I Cogitate

I've seen the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover.

Thankfully, this devil was not flitting about in Hoovie's favorite blue dress and actually was a woman.

No, this latest Beezlebub and apparent Hoover acolyte (Hoover-lite for short) is Judith Coleman (actually Kate Coleman, per the email message below) , purveyor of "The Secret Wars of Judi Bari: A Car Bomb, the Fight for the Redwoods, and the End of Earth First!"

Judi Bari was an environmental activist and non-violent resistance practitioner who lived in northern California. She died of cancer in 1997. She wasn't perfect and never claimed such status. But she was a single person determined to resist environmental abuse by the moneyed interests who purchase power through the financial benefits accrued by despoiling nature.

Unfortunately, she and Darryl Cherney are best known for a bomb exploding in their car in Oakland, California.

Immediately (or should I write Pavlovianly?), the two were branded as terrorists (not just eco-terrorists, mind you, but the full-fledged type) and the powers that be, in this case the Oakland Police Department--long known for its incorruptability and adherence to the Bill of Rights and the FBI--ditto, were investigating Bari, Cherney and associates for being threats to the nation. After all, a bomb went off in their car. I guess law enforcement must have adopted the real estate maxim for determining absolute guilt: location, location, location

Just what is it about the F.B.I. and other such government entities? Why the too often sordid history of protective moats around so many of the bad guys, the truly dangerous? Why the diversion from elements who can truly do harm to employing 'shock and awe' campaigns against non-violent citizen patriots exercising their civil rights? So much time, effort and money has been spent attempting to cement the status quo, keeping the rich, the powerful, the corporate interests, in place for now and forever.

Anyway, I daigress.

Despite Bari's passing, fellow activists kept pushing a countersuit and in 2002, a jury awarded Bari's estate and Cherney a $4.4 million judgment against both the Oakland P.D. and the FBI for violating the civil rights of the two.

And the actual bomber or bombers were never found. Of course, there wasn't even a pursuit in that direction, so sure the Oakland P.D. and the FBI were of Bari's and Cherney's guilt. They were members of the counterculture, plus Cherney had a beard, so the guilt was self-evident.

As for the book, author Coleman, who describes herself as a liberal, used assistance, financial and otherwise, from Peter Collier and David Horowitz to produce her book. FYI, Horowitz is the now-conservative sock puppet who remains in perpetual self-flagellation mode for his 'sins' as a youthful liberal. He has found his shift to the other side of the political spectrum to be quite financially rewarding and that telling the truth is not a prerequisite for such beneficial rightwing membership.

As for Coleman, she certainly has every right to do such a book on such a subject. One does wish accuracy was something important to her, just as it should be to any writer. But if Coleman wishes to join the ranks of such luminaries as Kitty Kelley, so be it. Just don't expect to be taken seriously. Ever. Again.

(link to complete article)

"...Meanwhile, the unprecedented Internet demolition of Coleman's book reached a new peak as the page-by-page count of factual errors listed on www.ColemanHoax.com grew to 351, and this in a book with only 232 pages of text.

Among the latest entries was an indignant response from Julia “Butterfly” Hill, the former tree-sitter and ecology icon who is the target of some of the same mean-spirited and false commentary that the book, from conservative publisher Encounter Books, directs at Bari. It’s untrue that Julia Butterfly “drives a Lexus SUV” as Coleman's book claims. In fact Julia doesn't drive at all and has no driver’s license. She walks, rides a bike and uses public transportation. Julia sent a copy of her non-driver California ID for posting on the website www.ColemanHoax.com, where it adds to a mountain of documentation that proves Coleman’s faux biography of Bari is plain wrong on countless allegations, large and small.

In addition to the page-by-page catalog of “factual errors and outright lies,” the website features a unique “INSTANT PROOF” feature that gives one-click access to documents and photos disproving key assertions in Coleman's book. That's where the new image of Julia Butterfly's non-driver ID card may be found.

