Edgar J Steele Setup: COINTELPRO Car Bombs
Not the first time the FBI set someone up with a pipe bomb
Edgar J Steele, http://conspiracypenpal.com/
Edgar J Steele is charged and jailed without trial for allegedly hiring someone to kill his wife and make it look like an accident, then right away a car bomb is found under her car, and against the wife’s wishes the judge orders no contact between them.
The car bomb is a favorite weapon of the FBI, they can kill or maim their targets, and prosecuting their surviving victims is a bonus.
That’s exactly what the FBI did in their COINTELPRO activities against Judi Bari and Daryl Cherny of Earth First! http://www.judibari.org/ Someone planted a bomb in the car, it detonated and the FBI quickly slapped the seriously injured victim with explosives charges.
Steele doesn’t mince words, and his last articles and intentions to run for office were just too much for the powers that be, and they are employing some of the same tactics they have in the past. It would be great if a copy of the alleged audio where he allegedly hired someone to kill his wife could be leaked to the public.
Let’s hope he survives any further attempts on his life in jail to demolish this clumsy frame-up in court.
Judge Uses Likely FBI-Planted Bomb as Excuse to Keep Steele Locked Up
Steele pleads not guilty shortly after bomb discovered
The Spokesman-Review
Edgar Steele
Coeur d’Alene auto shop employees found a pipe bomb attached to an SUV belonging to the alleged victim in a murder plot Tuesday, just hours before her husband pleaded not guilty to a murder-for-hire charge in federal court.
Police confirmed that the device removed Tuesday from a car registered to Edgar J. Steele, who has been in custody since Friday, was explosive and required detonation by a Spokane bomb squad.
The discovery came just hours before Steele, 64, acted as his own attorney during a 45-minute hearing in U.S. District Court attended by his wife and son.
Steele, known for his unsuccessful defense of the Aryan Nations in the landmark 2000 case that bankrupted the racist group, pleaded with U.S. District Court Judge Candy Dale to release him from jail before next week’s bail hearing to tend to his clients and “put my affairs in order.”
“I’m certainly no threat to witnesses or jurors and there’s no evidence – absolutely no evidence – to support that,” Steele said.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Traci Whelan told Dale that developments “within the last few hours” show Steele is “a substantial risk to the public,” and the judge ordered Steele held pending next week’s hearing.
Whelan was referring to the discovery of a bomb on the black 2004 Mitsubishi Endeavor Limited that a woman drove to the Fast Lane Quick Lube at West Bosanko Avenue and U.S. Highway 95 in Coeur d’Alene, about 12:30 p.m. That same car was targeted in an alleged murder plot authorities say was planned for last Friday.
A worker saw what appeared to be a pipe bomb attached to the bottom of the car, removed the vehicle from the shop bay and called police, prompting an evacuation of nearby businesses and a closure of U.S. 95.
A bomb squad unit from Spokane detonated the device, said Lt. Jay Heintz of the Coeur d’Alene Police Department. It was deemed to be explosive, but Heintz provided no additional detail.
Police also were looking at another car parked at the lube shop that may contain evidence, Heintz said.
The bomb was a 1-foot piece of galvanized pipe with cap screws, with two fuses attached to the exhaust system, shop employees said.
Workers said they were more stunned than shaken when they discovered it during a routine chassis inspection, which comes with an oil change.
“Usually, we find things like sticks,” said technician Josh Young, who first spotted the device. “We’re talking Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Nothing ever happens like this.”
Co-worker Charles Tyron said, “We were all down there gawking at it.”
Young said, “I brought her (the driver) down to show it to her. She was surprised to see it. She made comments about death threats. Her family had some issue.”
Tyron said the car’s driver was “lucky it didn’t get hot enough to ignite.”
Steele’s wife and son were at the federal courthouse in Coeur d’Alene about 4:30 p.m. for his first court appearance, where he asked to be released while awaiting a bail hearing scheduled for next Tuesday. The judge declined and ordered Steele not to contact his mother-in-law and wife.
Steele called the order “an unconscionable” assault on his marriage and asked Dale to consult Steele’s wife and son before ruling, saying they “are in no danger from me.
“They know me far better than the U.S. government does,” Steele said. “The United States government is doing everything in its power to try to drive a wedge between me and my wife,”
Steele’s wife and son, who appeared to be in his early 20s, declined interviews but spoke with Whelan at the hearing and communicated with Steele before the no-contact order.
Steele’s wife cried after the hearing and slammed her hand against a wall outside the courtroom.
“I need to be allowed to talk to my husband – I need to not be stripped of my car,” she said to court officials.
She met with federal authorities in the U.S. attorney’s office before being driven from the building. Authorities said she wasn’t in protective custody early that afternoon, but it’s unclear if that changed after the bomb was discovered.
