James Retherford : Who Watches the Watchman?

Introduction:
Who watches the watchman?

COINTELPRO and the federal government’s clandestine attack on the U.S. constitution

By James Retherford / The Rag Blog / June 16, 2009

I wonder how many Americans actually remember or are even aware of the excesses of government intrusion during the Vietnam era -- the FBI's COINTELPRO, the CIA's Operation Chaos (later known as "Family Jewels"), the NSA's Operation Minaret, and U.S. Army spying on civilians, as exposed by Christopher Pyle in 1970? All of these were domestic operations carried out against American citizens within the borders of the United States.

And all were ILLEGAL, prohibited by the law of the time. The "inconvenience" of mere law and legalisms, however, didn't stop local law enforcement authorities and the various intelligence agencies during the administrations of Lyndon Johnson and especially Richard Nixon from mobilizing and carrying out illegal wiretaps, break-ins, mail tampering, frame-ups, character assassinations, and, in at least one stunning incident, the real assassination of a charismatic young African-American activist leader, Fred Hampton, by FBI and Chicago police.

A measure of our government's attack on the Bill of Rights and rule of law was documented by the Church Commission in 1975-76. The commission's findings were published in 14 volumes. Very thick volumes filled with chilling specifics.


I first got to know FBI operating procedures "up close and personal" when in 1967-68 I was indicted on three fabricated federal charges, tried in a "kangaroo" court without due process, convicted, and sentenced to six years in federal prison. My REAL "crime": I was co-founder and editor of one of the earliest underground newspapers in the United States, a small, but apparently very effective weekly published in a part of the American heartland where anti-war and pro-civil rights/social justice views were considered subversive, and the First Amendment only existed for those who proudly displayed their "Bomb 'Em Back to the Stone Age" bumper stickers.

My conviction was literally thrown out of the federal appeals court in 1969; the three-judge panel scolded the U.S. attorney for prosecutorial misconduct during the hearing, then also added a reprimand to the trial judge in a strongly worded written decision.

Yet the damage to me already had been achieved when the government imprisoned me during the beginning of the appeal process, and I was unable to continue as editor of the underground newspaper I helped start.

On the other hand, what I assume to be the government’s main objective — to silence a small dissident weekly newspaper — failed when a courageous young man named Mike King – the same Michael King who currently is news editor of the Austin Chronicle – agreed to take over the editorship. Because of the tenacity and extraordinary dedication of a battle-tested staff, our little newspaper survived COINTELPRO's best shot and continued to publish its progressive message week after week, despite ongoing and relentless attacks from the right. Eventually the everyday folks of the heartland came to reject the government's tone-deaf policies and began to embrace the belief that racial injustice and the Vietnam War did not represent either American values or national interests.


My next experience with FBI investigative techniques came a couple years later in New York City when federal agents removed my next-door neighbor from his apartment and installed themselves and a battery of listening devices aimed at my apartment. I discovered the bugging operation when I became suspicious about the trench coats and "suits" moving in and out of my neighbor's sixth-floor tenement walk-up apartment.

One night I heard a commotion in the hallway outside the two apartments and peeked out the front door peep hole. I saw several men, all dressed in London Fog, leaving the apartment. So I decided to do my own investigation. Crawling out on the fire escape, I looked in through the neighbor’s living room window. Through a gap in the curtains, I could see glowing VU meters and moving tape reels lit up in the semi-darkness. I found out later there was no warrant for this eavesdropping operation.

There was, however, a subpoena delivered a few days later to my door by a contingent of federal marshals backed by a SWAT team in body armor and armed with automatic weapons. Together with five friends and compatriots from New York and California, I had been summoned to the Nixon administration’s nationwide “witch hunt”: the Guy Goodwin grand juries. In addition to the New York inquiry, other Goodwin grand juries convened in Detroit, Phoenix, San Diego, and Seattle. All shut down after witnesses followed our lead in New York. We not only refused to cooperate; we were openly contemptuous of the process.

I showed up to testify wearing a King Kong costume -- hey, I wanted to help Assistant AG Goodwin find those urban gorillas. Goodwin -- and ultimately all government prosecutorial “expeditions” -- depend on intimidation to obtain testimony about the protest movement and the underground. Goodwin was helpless when that tactic failed, and he was left only with whatever information he had obtained by using illegal means.


Very simply, here's what I have learned from my experiences with the police state: Anyone who really believes that government can be expected to police its own activities is at best naive, at worst delusional. Because of Bush-era acts and executive orders, activities which in the mid-70s were clearly unlawful now have become lawful. With all of these well-tested tools now LEGALLY available, do not think for a moment that Homeland Security and intelligence agency snoops and spooks will neglect anything in their black bag of tricks to carry out their objective -- i.e., to maintain and protect the authority (money and power) of government and its corporate allies.

The upcoming series was originally researched and written six years ago and describes in chilling detail how the U.S. government surreptitiously conspired to maintain lock-down social control of American citizens in the period up to and including post-Watergate. I’m not talking about the “fairy tale” of American democracy as taught in high school civics classes. I’m talking about the real U.S. government, i.e., the executives and their highly placed lobbyists representing the nation’s wealthiest, most powerful global corporations (oil and energy, defense, agriculture, telecommunications and information infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, media, the prison industry, etc.), working together with neo-conservative and neo-liberal think tanks, their business partners (Democrat and Republican) in the Administration and the Congress, and their enforcers at the Pentagon and the spy agencies. The single-minded goal of this real U.S. government is to expand and defend domestic and global markets by any means necessary.

