-Caveat Lector-
http://sf.indymedia.org/display.php?id=100562#100564
Jim
by nessie May 15 2001, Tue, 10:56am
Jim Squatter
Jim Squatter is an anarchist. He's not a typical
anarchist, but then, which of us is? Though not a
pacifist, Jim is an avid, ardent peace monger.
Mongering peace takes up much of Jim's life as, he
would say, it should yours. He would say, too, for
he's never one to bite his tongue about something
important. On the contrary, Jim is a loudmouth. It
makes him a thorn in the side of the state.
I met Jim in the early eighties. He occupied abandoned
buildings in San Francisco for a living then, which is
how he copped the moniker. He wasn't alone in there.
There was a regular tribe of them. Jim spent most of
his time organizing the others. For American.
squatters they had remarkable success, at least for a
while. Alas, this isn't Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Lima or
Berlin. Squatting at all in San Francisco is no piece
of cake. Organized squatting, out in the open, and in
the cop's face, is a feat to be proud of. It earned
him his reputation, some jail time, and not a few
bruises.
Jim is a pretty good organizer. I'm not sure where he
learned how to do it, It probably wasn't in what he
calls the "Air Farce" and for sure it was not in the
nut house. Maybe he figured it out on his own. Maybe
he's just a natural. He reads a lot, which must be of
some help. Mostly, he just listens when other people
talk. Jim really cares what you have to say. That's a
whole lot of the organizing process, right there. In a
meeting, he can be fairly charismatic. Out of a
meeting, he's mostly just a guy from the block. That
is, unless he's just thought of something you could be
doing right now for The Cause. Then he turns on the
charm. Jim can be quite charming, when he wants to be.
It's very persuasive.
Jim is also totally fearless. I lost track of how many
times he's been arrested. Twice the SFPD took him out
to Golden Gate Park, beat the living bejeezus out of
him and left him there bleeding. The Santa Crux cops
left him in a paddy wagon out in the sun for a couple
of hours once with no water and a face full of mace
(on the six o'clock news, no less). Jim doesn't quit.
He once went after five skin heads, alone, up on
Haight St. Lucky for them, they had a head start. He
can cover my back any day of the week, a task I don't
trust most folks to be able to handle. Money and
secrets are safe in his hands. He's on a very short
list, indeed. Indeed, I wish it was longer.
Judi Bari driving to Jim's house when the terrorist's
nail bomb went off under the front seat, maiming her
for life, but not intimidating her in the least. She
had just left David Kimnitzer's house, where she had
spent the night.
Two days earlier, after eighteen years with David,
Stephanie Massey left him, and moved in with Jim.
She's ten years Jim's senior, has been around more,
and is much better educated. As near as I can tell,
she's the best thing that ever happened to him. Aside
from the education, which never hurts anyone,
Stephanie is also just naturally smarter than hell.
She knows what she's doing, or else she don't try.
She, too, is totally fearless, a feat in itself for
some one that short. She too, has a pretty loud mouth.
Stephanie bought a house near downtown Oakland in a
thoroughly mixed area. The previous owners had been
driven out by the crack heads next door. Jim and Step
still hadn't unpacked all their stuff when I came by
and taped this interview. The crack heads were already
making plans to move out. This was not of Jim and
Stuffs doing. The crack heads had cooked in their own
soup. The whole fed up neighborhood had organized
against them before Jim and Step ever showed up. It
can be done. You don't need the help of experienced
organizers to organize. You can do it yourself. Do it
today. That's what Jim would say. It is the truth.
I copped a number on the corner. Jim and I blew about
half. It tasted to me like Humboldt's finest. Jim
thought it was from Mendocino. Half was clearly
enough. We closed the front window, so as to be not
overheard from the street. It's an old local custom.
I flipped on the tape.
Nessie: OK, so lets brainstorm this thing a while. Why
was Judi at Seeds of Peace house the night before the
bomb went off?
Squatter: We had a meeting that, uh, we decided there
was this series of meetings about one a month I think,
maybe even one every two weeks, where we were going up
the coast (I think the first one was in Arcata) then
we went to . . . the next one was down in Laytonville.
At one of these meetings we decided the next meeting
was gonna be down in the Bay Area at Seeds house and
it'll be pretty much the final, major meeting before
the beginning of the whole she bang.
Nessie: Redwood Summer?
Squatter: Right. We had lots of business, and we
y'know . . . this meeting . . . It was publicly known.
It wasn't advertised, but anybody that wanted to know
could know, pretty much. You come to a meeting and
they were open, y'know meeting as usual, anybody that
shows up. This one down at Seeds house. had been set
up at the previous meeting so there was two weeks to
get the word around, and it was word of mouth. I don't
think there was ever a leaflet, or anything like that.
Kinda we wanted core people there for the final
planning of the event.
Nessie: It was discussed on the telephone?
Squatter: Undoubtedly. Undoubtedly. Uh, people began
to arrive in the late afternoon. I remember George
Shook and Darryl showed up and they needed something .
. . guitar strings, maybe . . . something musical.
They went off to a music store. Then other people
start showing up, Mike Russell, and at some point
Darryl, no not Darryl, uh, Judi showed up, and the
gang was all there. As I recall we may even have had
dinner during the meeting. It was a pretty long
meeting. It must have gone on four or five hours.
Meanwhile all the vehicles are parked out in front of
our house. In our neighborhood. Our neighborhood at
the time (long pause) is kinda low income/high crack.
That's how I'd describe it. Lots of stuff on the
street. It would be easy to be not noticed in some
ways in our neighborhood. And nobody's gonna confront
you, probably. Except to ask you if you Wanda buy
crack. That's the only confrontation you might get
into. After the meeting there's a smoking session, and
then, uh, I guess some time during that, David and
Judi . . . Judi needed a place to stay, and she went
over to David's house.
Nessie: David Kimnitzer's house?
Squatter: Yeah. David Kimnitzer's house; and he lived
there with Stephanie at the time, and probably
Christopher. Yeah, Christopher was there.
(Christopher was, at the time, a foster kid. David and
Stephanie habitually took in strays, bunches of 'em.
Theirs was a warm and lively house.)
Nessie: Was this the house on 59th?
Squatter: No, this the house that I just left, on
23rd. Seeds house at the time was on California, near
Alcatraz. From what I gather, they stayed up fairly
late talking, probably 2:00 or 3:00. Then they
crashed. She crashed in the back bedroom where Step
and I slept. He slept in the master bedroom. I think
Christopher slept down on the couch.
Nessie: "He slept in the master bedroom." That was
David?
Squatter: Yeah, David Kimnitzer.
Nessie: I'm gonna talk to him about this next.
Squatter: So the potential for the bomb to be placed
would have been in front of our house during the
meeting . . . Now I would imagine somebody would have
been answering the phone. The phone was ringing non
stop. We're getting close to an action; the phone is
ringing a lot. Somebody's going up front to at least
answer the phone occasionally, during the meeting. I
don't think we disconnected it, though we may have,
and put that machine on. But that was pretty rare. Of
course that was the kind of meeting where we might
have done it.
Nessie: During the meeting, anyway?
