[AGL] Scoop on Sixties Surveillance!

[michelemason]

New address:  yaya.m at earthlink.net
Send when email straightened out.

On Oct 25, 2006, at 9:36 AM, Michael Eisenstadt wrote:

> Having been in the USArmy myself, i say you exaggerate
> what they were capable of.
>
> I went to Ft Hood once in the 70s when US was still
> in Veetnam. They had an anti-drug display for the visiting
> folks (open base day) which was in a truck trailer with
> a ramp up and down and at the back of the trailer there
> was a hippy pad with a grotty rug and posters on the
> wall and a soldier dressed as a hippie lolling about
> on a mattress trying to catch your eye. I think he had
> either been instructed to or decided on his own hook
> to see if he could guess which visitor was a dope
> smoker like himself. Takes one to know one.
>
> The mind-set of USArmy officers was right wing +
> almost total ignorance about the world. And presumably
> still is.
>
> A few years after the fall of the USSR, in the early
> nineties, i ran into a retired Air Force officer who
> told me that he was attending a class at Bergstrom
> where it was being explained that the fall of the USSR
> was a ruse. I laughed as this is how it was when i
> was in the peacetime army in 1957.
>
> Old subscribers here will remember the xeroxes
> of some of the UT police reports that Sarah Clark
> unearthed. It was proposed that it be put on the
> http://www.texasghetto.com web site which Karen
> maintains. But some of us who were actually
> named refused that proposal. You know who you
> are.
>
> One of the named ghettoites (not a subscriber here)
> was described as participating freely in promiscuous
> couplings (not an exact quote).
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Igor Loving" <lovingigor at hotmail.com>
> To: <austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 8:51 AM
> Subject: **JUNK** Re: [AGL] Scoop on Sixties Surveillance!
>
>
>> What G says is true. I too was in 1st LT Military Police in the Tex  
>> Guard
>> and we had a plan to make IH35 the main line of defense against the
>> rioting
>> East Austinites and the looters. We had an MP Company that would  
>> block all
>> the roads from the river north to MLK before the other units would  
>> move
>> into
>> the bario.
>>
>> It was to me unworkable but then I was really stupid in those days and
>> never
>> believed a word of any of it. We had some really gungho racists in the
>> upper
>> officer corps and strangely there were no people of color in the
>> headquarters unit I was in. I was a meteorologist in the Air Force in  
>> NAM
>> and somehow ended up an MP when I came back and went from the AF to  
>> the
>> Army. The idea was that at some point I was going to the helicopter  
>> force
>> but that never happened and I blew the whole thing off after six  
>> months
>> and
>> went to work for Ken Jehn at KTBC and Jimmy Fiddler.
>>
>>
>>
>> Charlie Loving
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> From: michelemason <coltrane at ev1.net>
>>> Reply-To: survivors' reminiscences about Austin Ghetto Daze in the
>>> 60s<austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net>
>>> To: survivors' reminiscences about Austin Ghetto Daze in the
>>> 60s<austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net>
>>> CC: michelemason <coltrane at ev1.net>
>>> Subject: Re: [AGL] Scoop on Sixties Surveillance!
>>> Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 07:16:07 -0500
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>>> $cc0b3eb0$23daead8 at gerrywq5612s9x>
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>>>
>>> I know there were some "dirty tricks"-like my phone was tapped and  
>>> family
>>> members arrested when I worked with CISPES in the late '70s, early  
>>> 80's,
>>> during Reagan's regime, but I must have played innocently along  
>>> during the
>>> '60's. How freakin scary-then and now.  mm
>>>
>>> On Oct 23, 2006, at 1:19 PM, Gerry wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thorne,
>>>> A high school buddy of mine became an officer in the Texas National
>>>> Guard.
>>>> He was not a radical, a rather straight family man who worked as a