A century of paradigm development by the American ruling class produced another success, one never fully realized in previous protofascist regimes: under the control of a new generation of corporate-savvy academicians, the U.S. educational system systematically gutted critical thinking from school curricula from diaper to diploma and began turning out generations of Americans mesmerized by the spectacle of easy credit and conspicuous consumption.

Meanwhile, for those who skipped class, didn’t do their homework, or just plain don’t fit into the program, the real government now has a new, improved police state, one in which the spooks and spies are no longer fettered by law, privacy concerns, habeas corpus, and that nuisance document called the Bill of Rights. In this brave new world order, those things are no longer considered USA-PATRIOTic. Fear replaced Freedom on the new post-9/11 class schedule. Fear works just fine as a social control.

Almost 2,000 years ago, Roman poet Juvenal wrote: "Who watches the watchman?"

It’s a very good question for us here today in the USA.

Coming next: "Who Watches the Watchman? COINTELPRO and the Federal Government’s Clandestine Attack on the U.S. Constitution, Part I."

[James Retherford was a founder and editor of The Spectator in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1966. He is a director of the New Journalism Project, the nonprofit organization that publishes The Rag Blog.]

Also see James Retherford : Brandon Darby, The Texas 2, and the FBI's Runaway Informants by James Retherford / The Rag Blog / May 26, 2009

And for more background on the history of informants in Texas, read The Spies of Texas by Thorne Dreyer / The Texas Observer / Nov. 17, 2006.

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James Retherford : Brandon Darby, The Texas 2, and the FBI's Runaway Informants

The Texas 2: David McKay and Bradley Crowder.
The Texas 2: Intrigue, Provocation, and Betrayal

The overarching story here is the blatant size of the federal government’s strategic operational use of informants and undercover agents against American citizens protesting eight years of Republican misrule in the streets of St. Paul.

By James Retherford / The Rag Blog / May 26, 2009

The steel door of the United States federal criminal justice system has slammed shut on the cases of the so-called Texas 2. Amidst courtroom drama replete with extraordinary plot twists, the linked stories of Austin activist pals Bradley Neal Crowder and David Guy McKay interweave tumultuous boy-to-manhood coming-of-age themes with the bitter taste of betrayal. Far more disquieting, looming above the northland Minnesota stage, larger, darker questions emerge concerning the role of informers and agents provocateur within activist movements.

On Thursday, May 21, David McKay, a 22-year-old Austin resident accused of making and possessing Molotov cocktails at last year’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN, was sentenced to four years in federal prison. One week earlier his friend and co-defendant, Brad Crowder, 23 and also from Austin, was sentenced to 24 months on firebomb possession charges.

Crowder and McKay were charged Sept. 3, 2008, after federal authorities, acting on information provided by Brandon Darby, a paid informer who had been highly visible in Austin progressive circles for several years, found eight Molotov cocktails hidden in the basement of a St. Paul apartment building where the two were staying during the convention.

From the outset, the cases against Crowder and McKay were clouded by Darby’s brazen revelation that he was on the FBI payroll. Given his history of bizarre and provocative behavior in Austin and New Orleans, many local activists immediately suspected Darby of manipulating the younger men into a criminal adventure and then busting them.

Indeed, when McKay’s case went to trial in late January, his attorney, Jeff DeGree, staged an aggressive defense around the entrapment argument. Darby’s past statements, such as his stated advocacy of using firebombs to “fight against gentrification,” provided DeGree with a provocateur “quote fest,” and as many as six jurors found Darby’s actions to be over the line. The trial ended in a hung jury.


McKay’s courtroom success was to be short-lived. From the outset, the McKay and Crowder defense teams had no unity of purpose and common courtroom strategy. The government exploited the disunity between the two friends and fellow defendants with great success.

While McKay’s lawyer was planning an aggressive case to put Darby and his FBI handlers on trial, Crowder’s attorney, federal public defender Andrew Mohring -- with what appears to be considerable support from Crowder’s family -- persuaded the young Austinite to accept a plea bargain on a single charge of possession.

Crowder’s deal was signed in early January, several weeks before McKay was scheduled to go on trial. The government, however, delayed Crowder’s sentencing until after the McKay case was resolved. Though prosecutors did not call Crowder to testify in the McKay trial, they still held his admission of guilt as a trump card that ultimately would become the key factor in McKay’s eventual decision to change his plea to guilty.

Earlier this month, as McKay’s second trial date approached, federal prosecutors announced that this time they would put Crowder on the stand to testify against his friend. They also told Crowder that if he did not co-operate, they would tack two years onto his sentence.

Crowder’s public defender argued that because Crowder had not yet been sentenced, he could not be compelled to give self-incriminating testimony. The government countered by filing a request to grant Crowder immunity, thus compelling his testimony.

In his plea bargain, Crowder had stipulated that, though Darby had become “very influential” in his life and that he looked up to him, the FBI informant had not participated in the firebomb plan “in a direct way.” On the other hand, McKay’s defense had claimed that Darby’s prints were all over the alleged plot. "Brandon Darby created the idea that we, as an affinity group, create multiple Molotov cocktails," McKay stated on the witness stand in his own defense.

The contradiction between the two defendants’ statements would continue to be a factor as McKay attempted to negotiate a plea bargain earlier this month. District Judge Michael Davis, the same judge who presided over the Crowder case and would pass sentence on both defendants, at first refused to accept McKay’s guilty plea because McKay, in his statement to the judge, did not withdraw his entrapment allegations by repudiating his earlier insistence that Darby unduly influenced his decision to make bombs. With a panel of prospective jurors waiting outside the courtroom, Judge Davis told McKay to think about it and come back the next day.

