High, His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie I, we're inviting a few leading people of the slaves to shake hands. . .
To show the people that you love them right, to show the people that you gonna unite, show the people that you're over bright, show the people that everything is all right.
Watch, watch, watch, what you're doing, because I wanna send a message right out there.
I mean, I'm not so good at talking but I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.
Well, I'm trying to say, could we have, could we have, up here onstage here the presence of Mr. Michael Manley and Mr. Edward Seaga.
I just want to shake hands and show the people that we're gonna make it right, we're gonna unite, we're gonna make it right, we've got to unite .
The moon is right over my head, and I give my love instead.
The moon was right above my head, and I give my love instead."
It was not until Bob Marley’s funeral in 1981 that the two political figures met each other in person and once again shook hands.
The ABC of NJM: Questions & Answers on NJM - Its History, Ideas, Principles, circa 1974
The organisation has run a weekly newspaper non-stop for over a year now. Even parties in power are not able to do this. (note for instance Gairy's 'Horizon'). Furthermore, our movement has discredited the regime both home and abroad. Even the regime has conceded this. In addition we have provided medical and legal help for hundreds of persons victimised by the regime. Moreover, we have prepared a manifesto, a national plan to reconstruct and further construct the nation. Very importantly, we have come up with a new form of government, a form that is far more democratic. Indeed, we are one of the few new groups in the world today to have attempted to do so. Lover the past months, we have mounted a massive series of meeting that must be a record in the Caribbean for an organisation in a non-election time. This has mobilised the people. The New Jewel Movement has united the people cutting through class lines as never before. We now have a mass movement capable of taking power. Yet there are difficult days ahead. The regime continues its policy of increasing repression. Recent laws make if difficult to even hold public meetings now. But the struggle will continue with equal vigour and even greater determination. In a struggle as sacred and precious as this, we can set the time limit. It seems that a few voices expect us to do in one year what others have failed to do in decades. We do not work [unclear word]. We are a people's organisation. We are only as strong as the will of the people. At long last, there is basic agreement on where are we doing and how. After months of struggle together, the issues are now clear. All that remains now is the transference of power in an organised way. It is this question to which we must now address ourselves with deliberate urgency. The struggle ahead will not be easy. However, all signs point to a glorious victory and a bright new dawn for all our people.
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BY JEFF MACKLER
Thirty years ago, on Oct. 25, 1983, almost 8000 U.S. Rangers invaded the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada to make doubly sure that the revolution of March 13, 1979, four and a half years earlier, would not rise again. This vital and exemplary revolution in a Black, English-speaking country of 100,000 nevertheless posed a serious threat to U.S. imperialism. This was not because of the size or military power of this tiny nation that measured some 21 by 11 miles but because of the politics and socialist orientation of its leadership.
In truth, however, the revolution had ended in blood a week earlier. At that time, a Stalinist “leader” of Grenada’s governing party, the New Jewel Movement (NJM) and its People Revolutionary Government (PRG), Bernard Coard, ordered a handful of Grenadian soldiers led by Hudson Austin to gun down Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, several other members of Grenada’s central leadership, and some dozen supporters who were part of a demonstration of tens of thousands demanding Coard’s removal.
The subtitle of this article, “A 30-year personal retrospective,” is included because by a combination of circumstances I had become intimately familiar, as a sometimes close observer to be sure, with the events surrounding the revolution’s internal disputes and tragic demise.
Within days of the impending U.S. invasion, and after initiating a San Francisco demonstration of 5000 to warn against it, I resigned from the then most influential and largest Trotskyist party in the U.S., the Socialist Workers Party, where my political loyalties had resided for almost two decades. The SWP’s break from its revolutionary heritage had begun several years earlier, compelling me along with several hundred other comrades to form a short-lived internal opposition. However, we were denied a fundamental right that, since its formation a half-century earlier, had been central to the SWP’s traditions and rich democratic history—the right to present contending ideas to the ranks for thorough discussion, debate, and decision. By 1983 at least half of this opposition of some 200 comrades, including several of the SWP’s founding members, has been bureaucratically expelled.
The SWP’s initial stance on the murder of Maurice Bishop was kept from the membership by the party’s uncertain leadership. A week after Bishop’s murder, when Cuban President Fidel Castro denounced Bishop’s murder and skewed Bernard Coard as a Stalinist betrayer, the SWP reversed course and eventually published a long tract, joining in Castro’s powerful repudiation. But the SWP’s actions before Castro spoke revealed a tragic flaw in the politics and orientation of this once exemplary revolutionary party.
I resigned a few days after the U.S. invasion, to be among the founders of Socialist Action, but not before observing close up—and against the wishes of the SWP leadership—the tragic events surrounding Grenada’s internal travail and disintegration.
The origins of Grenada’s March 13, 1979, revolution are not well known. The 13th of March, an unlucky day in the minds of the superstitious, was chosen by Grenada’s president for a trip to New York City to attend a conference whose agenda focused on flying saucers, the occult, and extra-terrestrial communication. Knighted in 1974 by Great Britain’s queen as Sir Mathew Eric Gairy, the president’s demons extended to literally banning the construction of left turn lanes on the few roads that surrounded this volcanic mountain nation. With half of its people unemployed and living in poverty, and 70 percent of its women workforce unemployed, Grenada’s sneering critics had long derided it as “the armpit of the Caribbean.”
Before Gairy’s departure, he left word for his notorious secret death squad, the Mongoose Gang, to assassinate the young 34-year-old revolutionary, Maurice Bishop, and his comrades, whose New Jewel (Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education and Liberation) Movement and its allied parties had in fact won the previous Grenadian election only to have the results voided at Gairy’s diktat.
But secrets are hard to keep in a small nation like Grenada. A few friends informed Bishop and his comrades of Gairy’s assassination directive. These young revolutionaries, whose choices were limited indeed—most obviously, to flee the island or hide—hastily planned a response that had more than a few stunning, if not unexpected results. Their plan began on March 13 at 4:30 a.m. with an armed assault by Bishop and a relatively small group of supporters on Grenada’s True Blue military barracks, where almost all of Grenada’s tiny army lay asleep. Some 20-50 activists participated, most having had no prior military experience. Gairy’s troops quickly surrendered, taking but a handful of casualties.
Grenada’s sole radio station, instantly renamed Radio Free Grenada, was captured at 10:30 that morning. Bishop delivered his famous address, “A Bright New Dawn,” which included a call to action, stating, “I am now calling upon the working people, the youth, workers, farmers, fishermen, middle-class people, and women to join our armed revolutionary forces at central positions in your communities and to give them any assistance which they may call for.”
The call was initially disregarded by Grenada’s cautious populace for fear that it might be the work of dictator Gairy, seeking to entice unwary Bishop supporters into the streets where they would be met with arrest, if not execution. It was not until the inspired NJM leaders played Bob Marley’s revolutionary music, banned under Gairy, that the masses realized that indeed, this was to be a “bright new dawn” for the Grenadian people.
Bishop’s followers, perhaps 200 activists at most, but accompanied by massive community support across the island, successfully seized control of all local police stations. Bishop’s address to the nation explained a truth that few doubted. “The criminal dictator, Eric Gairy,” he stated, “apparently sensing that the end was near, yesterday fled the country, leaving orders for all opposition forces, including especially the peoples’ leaders to be massacred.
“Before these orders could be followed, the Peoples’ Revolutionary Army was able to seize power. The people’s government will now be seeking Gairy’s extradition so that he may be put on trial to face charges, including the gross charges, the serious charges, of murder, fraud and the trampling of the democratic rights of our people.”
Bishop’s statement made clear the revolution’s objectives: “People of Grenada, this revolution is for work, for food, for decent housing and health services, and for a bright future for our children and great grand-children. … The benefits of the revolution will be given to everyone regardless of political opinion or which political party they support.
“Let us all unite as one. All police stations are again reminded to surrender their arms to the people’s revolutionary forces.”
“Maurice’s boys,” as they were popularly called, in consort with the Grenadian people, had indeed, taken power. With but a handful of deaths, Grenada was deemed “the peaceful revolution” by its friends everywhere.
The newly-founded People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) soon after sought financial aid from the U.S. and other capitalist nations to meet its promises to the Grenadian people. Aid was denied by the Carter and Reagan administrations, who, seeking to isolate this poor former English colony of Black slaves, pressed other countries to follow suit. The call of Black Power that began in the U.S. had swept the Caribbean and around the world. In Grenada, revolutionary Blacks had achieved power and set out to be an example to the world of what could be achieved by oppressed people, even in an isolated poor nation, under constant threat and virtually embargoed by U.S. imperialism.
A Nov. 19, 1979, Nation magazine interview with Bishop made the new government’s intentions and political origins clear. Said Bishop, “We have always stressed, underlined and emphasized that we are socialist and manifestly so. What we have also said is that the way in which people should define what we mean by socialism is to look at our manifesto, study our programmes and policies [over the past] six and a half years, see what struggles we have defended, see whose interests we have fought for, and from that you can tell see what we are.”
With the solidarity and support of revolutionary-minded volunteers around the world, and especially from Cuba, which several PRG leaders had visited, Grenadians set out to be an example to the world. This was at a time when capitalist economies were stagnant, and the conditions of working people, and oppressed nationalities especially, were under siege.
Cuba provided a fleet of more than a dozen state of the art fishing boats, transforming Grenada’s 5000-odd tiny and dangerous dingy-like boats into a more efficient operation while cutting down on waste and the need to import food. Previously, much of the caught fish were dried on tin roofs, only to rot when Grenada’s tropical rain ruined much of the catch. Refrigeration facilities were similarly proved by Cuba, which allowed for the preservation of fruits and vegetables. A program to increase the availability of electricity was set into motion on an island where the great majority had none.
Again with the help of the Cubans, medical and dental care became free to all, with the number of doctors, although still far from meeting the needs of the people, dramatically increasing in a few years. Prior to the revolution there was only one dental clinic serving the entire island.
Grenada’s sister islands, Petite Martinique and Carriacou, which together constituted the Grenadian state, had long been stripped bare—their tropical rainforests practically reduced to deserts—and their people given no alternative but to live on remittances from Grenada and abroad. Jobs and healthcare were provided there as well.
In four short years, unemployment was reduced from 49 percent to 14.2 percent. Virtually free loans for construction materials to repair dilapidated housing, the sad living norm for most Grenadians, were provided, while a broad range of infrastructure improvements were undertaken. Roads had barely existed in Grenada; there were only some 48 miles in total before the revolution. A new series of roads were built to aid local farmers in bringing their crops to market. Pipe-borne water, which the great majority had had no previous access to, was significantly expanded, and rusted pipes were repaired.
With help of the Cubans, agriculture was diversified, especially since Grenada, the world largest nutmeg producer, was dependent for income on three export crops—nutmeg, cocoa, and bananas.
Thirty percent of the population was excluded from taxation while the few wealthy hotel owners saw their taxes, which they had barely paid due to an almost total lack of an accounting system regarding hotel revenues, significantly increased. Women’s equality, including equal pay for equal work, was enshrined in Grenadian law, along with extended and paid maternity leave. The law strictly banned all sexual exploitation of women in return for employment.
All of these critical gains notwithstanding, almost everyone understood that Grenada, essentially a huge mountain with poor soil conditions and surrounded by a single road, was currently incapable of putting into effect more dramatic and long lasting improvements. The PRG leadership moved to resolve this dilemma by embarking on the construction of a major international airport, able to provide access to the world’s modern airplanes. With significant loans from Canada and the allocation of vast human resources, again from revolutionary Cuba, Grenadian and Cuban workers began construction on this project aimed at promoting tourism as the major source of income in the years to come. Grenada’s antiquated Pearl Airport was capable of landing only small turboprop planes with a capacity of some 30-50 people.
Perhaps the most controversial debate inside the PRG was the very nature of the system of governance to be established. Early on, the revolution, especially at Bishop’s prodding, established a system of what was called participatory democracy, wherein workers’ and farmers’ councils, parish councils, and zonal councils met to discuss the revolution’s priorities and how they could best be achieved.
While these groups initially met with great enthusiasm and were well attended, in time attendance declined when the participants came to understand that there was a qualitative difference between theparticipation of the masses, including their right to criticize and recommend important changes, and their right to decide. While the leaders of these councils were often elected and subject to immediate recall, their role remained advisory. Key decisions remained in the hands of the tiny group of the revolution’s main leaders organized in a Central Committee of some dozen individuals.
Bishop was known to advocate increased decision-making power to the local councils. Coard defended maintaining the power and authority of the Central Committee. The size of the organized core of the New Jewel Movement was likely quite small, at best in the hundreds. Even here, however, the NJM rarely, if ever, met as a decision-making body.
I first noted tensions in the PRG when I visited to attend the Nov. 23-25, 1981, First International Conference in Solidarity with Grenada and to deliver a relatively large amount of supplies to support their literacy campaign. Our Bay Area committee was fortunate to link up with a San Francisco GreenPeace group sailing a sizeable ship toward Grenada and agreeable to cramming its hold with tons of supplies. This was for the “welfare of the Grenadians,” they explained, “as well as to provide needed ballast for the ship to insure its safe voyage.”
I was quite surprised to meet Bishop during this conference when he asked for a meeting to discuss a conflict we were experiencing in the Bay Area with the recently formed U.S.-Grenada Friendship Society. Our Grenada Solidarity Committee, formed two years earlier, had established close ties with Grenada’s UN Consul General, Joseph Kanute Burke, who we toured through the Bay Area twice during that time. Yet we were shunned by the Communist Party-initiated U.S.-Grenada Friendship Society as being illegitimate. Through Burke, this had come to the attention of Bishop, who expressed concern that I was not scheduled to address the conference.
Bishop was quite familiar with the Socialist Workers Party. When he resided in Brooklyn, N.Y., where more than 80,000 Grenadian nationals lived, he was an occasional speaker at SWP-sponsored Militant Labor Forums. When the SWP’s 1980 U.S. Presidential candidate, Andrew Pulley, visited Grenada in 1981, he received a surprise visit from Bishop, who humorously asked, “Hey Andrew, what are you doing on my island?” Bishop, driving an old VW Bug, proceeded to give Pulley a personal tour.
During the conference Bishop learned that it was a representative of the U.S. Communist Party that sought to prevent me from greeting the conference. His response was to send his closest ally, Minister of Agriculture George Louison, to resolve this matter in a three-way meeting. Louison sternly explained to the CPer that Grenada valued our work and operated on the principle of non-exclusion. I would speak as the U.S. representative, he insisted, as he urged future collaboration between all Grenada’s supporters.
Bishop’s June 5, 1983, visit to New York has been cited by some as perhaps a source of the divisions that would be revealed some three months later. Some uninformed “left” critics noted that Bishop advocated in his talk improved relations with the United States, including U.S. recognition of a Grenadian ambassador. Here Bishop advocated no more than the Cubans, who had been denied formal recognition for decades. The implication of these “critics” was that Bishop was “soft” on imperialism.” But in explaining the functioning of Grenada’s participatory democracy, Bishop did employ some formulations that could be taken as important, if not critical insights into a sharpening controversy inside the PRG.
Bishop stated: “And for the people in general, there have been organs of popular democracy that have been built—zonal councils, parish councils, worker-parish councils, farmer councils—where the people come together from month to month. The usual agenda will be a report on programs taking place in the village.
“Then there will be a report, usually by some senior member of the bureaucracy. It might be the manager of the Central Water Commission. Or it might be the manager of the telephone company or the electricity company. Or it might be the chief sanitary inspector, or the senior price-control inspector.
“And this senior bureaucrat has to go there and report to the people on his area of work, and then be submitted to a question-and-answer session. And after that, one of the top leaders in our country, one of us will also attend those meetings, and ourselves give a report, and usually there is question-and-answer-time at the end of that also.
“In this way, our people from day to day and week to week, are participating in helping to run the affairs of their country. And this is not just an abstract matter of principle. It has also brought practical, concrete benefits to our people.”
Bishop’s references here to “senior members of the bureaucracy” and “this senior bureaucrat” may not have been accidental, especially in light of his experience in the Central Committee, where a twisted version of “democratic centralism” prevailed—that is, a bureaucratically enforced muzzle banning criticism of “majority” decisions without recourse to democratic discussion and debate in the party’s ranks, not to mention among the increasingly organized masses in the emerging and varied councils.
In truth, there were no “ranks” of the PGR or the NJM that met to decide anything. Power was vested in the hands of a tiny few—the Central Committee. As I have noted, a few months later, Bishop was arrested because he sought to challenge this Coard-led bureaucracy, based on the rule of perhaps a dozen or so leaders. Vesting real power in the various councils that had been established was not on Coard’s agenda.
Although no formal records exist of its decisions, the debates in the tiny Central Committee were “resolved” in Coard’s favor, and Bishop, while retaining the title of prime minister, saw his authority much diminished. He was soon afterwards sent to Czechoslovakia on a trade mission and returned to Grenada via Cuba. Upon his return he was reported to have informed the Central Committee of his intention to challenge their orientation, whereupon he was immediately placed under “house arrest,” incarcerated, and placed under armed guard in his own house at Mount Wheldale, literally across the road from Coard’s dwelling.
