Editor Matthew Rothschild comments on the news of the day.

June 12, 2002

On June 11, a jury in Oakland ruled against the FBI and in favor of Earth First! activists Darryl Cherney and the late Judi Bari. Cherney and the Bari estate were awarded $4.4 million from the FBI and the Oakland police department.

Attorney General John Ashcroft should take heed: In his haste to unleash the FBI to monitor political and religious groups, he is taking the agency back to its worst days and opening it up to legal liability.

Here's the background on the Bari case: On May 24, 1990, a bomb exploded in Bari's car, injuring her and Cherney. The FBI immediately accused Bari and Cherney of transporting the bomb and arrested them, even though both had recently received death threats, which they had reported to the police. The government dropped its charges against Bari and Cherney for lack of evidence six weeks later, but it had already illegally searched their homes, and it continued to say they were the only suspects. Bari and Cherney sued on the grounds that the FBI and the Oakland police violated their First and Fourth Amendment rights by falsely arresting them, by making unlawful searches of their homes, and by engaging in a political conspiracy to smear them. Now Bari and Cherney have been vindicated, Bari posthumously (she died of cancer in 1997).

At the time of the bombing, which has never been solved, the FBI had been keeping tabs on Earth First! After the bombing, it continued to do so, creating "dossiers on over 500 people whose only crime was to have received a long-distance phone call from Judi, Darryl, or one of fourteen people associated with them," according to the Bari web page (www.judibari.org).

This is not a surprise, since it is in keeping with the most notorious acts by the FBI. The agency not only spied on Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and the American Indian Movement, but actively engaged in smearing these leaders and groups in the bad old days of Cointelpro. Often in these infiltrations, FBI agents would act as agents provocateurs, urging members of political groups to commit crimes. Even after the Church hearings in the 1970s were supposed to have ended these violations, the FBI continued to spy on and infiltrate leftwing groups, as it did in the 1980s with CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador.

Ashcroft's new policy states that "the FBI is authorized to visit any place and attend any event that is open to the public, on the same terms and conditions as members of the public generally."

This means that the person in the pew next to you may be a G-man on patrol, or the person holding a protest sign at a demonstration may be an impostor.

This is an infringement on our right to free speech, assembly, and the peaceable redress of grievances.

It will lead to more FBI abuses, like the ones that occurred in the Bari case.

And, at this point, with Congress capitulating, a jury of citizens and some independent judges constitute the last line of defense for our Constitution.

Bari deserves the last word.

"This case is not about me or Darryl or Earth First!" she said after she filed the suit. "This case is about the rights of all political activists to engage in dissent without having to fear the government secret police."

-- Matthew Rothschild