______________________________
ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN
News * Analysis * Research * Action
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RESEARCH SUPPLEMENT
- September 13, 2000 -
* * *
______________________________________________________________________________
PRIVATE SPIES, PUBLIC REPRESSION
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CONTENTS:
1. PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: Rumors Had Troopers Seeing Reds During the GOP
Convention.
2. POLITICAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATES [US]: The Maldon Institute.
3. LET 'em TALK [US]: McDonald's Private Spies (1983).
* * *
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RUMORS HAD TROOPERS SEEING REDS DURING THE GOP CONVENTION
____________________________________________________________________
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Metro News
Sunday, September 10, 2000
http://web.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/09/10/city/PPROTEST10.htm
By Craig R. McCoy and Linda K. Harris
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
The cold war is long over but Pennsylvania State Police were still on the
lookout for communists and Soviet sympathizers among the demonstrators
protesting last month's Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.
In state police affidavits justifying a raid on a West Philadelphia
warehouse used by convention protesters, troopers alleged that communists
were behind the demonstrations.
"Funds allegedly originate with Communist and leftist parties and from
sympathetic trade unions," the state police declared in the affidavits.
"Other funds reportedly come from the former Soviet-allied World Federation
of Trade Unions."
The language left critics, including demonstrators and civil-liberties
lawyers, both a little amused and a lot indignant. They said it seemed like
something out of a musty red-baiting periodical of the 1950s - Red Channels
and the like.
The allegations - passed to state police by a private group funded by
conservative multimillionaire Richard Mellon Scaife - did not belong in
government affidavits seeking judicial approval for a search warrant that
led to 75 arrests, they said.
"It's McCarthyite. It's tarring people," said David Kairys, a law professor
at Temple University. "It's reminiscent of the worst of the '50s."
The allegations of communist money made up only a small part of the 23-page
affidavits in support of search warrants for three vehicles and the
warehouse, at 4100 Haverford Ave. The affidavits, made public Wednesday
after having been sealed for more than a month, relied most heavily on the
direct observations of undercover troopers who infiltrated the warehouse.
Known as "the puppet warehouse," police called it a center of illegal
activity; activists said it was a workshop in which they made more than 100
puppets and a large satirical float, "Corpzilla."
The documents were the first public acknowledgement that police had
infiltrated groups planning to protest during last month's Republican
National Convention.
Without elaboration, the affidavits stated that the allegations of
communist funding had come from the little-known Maldon Institute.
Asked last week about the Maldon Institute, Jack Lewis, a state police
spokesman, seemed a little unsure.
"Our people said they believed this institute is based in the United
Kingdom," he said.
The Maldon Institute - named after an obscure battle in England in the 10th
century - is based in Baltimore and has a mailing address in Washington,
D.C.
Lewis added: "I'm told by our intelligence people that the Maldon Institute
is a private organization that provides intelligence information to police
departments.
"We have found in the past that the Maldon Institute generally presents
reliable information."
Lewis said that state police and other police departments "routinely
receive information from the Maldon Institute at no cost, via e-mail. The
department did not solicit this information."
Asked whether state police had attended Maldon Institute conferences, Lewis
responded: "State police personnel have had contact in the U.S. with
representatives of the institute."
According to public records, the institute is funded, at least in part, by
Scaife, the Pittsburgh political philanthropist best known for his
financial support of several private investigations of President Clinton in
recent years.
Financial forms for Scaife's Carthage Foundation show it provided Maldon
with $250,000 in 1998.
Institute documents show that board members have included D. James Kennedy,
a Florida televangelist who is cofounder of the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Moral
Majority; and Robert Moss, a journalist and novelist who in the 1980s wrote
that the KGB used Western media to manipulate public opinion.
The institute's officials did not return repeated telephone calls seeking
comment Friday.
In an interview last week, Chip Berlet, who studies conservative and
far-right groups, said a key figure within the 15-year-old institute has
been John H. Rees, a British-born contributor to the John Birch Society and
publisher of a newsletter devoted to intelligence-gathering and distributed
to police.
In the 1970s, Rees published the Information Digest, which gave details
gathered after he infiltrated left-leaning groups under a false name, the
Baltimore Sun reported in 1988.