Among the things McKay and his attorney had to think about was the problem of withdrawing the entrapment argument without exposing McKay to new charges -- perjury -- for his court testimony.

McKay returned to court the next day and told Judge Davis that he may have misremembered who first brought up the idea of making and using Molotov cocktails. Satisfied that the entrapment defense had been taken off the table voluntarily by McKay, the judge accepted the guilty plea.

Why did federal prosecutors push so hard to get guilty pleas from both defendants and to avoid a second trial for McKay? The simple answer: Brandon Darby. He had proved to be a liability in the first trial, and the defense had put together a long list of witnesses prepared to attest to his violent and provocateur-like behavior.

Why did federal prosecutors push so hard to get guilty pleas from both defendants and to avoid a second trial for McKay? The simple answer: Brandon Darby. He had proved to be a liability in the first trial, and the defense had put together a long list of witnesses prepared to attest to his violent and provocateur-like behavior.

But there is a far-more-important backstory at play, and that is the question of the scope and credibility of the government’s massive infiltration of peace and environmental activist groups and the incredibility of the Justice Department’s use of post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws against American political dissidents.

The government likes its moles to burrow in deep and avoid the light. Darby turned out to be more moth than mole -- he has a penchant for gravitating toward the spotlight. Another key RNC informant, Andrew (Panda) Darst, also wandered too close to the flame.

In a case unrelated to the Texas 2, 23-year-old Matthew Bradley DePalma of Flint, MI, in early March quietly pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 42 months in prison on the charge of possessing Molotov cocktails. The case against DePalma began at a CrimeThinc Convergence in Wisconsin in July 2008 when an FBI informant first met DePalma and reported that DePalma had talked about traveling to the RNC to “make some bombs” and “blow shit up.”

The informant met up with DePalma in Minneapolis in mid-August and helped him procure bomb-making materials and how-to manuals, let him use his residence to manufacture as many as five firebombs, and even drove DePalma to a remote location to test the devices. That FBI informant was Andy Panda Darst.

In addition, Darst is a key government witness in the high-profile case of the RNC 8, Minneapolis area members of the RNC Welcoming Committee who in early September 2008 were indicted on four felony conspiracy and terrorism charges under the Minnesota PATRIOT Act.

Just two weeks before the McKay trial, Darst seriously damaged his value as a creditable witness when he broke down a door and assaulted several people in a house where his wife had sought refuge after a domestic dispute. He was arrested and charged with burglary and assault. Later he was found guilty of felony burglary and assault and on May 18 was sentenced to 180 days in the workhouse with 160 days set aside.

Panda was on the government’s witness list for the McKay trial, but the prosecution did not put him on the stand. The damage to Darst’s credibility as a witness is also believed to have influenced county prosecutor (and Minnesota Democrat gubernatorial candidate) Susan Gaertner’s decision to drop the two terrorism charges against the eight Minneapolis activists -- conspiracy to commit riot in furtherance of terrorism and conspiracy to commit criminal damage to property in furtherance of terrorism. All eight still face felony charges of conspiracy to commit riot and conspiracy to commit criminal damage to property.

Seven of the RNC 8 marched behind a banner reading "Our Common Treasury. Dig It!" at the Minneapolis May Day parade.
The overarching story here is the blatant size of the federal government’s strategic operational use of informants and undercover agents against American citizens protesting eight years of Republican misrule in the streets of St. Paul. Gone are the secret COINTELPRO operatives lurking in the shadows in the years before the Church Committee’s voluminous 1975-76 exposé of illegal domestic spying conducted by the FBI, CIA, NSA, Department of Defense, and intelligence services within the military against American citizens. Since the fear-mongered passage of the USA-PATRIOT Act in 2001 and the Bush-Cheney program to extend executive privilege beyond any and all constraints inconveniently imposed by rule of law, domestic spying is no longer illegal. No need to hide in the dark.

The Church Committee’s findings did not simply linger on the extent of the spying -- for example, 215,000 pieces of mail secretly opened by the FBI and CIA before 1973 -- or the hundreds of thousands of Americans on various “watch lists.” Far more revealing -- and appalling -- were the excesses. Near the top of that list stands the 1969 murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in his bed after he had been drugged by a police informant. Though years later details of a conspiracy to assassinate the charismatic young Panther implicated the FBI, the Illinois State's Attorney's Office tactical unit, and the Chicago Police, no one has been brought to justice.

Two recent studies -- the Center for Democracy and Technology’s 2002 Analysis of New FBI Guidelines and a 2005 Justice Department Inspector General Report -- suggest that relaxed investigative ground rules and failure to properly oversee the activities of confidential informants once again may be leading to investigative excesses and dismantling of the Bill of Rights.

Eric Lichtblau reported in the May 6, 2009, New York Times that the FBI presently maintains a consolidated watch list of 400,000 “terrorism suspects.” According to Lichtblau, the DOJ inspector general discovered in a recent statistical sampling study that at least 24,000 people were incorrectly kept on the terrorist watch list on the basis of outdated and sometimes irrelevant information. Because of the limited scope of the study, this is likely the tip of the iceberg. Lichtblau continues:

People with names similar to actual terrorists have complained that it can take months to be removed from the list, and civil liberties advocates charge that antiwar protesters, Muslim activists and others have been listed for political reasons.

The CDT study of former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s 2002 revision of FBI investigative guidelines reached the following conclusions:

• The changes mean that the FBI, which has failed to manage the ocean of information it already collects, will be gathering yet more information in situations completely unconnected to any suspicion of criminal conduct, and will be continuing for longer periods of time investigations that are producing nothing.


