NZ: The beauty of hindsight - police informant caught after 10 years
miss x. | 24.12.2008 15:38 | Animal Liberation | Repression | Terror War | Sheffield | World
About a week ago news broke in New Zealand that long time activist Rob Gilchrist had been a police informant for the last 10 years. Working for the Special Investigations Unit - an anti-terror, national security police unit - Rob had been informing on animal rights groups, environmental groups, unions, peace groups, even the Green Party.
His reports included not only communication methods, phone numbers, demonstration plans etc but also information on sexual relationships, travel plans, sources of income, etc.
Much of the behaviour of Rob Gilchrist is what one would consider classic informant and contilpro behaviour – most people I've talked to didn't react with shock at the news – instead everything suddenly clicked into place. I had once considered Rob to be a close friend, but hearing this news I realised deep down I already knew it to be true.
Many people had previously expressed distrust of him and some had already broken off contact with him or stopped working with him politically, but for various reasons there was no collective confrontation.
Before I get into how Rob got away with it for so long, I want to summarise some of the key signs that something was seriously wrong.
Mr I'm Bored
Rob was a self-confessed adrenaline junkie and always very keen on 'fucking shit up', would often during quiet periods say he was bored and suggest doing something illegal just for the hell of it.
He promoted violence against cops and fascists at every opportunity, but when push came to shove, either escalated a situation when it wasn't strategic to do so, or wasn't there. For example would take on the role of driving, police liason, or listening to police scanners during an action/demo (All things that people are generally happy to let someone else do). Or he would simply make up a reason at the last moment why he wouldn't take part.
This is not to say Rob limited his behaviour to provocation and incitement. Criminal acts include breaking and entry, amongst others. Footage released to television for example clearly show Rob breaking into a high security intensive chicken farm.
Mr security expert
Although seldom arrested during his 10 years on actions and protests, he led the majority of workshops on what to do if arrested or interrogated. Likewise at conferences Rob led workshops on anti-surveillance, getting away if police were chasing you (and police dogs - quite a terrifying discussion), how to move around in country and city spaces without people noticing you. Rob didn't just suggest to people they should commit criminal acts, he showed them personally how to do it. He also distributed booklets on how to break into factory farms and how to commit acts of eco-sabotage.
Although security conscious in many ways, he would definately pick and choose aspects of security culture he liked (ie. good for his ego) and ignore the ones that weren't convenient. For example Rob never cared about talking about sensitive issues in easily surveilled spaces. He was a scanner geek and had fancy equipment that could apparently check for (nonhuman) bugs. His car was always 'clean', the office was always 'clean' , etc....
Mr Finger
Rob was expert in calling other people out as being not trust worthy, or being corporate/police spies. In general he spread paranoia about other people. Numerous mass actions he knew about were stopped from happening by police beforehand (ie, a planned mass action at a GM field), but he was highly skilled at pointing the finger at someone else. Especially if that person had been questioning his authenticity.
If an action happened without him, Rob would sulk, and behave hurt he hadn't been invited. He would pick people he thought could be responsible for it, make comments about it to see how they reacted and try to make them feel guilty for the exclusion.
Mr Secret
Rob would tell people more explicitly of his trust of them, and entrust them with some secret only they or very few people could know about, be it a personal secret, a fancy new camera he got in some suspect way, or an upcoming action. Entrusting someone with a secret is an effective way to get trust reciprocated. And of course its even better if you have someone elses secrets to hold over them if the relationship breaks down.
On a broader level he promoted the creation of unnessecarily closed, secretive groups with vetting processes. This created not only an extremely false sense of security, but a general feeling of paranoia, heirachies and 'in' groups of people.
Mr 'put it on my account'
Rob had his own business selling scanners, radios etc, but in reality he wasn't getting much money from this, if any. He didn't pretend it was a major source of income, but he somehow had a lot of money. He explained this by having a large inheritance - not so unusal for a white activist in New Zealand.
And he was very generous with this money. He was constantly insisting on paying for everyones lunch, drinks, etc and putting on his 'work account'. And if someone he wanted to be in close contact with didn't have a cell phone for example, he would just give them one, implying that it was aquired in some kind of criminal way so not to tell anyone.
Questionable relationships
Rob slept with as many female activists as possible, or at least tried to. But not in an open free love kind of way – in a behind someones back, you have to keep it secret kinda way....This not only helped him get information, but was effectively a weapon against people speaking out against him in case he reacted by telling other people things he shouldn't.
This included recently discovered relationships with two 16year old activists, one of whom he took naked pictres of and emailed to his bosses. Also found on his computer were photographs of both the young women posing naked with his guns, and photos taken while one of the girls was sleeping.
Rob excelled at gossip and generally shit stirring between people. In this he went beyond plain informing into classic contilpro methods, facilitating splits of several groups, destroying friendships and ruining planned actions.
Rob either lived alone or with his current girlfriend, and was protective of his private space. People did get invited to his house, and also stayed the night there sometimes. But he never left people alone in his house.
why didn't he get called out sooner ?
It's so painfully obvious in hindsight. Perhaps it was simply a case of not seeing the forest for the trees, as he was in fact challenged on some of the individual points above – the problems just weren't put together to make a whole picture.
This theory is useful to a point, but since people were discussing his authenticity since early on in his informant career its obviously more complicated than this. Rob had very effectively sown seeds of discord amongst people and there was a lack of concrete evidence to call him out, but more importantly he had established credibility and a variety of close personal relationships which protected him.