Squatter: Yeah. It's possible. So it'd be in front of
our house or while they slept that night. It could
have been any time after they got there, but I don't
think that they arrived, probably, at David's house
until eleven or midnight. In that range. So it'd been
pretty late by the time they even got there. The next
morning . . . I slept over our house in that front
room there. I don't think Stephanie even slept over
that night. She'd just moved into her own place on
45th. I think she slept there. The next morning,
people were up.
Nessie: You were already sleeping with Stephanie by
then, right?
Squatter: Yeah. Yep. And that was starting to cause
problems. It was beginning to cause problems,
frictions. That's about when the friction started. So,
um, that morning Shannon had to take some camera ready
or close to camera ready copy, something like that,
over to David. They did something on the computer.
Judi was there, Shannon was there, and David. Chris
would have probably have gone to school. Though school
might have been out. It was like the twenty-fifth of
May. So it's towards the end of school. He may have
gone. He did. They had to do some, something . . .
like he needed money for something. David had to go to
the bank or some shit like that.
Nessie: There was something that made David tail
behind her.
Squatter: About five minutes. Yeah, about five or ten
minutes. I think it was . . .
Nessie: He had to stop somewhere?
Squatter: Yeah, something. David had a couple
transactions, like he went to get donuts that morning
and then he had to go to the bank to get the kid money
for school or some shit like that. No. Then he went
back to the house and they did something on the
computer or something . . . yeah, that's it . . . the
computer . . .
So they finished tap tapping on the computer. Shannon
and . . . Where were her kids? Up north.
Nessie: Judi's kids?
Squatter: Yeah.
Nessie: They didn't come down on the trip?
Squatter: Right. Up north because she ended up doing a
gig in Santa Cruz. Yeah, that was the big deal: that
evening they had a show in Santa Cruz. They might have
been getting a leaflet together for the show put
together or something. I can't remember what it was
exactly. Anywise, Shannon and Judi split from David's
house and I assume they drove the route we always do:
down the hill and, uh, and on up to Park Blvd.
Nessie: Shannon's a Seeds person, right? Not Shannon
the stripper?
Squatter: Yeah. She's with Seeds. Not the stripper.
The other one. And I believe Shannon is following
Judi, which is kinda odd again. You'd think that
Shannon would be leading. She may have been. She may
have looked back. Anyway, they get down by the light
by the high school; the bomb goes off, and y'know, the
car comes to rest against that kinda walking guardrail
thing; Shannon pulls over; shortly thereafter the
police show up; then David . . .
Nessie: Where were you at that moment?
Squatter: At the house. I was at the house.
Nessie: 23rd St.?
Squatter: No.
Nessie: At Seeds house?
Squatter: At Seeds house. At Seeds house on
California. We don't know anything. We were at the
house; we don't know zip. We're far away, can't hear
the bomb or nothing. So at the time of the bombing, I
know exactly what's happening. Now it slows down to
slow motion for me.
I am supposed to be taking a check over to an
insurance agent in San Francisco to buy liability
insurance for Redwood Summer, for the whole summer.
It's gonna cost twelve hundred bucks for the entire
summer. I'm supposed to be there at two.
I got some time. I'm not gonna be late. Alex, and E.
J., and Sarah are the only people in the house.
I ask Alex and E. J., "Hey, let's smoke a joint."
Together, we somehow scrape up the last joint in Seeds
land, roll that sucker up, and we're going out the
back door, down the back steps to the yard to smoke
it. The thing about smokin' in the house, we said,
nah, somebody might walk in.
Nessie: (Laughs)
Squatter: (Laughs)
Both: (Laugh some more)
Squatter: Somebody might walk in . . . it might be
somebody straight. So we go out the back door . . .
we're going down the steps. Alex is in front of me,
E.J. is behind me. I get to the second to last step of
the steps, and there's a little hesitation, the
slightest of hesitation. At which point I think, for a
split moment, y'know, I think there's somebody there;
I should jump over this back wall. I decide, no,
y'know, I'm going to go forward and confront this,
what ever it is.
This is all . . . all these thoughts are taking the
amount of time it takes to move one foot off the step
and be reaching for the next one.
Nessie: Well, did you think it was the cops or did you
think it was the robbers?
Squatter: I thought it was the robbers. I did not
think, you know, there was that flash, but I didn't
think it was that heavy. You know the neighborhood.
You know, it was a drunk in our yard or some bullshit.
By the time my foot reaches down to the next step,
we're both flying through air. We've been grabbed by
the chest and yanked off the stairs, one to one side
and one to the other, and E.J. was being dragged down
behind us. This guy rushes up, sort of, as we're being
jerked down, he's being jerked down as well.
Nessie: They didn't tell you you were under arrest or
anything?
Squatter: No.
Nessie: Did they identify themselves or anything?
Squatter: No, there's no sound, there's no . . .
Nessie: What'd they look like? Were they in suits?
Squatter: No, wait, hold on. I'm still moving at that
. . . (snaps fingers twice)
Nessie: (laughs)
Squatter: At this point the brain is firing about
forty thousand synapses a second.
Nessie: Right.
Squatter: And as I'm being jerked to the side, I look,
not at the person jerking me, but at a person that's
gonna rush by me and grab E. J. And he's . . . they're
not in uniform. They're wearing jackets, and what I
realize is, is they have flak jackets with blue
windbreakers on.
I turn and look at this guy that's kinda now standing
back; he's immediately pulling down kinda past me to
the side and there's all these guys with guns around
saying, "Freeze," and "Put your hands up," You know,
those kind of declarations, commands . . .
Nessie: That's when you realized they weren't robbers?
Squatter: Yeah, and at the same time as we're putting
our hands up, Alex has a lighter and a joint in his
hand and he's throwing them under the bus as his hands
are going up. And I see them skitter over, and I go,
cool, they didn't see it. That's the first thought I
had. Y'know? Cool! We're not gonna get busted for pot.
I look over and realize that this guy is wearing a
Treasury Department tag, dog tag, with a big shield on
it, type thing. And this is no petty pot bust.
At this point, I'm now spinning around.
Since that hesitation, now has elapsed one and a half
seconds, maybe. I'm being whirled around and put hands
up, y'know, against the wall, patted down. And I'm to
not to look around. I turn around, see "ATF", in
letters on the back of this guys jacket, "Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms."
Nessie: Treasury Department?
Squatter: "Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms" !?! This is
big, heavy . . . big time heavy. This is . . . I was
beginning . . . And more cops are sliding down the
wall of our house because there's busses parked in the
driveway and there's just this narrow way. More cops
are continuingly coming into the back yard. They're
running up the stairs, y'know, lookin' in the back
door, and stuff.
I turn and they say, "Don't say anything! Remain
silent."
Y'know, and I'm kinda (unintelligible) and it's
forced, and I say, "Don't say anything. Don't tell 'em
anything," and, "Demand to see an attorney."
And at that point I turned my head, and he kinda bangs
my head against the wall and says, "Don't turn
around!"
I said, "What am I being charged with? What's the
crime? I want an attorney. We're not gonna say
anything."
"Fuck you," basically. And this . . . at that point I
had seven guns, I counted, I think, pointed at our
heads, at the back of our heads. Maybe our chests, the
back of our chests.