• The expanded surveillance and use of data mining could be written off as just a waste of money, but for two paramount problems: the changes are likely to make the FBI less efficient in preventing terrorism, by diverting resources down rat-holes of fruitless investigations; and the DOJ has proven its determination since September 11 to arrest people based on the kinds of innocent coincidences that data mining may flag and hold them in jail even after concluding that they were unrelated to any terrorism and in some cases (the material witnesses) had committed no legal violation at all.


• The FBI was never prohibited from surfing the Internet or using commercial data mining services -- the FBI has long been a major customer of many private information systems. But in the past, searches of databases had to be related to some investigation. The threshold was very low -- under the old guidelines, the FBI could maintain a preliminary inquiry for 90 days using data mining, undercover operations, photo surveillance, informants, etc, whenever it had "information or an allegation whose responsible handling required some further scrutiny." In fact, the FBI could open preliminary inquiries solely for the purpose of data mining. But it had to be looking for some criminal conduct. The new changes allow the data mining technique -- who has changed apartments three times in the past two years? who has been making a lot of international phone calls? -- as the basis for generating the suspicion of criminal conduct in the first place.


• The FBI was never prohibited in the past from going to mosques, political rallies and other “public” places, to observe and record what was said, but, again, in the past it had to be guided by the criminal nexus -- in deciding what mosques to go to and what political meetings to record, it had to have some reason to believe that terrorism might be discussed. Under the new guidelines, even before opening a preliminary inquiry, the FBI can go to mosques and political meetings. How will it decide which ones to go to? -- we fear it will be on the basis of politics.


• The DOJ is using the terrorism crisis as a cover for a range of changes, some of which have nothing to do with terrorism.


The online surfing provisions, for example, relate not only to terrorism cases, but to all other investigations -- drugs, white collar crime, public corruption, and copyright infringement. Other changes affect how the FBI conducts investigations under RICO, the racketeering and organized crime law, allowing the FBI to use the heavy weaponry of RICO (forfeiture, enhanced penalties) against crimes that are not committed for monetary gain.

Regarding the FBI’s handling of its confidential informants, the DOJ inspector general found that in nearly nine out every 10 cases reviewed, bureau guidelines were violated in ways that risked compromising investigations.

While the guidelines sometimes permit informants such as drug dealers or gang members to commit crimes in order to further an investigation, the review found that F.B.I. agents allowed criminal informants to engage in criminal activities without getting needed approval from supervisors or lawyers for such operations, failed to report unauthorized illegal activity, or approved such illegal activity only retroactively.

Beyond the problems in managing confidential informants, the inspector general's review looked at the effect of a number of changes ordered by Mr. Ashcroft in his 2002 revamping of the bureau's investigative guidelines. According to The New York Times, “The new guidelines relaxed restrictions put in place in the 1970s as a result of F.B.I. abuses in the monitoring of political dissidents.”

Critics charged last year that the F.B.I. had abused its expanded powers by monitoring, interviewing and sometimes subpoenaing antiwar protesters and political protesters in advance of the political conventions last summer. The inspector general's office disclosed in its report Monday that it was conducting a separate investigation to determine whether the F.B.I. interrogations of protesters were in fact improper.

The 1990 Judi Bari-Darryl Cherney case may have been an early warning signal that the FBI had found an opportunity to recommission its Vietnam-era bag of dirty tricks. After she almost died when a motion-triggered pipe bomb wrapped with nails exploded under her car seat, Earth First activist Bari and her companion Darryl Cherney were charged by the FBI with knowingly transporting the bomb as part of an eco-terrorism plot.

Before Bari’s death in 1997, Bari and Cherney launched an aggressive lawsuit against the bureau and local police and uncovered evidence of collusion between the FBI and the lumber industry to blame the victims and cover up investigative leads that might have linked the bomber to an FBI bomb school run by the agency’s top expert -- the very “expert” who insisted that forensic evidence proved that the environmental activists had placed the device behind the drivers seat to transport it to their intended target.

"Anna" -- aka: Anna Davies, Anna Davidson, and Grai Damiani.
The plot thickened in 2007 when the FBI persuaded a 17-year-old Florida college student identified as “Anna” in court documents (also known in activist circles as Anna Davies, Anna Davidson, and Grai Damiani) to spend four years undercover -- apparently often literally so -- building a case against Earth Liberation Front member Eric McDavid on charges of conspiring to damage and destroy property, including government facilities, by means of fire and explosives.

The subsequent trial produced a sordid tale of sexual manipulation and obsession as “Anna” provided McDavid and the two other members of the group with money to buy materials, transportation, and a remote cabin -- fully equipped with audio and video surveillance equipment -- in which to work. According to McDavid’s attorney, Mark Reichel, Anna was always pushing McDavid and the two other members of the group to do something criminal, taught them how to make the bombs, supervised their activities, and repeatedly threatened to leave them if they didn't start doing "something." Friends of the ELF activist say that “Anna” used the promise of sex to manipulate and eventually snare McDavid into a bomb plot concocted and financed by her handlers at the Department of Justice.

After the two co-defendants were pressured into testifying against McDavid, he was found guilty and sentenced to almost 20 years in prison.

In the past few days news channels have been abuzz with the story of the Bronx terrorist bomb plot, four dead-enders with histories of drug addiction, mental illness, and a petty crime (such as purse-snatching) as well as big plans to blow up a New York City synagogue and shoot down military aircraft with Stinger missiles.

Noted the Los Angeles Times: “Prosecutors called it the latest in a string of homegrown terrorism plots hatched after Sept. 11. ‘It's hard to envision a more chilling plot,’ Assistant U.S. Atty. Eric Snyder said in court Thursday. He described all four suspects as ‘eager to bring death to Jews.’"