Just this year, Rees, as director of the Maldon Institute, helped organize
an invitation-only conference in New York City on terrorism that drew FBI
agents and police, according to conference sponsors.
Berlet said state police erred in using the institute as a basis for police
action.
"It issues monographs and monitors cults and terrorist groups and left-wing
groups," said Berlet, senior analyst with the left-leaning Political
Research Associates, based in Massachusetts. "It does so from an
old-fashioned counter-subversion perspective that is obsessed with finding
reds under every bed."
Berlet said police needed to distinguish protesters who were engaged in
nonviolent and legal protest from those breaking the law.
"You're never going to draw those appropriate distinctions if you're
relying on these kind of scurrilous, McCarthyite allegations," he said.
Lewis, the state police spokesman, noted that the affidavit drew from "a
wide variety of sources" and did not rely solely on the Maldon Institute's
work. The affidavits drew most heavily on information developed by troopers
who had infiltrated the warehouse.
The affidavits, in alleging communist links to the protest, cited
specifically a Maldon Institute research report dated April 7. Lewis said
the state police would not release that report.
"The department does not believe it has an obligation to provide the public
with all information it receives as part of its intelligence-gathering
operation, whether or not the department pays for that information," he
said.
The affidavit's specific allegation is that communist money flowed to a
protest group called the Pennsylvania Consumer Action Network through its
supposed ties to People's Global Action, an anti-capitalist group formed in
Switzerland two years ago.
All of this astounded Mike Morrill, a leader of the Pennsylvania Consumer
Action Network. His group organized a peaceful march for July 30 - one
permitted by the city.
Morrill last week released his group's donor list. It showed that the group
raised about $48,000 for the Republican convention protests, with the
largest contributions coming from well-known city labor unions. Of the
total, $200 came from the Communist Party of Eastern Pennsylvania, the only
communist group listed.
Morrill said he took no part in the Aug. 1 street blockades that disrupted
city traffic.
"Imagine my surprise when I found out my organization was awash in money,
funded by Soviet-era organizations and communist-inspired groups from
around the world," Morrill said.
"Were it so, I'd probably have a better wardrobe and live in a nicer house."
Craig R. McCoy's e-mail address is cmccoy@phillynews.com
Copyright 2000 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
*****
POLITICAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATES
120 Beacon Street, #202
Somerville, MA 02143-4304
E-Mail: publiceye@igc.org
Web: http//www.publiceye.org
- Saturday, 9 September 2000 -
-----
____________________________________________________________________
THE MALDON INSTITUTE
____________________________________________________________________
By Chip Berlet
Political Research Associates
http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/Rees/Rees.htm
The Maldon Institute is a right wing think tank that studies national
security and terrorism from a countersubversive and often conspiracist
perspective. Maldon's director, John Rees, infiltrated the political left
in the 1970s, and passed the information to groups ranging from the John
Birch Society to the FBI.
In 1993 Maldon Institute board members included three notable conspiracists:
* Dr. D. James Kennedy, a leading Christian right activist and a co-founder
of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority. Kennedy endorsed a book that alleged the
Illuminati Freemasons and certain Jewish bankers were behind US
liberalism's attack on morality.
* Raymond Wannall, past president of the Association of Former Intelligence
Officers and a former assistant director of the FBI. Wannall led a campaign
to justify the acts of government agents charged with illegally spying on
the left based on the FBI's conspiracist view of countersubversion.
* Robert Moss, a journalist who gained fame suggesting that Soviet agents
secretly controlled a network of left and liberal groups in the US.
The overlap with the Christian Right is not surprising. The Free Congress
Foundation, Concerned Women for America, Focus on the Family, Family
Research Council, and other Christian Right groups have long maintained
cordial ties with military and intelligence officials, a relationship which
flourished during the Reagan and Bush administrations.
The Maldon Institute in 1993 claimed financial support from
"public-spirited foundations including the Allegheny Foundation, The
Carthage Foundation, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith...." Both
Allegheny and Carthage are controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife, who later
funded several anti-Clinton investigations claiming vast conspiracies; and
which were carried in conservative and hard right media.
