A major aim of the break-ins was to destroy the United Farm Workers union led by César Chávez. The black-bag jobs were at least partly financed by major growers and agribusiness organizations.

The guilty plea, entered in Santa Clara County Superior Court, effectively short-circuited a trial that threatened to implicate the FBI, CIA, growers, politicians, the local cops, and the utilities companies in the crimes and a subsequent cover-up.

The burglaries came to light last December when Ducote was accused of defrauding several growers of $30,000.

Ducote freely admitted having committed the burglaries in the mid-1960s, apparently believing no charges could be filed against him because the statute of limitations on the break-ins had already run out.

He described how he and two accomplices had broken into the offices of labor, civil libertarian, and radical groups and individuals, in some cases at the behest of an anti-UFW grower, who was seeking the derogatory information about the union.

Ducote also implicated at least two members of Congress, the FBI, the CIA, and the Pacific Gas and Electric Company as among those who had been given access to stolen property or information.  
 
May 21, 1951
Under the irresistible pressure of the Iranian masses whose revolutionary ferment is rising to a fever pitch, the Majlis, Iran's Parliament, is carrying through the measure nationalizing the British-owned oil industry. The Laborite flunkeys of British imperialism employed every device to balk the nationalization and are now threatening to occupy the oil fields. Defense Minister Shinwell, who had previously hurled one threat after another, has issued an alert order to British parachute troops. The Iranian press has responded with a counter-threat of "holy war" against Britain.

The Iranian crisis, precipitated by the nationalization move, is aggravated by the highly strategic importance of this country and its vast oil reserves in the Middle East.

At stake for British imperialism is its largest remaining foreign investment, valued at well over one billion dollars. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which Iran is now preparing to take over, supplies one-third of Britain's total oil needs and keeps the British Navy running.

Britain's exploitation of Iran has been ruthless. Production costs in the Near East oil industry are the lowest in the world and Iranian costs and wages are at the bottom of this wretched scale.

It has been British policy to keep Iran in degradation precisely in order to keep oil costs "nominal," that is, continue to extract fabulous wealth while paying little or nothing in return.  
 
 
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