Nessie: It was probably the chest.
Squatter: Yeah. But there's seven of 'em so they're
not gonna miss. There was only three of us, that's two
per, plus an extra. So we're not going anywhere. And
they start . . . they pass down . . . put us in the
cuffs. And then we get taken out in the front yard,
ultimately, after they try to ask just one question
and we don't say anything.
So I'm continually asking, "What am I being charged
with? Where is your warrant?" and, "I want an
attorney."
Y'know, the basic litany. They're telling me to shut
up. They're putting us against the neighbor's garage,
basically, up in the front of it.
Just this minute, I saw Wit, walking down the street,
towards us from across Alcatraz. And I turned around
and kinda show him my handcuffs.
Nessie: (laughs)
Squatter: I see Wit turn the corner and start walking
away and . . . Ah! Somebody in the world knows where
we are and what's happening. Y'know? Good. We're one
step better than we were thirty seconds ago. At this
point . . .
Nessie: Was he alone?
Squatter: He was alone walking down the street,
towards us. He never crossed Alcatraz; he turned right
on Alcatraz and walked away, it turns out, to his
gurlfriend's house, where he didn't do anything for
the entire time. But, oh well.
Nessie: You were expecting him to get a lawyer, maybe?
Squatter: Or something.
Nessie: (laughing) Not a commando raid?
Squatter: (laughs) Well, I'd have settled for some
phone calls, but . . . oh well . . . And so the next
thing that happens is that back from the corner . . .
oh no . . . All these people kept coming to our house.
Like us. But we kept coming home and getting . . .
first they have us and then they say, "Is there
anybody . . ."
First they said, "Is the door into the house booby
trapped?'
And we started laughing. But they didn't know what
laughing meant. And they got really uptight. So we're
like, "No, no, no, man, y'know you kinda caught us off
guard there."
We were laughing, y'know, like me and the Mansons,
y'know. So they go . . .
Nessie: Hey, they don't know! The guy called 'em up
and like, "What are you doing today? OK. You'll be
raiding a hippie house"
"OK, where is it?"
"We don't know."
Squatter: On ten minutes notice.
Nessie: Ten minute's notice. Well, we don't know, see.
Squatter: We don't know.
Nessie: This is very important. How long from when the
bomb went off until they came in your door?
Squatter: I don't know. To be quite honest, I don't
know. I could sit down with some other people and get
it down to the exact, y'know, with in a couple
minutes.
Nessie: This is a crucial piece of the case, here.
Squatter: I know it. It's a crucial piece of the case,
but it's been more'n three years now. (laughing)
There's been a lot of other cases in the last three
years.
Nessie: This is true.
Squatter: And then we got cases going back as far as
'84.
Nessie: Yeah, right.
Squatter: And I've had . . . they've involved so many
. . . I mean, shit . . . the flag burning case . . . I
mean, case after case after case, y'know. But my
guesstimate is when it all went down . . . my
appointment was two o'clock, it was forty minutes,
really forty minutes by BART. So it was not after
fifteen after one. Which would mean that's an hour
later. It might have been as much as twelve
fifteen-twelve thirty. Which is real right after.
Now they assembled a team that included federales,
OPD, and Berkeley. Several different versions of
federales, ATF, Treasury Department which I think ATF
is under, and the FBI. So that must take at a half
hour coordination, in my . . .
Nessie: Were there self identified FBI men in the raid
on your house?
Squatter: Self identified?
Nessie: Did anybody have an FBI badge, jacket, or
anything?
Squatter: Jacket, yeah. Blue jackets with FBI on the
back just like the ATF.
Nessie: The ATF, the FBI, and who else?
Squatter: The guy with the Treasury Department tags,
but ATF is under the Treasury Department. It could be
the same, I don't know. He seemed to be kinda in
charge. OPD, both street guys and detectives. And we
had Berkeley, who was out in left field. Berkeley did
not have a clue. They didn't know why they were there,
They didn't know what was going on. And that's for
sure.
Nessie: How many uniformed Berkeley cops were there?
Squatter: Different times, different numbers. In the
beginning, just two, I think.
Nessie: And they were clueless? They were acting
clueless?
Squatter: They were clueless. They didn't have to act.
Nessie: I don't supposed you remember their names.
Squatter: Nah. It's all written down though. Sarah
probably has notes on 'em. If she don't, Seeds
probably has notes on 'em. Bill Simpich probably does.
We've given him information out of our files. We've
made copies'n stuff. All that.
But, so they ask us if anybody's inside, and we're
like, "Is anybody inside?"
"I think Sarah is, yeah, right. We think one person
is. We think Sarah is."
So they get the three cops, one on each side of the
door and one in the middle, y'know, the whole . . .
fucking One Adam Twelve number, y'know? And, uh, they
knock on the door.
"Open up in the name of the police! In the name of the
Law!" What ever.
Nessie: Sarah is a doctrinaire, religious pacifist.
Squatter: Not only that, she thinks it's somebody
fucking around.
Nessie: (laughs for a long time)
Squatter: (laughing) So . . .
Nessie: She thought it was you playing a joke! (falls
off couch, ROTFL)
Squatter: Right! And it's like, "Blam, blam, blam!!!"
They're knocking really hard on the door and "Open up
in the name of the Police!"
And they're just about to kick down the door, when I
like, "Hold it! Hold it! It's not locked! Just like
open it. Don't kick it down. Y'know we don't wanna
have to pay. And the landlord'll get pissed. All like
that, y'know. Just open it."
So at that point they decide that opening it, though
it's not as dramatic, gives you a certain advantage of
speed and, y'know, suddenness that . . .
Nessie: So they debated this for a little while?
Squatter: Well it seem like they kinda got it, and so
they decide . . .
Nessie: Which cops went in the door? You said three
cops were at the door. Which departments?
Squatter: Wait. We haven't gotten to that part, yet.
Nessie: (laughs)
Squatter: (getting to the good part, leaps up, begins
shouting and gesticulating, miming out his narrative)
They got one guy on the door! Two guys with guns!
Other guy with gun drawn! They start to open it!
Just then Sarah opens it on her side. (laughs) "Cause
they pounded so hard the last time, she figures, fuck,
these fuckers are gonna break the door. So she comes
to like . . .they're (yells) "Ya da, da, da, da, da.
"So she's in a (yells) "Ya da, da, da, da da" mood,
y'know. And they open the door! (swings open imaginary
door) and they open the door on each other! (bulges
eyes in mock surprise) She's like, three guns to her
head! She's like, "Oh, well, you could have called."
Nessie: (Falls off couch again laughing, kicks over
ashtray)
Squatter: She had a one liner like that. I can't
remember what it was. She had a perfect one liner. But
after that, she was obviously freaked out and she
didn't say nothing else.
Nessie: Still no warrant?
Squatter: Warrant!?! We never . . .Warrant!?! Listen
to this one. No warrant. They get her. They put her in
handcuffs. It this point somebody else in Seeds,
Stephanie . .Stephanie works for the Fire Department.
She drives an official little Fire Department car, and
she looks like her little officious Fire Department
Lady self. She drives up. She sees what's going on.
