AVA Ltr to the Editor - RE: Bari bombing

Letter to the Editor,

Here's my rebuttal to your editorial reply to a letter in the August 20 edition of the AVA (Anderson's Venomous Attack). Elsewhere you called that the "nut" of your case against Mike Sweeney as the bomber of Judi Bari. I think "nut" is an apt choice of words.

Ed reply: If any DA in America is more likely than ours to take this one on I haven't heard of him. I think Vroman would do it, and he's got the talent in his office to do it right, if he could be convinced that the bombing was a crime that originated here in Mendocino County. It did, but the cops get confused, it seems, by the fundamental fact that the explosion occurred in downtown Oakland.

You and your GetSweeney (TM) lynch mob already presented your case to Vroman on May 24, 1999, the anniversary of the bombing. Vroman said you didn't have a case. You have added nothing new to it since then.

On KZYX radio news, Vroman dismissed what you and your posse presented to him as "conjecture, innuendo, speculation, guesses." -- KZYX Community News, May 24, 1999

A few days later he said to the Ukiah paper about your demand for an investigation: "I am not investigating anything.  I have nothing to investigate and you can quote me on that." -- Ukiah Daily Journal, May 30, 1999, p. A-8

The Oakland PD assumed jurisdiction and still have it, as I understand the current status of the case. (The FBI gave up on it years ago, although the Bari-ites milked the bumbling G-Men as a fundraising pretext for fifteen years.)

The bombing clearly happened within the jurisdiction of the Oakland PD. What the Andersonites don't mention is that the jury unanimously agreed that the Oakland cops and the FBI agents assigned to the case engaged in a politically motivated attempt to frame Judi and Darryl for the bombing, and they ignored obvious evidence, like fingerprints on death threats, and other leads pointing to a timber industry plot because finding the real bomber would be at odds with the frame-up.

The key to the case is the confession letter written by a person calling himself "The Lord's Avenger."

Partly true, but it's not a true confession letter. It's a phony confession letter written to divert attention away from the timber industry, where the death threats Judi had received and reported came from, and which had a real, multi-billion-dollar motive for the bombing.

Darryl Cherney and his legal team had this document tested for DNA. Test results revealed that most of the DNA on the envelope was that of an unknown female; there was also the DNA of an unknown male. A female apparently licked the envelope to seal it, the male licked the stamp.

Thank you for admitting that Darryl and team have done real investigative work in pursuit of the bomber, something that you have repeatedly denied. However, your description of the DNA findings is oversimplified. The DNA from the envelope flap was definitely female, though the letter is from a male point of view. There was also a very faint, secondary contribution of DNA from a male, so faint that it could have come from Mike Geniella opening the envelope, or a postal employee handling the envelope.

... By testing the Avenger envelope for DNA, Cherney and Co. hoped to implicate Irv Sutley, their long time villain of choice. It didn't,

But they also tested the Argus snitch letter and the No Second Warning death threat letters, which DID implicate Sutley. The
writer of the Argus Letter wrote that he joined EF! to be a snitch, and offered to snitch off Judi Bari when the cops could bust her on "federal charges" for mailing pot. Sutley admitted to me (on tape), in the public forum at the Headlands Cafe Fort Bragg that you organized, that he phoned Judi from Sonoma County in the period immediately after the Argus snitch offer was accepted by the cops and asked if she could get him some pot. She declined, of course, but she also cited Sutley's call as one of several indicators that he was "Argus," and the DNA evidence now tends to support that conclusion.

... If the known DNA from the Avenger envelope were matched against the most likely suspects, beginning with Judi Bari's ex-husband Mike Sweeney and Sweeney's then-love interest, a woman named Meredyth Rinehard of the Mendocino County Health Department, I believe it is quite likely we'd have a match right out of the box. But if we only got Sweeney, we could then proceed down the short list of most likelies, beginning with the late Bari herself, her and Sweeney's two daughters, Karen Pickett, Pam Davis, and on through other close friends of Bari at the time of the event.

