US Domestic Covert Operations

From the Archive: WAR AT HOME

From: yibgle@cts.com (Gary Lee)
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 14:21:22 GMT
Organization: The Gloons of Tharf
Newsgroups: alt.society.anarchy

/** pn.publiceye: 23.5 **/ ** Written 7:12 pm Jan 25, 1991 by nlgclc in cdp:pn.publiceye **

The Anti-war and New Left Movements:


Government covert action against the New Left and anti-war movements also persisted, especially as activists mobilized to protest the 1972 Republican and Democratic Party conventions. In San Diego, where the Republicans initially planned to convene, this campaign culminated in the January 6, 1972 attempt on the life of anti-convention organizer Peter Bohmer by a "Secret Army Organization" of ex-Minutemen formed, subsidized, armed, and protected by the FBI.

Movement organizing and government sabotage continued when the Republican convention was moved to Miami Beach, Florida. In May 1972, Bill Lemmer, Southern Regional Coordinator of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), a key group in the convention protest coalition, surfaced as an undercover FBI operative. Lemmer's false testimony enabled the Bureau to haul the VVAW's national leadership before a grand jury hundreds of miles away during the week of the convention.

FBI efforts to put the VVAW "out of business" were later confirmed by another ex-operative. Joe Burton of Tampa, Florida, told the New York Times "that between 1972 and 1974 he worked as a paid FBI operative assigned to infiltrate and disrupt various radical groups in this country and Canada." Burton described how specialists were flown in from FBI Headquarters to help him forge bogus documents and "establish a `sham' political group, `the Red Star Cadre,' for disruptive purposes."

The same article reported that "two other former FBI operatives, Harry E. Schafer, 3d, and his wife, Jill, told of similar disruptive activity they undertook at the bureau's direction during the same period." Working out of "a similar bogus New Orleans front group, termed the `Red Collective,'" the Schafers boasted of diverting substantial funds which had been raised to support the American Indian Movement.

** End of text from cdp:pn.publiceye ** 

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