Personal relationships
Rob was a friend of many people. He could see when someone was not feeling good, needed emotional support, and would be there for them. I knew I could ring him in the middle of the night crying my eyes out and he'd tell me everything would be alright (and I did more often than I care to admit). He was also in several long term relationships with other trusted politically active people. The creation of emotional ties and loyalties protected him for a long time, and built a deep network of trust. He supported people who were stuck in abusive relationships, he supported people getting harrassed from neo-nazis, he supported people experiencing depression – in other words, he saw peoples vunerabilities and used them to his advantage. People got drunk with him, did actions with him, cried on his shoulder. All this creates bonds and loyalties that are hard to break.
Any friend of yours is a friend of mine
Networks of trust can be very useful things, but dangerous if treated as infallible. They work both blatantly (ie. when someone explicitly vouches for someone else) or more subtly and both kinds were at play in this sitation. If someone you trust completely trusts someone you don't know so well, or feel uneasy about, like it or not its usually going to influence your feelings on that person.
Rob was assumed to be trusted by 'key' or respected activists, sometimes purely by virtue of association, when in reality it was often more a kind of tolerance than trust.
Common reactions for example, posted on indymedia:
'I never liked Gilchrist personally, but while he was such a close mate of Mark's I never questioned his loyalty, because I trusted Mark as a more experienced and politically savvy activist.... perhaps we all need to take responsibility for ourselves, and obey our gut instinct. ' - Michael Morris
“Although I thought he was a friend, I had had suspicions that he might be an informant which I had raised with my previous girlfriend, an animal rights activist who was also very close friend with Rob,” he says. “It led to serious problems in my friendship with Suzy that I can’t repair now that my fears had been proved correct because she died earlier this year.” -Simon Oosterman
Credibility
By the time Rob had been caught out, he had been active within activist scene for at least 10 years. This was not 10 years limited to inciting and commiting illegal actions, but also periods doing basic organising such as making posters, getting stuff printed, email list admin (he was list admin of a lot of email lists – also a warning sign in the wider context). He researched local wannabe-nazis, conference venues, addresses of animal researchers, and more.
Reluctance to call someone out
After the Operation 8 raids and arrests last year it was undeniable that there was at least one informant in the left wing/anarchist scenes.
As Sally Darity from the Justice NOW! Collective writes:
“The police affidavit which was used as evidence to gain interception warrants against these people and many others is filled with ‘informant information’.”
“The ‘informant information’ is not available to the defendants. The identity of the informant is secret. This leaves the defendants in a legal black hole – defending themselves against information they do not have access to, from a person whose credibility cannot be questioned.”
And it's now clear that Rob had given reports on at least 3 of the people facing charges from the Operation 8 raids.
But it is a big call to accuse someone of being a police informer – few people do this lightly especially if its 'just a feeling' and you have no proof.
Many people had stopped working with Rob - some because he was simply disruptive, others because they just didn't trust him- but there was either no or little direct confrontation with him. And besides, who wants to believe someone close to them has been telling the police who they are sleeping with, the fights they have with their lovers, and what they had for breakfast that day.
In the end Rob was only caught after asking his then girlfriend Rochelle Rees, a computer programmer, to fix his computer.
After checking to see if his emails had been corrupted, she found hundreds of strange emails where the sender and subject lines were all blank, being sent to the same anonymous email address. This email address was traced back to the Christchurch central police station and then the Special Investigations Group. Wanting more evidence, she then installed spyware on his phone to monitor his text messages and calls, and set a script on his computor to continue sending his emails to her. She even downloaded a years worth of phone bills and decrypted documents he had encrypted.
Giving a computer filled with sensitive information to a computer programmer seems to be a stupid thing to do. Opinion is divided as to whether it was just a case of getting too big for ones boots, or actually wanting to be exposed. But lets give Rochelle some credit here - she's pretty damn smart. Personally if I was going to knowingly expose myself I'd get rid of the photographs of my illicit affairs playing with my guns first. But who knows.
what now?
Now I am left with the problem of how to move beyond a reduction of the situation to emotion vs logic, openess vs secret.
Emotions and vunerabilities were expertly exploited by Rob but cold hearts with walls around them is not my idea of the revolution. I don't want to live in a community where no one gets close to each other, where no one can show vunerability or rage, where everyone is suspect. And it's not going to get us any closer to the world we want to live in either.
Listening to each other and taking collective responsibility for looking out for each other would be a good start. Meeting with each other personally, face to face instead of relying on email lists and text messages would also help. Emails and texts messages are not only loved by police and surveillance agencies, they also de-personalise relationships. It was the people who spent had day to day contact with Rob who picked up that something was wrong first.
No doubt the debate between 'taking the moral high ground' of open actions versus working in closed anonymous groups will continue for eternity. The reality is that informants fuck up everyone, open or not. State repression aims to crush both. But we do need to reconsider when we need to keep secrets, when we don't, and keep the line between them clear. Because as well as being generally destructive, heirachies and paranoia damage security conscious behaviour, and will not make any social movement inclusive.
Peace, love and crowbars
miss x.
For more information:
Rob Gilchrist - police informant for 'anti-terror' unit
http://indymedia.org.nz/feature/display/72017/index.php
Rob Gilchrist sent naked photos of teenage activist to police
http://indymedia.org.nz/newswire/display/76545/index.php
Pepper sprayed activist to take police to court over provocateur
http://indymedia.org.nz/newswire/display/76546/index.php
Operation 8 info
http://october15thsolidarity.info/
Video of rob breaking into chicken farm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JR5zukeI-Q
News clip from when story first broke
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPTtG9x1hlo
Debate between unionist and editor of National Business Review
http://www.3news.co.nz/Video/Politics/tabid/370/articleID/84840/cat/167/Default.aspx
Much of the behaviour of Rob Gilchrist is what one would consider classic informant and contilpro behaviour – most people I've talked to didn't react with shock at the news – instead everything suddenly clicked into place. I had once considered Rob to be a close friend, but hearing this news I realised deep down I already knew it to be true.