To which Robert Dreyfuss, writing in The Nation on May 23, retorts:
“Actually, it's hard to imagine a stupider, less competent, and less important plot. The four losers were ensnared by a creepy FBI agent who hung around the mosque in upstate New York until he found what he was looking for.”

Lurking in the shadows of this sensationalized story is another FBI confidential informant, a man arrested for identity theft in 2002 and given five years probation on the condition that he become an FBI informer.

According to Michael Wilson’s May 21 report in the New York Times, the mole began to show up at a mosque in Newburgh, NY, in 2007, telling prospective targets that he was a recruiter for Jaish-e-Mohammed (the Army of Mohammed), an Islamic mujahadeen organization based in Pakistan. The iman of the Newburgh mosque said that one of his congregants was offered a substantial amount of money to join the informant’s terrorist “team.”

As Dreyfuss emphatically notes:

So a creepy thug buttonholes people at a mosque, foaming at the mouth about violence and jihad? This is law enforcement? Preying on these losers, the "confidential informant" orchestrated the acquisition of a disabled Stinger missile to shoot down military planes and cooked up a wild scheme about attacking a Jewish center in the Bronx.

The informant whipped up their violent tendencies and their hatred of Jews, cooked up the plot, incited them, arranged their purchase of weapons, and then had them busted. To ensure that it made headlines, the creepy informant claimed to be representing a Pakistani extremist group, Jaish-e Muhammad, a bona fide terrorist organization. He wasn't, of course. …

The headlines reinforce the very fear that Dick Cheney is trying to stir up. The story strengthens the narrative that the "homeland" is under attack. It's not.

Is the Bill of Rights under attack? It would seem so in Minnesota where 34 RNC protest cases have come to trial with one conviction.

Correction: zero convictions.

On May 19 a street medic was convicted of public assembly without a permit, but the trial judge himself, in an extraordinary move, overturned the verdict, and the prosecutor has declined to retry the case.

Therefore the murky firebomb conspiracy pleas of DePalma, Crowder, and McKay are the only prosecutorial “successes” to date. Indeed, after the McKay sentence was handed down, the feds must have heaved a collective sigh of relief. Their improperly supervised, out-of-control informants provided just enough to intimidate three young men, two of whom were represented by public defenders, into copping pleas and saving the Justice Department from the sorry spectacle of more public trials -- and more revelations about how FBI snitches play fast and loose with the rule of law.

Also see Brandon Darby in New Orleans : FBI Informant Was Egotistical Sexist by Victoria Welle / The Rag Blog / May 26, 2009

Previous Rag Blog articles on Brandon Darby and the Texas 2:

• Cop Nation : Snitch Brandon Darby, and Riot Police With the 'Kent State' Gene by Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / Jan. 8, 2009
• Mariann Wizard on Brandon Darby : 'To Live Outside the Law You Must Be Honest' by Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog / Jan. 7, 2008
• Brandon Darby : FBI Informant is Provocateur, Not a Hero by Austin Informant Working Group / The Rag Blog / Jan. 6, 2009
• Brandon Darby: Austin Activist Outed as FBI Spy / The Rag Blog / Jan. 2, 2009

Also go to the Support the Texas 2 website.

And listen to “Turncoat,” a story about Brandon Darby on Chicago Public Radio’s "This American Life.” [The Darby segment starts 13 minutes in.]

Also, read this remarkable piece of reporting: The Informant: Revolutionary to rat: The uneasy journey of Brandon Darby by Diana Welch / Austin Chronicle / Jan. 23, 2009

For more background on the history of informants in Texas, read The Spies of Texas by Thorne Dreyer / The Texas Observer / Nov. 17, 2006.

And see the entire "Hamilton Files" of former UT-Austin police chief Allen Hamilton that served as documentation for Dreyer's story, here.

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Brandon Darby in New Orleans : FBI Informant Was Egotistical Sexist

This Activist Life:

FBI snitch was also a sexist, authoritarian, provocative fraud

By Victoria Welle

[Victoria Welle worked with Brandon Darby at the Common Ground Collective in New Orleans. Common Ground is a community-run relief organization that played a major role in post-Katrina rebuilding efforts. Darby has since been revealed to have been an FBI informant who allegedly played the part of provocateur in the recent “Texas 2” case in which two defendants were convicted of making and possessing Molotov cocktails at last year’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN. This article was first published at (hasta la) Victoria on May 21, 2009.]

“not sure when you last spoke to [x] or how much she told you about all the common ground drama, but it’s pretty chaotic here, and not in a good way. [a founder] and the fiscal sponsor turned over all directing responsibility of cg to brandon darby, and, well, let’s just say that any lingering notion that common ground is a collective has been completely shattered. darby might be anti-racist, but he’s got a lot to learn as far as male privilege is concerned. there are days when i feel like i’d rather be back working in a formal Catholic institution b/c at least I’d know to expect the blatant sexism and hierarchy. if it wasn’t for all the other amazing folks struggling alongside me with the day to day work i’d be long gone.” -- from an email sent [by Victoria Welle] 10 Feb 07

This weekend the public radio show This American Life is going to do a story on Brandon Darby, an activist who became an informant for the FBI. [The story was aired on May 12, 2009, and can be downloaded online.]

I’m very curious to hear how the story gets told, but they probably won’t tell the side of the story I’m most familiar with. I worked with Darby in 2007, when both of us were part of Common Ground, an organization doing relief work in post-Katrina New Orleans.