When news of Bishop’s arrest reached his closest associates, Minister of Agriculture George Louison, accompanied by Bishop’s press secretary, Don Rojas, quickly organized a mass march to Bishop’s home to free the island’s most well-known and popular leader—“Bish,” as he was called by friends everywhere. The march to liberate Bishop and its arrival at his home was observed first hand by a member of our San Francisco Bay Area Grenada Solidarity Committee, who we had sent to assist with Grenada’s literacy program. This mass mobilization rapidly grew until tens of thousands participated. Bishop was freed with zero resistance and immediately proceeded to lead the marchers to Fort Rupert, Grenada’s military headquarters in the capital city, St. Georges, and Coard’s likely location.
Bishop led the angry marchers onto this ancient stonewalled fort’s patio, whereupon he and his associates were gunned down at the orders of Coard’s appointed “General,” Hudson Austin. Three ministers were murdered outright—including Bishop and his companion and Minister of Education Jacqueline Creft—and two leading trade unionists. As Coard’s tiny death squad fired on the crowd, killing perhaps a dozen or more, others leaped to safety from the fort’s great walls, suffering serious injuries or death. The wounded and injured were treated by medical teams that included members of the Swedish section of the Fourth International.
The Grenadian Revolution ended that day. The U.S. invasion that followed a few days later was met with virtually no resistance except for the several hundred Cuban airport workers. Breaking a formal agreement that had been hurriedly negotiated between the Cuban government and the Reagan administration, affirming that the Cubans would not resist the invasion and would act only in self defense, the Rangers nevertheless opened fire on the Cubans, who alone courageously resisted as well as they could the massive power of the imperialist forces.
Several hundred Cubans were arrested and jailed but soon afterward released to return home. There was virtually zero resistance from Grenada’s armed forces or militias. Fearing mass hatred for his action in imprisoning Bishop, Coard invoked martial law and enforced strict curfews. Weapons were locked tight in Grenada’s armories. The island was “conquered” by the invaders in a matter of hours as Grenada’s humiliated and demoralized masses were rendered helpless and disarmed.
All the pretexts employed by the Reagan administration and the capitalist media were soon repudiated. There were many—all lies. Grenada was said to be threatening the lives of some 700 U.S. medical students on the island; Grenada was said to be constructing a military base for Soviet use on its new airport; Grenada was said to be detaining political prisoners; Reagan officials even implied that Cuba had orchestrated the coup and was behind the murder of Bishop and his comrades. And finally, the U.S. claimed to have been invited to invade by the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States.
These lies were broadcast around the world without regard to their veracity. The invasion was repudiated almost everywhere, including by an overwhelming vote of the UN General Assembly. Cuban President Fidel Castro condemned the coup. Coard and his associates were labeled Stalinists and traitors to the revolution. An official day of mourning was organized in Cuba to commemorate Bishop’s achievements. Cables from Cuba threatened to cut off all aid to the Coard regime.
Before this Cuban condemnation and immediately after Bishop’s murder, the SWP leadership stood publicly mute. But it soon became clear that central party leaders were more than prepared to side with “the Central Committee majority.” Following Bishop’s arrest I had been in daily contact with Consul General Joseph Kanute Burke, who in turn was in daily contact with Bishop’s mother, who had been allowed to visit her son to bring him food.
Burke reported that “the boys” were talking, and that a resolution was possible in his view. History demonstrates that this never came to pass. The SWP demanded that I cease all contact with Burke and Grenada. They went further; the Oakland/Berkeley party organizer insisted that I unilaterally cancel the planned demonstration set for the San Francisco Federal Building the following day, a decision that had been unanimously taken by the ranks of the Grenada Solidarity Committee, with 100 activists present!
“Do you know” the party organizer asked me, “that Bishop was in the minority of the Central Committee?” I responded, “I am in the minority of the SWP. Do you intend to murder me?” Ignoring this, the organizer demanded that I tell her what I would say about Bishop’s assassination. “I will oppose it,” I replied, adding, “We do not resolve internal disputes by murder.” The veneer of civility, not to mention comradely discussions, disappeared forever in that exchange. I spent the next several hours preparing the final details for the protest and resigned from the SWP the next day.
In my view, two parties had died that terrible day, both having irrevocably lost their revolutionary integrity. The degeneration of both had been long in the making. The history of the SWP’s degeneration has yet to be written. The few feeble attempts to date miss the mark entirely.
Grenada’s Revolution set out to be an example to the world as to what Black Power and the fight for socialism could mean. Its heroic figure, Maurice Bishop, will not be forgotten. We honor his memory in this 30th year marking his brutal murder at the hands of a Stalinist thug.
Statement by General Hudson Austin on Behalf of the Revolutionary Military CouncilFirst heard at 9:10 p.m., Radio Free Grenada, 19 October 1983, in a broadcast scheduled for 7:00 p.m. Brothers and Sisters: Last night a delegation from the Central Committee of the New Jewel Movement made a formal offer to Comrade Bishop for him to continue as Prime Minister, to continue as a member of the Party and work closely with the NJM Central Committee in running the country. Comrade Bishop's position was that he would consider the offer but was not willing to talk last night. This morning at nine-thirty, a crowd led by Unison Whiteman, Vincent Noel and two businessmen stormed Maurice Bishop's home. The soldiers guarding the Mount Royal road had instructions not to fire on the people. The people therefore broke through the barrier and stormed through the gates of the house. Again the soldiers were instructed not to fire on the people but to fire above the people's heads - not at the masses. The crowd, realising that the soldiers had instruction not to fire on the people, broke into the house. Maurice Bishop went with them and then led the crowd of innocent people to seize Fort Rupert, the headquarters of the Armed Forces. Again, the soldiers at Fort Rupert were told not to fire on the people who stormed the fort. Attempts were made by the Armed Forces to establish communication with Maurice Bishop, and Unison Whiteman in order to continue negotiations for a peaceful solution and in order to persuade them to let the civilians leave the fort. Bishop and Whiteman declared: “No compromise, no negotiations.” They then disarmed Officers of the General Staff as well as the rank and file soldiers guarding Fort Rupert and began to arm the crowd. They declared their intention to arrest and wipe out the entire General Committee and the senior members of the Party and the entire leadership of the Armed Forces as well as to smash the Revolutionary Armed Forces. At that point, the Revolutionary Armed Forces sent a company of soldiers to reestablish control of Fort Rupert. Maurice Bishop and his group fired on the soldiers killing two members of the PRA - Sergeant Dorset Peters and Warrant Officer, Raphael Mason, and wounding several others. The Revolutionary Armed Forces were forced to storm the fort, and in the process the following persons were killed: Maurice Bishop, Unison Whiteman, Vincent Noel, Jacqueline Creft, Norris Bain and Fitzroy Bain among others. The Revolutionary Armed Forces then evacuated the wounded and assisted several persons in getting to hospital. Comrades, The People's Revolutionary Armed Forces has all along stayed off the street in the hope that [the situation] could be resolved internally by the Party. However, in a situation where Maurice Bishop had declared his intention to wipe out the entire leadership of the Party and the Army, in a situation in which he had linked up with counter-revolutionaries, in order to do so, the Revolution itself would have been wiped out. Our working people have suffered too much for too many years to allow imperialism and counter-revolutionaries to take over our People's Revolution. The People's Revolutionary Armed Forces has, as of 3:00 p.m. today, established a Revolutionary Military Council which will form the government of the country until normality is restored. Let it be clearly understood that the Revolutionary Armed Forces will govern with absolute strictness. Anyone who seeks to demonstrate or disturb the peace will be shot. An all day and all night curfew will be established for the next four days, from now until next Monday at 6:00 p.m. No one is to leave their house. Anyone violating this curfew will be shot on sight. All schools are closed and all workplaces except for the essential services until further notice. The personal safety and property of all citizens will be guaranteed by the Armed Forces. Let it be clearly understood that the People's Revolutionary Army is totally united. We are also clear that our major task at this moment is to protect and defend our country against any attack by imperialism. Our people must be clear that imperialism will seek to take advantage of this situation. We must also realise clearly that a military invasion would bring about the deaths of thousands of our people and that any confusion in Grenada at this time opens the way for such intervention by imperialism. Whatever each man's personal views on this situation at this time, we must unite to defend our country against any attack by outside forces. The Armed Forces for their part will defend the revolution with all our might! LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION! LONG LIVE OUR PEOPLE! LONG LIVE GRENADA! FORWARD EVER! BACKWARD EVER! |
Thursday, 27 March 2014
Wednesday, 26 March 2014
The SLA is the CIA
"You only need to have a tape recorder to set up a revolutionary movement today."
– FBI Director Charles Bates, San Francisco
SLA-BC (Before Cremation)
A small band of people brought together in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. Through various manipulations, military intelligence infiltrated radical groups, specifically the prison's Black Guerrilla Family, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, United Farm Workers, Chino Defense Fund, Venceremos and the Women's Movement. These targets of the FBI and police were to be associated with the importation of persons from out of state. Some local women were incorporated in the group to lend authenticity.
SLA-AC (After Cremation)
Radicals or concerned citizens who responded with sympathy and horror at the public cremation of six SLA members by the military SWAT team. Continuous government murders such as those committed at the Orangeburg massacre, Jackson State, Kent State, Attica and San Quentin, police murders of Black Panthers, Black Muslims and hundreds of others, necessarily cause a genuine response. Silence in the face of these acts escalates genocide. Public disapproval escalates police armies.
SLA-CIA
More "liberation armies," fictitious messages, forged documents, infiltrators and spies will surface. Legitimate reform groups will continue to be discredited by acts of violence committed in their names. Peaceful rallies will be destroyed by intelligence agents. The organized disruption of the anti-war movement and rock concerts that took place during the '60s will escalate. The kidnappings and bombings will be blamed on the SLA, or "dedicated to the memory of the six slain SLA members." These planned acts of violence will include chemical warfare.
THE SLA IS THE CIA part I
I. Why Was Patricia Hearst Kidnapped?
II. Cast of Characters
III. Chronology of Events
IV. Why Was the SLA Created – the Motives?
V. The Tell-Tale Revolutionaries: Conspicuous Banditos or Provocateurs?
VI. Tactical Support – Where Did It Come From?
VII. How Dangerous Was the SLA?
VIII. Why the Charges Against Patty?
IX. The Death Trap
How Do You Tell a CIA Espionage Plot from a Revolutionary, Radical, Terrorist Guerrilla Army?
XI. Indications the SLA Was Part of a Larger National Conspiracy
XII. Was This Plan Necessary?
************************************ Introduction:
There are three Symbionese Liberation Armies. This article is about SLA-BC.
SLA-BC (Before Cremation)
A small band of people brought together in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. Through various manipulations, military intelligence infiltrated radical groups, specifically the prison's Black Guerrilla Family, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, United Farm Workers, Chino Defense Fund, Venceremos and the Women's Movement. These targets of the FBI and police were to be associated with the importation of persons from out of state. Some local women were incorporated in the group to lend authenticity.
SLA-AC (After Cremation)
Radicals or concerned citizens who responded with sympathy and horror at the public cremation of six SLA members by the military SWAT team. Continuous government murders such as those committed at the Orangeburg massacre, Jackson State, Kent State, Attica and San Quentin, police murders of Black Panthers, Black Muslims and hundreds of others, necessarily cause a genuine response. Silence in the face of these acts escalates genocide. Public disapproval escalates police armies.
SLA-CIA
More "liberation armies," fictitious messages, forged documents, infiltrators and spies will surface. Legitimate reform groups will continue to be discredited by acts of violence committed in their names. Peaceful rallies will be destroyed by intelligence agents. The organized disruption of the anti-war movement and rock concerts that took place during the '60s will escalate. The kidnappings and bombings will be blamed on the SLA, or "dedicated to the memory of the six slain SLA members." These planned acts of violence will include chemical warfare.
I. Why Was Patricia Hearst Kidnapped?
The kidnapping of Patricia Campbell Hearst was as vital to the creation of the Symbionese Liberation Army as the murder of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was to the beginning of World War I. Both the kidnapping and the murder were used as an excuse to declare war. The ensuing battles had been carefully prepared and anticipated by the merchants of death.
The end goal of the SLA – World War III – is to plunge the Third World masses into starvation and slavery. We have accomplished this through the CIA in 77 countries. The Third World inside the United States is the next selected victim.
The SLA was nurtured inside the American prison system. This will provide the excuse to isolate prisons from future visitors, creating private Dachaus and another Auschwitz.
The SLA was created in order to spread terror and fear across the country. There will be a forced response upon existing radicals. Domestic chaos will escalate.
Carefully synchronized with the Hearst kidnapping in Berkeley were a series of provocateur-inspired kidnappings. Fictitious "armies" surfaced. As far away as England, well-dressed and well-financed Ian Ball was pretending to kidnap Princess Anne to "feed the poor." After his brief moment in history, Ball was taken away to a mental hospital.
An admitted kidnapping hoax involved Jean Paul Litt, son of a Belgian diplomat, in Florence, Italy.
The timing of international with national kidnappings could easily be planned to instill fear of an epidemic of abductions across continents.
In the meantime, and not by coincidence, only the poor suffer from these kidnapping and shootings on their behalf.
America's first political kidnapping was necessary to justify the creation of laws and the development of police SWAT teams. They can later be used against legitimate guerrilla or terrorist activities.
Increased repressions, planned genocide, starvation, widespread unemployment, inadequate health care and housing must necessarily provoke anger and self-defense in the face of death. Washington is preparing its defenses, its punishments and its armies in the streets.
The series of staged exploits by the SLA has created fear, suspicion and mistrust of genuine avenues of political change. Radical movements can be discredited and associated with kidnapping, terror, murder, bank robbery and violence.
Under the guise of "reforms," the door is now open for increased infiltration and disruption of progressive movements.
The Watergate affair provides only a small glimpse of how the White House, Pentagon, CIA, FBI, local police departments and intelligence agencies rig elections, manipulate candidates and violate the rights of citizens. Wiretaps, smear campaigns, illegal entry, forgery, interception and opening of mail, provocations, planned kidnappings, blackmail, leaks, poisoning, and assassinations are acceptable tactics to the "team members."
The Justice Department, Attorney Generals, government prosecutors, and investigators are used to protect these domestic espionage operations and cover up the serious crimes that are committed.
Intelligence agents don't only work against us at election time. They work every year, in every city, to help the power structure maintain control. They work against leftists, radicals and ordinary citizens assembling to inquire how their freedoms are being taken away.
Government-funded studies are made at Rand Corporation a and other think tanks on how to manipulate the population for maximum effectiveness and profit. The armies put the plans into action.
The agencies that control our elections, and indeed the selection of candidates, by bullets and smear tactics also control domestic productivity and investments. Since starvation and unemployment will inevitably lead to violent objections, provisions must be made to handle the mob. That is what the SLA was about.
Members of radical groups in the Bay Area were taunted and baited to join the revolution, to see how many were ready for the next stage and would accept violence. All of these groups turned the SLA down, suspecting that they were police provocateurs.
The People In Need Program (the Hearst food giveaway plan) and the SLA communiques identified radical or leftist organizations. Their strength and numbers were added up. Leaders were identified.
Public sensitivities were tested by well-placed cameras which invited us to witness the SLA cremation in Los Angeles. How will we respond the next time troops are deployed to control the people? What did you think of the first military operation inside the U.S., based upon the feeble creation of the mythical SLA., and our "first political kidnapping"?
The 1960's saw the systematic murder of politicians, civil rights leaders, minority spokesmen, educators, Black Panthers, prisoners, and many other concerned citizens.
In the 1970's, large masses of the population, now leaderless, can be controlled and exterminated. We have allowed this situation to develop by not exposing each conspiracy as it came along, pretending the facts and evidence would disappear.
Dr. Marcus Foster, Oakland School Superintendent, was murdered by the same kind of people, and for the same reasons, as Martin Luther King.
Patricia Hearst was kidnapped by the same kind of people, and for the same reasons, as Martha Mitchell.
Our lives are being manipulated by specific individuals who can be identified and exposed.
Conspiracy theories only remain "theories" when there is no court, no lawyer, no judge, no Congress, with the courage to expose the evidence. In every case where the evidence is pursued, the "theory" becomes a clear-cut case of criminal conspiracy.
It took ten years for Emile Zola to reveal that Captain Alfred Dreyfus did not betray the French Army.
America has hundreds of Dreyfus Affairs going. Latest on the list is the creation of the SLA.
Congress gives the CIA and other intelligence agencies all the money they desire. No questions are asked about how much they receive, much less how it is used. CIA Director William Colby wants to tighten the secrecy, with the threat of a $10,000 fine and ten years in jail, for any Paul Reveres shouting in the dark to wake us up.
Until the present time, the CIA was carefully inconspicuous on the domestic scene. Creation of the SLA provides an excuse for the CIA, and special police forces like the German Gestapo, to step forth publicly and assume control of all law enforcement agencies.
The covert operations and psychological warfare techniques that were used to form the SLA were perfected in Britain and Germany during World War II. After the war, our OSS was converted into the CIA by English and German spy masters.