>>>> bureaucrat for the federal government (not in law enforcement). We  
>>>> met
>>>> again in the mid-80's and over a few beers recalled our respective  
>>>> pasts.
>>>> When he learned that I had been an Austin hippy in the '60's he  
>>>> told me
>>>> the following:
>>>>
>>>> The Texas National Guard had a plan in place to swoop into the  
>>>> Austin
>>>> hippy neighborhoods and arrest everyone in sight. The victims were  
>>>> to be
>>>> bussed to an abandoned air force base in West Texas which had been  
>>>> fixed
>>>> up for the occasion. My friend was with a planning group that drove  
>>>> to
>>>> Austin several times and patrolled the neighborhoods, putting  
>>>> details
>>>> onto
>>>> a master map. "You guys don't know how close you came to being  
>>>> residents
>>>> of West Texas," he told me. "Why didn't the deal go down?" I asked  
>>>> him.
>>>> "Don't know," he said, "Guess it was tabled when LBJ decided not to  
>>>> run
>>>> again."
>>>>
>>>> I immediately recalled all the rumors of "The Big Bust" we used to  
>>>> joke
>>>> about in the '60's. Turns out it was not a joke and presumably came
>>>> pretty
>>>> close to being a fact. The rumors were strong enough to serve as a  
>>>> major
>>>> factor in the decisions of many of us to move to San Francisco and  
>>>> also
>>>> to
>>>> Berkeley where some of us lived during the People's Park episodes in
>>>> which
>>>> the California National Guard did, in fact, invade the town and  
>>>> conduct
>>>> mass sweeps in which hundreds of people were arrested and bussed to  
>>>> a
>>>> former air force base where they were held in legal limbo for a  
>>>> time.
>>>> G
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>>> From: thorne dreyer
>>>>> To: austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net ; GHETTO2 at LISTS.WHATHELPS.COM
>>>>> Sent: Monday, October 23, 2006 11:36 AM
>>>>> Subject: [AGL] Scoop on Sixties Surveillance!
>>>>>
>>>>> Friends,
>>>>>
>>>>> I am working on an article for the Texas Observer and I'd  
>>>>> appreciate
>>>>> input from you guys.
>>>>> When Allen Hamilton died (he was UT campus police chief in the  
>>>>> sixties),
>>>>> his son discovered boxes of papers and sold them to Half Price  
>>>>> Books who
>>>>> in turn donated them to the UT library. Most of the stuff was about
>>>>> Whitman and it was delivered immediately; the remainder was  
>>>>> records of
>>>>> surveillance by campus police: of sds and other activists, of  
>>>>> dopers,
>>>>> lots of mentions of the Ghetto ("a haven for campus Jews"), etc.  
>>>>> Anyway,
>>>>> the good folks at Half Price, fearing that this stuff would be  
>>>>> buried by
>>>>> UT, contacted Alice Embree and offered us access to the materials  
>>>>> before
>>>>> turning them over. So we went to Dallas and scanned and copied the  
>>>>> whole
>>>>> kit 'n caboodle. There are lists and memos and photos. Janis Joplin
>>>>> shows up lots! Billy Lee Brammer. Shelton. Jerry Jeff Walker.  
>>>>> Richard
>>>>> Friedman. As do a number of people on the ghetto list.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm doing a story on these materials, but also tying them into the
>>>>> larger
>>>>> picture of harassment and surveillance in the sixties, including  
>>>>> the
>>>>> Cointelpro activities of the FBI.
>>>>> I'm interested in any memories, stories, inside poop any of you  
>>>>> may have
>>>>> regarding the campus police, Bert Gerding and the Austin red squad,
>>>>> other
>>>>> law enforcement agencies and so on. Any direct harassment,  
>>>>> provocateur
>>>>> actions, dirty tricks. Anything about the murder of George Vizard
>>>>> (Hamilton was a suspect at first!); I may be doing a sidebar  
>>>>> looking
>>>>> back
>>>>> at that. Also, if anybody knew a guy named Jeff Gardner. He was
>>>>> apparently Austin SDS treasurer for a while, and was an informant.
>>>>>
>>>>> And, of course, I need stuff right away! This week. My deadline's  
>>>>> the
>>>>> 30th.
>>>>>
>>>>> Respond onlist or to my rr. email site below.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for your help,
>>>>>
>>>>> Thorne
>>>>>
>>>>> tdreyer at austin.rr.com
>>>>> 512-436-9968
>>>>> 713-210-9608 (cell)
>>>>>
>>
>>
>
>