As the above excerpt from a personal email I sent shows, I have a definite bias, based on my less than positive interactions with him. But my experiences with Darby have also given me a lot to think about when it comes to how we as activists work together, how we hold one another accountable, and how we go about not making the same mistakes as the culture we’re critiquing.

When the rumors of Darby’s involvement with the FBI were confirmed, there was a lot of speculation about when exactly he began informing. Was it just in the months before the 2008 Republican National Convention protests, or did it go back further? Was he working for the feds when he was in New Orleans? It might sound ridiculous and paranoid to consider this, but it’s not hard to see how many came to that conclusion.

Common Ground was political as well as social service oriented, formed in large part to counter the ineffective relief efforts attempted by FEMA and other government agencies. Common Ground routinely criticized government officials (often via an active grassroots media team), it refused any federal funds, and one of its founders was a former Black Panther, an organization that itself saw a great deal of harmful (and deadly) government infiltration throughout its history. Common Ground at that point in time fit the profile of an organization that would likely be under some sort of surveillance.

Then there was Darby’s sometimes erratic behavior and seemingly inexplicable actions that would make more sense if understood as being done to deliberately sabotage the organization. Like ousting two long-term workers simply because they publicly disagreed with him in a meeting. Or, in a burst of anger, canceling the cell phone account used as the central hotline for the hugely successful (and much needed) legal aid program; or the matter of thousands of dollars wasted on an ill-conceived and poorly planned “police accountability” project that went nowhere. Most harmful of all was the loss of many allies in organizations throughout the city who were alienated by Darby’s arrogant bravado and no longer wanted to work with the organization.

All of this said, I think dwelling on the was-he or wasn’t-he questions of when his involvement with the FBI began detracted from the bigger and more difficult questions and issues that we anti-oppression activists need to be focused on. There will always be government interference with our work, and much of that is beyond our control.


The biggest problem I have with Brandon Darby isn’t that he snitched. What still angers me to this day is how his unchecked sexism, authoritarian leadership style, and stubborn refusal to take advice or criticism caused a great deal of disruption to the organization’s relief and justice work in New Orleans. The fact that someone with so much unexamined privilege was able to maintain leadership in our organization as long as he did says a lot about us as well: we as activists have to do a better job of calling out oppressive behavior within our organizing culture.

It means being truly democratic in how we structure ourselves, and being clear that top-down power imbalances are not effective, even if done with supposedly good intentions. It means being willing to have difficult conversations when it’s not convenient, when there’s “not enough time” because we have so much “real” work to do. It means continuing to do our own internal anti-oppression work, especially when it comes to examining the intersection of differing oppressions, and being willing to take constructive criticism.

Common Ground was right to be explicitly anti-racist in its work, but that wasn’t enough. By failing to critically examine and confront other oppressions at work in our organization (such as sexism, ageism, authoritarianism), we allowed highly dysfunctional behavior to go unchecked, which ultimately lessened our ability to do effective work for the people of New Orleans. Sadly, Darby was not the only one at fault when it comes to this lack of critical reflection, and I think this festering of multiple “isms” within the group laid the groundwork for someone as problematic as him to be placed in such an influential position.

Could we have done things differently? Many people in Common Ground had problems with Darby’s actions from the outset, but it was also made clear from early on that disagreement with him would not be tolerated (such as the examples mentioned above). Some long term workers decided to leave the organization rather than continue to work under him. Many of us chose instead to try to work around him, avoiding interactions and further fruitless arguments we felt we could not win with him.

When it was necessary to deal with Darby or one of his (all male) team, I often sent a male co-worker, knowing that he could successfully navigate Darby’s good ol’ boys network. I chose the “easy” way of avoiding conflict by retreating into traditionally female roles: running the office behind the scenes and even (literally) getting coffee for the men when they came by for meetings.

I rationalized my experiences by telling myself that what I was dealing with was minimal compared to what the residents of New Orleans were going through, and my issues needed to take a back seat. But the stress of working in such a dysfunctional setting took its toll on me, and I think I was a less effective relief worker in the long run because of that stress. I’m convinced that many others experienced a similar type of burnout.

If we had dealt more effectively with Darby in New Orleans, would he have been in less of a position of prominence when he returned to Texas, and therefore less able to influence the younger activists who became caught in the web of government surveillance and entrapment? It’s hard to say for sure, and probably not a productive line of reasoning.

What I do know is that we will always be dealing with people like Brandon Darby, and while we are right to be angry about what he did, it can’t detract us from the essential anti-oppression work we each have to do. In the case of Common Ground, making Darby the scapegoat for all that went wrong lets the rest of us off the hook, and distracts us from continuing to ask the hard questions of how each of us is also complicit in oppressive actions.

I’m guessing that if I didn’t have a personal tie to the story, the upcoming episode of This American Life would be, as usual, good radio entertainment. But I have a feeling I’ll instead find myself muttering epithets back at the radio when I hear Darby once again try to portray himself as nothing more than an earnest, ethical activist who couldn’t bear the thought of violence happening, and so he took it upon himself to Do the Right Thing and become an informant. I’ll think back to the behavior I witnessed in New Orleans and wish he’d never been given the mike. Then I hope to turn off the radio and get back to work.

Source / (hasta la) Victoria

Also see James Retherford : Brandon Darby, The Texas 2, and the FBI's Runaway Informants by James Retherford / The Rag Blog / May 26, 2009

Previous Rag Blog articles on Brandon Darby and the Texas 2:

• Cop Nation : Snitch Brandon Darby, and Riot Police With the 'Kent State' Gene by Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / Jan. 8, 2009
• Mariann Wizard on Brandon Darby : 'To Live Outside the Law You Must Be Honest' by Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog / Jan. 7, 2008
• Brandon Darby : FBI Informant is Provocateur, Not a Hero by Austin Informant Working Group / The Rag Blog / Jan. 6, 2009
• Brandon Darby: Austin Activist Outed as FBI Spy / The Rag Blog / Jan. 2, 2009

Also go to the Support the Texas 2 website.