Right-wing groups such as the American Nazi Party, the Ku Klux Klan, the Minutemen and the National States Rights Party are used as fronts for CIA and FBI operations. The military-intelligence teams give approval, funding, tactical support and protection from arrest.
Mass education, political organization and the attempt to solve economic and social problems are perceived as threats to the status quo. Recommendations for constructive alternatives to unemployment, sickness, hunger and poverty are answered by chaos, violence and racism. it is because the solutions to many problems exist today that armies and propaganda machines must step lip their domestic warfare. Police, prison guards, and intelligence agents flex their muscles and take aim at their victims.
Motives for Creation of the SLA
Fifteen goals were to be achieved by the creation of this elaborate conspiracy. They have all been launched, and a careful observer can see them being implemented in today's news stories.
1. Create a national fear of terrorist organizations, and of future kidnappings, accompanied by increased bombings.
2. Link U.S. terrorists to international guerrilla groups.
3. Discredit communes.
4. Escalate domestic fear of Mao Tse Tung, brainwashing and indoctrination.
5. Create the apparent justification for UCLA's Institute to Study the Causes and Prevention of Violence, now temporarily shelved and suspect.
6. Discredit the poor, and test food distribution programs.
7. Isolate prisoners from genuine reform organizations.
8. Escalate domestic race war between blacks and whites.
9. Discredit radical and/or leftist organizations, particularly the Black Guerrilla Family, Los Venceremos, United Farm Workers, Women's Movement groups and Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
10. Increase public and private police forces and security agents.
11. Turn the population into informers, who turn each other In.
12. Create new legislation against future kidnappings.
13. Link demons and the Devil to communists, radicals, leftists and other deviants from the official Government line, and virtuous, right-thinking Christianity to strong-arm police tactics.
14. Discredit the FBI; make military and international police and the CIA appear necessary to control terrorism in the U.S.
15. Set up conditions for martial law, prevent free election choices in 1976 and escalate fear, to keep power in the hands of the military and intelligence agencies.
What was Patricia Hearst's state of mind during these various manipulations? None of us was there, so we can only speculate. Could she change over to think and feel with the "radicals" when she was their captive?
The rank-and-file of the SLA consisted predominantly of CIA agents and police informers. For this reason, Patty could be cleverly controlled in order to make it appear that she had joined them of her own free will.
Sophisticated radicals and politically aware people of the Bay Area rejected the SLA, but Patty Hearst had no choice; she was, and is, their captive.
Each day, we were invited to witness the purposeful manipulation of an individual who had been captured, and subsequently drastically altered, over a four-month period of time. Patty lived with fear, was taught terror, became hunted and oppressed, was given a new name, a new family and new "loves."
Was Patty Hearst brainwashed?
What did Vacaville Medical Facility promise Donald DeFreeze in exchange for the use of his head? What "favor" did he do for them?
Why was CIA agent Colston Westbrook – educated in psychological warfare and the indoctrination of assassination and terrorist cadres – chosen to select and train the group that became the SLA?
Joseph Remiro and Nancy Ling Perry, important to the SLA for military tactics and cover story rhetoric, were dependent upon drugs. Both were political conservatives with a "kill-a-commie-for-Christ" background. Their transition into "radicals" could have been assisted by the same chemical and psychological controls our intelligence agencies are using and experimenting with daily.
Bill and Emily Harris, and Angels Atwood, worked together as a "mod squad" narc team back home in Indiana, for the Indiana State Police. What brought them all scurrying to the Bay Area in the summer of 1972?
Russell Little and Robyn Steiner, college chums from the University of Florida, drove out together from Florida to Oakland is the summer of '72. Though neither had shown any previous interest in blacks or prisoners, both immediately began working with Colston Westbrook and Donald DeFreeze at Vacaville Medical Facility.
Camilla Hall and Patricia Soltysik were at least authentic residents of the Berkeley community. What controls were used to draw them into the SLA and ultimately to their deaths in Log Angeles?
Donald DeFreeze and Patty Hearst are not the only ones who were brainwashed.
The same mass media that told us Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy, that James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King, that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert F. Kennedy, that Arthur Bremer was the lone gunman when George Wallace was shot, and that Ted Kennedy was responsible for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, brainwash this society every single day. The creation of the SLA is only one more propaganda lie. We can't discuss Patty's brainwashing without looking at our own.
Our sensitivities and emotions were tested over the same period of time as Patty Hearst's or Donald DeFreeze's. Patty was taken to a building near the death trap on 54th Street, so that she could witness six of her close associates and intimates for the last four months being shot and burned to death. We watched the event in living color over Friday TV Dinner.
All of us took part.
The only ones to gain from the maneuvers of the SLA were the military and police agencies.
They have already spent between $5-and-l0-million "pursuing" the SLA. Ten thousand young adults were stopped, searched or arrested within a three-week period. SWAT police teams are now located in every major city. Police helicopter contracts are escalating.
Computerized police information systems will increase. And the CIA will openly take over local police departments, where before they hid behind Public Relations doors.
The creation of the fictitious Symbionese Liberation Army was a cruel hoax perpetrated on the American public.
Years of planning went into this operation. It may have started taking shape after the Chicago convention in 1968, when protestors were moving into the streets, displeased with Washington's policies. The intelligence community was determined that large riots such as those in Watts and Detroit would never happen again. The next stage of "political protest" will be planned terrorist activities.
To speed things along, police and the military have selectively provided weapons, knowing that dissidents will be outnumbered, outgunned and handled with brutality. America will become like Vietnam, a battleground of burnings, killings and provocations. Military provocateurs, and the Phoenix Program in the U.S. will be used to control blacks, Chicanos, Indians, and radicals.
The public cremation in Los Angeles on May 17, 1974, was not the end of the SLA. It was only Stage One. Vietnam has arrived in California.
The families of the deceased SLA members wish they understood what the SLA was about. Aside from empty rhetoric, nothing was accomplished that justified their early deaths. The SLA's printed analysis of fascism in America was accurate enough; but their actions did not elucidate any constructive programs for altering society. The military intelligence agents simply iliustrated how easy it is to be wiped out once the issues are declared. Police have made it perfectly clear what can happen to you if you don't like what you are getting.
A 15-member team of psychiatrists, criminologists and suicide specialists has assembled to piece together what they call "psychological autopsies" to answer the "puzzling question" of why the SLA members "chose to die." Yet Nancy Ling Perry was gunned down outside the hideout, after she fled from the flaming house.
Why isn't a psychological profile prepared of the police who did not allow her to surrender alive? Her body was found outside the house. What does that tell the so-called experts?
The "psychological autopsies" of the SLA are a typical CIA technique for producing irrelevant facts from a person's life. They will dangle these facts before us as "motives" for violence, but their analysis will make no reference to how the victims were led and tricked into dying.
Donald DeFreeze may have had fantasies of becoming a great black leader. A genuine void existed, because of the systematic assassination of black leaders. The same agencies that murdered George Jackson, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Martin Luther King, Che Guevara and Jonathan Jackson were not about to provide Field Marshal General Cinque with his own personal army, without having some purpose of their own. Was Cinque's vision of freeing society's slaves born at Vacaville Medical Facility, known and dreaded for its experimentations on the human mind?
DeFreeze didn't outsmart the law enforcement agencies from the time of his "escape," as the SLA communiques would have us believe. These agencies permitted his freedom only until the time came when they wanted him dead.
To act out his dreams, DeFreeze needed assistance. His tragic figure can best be summarized when, on the last day of his life, he was draping his body in ammunition belts, while at the same time unsuccessfully trying to recruit an 18-year-old neighbor on 54th Street and Compton Avenue to join his "revolution." The street was choked with Los Angeles police agents, and DeFreeze was an escaped convict, wanted for murder, kidnapping, bank robbery and assault. He never managed to persuade a single black person to join the SLA. The only support given to the SLA by blacks was given by police agents, informers and collaborators, who conspired to lure him into his death trap.
The man was mechanized and robotized by the CIA and other agencies. He is a pathetic example of the way our society uses black males in its sadistic, imperialistic greed.
Legitimate dreams are perverted by the military intelligence system. One black male, surrounded by whites, and all of them led step by step to their death by police informers, was presented as a serious army, a threat to all the nation. And the nation responded, like a hypnotized, robotized zombie; like Camilla Hall, or Donald DeFreeze, or Patricia Hearst, drawn slowly, step by programmed step, toward destruction.
Are there really such vicious and immoral people, making long-range plans and conspiring against us? Of course there are. And the more carefully they plan, the more difficult it is to detect and unravel the master plan.
Politica was a game plan devised by Abt Associates in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Pentagon and CIA wanted a course of action against developing Third World countries, including Chile. Funding came from the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). The aim was to provide methods of anticipating various social groups and personality characteristics that might emerge in response to given specific military actions. Polilica became a reality when Salvadore Allende was murdered and Chile was delivered into the hands of ITT and other investors.
The Phoenix Program was applied to Vietnam the way Politica was used in Chile. Now-CIA Director William Colby was in charge of the Phoenix Program. It included a continuous policy of political assassinations, rigged elections, political imprisonment in American-made tiger cages, torture and slanted misinformation spread by uncontrollable CIA agents. Colby promised at his Senate confirmation hearings in July, 1973 that he would curb the CIA's activities at home and abroad. Instead, he has imported the Phoenix Program into the United States.
The SLA script is to America what Politica is to Chile or the Phoenix Program is to Vietnam. Methods of political control through manipulation and terror have been perfected.
Our response to America's "first political kidnapping" will determine how well these machinations will succeed.
II. Cast of Characters
The California Connections
Donald DeFreeze, Camilla Hall, Nancy Ling Perry, Patricia Soltysik, Joseph Remiro.
Importations–Migratory Birds
Angela Atwood, Gary Atwood, Emily Harris, William Harris, Russell Little, Robyn Steiner, William Wolfe.
Patsies
Donald DeFreeze, Patricia Hearst
Victims
Dr. Marcus Foster, Donald DeFreeze, William Wolfe, Camilla Hall, Angela Atwood, Nancy Ling Perry, Patricia Soltysik.
Military Agents, Intelligence Agents and Police
Wes Davis, Dr. Fredric Hacker, William Harris, Ron Karenga, Ludlow Kramer, Joseph Remiro, Chris Thompson, Colston Westbrook, Attorney General Evelle Younger, Six migratory birds from the East.
Allowed to Vanish
Peter Benenson, Jean Chan, JoAnn Little DeVito and Joseph DeVito, Amanda De Normanville, Dave Gunnell, Bernard Keaton, Tom Mathews, Mary Alice Siem, There Wheeler, Three unnamed black agents of LAPD.
********* Angela Atwood, alias Deborah Key Crus, General Gelina, Angela DeAngelis
Graduate, University of Indiana.
Trained by CIA think tank, College of Foreign Affairs, University of Indiana, Bloomington, Indiana.
Worked in a "mod squad," setting up narcotics arrests for Intelligence Division of Indiana State Police.
Angela's father a Teamsters' Union Official, in New Jersey.
Never discussed with best friend how she met husband, Gary, or why she married him. "Nobody could get near him."
Moved to Oakland, California, with husband Gary Atwood. Emily and William Harris, summer, 1972.
Upon arriving in Oakland, Angela immediately volunteered to work for United Farm Workers and Los Venceremos, both highly infiltrated by the Federal Government at the time.
Visited Vacaville Medical Facility, and prisoners in the Black Cultural Association (BCA).
Described personally as warm, sensitive; wanted to be an actress.
Not politically sophisticated upon arrival in California.
Employed as a waitress, at Great Electric Underground, in Bank of America Building, San Francisco.
A close friend was afraid Gary might kill Angela. He had beaten her up.
Gary and Angela maintained separate sets of friends. Their husband-wife relationship was similar to that of known espionage agents.
Gary moved back to Indiana in the summer of 1973.
In the fall of 1973, Angela severed other friendships, saying "I am into my own trip now," and moved in with Emily and William Harris.
November 7, 1973, one day before arrest of Remiro and Little, Angela Atwood bought a .380 caliber automatic Mauser pistol, and registered it in her name.
Library card of Gary Atwood was found at Sutherland Court address after Remiro and Little were arrested.
Surfaced as General Gelina, after the Hearst kidnapping.
Was found dead in the house on 54th Street, in Los Angeles, 24 hours after the five other bodies were discovered.
Gary Atwood
Married to Angela Atwood, who trained with Emily and Bill Harris, setting up narcotics arrests for Intelligence Division of Indiana State Police.
Moved to West Coast, summer, 1972, with Angela and William and Emily Harris.
Occupation in Bay Area not explained. Taught part of the time in Chinatown.
Political involvement "all talk"; described as "indoor entertainment, like an intellectual exercise." Threatened to "blow off the head" of a friend who didn't join his revolution. Spoke of Nietzsche, Superman, revolution, Palestinian guerrillas. No evidence of political activism. Not identified with prison or radical groups.
Mean disposition. Angela told a friend, "if you think he is bad now, you should have seen him." "Nobody could get next to him; he didn't like to be touched."
Summer of 1973: Gary went back to Indiana, to Library School.
Angela's body remained unclaimed for three days after her death. Friends called Gary; he signed the release for her to be buried in New Jersey.
Peter Benenson
Mathematician, employed at Lawrence Laboratory, Berkeley; a sensitive government agency.
Was tied up inside his car, on the floor, while five persons kidnapped Patricia Hearst. He heard the shoot-out coming from the apartment as they exited.
Benenson's car was used to drive to a waiting white station wagon, and he was left tied up inside the car. He released himself, and walked one mile to his sister's home, where he spent the night. The FBI and police were not notified for 24 hours about the use of his car for the kidnapping.
He refused to be a witness against anybody, claiming that he "didn't see faces" when he was tied up.
A letter to the Berkeley Barb, Feb. 22, 1974, stated: "The manipulators are brother and sister both by blood and in mind. The male is a mathematician with the U.C. Radiation Lab. His was the car 'commandeered in the kidnapping.'"
The SLA had in their possession books that might have come from Benenson: Chemical Biological Warfare; The Science of Puplic Death; and The Genetic Effects of Radioactivity.
Jean Chan
Oriental girlfriend of David Gunnell, owner of "Peking House," where SLA members lived.
Visited Vacaville Medical Facility; tutored Black Culture there.
No information on her background, or any training which would qualify her to tutor in the prison system.
Sold Chinese food from a food stand on Bancroft Way with Gunnell.
Police stopped a 1965 station wagon in connection with Dr. Marcus Foster's murder, and questioned a female Oriental. A number of "firearms" were found in the vehicle, three weeks before Patty Hearst was kidnapped. If Jean Chan was the person questioned, she was never identified.
Wes Davis
Free lance photographer, Empire News Service, a CIA front, in Vietnam and Asia.
Surfaced after the Hearst kidnapping as an expert on Maoist brainwashing. Often quoting Joseph Remiro, inside San Quentin, with "criticism-self criticism" techniques, as proof of Korean influence in Berkeley.
His sanctimonious speeches ignore the billion-dollar investment in American prisons and hospitals, which funds research on behavior modification techniques, including psychosurgery, chemosurgery, use of mind-altering drugs, electric shock and electrode implants. The Vacaville Medical Facility, where SLA was nurtured, is notorious for such experimentations.
Davis heads an organization called World Humanity Against Totalitarianism. This group helped set up the speeches of Reverend Sun Myumg Moon, defender of Richard Nixon against impeachment.
Reverend Moon is part of General Parks' South Korean Intelligence, CIA. Genuine Christians in South Korea are suspicious of him.
Donald DeFreeze, alias Donald David DeFreeze, Don Cinque DeFreeze, David Thomas, David Kennedy Robinson, Donald John DeFreeze, Donald DeFrez, John DeFriele, Steven Robinson, Gin, Cinque, General Field Marshal Cin, SLA
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, oldest of eight children; beaten by father, forced to leave home at age 14; left Cleveland.
Lived with Reverend W. Foster, Buffalo, N.Y.; became deeply religious.
Arrested for robbing a parking meter; later, for stealing a car and a weapon.
Spent two years in a reformatory, surrounded by "hell," loneliness, fear, hatred. Tried to keep out of fights and avoid homosexual advances.
Married Glory Thomas, 23, mother of three children. They had three more children. Marriage filled with rejection, disappointment. Tried to work and support Glory. Differences drove him to California. Began drinking, taking drugs, collecting weapons.
Arrested on nine separate occasions. Charges involved possession of bombs and explosives, knife, sawed-off shotguns; robbery, assault, possession of 200 firearms, grand larceny, kidnapping, and escaping arrest.
From 1967 to 1969, worked as a police informer for the Los Angeles Police Department, under Detective R. G. Farwell, Public Disorder Intelligence unit. At the time, the LAPD was supplying weapons to black agents, and hiring them to kill Black Panthers. DeFreeze worked with police agent-provocateur Ron Karenga, head of the US Organization. Later, other members of Karenga's group were at Vacaville Medical Facility with DeFreeze. US used the 7-headed cobra, later adopted by the SLA, for its symbol. Nothing in DeFreeze's background indicated a political consciousness while he worked as a Police intelligence informer.