Starting in the late 1960's, John Rees and his long-time partner S. Louise
Rees conducted political monitoring and surveillance operations on leftists
for over thirty years, first circulating their reports in their Information
Digest newsletter to a wide range of public and private groups. The Reeses
supplied information to such private sector conservative groups as the Old
Right John Birch Society, the Christian Right Church League of America, the
New Right Heritage Foundation, and the Neo-conservative Anti-Defamation
League of B'nai B'rith. The Reeses also provided information to government
law enforcement and investigative agencies such as the FBI, congressional
committees, and local police intelligence units. In addition, the Reeses
supplied data to private sector industrial and corporate security
departements.
John Rees, who once edited a newsletter for the Church League of America,
first published Information Digest and then took on the task of editing a
newsletter for the ultraconservative Western Goals Foundation, then helped
create Mid-Atlantic Research Associates, and then the Maldon Foundation.
Rees spent the early years of the Reagan administration as the spymaster
for the right-wing Western Goals Foundation. Western Goals was the
brainchild of Democratic congressman Larry McDonald of Georgia, a urologist
and a John Birch Society honcho who specializes in placing anti-progressive
diatribes and reports on the left-wing activities in the Congressional
Record. Broken Seals, the outfit's first book, charged that groups
including the Campaign for Political Rights, the National Lawyers Guild,
the American Friends Service Committee, and the Center for National
Security Studies were part of a Soviet-backed attempt "to destroy the
foreign and domestic intelligence capabilities of the United States." The
book featured an introduction by right-wing congressman John Ashbrook and
an afterword by Lieutenant General Daniel O. Graham, former director of the
Defense Intelligence Agency. Western Goals published several small books
warning of the growing domestic red menace.
Western Goals solicited funds to create a computer database on American
subversives, but was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) when
it was caught attempting to computerize references to "subversive" files
pilfered from the disbanded Los Angeles Police Department "Red Squad."
Western Goals essentially collapsed after the death of Larry McDonald in
September of 1983. John Rees left shortly after McDonald's death. Western
Goals discontinued its domestic dossier and intelligence operation shortly
after the departure of Rees. A contentious battle over control of Western
Goals and the alienation of key funders left the foundation essentially a
shell which was taken over by a conservative fundraiser Carl Russell
"Spitz" Channell who turned it into a conduit for contra fundraising
efforts linked to North and Iran-Contragate. Rees returned to his freelance
spy-master status while former Western Goals director Linda Guell went to
Singlaub's Freedom Foundation. Rees later turned up at the Maldon
Institute.
For many years John Rees was a frequent contributor to American Opinion and
Review of the News, John Birch Society periodicals. Rees network material
is frequently cited in right-wing newsletters and monographs. For instance
in 1988 Phyllis Schlafly's newsletter cited the Rees newsletter Information
Digest on an FBI probe of CISPES. A second Rees newsletter, published
through his Mid-Atlantic Research Associates (MARA) with Arnaud de
Borchgrave and Robert Moss, and titled Early Warning, was cited in an essay
by retired Lt. General Gordon Sumner, former chairman of the Council on
Inter-American Security and a national security adviser to President
Reagan. The Sumner essay offered "Some Strategic Thoughts on Central
America," including the following paragraph:
"Mid-Atlantic Research Associates, Inc., issued a special report on August
15, 1984 entitled "Central American Support Networks," which gives a
detailed and documented description of the proliferation of
Communist-supported organizations, both in the United States and abroad,
that are supporting the Cubans' and Sandinistas', efforts." The Sumner
monograph was published by the Washington Institute for Values in Public
Policy, a think-tank with close ties to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Sumner is
credited in the publication as having served on the "Committee of Santa Fe
which developed the Republican Party platform on Latin America in the 1980
campaign."
Allegations by the Reeses and other right-wing spies have been used by the
FBI as a justification for launching massive investigative probes. These
intrusive FBI investigations harassed, smeared, and disrupted groups that
were not engaged in any criminal activity, but simply exercising their
constitutional rights to dissent from official government policies.
Smearing CISPES
An example of this was the first FBI investigation of the
anti-interventionist group CISPES, which was launched in September of 1981
to determine if CISPES should be forced to register under the Foreign
Agents Registration Act. Among the documents used by the FBI to justify
this CISPES probe, according to Congressional testimony by FBI official
Oliver "Buck" Revell, was a 1981 article by a former FBI informant and
ongoing right-wing private spy--John Rees. The Rees article appeared in
Review of the News a magazine published by the paranoid ultra-right John
Birch Society. This FBI investigation was terminated without indictments in
December of 1981.