And listen to “Turncoat,” a story about Brandon Darby on Chicago Public Radio’s "This American Life.”

And, for more background on this issue, read The Spies of Texas by Thorne Dreyer / The Texas Observer / Nov. 17, 2006.

And see the entire "Hamilton Files" of former UT-Austin police chief Allen Hamilton that served as documentation for Dreyer's story, here.

The Rag Blog / Posted May 26, 2009

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Brandon Darby : Austin Activist Outed as FBI Spy

Austin activist and admitted FBI informant Brandon Darby.

Austin has its very own FBI spy. Recall that Scrub Bush took all the FBI agents off enforcing banking laws, and put them to work watching political groups here at home. -- Janet Gilles / The Rag Blog.

There have always been undercover cops spying on the left in Austin. The now famous right wing pundit William Bennett lived in a hive of leftists and dopers at Nueces College House in 1967-8. Long time chairman of the Republican Party in Travis County and right wing government professor, Alan Sager, hired me to be his research assistant when I returned from a year working for national SDS in 1969. Wonder why? Strange, isn't it? -- David Hamilton / The Rag Blog.

The Rag Blog’s Thorne Dreyer wrote a cover story for the Nov.17, 2006, issue of The Texas Observer about spying on campus radicals and resident bohemians at the University of Texas in Austin in the sixties. Go here to read “The Spies of Texas.”

And go here to see the “Hamilton Files” of former UT-Austin campus police chief Allen Hamilton with all the documents and photographs that accompanied Dreyer’s story.

The Rag Blog / January 2, 2009

Sometimes You Wake Up and It's Different:
Statement on Brandon Darby, aka, 'The Unknown Informant'
December 31, 2009

Also see an Open Letter from admitted FBI informant Brandon Darby, Below.

[Scott Crow, who originally posted this story, worked closely with fellow activist Brandon Darby. Darby received substantial media coverage for his role in Katrina recovery efforts in New Orleans.]

Below is a statement by a group of Austin-based community organizers that documents that a local activist, Brandon Michael Darby of Austin, is a government informant/provocateur.

Brandon now publicly acknowledges that he is working with the FBI and has been for some time.

Statement on Brandon Darby, the 'Unnamed' Informant/Provocateur in the 'Texas 2' Case from Austin, Texas.

As part of the wave of government repression against activists protesting at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota in September, 2008, the FBI arrested two men from Texas, Bradley Crowder (22) and David McKay (23), and indicted them for allegedly possessing molotov cocktails. Crowder and McKay have been in jail since the RNC. They have not been granted bail and their trial has been postponed indefinitely. They are facing 7 to 10 years in federal prison.

As outlined in the affidavit against Crowder and McKay (found here), the case was built almost entirely on the statements of two informants covertly working with the FBI, identified in the affidavit as "Confidential Human Sources" or just "CHS".

One of these informants was working in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area ("CHS 2" in the affidavit) and has been previously identified as Andy/Panda by people familiar with the situation and the informant. This statement ends speculation and anticipation concern about the identity of the other informant who was operating in Texas and Minnesota.

Using FBI documents previously unknown to us, but recently provided by one of the defendant's defense teams, we have positively confirmed the identity of the unnamed informant ("CHS 1" in the affidavit) as Brandon Michael Darby of Austin, Texas, based on the following evidence:

1) The FBI documents detail private conversations between Darby and several individuals named in the documents, including scott crow and Lisa Fithian, who have closely reviewed the documents and confirmed that they had the conversations in question with only Darby. In addition they can confirm his participation in events reported in the documents.

2) In verbatim reports from the informant to the FBI, the language, personality, skills, and interests of Darby are readily apparent to those who know him.

3) Cross-referencing the time line provided by the FBI in the documents with people familiar with the situation and course of events shows that Darby was in a position to have the incriminating conversations with McKay referenced in the affidavit.

4) In all of the documents Brandon Darby's name is conspicuously absent from any and all meetings and events which he attended and was involved in. In fact Darby's name only appears at the end of all the documents in a confession made by David McKay upon his arrest in Minnesota.

Numerous people familiar with both Brandon Darby and the legal situation of Crowder and McKay have verified this information.

Over the years Brandon Darby has established strong ties with individuals in many different radical communities across the United States. While it is not yet clear how long or to what extent Darby has been acting as an informant, the emerging truth about Darby's malicious involvement in our communities is heart-breaking and utterly ground-shattering to those of us who were closest to him.

Darby operated in and around the Austin community for about 6 years, and this is the same Brandon Darby who participated in the Common Ground Collective in New Orleans during 2005-2006. Based on the evidence we have, Brandon has been giving the state information since at least November 2007, but there is also information that suggests his informant activities may go back further, at least to 2006 or earlier. In the documents, Darby makes numerous remarks that are inflammatory and often untrue or grossly taken out of context. There is also compelling evidence to suggest that Darby, more than just reporting on Crowder and McKay's activities, was actively encouraging, enabling, and provoking the two men to take illegal action.

We recognize that suspicions and accusations of Darby have been circulating for some time now, including one corporate media article by David Hanners in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on October 29, 2008. Our aim in releasing this information is to clear the confusion that has circulated in the last few months.