Many people had previously expressed distrust of him and some had already broken off contact with him or stopped working with him politically, but for various reasons there was no collective confrontation.
Before I get into how Rob got away with it for so long, I want to summarise some of the key signs that something was seriously wrong.
Mr I'm Bored
Rob was a self-confessed adrenaline junkie and always very keen on 'fucking shit up', would often during quiet periods say he was bored and suggest doing something illegal just for the hell of it.
He promoted violence against cops and fascists at every opportunity, but when push came to shove, either escalated a situation when it wasn't strategic to do so, or wasn't there. For example would take on the role of driving, police liason, or listening to police scanners during an action/demo (All things that people are generally happy to let someone else do). Or he would simply make up a reason at the last moment why he wouldn't take part.
This is not to say Rob limited his behaviour to provocation and incitement. Criminal acts include breaking and entry, amongst others. Footage released to television for example clearly show Rob breaking into a high security intensive chicken farm.
Mr security expert
Although seldom arrested during his 10 years on actions and protests, he led the majority of workshops on what to do if arrested or interrogated. Likewise at conferences Rob led workshops on anti-surveillance, getting away if police were chasing you (and police dogs - quite a terrifying discussion), how to move around in country and city spaces without people noticing you. Rob didn't just suggest to people they should commit criminal acts, he showed them personally how to do it. He also distributed booklets on how to break into factory farms and how to commit acts of eco-sabotage.
Although security conscious in many ways, he would definately pick and choose aspects of security culture he liked (ie. good for his ego) and ignore the ones that weren't convenient. For example Rob never cared about talking about sensitive issues in easily surveilled spaces. He was a scanner geek and had fancy equipment that could apparently check for (nonhuman) bugs. His car was always 'clean', the office was always 'clean' , etc....
Mr Finger
Rob was expert in calling other people out as being not trust worthy, or being corporate/police spies. In general he spread paranoia about other people. Numerous mass actions he knew about were stopped from happening by police beforehand (ie, a planned mass action at a GM field), but he was highly skilled at pointing the finger at someone else. Especially if that person had been questioning his authenticity.
If an action happened without him, Rob would sulk, and behave hurt he hadn't been invited. He would pick people he thought could be responsible for it, make comments about it to see how they reacted and try to make them feel guilty for the exclusion.
Mr Secret
Rob would tell people more explicitly of his trust of them, and entrust them with some secret only they or very few people could know about, be it a personal secret, a fancy new camera he got in some suspect way, or an upcoming action. Entrusting someone with a secret is an effective way to get trust reciprocated. And of course its even better if you have someone elses secrets to hold over them if the relationship breaks down.
On a broader level he promoted the creation of unnessecarily closed, secretive groups with vetting processes. This created not only an extremely false sense of security, but a general feeling of paranoia, heirachies and 'in' groups of people.
Mr 'put it on my account'
Rob had his own business selling scanners, radios etc, but in reality he wasn't getting much money from this, if any. He didn't pretend it was a major source of income, but he somehow had a lot of money. He explained this by having a large inheritance - not so unusal for a white activist in New Zealand.
And he was very generous with this money. He was constantly insisting on paying for everyones lunch, drinks, etc and putting on his 'work account'. And if someone he wanted to be in close contact with didn't have a cell phone for example, he would just give them one, implying that it was aquired in some kind of criminal way so not to tell anyone.
Questionable relationships
Rob slept with as many female activists as possible, or at least tried to. But not in an open free love kind of way – in a behind someones back, you have to keep it secret kinda way....This not only helped him get information, but was effectively a weapon against people speaking out against him in case he reacted by telling other people things he shouldn't.
This included recently discovered relationships with two 16year old activists, one of whom he took naked pictres of and emailed to his bosses. Also found on his computer were photographs of both the young women posing naked with his guns, and photos taken while one of the girls was sleeping.
Rob excelled at gossip and generally shit stirring between people. In this he went beyond plain informing into classic contilpro methods, facilitating splits of several groups, destroying friendships and ruining planned actions.
Rob either lived alone or with his current girlfriend, and was protective of his private space. People did get invited to his house, and also stayed the night there sometimes. But he never left people alone in his house.
why didn't he get called out sooner ?
It's so painfully obvious in hindsight. Perhaps it was simply a case of not seeing the forest for the trees, as he was in fact challenged on some of the individual points above – the problems just weren't put together to make a whole picture.
This theory is useful to a point, but since people were discussing his authenticity since early on in his informant career its obviously more complicated than this. Rob had very effectively sown seeds of discord amongst people and there was a lack of concrete evidence to call him out, but more importantly he had established credibility and a variety of close personal relationships which protected him.
Personal relationships
Rob was a friend of many people. He could see when someone was not feeling good, needed emotional support, and would be there for them. I knew I could ring him in the middle of the night crying my eyes out and he'd tell me everything would be alright (and I did more often than I care to admit). He was also in several long term relationships with other trusted politically active people. The creation of emotional ties and loyalties protected him for a long time, and built a deep network of trust. He supported people who were stuck in abusive relationships, he supported people getting harrassed from neo-nazis, he supported people experiencing depression – in other words, he saw peoples vunerabilities and used them to his advantage. People got drunk with him, did actions with him, cried on his shoulder. All this creates bonds and loyalties that are hard to break.