Another new development was the admission by Coleman, at her first book signing event, January 8 in Fort Bragg, California, that she had been recruited and hired by the conservative Encounter Books to write the book, rather than undertaking it as an independent creative project.

Most of Bari's friends and associates wouldn't talk to Coleman after her first article trashing Bari was printed in a weekly Mendocino County newspaper whose then-editor, Bruce Anderson, is famous for his long and bitter personal vendetta against Bari, who briefly wrote for his paper. Many other key sources required for any fair and balanced view of Bari say Coleman never even contacted them.

The result is that Coleman's book was cobbled together from malicious gossip and rumors from a very biased handful of Bari's ex-friends, ex-associates, and others who turned against her long ago, and who are well-known in the Northern California region as attention-seeking critics of Bari with personal axes to grind.
Coleman has not denied that her book contract was brokered by neocon pundit David Horowitz, author of The Art of Political War: How Republicans Can Fight to Win (1999). Horowitz showed Coleman's article from Anderson's paper to his longtime collaborator Peter Collier, Encounter's publisher, who, like Horowitz, is a former leftist convert to the hard right. Coleman, who leans on her own leftist credentials, has written several articles since the late '80s for Horowitz's blatantly neocon FrontPage Magazine. In a current fundraising pitch for FrontPage, Horowitz says his mission is "exposing the left ... to ensure that mainstream Americans learn about the influence of these radicals, who they are, what their agenda is and how they're going about subverting our democratic process. (www.frontpagemag.com)"

Thanks for your piece on Judi Bari http://www.icogitate.com/~icogitate/JudiBari.html

I offer you one correction: the smear book author's name is Kate Coleman, not Judith Coleman as you have it in your 3rd paragraph.

While it's true that the Oakland cops and FBI never did any real investigation to find the bomber, I don't agree, as you suggest, that it's just because they were so convinced that Bari and Cherney were the perps. Rather it's because the operation was a deliberate frame up, part of an operation to discredit and neutralize Earth First! by branding it as a terrorist group.

The evidence was clear at the scene and on further investigation that the bomb was hidden under the driver's seat and covered with a towel, and that it was triggered by a motion device activated by the movement of the car, to make sure that it didn't explode in an empty car and miss its target, Judi Bari. Judi had received and duly reported death threats that referred to her forest defense activism. There were copies of such written death threats among Judi's papers in the bombed car. In order to charge Judi and Darryl and smear them in the press for the next two months, the cops made false statements about evidence, claiming, for example, that the bomb was in the back seat where Judi would at least have seen it when she loaded the car. They also falsely claimed that nails found in Judi's toolbox in the back of the car and also in her cabin's woodwork perfectly matched nails taped to the outside of the pipe bomb for shrapnel effect. In fact the nails were at opposite ends of the spectrum of nail design, short flat-headed roofing nails in the toolbox and slender nearly-headless finishing nails taped to the bomb. There was no possibility of an honest mistake; it was a deliberate lie.

The 2002 federal jury agreed that the cops had not merely made a mistake in blaming Judi and Darryl. The cops are immune from being sued for their mistakes under the legal doctrine of qualified immunity, an issue that was litigated for the first six years of the lawsuit and finally won in the appeals court prior to the 2002 trial. In order to find the cops liable, the jury had to decide that they acted knowingly and out of "animus" (feelings of ill will or malicious intent) toward the plaintiffs (Judi and Darryl).

I note that you're in or near Santa Cruz. I presume you know that Judi and Darryl were scheduled to speak and play music at the UCSC campus as part of their organizing for Redwood Summer on the day they were bombed.

Thanks again for your contribution to the discussion.

Nicholas Wilson
Coordinator, Friends of Judi Bari
www.fojb.org
See also: www.colemanhoax.com
www.judibari.org

P.S. The latest review of the Coleman smear book is on David Horowitz's neocon emagazine FrontPage at
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17485.  Not surprisingly, the right wing loves this book. They should, it was written for them.

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