Somebody signals with the handcuffs. At this point
they think it's me. They grab me and they handcuff me
to a post at the back of the garage, kinda to the
ground so that I can't signal any more.
She asks the cop, "What seem to be the . . . What's
going on here?"
The cop tells her exactly what's going on. She steps
into the Yemeni guy's convenience store, "Mind if I
use your phone?"
They recognize her and sez, "Oh, no. It's about those
people? Very nice people. Absolutely. Use our phone
free."
She calls an attorney, Malcolm. Malcolm goes ('cause
there's cops at her house, she's already been by there
and decided not to go in) . . .
Nessie: Was her car parked on the street in front of
the house at the same time as Judi's was, when the
bomb was planted?
Squatter: At night? No it was her house on 45th.
Nessie: How about at the meeting earlier?
Squatter: Probably at our house.
Nessie: So they knew who she was?
Squatter: Nah.
Nessie: They were surprised?
Squatter: Well, here's this official looking car . . .
Nessie: Oh yeah! Fire Department, right!?!
Squatter: Right.
Nessie: But if it happened during the meeting, who
ever planted the bomb, did it near Stephanie's car,
which stands out.
Squatter: No, because it could have been done in front
of David's house and her car wasn't there; it was in
front of her house. So it doesn't necessarily . . .
Nessie: Where were you?
Squatter: So at this point they have four of us out
front, and here comes the truck! The people on the
food and dumpster run! They're gonna be in this show,
and . . .Some of them are like collecting food. They
pull . . . Oh, before they pull up, this hippie, this
hippie that lives down the block, he comes walking
down the street. He gets to our corner, and the cops
go, "Get him!"
This poor innocent dude, they jump him, and he's like
freaked out, so he gets up and he runs away. They drop
him on the pavement, open his head up on the pavement.
Nessie: Did they identify themselves to him? Or did
they just grab him?
Squatter: They just grabbed him. There was no
identifying . . . all that One Adam Twelve and
Dragnet? That's out the window. None of that.
Nessie: No identification?
Squatter: None of that.
Nessie: They grabbed the neighbor and they smashed his
head on the pavement?
Squatter: Right. And he fights them and they bring up
a car and bash his head a couple more times and throw
him in the car.
Nessie: This is in the kind of neighborhood where
people get grabbed and bashed to the sidewalk anyhow.
Squatter: Right. Yeah.
Nessie: So he had a reason to run, is what I'm getting
at.
Squatter: Yeah, right. This is not out of the ordinary
except that he's white. In our neighborhood they
usually only do this to black people. But this was
like a "Whites Only" day.
Nessie: Yeah, right. Happens sometimes. Seen it
myself.
Squatter: (laughing) And so, like, he's really bent,
and he's like, down for it. He says, "I'm gonna be a
witness for you guys, man. I don't care what the fuck
you did."
Both: (crack up severely)
Squatter: "I'll be a witness for you!"
And we're like, "Yeah, guy. Sorry about all this.
Really. We didn't have much control over it. If we had
it our way, it'd be different, too."
We immediately became, like, on the same team. He
became a good contact throughout the summer. He stayed
in touch with us. So anyway, so he's in the car, and
the pick up truck comes, and turns the corner, and
here's Heidi and Heather and they no sooner, like . .
.
The cops blocked off our whole block. They didn't just
take our house; they took our whole block, blocked off
both ends of the street, y'know, and nobody could get
in. And Heidi and Heather say, "Hey, we live down
there," thinking that maybe this is a crack crack down
on the neighborhood. They get busted.
So they bring them over to us. Then Guin comes walkin'
up.
Nessie: They grab some guy off the sidewalk; they grab
some passersby in a car, no, in a truck . . . what
kind of truck?
Squatter: A pick up truck.
Nessie: They pull over a pick up truck because they
look like freaks?
Squatter: No, because they said they said, "Hey, we're
goin' to our house."
Y'know, hey!
So then Guin comes around the corner and he's, "Hey! I
live there!" And they grab him and bring him over and
then Michael comes and they grab him. Pretty soon they
realize that everybody, everybody, is coming to our
house, because it's right before an action. It's no
longer like, "We grab a few people and we got some
shit and like let's go."
Nessie: Well, wait a minute! There was going to be a
meeting, right? Judi was on her way to a meeting,
right?
Squatter: No, no, no. We'd already had the meeting the
night before. But . . .
Nessie: Why was she going over to the house that
afternoon, then.
Squatter: She was going to go to a copy shop and come
over the house with the finished product and drop off
some so we could take some.
Nessie: So she wasn't going to hang out there? She was
just gonna drop some flyers off.
Squatter: And pick up Darryl and George Shook and then
they were all gonna go down to Santa Cruz for a gig,
that evening.
Nessie: OK. Got it.
Squatter: At this point, the cops were starting to
realize they're gonna have to arrest about all of
south Berkeley. The quicker they can get these
suspects outa here, the quicker there will not be any
more volunteers, they're hoping.
Nessie: Lotta paperwork.
Squatter: Yeah, whole lotta paperwork. It was starting
to get to be a lot of people and, y'know, this is
Berkeley; this neighborhood could break out into a
"demonstration" at any moment.
Nessie: Yeah.
Squatter: And meanwhile they're goin' through our
house.
Nessie: Had they put the sawhorses up yet?
Squatter: No. I think they were using yellow tape.
Well, first they used a line of police. Not a line of
police, but a couple of cops. The crowd's got big, so
they had to make it more, y'know, yellow line. I don't
know how it got, because I was in jail for quite a
while.
Nessie: When I got there . . .
Squatter: When'd you get there?
Nessie: I don't know what time I got there. From other
people's accounts, probably about two o'clock.
[redacted] called me. He said he'd been on his way
over there, saw what happened and left.
Squatter: Oh, good for [redacted] Another person that
got away.
Nessie: Yeah, well he learned that in the old country.
So he called me, and I went over there and, like,
parked around the corner and looked and they had two
sawhorses and a couple of blue coats. Blue coats! They
wore blue coats! Were they wearing blue coats or were
they wearing brown? I don't remember. It makes a
difference, right?
Squatter: Not to me. Only to them.
Nessie: Well, it's south Berkeley, so it'd be Berkeley
cops. They wear brown. Oakland wears blue. I don't
remember. They had the block blocked off. I thought it
was a good time for me to go away somewhere else.
Squatter: Right. They took our whole neighborhood that
day. They had to, it was . . . our neighborhood!
Nessie: Did they search any other houses there?
Squatter: Well they searched our house really, like,
thoroughly and trashed it in the process. Really
thoroughly. Only a few things they didn't trash. Like
the index card file they didn't trash. I was blown
away. Ten thousand index cards. I'd of had a field day
with it. But they didn't really fuck with it, though I
think they probably went through it.
Nessie: Let's stop for a minute and explain what Seeds
is, and what it does, and who's on those index cards,
and all that shit.
Squatter: OK. Seeds of Peace is, at this point, an
unincorporated association. And it's actually a group
of people, usually numbering around fifteen to twenty
that provide infrastructures for massive public
demonstrations. Redwood Summer was this project that .
. .
Nessie: What do you mean infrastructure?