And what if you DIDN'T get a DNA match for Sweeney? Would you then fold the AVA as you have vowed to do if proven wrong? Not bloody likely. If you're so arrogantly sure of your lamebrained theory, you're the one who should raise the money for the DNA test and get it over with. Someone who betrays as little factual knowledge about the case as you is in no position to dictate to Darryl or the Bari-Cherney legal team how to conduct their investigation. It would be a waste of money and effort, but if you can't see that, go right ahead and chase that wild goose.

But how do we know the bomb was assembled and placed in Bari's car here in Mendocino County? How do we know Mendocino County is the scene of the crime? Because the Lord's Avenger confesses that he put it in Bari's car while she was in Willits meeting with loggers on Tuesday evening but that it hadn't gone off until she was leaving Oakland for Santa Cruz the following Thursday morning.

And the LA letter was a hoax, with just enough verifiable info about the construction of the bomb to establish credibility, and the rest of it deliberate disinformation about the source, timing and motivation of the attack, designed as a red herring to divert public attention from the timber industry. The letter's assertion certainly is not evidence that the bomb actually was placed in Mendocino County.

Sweeney, conveniently, has an alibi for the Tuesday night of the Willits meeting with the loggers; he was at home with Meredyth, hence his Avenger letter has the Avenger placing the bomb Tuesday night in Willits. Sweeney doesn't have an alibi for any part of Wednesday or any part of Thursday, during which period he placed the device (which was wrapped in a towel) in Bari's car either at the property the two of them shared in Redwood Valley or he slipped it under her seat while her vehicle was parked in front of the MEC in downtown Ukiah prior to her leaving for Oakland Wednesday afternoon.

You have it precisely backward. Sweeney was taking care of his and Judi's younger daughter in Redwood Valley all day Wednesday May 23, and both daughters the night of May 23-24, when the bomb was placed in Judi's car in Oakland on a dark, moonless night on a quiet, no-traffic residential street. You speculate he traveled to Ukiah to put the bomb in Judi's car on a busy street next to the courthouse and sheriff's headquarters during the lunch hour, presumably while holding his little daughter by the hand. You have absolutely no evidence, not so much as a rumor, that Sweeney was even in Ukiah during that time. Moreover, if Sweeney was the bomber he would have put it in Judi's car during the night before she left home, while her car was parked just steps from his front door. But we know the bomb wasn't placed then because if it had been, it would have exploded no later than when Judi drove from Berkeley to Oakland that night, more than 12 hours after she left home. Your speculation that he passed up the perfect, easy opportunity to place the bomb, and then immediately pursued Judi to Ukiah to do it at high noon on a public street is more than improbable, it's laughable.

But given the design of the bomb, no matter where it was placed it's manufacturer must explain why he put a timer on it. If the intent is murder, an on/off switch and activation by a motion device is sufficient. The bomb had a timer because the idea was to have the bomb explode 100 miles south of Ukiah-Redwood Valley where it was made and placed beneath the driver's seat of Bari's Subaru. When the on switch was on, the 12 hours on the timer began ticking. When the timer finished ticking the bomb was armed. The motion from the vehicle containing the bomb would then ignite it. Which is what happened.

The essential purpose of the timer in the bomb's design was to prevent the bomber from being accidentally killed while placing the bomb, which is what would likely happen if there were only a simple on-off switch (which there also was). The motion trigger was a simple ball bearing resting in a hole drilled in the plywood base of the bomb assembly, much smaller than the ball's diameter, and located under an arch made of pair of U-shaped wires such that no matter which way the ball rolled once dislodged from its hole it would contact two wires and complete the electric circuit, detonating the bomb.  Given the handling needed to put the bomb in place, and allowing for the fact that the street would most likely be sloped, there had to be a safety device to allow the bomber to place the bomb and then throw the arming switch without the possibility that the bomb would explode instantly because the ball was accidentally dislodged and was already contacting the wires.