We want to point out that while the conclusions of these suspicions and accusations turned out to be correct, these conclusions were not based on any verifiable facts, and thus, their public airing was inappropriate and irresponsible. When these accusations surfaced, we did what we could to quash them, trusting what we believed to be true about people in the absence of any compelling evidence to the contrary. Having been presented with new evidence, we are acting on it promptly and deliberately.

Through the history of our struggles for a better world, infiltrators and informants have acted as tools for the forces of misery in disrupting and derailing our movements. However, even more dangerous to our communities than setting people up, turning them in, or gathering information, informants sow seeds of fear, paranoia, and distrust that fester and grow in paralyzing and destructive ways. We must be forever vigilante against deceptive, malicious and manipulative actors, while we defend the trust and openness that give our communities cohesion and power.

Now we must get on with the work of supporting the "Texas 2". In light of these revelations and what we know about Brandon Darby, we believe they were set up and that the charges should be dropped. We urge you to join us in a campaign to "Free the Texas 2"

In solidarity,
The Austin Informant Working Group

Source / Infoshop News

And this on Darby:

It is not clear exactly how long [Brandon Darby] has worked for the FBI for or how many people he gave information on, but it appears that he has been an informant for about two to three years. His information led the to the arrests of two activists who are charged with making Molotov cocktails which they allegedly intended to use at the Republican National Convention protests in St. Paul this past summer.

It is also being speculated that his information may have had something to do with the arrests of eight activists who were rounded up before the week of RNC protests could even begin. The activists, known as the “RNC 8″, are being charged with four felony counts each.

Many of his peers defended him before he was officially outed, saying that he would never spy on his fellow activists and that doing so would be completely against his ideology. Darby disagreed, saying in his letter (which he ironically signed “In Solidarity”) that his ideology supports his choice, a choice he “strongly defends.”

Michael A. Weber / Planetsave

And here is an open letter from Brandon Darby, published on Dec. 30, 2008

To All Concerned,

The struggles for peace and justice have accomplished significant change throughout history. I've had the honor to work with many varying groups and individuals on behalf of marginalized communities and in various struggles. There are currently allegations in the media that I have worked undercover for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This allegation no doubt confuses many activists who know me and probably leaves many wondering why I would seemingly choose to engage in such an endeavor. The simple truth is that I have chosen to work with the Federal Bureau of investigation.

As compelling as the natural human desire to reason and express oneself can be, regardless, I must hold my comments at this time on certain aspects of the situation. That said, there are a few statements and generalizations I will make relating to my recent choices.

Though I've made and will no doubt continue to make many mistakes in efforts to better our world, I am satisfied with the efforts in which I have participated. Like many of you, I do my best to act in good conscience and to do what I believe to be most helpful to the world. Though my views on how to give of myself have changed substantially over the years, ultimately the motivations behind my choices remain the same. I strongly stand behind my choices in this matter.

I strongly believe that people innocent of an act should stand up for themselves and that those who choose to engage in an act should accept responsibility and explain the reasoning for their choices.

It is very dangerous when a few individuals engage in or act on a belief system in which they feel they know the real truth and that all others are ignorant and therefore have no right to meet and express their political views.

Additionally, when people act out of anger and hatred, and then claim that their actions were part of a movement or somehow tied into the struggle for social justice only after being caught, it's damaging to the efforts of those who do give of themselves to better this world. Many people become activists as a result of discovering that others have distorted history and made heroes and assigned intentions to people who really didn't act to better the world. The practice of placing noble intentions after the fact on actions which did not have noble motivations has no place in a movement for social justice.

The majority of the activists who went to St. Paul did so with pure intentions and simply wanted to express their disagreements with the Republican Party. It's unfortunate that some used the group as cover for intentions that the rest of the group did not agree with or knew nothing about and are now, consequently, having parts of their lives and their peace of mind uprooted over.

There is no doubt in my mind that many of you reading this letter will say and feel all possible bad things about my choices and for me. I made the choice to have my identity revealed and was well aware of the consequences for doing so. I know that the temptation to silence or ignore the voice of someone who you strongly disagree with can be overwhelming in matters such as this one; and no doubt many people will try to do just that to me. I have confidence that there will be a few people interested in discussion and in better understanding views different from their own, especially from one of their own. My sincere hope is that the entire matter results in better understanding for everyone.

Many of you went against my wishes and spoke publicly in defense of me. Those involved were correct when they wrote that I wasn't making my choices for financial reasons or to avoid some sort of prosecution. They were incorrect that my ideology didn't support such choices. One individual who publically defended me stated that they didn't believe I was working undercover because the government would have used my access to take down a more prominent activist if the allegations were true. If indeed the government or I was interested in doing so, it could have happened in such a manner. However, the incorrect notion that the government was out to silence dissent was the cause for the mistake made by that person. In defense of the individuals who openly did their best to do what they thought was defending me, they did not know the truth and they had no way of knowing the truth due to their ideological and personal attachments to me. It's unfortunate that the truth couldn't have come out sooner and that the needed preparations for such a disclosure take time. I really did mean it when I said that I didn't want to discuss it and that I didn't want folks addressing the allegations.

Again, I strongly stand behind my choices in this matter. I'm looking forward to open dialogue and debate regarding the motivations and experiences I've had and the ethical questions they pose.

In Solidarity,

Brandon Michael Darby
December 29, 2008

Source / Independent Media Center

Read The Spies of Texas by Thorne Dreyer / The Texas Observer / Nov. 17, 2006.

And see the entire "Hamilton Files" of former UT-Austin police chief Allen Hamilton that served as documentation for Dreyer's story, here.

The Rag Blog

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