Squatter: We have portable kitchen trailers, water
trailers, shitters, all that kind of stuff, busses,
and the technical skills and know-how to put together
these really big public actions where you throw down
in the middle of nowhere, a mini-city. Y'know, like,
anywheres from two hundred to ten thousand. And we've
done it in some of the starkest environments that
there are, like right outside the Nevada Test Site
where there ain't nothing. That's why they decided to
blow up bombs there.
Nessie: A-Bombs and Wackenhut.
Squatter: There isn't much else there. Really. Truly.
Not much.
So the FBI had taken down Earth First! in Arizona,
Dave Foreman and those folks . . .
Nessie: How long before that raid did that happen?
Squatter: Less than a year, but how long, exactly, I
don't know. Probably nine, ten months earlier than we
had been. We knew about it and we said, "Wow! These
people are being targeted COINTELPRO style by the FBI.
These are people we should support. Let's do it." They
came up with "Mississippi Summer in the Redwoods"
We said, "Hey, we can help. This'll be a great action.
We can really bring some pressure to bear. We can do
it. Make this action really powerful. Let's help these
people out and let them not be targeted by the FBI."
Heh.
Yeah.
Well, I really, honestly believe, because of the
efforts that Seeds made, those two people are not
sitting in Federal prison, rotting the rest of their
lives away. They tried to hang it on 'em. Sarah,
personally, saved their butts.
Nessie: How?
Squatter: She got some of the nails from the building
Judi was working on, had 'em checked out (some nail
expert, whatever), had them traced, where the nails
were made, all the way back to, I believe it was
Korea, found out that instead of the six or eight
hundred nails in the whole that are like this like the
FBI was putting out, found out that they were a lot of
like a quarter million nails, that went to every Ace
Hardware on the west coast of the United States. And
when she proved that to the media, they stopped
parroting the police line. It changed immediately from
dogging these people to questioning everything the
police said. And the police lost that vehicle right
afterwards. The house investigation of the FBI began
right afterwards. And it all went down.
Nessie: What investigation? The House investigation?
Squatter: In Congress there was a House investigation
the Judicial Committee (I think it was the Judicial
Committee, Tom Bates, what ever he's head of).
Nessie: Tom Bates?
Squatter: I think it was Tom Bates. I can't remember.
Nessie: He's from around here?
Squatter: Yeah, he's California. I think out on the
peninsula he represents.
(Stephanie returns from work, exhausted)
Nessie: Hello!
Stephanie: Hi.
Nessie: (to tape recorder) Stephanie came in. (to
Stephanie) Keep talkin' to my tape recorder. You wanna
talk to my tape recorder? I'll make you famous.
Stephanie: (suspiciously) What do I want to talk to
your tape recorder about?
Nessie: Judi Bari's case. Some recent interest has
arisen in it.
Stephanie: (fanning face with newspaper) This is
unbearable. Can we open some windows?
Squatter: Do what ever you want, yeah. The heat of the
day, it soaks into the house. The sun's out all day
(Instead, she goes into the back of the house.)
Um, so that really turned it. In my opinion, that was
the one incident that made them from villains to, uh,
victims, y'know. It made them from at least not going
to Federal prison. Because it was lookin' like that.
The railroad was greased pretty much up until then. I
didn't have much hope that . . . I didn't have a sense
that we were gonna win, that we were gonna turn the
media tide.
Nessie: How long did it take? They were charged
immediately . . .
Squatter: Yeah.
Nessie: Where was Darryl? Where did they grab Darryl?
Squatter: In the car! He was in the car. He was bombed
also.
Nessie: Duh. Right. He was in the car! I'm getting
stupider by the minute. (laughs, takes another hit)
Squatter: So, uh, anyways . . .
(Stephanie returns to living room)
Nessie: I like the bullet holes in your window,
Stephanie. It's very becoming.
Stephanie: It's the ethnic touch, isn't it.
All: (laugh)
Squatter: Anyways, we're on the front yard. They keep
grabbing people. They decided they need to transport
us. So they come up and they ask me, "Look,
loudmouth," cause all the time I'd been kinda
harassing them and asking for attorneys and charges
and warrants and . . .
Nessie: You're a real loud mouth.
Squatter: A mouth, yeah.
Nessie: You're a real fuckin' nuisance, Jim.
Squatter: So, they say, "All right, you're going
downtown. You can either go voluntarily . . .
Nessie: (inhales roach, coughs profusely) Well that
didn't work.
Squatter: . . . or we can charge you."
I said, "Voluntarily, that means you take off the
handcuffs; you go call me and make an appointment."
They're like, "Oh, no, no, no."
I says, "Well that's what voluntarily is, right? In
handcuffs, in the back of a police car is not
'voluntarily' where I come from."
"Well, you can either come down or we charge you."
I said, "Well, what are the charges?"
And he said, "You don't want 'em."
That's kind of a threat, y'know. Threats don't work.
(Stephanie opens the window and tries to tie back
curtain and it falls on top of all of us.)
Nessie: (laughs) Well, that didn't work either. OK, so
much for the curtain. Y'get a nice view of the bullet
holes this way, though. One, two, three four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine. (To tape recorder, in an
exaggerated aside:) There's nine bullet holes in the
window we're sitting in front of here. None of 'em
have anything to do with this case, not a single one
of 'em.
Squatter: We're trying to figure if it's BBs or a far
away blast from a shotgun. I think it's a BB gun
because there's none in the wood and if it was a
shotgun, the pattern would have extended down more.
Oh, well, that's livin' in the ghetto.
Nessie: That's life on the planet, today. Y'saw the
news last night, right?
Squatter: Yep.
Nessie: They shoot at ya; they blow ya up; what're ya
gonna do?
Squatter: Actually, I got some warrants, some
petty-ass bullshit warrants in my name so if I go
downtown, I stay downtown for a while until I work off
these warrants. I don't really want to do that. I
says, "I'm not giving you my name."
He says, "Oh you motherfucker." He goes on to Heather
and asks if she want's to go downtown voluntarily.
She says, "Yea, I'll go downtown voluntarily, if you
let me go."
"Yeah, just make a statement and you can go."
I'm like, "Don't talk to 'em."
She says, "I'll go voluntarily. I'm not going to talk
to 'em, but I'll go. We'll see how that goes."
"Oh, yeah, we'll take the cuffs off. You can sit in
the car."
"Hey!" I says, "You didn't do that for me!"
He says, "You want to come downtown voluntarily? We'll
take off the cuffs. What's your name?"
I say, "I don't wanna tell you my name."
He says, "What's the matter? You got some warrants?"
"Maybe."
Nessie: (laughs)
Squatter: He says, "We can be done with those. They're
gone. Your warrants are gone. We don't care about
those."
They backstabbed me on that, by the way. Never believe
a cop. Never. An important lesson that I relearn
occasionally.
Nessie: (laughs)
Squatter: I thought, well maybe he doesn't. He can
wipe out my warrants. Hey! Then I'm home free. 'Cause
how long can this go on?
So I say, "OK, I'll go downtown voluntarily."
Mistake number one.
