Darryl Cherney Music

Cherney: I would say that writing articles and books about monkeywrenching is itself a form of monkeywrenching, because you can monkeywrench a thought as much as you can monkeywrench a piece of machinery. Just putting out a book on monkeywrenching—or providing a forum for discussing monkeywrenching tactics, as Earth First! Journal does—causes the federal government and the corporations to say, "Whoa! What's going on here? Who are these people?" Earth First! owes its reputation as much to what its members have written as to any actual acts of sabotage that have taken place, which are very few and far between.

There was so much disinformation going around that I felt compelled to leave a paper trail. Somebody was trying to set us up for something.

Cherney: Earth First! has never used explosives, has never used guns, has never used knives, has never used fists. We've barely even given anybody the finger.

King: You say that the FBI has been dogging Earth First! since 1982. How do you know this?

Cherney: Susan Zakin, author of the Earth First! exposé Coyotes and Town Dogs, did the first Freedom of Information Act request for FBI records on Earth First!, and PBS-TV producer Steve Talbot uncovered some of the early FBI documents on us. The paperwork shows that from 1982 to 1987 the FBI was very interested in Earth First!, but as far as we can tell, they had not yet launched a major campaign to destroy us. That started in earnest in 1988.

I think part of what precipitated the FBI's campaign against Earth First! was the fall of Communism and the disabling of the American Indian Movement and the Black Panther movement. By 1989 the FBI was looking for new enemies.

King: Did you have any first-hand experience with the FBI prior to the bombing?

Cherney: I'd long been aware of the FBI's scrutiny of us—from the arrest of the Arizona Five and the arrest of seven people in Montana for tree spiking, all of whom were proven innocent when they found the real tree spiker three years later. But the first time I ever talked to an FBI agent was shortly before the bombing. I contacted agent Stan Walker in Humboldt County about the ongoing disinformation campaign against us, which painted us as a violent movement. Specifically I called him after a local logging family received a bomb threat at their house. The family blamed us, and I told Walker we weren't involved.

Cherney: Not at all. I knew exactly what I was doing. There was so much disinformation going around that I felt compelled to leave a paper trail. Somebody was trying to set us up for something. Not only that, Judi and I had received so many death threats that we felt pretty certain somebody was going to make an attempt on our lives. We had no idea that we were going to be blamed for the attempt ourselves, of course.

I also called John Campbell, the president of Pacific Lumber Company, after fake Earth First! press releases were distributed. I asked if he would go on television with me and hold a press conference to get to the truth, and he refused. But I'm glad I called him. I live by something you said to me a long time ago: It's always good to talk. By talking to people, you humanize yourself; you take away some of their ability to demonize you.

Cherney: When we took the deposition of officer Kevin Griswald, he said that the OPD maintained files on more than three hundred activist groups, including Earth First!—which is interesting, because Earth First! has had virtually no activity, in its entire history, in the city of Oakland. But Griswald testified that the OPD had been monitoring Earth First! since around 1988. When the Golden Gate Bridge action occurred on April 24, 1990—one month to the day before the bombing—Griswald traveled from Oakland to search our cars in Marin County. Now, what was an Oakland police officer doing in Marin County? It turned out that Griswald had a very close relationship with the FBI. In fact, the Oakland Police Department and the FBI have a long history of working together that dates back to the days of the Black Panthers, who had a strong presence in Oakland.

In his deposition, Griswald testified that he'd been given a tip about the bombing. Special Agent Phil Sena had informed Griswald a month before that there could be some kind of action, maybe even a bombing, in Santa Cruz. (Again, why tell the Oakland Police Department and not the Santa Cruz Sheriff's Department?)

Now, multiple agents and Oakland police officers have testified that the FBI had advance knowledge of the bombing. And only the bomber, or possibly an accomplice, could have given them that knowledge. That means that the FBI was using a hit man as its source of information, which, as we know from all the news reports over the last several years, is the way the FBI operates.

King: The events of September 11 changed the dynamics of your lawsuit against the FBI. Most immediately, the trial, originally scheduled for early October, was postponed until April 8 of this year. Then there was the temporary elevation of the FBI's stature in the public mind. FBI agents were the heroes who would fight the terrorists and keep us safe. And right-wingers like Alaska's Republican Congressman Don Young advised the government to start rounding up "eco-terrorists," too.

Cherney: First of all, I think it was firemen and policemen, not the FBI, who became working-class heroes. The FBI, on the other hand, has been consistently seen in a bad light since September 11. Questions continue to arise as to how our national-security apparatus allowed this to happen, especially since we had the "twentieth pilot" in custody in the Midwest at the time. The FBI disgraced themselves further when they didn't even bother to test the anthrax sent to Tom Brokaw for a full seven days. Which just goes to show that, no matter how high-profile the case, the FBI manages to bumble it. There are legions of books written by former agents that document how corrupt, incompetent, and criminal the FBI is.