Steele was scheduled to appear in court Monday, but the hearing was delayed after the U.S. attorney’s office in the federal courthouse in Coeur d’Alene received a letter containing a suspicious white powder and was evacuated. There’s no indication the powder is connected to Steele’s case.
Steele is charged with use of interstate commerce in the commission of murder for hire; the man he allegedly hired told the FBI of the plot, according to a probable cause affidavit.
The informant had known Steele for several years and said he heard him talk six months ago about people he wanted to kill, including his wife and mother-in-law, who lives in Oregon. The informant said he was to be paid $25,000 to make the murders appear to be automobile accidents. If Steele collected on an insurance policy, the informant would receive an additional $100,000, according to the affidavit.
The informant met with Steele in a FBI-monitored meeting June 9 at Steele’s home at 1569 Talache Road, about 10 miles south of Sandpoint near Shepherd Lake. The murders were planned for Friday; Steele said “that if the Black Endeavor were to leave he guaranteed that his wife would be driving it,” according to affidavit.
Steele gave the informant $400 to cover travel expenses to Oregon, which the informant gave to the FBI, according to the affidavit.
The informant met with Steele again on Thursday, this time wearing a recording device. The affidavit says Steele told the informant “he would receive payment when confirmation of death was received and Edgar Steele was not considered a suspect.”
Staff writers Becky Kramer, Carolyn Lamberson and Sara Leaming contributed to this report. \
Some Comments from above article
COINTELPRO Car Bombs
This artilce is old but provides a glimpse of what COINTELPRO was about when used against peaceful activists.
http://www.judibari.org/bomb-overview-Nov97.html
Overview of the Earth First! Bombing Case
Who Bombed Judi Bari?
November 1997
When Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney first filed their civil rights lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland Police Department in 1991, they were told a suit of this kind would take ten years to come to trial. Now, mid-way through year number seven, the case has gone through four name changes, two different judges and an appellate court decision. It has survived repeated attempts by the defendants to have the case thrown out, and unearthed thousands of pages of FBI files and police documents. The result is documented proof of a covert operation in 1990 against Earth First! that used the tactics of the FBI’s notorious Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO). The FBI claims that COINTELPRO was discontinued in 1975, after a congressional investigation found it involved massive violations of constitutional rights.
THE BOMBING
Just before noon on May 24th, 1990, a pipe bomb exploded beneath labor/environmental organizer Judi Bari’s driver’s seat as she and fellow activist Darryl Cherney drove through Oakland on their way to an organizing event in Santa Cruz. Judi and Darryl were the two most prominent organizers for Earth First! Redwood Summer, a planned summer-long campaign of non-violent protests in defense of California’s North Coast redwood forests. In the weeks prior to the bombing, Judi, Darryl and other Earth First! organizers received numerous and increasingly scary death threats focused on their involvement in the redwood struggle.
The bomb was hidden under the driver’s seat and triggered by a motion device, clearly a politically motivated assassination attempt. Even so, the FBI appeared on the scene within 15 minutes of the blast and seized on the attack to attempt to portray Judi and Darryl as bombers and “neutralize” their EF! organizing. Aided by the Oakland Police and in contradiction to the physical evidence, the FBI declared that the activists had been knowingly transporting the bomb on the back seat floor board of the car, and that it had exploded accidentally. According to Oakland police testimony, the FBI told them at the scene that Judi and Darryl, two non-violent activists, were “the type of individuals who would be involved in transporting explosives; bombs.”
The Oakland Police placed Judi under arrest just three hours after the blast as she struggled for her life in the hospital. Her back was broken and her pelvis shattered by the bomb that left her permanently disabled and in constant pain until her death March 2, 1997, of breast cancer. Darryl was arrested within twelve hours. The two became the focus of an FBI smear campaign that resulted in nationwide headlines declaring the activists guilty of transporting the bomb that had been used to try to kill them. After seven weeks, the Alameda County District Attorney declined to press charges; there was simply no evidence. To this day, no legitimate investigation has ever been conducted and the bombers remain at large.
THE CIVIL RIGHTS LAWSUIT
Knowing that such violence and government repression would only increase if left unchallenged, Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney filed suit against the FBI and OPD in May of 1991, charging them with false arrest and civil rights violations. The federal lawsuit claims that the FBI and Oakland police knew well that Judi and Darryl were innocent, and that they were in fact the intended targets of a brutal assassination attempt. But instead of treating it as such, the FBI launched a plan to discredit Earth First! and Judi and Darryl as organizers, in order to “neutralize” the burgeoning forest protection movement.