Any friend of yours is a friend of mine
Networks of trust can be very useful things, but dangerous if treated as infallible. They work both blatantly (ie. when someone explicitly vouches for someone else) or more subtly and both kinds were at play in this sitation. If someone you trust completely trusts someone you don't know so well, or feel uneasy about, like it or not its usually going to influence your feelings on that person.
Rob was assumed to be trusted by 'key' or respected activists, sometimes purely by virtue of association, when in reality it was often more a kind of tolerance than trust.
Common reactions for example, posted on indymedia:
'I never liked Gilchrist personally, but while he was such a close mate of Mark's I never questioned his loyalty, because I trusted Mark as a more experienced and politically savvy activist.... perhaps we all need to take responsibility for ourselves, and obey our gut instinct. ' - Michael Morris
“Although I thought he was a friend, I had had suspicions that he might be an informant which I had raised with my previous girlfriend, an animal rights activist who was also very close friend with Rob,” he says. “It led to serious problems in my friendship with Suzy that I can’t repair now that my fears had been proved correct because she died earlier this year.” -Simon Oosterman
Credibility
By the time Rob had been caught out, he had been active within activist scene for at least 10 years. This was not 10 years limited to inciting and commiting illegal actions, but also periods doing basic organising such as making posters, getting stuff printed, email list admin (he was list admin of a lot of email lists – also a warning sign in the wider context). He researched local wannabe-nazis, conference venues, addresses of animal researchers, and more.
Reluctance to call someone out
After the Operation 8 raids and arrests last year it was undeniable that there was at least one informant in the left wing/anarchist scenes.
As Sally Darity from the Justice NOW! Collective writes:
“The police affidavit which was used as evidence to gain interception warrants against these people and many others is filled with ‘informant information’.”
“The ‘informant information’ is not available to the defendants. The identity of the informant is secret. This leaves the defendants in a legal black hole – defending themselves against information they do not have access to, from a person whose credibility cannot be questioned.”
And it's now clear that Rob had given reports on at least 3 of the people facing charges from the Operation 8 raids.
But it is a big call to accuse someone of being a police informer – few people do this lightly especially if its 'just a feeling' and you have no proof.
Many people had stopped working with Rob - some because he was simply disruptive, others because they just didn't trust him- but there was either no or little direct confrontation with him. And besides, who wants to believe someone close to them has been telling the police who they are sleeping with, the fights they have with their lovers, and what they had for breakfast that day.
In the end Rob was only caught after asking his then girlfriend Rochelle Rees, a computer programmer, to fix his computer.
After checking to see if his emails had been corrupted, she found hundreds of strange emails where the sender and subject lines were all blank, being sent to the same anonymous email address. This email address was traced back to the Christchurch central police station and then the Special Investigations Group. Wanting more evidence, she then installed spyware on his phone to monitor his text messages and calls, and set a script on his computor to continue sending his emails to her. She even downloaded a years worth of phone bills and decrypted documents he had encrypted.
Giving a computer filled with sensitive information to a computer programmer seems to be a stupid thing to do. Opinion is divided as to whether it was just a case of getting too big for ones boots, or actually wanting to be exposed. But lets give Rochelle some credit here - she's pretty damn smart. Personally if I was going to knowingly expose myself I'd get rid of the photographs of my illicit affairs playing with my guns first. But who knows.
what now?
Now I am left with the problem of how to move beyond a reduction of the situation to emotion vs logic, openess vs secret.
Emotions and vunerabilities were expertly exploited by Rob but cold hearts with walls around them is not my idea of the revolution. I don't want to live in a community where no one gets close to each other, where no one can show vunerability or rage, where everyone is suspect. And it's not going to get us any closer to the world we want to live in either.
Listening to each other and taking collective responsibility for looking out for each other would be a good start. Meeting with each other personally, face to face instead of relying on email lists and text messages would also help. Emails and texts messages are not only loved by police and surveillance agencies, they also de-personalise relationships. It was the people who spent had day to day contact with Rob who picked up that something was wrong first.
No doubt the debate between 'taking the moral high ground' of open actions versus working in closed anonymous groups will continue for eternity. The reality is that informants fuck up everyone, open or not. State repression aims to crush both. But we do need to reconsider when we need to keep secrets, when we don't, and keep the line between them clear. Because as well as being generally destructive, heirachies and paranoia damage security conscious behaviour, and will not make any social movement inclusive.
Peace, love and crowbars
miss x.
For more information:
Rob Gilchrist - police informant for 'anti-terror' unit
![](/img/extlink.gif)
Rob Gilchrist sent naked photos of teenage activist to police
![](/img/extlink.gif)
Pepper sprayed activist to take police to court over provocateur
![](/img/extlink.gif)
Operation 8 info
![](/img/extlink.gif)
Video of rob breaking into chicken farm
![](/img/extlink.gif)
News clip from when story first broke
![](/img/extlink.gif)
Debate between unionist and editor of National Business Review
![](/img/extlink.gif)
miss x.
Comments
Hide the following 7 comments
Hindsight is 20-20
24.12.2008 17:15
Joseph Roth
Wow!
26.12.2008 00:08
Rochelle Rees is a total star!