Well we end up getting loaded into the car and going
down to OPD, getting thrown in the little interview
cubicles with the foam on the walls and shit. And so I
was there for, I dunno, a couple of hours. I sleep a
little while. I get up and like, this is fucked. I
want outa here. You know, I'm not charged. I'm
obviously being held as a witness. I have no rights.
This is bullshit.
Nessie: Did they tell you you were a material witness?
Squatter: They probably tried to make it seem like we
were witnesses. If they treat witnesses that bad, no
wonder they lose all those cases. Hey, fuck that shit,
y'know. Nobody would ever cooperate with that.
So at this point I decide, well, I'm gonna break
something in here and get me a vandalism beef and get
me an attorney, y'know, a phone call and shit. I wanna
know what's going on out in the world. Because at this
point, we have no clue what's going on. They pull us
out of the back yard. I'm asking, what's up? Who's in
town? Gorbachev is supposed to be coming in a few
days. Maybe his advance crew got done in, and they're
rounding up the Left. That's my first theory on why
we're going in. Then later when we're at the cars, I
hear them say, "Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney" on the
radio, on the cop radio, I went, "Wow! They're taking
down more people. They are rounding up the Left."
Sound from outside the window: (thumpa, thumpa,
thumpa)
Nessie: There's the helicopter.
Squatter: Yeah, they used to run a pattern over our
house. I used to wonder about it. Here they just drive
by every day.
Nessie: They fucked with me once, right up there at
44th. They pulled me over with it. Scary shit. Scary
shit. We were ina green sedan. Some other guys in a
green sedan had just jacked up a restaurant. That
chopper was on us in hot second. Thought we was gonna
die. Good thing we was white.
Squatter: I never been stopped by a helicopter.
Nessie: Scar-ey.
Squatter: They were chasing people down St. Marks with
one during the Tomkin's Sq. riot.
Nessie: What a world.
Squatter: Yep. So anyways, uh, I think maybe it's got
something to do with Judi and Darryl, y'know. And I'm
thinkin' . . . 'cause I don't know these people real
well, and I'm thinkin' in my head, to myself, did
these people do something like, do something crazy,
y'know. Shit I hope not. But I'm thinkin' it doesn't
matter, 'cause I'm still in the same soup, no matter
what.
Nessie: Right.
Squatter: So after several hours, I want out, so I
break into this little cabinet. There's this 1950s
reel to reel tape recorder in it with big giant
microphones, for confessions, I presume. Or whatever.
As I pop that open, the door pops open and these cops
come in and they're heavy, like "We're gonna beat you
up."
"Hey, fuck you! I didn't break nothin' yet. Hey man, I
want out now. Look, I'm not hanging for this. This is
not what I signed on for."
Well, that didn't work. So they handcuffed me to this
chair. And I'm thinkin', shit now I gotta break the
chair.
Nessie: So this is four hours later, you're downtown,
you're handcuffed to a chair, and you haven't been
charged?
Squatter: No charges, no warrants, no nothing.
Nessie: Did they take everybody downtown?
Squatter: Everybody that was at the house or came to
the house.
Nessie: They still had the house, while you're
downtown?
Squatter: They're still going through the house, and
answering the phone. A lot of people called up and the
guy'd say, "Hello," and they'd say, "Is this Seeds?"
and he'd go, "Yeah, uh, uh, what do you have to tell
me?" or something like that, and they'd go, "Who the
fuck are you?"
I doubt if they talked to more than two or three
people, even though they had the house for more than
sixteen hours.
They kept the house. They searched it, searched it,
searched it. They never searched the back house. It
had a separate address, so I guess they thought
somebody else lived there.
Nessie: How do you know they didn't search through the
back house?
Squatter: Well, there was no . . . The front house
they tossed! The back house was exactly the same, even
the dust. You know, there wasn't foot prints in it or
anything.
Nessie: It's an in-law cottage you're talking about.
Squatter: That had had a fire and was gutted and just
had a roof on it. You remember.
Nessie: Yeah, it was under construction.
Squatter: Yeah. And if that's where, if you were
trying to make a bomb, that's where all the tools
were, all the nails were, all the everything. That's
where you'd look.
Nessie: And they never looked there?
Squatter: Never. Never went through the doorway. A
real bozo move.
(long pause)
Where was I?
Stephanie: Handcuffed to the chair.
Squatter: Oh yeah, I was handcuffed to the chair. They
leave. A couple minutes later, I decide, OK, I'm gonna
break the chair. So I slam the chair maybe twice
against the wall. It's a kinda aluminum legged chair.
It doesn't break, but this guy pops in, "What are you
doing, yadda da yadda da."
I say, "Hey, I want out. Or I want a charge. One or
the other, I'm gonna get it in the next couple
minutes, or I'm breaking this chair."
"Hang on a couple of minutes, I'll talk to Lieutenant
So-and-So, yadda, yadda."
He closes the door. I decide I'm not waiting for that
guy. It's just another cop ploy. So I pick up the
chair. I'm just about to slam it against the wall when
the door opens again and now it looks like I'm gonna
assault the guy with the chair.
I'm like, fuck, I don't wanna assault a cop with a
chair, I'll get the shit kicked outa me. I get the
chair under my butt. He says, "We're gonna cut you all
loose. We're gonna get you all together."
He takes the handcuffs off. By now it's, I don't know
what time it is. It turns out it's five-five thirty,
sixish. Prime news hour. Live shit.
So they collect us up in a room. They ask us if we
want to make a statement.
Nessie: How many people?
Squatter: Me, Sarah, E. J., Alex, Guin, and Michael, I
think, seven. Oh Heidi! And Heather! Eight. A bunch of
us. Seven, eight, ten. That's what it is.
They pull us all together; they ask us if we want to
make a statement. We say, "No."
Do we know what's going on? No. They tell us Judi and
Darryl have been blown up in a car bomb. We're like
ca-rocked.
How are they? Well, they're in the hospital.
That's all they'll tell us. They give us their card.
They ask us to make a statement again.
Hey sit on it and rotate, motherfucker.
And so, they say, OK. They open the door. We take like
three steps and they push us out and we are locked out
into the lobby of the Oakland Police station and we
are hit with reporters, people, the whole intensity.
All I remember was this reporter coming up to me
standing in my face, and the thing going, and, "Do you
have anything to say? Yadda dada da"
And I say, "The police are behind this."
Our whole statement was, "The police had something to
do with this."
We figured it was innocuous, and true, y'know. So we
go out. Somebody meets us, tells us a little about
what's going on and we decide, lets get out of this
madhouse, lets go to our house. We go to our house.
The street is blocked off. The cops wont let us in.
Nobody's there we know, except us.
Nessie: The cops are still there?
Squatter: Yep. They still have our house. They're
still going through the house.
Stephanie: Had you mentioned that way back when you
got picked up some of the people at Seeds had noticed
that I was there. The media was there.
Squatter: Yeah, way back, way back.
Nessie: You'll get you're turn, don't worry about
that!
Stephanie: I just (unintelligible) at that time.
Squatter: We got you at both houses, your story,
pretty much. Um, so then we get back to the house.
(unintelligible) has given us a ride, and come with
another car. We go to our old house. The cops have
moved in. They have control of it. At that time I
decide I'm going to her house. She was in north
Oakland at the time in her own place.