You and your gang made another false assumption about the timer when you said it had to run at least 12 hours. Not so at all. It was based on a pocket watch which could run a MAXIMUM of 12 hours before the hour hand would contact a screw through the crystal and complete the circuit. The minimum practical delay with that design would be a little as 10-15 minutes, and that was all that was needed for the timer to fill its vital role as a bomber safety device.

Bari's itinerary the day before the bombing began with her departure from her home in Redwood Valley for downtown Ukiah some time before noon. Utah Phillips was in the car with her. She parked in front of the MEC to which Sweeney possessed a front door key and where he maintained an office.

According to Betty Ball, Sweeney did NOT have an office at the MEC. Utah Phillips said he set up a chair in the outer doorway of the MEC and played guitar while Judi went a couple of blocks down the street to the west to attend a press conference related to the lawsuit by Mem Hill against a logger who had punched her and broken her nose at a demo near Whitethorne. Phillips said he did not see anyone approach Judi's car. Utah's wife Joanna Robinson and Dakota Sid, who were traveling in Sid's camper van in convoy with Judi and Utah, had also parked nearby on the same street and were also hanging out at the MEC while Judi was busy. It was the lunch hour in downtown Ukiah. The busy Sports Attic bar is next door to the MEC. There was plenty of foot traffic.

She was in and around downtown Ukiah talking to media in front of the Courthouse for an hour or so before she headed south for the Bay Area.

She was at Barry Vogel's law office two blocks west of the MEC and the courthouse, attending a press conference, not in front of the courthouse conducting a Redwood Summer rally, as was falsely reported by Ed Gehrman in his Flatland article, one of many errors in that article.

The clock on the bomb, its timer, was now ticking. By the time she stopped in Berkeley for a meeting, at least five hours had ticked off. Around midnight she drove to Oakland where she spent the night in the home of a fellow named David Kemnitzer. By that time another five or so hours had ticked off the timer. While she was asleep in Oakland, some time around two, or three, or four in the morning ,the full twelve hours on the timer had elapsed.

While she was asleep in Oakland, the bomber slipped the bomb into her car on a quiet residential street with virtually no traffic at that time of night. The timer was set to just enough delay to allow the bomber to place the bomb and safely leave the area. The time elapsed long before Judi and Darryl got into her car and set off for Berkeley, not Santa Cruz.

The bomb was now armed. The motion of the car would set it off. Shortly before noon, and just after she'd left Kemnitzer's house to drive to Santa Cruz, the bomb exploded. If it had gone off in Berkeley, or had detonated as Bari drove from Berkeley to Oakland to spend the night, that would have served the bomber's purpose, too, because the very design of the bomb was to kill Bari after she arrived in the East Bay, far from where the perp sat waiting for the news. If the idea was simply to blow her up any old place, no timer would have been necessary.

Wrong about the purpose of the timer, as explained above. But the plan was certainly to blow her up in the Bay Area, where the FBI could quickly arrive in force and manage the frame-up with the willing assistance of the OPD, which after all has a long history of cooperation with the FBI in the infiltration and disruption of radical groups. The Bay Area was also the desired location because it would result in maximum nationwide media coverage of the sensational false charges, which was the purpose of the bombing in the first place.

If the idea was simply to get rid of her, there would be no need to go to all the trouble of a bomb.

Exactly so. The reason for the bomb, and for the homebrew style of it, was so that she could be framed for it, probably posthumously if the bomb had killed Judi, as it certainly could have and very nearly did.  Darryl was in the car with her totally by spur-of-the-moment accident, so she would have been alone, and there would have been no survivor with standing to file suit against the FBI and OPD, pry loose the evidence and expose the frame-up.