In December, 1967, DeFreeze led police to an apartment where a cache of 200 stolen weapons were found. On November 11, 1969, DeFreeze exchanged gun shots with a bank guard and wounded him – using a .32 caliber Beretta automatic pistol, one of the 200 stolen guns that the police had apparently allowed him to keep.
In 1968, Glory DeFreeze wrote to authorities, following an arrest of her husband, reminding them that they had promised him protection from arrest while he worked for them.
In 1969, DeFreeze subpoenaed Distiict Attorney Evelle Younger to testify in his behalf.
Younger has always maintained close contact with LAPD's Criminal Conspiracy Section (CDS).
During 1969, DeFreeze maintained a nice house, only a few blocks from the Los Angeles Airport, close to his death trap. He was in the business of pimping for black judges and airport officials, fixing them up with women. He drove around in a city truck during the day, and gave the impression to one of his women that he was employed by the city.
Late in 1969, DeFreeze's religious conscience began to bother him. Detective Farwell decided that he was no longer useful to the LAPD, and "cut him loose." In December, 1969, DeFreeze was sent to Chino for "psychiatric testing." From there, he was sent to Vacaville Medical Facility for a term of 6-14 years, where he was to undergo a drastic, and ultimately fatal, personality change.
Dr. Fredric Hacker, an expert on "terrorism," was assigned to Donald DeFreeze for "psychiatric evaluation." He later became a consultant to Randolph Hearst, after Patty was kidnapped.
In 1970, DeFreeze wrote to Judge William L. Ritzi that he "wanted to tell everything." "I want to let you know what really happened and why. I am going to talk to you truthfully like I am talking to God. I will tell you things no one has ever known before." Judge Ritzi wasn't interested.
In 1970, Colston Westbrook, who had been trained in the psychological warfare unit of the CIA, became the CIA control officer for DeFreeze and the group that was to become the SLA. Westbrook headed an experimental behavior modification unit, called the Black Cultural Association (BCA), at Vacaville.
DeFreeze assumed a militant anti-white cover, while meeting with white agents who were brought into the prison system.
While in prison, DeFreeze worked as a double agent, for Westbrook and the CIA, and for the California Department of Corrections and Bureau of Criminal Intelligence and Investigation.
He was responsible to Attorney General Evelle Younger.
Westbrook, in charge of DeFreeze for two years, bragged about how he brought beautiful women into the groups: "They accused me of taking Sexy-looking black women wearing high miniskirts into the prison. Sure I took some foxes, some of my prime stock in there.
Because if you want to dangle a carrot in front of the inmates to get them to learn and come to meetings, you don't dangle communism. You dangle fine-looking chicks. The SLA women say I tortured the inmates by taking in chicks they couldn't do anything to. That's why those lesbians were mad at me."
Vacaville Medical Facility was not a political science institute. Colston Westbrook was not instructing inmates in "communism" for the CIA and the Department of Corrections. For what purpose did Westbrook bait DeFreeze with his carrot-stick technique, and his "prime stock?"
In November, 1972, DeFreeze met Thero Wheeler, inmate, for one month.
In December, 1972, DeFreeze was transferred to Soledad Prison. He was placed in South Facility, set up for trusted inmates, and a holding section for informers. One inmate described DeFreeze's departure from Soledad:
"While Donald DeFreeze was here, I had a few conversations with him. I have always questioned his departure as being a simple walk-away. I didn't come into contact with him personally until his last couple of week here. There weren't many who would associate with him. He tried to give the impression of being supercool, and he came across as cold. When I met him, he was working in the maintenance shop. I asked him if he was happy on his job, because if not, I might be able to find him something else.
"He replied that within a few days, he was going to be assigned to work in the boiler room at the South Facility. I questioned that, because he didn't have enough time here to be given that trust. I know cons that have been turned down for that position. He wouldn't comment; he only gave me a big smile. I should explain that no prisoners were kept at the South Facility at that time, because it had no security. No gun towers were in operation, and there were no guards posted.
"A few prisoners with proven records of trust were taken from Central Facility to South Facility to perform certain duties; then they would be returned to Central after their shift. A few days later, DeFreeze did get that job. Midnight to 8 a.m. shift, in the boiler room, South Facility. On his first night, he was dropped off at midnight, and given a few instructions. His job was automatic; it only required an overseer. He was left to himself, and when an officer returned an hour later to check on him, he was gone."
A few months after leaving Vacaville, DeFreeze was given a special privilege at Soledad prison. He was allowed to use the marital trailers for visits with women, a privilege normally reserved for married men.
Did Westbrook provide women for DeFreeze even though he was not meeting him with prison visits?
Donald DeFreeze walked out of Soledad prison in March, 1973. His transportation to the Bay area was allegedly arranged by Deputy Superintendent James Nelson. Another former employee from Soledad, currently owner of a liquor store in Sacramento, assisted in the departure, which was later classified as an "escape." His name will be turned over to a Grand Jury when there is a proper investigation of the case.
In Spring of 1973, Bernard Keaton, a double for Donald DeFreeze, visited the Foster family in Buffalo, New York. He passed himself off as DeFreeze, who had lived with the family 15 years ago, and he knew intimate details of their life.
In August, 1973, Thero Wheeler walked away from Vacaville Medical Facility.
From August to October, 1973, DeFreeze and Wheeler met "at least twenty times" with the SLA in Oakland.
DeFreeze made his public appearance as General Field Marshal Cinque of the SLA following the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst.
In March, 1974, DeFreeze publicly named Colston Westbrook, Chris Thompson, and Robyn Steiner as CIA and FBI informers.
On May 4, 1974, Donald Freed, writer, and Lake Headley, independent investigator, held a press conference in San Francisco. They presented 400 pages of documentation on DeFreeze's arrest records, the work of Colston Westbrook with the CCS and CII (Criminal Identification and Investigation), and evidence of links of the CIA to Police Departments.
May 17, 1974, New York Times carried the story of DeFreeze and the Los Angeles Police Department. That same day, he was cremated by the Los Angeles Police Department.
The LAPD did not notify DeFreeze's family of his death for three days. His remains were sent to Cleveland, Ohio, with the head and the fingers missing.
Billions of dollars are spent confining, arresting, judging, punishing, altering and experimenting upon men like DeFreeze. If the same attention and money were spent on understanding and helping them, events like the SLA saga would never happen.
Amanda De Normanville
Former student of Berkeley School of Criminology. Supposedly housed Donald DeFreeze after he left Soledad prison.
Again: DeFreeze was allowed special visits with women in marital trailers while in prison, a privilege only allowed to married men; Amanda visited DeFreeze in prison, and was reported to be romantically involved with him.
Prisons keep detailed records of visitors, but the police never went to Amanda's house in the Bay Area to search for DeFreeze after his "escape."
JoAnn DeVito, and Ex-Husband Joseph DeVito
JoAnn was Russell Little's sister; she was interested in prisons and in Donald DeFreeze.
The SLA house in Concord was rented by Mr. and Mrs. J. DeVoto, aliases for Russell Little and Nancy Ling Perry.
Joseph DeVito was questioned by FBI agents in Isla Vista, California, on March 26, 1974. Held for interstate flight from prosecution of a prior crime in Florida; nature of crime not stated.
Dr. Marcus Foster, Supt. Oakland Unified School District
Fatally wounded, November 6, 1973. Robert Blackburn, Deputy Superintendent, also critically wounded.
Both men had moved from Philadelphia together in 1970.
Oakland had put police in the schools as part of the federal government's push to solve social problems with "law and order" government. This and other measures became the excuse for Foster's murder.
Willie Wolfe, who had no children, attended Oakland School Board meetings and told prisoners in Vacaville that "something had to be done to prevent Foster from implementing student identification programs." Colston Westbrook and other prison visitors aroused the anger of black inmates against Foster.
Two weeks before the killing, the American Nazi Party handed out leaflets in nearby San Leandro, predicting the murder of a "Mixmaster school superintendent" and his white friend.
Foster was shot with cyanide bullets and didn't stand a chance. Blackburn, the white man, was shot with ordinary bullets, and lived. The quantity of cyanide in the bullets was not as important as the selective methods of kill vs. survival.
Foster's death was a blow to the black community, where he was needed and well liked.
The SLA surfaced immediately after the murder, taking "credit" for the assassination in the name of the "Symbionese Liberation Army Western Regional Youth Unit."
Two "black" people were seen leaving the scene of the Foster murder. When Remiro and Little were indicted for the crime, black make-up was found in their house. This make-up can be worn by whites emulating blacks.
How many other whites in blackface are killing and kidnapping?
Blaming "blacks" for white murders is consistent with a fascistic escalation of terror to speed up genocide.
Dave Gunnell
In late thirties; older than SLA members. Lived with Jean Chan in house on Chabot Road, Berkeley, called Peking House, which was a meeting place for the SLA. The name "Peking House" was played up by CIA agent Wes Davis as "proof" that Mao was behind the SLA.
Gunnell sold Chinese food from a food stand on Bancroft Way, adjacent to the U.C. Berkeley campus, next to Fruity Rudy's stand, where Nancy Ling Perry worked. Gunnell claimed he did not know Nancy. Gunnell was a jazz musician, like Nancy's husband and Rudolph Henderson (Fruity Rudy).
Chris Thompson, named by DeFreeze as CIA, was a frequent visitor at Peking House, and a source of contact with Nancy Ling Perry, Camilla Hall, and Patricia Soltysik.
Willie Wolfe, Russell Little, and Robyn Steiner lived in Peking House.
If Peking House were indeed a haven for radicals, if the SLA was visiting California prisons, and if Maoist doctrines were being taught at the house, the FBI and California police would have been well aware of the SLA members before Patty Hearst was kidnapped.
Yet, in spite of the SLA's attempted infiltration of every radical group in the area, their week-end target practice at gun clubs and the assortment of guns registered in their names, the residents of Peking House were quite inconspicuous as far as the police were concerned.
Gunnell was "not into politics."
Camilla Hall, alias Gabi
Daughter of Lutheran Minister, Reverend D.G. Hall. Graduate of University of Minnesota; excelled in English and art.
Social worker for three years before moving to California.
Shared apartmant with Patricia Soltysik; wrote poetry for her, named her "Mizmoon."
Authentic Berkeley artist; sensitive; gentle; into ecology and the women's movement. Not into radical politics; drawn into SLA with Patricia Soltysik to lend authenticity to cover story that SLA was a group of Berkeley hippie-radicals.
Travelled in Spain in 1972. What other countries?
Worked as a groundkeeper for the Regional Parks. Fired in fall, 1973.
Disappeared in December, 1973, a month after SLA claimed credit for murder of Dr. Foster.
Blue VW, similar to Camilla's, seen scouting Steven Weed's apartment before Patty's kidnapping.
Jan. 2, 1974: purchased .380 caliber automatic Mauser pistol and registered it under her name.
Feb. 4, 1974: Patricia Hearst kidnapped.
Feb. 14, 1974: Camilla moved out of her apartment, taking only her pet cat.
Photographed at Hibernia Bank robbery in San Francisco as a gun-toting radical terrorist.
This act was inconsistent with Camilla's hatred of war and violence.
Christine Johnson, the last person to see Camilla Hall alive, said she was holding two bottles in her hands, with "something white around the bottles. She was walking around, looked like a zombie or something, halfway smiling."
Emily Harris, alias Anna Lindenberg, Yolanda
Daughter of a wealthy consulting engineer, from Illinois suburbs.
B.A., University of Indiana, language arts.
Training: CIA think tank, College of Foreign Affairs, University of Indiana, Bloomington.
Worked with William Harris and Angela Atwood in "mod squad," setting up narcotics arrests for the Intelligence Division, Indiana State Police.
When the Harrises apartment was vacated, among the names left in an address book was Tim Casey, from Orange County. Emily and Tim dated during the summers of 1967 and '68 while she was working in California at Disneyland Hotel. Were there any links between two clients of J. Waiter Thompson Advertising Agency – Disneyland Hotel and the San Francisco Police Department?
Was Emily in touch with espionage agents from Orange County?
Described as "cold, intelligent, the strength of the family; had leadership ability."
Moved to Oakland late 1972, with the Atwoods.
Employed as clerk-typist, Survey Research Center, "polling office," at University of California.
Not in politics in Indiana; never involved in radical movements.
On moving to California, immediately joined Chino Defense Committee, an offshoot of Marxist-Leninist Venceremos organization. Worked to aid members accused of a prison break; wrote letters on their behalf. Visited prison inmates Doc Holiday and Barren Broadnax, who had long been targets of the prison system and Attorney General Evelle Younger. She travelled several hundred miles from Oakland to San Luis Obispo each week to make these prison visits. At the time, the Black Guerrilla Family and the Chino Defense Fund were filled with infiltrators and agents provocateurs.
Emily's last prison visit was January 10, 1974, the day Remiro and Little were arrested.
It is not clear why the Harrises left Bloomington. They had "toyed" with politics and posed in the school annual with Bill jokingly holding a book entitled About Communism, but they were not into radical politics.
Cover story to the effect that "underemployment radicalized middle-class America" has no basis in fact. Underemployment is consistent with clandestine assignments.
Through her work, Emily Harris allegedly had access to Patty Hearst's school schedule.
Denials merely indicate that investigation should proceed on this matter. Remember Watergate denials?
The Harris' apartment in Oakland was modern, well-furnished, with a color TV, a waterbed, imported kitchenware, and fine china. They read the straight press: Time, the Oakland Tribune.
A Maoist poster and a picture of a starving child hung over their dining table. Donald Segretti, White House spy, had a "Free Huey Newton" poster over his desk, and wore a peace emblem and long hair, for espionage cover. William and Emily Harris were verbally and visually "radical."
Emily owned a gun, registered in her name, and practiced shooting twice a week at Chabot Gun Club, in Oakland.
Emily's father, Mr. Schwartz, said on TV that in her last letter, she explained a change in her life-style, saying she had been "pretending for some time." Her other life – the straight life, with material possessions, non-radical experiences, formal education, and employment at the UCB polling office – might indicate that the SLA experience did not reflect her real self.
Suddenly abandoning her husband for a "black lover" and disappearing with Randolph Hearst's daughter might have been part of her next assignment.
William Harris, alias Rip Kimberley, Richard Frank Dennis, Jonathan Mark Salamone, Teko
B.A., University of Indiana; studied Speech and English. Enlisted in U.S. Marines, served at the supply depot at DaNang. Joseph Remiro and Colston Westbrook were in Vietnam the same time.
Returned to Indiana. Joined fraternity; competed in golf and cross-country running.
Member of "mod squad," with Emily, and Angela Atwood. Set up narcotics arrests for the Intelligence Division, Indiana State Police. Studied at College of Foreign Affairs, University of Indiana.
Taught at Bloomington Junior High School before coming to California.
Received Master's Degree in "Urban Education" at Indiana. CIA agent Colston Westbrook, leader of the group which became the SLA, taught "Black Lexicon" in the Department of Urban Affairs at UC Berkeley.
Not a campus radical, but kept posters of Black Panthers Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in trailer in Indiana following his return from Vietnam. Later, the SLA headquarters contained a map of Huey Newton's apartment, and his name was listed as a possible death target.
In California, worked as truck driver for Post Office. Postal helmet discovered November 10, 1973, following the arrest of Remiro and Little, at Sutherland Courthouse in Concord. Harris could have been identified by police at that time, before the Hearst kidnapping.
November, 1973: purchased 9mm Mauser pistol, registered in his own name.
Joined Chabot Gun Club, in Oakland, and practiced twice a week. Associated with, but not active in, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a heavily infiltrated organization.
Rented SLA safehouse in December, 1973, that would be filled with propaganda which would later be used by Attorney General William Saxbe for future political terrorism and repression.
Driver's license from Rhode Island. Never explained when or why Harris was in Rhode Island.
Mayor Alioto claimed Emily and William Harris intended to kidnap his grandchildren.
Considering the Harrises' provocateur role, and Alioto's election campaign for Governor, it is possible that they obliged him by making themselves conspicuous in his neighborhood without being arrested by police.
Caused an altercation at Mel's Sporting Goods Store, Inglewood, that would be the signal for the pre-arranged murder of six SLA members. Set Patty up in the "shooting scene."
Purposely introduced and identified "Tania" to Tom Matthews during an unnecessary 12-hour captivity; supervised her so-called "confession" to Matthews, framing her so that 22 charges would be brought against her.
Harris's military I.D. was found in the death house on 54th Street, in Los Angeles. It was not explained why a radical revolutionary terrorist was still using his military I.D.
Set Patty Hearst up so that she could witness the massacre of the other SLA members.
June 7, 1974: released another "SLA Communique," hardly the rhetoric of George Jackson, Malcolm X, Chairman Mao, or Martin Luther King. The man with a B.A. in English and a Master's Degree produced a provocative, foulmouthed public display that can only harm legitimate protest.
Harris is probably currently hiding in a CIA safe house ranch, preparing for his next outrageous actions.
While the Harrises acted as provocateurs, and set Patty Hearst up, they themselves are not wanted for anything.
"The Harrises are less militant than their six SLA comrades.... So far, the Harrises were not overtly involved in any of these incidents...." So says Charles Bates, Chief of FBI, San Francisco.
