Cal­i­for­nia Under Ronald Reagan

Part 2a 44:14 | Part 2b 44:43 | Part 2c 44:16 | Part 2d 44:18 | Part 2e 44:22 | Part 2f 41:25
(Recorded August 28, 1986)

When Ronald Rea­gan was Gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia, the state was the focal point of a num­ber of highly vis­i­ble, influ­en­tial and politically-connected mur­ders and ter­ror­ist plots (real and alleged) asso­ci­ated with activism in the African-American com­mu­nity and/or anti-Vietnam war move­ment. This pro­gram sets forth and ana­lyzes evi­dence link­ing much of this vio­lence to infil­tra­tion and provo­ca­tion by ele­ments of law-enforcement and the intel­li­gence community.

The broad­cast begins with dis­cus­sion of the Crim­i­nal Con­spir­acy Sec­tion of the Los Ange­les Police Depart­ment, an intel­li­gence unit of LAPD involved with polit­i­cal espi­onage, fre­quently con­ducted in con­junc­tion with ele­ments of the fed­eral law enforce­ment and intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment (FBI and CIA in par­tic­u­lar.) Tar­get­ing ele­ments of the polit­i­cal left (the Black Pan­thers and related ele­ments in par­tic­u­lar), the unit was alleged by Louis Tack­wood (one of its oper­a­tives) to have delib­er­ately engaged in crim­i­nal activ­i­ties, includ­ing mur­der. The unit oper­ated out­side of the city of Los Ange­les and even out­side of Cal­i­for­nia. (By func­tion­ing out­side of its munic­i­pal juris­dic­tion, the unit was oper­at­ing illegally.)

One of Tackwood’s most star­tling rev­e­la­tions con­cerns the “Squad 19″ or “San Diego” con­spir­acy. Tackwood’s dis­clo­sures out­line a plan for the CCS (oper­at­ing in con­cert with ele­ments of the CIA and the Nixon White House) to stage a vio­lent inci­dent at the 1972 Repub­li­can Con­ven­tion in San Diego. This inci­dent, to be blamed on “left-wing mil­i­tants,” was to be used as a pre­text for sus­pend­ing the ’72 elec­tions and, in effect, insti­tut­ing mar­tial law. (Tack­wood passed a poly­graph exam­i­na­tion and his alle­ga­tions were sub­stan­ti­ated by the Los Ange­les Times, Wash­ing­ton Post and Newsweek.)

Next, the pro­gram dis­cusses Oper­a­tion Gar­den Plot, a late’60’s and early ‘70’s pro­gram which coor­di­nated local police, FBI, and mil­i­tary intel­li­gence activ­i­ties against the polit­i­cal left, the anti-Vietnam war move­ment in par­tic­u­lar. Super­vised by then Rea­gan legal adviser Edwin Meese (later U.S. Attor­ney Gen­eral under Rea­gan), the under­tak­ing spawned the plans for mar­tial law, which were devel­oped by Oliver North’s National Secu­rity Coun­cil in the 1980’s. (AFA-23 directly antic­i­pated the Rex 84 mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans that were pub­licly revealed in July of 1987, nearly a year later.)

Much of the pro­gram deals with abun­dant evi­dence that the Sym­bianese Lib­er­a­tion Army were an “agents prova­teurs,” oper­at­ing on behalf of ele­ments of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment. This por­tion of the broad­cast draws on the sem­i­nal research on the SLA by Mr. Emory’s dear friend and col­league the late Mae Brussell.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: evi­dence link­ing the CCS’s oper­a­tions to a num­ber of vio­lent deaths in the Black Pan­ther Party; Tackwood’s con­tention that the CCS was involved in the fram­ing of Elmer “Geron­imo” Pratt (a Black Pan­ther Party mem­ber wrongly con­victed of mur­der and later freed after decades of impris­on­ment); Tackwood’s con­tention that CCS was involved in the death of black activist George Jack­son and that of his brother; Tackwood’s alle­ga­tion that CCS was involved in fram­ing black activist Angela Davis; evi­dence link­ing the Squad 19 con­spir­acy to Water­gate; evi­dence sug­gest­ing that the oper­a­tions orig­i­nally sched­uled for San Diego may have evolved into dis­tur­bances at the con­ven­tion in Miami (the event was moved to that city); evi­dence that the var­i­ous crimes of the SLA were aided and abet­ted by local police, as well as ele­ments of the fed­eral law enforce­ment estab­lish­ment; evi­dence that the SLA’s oper­a­tions served as a pre­text for crack­ing down on polit­i­cal activism and restrict­ing civil lib­er­ties; infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that the oper­a­tions that took place in Cal­i­for­nia under the Rea­gan guber­na­to­r­ial admin­is­tra­tions served as the foun­da­tion for sim­i­lar machi­na­tions con­ducted at the fed­eral level when Rea­gan became President.