Nessie: That place on 59th St.?
Squatter: No.
Stephanie: 45th. Down the street from Oakland Tech.
Squatter: Whatever. So I head over to her house, and
she comes with the car and tells me a little about
what's been going on and we're going to our house to
meet David and the attorney.
We get there. Our house is not our house. The attorney
can't make it be our house. They still don't have a
warrant.
Nessie: OK, in the house you have two computers . . .
Squatter: One computer, an IBM.
Nessie: And a ten thousand name card file of people
that donate . . .
Squatter: People that we have been in contact with
through various actions. Some give money. Most don't.
The vast majority don't.
Nessie: OK, so it's like you keep a mailing list?
Squatter: Right.
Nessie: So they got the mailing list. And they were in
the house for at least five or six hours with that?
Squatter: Twelve plus.
Nessie: When did you get the house back?
Squatter: OK, so they wont give us the house back so
we decide we can't stay here, let's go some place.
Lisa says she and her fiancee have a house and we say
OK, we'll all go over there for the night. Meanwhile
Guin decides he's going to stay until they release the
house. They say, at some time around midnight, they
say, "No problem, guy. You can leave. We're gonna
home. It's our responsibility, in the morning, when
you come back, we'll return it to you."
Of course, in the middle of the night, at some point
they leave and leave the house wide open to the
neighborhood. And they disappear. So when we come at
six AM . . .
Nessie: They left the door open?
Squatter: Wide. Nothing was locked.
Nessie: But nobody stole the computer?
Squatter: I don't think nobody dared to go near that
house.
Nessie: Well if you was that crack dealer across the
street, would you go in the house the FBI had just
been in for twelve hours?
Squatter: For sixteen. No I would not. And neither did
anybody else. So we got our house back (trashed) the
next morning And we were pretty freaked out. We let
the media come through the house before we cleaned it
up or touched it really. They came through and said,
"God! They trashed your house!" They took pictures of
the house being trashed.
We started a media campaign, everyday, of looking for
errors and ways to fuck 'em around. And at the same
time we said, "The action goes on! No matter what!
This is not gonna stop us from organizing! We are not
gonna lose our focus, because that's what they want."
We did the action.
We never looked back till it was over.
Nessie: OK, so, you took off for Redwood Summer, you
camped in the woods. They shot at you. Tell about
that.
Squatter: We had a little fax newspaper. There was
offices all up and down the west coast, well, in
northern California. We tied it together through a
communications network, and they faxed in what ever
happened. at that place, that day. So then a guy
compiled them and sent them back so it was essentially
a fax newspaper. It reported all incidences of
violence.
Nessie: Whose offices? Seeds offices, Earth First's
offices, and who else?
Squatter: IWW. Those were the main ones. We set up an
office just outside of Garberville, an office in an
abandoned greenhouse nursery type place. We had
another one up in Arcata. We had one in Laytonville.
We had one out at Alder Point. We had Earth First! in
the city. And us over in Berkeley. And we compiled
information on actual incidents of violence, of
attacks and stuff, and there were lots of 'em. It was
amazing. We collected all them and saved them and gave
them to Bill Simpich. We gave them to him. There were
so many to substantiate the case that there was open
violence against us and the police didn't do shit
about it.
There were shots over camp.
There was this botch in the very beginning. We counted
on some locals to find us a site. It's a mistake to
count on people who haven't done this kind of thing to
do it, because they just don't have the experience and
don't understand what's needed. They picked out a
little tiny plot of land under a very wide, huge
pull-off of 101, directly below it. It was at least 45
degrees straight up. Maybe even steeper.
We pull in, and these logger types come out with . . .
as it turns out . . . my eyes aren't so great, and
they were far up the hill and they have what turns out
to be a video camera on a shoulder aimed at us, but I
think it's a rifle. The reporter from the Village
Voice and the reporter from I think it was the Bay
Guardian or, no it was the San Jose Mercury, they all
think he's got a gun too. They're all hiding
underneath the kitchen trailer. This guy's aiming what
we think is a rifle at us, and the police come. The
land turns out to be not cool, it's privately owned.
There's a big scene, and they go up and investigate
and it turns out we're lucky, man, 'cause we went up
to confront the logger guys with the camera, we sent
two people up the hill and just at the same time as we
arrived at the top of the hill, what's her name, uh,
uh, Lori, pulls up in a car and gets out to eat
sandwiches and they think that we've got great radio
communication and we're really together and what it
really is is blind luck. So they "realize" that, hey
man, these people have good security, which is a joke,
but they don't know.
We're there with three Seeds people and one or two
volunteer people trying to set up a camp that we know
is a dead duck. So the police finally come and we get
maps from the county and sure enough, we're on private
land.
So we're booted
We go over to this supporter's house in Laytonville,
and we stay there while we hunt up a new site, which
eventually becomes the Honeydew Camp. The first day we
set it up these logger types go by with four or five
guys and snatch the banner flag from out in front of
the camp that's by the road and yell some shit and
then that night begins the first of many nights of
people shooting towards or over the camp.
Nessie: That went on all summer?
Squatter: On and off.
Nessie: Did anybody actually get shot?
Squatter: Nobody in the camps ever got shot. Only one
time do I believe that people really made a real
attempt to actually shoot somebody, and they were
probably blasted drunk and missed anyway. Close
though.
It was at this fucked camp that the fucking Feds
pushed us into because our people there didn't have
the guts to say, "Call the National Guard. We'd love
some national media."
They pushed us out of this legal camping zone and into
this other place where they bent the rules so we could
camp there long term, but it was in a bowl, a canyon
all the way around it. It was a snipers heaven. We got
sniped there, pretty good. And this drunk came in with
a knife and he tried to rape this young woman there
and we had to, like, accost him and then the police
and had to cart that guy away. It was just a bad
location.
And you know, there were so many informants, at times
they were tripping over each other. There were ones
that you could just pick out. "Yeah, that guy!"
They'd have this funny story about how, "I just got
out of prison, blah, blah, blah."
Yeah, right. Cops. Or at least, working for the cops.
That kind of stuff happened all summer long.
People were beaten. Like this one guy went into this .
. . he was kind of dumb . . . he went into a logger
bar to drink and they took him out to a clear cut and
stripped him and chained him to a stump and beat him
half to death.
Nessie: That was locals, right? That wasn't . . .
Squatter: That was loggers.
Nessie: But other locals are people like Judi Bari.
Squatter: Right.
Nessie: The community's split up there.
Squatter: Yeah, the community's split. In some towns
it's fifty-fifty. In other towns, it's not so good.
Like you go through company towns, and like there's
one or two voices in the wilderness. But you go to
Garberville and it's the majority are against the
logging. It just depends on what town. Arcata's
probably fifty-fifty. It's real close in Arcata. Those
are like the cool centers are like Arcata and
Garberville. And Laytonville. which is maybe
seventy-thirty, their favor. But these are the centers
of our strength, where we have maybe thirty percent on
our side. Those are not good odds.
Nessie: Right.
Squatter: There's only one town where we're the
majority, Garberville.