"I feel that Bill and Emily Harris have lost touch with the masses. They have become isolated. The SLA is not an organized group that plans its actions as far as I can see. My political friends and comrades think the SLA has a superfly mentality. They lined their pockets with the bank robbery money and accomplished nothing but spreading of fear."
– Bill Brennan, former roommate of Joseph Remiro
Were Emily or William Harris ever in touch with the masses? Or was their role, as police agents, to do exactly as they were told?
Ron Karenga
Black leader of the US Organization. In December, 1967, Detective Sergeant R. Farwell recruited Donald DeFreeze to work for the Public Disorder Intelligence Unit, of the CCS (Criminal Conspiracy Section, LAPD). Its purpose was to monitor black political activities in California.
Karenga worked with DeFreeze and the LAPD, as part of a "fuck-fuck unit," running guns to various black militant groups, hoping to set off a gang war between the Black Panthers and the US Organization.
US member Melvin Cotton Smith helped set up Black Panther busts for the police. The Steiner brothers, working with Karenga and the LAPD, killed Panther leaders John Huggins and Alpretnice Carter at UCLA.
Members of Karenga's group were at Vacaville with DeFreeze.
In April, 1974, the Steiner brothers were allowed to walk away from San Quentin, as Thero Wheeler walked away from Vacaville and DeFreeze walked out of Soledad a year earlier.
The Steiner brothers seem to have disappeared without a trace. Where are they now? Did they play any role in setting up their former comrade-informer, DeFreeze, back home in Los Angeles?
Bernard Keaton
Double for Donald DeFreeze. Surfaced in Spring, 1973, after DeFreeze walked away from Soledad.
Claimed to be Donald DeFreeze; moved in with Reverend W. Foster and family, in Buffalo, New York; familiar with intimate details of the family history that only DeFreeze would have known about.
FBI stated they are not concerned or curious about DeFreeze's double; that it "isn't illegal."
The only reason for having a double would be that in case DeFreeze had been accidentally picked up by law enforcement officers in the Bay area during the time between his "departure" from Soledad and the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, his double could have taken his place in prison. Three long-years had gone into training DeFreeze for his mission at Vacaville Medical Facility. It couldn't be thrown away.
Ludlow Kramer
Secretary of State, Washington State. Director of P.I.N. (People In Need), the Hearst food give-away rip-off.
Hired by Randolph Hearst to distribute $2,000,000 worth of food to the poor.
Previous experience handing out food during NASA and military job lay-offs in Washington. Quality of that food was good, and provbked violence was not a part of this previous assignment.
P.I.N. food program was a disaster. It was a catalytic, provocateur action to hasten Patty's conversion to the SLA.
Meat was bought for Hearst's program, from "the nation's major meat packers," at triple the normal cost; it contained up to 75% fat. Some of the food was contaminated.
Governor Ronald Reagan hoped the people who took the food would get botulism.
His mission accomplished, Kramer returned to Washington in time to run for Congress on the Republican ticket – with substantial financial backing.
Kramer pushed for "vote by voice print" by 1984 – identiftcation of every adult by voice and social security number.
During this time, March, 1974, Congress passed a bill to pay $10-million to five chicken growers from the South. Their chicken feed was poisoned, somehow, with Dieldren, a cancer-inducing insecticide. Nobody knows how it got into the chicken-feed. Millions of poisoned chickens had already been delivered to poor school lunch programs in Chicago and Detroit.
Question: Did any of those poisoned chickens make their way into the P.I.N. food distribution program?
Russell Little, alias George DeVoto, James Scalise, Osceola
Father a mechanic at Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Florida. Little also stated that father was a retired labor relations specialist.
Graduated from University of Florida, Gainesville, 1967.
Allegedly took a course on Revolution, where he was introduced to Communist writers such as Marx, Lenin, Mao, Cleaver and Malcolm X.
Studied engineering, electronics.
Questioned by police in Philadelphia when Dr. Marcus Foster was leading an anti-drug campaign in that city. Why was Little there? Was Foster marked earlier for identification and death?
Traveled in U.S., locations not identified, before arriving in Oakland.
Summer of 1972: made contact with Willie Wolfe through Peking House in Berkeley; started to visit California prisons; joined BCA at Vacaville with Donald DeFreeze.
No previous radical experiences with prisoners or blacks.
It is strange how migratory birds such as Little, Steiner, the Atwoods and the Harrises entered immediately into California prison "reform" groups – their "reforms" would set prison movements back a hundred years.
Little joined Westbrook, DeFreeze and SLA members in a small prison group, "Unisight," with a Maoist cover. All took African names.
Little brought controversial discussion and hatred of Dr. Foster into the prisons.
Visited Death Row Jefferson, supposedly the founder of BCA.
Taught at Peralta Junior College, Oakland.
Bought a .380 caliber Brazilian-made Rossi revolver from Chris Thompson. This kind of weapon could be used with cyanide bullets.
October 8, 1973: rented a house on Sutherland Court, using alias George DeVoto, with Nancy Ling Perry. It became an SLA "Liberated Zone."
November 6, 1973: Dr. Marcus Foster murdered, allegedly by two black men. Little and Remiro, arrested for this crime, possessed black make-up and the murder weapons.
January 19, 1974: Little and Joseph Remiro were taken to San Quentin, charged with the murder of Foster, as well as resisting arrest and assaulting a policeman.
While in San Quentin, Little apparently read an interview with me in the Berkeley Barb on April 19, 1974, titled "Is SLA's Cinque the First Black Lee Harvey Oswald?" Little was furious at my suggestion that the SLA was a CIA operation. He wrote a letter saying, in part, "That dizzy bitch can kiss my ass! That pompous bitch has a nerve to call Jonathan Jackson a 'patsy.' I hope she drops dead tomorrow."
Louis Tackwood, in The Glass House Tapes, describes in detail how the LAPD knew in advance of the George Jackson "escape" plans and the Marin County Courthouse shootout. Jonathan Jackson was double-crossed and left abandoned without a promised backup. He was murdered by members of the LAPD. Risking his life on the line to tell the truth, Tackwood is the real freedom fighter. Little and Remiro are the mouthpieces that Congressmen will quote to "prove" that a violent revolution is taking place.
Any person involved in radical politics is aware that most if not all radical groups are heavily infiltrated by espionage agents and provocateurs. What angers Little is any exposure of the methods and contacts that created the SLA.
Nancy Ling Perry, alias Nancy DeVoto, Fahizah, Lynn Sedworth
Family background: conservative, well off. Goldwater supporter; political conservative.
Attended Santa Rosa High School; cheerleader, Sunday school teacher.
B.A., Whittier College. Graduate work, U.C. Berkeley, specializing in chemistry.
Married for six years to black jazz musician Gilbert Perry; met when he was working for State Employment office. Described as a "love-hate affair."
Topless blackjack dealer in San Francisco; went through a period of heavy use of psychedelic drugs and amphetamines.
Politics always "vague." After being openly conservative, she seemed to have no politics at all. Remained apart from groups in Berkeley; maintained her older friends from high school. She seemed to like to appear as though she had no past at all. People who knew her sensed a curious intellectual loneliness. Into dope, and a good source of where to buy it.
No indication as to where or when radical political indoctrination took place. Trained in behavior modification.
Sold fruit juice at Fruity Rudy's stand, on Bancroft Way near U.C. Berkeley campus.
Dated Chris Thompson, who was the link between "Peking House" and Nancy, Camilla Hall, and Patricia Soltysik.
Began visiting prisoners; cover story was "an interest in prison reform." She and Emily Harris appear to have been given special privileges, in that they were permitted to visit more than one prisoner at a time. Were SLA members given special treatment?
Nancy wrote "Death to the Pigs" inside Fruity Rudy's stand, just as the same slogan was written on the walls of Sharon Tate's home, to make police think that blacks committed the murders.
Nancy paid $553 in cash to rent the house at 1560 Sutherland Court in Concord, using the alias, "Nancy DeVoto." The house was used as an SLA hideout, and filled with ammunition, weapons, and literature.
On January 10, 1974, the day Remiro and Little were arrested for the murder of Dr. Foster, Nancy set fire to the bungalow. She did a remarkably poor job of destroying the evidence, but an excellent job of calling attention to the house and its contents.
There was no personal oppression or experiences in the past that would explain participation in the murder of Foster, or acceptance of a fiery martyrdom in Los Angeles. She was apparently shot by the police while trying to get out of the house.
Joseph Remiro, alias George DeVoto, "B," Charles Robert Peterson
Remiro, in San Quentin, didn't cry when he heard that six SLA members had been cremated. He went on playing gin rummy. "Joe was a political heavy."
Devout Catholic family; raised in San Francisco, trained as a "stone reactionary."
Member of 10lst Airborne Division; volunteered twice for duty in Vietnam. Signed up to "kill a commie for Christ." Participated willingly in numerous search and destroy missions; said they were like Galley's massacre at My Lai.
Declared himself to be a pacifist when he came home; this would be inconsistent with his alleged murder of Dr. Foster, and the subsequent death warrants issued by the SLA.
By January, 1969, Remiro allegedly started to take a lot of drugs. He claimed he "couldn't get outside my house without being completely drugged out of my head." Remiro and Perry, both dependent upon drugs, could be manipulated by CIA agents to form the nucleus of the SLA. Perry was the theoretical "brains" behind the organization. Remiro provided military and tactical support. Chemistry, weapons and radical rhetoric were all they needed to start their "army."
Carlos Marighella's Mini-Manual for Urban Guerrilla Warfare was to the SLA cover story what Marx's Das Kapital was to the Warren Report and Lee Harvey Oswald. The myth that Marx influenced Oswald was pure fabrication, a "cover story."
Remiro was employed as a "mechanic," was divorced, and had one child.
July 19, 1973: purchased a .380 caliber Walther automatic. This gun was found in his possession when he was arrested on November 10, 1973.
October, 1973: went underground with Little and Willie Wolfe. Rented 7th Street apartment in Oakland, with Emily and William Harris, for Foster ambush.
Racist; wanted Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Winter Soldier Organization to take the position that U.S. minorities should each have their own territory.
Helped race war along by owning black make-up. Did he put on black face to escalate violence in the Oakland-Berkeley area?
Developed plans to kill Black Panther leaders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.
Remiro and Little were placed in San Quentin, without trial, immediately after their indictment for the murder of Dr. Foster. They were given maximum media coverage to mouth radical violence.
Lee Harvey Oswald's public radio broadcast in New Orleans, with Ed Butler of Army Intelligence, was to create a cover for U.S. agents operating behind a Communist front.
Colston Westbrook, William Harris and Joseph Remiro supplied the SLA's intelligence and military tactics.
"I believe the SLA actions have had and are having such an inhibiting effect on political works in the Bay Area that I feel the time to speak out has come."
– Bill Brennan, former roommate of Remiro
Mary Alice Siem
Twenty-four years old; mother of small child, friend of Thero Wheeler.
Frequent visitor to Wheeler at Vacaville Medical Facility.
August, 1973: Wheeler "escaped" from Vacaville, and lived with Mary Alice in the Bay area.
August-October, 1973: Mary Alice and Thero made at least 20 visits to DeFreeze and the SLA in Oakland.
DeFreeze wanted to kill both of them, but was "discouraged." Did he suspect them at the time of being provocateurs?
Mary Alice gave $600 to DeFreeze and the SLA; said she was "robbed." Difficult to visualize prison escapee Wheeler and Mary Alice carrying $600 in cash to a meeting in Oakland with the SLA. Possible source of funding for DeFreeze before the kidnapping?
Visitors to prisons are carefully identified; yet police didn't seek or locate Wheeler at Mary's home in the Bay area, or hold Mary for harboring an escapee
America has hundreds of Dreyfus Affairs going. Latest on the list is the creation of the SLA.
Congress gives the CIA and other intelligence agencies all the money they desire. No questions are asked about how much they receive, much less how it is used. CIA Director William Colby wants to tighten the secrecy, with the threat of a $10,000 fine and ten years in jail, for any Paul Reveres shouting in the dark to wake us up.
Until the present time, the CIA was carefully inconspicuous on the domestic scene. Creation of the SLA provides an excuse for the CIA, and special police forces like the German Gestapo, to step forth publicly and assume control of all law enforcement agencies.
The covert operations and psychological warfare techniques that were used to form the SLA were perfected in Britain and Germany during World War II. After the war, our OSS was converted into the CIA by English and German spy masters.
Right-wing groups such as the American Nazi Party, the Ku Klux Klan, the Minutemen and the National States Rights Party are used as fronts for CIA and FBI operations. The military-intelligence teams give approval, funding, tactical support and protection from arrest.
Mass education, political organization and the attempt to solve economic and social problems are perceived as threats to the status quo. Recommendations for constructive alternatives to unemployment, sickness, hunger and poverty are answered by chaos, violence and racism. it is because the solutions to many problems exist today that armies and propaganda machines must step lip their domestic warfare. Police, prison guards, and intelligence agents flex their muscles and take aim at their victims.
Motives for Creation of the SLA
Fifteen goals were to be achieved by the creation of this elaborate conspiracy. They have all been launched, and a careful observer can see them being implemented in today's news stories.
1. Create a national fear of terrorist organizations, and of future kidnappings, accompanied by increased bombings.
2. Link U.S. terrorists to international guerrilla groups.
3. Discredit communes.
4. Escalate domestic fear of Mao Tse Tung, brainwashing and indoctrination.
5. Create the apparent justification for UCLA's Institute to Study the Causes and Prevention of Violence, now temporarily shelved and suspect.
6. Discredit the poor, and test food distribution programs.
7. Isolate prisoners from genuine reform organizations.
8. Escalate domestic race war between blacks and whites.
9. Discredit radical and/or leftist organizations, particularly the Black Guerrilla Family, Los Venceremos, United Farm Workers, Women's Movement groups and Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
10. Increase public and private police forces and security agents.
11. Turn the population into informers, who turn each other In.
12. Create new legislation against future kidnappings.
13. Link demons and the Devil to communists, radicals, leftists and other deviants from the official Government line, and virtuous, right-thinking Christianity to strong-arm police tactics.
14. Discredit the FBI; make military and international police and the CIA appear necessary to control terrorism in the U.S.
15. Set up conditions for martial law, prevent free election choices in 1976 and escalate fear, to keep power in the hands of the military and intelligence agencies.
What was Patricia Hearst's state of mind during these various manipulations? None of us was there, so we can only speculate. Could she change over to think and feel with the "radicals" when she was their captive?
The rank-and-file of the SLA consisted predominantly of CIA agents and police informers. For this reason, Patty could be cleverly controlled in order to make it appear that she had joined them of her own free will.
Sophisticated radicals and politically aware people of the Bay Area rejected the SLA, but Patty Hearst had no choice; she was, and is, their captive.
Each day, we were invited to witness the purposeful manipulation of an individual who had been captured, and subsequently drastically altered, over a four-month period of time. Patty lived with fear, was taught terror, became hunted and oppressed, was given a new name, a new family and new "loves."
Was Patty Hearst brainwashed?
What did Vacaville Medical Facility promise Donald DeFreeze in exchange for the use of his head? What "favor" did he do for them?
Why was CIA agent Colston Westbrook – educated in psychological warfare and the indoctrination of assassination and terrorist cadres – chosen to select and train the group that became the SLA?
Joseph Remiro and Nancy Ling Perry, important to the SLA for military tactics and cover story rhetoric, were dependent upon drugs. Both were political conservatives with a "kill-a-commie-for-Christ" background. Their transition into "radicals" could have been assisted by the same chemical and psychological controls our intelligence agencies are using and experimenting with daily.
Bill and Emily Harris, and Angels Atwood, worked together as a "mod squad" narc team back home in Indiana, for the Indiana State Police. What brought them all scurrying to the Bay Area in the summer of 1972?
Russell Little and Robyn Steiner, college chums from the University of Florida, drove out together from Florida to Oakland is the summer of '72. Though neither had shown any previous interest in blacks or prisoners, both immediately began working with Colston Westbrook and Donald DeFreeze at Vacaville Medical Facility.
Camilla Hall and Patricia Soltysik were at least authentic residents of the Berkeley community. What controls were used to draw them into the SLA and ultimately to their deaths in Log Angeles?
Donald DeFreeze and Patty Hearst are not the only ones who were brainwashed.
The same mass media that told us Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy, that James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King, that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert F. Kennedy, that Arthur Bremer was the lone gunman when George Wallace was shot, and that Ted Kennedy was responsible for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, brainwash this society every single day. The creation of the SLA is only one more propaganda lie. We can't discuss Patty's brainwashing without looking at our own.
Our sensitivities and emotions were tested over the same period of time as Patty Hearst's or Donald DeFreeze's. Patty was taken to a building near the death trap on 54th Street, so that she could witness six of her close associates and intimates for the last four months being shot and burned to death. We watched the event in living color over Friday TV Dinner. All of us took part.
The only ones to gain from the maneuvers of the SLA were the military and police agencies. They have already spent between $5-and-l0-million "pursuing" the SLA. Ten thousand young adults were stopped, searched or arrested within a three-week period. SWAT police teams are now located in every major city. Police helicopter contracts are escalating. Computerized police information systems will increase. And the CIA will openly take over local police departments, where before they hid behind Public Relations doors.