THE FRAME-UP
Through the lawsuit’s discovery process, we have gotten access to the FBI’s and OPD’s own documents, including striking police photos of the bombed out car that shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the bomb was hidden beneath the seat, and the FBI knew it. The files document the series of blatant lies told by the FBI and Oakland Police from the first moments after the blast.
LIE # 1: The search warrant states that the FBI claims that the bomb “was on the floor board behind the driver’s seat when it detonated.” This is disproved by the police’s own crime scene photos, which clearly show the hole in the car’s floorboard to be centered under the driver’s seat, and the back seat still intact. Also, the FBI’s own bomb expert from the lab in D.C., SSA David R. Williams, has confirmed that the bomb was hidden under the driver’s seat, and that this would have been obvious from the damage to the car.
LIE # 2: The search warrant also quotes the FBI as saying that “a separate bag of nails was discovered in the vehicle that are identical to the nails taped to the explosive device.” In fact, the nails taped to the bomb were finishing nails; while the nails found in two bags in the car were roofing nails and sinkers, quite different to the naked eye from the nails in the bomb.
LIE # 3: FBI lab bomb expert SSA Williams has also testified that the bomb was triggered by a motion device, consisting of a large ball bearing that had to roll to connect two contact points. The fact that the bomb was hidden under the car seat and triggered by the motion of the car certainly undermines FBI/OPD claims that a reasonable officer could have thought Judi and Darryl were anything but the intended targets of the bomb.
LIE # 4. In the warrant for a groundless second search of Judi’s home one month after the bombing, Oakland police claim they were told by FBI lab expert SSA Williams that nails were found in the house that matched nails in the bomb “in a batch of 200-1,000 nails.” SSA Williams has testified that he never said that, and in fact nails are made in batches of millions, and cannot be matched on that scale.
THE BOGUS INVESTIGATION
The files also document the FBI’s bogus investigation of the bombing, as page after page reveals that they used this case as an excuse to conduct a far reaching campaign of political intelligence gathering on environmentalists, both locally and nationally. Meanwhile the FBI failed to follow up on significant leads that indicate the bombing was an assassination attempt, plotted in retaliation for Judi and Darryl’s organizing activities. For instance, the death threats Judi had received before the bombing were never investigated or even sent to the FBI lab for analysis.
FBI BOMB SCHOOL
The most outrageous revelations about be FBI involvement in the bombing case have come in more recent discovery documents. Through deposition testimony, we found out an FBI “bomb school” was held in Eureka, California, just one month before Judi and Darryl were bombed in Oakland. During the week-long Bomb Investigators Training Course, the FBI blew up cars with pipe bombs and practiced responding. The teacher at bomb school was Special Agent Frank Doyle, the very same FBI bomb expert who showed up at the scene one month later in Oakland and supervised the collection of evidence. SA Doyle is credited with the pronouncement that the bomb was visible in the back seat.
Another FBI lie was uncovered when the defendants were forced to unredact previously blacked-out passages of internal FBI reports and communiqués made during the first hours after the bombing. Throughout the depositions, every FBI agent and OPD officer involved in this case denied under oath that there had been any investigation of Judi, Darryl or Earth First! prior to the bombing. Yet the passages ordered disclosed by the court show them characterizing Earth First! as suspected of terrorist activities, and stating that Darryl and Judi were already known to the FBI and were the “subjects of an FBI investigation in the terrorist field.”
The evidence that raises the most serious questions about the extent of FBI involvement in the bombing case is the FBI’s “THERMCON” file. The San Francisco FBI records of the THERMCON case, the FBI sting operation targeting Arizona Earth First! and EF! founder Dave Foreman, are key to the Oakland bombing case. Not only does it chronicle an active FBI undercover operation against EF! at the time of the bombing, THERMCON was a concerted and deliberate plot by the FBI to connect EF! with explosives in order to discredit the movement.
Most disturbing about the THERMCON file is what isn’t there. Where the documents from February through May of 1990 should be, there is a page that reads simply, “Serials 141-159 were missing from the file when it was processed.” The next document in the file is dated June 1990, one month after the bombing.
RELATED DOCUMENTS
This article was part of the November 1997 mailing from the Redwood Summer Justice Project. Read the Bombing Case Update and the letter that accompanied it.
To be placed on the mailing list to receive updates on Judi Bari’s lawsuit against the FBI, or to make a tax deductible contribution to help fund the lawsuit, please contact:
REDWOOD SUMMER JUSTICE PROJECT
P.O. Box 14720, Santa Rosa, CA 95402
Phone (707) 887-0262 or FAX (707) 887-0865
email: RJF at judibari.org
http://www.judibari.org/
Jury’s message to feds in $4.4 million verdict for Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney
(revised 6/19/02)
On June 11, 2002, a federal jury returned a stunning verdict in favor of Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney in their landmark civil rights lawsuit against four FBI agents and three Oakland Police officers.