But the idea was to explode the device far from where it was constructed, and far from the person who constructed it, hence its design. That person, of course, is Mendocino County's tax-paid recycler, Mike Sweeney, a man with at least a two-bomb prior. (All three Sweeney-made devices are what the bomb experts call "signature devices," meaning there are identifying similarities linking the three to the same manufacturer.)

The idea was to frame Judi Bari, the timber industry's biggest public relations problem and most outspoken opponent, and Earth First! as bomb-using "eco-terrorists" so the industry's public relations team could use that against Prop. 130, the Forests Forever Initiative, by falsely labeling the it "the Earth First! Initiative" and calling it "too extreme." And that's exactly what they did. I've already sent you some of the documents demonstrating that.

According to the industry's campaign arguments, passage of Prop. 130 would reduce California's timber business by 70%. According to the California Timber Commission website the value of California's timber business is $14 Billion per year. Do the math, and you'll see that they were claiming a impact of $9.8 Billion per year. That's $10 BILLION a year for, say, the rest of the 1990s, or roughly $100 BILLION at stake on Prop. 130. They spent a reported $20 million to beat it. With a financial motive of that size (or even one percent of that size) would you put it past people like Charles Hurwitz and Harry Merlo and their PR minions to plan and carry out the Bari bombing as a ploy to defeat the initiative?

The Sweeney-drafted Lord's Avenger Letter appeared two days after the bombing, by which time it had become clear that Bari had survived it.

Two days is wrong. The bombing took place on Thursday, May 24. The letter was delivered to Mike Geniella's Press Democrat Ukiah bureau office on Wednesday, May 30.  That's six days later, not two.  The letter was postmarked Tuesday, May 29, but could have been dropped in the mail earlier, because Monday, May 28 was the Memorial Day postal holiday.

She knew who did it, and Sweeney knew she knew. Now he needed an alibi that put him beyond the bomb's 12-hour lead time, so he had the Avenger say that the bomb was placed in Willits almost three days before it exploded, explaining the full-day delay by claiming that it hadn't worked as designed.

Wrong again. You have no basis for saying Judi knew who did it. You're simply stating your hunch as though it were fact, as you do throughout your silly analysis. Sweeney didn't need an alibi, because no one has to prove their innocence in this country, at least before BushCo took over. But in fact Sweeney does have at least one witness to his whereabouts when the bomb was most likely placed in Oakland during the early hours of May 24.

The Avenger letter was also designed to divert attention from ex-hubbykins, the secretive, cunning and terrible-tempered Mr. Sweeney. To divert attention from himself, Sweeney wrote the Avenger letter in what he seemed to think was fundamentalist Christian prose, dragging in tree worship to implicate loggers and Christians as possible perps, two well-known groups of Bari antagonists.

The letter was designed to divert attention from the most obvious suspects in the bombing, the timber industry and its supporters who had sent written death threats to Judi, Darryl, Greg King and other Earth First!ers organizing Redwood Summer, which would draw very unwelcome media attention to the liquidation logging of the redwoods during the campaign for Prop. 130.  Abortion was chosen as the phony motive because people would readily accept it. Anti-abortion extremists were well-known for using terrorist bombings as a tactic, so they made a plausible bombing suspect group. But in fact, Judi was involved in exactly one (1) counter-demonstration against an anti-abortion rally, and that was more than a year and a half before the bombing. She organized at least scores of logging-related rallies, demonstrations and other actions, and was constantly in the media speaking out about the timber issue.

Judi didn't receive any death threats from anti-abortionists, but she got several from pro-timber people, all of them right before the bombing. The first of them has been linked by DNA to Irv Sutley, or at least with extremely high probability to a close male lineal (father or son) relative of his, as has the Argus letter. Note also that the death threats began immediately after Judi and Darryl went to the Mendo Board of Supes and demanded they do an eminent domain county seizure of LP timberlands and turn them over to the workers to operate in the public interest.

