San Francisco Chronicle - July 19, 1999
KPFA WORKERS' FILES KEPT FROM THEM Hired guards alleged to have ties to FBI by Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff Writer
The private security service now occupying padlocked KPFA radio has ties to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies and could be having a field day with confidential records kept by reporters at the frequently anti-establishment station, KPFA journalists charged yesterday.
The complaint came after KPFA's governing body, the Pacifica Foundation, refused yesterday morning to let employees retrieve their files and tapes from the Berkeley station. Pacifica shut out all employees Tuesday and has been broadcasting music and past programs on KPFA's frequency at 94.1 FM.
The ousted host of the KPFA news magazine "Flashpoints," 20-year veteran Dennis Bernstein, said he was particularly concerned about confidential sources who provided information on condition of anonymity.
"I'm frightened for those people," he said.
Pacifica, which placed all employees on paid, involuntary leave Tuesday after mass protests and arrests, maintains that files and tapes are "company property," said Pacifica spokeswoman Elan Fabbri. She said the security service employees are merely protecting the station and are not looking into anyone's files or desks.
Fifty-year-old KPFA has been a leading forum for dissent, including exposes of alleged FBI and police abuses, and some employees are worried about the occupation of the station by IPSA International, a security firm headed by former law enforcement officials who specialize in executive protection and special investigations.
The concern turned to anger yesterday when Pacifica, after a demand from the employees' union, allowed a few workers to enter the station briefly to retrieve their belongings but barred removal of files and tapes.
Bernstein said he does not care about clothes or coffee cups, just his notes and recordings. "That's what's driving me and what's making me extremely nervous."
"Look at the Web site," KPFA's co-news director Mark Mericle said of IPSA's home page at <www.ipsaintl.com.> "It's a concern."
Aileen Alfandary, the other news director, was visibly angry when she came back out of the station yesterday morning.
"I had files related to this crisis, and they wouldn't let me take them out of the building," she said.
The person escorting KPFA employees into the station yesterday was Gene Edwards, a human relations consultant criticized by KPFA reporters for bringing in the IPSA security firm. He refused to talk to The Chronicle.
Fabbri said Edwards had suggested IPSA, but she said he was hired by Pacifica primarily to help fill vacancies and organize personnel records. IPSA, a division of Oakland's American Protective Services, the nation's fourth-largest contract security firm, was brought in after protesters occupied that station and after Pacifica received threats that the station would be "seized by any means necessary," Fabbri said.