The jury unanimously found that six of the seven FBI and OPD defendants tried to frame Judi and Darryl in an effort to crush Earth First! and chill participation in Redwood Summer. That was evident in the fact that 80% of the $4.4 million total damage award was for violation of their First Amendment rights to speak out and organize politically in defense of the forests.
“The jury exonerated us,” said Darryl Cherney. “They found the FBI to be the ones in violation of the law. The American public needs to understand that the FBI can’t be trusted. Ten jurors got a good, hard look at the FBI and they didn’t like what they saw.”
“It’s really beyond our wildest dreams,” said Darlene Comingore, Judi Bari’s friend and executor of her estate who stood in for her as co-plaintiff in this suit. “We hope the FBI and Oakland and all the police forces out there that think they can violate people’s rights and get away with it are listening because the people of the state of California and Oakland today said, ‘No, you can’t. You can’t get away with it.’ ”
Lead attorney Dennis Cunningham said the message he hopes the verdict sends is that: “Ashcroft is doing precisely the wrong thing to abandon the (Levi) guidelines and let the FBI go after dissent with a free hand. It’s clear that their intention is not about fighting terrorism, it’s about suppressing dissent. That’s what the FBI has always been about. Hopefully it will make Congress think twice about giving them a free hand.”
Please click here to continue reading this article, with more interpretation of the meaning and importance of the verdict by the media as well as by individual participants and observers, including one of the jurors.
Senseless Horrors like D-Day are Celebrated as Necessary
Russ on June 16 at 7:22 a.m.
Notice the contradictions in this story. Informant goes to FbI and implicates Steele wants Wife murdered in “car accident”. Now we find a few days later with Steele in jail that a pipe bomb is under the car. If Steele was going to pay for an “accident” and the informant was working with the FBI then how did the bomb get there. I can tell you, this is a frame up of a man that has worked on behalf of those who are not so popular merely to stand up for freedom of speech and expression. Steele was targeted not so long ago with telephone death threats and has been on the ADL’s list for extermination for some time. Isn’t it funny how all whom are considered enemies of ADL and Jewish supremacists end up being charged with something, true or not. Remember how they hounded David Duke. When they cannot get you to do anything illegal then it appears something is made up to destroy anyone who tells the truth. Ask yourself this: Why would a man that just came out of the hospital around Christmas immediately start planning the murder of his closest people? No, near death makes people closer. This is another randy Weaver in my book, or perhaps a Matt Hale. I will not believe a man of the intelligence as Steele would be so stupid and plan something so juvenile. Besides, if Steele wanted to murder someone I am sure it would NOT be his Wife and family. Our government is going too far. Denied bail for what reason? He has no criminal history. Voice tapes can be made of a person’s voice if that person has a lot of voice tapes out in the public, which Steele does. Today’s technology can do anything and make anyone look guilty. Steele is NOT guilty and I know it. Pipe bombs under cars when FBI knew prior that a car accident was the supposed murder weapon is crazy. Why did FBI not check? Why did FBI not contact Wife and tell her not to go near car? Because the story is untrue. Someone wanted to make Steel lok guilty or wanted him dead or both, but when informant said accident, then a bomb is found, who put it there, since the informant was working for FBI? One of Steele’s children could have driven the car. Do you people not see the holes in this story? Big gaping holes and contradictions. Just my opinions, so please don’t arrest me next. :)
Russ on June 16 at 7:40 a.m.
Let’s just say you are FBI and you arrest Steele. Wouldn’t the next thing you do is have someone close to the supposed victim and make sure the auto that was supposed to be the death weapon, was safe? Why two days later a bomb is found? of course that would be obvious and not accidental and would be easy to find if Steele had any knowledge of how to make such.
It sounds to me like whoever is wanting to set up Steele failed when the bomb did not go off. The so called informant went to FBI thinking bomb was set. Funny that part was missing in his information. I think the FBI best check the informant out very carefully. This smells real bad and the way the media tries a person before he is guilty is obscene. Racist, nazi and defender of such and such. Media makes an impartial jury impossible. Just because white folks protest our enslavement does not make us anything. I remember Blacks burning Los Angeles and they are considered heros today who were only fighting for their civil rights. Why when a white organization protests and speaks about the unjust system, are we considered racists, nazis and anti-semites, even acting peacefully? it seems those are key propaganda words to defuse the topic and smear the person, who has to resort to defending his name, so all subject matter is lost. I say let the facts come out and until then the media should stop the “Hate Lawyer arrested” type headlines for their biased stories. Just my opinions now, or is it illegal for me to have an independent thought? I think it’s coming to that if ADL and other hate orginizations have their way..