On May 24, 1990, a pipe bomb exploded underneath the seat of a car driven by Bari as she and Cherney were driving through east Oakland. Bari was nearly killed in the explosion, and Cherney was injured. The pair were organizing protest actions against the timber industry’s clear cutting of old growth redwood trees.

Darryl Cherney, speaking at a Militant Labor Forum in San Francisco last month, explained that Bari began receiving death threats in the spring of 1990. Threatening phone calls, phony press releases, and inflammatory leaflets falsely attributed to Earth First! multiplied along with a violence-baiting campaign in the press. Cherney and others began to think about the possibility that a police Cointelpro-type operation was being waged against them.

"We had read books about Cointelpro, books like ones in this bookstore," Cherney said, pointing to several titles on display in the Pathfinder bookstore where the forum was held. "We knew that the FBI’s standard procedure was to take existing rifts" and deepen them, and "to fan violence" among groups.

Hours after the car explosion the two were arrested by the Oakland Police Department (OPD), working in collaboration with the FBI. The cops accused the pair of transporting an explosive device to promote "ecoterrorism."

"We’re assuming the device was placed in the car by the occupants," one Oakland cop told the San Francisco Examiner at the time. Less than two months later all charges were dropped due to lack of evidence. No one else was ever arrested for the bombing.

In 1991 Cherney and Bari sued the FBI and OPD for false arrest and for violating their constitutional rights. After more than a decade of government stalling, their lawsuit went to trial this April. Along the way the FBI and OPD as institutions were dismissed by the judge as defendants, and the individuals named in the lawsuit were winnowed down to four FBI agents and three Oakland cops.

During the trial the OPD admitted to spying on political organizations. Kevin Griswald, a cop assigned to the OPD’s "intelligence" unit, admitted on the stand to keeping files on some 300 political groups.

The jury cleared one FBI agent of any wrongdoing and all the defendants of the conspiracy charge. But they found that the remaining defendants deliberately violated the pair’s Fourth Amendment rights against false arrest and illegal searches, as well as chilling their free speech rights by casting them as the only suspects in the bombing.

A New York Times article on the lawsuit noted that "the outcome of the trial...left the large question of who is responsible for the bombing untouched."

Jim Altenberg contributed to this article.  
 
 
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