ChuckO take note: -----------------------------------
FBI: Anarchists operating in Hub By Michele McPhee/ HERALD EXCLUSIVE Monday, February 28, 2005
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=70734
Local Joint Terrorist Task Force investigators are keeping close tabs on a group of anarchists hellbent on creating a classless society - using armed resistance if necessary, the Herald has learned.
Anarchist Black Cross Federation, an organization that FBI Director Robert S. Mueller calls an ``emerging revolutionary group,'' has active members in Boston who have distributed fliers against the war in Iraq, including one that reads: ``Synchronized bombing is a lie. But we can be more precise.''
The flier, released by Anarchist Black Cross Boston, goes on to list the address of Boston Police Headquarters in Roxbury, FBI headquarters in Government Center, the IRS building and a military recruiting center on Summer Street.
There is also a list of corporate sites, including Fidelity, the Gap, Niketown, and Raytheon's Waltham location.
``We are aware of this group, and the flier. The potential victims were notified,'' said FBI spokeswoman Gail Marcienkiewicz.
The group first garnered police attention last summer as Boston police prepared for the Democratic National Convention, said police department spokesman Sgt. Tom Sexton.
``They showed up on the radar shortly before the DNC. It's not a new group to us,'' Sexton said.
``Investigators have been aware of this particular group, and we are working collectively with our partnership on the state and federal level,'' he added.
Anarchist Black Cross has a Web site that lists monthly meetings at a Cambridge apartment, and urges support at court appearances for people it calls ``comrades,'' including Dominic Giannone, 29, a union boilermaker from Quincy who was arrested during the DNC for assaulting Boston police Superintendent Robert Dunford.
``Boston ABC supports all the protestors who took to the streets during the DNC,'' John Riley, an ABC member, wrote in an e-mail responding to a request for an interview, adding that the group opposes ``unprovoked violence.''
On Feb. 16, Mueller addressed the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about the ``potential for violence'' by ABCF and other domestic militant groups.
``The stated goals of the ABCF are the abolishment of prisons, the system of laws, and the capitalist state,'' Mueller said. ``The ABCF believes in armed resistance to achieve a stateless and classless society. ABCF has continued to organize, recruit, and train anarchists in the tactical use of firearms.''
The FBI chief also said some US-based militant groups ``follow radical variants of Islam, and in some cases express solidarity with al-Qaeda and other international terrorist groups.''
Riley insisted his group, which has around 25 members, does not sympathize with al-Qaeda.
---------------------------------------------------- Group seeks aid for `political' prisoners By Michele McPhee Monday, February 28, 2005 http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=70733&format =
One of the missions Anarchist Black Cross Federation heralds is the support of ``political prisoners,'' urging sympathizers to send money, stamps and letters to convicts, including two notorious revolutionaries imprisoned in Massachusetts jails.
William ``Lefty'' Gilday, a one-time minor league baseball player from Amesbury who joined the Weather Underground while attending Northeastern University, is serving a life sentence at MCI-Shirley for killing Boston police officer William Schroeder in a 1970 bank heist.
Schroeder, a father of nine, interrupted a robbery at a Brighton State Street Bank branch by Gilday and other armed revolutionaries, including Brandeis University student Katherine Ann Power, to fund an uprising against the U.S. government.
Gilday was convicted of shooting Schroeder in the back. In 1984, Gilday was convicted of running a credit-card fraud operation using the prison's phones and defrauding American Express of $4,000.
Another revolutionary ABCF supports, Jaan Karl Waaner, writes a Web site magazine, www.4strugglemag.com, from his cell at MCI Cedar Junction in Walpole, where he is classified as a security-threat prisoner.
Waaner, who grew up in Roxbury and was a martial arts trainer with the Amandla Peoples security firm, is serving a long sentence for a series of bombings, including a 1976 blast at the Suffolk County Courthouse that injured 22 people.
Last week, state Department of Correction spokeswoman Diane Wiffin said Waaner's magazine is not approved.
``It is not sanctioned by the DOC,'' said Wiffin. ``We monitor this material as much as possible.''