It's been a while since there was something new to report in the progress
of Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney's civil rights
lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland Police Department. The real news
is that, for the time being, the case has been effectively stalled out
by the frivolous delay tactics of the defendants.
The lawsuit was originally filed in 1991, one year after a motion-triggered
car bomb exploded beneath Judi Bari's car seat in Oakland as Judi
and Darryl drove through Oakland on a Redwood Summer organizing tour.
From the first moments after the FBI and OPD arrived at the scene,
it was obvious that they intended to use the bombing to vilify Judi,
Darryl, and Earth First! as terrorists by falsely blaming it on the
activists. Instead of trying to find out who really tried to kill
them, the Oakland Police arrested Judi and Darryl for transporting
explosives. FBI agents then conducted a sweeping investigation of
the environmental community in Northern California, while the real
bombers were allowed to walk away. The lawsuit charges the FBI and
OPD with false arrest, illegal search and seizure, and conspiracy
to violate Judi and Darryl's first amendment right to organize in
defense of the redwoods.
Fortunately, connecting Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney to explosives
was a mighty stretch, and the FBI and OPD lied so many times in the
course of the smear campaign that the lawsuit has survived quite a
number of attempts to have it thrown out based on the strength of
the evidence. Except for the most recent round of delaying maneuvers
by the FBI and OPD, Judi and Darryl's lawsuit is on the verge of being
set for trial. Early in 1997, just after Judi released the devastating
news of her terminal breast cancer, the bombing case legal team filed
a huge motion asking Judge Claudia Wilkin to rule that the FBI and
OPD do not have "qualified immunity" from being sued. After hearing
arguments from both sides, in October 1997 Wilkin made a ruling allowing
the lawsuit to move forward against certain FBI agents and Oakland
Police officers, but releasing FBI agent Richard Held and other FBI
higher-ups from the suit.
One of the key charges in this lawsuit is the conspiracy claim,
that FBI agents and OPD officers consciously and deliberately worked
together to "neutralize" Judi and Darryl's environmental activism.
The bombing case shows that the FBI's COINTELPRO counterintelligence
program, developed by J. Edgar Hoover and used to annihilate groups
like the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, is
still being used in the US. What's more, Special Agent Richard Held,
who was the head of the San Francisco office at the time of the bombing,
is a notorious COINTELPRO operative who helped frame Leonard Peltier
and Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt. After Judge Wilkin's startling ruling,
the legal team wrestled with the dilemma of how to get Held, the man
seen as the mastermind behind the frame-up of Judi Bari and Darryl
Cherney, back into the case. To make matters worse, one day before
the deadline the Oakland Police filed their own appeal of the Judge's
immunity decision.
Judi predicted the case, once filed, would take ten years to come
to trial. The Oakland Police Department appeal has now stalled things
for an entire year. The FBI, never to miss an opportunity to drag
the case out even more to exhaust our scant resources, has used the
Oakland appeal to stop the discovery process by refusing to hand over
any of the documents we request. We finally dragged the FBI back into
court in November, 1998, to have a discovery judge rule that we could
indeed move forward with the case against the FBI if we only ask about
things that don't affect the Oakland Police. Meanwhile, more than
a year later, we are still waiting for a hearing date in the appellate
court, to argue against an appeal by the Oakland PD which our lawyers
consider completely frivolous.
In the face of such interminable delays, it is important to remember
how successful this lawsuit has already been in exposing the FBI and
the OPD's political sabotage of the environmental movement. With all
the odds against us, the bombing case has already unearthed over 10,000
pages of FBI and police records and deposition testimony that only
serves to strengthen and validate our original claims. Now, after
eight years, the lawsuit has cleared all the pretrial hurdles. The
fact is that no matter how long the FBI and OPD try to exhaust us,
Judi Bari's civil rights lawsuit will go to trial.
We will need your help as the case nears trial. To get involved
or to send a donation, please contact:
Redwood Summer Justice Project
(707)887-0262, Fax: (707)887-0865,
PO Box 14720, Santa Rosa, CA 95402
http://www.judibari.org