The creation of the fictitious Symbionese Liberation Army was a cruel hoax perpetrated on the American public.
Years of planning went into this operation. It may have started taking shape after the Chicago convention in 1968, when protestors were moving into the streets, displeased with Washington's policies. The intelligence community was determined that large riots such as those in Watts and Detroit would never happen again. The next stage of "political protest" will be planned terrorist activities.
To speed things along, police and the military have selectively provided weapons, knowing that dissidents will be outnumbered, outgunned and handled with brutality. America will become like Vietnam, a battleground of burnings, killings and provocations. Military provocateurs, and the Phoenix Program in the U.S. will be used to control blacks, Chicanos, Indians, and radicals.
The public cremation in Los Angeles on May 17, 1974, was not the end of the SLA. It was only Stage One. Vietnam has arrived in California.
The families of the deceased SLA members wish they understood what the SLA was about. Aside from empty rhetoric, nothing was accomplished that justified their early deaths. The SLA's printed analysis of fascism in America was accurate enough; but their actions did not elucidate any constructive programs for altering society. The military intelligence agents simply iliustrated how easy it is to be wiped out once the issues are declared. Police have made it perfectly clear what can happen to you if you don't like what you are getting.
A 15-member team of psychiatrists, criminologists and suicide specialists has assembled to piece together what they call "psychological autopsies" to answer the "puzzling question" of why the SLA members "chose to die." Yet Nancy Ling Perry was gunned down outside the hideout, after she fled from the flaming house.
Why isn't a psychological profile prepared of the police who did not allow her to surrender alive? Her body was found outside the house. What does that tell the so-called experts?
The "psychological autopsies" of the SLA are a typical CIA technique for producing irrelevant facts from a person's life. They will dangle these facts before us as "motives" for violence, but their analysis will make no reference to how the victims were led and tricked into dying.
Donald DeFreeze may have had fantasies of becoming a great black leader. A genuine void existed, because of the systematic assassination of black leaders. The same agencies that murdered George Jackson, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Martin Luther King, Che Guevara and Jonathan Jackson were not about to provide Field Marshal General Cinque with his own personal army, without having some purpose of their own. Was Cinque's vision of freeing society's slaves born at Vacaville Medical Facility, known and dreaded for its experimentations on the human mind?
DeFreeze didn't outsmart the law enforcement agencies from the time of his "escape," as the SLA communiques would have us believe. These agencies permitted his freedom only until the time came when they wanted him dead.
To act out his dreams, DeFreeze needed assistance. His tragic figure can best be summarized when, on the last day of his life, he was draping his body in ammunition belts, while at the same time unsuccessfully trying to recruit an 18-year-old neighbor on 54th Street and Compton Avenue to join his "revolution." The street was choked with Los Angeles police agents, and DeFreeze was an escaped convict, wanted for murder, kidnapping, bank robbery and assault. He never managed to persuade a single black person to join the SLA. The only support given to the SLA by blacks was given by police agents, informers and collaborators, who conspired to lure him into his death trap.
The man was mechanized and robotized by the CIA and other agencies. He is a pathetic example of the way our society uses black males in its sadistic, imperialistic greed. Legitimate dreams are perverted by the military intelligence system. One black male, surrounded by whites, and all of them led step by step to their death by police informers, was presented as a serious army, a threat to all the nation. And the nation responded, like a hypnotized, robotized zombie; like Camilla Hall, or Donald DeFreeze, or Patricia Hearst, drawn slowly, step by programmed step, toward destruction.
Are there really such vicious and immoral people, making long-range plans and conspiring against us? Of course there are. And the more carefully they plan, the more difficult it is to detect and unravel the master plan.
Politica was a game plan devised by Abt Associates in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Pentagon and CIA wanted a course of action against developing Third World countries, including Chile. Funding came from the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). The aim was to provide methods of anticipating various social groups and personality characteristics that might emerge in response to given specific military actions. Polilica became a reality when Salvadore Allende was murdered and Chile was delivered into the hands of ITT and other investors.
The Phoenix Program was applied to Vietnam the way Politica was used in Chile. Now-CIA Director William Colby was in charge of the Phoenix Program. It included a continuous policy of political assassinations, rigged elections, political imprisonment in American-made tiger cages, torture and slanted misinformation spread by uncontrollable CIA agents. Colby promised at his Senate confirmation hearings in July, 1973 that he would curb the CIA's activities at home and abroad. Instead, he has imported the Phoenix Program into the United States.
The SLA script is to America what Politica is to Chile or the Phoenix Program is to Vietnam. Methods of political control through manipulation and terror have been perfected. Our response to America's "first political kidnapping" will determine how well these machinations will succeed.
II. Cast of Characters
The California Connections
Donald DeFreeze, Camilla Hall, Nancy Ling Perry, Patricia Soltysik, Joseph Remiro.
Importations–Migratory Birds
Angela Atwood, Gary Atwood, Emily Harris, William Harris, Russell Little, Robyn Steiner, William Wolfe.
Patsies
Donald DeFreeze, Patricia Hearst
Victims
Dr. Marcus Foster, Donald DeFreeze, William Wolfe, Camilla Hall, Angela Atwood, Nancy Ling Perry, Patricia Soltysik.
Military Agents, Intelligence Agents and Police
Wes Davis, Dr. Fredric Hacker, William Harris, Ron Karenga, Ludlow Kramer, Joseph Remiro, Chris Thompson, Colston Westbrook, Attorney General Evelle Younger, Six migratory birds from the East.
Allowed to Vanish
Peter Benenson, Jean Chan, JoAnn Little DeVito and Joseph DeVito, Amanda De Normanville, Dave Gunnell, Bernard Keaton, Tom Mathews, Mary Alice Siem, There Wheeler, Three unnamed black agents of LAPD.
********* Angels Atwood, alias Deborah Key Crus, General Gelina, Angela DeAngelis
Graduate, University of Indiana.
Trained by CIA think tank, College of Foreign Affairs, University of Indiana, Bloomington, Indiana.
Worked in a "mod squad," setting up narcotics arrests for Intelligence Division of Indiana State Police.
Angela's father a Teamsters' Union Official, in New Jersey.
Never discussed with best friend how she met husband, Gary, or why she married him. "Nobody could get near him."
Moved to Oakland, California, with husband Gary Atwood. Emily and William Harris, summer, 1972.
Upon arriving in Oakland, Angela immediately volunteered to work for United Farm Workers and Los Venceremos, both highly infiltrated by the Federal Government at the time.
Visited Vacaville Medical Facility, and prisoners in the Black Cultural Association (BCA).
Described personally as warm, sensitive; wanted to be an actress.
Not politically sophisticated upon arrival in California.
Employed as a waitress, at Great Electric Underground, in Bank of America Building, San Francisco.
A close friend was afraid Gary might kill Angela. He had beaten her up.
Gary and Angela maintained separate sets of friends. Their husband-wife relationship was similar to that of known espionage agents.
Gary moved back to Indiana in the summer of 1973.
In the fall of 1973, Angela severed other friendships, saying "I am into my own trip now," and moved in with Emily and William Harris.
November 7, 1973, one day before arrest of Remiro and Little, Angela Atwood bought a .380 caliber automatic Mauser pistol, and registered it in her name.
Library card of Gary Atwood was found at Sutherland Court address after Remiro and Little were arrested.
Surfaced as General Gelina, after the Hearst kidnapping.
Was found dead in the house on 54th Street, in Los Angeles, 24 hours after the five other bodies were discovered.
Gary Atwood
Married to Angela Atwood, who trained with Emily and Bill Harris, setting up narcotics arrests for Intelligence Division of Indiana State Police.
Moved to West Coast, summer, 1972, with Angela and William and Emily Harris.
Occupation in Bay Area not explained. Taught part of the time in Chinatown.
Political involvement "all talk"; described as "indoor entertainment, like an intellectual exercise." Threatened to "blow off the head" of a friend who didn't join his revolution. Spoke of Nietzsche, Superman, revolution, Palestinian guerrillas. No evidence of political activism. Not identified with prison or radical groups.
Mean disposition. Angela told a friend, "if you think he is bad now, you should have seen him." "Nobody could get next to him; he didn't like to be touched."
Summer of 1973: Gary went back to Indiana, to Library School.
Angela's body remained unclaimed for three days after her death. Friends called Gary; he signed the release for her to be buried in New Jersey.
Peter Benenson
Mathematician, employed at Lawrence Laboratory, Berkeley; a sensitive government agency.
Was tied up inside his car, on the floor, while five persons kidnapped Patricia Hearst. He heard the shoot-out coming from the apartment as they exited.
Benenson's car was used to drive to a waiting white station wagon, and he was left tied up inside the car. He released himself, and walked one mile to his sister's home, where he spent the night. The FBI and police were not notified for 24 hours about the use of his car for the kidnapping.
He refused to be a witness against anybody, claiming that he "didn't see faces" when he was tied up.
A letter to the Berkeley Barb, Feb. 22, 1974, stated: "The manipulators are brother and sister both by blood and in mind. The male is a mathematician with the U.C. Radiation Lab. His was the car 'commandeered in the kidnapping.'"
The SLA had in their possession books that might have come from Benenson: Chemical Biological Warfare; The Science of Puplic Death; and The Genetic Effects of Radioactivity.
Jean Chan
Oriental girlfriend of David Gunnell, owner of "Peking House," where SLA members lived.
Visited Vacaville Medical Facility; tutored Black Culture there.
No information on her background, or any training which would qualify her to tutor in the prison system.
Sold Chinese food from a food stand on Bancroft Way with Gunnell.
Police stopped a 1965 station wagon in connection with Dr. Marcus Foster's murder, and questioned a female Oriental. A number of "firearms" were found in the vehicle, three weeks before Patty Hearst was kidnapped. If Jean Chan was the person questioned, she was never identified.
Wes Davis
Free lance photographer, Empire News Service, a CIA front, in Vietnam and Asia.
Surfaced after the Hearst kidnapping as an expert on Maoist brainwashing. Often quoting Joseph Remiro, inside San Quentin, with "criticism-self criticism" techniques, as proof of Korean influence in Berkeley.
His sanctimonious speeches ignore the billion-dollar investment in American prisons and hospitals, which funds research on behavior modification techniques, including psychosurgery, chemosurgery, use of mind-altering drugs, electric shock and electrode implants. The Vacaville Medical Facility, where SLA was nurtured, is notorious for such experimentations.
Davis heads an organization called World Humanity Against Totalitarianism. This group helped set up the speeches of Reverend Sun Myumg Moon, defender of Richard Nixon against impeachment.
Reverend Moon is part of General Parks' South Korean Intelligence, CIA. Genuine Christians in South Korea are suspicious of him.
Donald DeFreeze, alias Donald David DeFreeze, Don Cinque DeFreeze, David Thomas, David Kennedy Robinson, Donald John DeFreeze, Donald DeFrez, John DeFriele, Steven Robinson, Gin, Cinque, General Field Marshal Cin, SLA
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, oldest of eight children; beaten by father, forced to leave home at age 14; left Cleveland.
Lived with Reverend W. Foster, Buffalo, N.Y.; became deeply religious.
Arrested for robbing a parking meter; later, for stealing a car and a weapon.
Spent two years in a reformatory, surrounded by "hell," loneliness, fear, hatred. Tried to keep out of fights and avoid homosexual advances.
Married Glory Thomas, 23, mother of three children. They had three more children. Marriage filled with rejection, disappointment. Tried to work and support Glory. Differences drove him to California. Began drinking, taking drugs, collecting weapons.
Arrested on nine separate occasions. Charges involved possession of bombs and explosives, knife, sawed-off shotguns; robbery, assault, possession of 200 firearms, grand larceny, kidnapping, and escaping arrest.
From 1967 to 1969, worked as a police informer for the Los Angeles Police Department, under Detective R. G. Farwell, Public Disorder Intelligence unit. At the time, the LAPD was supplying weapons to black agents, and hiring them to kill Black Panthers. DeFreeze worked with police agent-provocateur Ron Karenga, head of the US Organization. Later, other members of Karenga's group were at Vacaville Medical Facility with DeFreeze. US used the 7-headed cobra, later adopted by the SLA, for its symbol. Nothing in DeFreeze's background indicated a political consciousness while he worked as a Police intelligence informer.
In December, 1967, DeFreeze led police to an apartment where a cache of 200 stolen weapons were found. On November 11, 1969, DeFreeze exchanged gun shots with a bank guard and wounded him – using a .32 caliber Beretta automatic pistol, one of the 200 stolen guns that the police had apparently allowed him to keep.
In 1968, Glory DeFreeze wrote to authorities, following an arrest of her husband, reminding them that they had promised him protection from arrest while he worked for them.
In 1969, DeFreeze subpoenaed Distiict Attorney Evelle Younger to testify in his behalf. Younger has always maintained close contact with LAPD's Criminal Conspiracy Section (CDS).
During 1969, DeFreeze maintained a nice house, only a few blocks from the Los Angeles Airport, close to his death trap. He was in the business of pimping for black judges and airport officials, fixing them up with women. He drove around in a city truck during the day, and gave the impression to one of his women that he was employed by the city.
Late in 1969, DeFreeze's religious conscience began to bother him. Detective Farwell decided that he was no longer useful to the LAPD, and "cut him loose." In December, 1969, DeFreeze was sent to Chino for "psychiatric testing." From there, he was sent to Vacaville Medical Facility for a term of 6-14 years, where he was to undergo a drastic, and ultimately fatal, personality change.
Dr. Fredric Hacker, an expert on "terrorism," was assigned to Donald DeFreeze for "psychiatric evaluation." He later became a consultant to Randolph Hearst, after Patty was kidnapped.
In 1970, DeFreeze wrote to Judge William L. Ritzi that he "wanted to tell everything." "I want to let you know what really happened and why. I am going to talk to you truthfully like I am talking to God. I will tell you things no one has ever known before." Judge Ritzi wasn't interested.
In 1970, Colston Westbrook, who had been trained in the psychological warfare unit of the CIA, became the CIA control officer for DeFreeze and the group that was to become the SLA. Westbrook headed an experimental behavior modification unit, called the Black Cultural Association (BCA), at Vacaville.
DeFreeze assumed a militant anti-white cover, while meeting with white agents who were brought into the prison system.
While in prison, DeFreeze worked as a double agent, for Westbrook and the CIA, and for the California Department of Corrections and Bureau of Criminal Intelligence and Investigation.
He was responsible to Attorney General Evelle Younger.
Westbrook, in charge of DeFreeze for two years, bragged about how he brought beautiful women into the groups: "They accused me of taking Sexy-looking black women wearing high miniskirts into the prison. Sure I took some foxes, some of my prime stock in there. Because if you want to dangle a carrot in front of the inmates to get them to learn and come to meetings, you don't dangle communism. You dangle fine-looking chicks. The SLA women say I tortured the inmates by taking in chicks they couldn't do anything to. That's why those lesbians were mad at me."
Vacaville Medical Facility was not a political science institute. Colston Westbrook was not instructing inmates in "communism" for the CIA and the Department of Corrections. For what purpose did Westbrook bait DeFreeze with his carrot-stick technique, and his "prime stock?"
In November, 1972, DeFreeze met Thero Wheeler, inmate, for one month.
In December, 1972, DeFreeze was transferred to Soledad Prison. He was placed in South Facility, set up for trusted inmates, and a holding section for informers. One inmate described DeFreeze's departure from Soledad:
"While Donald DeFreeze was here, I had a few conversations with him. I have always questioned his departure as being a simple walk-away. I didn't come into contact with him personally until his last couple of week here. There weren't many who would associate with him. He tried to give the impression of being supercool, and he came across as cold. When I met him, he was working in the maintenance shop. I asked him if he was happy on his job, because if not, I might be able to find him something else.
"He replied that within a few days, he was going to be assigned to work in the boiler room at the South Facility. I questioned that, because he didn't have enough time here to be given that trust. I know cons that have been turned down for that position. He wouldn't comment; he only gave me a big smile. I should explain that no prisoners were kept at the South Facility at that time, because it had no security. No gun towers were in operation, and there were no guards posted.
"A few prisoners with proven records of trust were taken from Central Facility to South Facility to perform certain duties; then they would be returned to Central after their shift. A few days later, DeFreeze did get that job. Midnight to 8 a.m. shift, in the boiler room, South Facility. On his first night, he was dropped off at midnight, and given a few instructions. His job was automatic; it only required an overseer. He was left to himself, and when an officer returned an hour later to check on him, he was gone."
A few months after leaving Vacaville, DeFreeze was given a special privilege at Soledad prison. He was allowed to use the marital trailers for visits with women, a privilege normally reserved for married men.
Did Westbrook provide women for DeFreeze even though he was not meeting him with prison visits?
Donald DeFreeze walked out of Soledad prison in March, 1973. His transportation to the Bay area was allegedly arranged by Deputy Superintendent James Nelson. Another former employee from Soledad, currently owner of a liquor store in Sacramento, assisted in the departure, which was later classified as an "escape." His name will be turned over to a Grand Jury when there is a proper investigation of the case.
