______________________________ ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN News * Analysis * Research * Action ______________________________ RESEARCH SUPPLEMENT - September 13, 2000 - * * * ______________________________________________________________________________ PRIVATE SPIES, PUBLIC REPRESSION ______________________________________________________________________________ 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). * * * ____________________________________________________________________ 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. * * * ** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, material appearing in Antifa Info-Bulletin is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for research and educational purposes. ** ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN (AFIB) 750 La Playa # 730 San Francisco, California 94121 To subscribe: afib-subscribe@igc.topica.com To unsubscribe: afib-unsubscribe@igc.topica.com Inquiries: tburghardt@igc.org On PeaceNet visit AFIB on pol.right.antifa Via the Web --> http://burn.ucsd.edu/~aff/afib.html Archive --> http://burn.ucsd.edu/~aff/afib-bulletins.html ANTI-FASCIST FORUM (AFF) Antifa Info-Bulletin is a member of the Anti-Fascist Forum network. AFF is an info-group which collects and disseminates information, research and analysis on fascist activity and anti-fascist resistance. 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