A second FBI investigation of CISPES began in March of 1983. It was
premised on the right-wing conspiracy theory that CISPES was a cover for
"terrorist" activity. To justify this view, the FBI relied not only on
reports from its informant Varelli, but also in part on a conspiratorial
analysis contained in a report written by Michael Boos, a staffer at the
right-wing Young Americas Foundation. This FBI "counter-terrorism"
investigation was terminated without indictments in 1985.
Red-baiting the Nuclear Freeze Movement
Information from John Rees and Western Goals led to embarrassment when
President Ronald Reagan charged the nuclear freeze campaign was, "inspired
by not the sincere, honest people who want peace, but by some people who
want the weakening of America and so are manipulating honest and sincere
people." Reagan saw freeze activists as dupes or traitors. When asked for
proof, reporters were told much of the information was secret, but that one
public source was a "Reader's Digest" article by John Barron. Barron had
based the allegation in part on an article by right- wing spy John Rees.
Rees had based his article on unsubstantiated red-baiting allegations made
during McCarthy period hearings. Reagan later openly criticized those who
brought down Joseph McCarthy. A State Department charge that the Women's
International League for Peace and Freedom was a "communist front" was
retracted when traced to a Rees report published by Western Goals
Foundation.
To prove the nuclear freeze is a Soviet plot, Rees in "Information Digest"
noted that public remarks on disarmament by a member of the Soviet Central
Committee of the Communist Party bear a "striking similarity" to materials
produced by the Mobilization for Survival, Coalition for a New Foreign and
Military Policy, and U.S. Peace Council. Furthermore, Rees noted that
several of the organizations involved in the nuclear freeze campaign were
identified by witnesses during the McCarthy era as communist fronts. This
is the type of material that appears in his book, The War Called Peace: The
Soviet Peace Offensive, which was the Bible of the anti-Freeze movement.
Rees gained considerable credibility in Washington, D.C. during the Reagan
years as an expert on national security issues. He was quoted as
"authoritative" by Sam Francis, a key aide on the Senate Subcommittee on
Security and Terrorism, which held hearings during the early part of the
Reagan Administration into alleged subversive conspiracies by leftists.
"What is truly frightening," explained Rachel Rosen DeGolia of the Chicago
Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights, "is that Sam Francis also wrote a
report for the Heritage Foundation where he suggested the U.S. intelligence
agencies utilize information from private security and intelligence groups
which are not hampered by constitutional and regulatory safeguards that
protect citizens from governmental invasions of privacy." She points out
that information-collecting techniques that cannot legally be employed by
governmental investigators are sometimes permitted private security forces.
In fact, the private political spy network was re-plugged directly into
governmental intelligence units by the Clinton Administration so they could
to supply information not otherwise obtainable legally by the government
investigators.
Red-baiting Antiwar Activists
Another example of the work of the Rees network was prompted by the January
26, 1991 Washington, D.C. demonstration against the Gulf War. Covering the
event for the newspaper Human Events, reporter Cliff Kincaid contacted and
quoted Sheila Louise Rees, who claimed the group coordinating the antiwar
demonstration, the Campaign for Peace in the Middle East, was established
"by the traditional hard-line peace activist organizations that have always
worked with the Communist Party U.S.A...." including, according to Rees,
the War Resisters League, American Friends Service Committee, Mobilization
for Survival, and SANE/Freeze. The phrasing of the quote implied that the
peace groups were really fronts for the Communist Party, U.S.A. The
headline for Kincaid's February 9, 1991 article read, "Far Left Sparks
Anti-War Protests: Effectively Supports Iraq," implying that in time of
war, the peace activists in effect were guilty of being criminal traitors.
The rhetoric, source, and outlet for the story are all familiar components
of an institutionalized domestic counter-subversion network. One arm of
this network is comprised of private right- wing groups that spy on
progressive dissidents and then publicize claims that the dissidents are
engaged in potentially-illegal activity. These biased claims are then used
by the other arm of the network, counter-subversive units within government
intelligence agencies, as a rationale to launch investigative probes which
frequently interfere with legitimate protest activities of dissidents who
are not engaged in criminal activity, but merely exercising their First
Amendment rights.
