Way Back When: FBI Funded Terrorists in San Diego
Fifty years ago, a small group of San Diego activists found themselves targeted by right wing terrorists calling themselves the Secret Army Organization. I was one of those people.
Given all the reporting on modern day terrorist-wannabes and their relationships with various law enforcement agencies, this seems like a good time for a little obscure San Diego history.
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After months of small acts of vandalism and phone threats (“don’t drink the milk in your refrigerator”), things escalated when our Muir Street house was targeted in a drive-by shooting. One of my roommates was wounded.
The police who responded to our 911 call felt like it was an open-and-shut case of left wing activists looking for some sympathy, a sentiment repeated in local media reports.
To make a long story short(er), months later some vice cops “investigating” a porn movie showing in Hillcrest happened to be sitting in the theater when a bomb exploded. The SAO’s targets included porn purveyors and the police were aware of threats being made.
One of the SDPD cops involved knew the FBI had an informant in right-wing circles, and the agency quickly coughed up his name in light of the danger posed to law enforcement brethren.
Things quickly got interesting once firefighter Berry Godfrey was brought in for questioning. He gave up the theater bomber and admitted to driving the vehicle that fired into the Muir Street address. He’d turned the gun and other evidence into his FBI handler and went on his merry way unscathed.
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Fast forward fifty years and a writer looking at various aspects of the FBI’s COINTELPRO operations contacted me, wanting to learn details of what happened back in the day.
Robert Skvarla is working on a bigger project, hoping for a return on the time he’s invested and says he’s got more documents that he’d like to sit on for now. Based on what I’ve seen, he’s been digging in all the right places and appears to have dodged the conspiracist fever endemic to people who visit dark places in our history.
He has graciously allowed me to share some of what he posted on Twitter (@RobertSkvarla) over the weekend.
This is what caught my eye:
https://twitter.com/RobertSkvarla/status/1472612852439597056?s=20
Rather than repost all his Tweets, I’m scraping them and adding a bit of commentary (in red).
…The SAO splintered off from a right-wing paramilitary group, the Minutemen, in 1971. The MM had formed a decade prior under the leadership of businessman Robert DePugh. They were intended as a violent counter-response to the growing threat of communism…
..The MM inspired fear nationally because they quickly established a dozen or more chapters in cities throughout the United States. A year after their forming, President Kennedy was already denouncing the group…
…The MM chapters were essentially terrorist cells. Membership was anonymous. You were assigned a number and asked to receive mail drops at a P.O. box under an assumed name…
Founder Robert DePugh claimed in an interview that even he didn’t know names, as each cell was only required to share their leader’s name (which could be a pseudonym)
…And guess what? The group formed to carry out terrorist attacks, did exactly that. In 1966, 20 members associated with the New York chapter were arrested for planning terrorists attacks on leftist communes in New York and Connecticut…
…But a funny thing about that! What should have been an open and shut case, wasn't. It dragged on in the courts until 1971—when it was dropped entirely. What was going on?...
…Well, the MM had some odd connections. The 1966 arrests revealed that MM members had "infiltrated" police departments, district attorneys offices—nearly every facet of law enforcement in this country…
…In fact, the FBI was well aware of the MM presence in these groups and often encouraged it. In San Antonio, for example, it chose to distribute MM literature to terrorize anti-war demonstrators. A COINTELPRO memo from the San Antonio field office:
…So why would the MM case fall apart in 1971, in roughly the same period when the FBI was distributing MM literature? Because FBI informants were either members of or leading MM chapters...