Oh and thanks "Joseph Roth" for suggesting what psyop methods would be used by the disinfo spooks to ensure that deep entry spies don't get their cover blown too easily... 9_9
BTW it's spelt COINTELPRO not contilpro -- for some background on this check out this great audio:
Ward Churchill: THE HISTORY OF COINTELPRO AND THE FBI
Speech in support of Leonard Peltier
From the Palmer Raids, the defeat of the Anarchists and Marcus Garvey, the attacks on the Civil Rights Movement, the murders of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, the Black Panthers and AIM members - the FBI has a 100 year record of murder and intervention.
Chris
Homepage:
http://www.oilempire.us/cointelpro.html
Security Practices and Security Culture
26.12.2008 01:00
Agents are law enforcement officers disguised as activists.
Informers are non-agents who provide information to a law enforcement or intelligence agency. They may be recruited from within a group or sent in by an agency, or they may be disaffected former members or supporters.
Infiltrators are agents or informers who work in a group or community under the direction of a law enforcement or intelligence agency. During the 60s the FBI had to rely on informers (who are less well-trained and harder to control) because it had very few Black, Hispanic, or female agents, and its strict dress and grooming code left white male agents unable to look like activists. As a modern equal opportunity employer, today's FBI has fewer such limitations.
What They Do
Some informers and infiltrators quietly provide information while keeping a low profile and doing whatever is expected of group members. Others attempt to discredit a target and disrupt its work. They may spread false rumors and make unfounded accusations to provoke or exacerbate tensions and splits. They may urge divisive proposals, sabotage important activities and resources, or operate as "provocateurs" who lead zealous activists into unnecessary danger. In a demonstration or other confrontation with police, such an agent may break discipline and call for actions which would undermine unity and detract from tactical focus.
Infiltration As a Source of Distrust and Paranoia
While individual agents and informers aid the government in a variety of specific ways, the general use of infiltrators serves a very special and powerful strategic function. The fear that a group may be infiltrated often intimidates people from getting more involved. It can give rise to a paranoia which makes it difficult to build the mutual trust which political groups depend on. This use of infiltration, enhanced by covertly-initiated rumors that exaggerate the extent to which a particular movement or group has been penetrated, is recommended by the manuals used to teach counterinsurgency in the US and Western Europe.
Cover Manipulation to Make a Legitimate Activist Appear to Be an Agent
An actual agent will often point the finger at a genuine, non-collaborating and highly valued group member, claiming that he or she is the infiltrator. The same effect, known as a "snitch jacket", has been achieved by planting forged documents which appear to be communications between an activist and the FBI, or by releasing for no other apparent reason one of a group of activists who were arrested together. Another method used under COINTELPRO was to arrange for some activists, arrested under one pretext or another, to hear over the police radio a phony broadcast which appeared to set up a secret meeting between the police and someone from their group.
Guidelines for Coping with Infiltration
1. Establish a process through which anyone who suspects an informer (or other form of covert intervention) can express his or her fears without scaring others. Experienced people assigned this responsibility can do a great deal to help a group maintain its morale and focus while, at the same time, centrally consolidating information and deciding how to use it. This plan works best when accompanied by group discussion of the danger of paranoia, so that everyone understands and follows the established procedure.
2. To reduce vulnerability to paranoia and "snitch jackets", and to minimize diversion from your main work, it generally is best if you do not attempt to expose a suspected agent or informer unless you are certain of their role (For instance, they surface to make an arrest, testify as a government witness or in some other way admit their identity). Under most circumstances, an attempted exposure will do more harm than the infiltrator's continued presence. This is especially true if you can discreetly limit the suspect's access to funds, financial records, mailing lists, discussions of possible law violations, meetings that plan criminal defense strategy, and similar opportunities.
3. Deal openly and directly with the form and content of what anyone says and does, whether the person is a suspected agent, has emotional problems, or is simply a sincere, but naive or confused person new to the work.
4. Once an agent or informer has been definitely identified, alert other groups and communities by means of photographs, a description of their methods of operation, etc. In the 60s, some agents managed even after their exposure in one community to move on and repeat their performance in a number of others.
5. Be careful to avoid pushing a new or hesitant member to take risks beyond what that person is ready to handle, particularly in situations which could result in arrest and prosecution. People in this position have proved vulnerable to recruitment as informers.
Other Forms of Deception
Bogus leaflets, pamphlets, etc.:
COINTELPRO documents show that the FBI routinely put out phony leaflets, posters, pamphlets, etc. to discredit its targets. In one instance, agents revised a children's coloring book which the Black Panther Party had rejected as anti-white and gratuitously violent, and then distributed a cruder version to backers of the Party's program of free breakfasts for children, telling them the book was being used in the program.
False media stories:
The FBI's documents expose collusion by reporters and news media that knowingly published false and distorted material prepared by Bureau agents. One such story had Jean Seberg, a noticeably pregnant white film star active in anti-racist causes, carrying the child of a prominent Black leader. Seberg's white husband, the actual father, has sued the FBI as responsible for her resulting stillbirth, breakdown, and suicide.
Forged correspondence:
Former employees have confirmed that the FBI and CIA have the capacity to produce "state of the art" forgery. The US Senate's investigation of COINTELPRO uncovered a series of letters forged in the name of an intermediary between the Black Panther Party's national office and Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, in exile in Algeria. The letters proved instrumental in inflaming intra-party rivalries that erupted into the bitter public split that shattered the Party in the winter of 1971.
