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Secret Army Organization

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Secret Army Organization
AbbreviationSAO
PredecessorMinutemen
Typeparamilitary
Legal statusnon-active
HeadquartersSan Diego, California
Region
Southern California
Membership
12–30
Key people
Jerry Lynn Davis, Howard G. Godfrey, John Rasperry
AffiliationsFederal Bureau of Investigation

The Secret Army Organization (SAO) was a short-lived right-wing paramilitary organization in Southern California, set up in 1971 in the aftermath of the breakup of the Minutemen group by local law enforcement. The organization received Federal Bureau of Investigation sponsorship from its establishment until its 1972 dissolution, engaging in various acts of violence and intimidation during this time.

History

Secret Army Organization was headquartered in San Diego, California and consisted of “about a dozen”[1] local members and a handful more spread across the Southern California region.[1] Its creation was a product of a meeting held on October 16–17, 1971; Its leaders were two former Minutemen, Howard B. Godfrey and Jerry Lynn Davis.[2] Davis had previously participated in CIA’s Bay of Pigs invasion.[3] SAO was to serve as a replacement for FBI’s intelligence/operative network broken up by local law enforcement in 1970. According to ACLU, the operation known as “Inlet” utilized the paramilitary Minutemen group to provide daily intelligence reports on the activities of “demonstrators and domestic radicals”. These reports were made on behalf of John N. Mitchell, then Attorney General, and Richard Nixon, by way of H.R. Halderman (former White House Chief of Staff) and John D. Ehrlichman (former Chief Advisor on Domestic Affairs in the Nixon White House).

Criminal activities

During the period of 1971 to 1972, the Secret Army Organization engaged in a variety of criminal and provocative behavior. They fire-bombed cars, burglarized the homes of antiwar protestors, ransacked offices and places of work.[4] As described by the San Diego Union, SAO was “a centrally designed and externally financed infrastructure designed for terror and sabotage,” whose actions were “sanctioned by the nation’s most powerful and highly respected law enforcement agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”[5][4]

ACLU report

On June 26, 1975, the American Civil Liberty Union of Southern California filed a report with Senate investigators alleging that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been instrumental in the creation and operation of San Diego-based SAO. The filing of this report came only two days after the FBI had publicly acknowledged their involvement in the domestic counterintelligence program COINTELPRO, with activity spanning from May 1968 until April 1971, yet known SAO operations contradicted this claim, extending into 1972.

FBI connection

1972 Testimony

Howard Berry Godfrey was selected by FBI to lead SAO after having already worked with him as an informant in the Minutemen for the previous three years. He paid over 75% the group’s expenses, recruited new members, supplied the group’s explosives, and selected their targets.[6] In front of a grand jury in July 1972, Godfrey testified that he helped set up the Secret Army Organization on instructions from the FBI for the purpose of terrorizing local radicals.[7] He additionally testified that, while leading SAO, he had been in constant touch with the Bureau through his appointed FBI supervisor, Special Agent Steven L. Christiansen, reporting to him daily.

1973 Testimony

In the 1973 trial of a fellow SAO member convicted of bombing a movie theater, Godfrey further testified that the FBI had furnished him with a total of between $10,000 and $20,000 for weapons and explosives over a period of five years. He said he had been paid $250 a month by the Bureau, plus expenses.[8]

Another FBI informer, John Rasperry, admitted to having been instructed by the Bureau in Winter 1971-1972 to assassinate Peter G. Bohmer, a local Marxist economics professor at San Diego State University. The plot was ultimately not carried out, although FBI would make another attempt on Bohmer’s life the following year.

In April 1972, FBI initiated a new operation, this time recruiting a member of the local San Diego Police Department’s antisubversive “Red Sauad” unit, Gil Romero, having previous experience with him as an FBI informant, and J.M. Lopez, an undercover San Diego police officer.[9] According to the ACLU report, Bohmer and Lincoln Bueno (a member the left-wing Chicano organization, “Brown Berets”) were to be lured over the border to a remote location in Tijuana, Mexico, where they would be murdered by Mexican Federal police over a contrived cache of smuggled firearms. ACLU lawyer H. Peter Young reported that this conspiracy was only abandoned when the Republican convention was moved to Miami Beach, Florida.

White House connection

In addition to the direct control exerted by FBI over the operations of the Secret Army Organization, the White House is alleged to have maintained its own liaison to communicate with the group in the form of Donald H. Segretti. He was later convicted for his role in orchestrating a campaign of political espionage and sabotage against the Democrats in 1972. Segretti was quoted by the ACLU as having told SAO that anyone causing trouble at the 1972 Republican convention would be “gotten rid of,” apparently in reference to the so-called “Liddy plan” as described in the Senate Watergate hearings. The plan was named for G. Gordon Liddy, former counsel of the Committee for the Re-election of the President, and entailed the kidnapping of protestors and sending them to Mexico.

Dissolution

Godfrey, “at the insistence of the FBI,”[1] was never prosecuted for activity connected with SAO. Having previously been a firefighter before his work with the FBI, by 1975 he was employed by the California State Fire Marshall’s Office.[1]

After Godfrey’s public disclosure of SAO’s FBI connections and the Bureau’s withdrawal of support, the Secret Army Organization quickly fell apart.[1]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Holles, Everett R. (27 June 1975). "A.C.L.U. Says FBI Funded 'Army' to Terrorize Antiwar Protesters". The New York Times (Newspaper). New York – via The New York Times Archives. Archived from the original on 28 July 2019.
  2. ^ "Secret Army Organization (SAO)". Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium (TRAC). Archived from the original on 17 July 2019. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  3. ^ "FBI Funds Right Wing Violence". Ann Arbor Sun. Ann Arbor, Michigan. 3 September 1975 – via Ann Arbor District Library.
  4. ^ a b "Untitled". San Diego Union. 10 January 1976.
  5. ^ Tasking, Marcus G (Summer 1976). "Democracy Versus the National Security State" (PDF). Law and Contemporary Problems (Journal article). 40 (3): 189–220 – via Duke Law Scholarship Repository.
  6. ^ "Newspaper Says FBI Funded Terror Unit" (PDF). Washington Post: A2. 11 January 1976 – via Internet Archive.
  7. ^ Ridenour, Ron (8–18 September 1972). "Secret Army on Trial". LA Free Press. Los Angeles, California.
  8. ^ Chomsky, Noam (September 1999). "Domestic Terrorism: Notes on the State System of Oppression". New Political Science. 21 (3): 303–324 – via chomsky.info.
  9. ^ "FBI Assassination Plot Seen" (PDF). Washington Post. 28 June 1975 – via Internet Archive.

Further reading

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