Human Events, is an ultra-conservative weekly newspaper that periodically
carries articles claiming to have uncovered subversive plots. And, as Human
Events reporter Cliff Kincaid pointed out in his story on the Gulf War
protest, Louise Rees is "publisher of Information Digest, the publication
that monitors extremist groups."
Unreliable Source
Lack of accuracy is no barrier to success for private spy publications.
Information Digest sold its biased but highly detailed reports on the
activities of left, liberal, and radical groups for over a decade. Its
subscribers were mainly corporate security agents and law enforcement
officials.
Information Digest collected its information not only by voraciously
reading leftist periodicals, but also by physically infiltrating various
groups, including several in Chicago. Information Digest repeatedly turned
up in the files of the Chicago Red Squad and other local and federal
intelligence agencies being sued for illegal surveillance and disruption.
Its specialty is tracing alleged "Communist" infiltration of movements for
social change.
John Rees is known to have supplied the Information Digest and information
to the Chicago Police Department, the FBI, and several other law
enforcement agencies.
He also worked for a time with the Church League of America in Wheaton,
Illinois. Information from the Church League and a similar group called the
American Security Council, has turned up in the Chicago Red Squad files.
There is ample evidence that the Red Squad was plugged into a private
political intelligence network. For instance, George Elliott was not the
only civilian spy utilized by the Red Squad. There was a string of paid and
unpaid civilian spies including Sheli Lulkin, a Chicago school teacher, who
was linked to spying on no fewer than 80 Chicago organizations.
Lulkin continued to keep in touch with some of the more right-wing former
Red Squad agents, and shortly after being revealed as a civilian Red Squad
spy, she received an award for her work from the Council Against Communist
Aggression. Lulkin maintains she infiltrated community and labor groups in
order to ferret out Communist influence and the "terrorist infrastructure."
While in Washington to receive her award, Lulkin met with John and Sheila
Louise Rees.
John Rees first turned up in Chicago on the occasion of the 1968 Democratic
Convention. He promptly went undercover to ferret out subversives. The
process of how information from Rees ended up as an item in Robert
Wiedrich's Chicago Tribune Tower Ticker column is illustrative both of how
private spies feed information to the police (who then pass it to
scoop-hunting journalists) and of how the information is distorted with
each little step it takes.
Documents released to Jerry Rubin in a FOIA request concerning the 1968
convention protests provide the details of how Wiedrich was buffaloed by
the private political spy network's information-laundering game. To begin
with, we will let the FBI documents speak for themselves. What follows is
taken from the memo prepared by the FBI agent assigned to investigate the
Wiedrich article:
"Chicago Tribune reporter Robert Wiedrich wrote a column 'Tower Ticker' on
September 4, 1968, that the Chicago Police Department, Chicago, Illinois,
had a secret tape recording made by an undercover man indicating that the
Yippie leaders intended to tear Chicago apart. The article quoted part of
the tape recording as 'These Chicago cops are soft. If that had been New
York cops, they'd have busted our heads. It's gonna be easy to take these
coppers and this town apart."
"Mr. Wiedrich advised he obtained his information used in his article from
Thomas McInerny, Mayor's Office, Commission of Investigation, Chicago,
Illinois.
"Mr. McInerny advised that the information he gave to Mr. Wiedrich was
obtained from one John Rees....Mr. Rees did undercover work during the
Democratic National Convention and reportedly made a tape recording of a
meeting of dissidents in which the quote referred to above supposedly was
made. Mr. McInerny does not have the tape recording in his possession nor
has he heard it."
The FBI agent went on to report that the tape recording was originally
given to Thomas Lyons of the Chicago Police Intelligence Unit by John Rees.
Unfortunately, the forgetful Mr. Lyons could not locate the tape and
reported that "no transcript was made of the recording inasmuch as it is
practically inaudible in its entirety." In fact, Lyons told the agent that
the quote about the Chicago Police Department being soft was not on the
tape recording at all. The quote was actually a statement by Rees, who
mentioned in the course of a conversation with Lyons that the persons
"gathered at the Quaker House generally felt the Chicago Police had been
easy to deal with at the time the demonstrators were forced out of Lincoln
Park." So much for accurate quotes. So much for Wiedrich's highly touted
sources. The right-wing political spy network strikes again.