Here’s a bizarre look into a never actualized plot concerning the 1972 GOP convention, via the New York Times:
In another development this week, two members of the Secret Army Organization reportedly recognized a photograph of Donald H. Segretti, the young lawyer accused of organizing a Republican espionage campaign last year. According to The Door, a local radical newspaper, the two rightists identified the man in the photograph as “Donald Simms,” whom they said they met in the summer of 1971 at a shooting range frequented by members of the Secret Army Organization…
…Mr. Segretti, who has been indicted for distributing false campaign literature in Florida, often used the name “Donald Simmons” in recruiting espionage agents…
…It is also known that Mr. Segretti and the Secret Army Organization at different times, discussed the idea of abducting radicals who might disrupt the convention. But so far, there has been no firm evidence linking Mr. Segretti to ‘the right wing group…
…In 1967, a man named Howard Berry Godfrey was arrested in San Diego for illegally possessing explosives. Instead of pleading guilty, Godfrey became an FBI informant (on the advice of a judge/elder in his local Mormon church). He joined the MM…
…Godfrey quickly rose from MM member to leader of splinter group the Secret Army Organization. Planning began in 1971, with full knowledge of the FBI, and the group began targeting activists. One in particular would become important, a controversial professor named Peter Bohmer...
…Bohmer was a recent hire at San Diego State University, and extremely outspoken about his politics. The university actively conspired to fire him in a long-term campaign to remove activist professors from the campus (another, Leon Nower, faced a similar situation a year prior)...
…But Bohmer wasn't just a target of the university. Both he and Nower were also targets of the SAO. In December 1971 the SAO distributed a copy of their monthly bulletin publishing his personal details, including his address, along with a threat…
This was the Muir Street address, and, yes, I was roommates with the infamous Peter Bohmer. He’s still raising hell at Evergreen College in Washington State.
…The following month, on January 6, 1972 (hey, interesting date!), both Godfrey and SAO member George Hoover attempted to assassinate Bohmer. They opened fire on his home. Fortunately, he wasn't home; unfortunately, his housemate, Paula Tharp, was wounded…
…Hoover carried out the attack while Godfrey was driving. Godfrey, an FBI informant, reported it to his handler, Special Agent Steve Christensen. He even gave Christensen the gun and Hoover's jacket, as evidence. Christensen hid the gun for 6 months and gave the jacket away…
…This came to light in July 1972, after an SAO member bombed an adult theater. A police officer who was in the theater as part of an obscenity sting—and who somehow knew of the SAO's existence—demanded the FBI turn over its SAO informant…
…Godfrey, in fact, was responsible for training the bomber, Frank Yakopec, on explosives. He was himself trained by the San Diego Fire Department….
From Godfrey's informant report (under the pseudonym Jerome):
…In the ensuing court cases (and the Church Committee hearings), it was revealed that the FBI had paid Godfrey both as an informant and reimbursed him for the group's expenses. He even expensed an April 1972 SAO bulletin where they provided instructions on improvised explosives...
…Oddly, the only expense reports missing in the FBI's SAO files are from December 1971, the month the SAO published Peter Bohmer's address and personally threatened him. The reports skip from November 1971 to January 1972...
…Which is odd because Godfrey expensed information on the Yakopec bombing. Of course, this happened only after he had been forced to reveal his identity, the month after the bombing...
…For whatever reason, charges again didn't stick. Hoover's conviction was overturned on appeal. Bohmer and Tharp coordinated with the ACLU to sue the government, but the case fell apart. Godfrey was placed in witness protection, and Christensen quietly resigned from the FBI…
…So, for all intents and purposes, the SAO event was memory-holed. It didn't even feature prominently in the Church Committee hearings; nothing came of Godfrey's testimony beyond a few headlines….
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There you have it folks. Ever wonder why the San Diego Police Department protected right wing extremists during a Pacific Beach confrontation last year? And how about the District Attorney’s decision to level “conspiracy charges” against the leftist “Antifa,” while overlooking publicly available video on social media showing a homeless man being attacked by the right wingers?
Wonder no more. That’s what “friends in high places” is all about.
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This week I’ll post Thursday, take the weekend off and then you’ll see me irregularly through the first of the year.
Hey folks! There’s a change coming to Words & Deeds in 2022. I’ll be moving from Wordpress to Substack, which hopefully will mean just a few changes in formatting. Stay tuned for exciting details.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com