Facts Behind a Sinister Connection

The Facts Behind a Sinister Connection

1970: Los Angeles Police Chief Edward M. Davis -- a staunch conservative -- created the Public Disorders Intelligence Division (PDID). Five years earlier Davis had formed the Criminal Conspiracy Section (CCS), California's top political intelligence-gathering operation. 1971: Louis Tackwood, agent-provocateur for the Los Angeles Police Department, exposed police involvement in "dirty tricks and murderous things" (Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, October 18, 1971). Tackwood later identified White House plumbers "Martin" and "White," linking the Pentagon to the LAPD (June 18, 1972). "Martin" and "White" were actually former CIA agents E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, both implicated in the Watergate break-in. Before the 1972 Republican National Convention was switched from San Diego to Miami, members of the LAPD formulated plans to incite riots, kidnap protesters and incredibly -- because they thought Vice President Spiro Agnew's outspoken conservatism was more to their liking -- plotted the assassination of President Nixon. 1973-1975: The Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, Watergate and Related Activities refused to expose the connections between Watergate and the LAPD. They were aware of -- and suppressed -- what had been festering for many years. 1975: The Los Angeles Police Commission, a civilian agency, ordered 2 million police-intelligence files to be destroyed. These files contained information on law-abiding citizens and had nothing to do with criminals. This information was obtained through infiltration, provocateurs, burglaries in homes and offices, bugging and wiretapping during massive spy operations throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. 1970-1972: Lawsuits against police abuses escalated as it became apparent that spying was continuing. The files ordered to be destroyed were never removed from LAPD intelligence. January 4, 1983: Representing 131 clients, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the LAPD and continued its efforts to locate files on over 200 organizations being spied upon. Among them were the following: Coalition Against Police Abuse; Alliance for Survival; U.S. Communist Party; Black Panther Party; Teamsters for Democratic Union; Peace and Freedom Party; Progressive Labor Party; Greater Watts Justice Center; Church of Scientology (L. Ron Hubbard); La Raza Unida; People's College of Law; Democratic Socialists Organizing Committee; Venceremos Brigade; antinuclear groups (all of them); American Friends Service Committee; Southern Christian Leadership Conference; United Farm Workers Local 80; American Civil Liberties Union; Community Relations Conference; Juvenile Justice Center; Socialist Workers Party; New Mount Pleasant Baptist Church; and Women For. PDID officer Jay Paul finally admitted he had removed between 50 and 100 cartons of police intelligence files to his garage in Long Beach, California. His wife, attorney Ann Love, was receiving a salary of $30,000 a year to put information from those cartons into a computer. May 24, 1983: The Los Angeles Times ran the following headline: "DETECTIVE IN SPYING CASE LINKED TO BIRCH LEADER - Suspect in Police Probe Ran Private Computer That Keeps Records on Leftists in U.S." Representative Larry McDonald, chairman of the John Birch Society, was publicly exposed for obtaining stolen documents ordered destroyed years before. Western Goals, a tax-free foundation, was paying for the computer and labor to transfer these "crown jewels" to McDonald's Alexandria, Virginia, and German offices. June 6, 1983: "L.A.'s Police Probe Leads to Prominent Right-Wing Lawmaker." (The headline should have read "Right-Wing Lawbreaker.") Western Goals was reported to have filled the gap caused by legal restraints imposed on the FBI and the abolition in 1975 of the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was also reported that Los Angeles faced a threat of terrorist action during the 1984 Olympics that would be comparable to the Palestine Liberation Organization's attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Robert Byron Watson's alleged (November 1977) affidavit connected McDonald to the Palestinian organizations that, along with the CIA, caused the Munich massacre. McDonald justified his Western Goals involvement with LAPD intelligence files as necessary for "future Olympic Games security." Evidence emerged that Western Goals, members of the LAPD and Pentagon personnel planned previous riots and fatal provocations. August 19, 1983: McDonald and Western Goals were ordered to turn over 30 computer floppy discs and their printouts, plus storage tape and printouts, to a Los Angeles grand jury. Lawyers won a delay of the August 9 subpoena for a hearing on September 13. September 1, 1983: Representative Larry McDonald, chairman of Western Goals, was killed on Flight 007. September 15, 1983: Linda Guell, the new Western Goals chairman, stated she would not testify before the Los Angeles grand jury unless she received immunity from prosecution. Otherwise she would invoke the Fifth Amendment. The irony, of course, was that Guell would be using one Constitutional amendment (the Fifth) to abuse another (the First). September 15, 1983: LAPD Detective Ben Lovato, one of those being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union, was accused of threatening to kill Western Goals editor John Rees.

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