Vigilant California

[Joseph Tracy]

Oops forgot to post this excerpt from an article in AlterNet by David  
Helvarg  for the whole article go here http://www.alternet.org/story/ 
7291/
Of course there were quite a few local cop organizations that were  
acting to infiltrate and harass activists and there might be a better  
Los Angeles match for this exact time frame but I love it when truth  
is strange as fiction. You even have  armed Mormon counter- 
revolutionaries here.

THIS IS  THE EXCERPT

In the 1960s the Minutemen was a right-wing paramilitary outfit that  
believed the U.S. government was overrun by communist infiltrators  
and that an underground patriot army had to be formed to fight a  
guerilla war against the reds. When they began to carry out bank  
robberies to finance their activities they were infiltrated and  
broken up by the FBI. In 1970 veterans of the Minutemen met secretly  
in Arizona to form a new paramilitary outfit called the Secret Army  
Organization. San Diego, with some 30 members, soon emerged as the  
most active SAO chapter in the nation under the leadership of an  
unemployed contractor named Jerry Lynn Davis and a fireman named  
Howard Berry Godfrey. Godfrey was also an FBI informant.__Godfrey, it  
turned out, had been working for the FBI as a Minuteman informant  
since 1967 when he'd been arrested for brandishing a gun during a  
traffic dispute and possession of explosives the police found when  
they went to search his home. As an SAO State Commander he recruited  
new members from the Mormon church in which he and several of his FBI  
handlers were active. As the SAO's intelligence officer he also  
provided the terrorist group with FBI funds and information on San  
Diego's anti-war organizers.__In late 1971 and early 1972 activists  
organizing protests at the upcoming Republican convention became the  
target of death threats, tear-gas attacks, vandalism and  
firebombings. On the night of January 6, 1972, Godfrey and fellow SAO  
member George "Mickey" Hoover cruised past the home of one of the  
activists in the Ocean Beach section of the city. Hoover fired two  
shots from a stolen 9-millimeter pistol into the house, seriously  
wounding a young woman named Paula Tharp. The next day Godfrey gave  
the weapon to his FBI control agent Steve Christiansen who hid it  
under his couch for the next six months.__Meanwhile the Republicans  
were getting nervous about the local intelligence they were  
receiving. On February 18, 1972, the day Nixon left for his historic  
trip to China, Godfrey published a poster of Nixon reading, "Wanted  
for Treason" accusing the President and Secretary of State Henry  
Kissinger of conspiring with the Red Chinese to betray the United  
States. The SAO distributed the poster in 15 cities (the FBI  
reimbursed Godfrey for the printing costs). The SAO which had by now  
begun warehousing rifles, mortar rounds, land-mines and explosives in  
garages around the city discussed how they might take turns mortaring  
the protesters outside and the Republicans inside the Convention  
Center. Meanwhile White House plumber G. Gordon Liddy was  
simultaneously developing his own plans involving the kidnapping of  
anti-war leaders in San Diego. In May the Republican National  
Committee, worried about growing security issues, pulled the plug on  
San Diego as the site for their convention.__A month later William  
Yakopec, an SAO member who'd been recruited into the group by the  
FBI's Godfrey, bombed the Guild, a local porno theater. The bomb blew  
out the screen, showering debris on theater patrons including a  
deputy city attorney and two vice cops. Soon more than a dozen SAO  
members had been rounded up and jailed. At that point the SAO began  
plotting to assassinate San Diego's police chief, local ATF agents  
and other government officials they thought had gone over to the side  
of the communists.__Godfrey's testimony helped send several of his  
confederates to prison. Jerry Lynn Davis and other SAOers then began  
talking to local reporters about meetings at the "Gunsmoke Ranch" a  
shooting range outside San Diego, where Godfrey had introduced them  
to a man named Donald Simms, who Davis later identified as Donald  
Segretti, Liddy's White House operative. Segretti and the SAO  
apparently discussed plans to kidnap activists to Mexico where they  
would be killed and their bodies dumped.__The FBI directed Agent  
Christiensen not to answer grand jury questions relating to the Paula  
Tharp shooting and the gun he'd hidden, then pensioned him off to  
Utah. Godfrey, who they shielded from any criminal charges, was given  
a job as a California arson investigator. Eighteen years later he was  
arrested for planting and then disarming pipe-bombs in the small  
rural town where he worked (and where he'd just broken up with his  
girlfriend). This time he was sentenced to 90 days psychiatric  
observation.__Interviewed at a Soldier of Fortune convention in  
October, 1995 convicted Watergate burglar turned radio talk-show host  
G. Gordon Liddy told San Diego magazine, that as far as targeting  
anti-war activists, "I would have grabbed them doped 'em up, taken  
them to Mexico and then released them none the worse for wear after  
the convention was over." Or perhaps, as he's suggested on his radio  
show in regards to ATF agents, he would have encouraged the SAO to,  
"shoot for the head."_