Nessie: OK, so lets back up a little. Seeds goes out
to Nevada.
Squatter: Yep!
Nessie: OK, say something about your relationship with
Wackenhut, because it might be a factor because of the
way that Wackenhut and the FBI overlap and your lives
and the FBI seem to be overlapping here.
Squatter: Well, we go out to the Nevada Test Site,
twice a year, and uh, we basically show the world that
Wackenhuts are bozos as security, and they can't guard
a nuclear butt hole in the ground, y'know, surrounded
by . . . it's larger than the state of Rhode Island .
. . nothingness . . . you know . . . mountains and dry
and hot and we still always dance on ground zero. We
keep makin' 'em look bad and they're pissed about it.
Nessie: How long has this been going on?
Squatter: Well, I personally started messing with them
in 1986. We were amateurs then. In 1988, we came back
with the goal of messing with 'em. In 1989 we pushed
their buttons. We actively pissed them off, a
psychological campaign of showing them what bozos they
are. We landed a crippled woman on crutches way deep
into the site where crippled people that can't walk
shouldn't get. And, oh, we stole the security manual
for the whole Nevada Test Site, and printed it up.
Nessie: They let a guy in a wheelchair escape, once.
He was a prisoner in San Diego. They were guarding
him, and he escaped. I wouldn't hire guys like that.
They don't like being humiliated in public, see.
That's why they're pissed at you; that's why they're
pissed at me. 'Cause, like, I just wont let this kinda
shit lie, y'know.
I gotta keep bringin' it up, and bringin' it up . . .
You've been humiliating them in public, twice a year,
for five or six years now, right?
Squatter: Yeah. Only we don't have to do it any more.
Nuclear testing is o-ver.
Nessie: We won.
Squatter: We kicked their ass.
Nessie: So those guys are out of work now, right?
Squatter: Well they're gonna have a job for eternity
guarding the crap that was created out there. Some of
that stuff's got a half life of a quarter million
years. There's nothing like job security.
But they can't do their job. Anybody . . . I'm telling
you, you could take a kindergarten class out there and
steal nuclear materials out at the Test Site, they're
that lame. They think they're good, but they just
aren't.
We set up, I would guess, dozens of peace poles,
dozens. And it got to the point that we were so bold .
. . I mean, you have to hike everything in there.
There is nothing out there but dust and rocks and sage
brush and a couple of lizards, and that's it. So we
take this peace pole, and we take it way up on this
mountain that you can see from the interstate. We took
it up on the side of the mountain and we dug a hole
and packed in the water and mixed the cement and
poured it in and set a peace pole in concrete.
Nessie: And you had to hand carry everything in?
Squatter: Yep
Nessie: So if you guys were spetznaz, or like, y'know,
S.M.E.R.S.H., or something, you'd have been able to
capture a bomb?
Squatter: Oh, yeah. If I had some government around
the world's backing, I can take anything I want.
Anything. I'm not looking for the backing.
Nessie: (cracks up, falls off couch again) Yeah,
right. Earth First! is being investigated like it was
a terrorist organization, and the Feds toss your house
and they don't even find that lighter, and if you
wanted to you could have had a nuke there and
Wackenhut wouldn't have been any wiser?
Squatter: Yep.
Nessie: I love your ass, Jim. You're the very model
citizen.
Listen, I gotta go. I'm supposed to meet [redacted]
(my current ex), I'll be back after dinner.
***
(I came back. Jim and Stephanie were finishing off
some take out Chinese food from the corner. Jim talks
with his mouth full. Or empty. Or closed. He don't
care. It's all the same to him.)
Nessie: There was something else I wanted to ask you
about, OK? So, some evidence got lost?
Squatter: Yeah
Nessie: You suspect the FBI was behind this all along,
because of this? Could you tell me about this?
Squatter: They were kicking the shit out of us in the
media, to begin with. They won the first round, flat
out. But we started to use all of our energy to turn
the media tide back. The first thing we did we threw
open our house, which said we had nothing to hide,
come look. Then we started to refute the blatantly
false shit. Then it went along OK. They were still
sandbagging us pretty hard. And then we had the
obligatory, all the organizations do shit to support
us. Then we started cranking on our elected officials.
Like we figured we're Ron Dellums' district. If
anybody in Congress is gonna support us, it's gonna be
him. So we start cranking him. And simultaneously to
our cranking him, people start calling us like Wilson
Riles Jr. You know, (unintelligible) when they
released the nail thing, this was . . .
Nessie: How much later?
Squatter: Four to seven days later.
Nessie: They'd been pretty much wailing on us. The
nail thing comes out. We find credible evidence to
refute it. Undeniable. We tell 'em the trails, how
they can check our story.
Nessie: Who they? Local reporters? National reporters?
Squatter: Everybody. They're calling us. We tell 'em
the story. That's all. I think who broke the story was
the San Jose . . . no, not San Jose . . . the Santa
Rosa Democrat or what ever. I think they might have
been the ones who broke it. But then everybody picked
up on it. The House Committee was formed to
investigate the investigation. Simultaneous to that
the whole case began to slip away. They said that they
left the car in a place where it could be tampered
with; it was no longer usable evidence for
prosecution.
Nessie: Where was this place that they left it? Under
the overpass down by the Broadway cop shop?
Squatter: You figure either there or . . . uh . . .
Yeah, around Broadway.
Nessie: Yeah.
Squatter: Now you and me both know they have a crime
lab in Washington DC. They can do that (snaps
fingers), you know, "yesterday."
Nessie: Yeah, yeah.
Squatter: And this is the kind of case that they do it
"yesterday," Generally. So, you know, I'm suspicious
as fuck. And then they just started blowing their
case, and they're looking bad, stringing along, trying
to come up with something against them and just coming
up big time empty handed. They musta searched twenty
houses and I bet they didn't find a fucking single
round of ammunition. or guns in any of them. That's a
pretty tough thing to do in America.
Nessie: Yep.
(My subsequent investigation has led me to believe it
was more like six or seven houses.)
Squatter: That really starts to shake them. I think
that they expected that everybody would have at least
one gun, and they could search these houses and they
could say, "Look what we found." And they show twenty
guns.
Nessie: Yeah.
Squatter: Right. But they didn't come up with that.
They got pictures of one shotgun. That was it.
Nessie: Stephanie's?
Squatter: Uh huh. And they searched Seeds house and
they really thought they'd come up with something.
They fucking came up with one plastic cap pistol.
(unintelligible) you know, it's obviously the
(unintelligible) the cap pistol. You know, it's just
nothing. So bit after bit their case fell apart. The
media started to attack them because they have now a
woman in the hospital and a guy that's now working the
media in his own behalf. Darryl, they sprung 'em on
bail.
Now he's working the media and he's pretty charismatic
and y'know: "Am I gonna blow myself up? Do I look
stupid enough to blow myself up?"
So we had attorneys up the butt at this point.
They were getting nervous, I think they thought we
might catch 'em. So they withdrew. I think the FBI is
in on it in some way. That's my belief. I don't have a
shred of proof.
Nessie: Somebody does.
Squatter: Yeah, right.
Nessie: I wonder what he'll do when he reads this.
=====
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