Anonymous letters and telephone calls:
During the 60s, activists received a steady flow of anonymous letters and phone calls which turn out to have been from government agents. Some threatened violence. Others promoted racial divisions and fears. Still others charged various leaders with collaboration, corruption, sexual affairs with other activists' mates, etc. As in the Seberg incident, inter-racial sex was a persistent theme. The husband of one white woman involved in a bi-racial civil rights group received the following anonymous letter authored by the FBI:
"Look, man, I guess your old lady doesn't get enough at home or she wouldn't be shucking and jiving with our Black Men in ACTION, you dig? Like all she wants to integrate is the bedroom and us Black Sisters ain't gonna take no second best from our men. So lay it on her man -- or get her the hell off [NAME]."
--A Soul Sister
False rumors:
Using infiltrators, journalists and other contacts, the Bureau circulated slanderous, disruptive rumors through political movements and the communities in which they worked.
Other misinformation:
A favorite FBI tactic uncovered by Senate investigators was to misinform people that a political meeting or event had been cancelled. Another was to offer nonexistent housing at phony addresses, stranding out-of-town conference attendees who naturally blamed those who had organized the event. FBI agents also arranged to transport demonstrators in the name of a bogus bus company which pulled out at the last minute. Such "dirty tricks" interfered with political events and turned activists against each other.
Fronts for the FBI:
COINTELPRO documents reveal that a number of 60s political groups and projects were actually set up and operated by the FBI.
One, "Grupo pro-Uso Voto", was used to disrupt the fragile unity developing in 1967 among groups seeking Puerto Rico's independence from the US. The genuine proponents of independence had joined together to boycott a US-administered referendum on the island's status. They argued that voting under conditions of colonial domination could serve only to legitimize US rule, and that no vote could be fair while the US controlled the island's economy, media, schools, and police. The bogus group, pretending to support independence, broke ranks and urged independistas to take advantage of the opportunity to register their opinion at the polls.
Since FBI front groups are basically a means for penetrating and disrupting political movements, it is best to deal with them on the basis of the Guidelines for Coping with Infiltration (below).
Confront what a suspect group says and does, but avoid public accusations unless you have definite proof. If you do have such proof, share it with everyone affected.
Guidelines for Coping with Other Forms of Deception:
1. Don't add unnecessarily to the pool of information that government agents use to divide political groups and turn activists against each other. They thrive on gossip about personal tensions, rivalries and disagreements. The more these are aired in public, or via a telephone which can be tapped or mail which can be opened, the easier it is to exploit a group's problems and subvert its work (Note that the CIA has the technology to read mail without opening it, and that the telephone network can now be programmed to record any conversation in which specific political terms are used).
2. The best way to reduce tensions and hostilities, and the urge to gossip about them, is to make time for open, honest discussion and resolution of "personal" as well as "political" issues.
3. Don't accept everything you hear or read. Check with the supposed source of the information before you act on it. Personal communication among estranged activists, however difficult or painful, could have countered many FBI operations which proved effective in the 60s.
4. When you hear a negative, confusing or potentially harmful rumor, don't pass it on. Instead, discuss it with a trusted friend or with the people in your group who are responsible for dealing with covert intervention.
5. Verify and double-check all arrangements for housing, transportation, meeting rooms, and so forth.
6. When you discover bogus materials, false media stories, etc. publicly disavow them and expose the true sources, insofar as you can.
Harassment, Intimidation and Violence:
Pressure through employers, landlords, etc.
COINTELPRO documents reveal frequent overt contacts and covert manipulation (false rumors, anonymous letters and telephone calls) to generate pressure on activists from their parents, landlords, employers, college administrators, church superiors, welfare agencies, credit bureaus, licensing authorities, and the like.
Agents' reports indicate that such intervention denied 60s activists any number of foundation grants and public speaking engagements. It also cost underground newspapers most of their advertising revenues, when major record companies were persuaded to take their business elsewhere. It may underlie recent steps by insurance companies to cancel policies held by churches giving sanctuary to refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala.
Burglary
Former operatives have confessed to thousands of "black bag jobs" in which FBI agents broke into movement offices to steal, copy, or destroy valuable papers, wreck equipment, or plant drugs.
Vandalism
FBI infiltrators have admitted countless other acts of vandalism, including the fire which destroyed the Watts Writers Workshop's multimillion-dollar ghetto cultural center in 1973. Late 60s FBI and police raids laid waste to movement offices across the country, destroying precious printing presses, typewriters, layout equipment, research files, financial records, and mailing lists.
Other direct interference
To further disrupt opposition movements, frighten activists, and get people upset with each other, the FBI tampered with organizational mail, so it came late or not at all. It also resorted to bomb threats and similar "dirty tricks".
Conspicuous surveillance
The FBI and police blatantly watch activists' homes, follow their cars, tap phones, open mail and attend political events. The object is not to collect information (which is done surreptitiously), but to harass and intimidate.
Attempted interviews
Agents have extracted damaging information from activists who don't known they have a legal right to refuse to talk, or who think they can outsmart the FBI. COINTELPRO directives recommend attempts at interviews throughout political movements to "enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles" and "get the point that there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox."
Grand juries
Unlike the FBI, the Grand Jury has legal power to make you answer its questions. Those who refuse, and are required to accept immunity from use of their testimony against them, can be jailed for contempt of court (Such "use immunity" enables prosecutors to get around the constitutional protection against self-incrimination).
The FBI and US Department of Justice have manipulated this process to turn the grand jury into an instrument of political repression. Frustrated by jurors' consistent refusal to convict activists of overtly political crimes, they convened over 100 grand juries between 1970 and 1973 and subpoenaed more than 1,000 activists from the Black, Puerto Rican, student, women's and anti-war movements. Supposed pursuit of fugitives and "terrorists" was the usual pretext. Many targets were so terrified that they dropped out of political activity. Others were jailed without any criminal charge or trial, in what amounts to a US version of the political internment procedures employed in South Africa and Northern Ireland.