In Spring of 1973, Bernard Keaton, a double for Donald DeFreeze, visited the Foster family in Buffalo, New York. He passed himself off as DeFreeze, who had lived with the family 15 years ago, and he knew intimate details of their life.
In August, 1973, Thero Wheeler walked away from Vacaville Medical Facility.
From August to October, 1973, DeFreeze and Wheeler met "at least twenty times" with the SLA in Oakland.
DeFreeze made his public appearance as General Field Marshal Cinque of the SLA following the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst.
In March, 1974, DeFreeze publicly named Colston Westbrook, Chris Thompson, and Robyn Steiner as CIA and FBI informers.
On May 4, 1974, Donald Freed, writer, and Lake Headley, independent investigator, held a press conference in San Francisco. They presented 400 pages of documentation on DeFreeze's arrest records, the work of Colston Westbrook with the CCS and CII (Criminal Identification and Investigation), and evidence of links of the CIA to Police Departments.
May 17, 1974, New York Times carried the story of DeFreeze and the Los Angeles Police Department. That same day, he was cremated by the Los Angeles Police Department.
The LAPD did not notify DeFreeze's family of his death for three days. His remains were sent to Cleveland, Ohio, with the head and the fingers missing.
Billions of dollars are spent confining, arresting, judging, punishing, altering and experimenting upon men like DeFreeze. If the same attention and money were spent on understanding and helping them, events like the SLA saga would never happen.
Amanda De Normanville
Former student of Berkeley School of Criminology. Supposedly housed Donald DeFreeze after he left Soledad prison.
Again: DeFreeze was allowed special visits with women in marital trailers while in prison, a privilege only allowed to married men; Amanda visited DeFreeze in prison, and was reported to be romantically involved with him.
Prisons keep detailed records of visitors, but the police never went to Amanda's house in the Bay Area to search for DeFreeze after his "escape."
JoAnn DeVito, and Ex-Husband Joseph DeVito
JoAnn was Russell Little's sister; she was interested in prisons and in Donald DeFreeze.
The SLA house in Concord was rented by Mr. and Mrs. J. DeVoto, aliases for Russell Little and Nancy Ling Perry.
Joseph DeVito was questioned by FBI agents in Isla Vista, California, on March 26, 1974. Held for interstate flight from prosecution of a prior crime in Florida; nature of crime not stated.
Dr. Marcus Foster, Supt. Oakland Unified School District
Fatally wounded, November 6, 1973. Robert Blackburn, Deputy Superintendent, also critically wounded.
Both men had moved from Philadelphia together in 1970.
Oakland had put police in the schools as part of the federal government's push to solve social problems with "law and order" government. This and other measures became the excuse for Foster's murder.
Willie Wolfe, who had no children, attended Oakland School Board meetings and told prisoners in Vacaville that "something had to be done to prevent Foster from implementing student identification programs." Colston Westbrook and other prison visitors aroused the anger of black inmates against Foster.
Two weeks before the killing, the American Nazi Party handed out leaflets in nearby San Leandro, predicting the murder of a "Mixmaster school superintendent" and his white friend.
Foster was shot with cyanide bullets and didn't stand a chance. Blackburn, the white man, was shot with ordinary bullets, and lived. The quantity of cyanide in the bullets was not as important as the selective methods of kill vs. survival.
Foster's death was a blow to the black community, where he was needed and well liked.
The SLA surfaced immediately after the murder, taking "credit" for the assassination in the name of the "Symbionese Liberation Army Western Regional Youth Unit."
Two "black" people were seen leaving the scene of the Foster murder. When Remiro and Little were indicted for the crime, black make-up was found in their house. This make-up can be worn by whites emulating blacks.
How many other whites in blackface are killing and kidnapping?
Blaming "blacks" for white murders is consistent with a fascistic escalation of terror to speed up genocide.
Dave Gunnell
In late thirties; older than SLA members. Lived with Jean Chan in house on Chabot Road, Berkeley, called Peking House, which was a meeting place for the SLA. The name "Peking House" was played up by CIA agent Wes Davis as "proof" that Mao was behind the SLA.
Gunnell sold Chinese food from a food stand on Bancroft Way, adjacent to the U.C. Berkeley campus, next to Fruity Rudy's stand, where Nancy Ling Perry worked. Gunnell claimed he did not know Nancy. Gunnell was a jazz musician, like Nancy's husband and Rudolph Henderson (Fruity Rudy).
Chris Thompson, named by DeFreeze as CIA, was a frequent visitor at Peking House, and a source of contact with Nancy Ling Perry, Camilla Hall, and Patricia Soltysik.
Willie Wolfe, Russell Little, and Robyn Steiner lived in Peking House.
If Peking House were indeed a haven for radicals, if the SLA was visiting California prisons, and if Maoist doctrines were being taught at the house, the FBI and California police would have been well aware of the SLA members before Patty Hearst was kidnapped.
Yet, in spite of the SLA's attempted infiltration of every radical group in the area, their week-end target practice at gun clubs and the assortment of guns registered in their names, the residents of Peking House were quite inconspicuous as far as the police were concerned.
Gunnell was "not into politics."
Camilla Hall, alias Gabi
Daughter of Lutheran Minister, Reverend D.G. Hall. Graduate of University of Minnesota; excelled in English and art.
Social worker for three years before moving to California.
Shared apartmant with Patricia Soltysik; wrote poetry for her, named her "Mizmoon."
Authentic Berkeley artist; sensitive; gentle; into ecology and the women's movement. Not into radical politics; drawn into SLA with Patricia Soltysik to lend authenticity to cover story that SLA was a group of Berkeley hippie-radicals.
Travelled in Spain in 1972. What other countries?
Worked as a groundkeeper for the Regional Parks. Fired in fall, 1973.
Disappeared in December, 1973, a month after SLA claimed credit for murder of Dr. Foster.
Blue VW, similar to Camilla's, seen scouting Steven Weed's apartment before Patty's kidnapping.
Jan. 2, 1974: purchased .380 caliber automatic Mauser pistol and registered it under her name.
Feb. 4, 1974: Patricia Hearst kidnapped.
Feb. 14, 1974: Camilla moved out of her apartment, taking only her pet cat.
Photographed at Hibernia Bank robbery in San Francisco as a gun-toting radical terrorist. This act was inconsistent with Camilla's hatred of war and violence.
Christine Johnson, the last person to see Camilla Hall alive, said she was holding two bottles in her hands, with "something white around the bottles. She was walking around, looked like a zombie or something, halfway smiling."
Emily Harris, alias Anna Lindenberg, Yolanda
Daughter of a wealthy consulting engineer, from Illinois suburbs.
B.A., University of Indiana, language arts.
Training: CIA think tank, College of Foreign Affairs, University of Indiana, Bloomington.
Worked with William Harris and Angela Atwood in "mod squad," setting up narcotics arrests for the Intelligence Division, Indiana State Police.
When the Harrises apartment was vacated, among the names left in an address book was Tim Casey, from Orange County. Emily and Tim dated during the summers of 1967 and '68 while she was working in California at Disneyland Hotel. Were there any links between two clients of J. Waiter Thompson Advertising Agency – Disneyland Hotel and the San Francisco Police Department?
Was Emily in touch with espionage agents from Orange County?
Described as "cold, intelligent, the strength of the family; had leadership ability."
Moved to Oakland late 1972, with the Atwoods.
Employed as clerk-typist, Survey Research Center, "polling office," at University of California.
Not in politics in Indiana; never involved in radical movements.
On moving to California, immediately joined Chino Defense Committee, an offshoot of Marxist-Leninist Venceremos organization. Worked to aid members accused of a prison break; wrote letters on their behalf. Visited prison inmates Doc Holiday and Barren Broadnax, who had long been targets of the prison system and Attorney General Evelle Younger. She travelled several hundred miles from Oakland to San Luis Obispo each week to make these prison visits. At the time, the Black Guerrilla Family and the Chino Defense Fund were filled with infiltrators and agents provocateurs.
Emily's last prison visit was January 10, 1974, the day Remiro and Little were arrested.
It is not clear why the Harrises left Bloomington. They had "toyed" with politics and posed in the school annual with Bill jokingly holding a book entitled About Communism, but they were not into radical politics.
Cover story to the effect that "underemployment radicalized middle-class America" has no basis in fact. Underemployment is consistent with clandestine assignments.
Through her work, Emily Harris allegedly had access to Patty Hearst's school schedule. Denials merely indicate that investigation should proceed on this matter. Remember Watergate denials?
The Harris' apartment in Oakland was modern, well-furnished, with a color TV, a waterbed, imported kitchenware, and fine china. They read the straight press: Time, the Oakland Tribune.
A Maoist poster and a picture of a starving child hung over their dining table. Donald Segretti, White House spy, had a "Free Huey Newton" poster over his desk, and wore a peace emblem and long hair, for espionage cover. William and Emily Harris were verbally and visually "radical."
Emily owned a gun, registered in her name, and practiced shooting twice a week at Chabot Gun Club, in Oakland.
Emily's father, Mr. Schwartz, said on TV that in her last letter, she explained a change in her life-style, saying she had been "pretending for some time." Her other life – the straight life, with material possessions, non-radical experiences, formal education, and employment at the UCB polling office – might indicate that the SLA experience did not reflect her real self. Suddenly abandoning her husband for a "black lover" and disappearing with Randolph Hearst's daughter might have been part of her next assignment.
William Harris, alias Rip Kimberley, Richard Frank Dennis, Jonathan Mark Salamone, Teko
B.A., University of Indiana; studied Speech and English. Enlisted in U.S. Marines, served at the supply depot at DaNang. Joseph Remiro and Colston Westbrook were in Vietnam the same time.
Returned to Indiana. Joined fraternity; competed in golf and cross-country running.
Member of "mod squad," with Emily, and Angela Atwood. Set up narcotics arrests for the Intelligence Division, Indiana State Police. Studied at College of Foreign Affairs, University of Indiana.
Taught at Bloomington Junior High School before coming to California.
Received Master's Degree in "Urban Education" at Indiana. CIA agent Colston Westbrook, leader of the group which became the SLA, taught "Black Lexicon" in the Department of Urban Affairs at UC Berkeley.
Not a campus radical, but kept posters of Black Panthers Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in trailer in Indiana following his return from Vietnam. Later, the SLA headquarters contained a map of Huey Newton's apartment, and his name was listed as a possible death target.
In California, worked as truck driver for Post Office. Postal helmet discovered November 10, 1973, following the arrest of Remiro and Little, at Sutherland Courthouse in Concord. Harris could have been identified by police at that time, before the Hearst kidnapping.
November, 1973: purchased 9mm Mauser pistol, registered in his own name.
Joined Chabot Gun Club, in Oakland, and practiced twice a week. Associated with, but not active in, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a heavily infiltrated organization.
Rented SLA safehouse in December, 1973, that would be filled with propaganda which would later be used by Attorney General William Saxbe for future political terrorism and repression.
Driver's license from Rhode Island. Never explained when or why Harris was in Rhode Island.
Mayor Alioto claimed Emily and William Harris intended to kidnap his grandchildren. Considering the Harrises' provocateur role, and Alioto's election campaign for Governor, it is possible that they obliged him by making themselves conspicuous in his neighborhood without being arrested by police.
Caused an altercation at Mel's Sporting Goods Store, Inglewood, that would be the signal for the pre-arranged murder of six SLA members. Set Patty up in the "shooting scene." Purposely introduced and identified "Tania" to Tom Matthews during an unnecessary 12-hour captivity; supervised her so-called "confession" to Matthews, framing her so that 22 charges would be brought against her.
Harris's military I.D. was found in the death house on 54th Street, in Los Angeles. It was not explained why a radical revolutionary terrorist was still using his military I.D.
Set Patty Hearst up so that she could witness the massacre of the other SLA members.
June 7, 1974: released another "SLA Communique," hardly the rhetoric of George Jackson, Malcolm X, Chairman Mao, or Martin Luther King. The man with a B.A. in English and a Master's Degree produced a provocative, foulmouthed public display that can only harm legitimate protest.
Harris is probably currently hiding in a CIA safe house ranch, preparing for his next outrageous actions.
While the Harrises acted as provocateurs, and set Patty Hearst up, they themselves are not wanted for anything.
"The Harrises are less militant than their six SLA comrades.... So far, the Harrises were not overtly involved in any of these incidents...." So says Charles Bates, Chief of FBI, San Francisco.
"I feel that Bill and Emily Harris have lost touch with the masses. They have become isolated. The SLA is not an organized group that plans its actions as far as I can see. My political friends and comrades think the SLA has a superfly mentality. They lined their pockets with the bank robbery money and accomplished nothing but spreading of fear."
– Bill Brennan, former roommate of Joseph Remiro
Were Emily or William Harris ever in touch with the masses? Or was their role, as police agents, to do exactly as they were told?
Ron Karenga
Black leader of the US Organization. In December, 1967, Detective Sergeant R. Farwell recruited Donald DeFreeze to work for the Public Disorder Intelligence Unit, of the CCS (Criminal Conspiracy Section, LAPD). Its purpose was to monitor black political activities in California.
Karenga worked with DeFreeze and the LAPD, as part of a "fuck-fuck unit," running guns to various black militant groups, hoping to set off a gang war between the Black Panthers and the US Organization.
US member Melvin Cotton Smith helped set up Black Panther busts for the police. The Steiner brothers, working with Karenga and the LAPD, killed Panther leaders John Huggins and Alpretnice Carter at UCLA.
Members of Karenga's group were at Vacaville with DeFreeze.
In April, 1974, the Steiner brothers were allowed to walk away from San Quentin, as Thero Wheeler walked away from Vacaville and DeFreeze walked out of Soledad a year earlier.
The Steiner brothers seem to have disappeared without a trace. Where are they now? Did they play any role in setting up their former comrade-informer, DeFreeze, back home in Los Angeles?
Bernard Keaton
Double for Donald DeFreeze. Surfaced in Spring, 1973, after DeFreeze walked away from Soledad.
Claimed to be Donald DeFreeze; moved in with Reverend W. Foster and family, in Buffalo, New York; familiar with intimate details of the family history that only DeFreeze would have known about.
FBI stated they are not concerned or curious about DeFreeze's double; that it "isn't illegal."
The only reason for having a double would be that in case DeFreeze had been accidentally picked up by law enforcement officers in the Bay area during the time between his "departure" from Soledad and the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, his double could have taken his place in prison. Three long-years had gone into training DeFreeze for his mission at Vacaville Medical Facility. It couldn't be thrown away.
Ludlow Kramer
Secretary of State, Washington State. Director of P.I.N. (People In Need), the Hearst food give-away rip-off.
Hired by Randolph Hearst to distribute $2,000,000 worth of food to the poor.
Previous experience handing out food during NASA and military job lay-offs in Washington. Quality of that food was good, and provbked violence was not a part of this previous assignment.
P.I.N. food program was a disaster. It was a catalytic, provocateur action to hasten Patty's conversion to the SLA.
Meat was bought for Hearst's program, from "the nation's major meat packers," at triple the normal cost; it contained up to 75% fat. Some of the food was contaminated.
Governor Ronald Reagan hoped the people who took the food would get botulism.
His mission accomplished, Kramer returned to Washington in time to run for Congress on the Republican ticket – with substantial financial backing.
Kramer pushed for "vote by voice print" by 1984 – identiftcation of every adult by voice and social security number.
During this time, March, 1974, Congress passed a bill to pay $10-million to five chicken growers from the South. Their chicken feed was poisoned, somehow, with Dieldren, a cancer-inducing insecticide. Nobody knows how it got into the chicken-feed. Millions of poisoned chickens had already been delivered to poor school lunch programs in Chicago and Detroit.
Question: Did any of those poisoned chickens make their way into the P.I.N. food distribution program?
Russell Little, alias George DeVoto, James Scalise, Osceola
Father a mechanic at Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Florida. Little also stated that father was a retired labor relations specialist.
Graduated from University of Florida, Gainesville, 1967.
Allegedly took a course on Revolution, where he was introduced to Communist writers such as Marx, Lenin, Mao, Cleaver and Malcolm X.
Studied engineering, electronics.
Questioned by police in Philadelphia when Dr. Marcus Foster was leading an anti-drug campaign in that city. Why was Little there? Was Foster marked earlier for identification and death?
Traveled in U.S., locations not identified, before arriving in Oakland.
Summer of 1972: made contact with Willie Wolfe through Peking House in Berkeley; started to visit California prisons; joined BCA at Vacaville with Donald DeFreeze.
No previous radical experiences with prisoners or blacks.
It is strange how migratory birds such as Little, Steiner, the Atwoods and the Harrises entered immediately into California prison "reform" groups – their "reforms" would set prison movements back a hundred years.
Little joined Westbrook, DeFreeze and SLA members in a small prison group, "Unisight," with a Maoist cover. All took African names.
Little brought controversial discussion and hatred of Dr. Foster into the prisons.
Visited Death Row Jefferson, supposedly the founder of BCA.
Taught at Peralta Junior College, Oakland.
Bought a .380 caliber Brazilian-made Rossi revolver from Chris Thompson. This kind of weapon could be used with cyanide bullets.