People should look at Judi's notes on the Threat card, the Argus letter and the Lord's Avenger letter, which are available online, including facsimile images of all three items and their envelopes, at
http://www.judibari.org/argus_threat_avenger_ltrs.pdfpdf    (note the underscore characters joining the words; the link won't work without them)

The Lord's Avenger letter was also intended to chill participation in Redwood Summer by threatening participants with the same thing that happened to Judi Bari. In fact, the whole last page of the three-page letter was devoted to that purpose.

Sweeney could account for his whereabouts if we accept the Avenger's explanation that the bomb was placed in Bari's car in Willits the night before she left Mendocino County for Oakland; he can't account for either of the days after the Willits meeting. (Moreover, at Willits, Bari's car was parked in the street directly in front of the huge window in the restaurant where the meeting took place. Anybody in or around Bari's vehicle would have been seen.)

As previously detailed, you're wrong about Sweeney's alibi. Moreover, you cite the visibility of Judi's car through a restaurant window at Willits  at night as evidence that the bomb could not have been placed there (and I agree, it wasn't), but you insist that Sweeney snuck into Ukiah to place the bomb in the even greater visibility of lunch-hour downtown next to the courthouse and sheriff's headquarters, while Utah Phillips sat in the doorway of the MEC strumming his guitar.

Bari herself later told Steve Talbot, the well-known PBS documentary filmmaker, that she was certain her ex-husband had bombed her because he'd blown up other things, including an old hangar at the semi-abandoned Naval air strip in Santa Rosa back in 1980 just after Sweeney and Bari had married.

You weren't there, of course, and you're paraphrasing Talbot's paraphrase of whatever Judi might have said. She might have briefly entertained the logical possibility, among many others, that Mike was responsible, but she quickly ruled it out, and not simply because, as you are so fond of saying, simply because he could never look her in the eyes if he had bombed her.

Talbot emphasized that likelihood in his documentary film on the Bari Bombing for which he was denounced by Bari, his informant!

Talbot's emphasis on Sweeney was only one of the several valid criticisms Judi stated. She wrote a detailed article about it, published in your paper under the title "Who Bombed Steve Talbot?" right after Talbot's piece first aired. A version of the article was included in her book "Timber Wars" and published elsewhere as "Who Bought Steve Talbot?" available online at www.judibari.org/talbot.html. Judi's biggest criticism of Talbot's film was that "instead of the hard-hitting expose he had promised, Talbot produced a liberal piece in the format of Unsolved Mysteries, that focuses in on the activists and little people while completely ignoring the timber corporations and letting the FBI and police slide by." She got that right; the least obvious bias to a reader or viewer lies in what a reporter or editor leaves out of a story, and especially so when the audience has no other source of information.

It's all yours, Norm Vroman. Sic 'em! You've got DNA; you've got Sweeney's history as a bomber and cult left guy; you've got lots of witnesses, including Talbot, to this or that aspect of the crime; you've now got the Bari Bombing timeline establishing Mendocino County as the scene of the crime; you've got the existing statement of Sweeney/Avenger that the crime began here.

Vroman also has enough brains to see that your non-case is a house of cards built on hearsay, rumors, false assumptions, mistaken facts, guesses, misinterpretations, incorrect analysis, bias and so forth. But since you wrote that the case is now all Vroman's, maybe you'll have the decency to stop the arrogant spouting off about that you have continued for the past 4-1/2 years at least. If it's all Vroman's, and you've presented your argument, now back off and respect his decision whether to pursue it or not. But there is faint hope you'll do that.

Sweeney's office is one block south of your office; Ms. Rinehard works out on Low Gap and lives in Redwood Valley; Cherney's in Southern Humboldt County; Karen Pickett's in Berkeley; Pam Davis is in Santa Rosa; Darlene Commingore is in Davis. Subpoena them for a swab party and we can wrap this thing up, and Mendocino County law enforcement will have racked up its biggest win ever.

And if the people you've named were DNA tested and none matched the Avenger letter DNA, would you finally shut up and keep your vow to fold the AVA?

Nicholas Wilson