False arrest and prosecution
COINTELPRO directives cite the Philadelphia FBI's success in having local militants "arrested on every
possible charge until they could no longer make bail" and "spent most of the summer in jail." Though the bulk of the activists arrested in this manner were eventually released, some were convicted on serious charges on the basis of perjured testimony by FBI agents, or by coworkers who the Bureau had threatened or bribed.
The object was not only to remove experienced organizers from their communities and to divert scarce
resources into legal defense, but even more to discredit entire movements by portraying their leaders as vicious criminals. Two victims of such frame-ups, Native American activist Leonard Peltier and 1960s Black Panther official Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, have finally gained court hearings on new trial motions.
Others currently struggling to re-open COINTELPRO convictions include Richard Marshall of the American Indian Movement and jailed black Panthers Herman Bell, Anthony Bottom, Albert Washington (the "NY3"), and Richard "Dhoruba" Moore.
Intimidation
One COINTELPRO communiqué urged that "The Negro youths and moderates must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teaching, they will be dead revolutionaries."
Others reported use of threats (anonymous and overt) to terrorize activists, driving some to abandon promising projects and others to leave the country. During raids on movement offices, the FBI and police routinely roughed up activists and threatened further violence. In August, 1970, they forced the entire staff of the Black Panther office in Philadelphia to march through the streets naked.
Instigation of violence
The FBI's infiltrators and anonymous notes and phone calls incited violent rivals to attack Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and other targets. Bureau records also reveal maneuvers to get the Mafia to move against such activists as black comedian Dick Gregory.
A COINTELPRO memo reported that "shootings, beatings and a high degree of unrest continue to prevail in the ghetto area of southeast San Diego... it is felt that a substantial amount of the unrest is directly attributable to this program."
Covert aid to right-wing vigilantes
In the guise of a COINTELPRO against "white hate groups," the FBI subsidized, armed, directed and protected the Ku Klux Klan and other right-wing groups, including a "Secret Army Organization" of California ex-Minutemen who beat up Chicano activists, tore apart the offices of the San Diego Street Journal and the Movement for a Democratic Military, and tried to kill a prominent anti-war organizer. Puerto Rican activists suffered similar terrorist assaults from anti-Castro Cuban groups organized and funded by the CIA.
Defectors from a band of Chicago-based vigilantes known as the "Legion of Justice" disclosed that the funds and arms they used to destroy bookstores, film studios, and other centers of opposition had secretly been supplied by members of the Army's 113th Military Intelligence Group.
Assassination
The FBI and police were implicated directly in murders of Black and Native American leaders. In Chicago, police assassinated Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, using a floor plan supplied by an FBI informer who apparently also had drugged Hampton's food to make him unconscious during the raid.
FBI records show that this accomplice received a substantial bonus for his services. Despite an elaborate cover-up, a blue-ribbon commission and a US Court of Appeals found the deaths to be the result not of a shootout, as claimed by police, but of a carefully orchestrated, Vietnam-style "search and destroy mission."
Guidelines for Coping with Harassment, Intimidation Violence
1. Establish security procedures appropriate to your group's level of activity and discuss them thoroughly with everyone involved. Control access to keys, files, letterhead, funds, financial records, mailing lists, etc. Keep duplicates of valuable documents. Safeguard address books, and do not carry them when arrest is likely.
2. Careful records of break-ins, thefts, bomb threats, raids, arrests, strange phone noises (not always taps or bugs), harassment, etc. will help you to discern patterns and to prepare reports and testimony.
3. Don't talk to the FBI. Don't let them in without a warrant. Tell others that they came. Have a lawyer demand an explanation and instruct them to leave you alone.
4. If an activist does talk, or makes some other honest error, explain the harm that could result. But do not attempt to ostracize a sincere person who slips up. Isolation only weakens a person's ability to resist. It can drive someone out of the movement and even into the arms of the police.
5. If the FBI starts to harass people in your area, alert everyone to refuse to cooperate. Set up community meetings with speakers who have resisted similar harassment elsewhere. Get literature, films, etc. Consider "Wanted" posters with photos of the agents, or guerrilla theater which follows them through the city streets.
6. Make a major issue of crude harassment, such as tampering with your mail. Contact your congressperson. Call the media. Demonstrate at your local FBI office. Turn the attack into an opportunity for explaining how covert intervention threatens fundamental human rights.
7. Many people find it easier to tell an FBI agent to contact their lawyer than to refuse to talk. Once a lawyer is involved, the Bureau generally pulls back, since it has lost its power to intimidate. If possible, make arrangements with a local lawyer and let everyone know that agents who visit them can be referred to that lawyer. If your group engages in civil disobedience or finds itself under intense police pressure, start a bail fund, train some members to deal with the legal system, and develop and ongoing relationship with a sympathetic local lawyer.
8. Community education is important, along with legal, financial, child care, and other support for those who protect a movement by refusing to divulge information about it. If a respected activist is subpoenaed for obviously political reasons, consider trying to arrange for sanctuary in a local church or synagogue.
9. While the FBI and police are entirely capable of fabricating criminal charges, any law violations make it easier for them to set you up. The point is not to get so uptight and paranoid that you can't function, but to make a realistic assessment based on your visibility and other pertinent circumstances.