October 8, 1973: rented a house on Sutherland Court, using alias George DeVoto, with Nancy Ling Perry. It became an SLA "Liberated Zone."
November 6, 1973: Dr. Marcus Foster murdered, allegedly by two black men. Little and Remiro, arrested for this crime, possessed black make-up and the murder weapons.
January 19, 1974: Little and Joseph Remiro were taken to San Quentin, charged with the murder of Foster, as well as resisting arrest and assaulting a policeman.
While in San Quentin, Little apparently read an interview with me in the Berkeley Barb on April 19, 1974, titled "Is SLA's Cinque the First Black Lee Harvey Oswald?" Little was furious at my suggestion that the SLA was a CIA operation. He wrote a letter saying, in part, "That dizzy bitch can kiss my ass! That pompous bitch has a nerve to call Jonathan Jackson a 'patsy.' I hope she drops dead tomorrow."
Louis Tackwood, in The Glass House Tapes, describes in detail how the LAPD knew in advance of the George Jackson "escape" plans and the Marin County Courthouse shootout. Jonathan Jackson was double-crossed and left abandoned without a promised backup. He was murdered by members of the LAPD. Risking his life on the line to tell the truth, Tackwood is the real freedom fighter. Little and Remiro are the mouthpieces that Congressmen will quote to "prove" that a violent revolution is taking place.
Any person involved in radical politics is aware that most if not all radical groups are heavily infiltrated by espionage agents and provocateurs. What angers Little is any exposure of the methods and contacts that created the SLA.
Nancy Ling Perry, alias Nancy DeVoto, Fahizah, Lynn Sedworth
Family background: conservative, well off. Goldwater supporter; political conservative.
Attended Santa Rosa High School; cheerleader, Sunday school teacher.
B.A., Whittier College. Graduate work, U.C. Berkeley, specializing in chemistry.
Married for six years to black jazz musician Gilbert Perry; met when he was working for State Employment office. Described as a "love-hate affair."
Topless blackjack dealer in San Francisco; went through a period of heavy use of psychedelic drugs and amphetamines.
Politics always "vague." After being openly conservative, she seemed to have no politics at all. Remained apart from groups in Berkeley; maintained her older friends from high school. She seemed to like to appear as though she had no past at all. People who knew her sensed a curious intellectual loneliness. Into dope, and a good source of where to buy it.
No indication as to where or when radical political indoctrination took place. Trained in behavior modification.
Sold fruit juice at Fruity Rudy's stand, on Bancroft Way near U.C. Berkeley campus.
Dated Chris Thompson, who was the link between "Peking House" and Nancy, Camilla Hall, and Patricia Soltysik.
Began visiting prisoners; cover story was "an interest in prison reform." She and Emily Harris appear to have been given special privileges, in that they were permitted to visit more than one prisoner at a time. Were SLA members given special treatment?
Nancy wrote "Death to the Pigs" inside Fruity Rudy's stand, just as the same slogan was written on the walls of Sharon Tate's home, to make police think that blacks committed the murders.
Nancy paid $553 in cash to rent the house at 1560 Sutherland Court in Concord, using the alias, "Nancy DeVoto." The house was used as an SLA hideout, and filled with ammunition, weapons, and literature.
On January 10, 1974, the day Remiro and Little were arrested for the murder of Dr. Foster, Nancy set fire to the bungalow. She did a remarkably poor job of destroying the evidence, but an excellent job of calling attention to the house and its contents.
There was no personal oppression or experiences in the past that would explain participation in the murder of Foster, or acceptance of a fiery martyrdom in Los Angeles. She was apparently shot by the police while trying to get out of the house.
Joseph Remiro, alias George DeVoto, "B," Charles Robert Peterson
Remiro, in San Quentin, didn't cry when he heard that six SLA members had been cremated. He went on playing gin rummy. "Joe was a political heavy."
Devout Catholic family; raised in San Francisco, trained as a "stone reactionary."
Member of 10lst Airborne Division; volunteered twice for duty in Vietnam. Signed up to "kill a commie for Christ." Participated willingly in numerous search and destroy missions; said they were like Galley's massacre at My Lai.
Declared himself to be a pacifist when he came home; this would be inconsistent with his alleged murder of Dr. Foster, and the subsequent death warrants issued by the SLA.
By January, 1969, Remiro allegedly started to take a lot of drugs. He claimed he "couldn't get outside my house without being completely drugged out of my head." Remiro and Perry, both dependent upon drugs, could be manipulated by CIA agents to form the nucleus of the SLA. Perry was the theoretical "brains" behind the organization. Remiro provided military and tactical support. Chemistry, weapons and radical rhetoric were all they needed to start their "army."
Carlos Marighella's Mini-Manual for Urban Guerrilla Warfare was to the SLA cover story what Marx's Das Kapital was to the Warren Report and Lee Harvey Oswald. The myth that Marx influenced Oswald was pure fabrication, a "cover story."
Remiro was employed as a "mechanic," was divorced, and had one child.
July 19, 1973: purchased a .380 caliber Walther automatic. This gun was found in his possession when he was arrested on November 10, 1973.
October, 1973: went underground with Little and Willie Wolfe. Rented 7th Street apartment in Oakland, with Emily and William Harris, for Foster ambush.
Racist; wanted Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Winter Soldier Organization to take the position that U.S. minorities should each have their own territory.
Helped race war along by owning black make-up. Did he put on black face to escalate violence in the Oakland-Berkeley area?
Developed plans to kill Black Panther leaders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.
Remiro and Little were placed in San Quentin, without trial, immediately after their indictment for the murder of Dr. Foster. They were given maximum media coverage to mouth radical violence.
Lee Harvey Oswald's public radio broadcast in New Orleans, with Ed Butler of Army Intelligence, was to create a cover for U.S. agents operating behind a Communist front.
Colston Westbrook, William Harris and Joseph Remiro supplied the SLA's intelligence and military tactics.
"I believe the SLA actions have had and are having such an inhibiting effect on political works in the Bay Area that I feel the time to speak out has come."
– Bill Brennan, former roommate of Remiro
Mary Alice Siem
Twenty-four years old; mother of small child, friend of Thero Wheeler.
Frequent visitor to Wheeler at Vacaville Medical Facility.
August, 1973: Wheeler "escaped" from Vacaville, and lived with Mary Alice in the Bay area.
August-October, 1973: Mary Alice and Thero made at least 20 visits to DeFreeze and the SLA in Oakland.
DeFreeze wanted to kill both of them, but was "discouraged." Did he suspect them at the time of being provocateurs?
Mary Alice gave $600 to DeFreeze and the SLA; said she was "robbed." Difficult to visualize prison escapee Wheeler and Mary Alice carrying $600 in cash to a meeting in Oakland with the SLA. Possible source of funding for DeFreeze before the kidnapping?
Visitors to prisons are carefully identified; yet police didn't seek or locate Wheeler at Mary's home in the Bay area, or hold Mary for harboring an escapee.
Patricia Soltysik, alias Mizmoon, Zoya, Mizmoon Monique Erlich
Born in Goleta, Santa Barbara County; daughter of a pharmacist.
Outstanding student; came to Berkeley in 1968; attended U.C. Berkeley.
Worked as a part-time janitor at the Berkeley Public Library.
Involved in radical politics, Women's movement, gay liberation.
Seen frequently with Chris Thompson, connecting link between Camilla Hall, Patricia Soltysik, Nancy Perry and Chabot House, and the out-of-state imports. These three women lent authenticity to the Berkeley image of the SLA.
Mizmoon and Camilla were sensitive poets, artists and sometime lesbians.
Mizmoon participated in the BCA at Vacaville Medical Facility; she worked with Donald DeFreeze. After DeFreeze "walked out" of Soledad, he lived with Mizmoon.
Mizmoon had access to the Berkeley library, allegedly where Cinque found source material for SLA rhetoric. SLA tapes and written messages sound more like E. Howard Hunt than George Jackson or "Cinque," the historical slave leader.
July 27, 1973: purchased .12 gauge sawed-off Mosberg shotgun under name Mizmoon Monique Erlich.
Changed housing from September to December, 1973. Missing during time Dr. Foster was murdered.
Identification and library books checked out in her name found at SLA house on Sutherland Court, January 10, 1974, three weeks before Hearst kidnapping.
Vanished from apartment by January, 1974.
Photographed in Hibernia Bank Robbery, San Francisco.
Cremated in Los Angeles, May 17, 1974.
Robyn Steiner
1970: met Russell Little at University of Florida. No political awareness, interest in blacks or prisoners. Not an activist.
Drove to California with Little in July, 1972.
Steiner and Little moved into commune, "Peking House," where Little met William Wolfe, and would join Westbrook and DeFreeze at the Vacaville Medical Facility.
Entered the prison as a tutor to blacks; previous training nonexistent.
Worked at Lucky's Market, Oakland.
Broke up with Little. Left California; returned to Florida in December, 1973, and went back to school.
Named by DeFreeze as an FBI informer.
Protected from questioning by U.S. Attorney and Grand Jury; San Francisco police interviewed her in Florida.
Lives in constant fear, "doesn't know who her friends are." So the tables are turned.
Chris Thompson
Named by DeFreeze as a CIA agent. Black man; not a political radical or activist; described as a "curious man."
Moved freely in and out of "Peking House."
"Dated" Nancy Ling Perry, Patricia Soltysik and Camilla Hall. Served as the connection between the three Berkeley females and the seven who moved west and infiltrated the radical movement groups (Wolfe, Angela and Gary Atwood, Emily and William Harris, Robyn Steiner and Russell Little).
March, 1973: Sold a .38 caliber Rossi pistol to Russell Little. Bullets fired from this gun allegedly killed Dr. Foster.
Drove to Vacaville Medical Facility with a member of BCA, but didn't attend any meetings.
January, 1974: Rented an apartment on 2069 Hillegass Street, Berkeley, half a block from Steven Weed's and Patricia Hearst's apartment at 2602 Benvenue Avenue. His apartment opened on a small alley way. You can walk through the alley way and be on Benvenue, directly across the street from 2602 Benvenue.
Occupation: sells soul food from a stand on Bancroft Way, Berkeley, near food stands where Dave Gunnell and Nancy Ling Perry worked.
After the Foster murder and Hearst kidnapping, Chris was "around now but missing."
He appeared as a secret and protected Grand Jury witness. Typically, in trials of radical groups, somebody in the know remains safe, and suspicious, while the others get roasted.
Not wanted by police or FBI; allowed to "vanish," or possibly to testify against the deceased.
Thompson offered to prove he was not CIA by submitting the facts to a jury which would include Ron Dellums, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis and Mrs. Foster. If he waits another year, they might take him up on the offer.
Steven Weed
Graduate of Princeton University; home in Santa Rosa, California.
Taught school where Patricia Hearst was a student.
Patty and Steven were living together in Berkeley when she was kidnapped.
Black Abductor, a novel published in 1972, described the plans for the Hearst kidnapping, including the "boyfriend who is beaten unconscious." Its publication date indicates how far in advance the plans were made.
Weed's role in the kidnapping can only be clarified by a proper investigation of the author and publisher of this book. His behavior since the kidnapping indicates the need to delve further.
Colston Westbrook, alias Big Daddy, Yajiuma
1962: CIA advisor to the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency. Cover: U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force. Linguistic training took place here.
1962: Enrolled in Inter-Christian University, Tokyo. Got special training in latest psychological warfare techniques. 1962-1966: Worked illegally under cover of AID, Agency for International Development. Handled undercover assignments in Cambodia, Thailand, India, Japan, Hong Kong, Philippines, Okinawa and Soviet Union.
Claimed to have personal line of communication with Premier of Cambodia.
William Harris' passport indicates visit to USSR. Was he there at the same time as Westbrook? Willie Wolfe was in Europe for nine months. Was it at the same time or same places?
Feb. 5, 1966, to Sept. 10, 1969: Westbrook listed his employment as Administrator, Pacific Architects and Engineers, a CIA cover.
Provided logistical support for CIA Phoenix Program. His job was the indoctrination of assassination and terrorist cadres.
William Harris, Marine volunteer, was stationed in Vietnam. Joseph Remiro served two volunteer tours in Vietnam. Did Remiro and Harris know Westbrook in Asia?
1969: Plans for the Black Cultural Association were formed.
1970: Donald DeFreeze sent by LAPD to Vacaville Medical Facility. Colston Westbrook, home after seven years in Asia with the CIA, was assigned to visit Vacaville Medical Facility two times a week.
Westbrook ran the BCA classes and decided who would be in the program.
The "cultural" meetings between DeFreeze and his white tutors were infiltrated, under the cover of teaching black male identity. The tri-colored flag of New Africa was paraded on stage, with music and black power salutes. Everyone adopted an African name. DeFreeze became "Cinque."
Westbrook brought in sexy women and pictures to prisoners to induce them to come to meetings.
The Black Cultural Association became the nucleus of the SLA after two black prisoner members, DeFreeze and Wheeler, were allowed to "escape" and join the group in Oakland-Berkeley.
The BCA was a behavior modification and psychological experimentation unit. Illegal funding and direction for the BCA came from the CIA via the Stanford Research Institute (SRI).
The cover story was "development of black pride."
Black prisoners were prepared and primed to murder black leaders on the outside. (Dr. Marcus Foster, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and Richard Foster were on the SLA "hit list.")
"Westbrook's CIA spymaster can be linked to another counter-insurgency expert, William Herrman, an advisor to Governor Ronald Reagan. Herrman was in contact with both SRI, the Hoover Center on Violence and the Rand Corporation in his development, for Reagan, of a plan to win the hearts and minds of the people of California.'" This was the proposed UCLA Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, a front for massive psychosurgical and psychological experimentation on radicals, Third World people, women, children and prisoners.
SRI and CIA Research and Development programs work with drugs such as Librium, which was administered illegally to certain BCA members.
Westbrook's assignment in the BCA behavior modification unit was to recruit future agents for CIA domestic programs. The "zombie" killings, and the Zebra murders in San Francisco, are linked to prison control and training, employing drugs and other forms of mind control.
Donald DeFreeze identified Westbrook as a CIA agent, and one who had betrayed him.
Westbrook must now live in fear for his life. David Ferrie, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby and almost one hundred other persons who served as government agents in conspiracies related to past political intelligence operations, have been murdered.
They were killed by their own team, not by the "enemy."
Thero Wheeler
Described as a "hell of a mind, close to genius."
Brother Bill a member of San Francisco police force.
"Did not relate ideologically with Donald DeFreeze," which might be a political way of saying that his association with DeFreeze was to entrap him.
Allegedly interested in Venceremos. Actually, only mailed them one letter.
November, 1972: met with DeFreeze in Vacaville Medical Facility for one month.
December, 1972: DeFreeze sent to Soledad from Vacaville; "escaped" March, 1973.
August, 1973: Wheeler "escaped" from Vacaville.
Stayed with Mary Alice Siem, a frequent visitor to Wheeler while he was in Vacaville, in the Bay Area. He was never sought there.
August-October, 1973: met with DeFreeze and SLA members in Oakland at least 20 times. Provided the SLA with $600.
DeFreeze wanted to kill Wheeler and Mary, indicating his probably mistrust of them as provocateurs or agents.
Description of Wheeler fits that of the second black man, who, with DeFreeze, kidnapped Patricia Hearst.
After cremation of six SLA members in Los Angeles on May 17, 1974, FBI and police claimed that only William Harris, Emily Harris and Patricia Hearst were still being sought. The SLA thus was reduced.
Why did the police forget about the man who helped kidnap Patty and assault Steven Weed?
Was Wheeler one of the black men who lured DeFreeze to his death trap -- and in exchange, will not be sought or prosecuted?
William Wolfe, alias Charles William Morgan, Cujo
Born in Pennsylvania; son of Dr. L.S. Wolfe, anesthesiologist.
Hobbies, interests, not described.
Studies, education, unclear.
Travelled for nine months in Europe before coming to Berkeley; "not yet decided on his goals."
Only Berkeley class mentioned was course in "Black Lexicon," under Professor Colston Westbrook, who would later bring William into Vacaville Medical Facility.
Westbrook described himself on San Francisco radio station KGO as having been raised in an all-white Pennsylvania town, knowing few blacks. Wolfe had no experience with prisoners, black friends, or radical movements. This team taught "black identity" to a prison study group. They created the pathetic "field Marshal General Cinque of the SLA."
Wolfe lived at Peking House, the common meeting ground from which "prison reformers" would spread into Vacaville Medical Facility, San Quentin, Folsom, Soledad and San Luis Obispo prisons.
Wolfe brought Russell Little and Robyn Steiner into the prison group.
Wolfe, though childless, attended Oakland School Board meetings, and brought arguments against Dr. Marcus Foster into BCA prison discussions at Vacaville. The prisoners were remote from Oakland school problems. Inciting of black prisoners against Dr. Marcus Foster was consistent with police policies. Ultimately, it was two whites in blackface who allegedly shot Dr. Foster.
Wolfe was last seen in Pennsylvania visiting his father in January, 1974, when Remiro and Little were arrested for the Foster murder. Wolfe then went underground; "disappeared."
Burned alive on 54th Street in Los Angeles, May 17, 1974. Not charged with any crime.
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