As for Rees, the FBI concluded his information left something to be
desired. One FBI memo puts it succinctly: "Rees is an unscrupulous
unethical individual and an opportunist who operates with a self-serving
interest. Information he has provided has been exaggerated and in
generalities. Information from him cannot be considered reliable. We should
not initiate any interview with this unscrupulous unethical individual
concerning his knowledge of the disturbances in Chicago as to do so would
be a waste of time."
Despite this rather tawdry assessment, the FBI did accept information from
Rees in the form of his newsletter Information Digest which several
activists found in their FBI files obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act.
Rees is famous for one other aspect of his career. He received nationwide
attention in 1964 when Peyton Place author Grace Metalious died leaving him
her quarter-million-dollar estate on the basis of a death-bed will that
ignored her estranged husband and their three children. Rees had known
Metalious only a few months. Rees later renounced his claim to the estate
once it was discovered liabilities exceeded assets.
Copyright 2000 Political Research Associates.
*****
[AFIB Editor's Note: The article below is from the December 1983 issue of
Overthrow magazine and provides essential background on one facet of the
"public-private partnership" in political repression -- exposing the role
played by "private" spooks such as the right-wing infiltrator and
provocateur, John Rees. Courtesy of ARON KAY, pieman@pieman.org]
____________________________________________________________________
McDONALD'S PRIVATE SPIES
____________________________________________________________________
By Paul DeRienzo, pdr@echonyc.com
Was the Flight 007 Caper intended to be the masterstroke of Larry
McDonald's intelligence career, a Far Right scheme to develop, with the S.
Koreans, an independent capability to spy upon the Soviets?
Everything we know about the Congressman's, background strongly suggests it.
Larry P. McDonald (D-Ga.), a urologist who was once charged with federal
conspiracy in connection with a scheme to raise money for the Birchers by
smuggling the worthless cancer nostrum, laetrile, into the U.S. for
distribution to thousands of gullible cancer victims, met his demise on his
way to ceremonies marking the 30th anniversary of the U.S.-South Korean
alliance. McDonald had just become head of the John Birch Society,
representing a victory for the 'western goals' faction associated with the
KCIA and the 'old guard' around Robert Welch. A lifetime member of the
National Rifle Association, he was known to keep over 200 guns in his home.
But he also played a major role in legitimizing his brand of lunatic fringe
politics in the U.S.
McDonald had recently been most visible testifying before the Senate
Subcommittee on Anti-Terrorism, where he entered thousands of pages into
the Congressional Record on the activities of the left, progressive
individuals and organizations like the Yippies. In the Record, protected by
congressional immunity, McDonald could print the most vicious lies without
risking suit for slander or libel. Thereafter, it might be reprinted with
impunity, and the rantings of Larry McDonald were widely disseminated in
right wing circles.
McDonald was also a major sponsor of private intelligence" operations, most
recently operating the intelligence-gathering arm of the Birchers, the
Western Goals Foundation, as a tax-exempt organization "to strengthen the
political, economic and social structure of Western Civilization so as to
make any merger with totalitarians impossible" (address: I I I South
Columbus St., Alexandria, VA 22314; (703) 549-6687).
Western Goals (Linda Guell, Director) was founded by McDonald in 1979, "to
fill the critical gap caused by the crippling of the FBI, the disabling of
the House un-American Activities Committee and the destruction of crucial
government files." McDonald told the Atlanta Journal in 1981 that, because
of the limitations on the CIA and FBI, Western Goals "will outdistance them
in a short period of time." What he did not tell the Journal was the extent
to which Western Goals personnel were themselves responsible for that
"crippling" and "disabling" through their own abuses and excesses.
Listed on the Western Goals letterhead, as "editor" is one John Rees. In
the early and mid '70s, Rees (a.k.a. John Seeley) and S. Louise Rees
(a.k.a. Sheila O'Connor), edited another kind of McDonald publication, a
semi-clandestine bulletin known as Information Digest.) , Which numbered
amongst its subscribers more than 40 police "intelligence divisions" (red
squads), and was associated with the LEIU. (Not to be confused with the now
defunct federal LEAA, the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit continues as a
private network).
The Reeses had infiltrated the left in Washington, D.C. around the time of
Mayday, in '71, trading heavily on their NLG cover, at one point even
housing YIP organizers for the July 4th, 1973 Smoke-In and Impeach Nixon
rally. The Reeses also ripped off $500 in receipts from the sale of Yipster
Times and buttons, and at one point, John Rees threatened to punch out a
Yippie who protested the theft.
The Digest, which stopped publication in 1974, was a detailed summary of
left 4ctivities, but the very nastiness of their dirty tricks and
thoroughness with which they violated the privacy of various groups and
individuals proved to be their undoing. The Reeses were exposed in 1976 in
hearings of the New York State Assembly as "private spies" with ties to
McDonald, the House Internal Security Committee, Senate Internal Security
Subcommittee, New York State Police and FBI. (See Counterspy [Spring,
19761, and the National Lawyers Guild paper, Guild Notes [May, 19761.)
According to Chip Berlet, editor of the National Lawyers Guild publication
Public Eye, Rees continued to maintain "an informal private/public network"
of active duty and retired FBI agents, police officers and private security
experts. Private intelligence is provided by companies such as Pinkerton,
Wackenhut and Ma Bell, as well as by Western Goals.
Rees has been extraordinarily prolific as an editor of "private
intelligence." He has placed more than 120 articles in Birch publications
in recent years. Most recently, along with Arnaud de Borchgrave and Robert
Moss,-authors of the witchhunt novel The Spike, he began publishing Early
Warning, a $1,000-a-year newsletter on international trends.
Under Rees's direction, the Western Goals Foundation has published a series
of special reports with titles like "Red Locust" (on Soviet support-for
"terrorists" in Southern Africa), "Outlaws of Amerika" (an attack on the
National Lawyers Guild as a support group for the Weather Underground), and
attacks on the nuclear freeze movement which Rees says is controlled from
Moscow. Readers Digest author John Barron admits he used Rees's material as
a primary source for his 1981 broadside at the anti-nuclear movement. There
they gain a semblance of "respectability," something the Birchers or
Western Goals could never provide.
Western Goals & The LAPD
It is not surprising, then, that the Foundation was recently tied into
political infighting between the Los Angeles Times and the LAPD chief,
Daryl F. Gates. The LA Times, which is owned by the Trilateral
Commission-connected Times-Mirror Co., has been gunning for Gates since
they made and issue of spying by the infamous LAPD Public Disorder
Intelligence Division (PDID).
The intrigue began in November 1982, when an associate superintendent of
the LA unified school district, Jerry Halverson, was called into his boss's
office for a meeting. According to sworn testimony he has given in a
lawsuit filed by the ACLU sponsored Citizens' Commission on Police
Repression, Halverson was shocked to find the editor of the LA Times Metro
Section, Noel Greenwood, leading the meeting, and Police Commissioner Reva
Tooley was also present. Greenwood revealed that his sources in the police
department applied some heavy beans, saying that the PDID (address: 150
North Los Angeles St., Los Angeles, CA; (213) 485-3391) was keeping files
on "very important people," and that some of those files were among those
that the police commission had ordered destroyed in 1975. According to-his
informants, those files had instead been offered to the school district.
Halverson admitted that files had been offered to him for storage, but he
said that they were never accepted. However, Halverson said that someone in
military intelligence might have taken them.
Investigations growing out of the ACLU suit have dug up evidence of a
partnership between elements of PDID and the Western Goals Foundation.
According to a deposition taken from the chief file keeper for the PDID,
Lt. Thomas Shiedecker, Jay Paul had presented the LAPD with a scheme to
acquire a new computer for the department. Paul said that he had
conservative business partners who would donate a computer; one of those
business partners was Congressman Larry McDonald. The LAPD agreed to the
deal.
The computer was placed in the law offices of Paul's wife, Anne Love, in
Long Beach, to be programmed. The ground rules set by the LA police
commission were that the computer would be accessible to Western Goals but
no PDID files would be put into the computer.
At a recent Alexandria, VA, court hearing to compel foundation director
Guell to testify in LA, a LAPD detective stated publicly that Western Goals
computer discs do, in fact, contain information from the LAPD intelligence
files. Meanwhile, in Baltimore September 15, a judge ordered John Rees to
testify in LA and supply the jury with discs and printouts sent by Paul.
* * *
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