10. Upon hearing of Fred Hampton's murder, the Black Panthers in Los Angeles fortified their offices and organized a communications network to alert the community and news media in the event of a raid. When the police did attempt an armed assault four days later, the Panthers were able to hold off the attack until a large community and media presence enabled them to leave the office without casualties. Similar preparation can help other groups that have reason to expect right-wing or police assaults.
11. Make sure your group designates and prepares other members to step in if leaders are jailed or otherwise incapacitated. The more each participant is able to think for herself or himself and take responsibility, the better will be the group's capacity to cope with crises.
Organizing Public Opposition to Covert Intervention
A Broad-Based Strategy
No one existing political organization or movement is strong enough, by itself, to mobilize the public pressure required to significantly limit the ability of the FBI, CIA and police to subvert our work. Some activists oppose covert intervention because it violates fundamental constitutional rights. Others stress how it weakens and interferes with the work of a particular group or movement. Still others see covert action as part of a political and economic system which is fundamentally flawed. Our only hope is to bring these diverse forces together in a single, powerful alliance.
Such a broad coalition cannot hold together unless it operates with clearly-defined principles. The coalition as a whole will have to oppose covert intervention on certain basic grounds -- such as the threat to democracy, civil liberties and social justice, leaving its members free to put forward other objections and analyses in their own names. Participants will need to refrain from insisting that only their views are "politically correct" and that everyone else has "sold out."
Above all, we will have to resist the government's maneuvers to divide us by moving against certain groups, while subtly suggesting that it will go easy on the others, if only they dissociate themselves from those under attack. This strategy is evident in the recent Executive Order and Guidelines, which single out for infiltration and disruption people who support liberation movements and governments that defy US hegemony or who entertain the view that it may be at times necessary to break the law in order to effectuate social change.
Diverse Tactics
For maximum impact, local and national coalitions will need a multifaceted approach which effectively
combines a diversity of tactics, including:
1. Investigative research to stay on top of, and document, just what the FBI, CIA, and police are up to.
2. Public education through forums, rallies, radio and TV, literature, film, high school and college curricula, wall posters, guerrilla theater, and whatever else proves interesting and effective.
3. Legislative lobbying against administration proposals to strengthen cover work, cut back public access to information, punish government "whistle-blowers", etc. Coalitions in some cities and states have won legislative restrictions on surveillance and covert action. The value of such victories will depend on our ability to mobilize continuing, vigilant public pressure for effective enforcement.
4. Support for the victims of covert intervention can reduce somewhat the harm done by the FBI, CIA, and police. Organizing on behalf of grand jury resisters, political prisoners, and defendants in political trials offers a natural forum for public education about domestic covert action.
5. Lawsuits may win financial compensation for some of the people harmed by covert intervention. Covert action suits, which seek a court order (injunction) limiting surveillance and covert action in a particular city or judicial district, have proved a valuable source of information and publicity. They are enormously expensive, however, in terms of time and energy as well as money. Out-of-court settlements in some of these cases have given rise to bitter disputes which split coalitions apart, and any agreement is subject to reinterpretation or modification by increasingly conservative, administration-oriented federal judges.
The US Court of Appeals in Chicago has ruled that the consent decree against the FBI there affects only operations based "solely on the political views of a group or an individual," for which the Bureau can conjure no pretext of a "genuine concern for law enforcement."
6. Direct action, in the form of citizens' arrests, mock trials, picketlines, and civil disobedience, has recently greeted CIA recruiters on a number of college campuses. Although the main focus has been on the Agency's international crimes, its domestic activities has also received attention. Similar actions might be organized to protest recruitment by the FBI and police, in conjunction with teach-ins and other education about domestic covert action. Demonstrations against Reagan's attempts to bolster covert intervention, or against particular FBI, CIA or polic operations, could also raise public consciousness and focus activists' outrage.
Prospects
Previous attempts to mobilize public opposition, especially on a local level, indicate that a broad coalition, employing a multifaceted approach, may be able to impose some limits on the government's ability to discredit and disrupt our work. It is clear, however, that we currently lack the power to eliminate such intervention. While fighting hard to end domestic covert action, we need also to study the forms it takes and prepare ourselves to cope with it as effectively as we can. Above all, it is essential that we resist the temptation to so preoccupy ourselves with repression that we neglect our main work. Our ability to resist the government's attacks depends ultimately on the strength of our movements.
COINTELPRO: The Danger We Face
Homepage:
http://web.archive.org/web/20021225065137/http://www.radio4all.org/aia/sec_cointelpro.html
Source of repost above
26.12.2008 02:32
Cointelpro: Civil Liberties Under Threat
by Brian Glick
It's very good -- it puts this new case in context...
Chris
JR
26.12.2008 09:52
With good reason; overwhelmingly, people accusing others of being plants are, in fact, paranoid, gossipmongers and Stalinists; not to mention journalists and, well, the police themselves. Such accusations can be even more destructive than the infiltration itself.
anonymous
What's Rob Gilchrist up to at the moment?
26.12.2008 10:58
anon
rob gilchrist, in 2010
24.10.2010 23:10
there's a summary of Robs career as a police informant here.
after he was exposed in activist circles he disappeared for a while, but popped up in some military reenactment groups in Christchurch. the group he was in soon started falling apart due to his disruption (not cos he was a cop, more because he was an unstable disruptive liar), and they investigated his background and discovered that he was not the ex SAS commando he was claiming to be. In 2010 a military veterans group in Australia investigated his alleged military background and wrote this
as far as we can tell he is still; receiving money from the police for informing, on who we don't know
Mark E