Depositions give us the power to subpoena and question police officers and agents under oath before trial. There have been dozens of depositions in this case since last fall, with more to go. Plaintiffs and legal aids can sit in, which is why Darryl and I get to be there.
However, the defendants get a chance to question our witnesses, too. In June, the FBI subpoenaed (among others) Utah Phillips, Peg Millet, and Betty and Gary Ball.
"Please state your name for the record."
"U. Utah Phillips, the Golden Voice of the Great Southwest."
"What does the U. stand for?"
"Well, that's a matter for popular debate."
Utah Phillips testified that in 1990 he became interested in Judi Bari's organizing work bringing Earth First!ers and timber workers together to fight for environmental and workplace justice. As a pacifist, he was especially intrigued by the upcoming nonviolent direct action campaign based on Mississippi Freedom Summer, called Redwood Summer. So on May 22, 1990, Utah traveled up to Mendocino County to visit with Judi and find out more about her organizing. The next day, he rode down to Berkeley with Judi in her white Subaru, to a Redwood Summer planning meeting. The following morning, Judi's Subaru exploded as she and Darryl were driving through Oakland, and they were arrested by the Oakland Police as terrorists who had accidentally blown themselves up.
Utah lectured the FBI lawyer about the cases of Sacco and Venzetti, Joe Hill, the Haymarket Martyrs, and Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, all murdered by the government for political reasons. "People are going to be looking at this case, studying this case, for years to come," he testified. It felt like the ghosts of all these fallen comrades had suddenly crowded into the conference room on the 10th floor of the San Francisco Federal Building.
Peg Millet, who flew in from Arizona for her deposition, spent two years in federal prison in the early 1990s after an undercover FBI agent infiltrated the Arizona Earth First! group and tried to get them to blow up power lines. The agent, Michael Fain, was not able to get the activists to use explosives; instead they were busted cutting down a power tower in the middle of the desertÑa location that Fain had picked out and driven them to. The Arizona arrests happened one year, almost to the day, before Judi and Darryl were accused by the FBI of bombing themselves in Oakland, and the case shows the FBI's prior interest in Earth First!, especially trying to falsely associate EF!ers with explosives.
It seemed ridiculous for the FBI to ask Peg about her activities in Arizona prior to her arrest. There are, after all, around 800 hours of bodywire recordings of Peg and her co-defendants talking with undercover FBI informants. At the end of the deposition, Peg stood up and sang what had been her closing statement during her criminal trial, "Forever Wild" by Walkin' Jim Stoltz.
I didn't see the FBI's lawyer look worried until Betty Ball, former director of the MEC, started answering questions. Betty and Gary Ball, who now live in Colorado, were founders of the MEC, and the core organizers with Judi and Darryl of Redwood Summer. Betty remembered vividly how she had heard about the bombing on May 24, 1990, when a man from the hospital in Oakland called to tell her about it. She didn't believe him at first, and thought it was just another crank call or threat. The man told Betty his name, and instructed her to look up the hospital's phone number and then call back and ask for him. He had apparently been told to call the MEC by Judi herself in the ambulance, who was barely conscious but managed somehow to give him the number en route to surgery.
Judi and Darryl's lawyers have filed a motion that's one last attempt to get Special Agent in Charge Richard Held back into the case, and force the FBI to hand over all the documents they've withheld from us.
There is much work to be done outside the courtroom in preparation for trial. Organizers and activists are needed to seize the moment, and ensure that the trial of Judi Bari vs. the FBI is heard around the nation. We've got to raise the profile of the case, and the police-state tactics of the FBI, by planning rallies and fundraising events, holding press conferences, writing letters, building support coalitions, organizing to bring people to Oakland for the trial, and much more.
We have an especially golden opportunity right now. Because of the FBI's mishandling of the evidence in the Timothy McVeigh case, the Senate Judiciary Committee has begun holding hearings about the FBI that will continue through the confirmation of the new FBI director, Robert S. Mueller III. Not surprisingly, so far the Senate does not plan to look at FBI crimes against activists. We've got to make some noise, and demand the Senate include these important cases in their oversight of FBI wrongs. Call, write or fax your government representatives today.
Alicia Littletree is a Mendocino Earth First! organizer and a paralegal for the FBI lawsuit.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2001
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited