The FBI's Nastiest & Most Criminal Agent

Richard Wallace Held

FBI TERRORIST
If you're a terrorist and work for the FBI Crime does pay

I was just at the FBI's Website reading it over and realizing why so many Americans are still ignorant of just how horrible this agency really is. Why do they remain so ignorant? It's quite simple really. Between its use of the media to spin its own black propaganda and of course the FBI Website, which reads like a Hallmark card to Civil Rights activists in which the FBI portrays itself as the "Dudley Do Right" of the American people, is it any wonder that most Americans still don't understand the FBI's real function in this country?

Let's be clear on what this agency does before we go any further. The FBI uses entrapment and covert forms of terrorism to maintain the status quo in America. Do we really need the FBI prowling the Internet for deviants (according to some former agents there are many perverts working as federal agents), web hackers and conartists, when the local cops could do a better a job?

Let's face it, the FBI is not protecting children from predators anymore then it is protecting adults from being scammed by web conartists or computer hackers. If the FBI wanted to arrest legit sexual predators it could start within the hierarchy of the US Federal government including Congress, and work its way down from there. George Bush and his father are two of the biggest sexual predators on this planet. However, this is something that you will never hear being broadcast by the mainstream media since it would be the death of the careers of those who did. And the FBI is not about to arrest Bush or his old man either. They'd much rather waste millions of taxpayer dollars waging their own personal vendettas, since the DOJ is hardly about to reign them in for doing so.

When a Texan woman by the name of Margie Schoedinger filed rape charges against George W. Bush, she reported that she was literally made a pariah within her own community. The local cops would not help her. And when she contacted the FBI they forwarded her complaint to Bush himself, who then sent several agents over to threaten her. Schoedinger claimed that she had been repeatedly drugged and raped by Bush and several FBI agents, who threatened her to keep quiet about it.

According to her deposition, when she went public with this information by filing her lawsuit, Bush decided to send her a message by having some of his thugs gangrape her again, this time beating her so badly that she was not only hospitalized, but also lost the baby she was carrying -- a baby which Schoedinger claimed may have been Bush's child.

All the time Schoedinger kept her lawsuit going, she and her family were repeatedly harrassed by the FBI and the Secret Service at Bush's request. Some of her relatives were beaten while others were fired from their jobs. Even Schoedinger's husband was fired from his job as a result of her lawsuit against Bush. So exactly how was the FBI helpful to this victim of a sexual assault? As usual, it appears that the FBI was aiding and abetting criminal activity and in this case taking part in it. And this brings me to my next point.

As for who was telling the truth in this instance: Schoedinger or Bush and the FBI?

From my own personal experiences with the scumbags that work for the FBI and what I know about Bush and his crime family, I believe that Schoedinger was not only telling the truth but was murdered by them in a made to look like suicide because she was strong willed and they feared that the public might just believe her side of the story.

As for the FBI's Internet surfing, it's become clear that it's being used as a covert data mining operation and using entrapment in the most extreme violations of Civil Rights ever recorded, simply to justify the taxpayer expense. The FBLIE is to keep Americans thinking that this organization is legitmate law enforcement, when it's become painfully clear that it is anything but.

When the FBI attempts to set Internet users up for crimes that they are clearly not committing, exactly what do we need it for? When the FBI sets up someone it targets and the target does not take the bait, exactly what is the FBI doing repeatedly setting the same target up over and over again. It would seem that the FBI is more interested in taking someone who is not committing crimes and through the use of entrapment (and at times even coercion) making criminals out of them. So again, exactly why do we need this organization which has clearly outlived its usefulness, if in fact it ever had any to begin with?

Do we really need the FBI and NSA spying on Americans within the privacy of our own bathrooms and bedrooms? I can tell you first hand that they are doing it, and to millions of us. I mean there must be a hell of a lot of terrorist activity going on in American bathrooms and bedrooms, right?

That or perhaps these FEDS have just had a taste of so much power without any Constitutional checks and balances to keep them honest (something which they clearly are not) that they have developed a deviant interest in watching people having sex, showering and using their toilets. And this would have to make them some of the sickest bastards law enforcement has ever produced.

As far as legit law enforcement is concerned, the FBI is about as far removed from the aforesaid as is possible. Covert domestic terrorist is a far more accurate description of the FBI and its modern day COINTELPRO tactics. And of course the BS on its Website, which represents the FBI as protecting the Civil Rights of all Americans is anything but the truth in regard to this agency.

The truth is that if the general public had even an inkling as to how corrupt the FBI is, or the crimes that it has committed against a myriad of innocent Americans over the past century, in its attempt to maintain the US status quo, we can be certain that its days would be numbered. Given that we recently passed the 5th Anniversary (9-11) of one of the most horrific events in United States history (one in which the FBI not only aided and abetted a criminal coverup but also obstructed justice), I thought that it would be more appropriate to describe what the FBI is really like.

And this time around, not just from my perspective, but from those of others. Below is an excellent article on former FBI agent Richard W. Held, the son of another former FBI employee by the same name (does nepotism ring a bell here?). As an orchestrator of many COINTELPRO actions against some very famous activist groups and people, Held to this day is considered to be one of the nastiest and most criminals agents to have ever occupied a place within the Bureau.

Was Held ever once punished for his actions? Not exactly. Oh he did eventually leave the Bureau, but not before orchestrating the murders of numerous people and destroying the lives of many more. Once Held did finally leave the FBI, it was for a very lucrative job as head of security for Visa International. It just goes to show you that if you work for the FBI crimes does pay, and for Held his crimes appear to have been quite the financial bonanza for him in the long run.

Of course, if you type his name into the Google search engine, most of the available sites that you'll find on Held discuss the terrible crimes that he committed under the FBI's CoINTELpro operations, as well as some of the lawsuits which have been filed against him as a result of them.

From the Refuse and Resist Website:

America's Secret Police:

FBI COINTELPRO In The 1990s
by Noelle Hanrahan

This report was written in association with the Redwood Summer Justice Project, which pursues Judi Bari's and Darryl Cherney's civil rights case against the FBI and Oakland Police.On April 22, 1970, as 22 million Americans rallied across the country on the first Earth Day celebration, FBI agents in over 40 cities were ordered to spy on and infiltrate these events. Senator Edwin Muskie, himself a victim, remarked from the floor of Congress that this surveillance was "a dangerous threat to fundamental constitutional rights."

The power of the environmental movement and the challenge it posed to business-as- usual made it an instant target for FBI suppression.Twenty years later on May 24, 1990, a shrapnel-wrapped car bomb went off under noted Earth First! activist Judi Bari's car seat, nearly killing her and injuring fellow organizer Darryl Cherney. Even more frightening to Bari, as she woke up in the hospital intensive care unit under armed guard, was the realization that a major FBI "counter-intelligence" operation against Earth First! was underway.

Within minutes of their arrival on the scene of the blast, the FBI was falsely characterizing nonviolent environmental organizers Bari and Cherney as "terrorists". Within hours, the Oakland Police Department had arrested and detained them for transporting explosives. It was not enough that the two leaders had been physically blown up; the FBI immediately began to orchestrate a disinformation campaign designed to discredit and imprison these activists and destroy Earth First!

What could make nonviolent environmental organizers the targets of repression? Back in May 1990, Earth First! in the redwood region was gearing up for "Mississippi Summer in the California Redwoods," a bold call that would draw thousand of activists to Mendocino and Humboldt counties.Earth First!'s fierce, grassroots, pro-labor campaign of mass nonviolent civil disobedience was determined to stop corporate timber's liquidation of the old-growth forests.

Even in the face of the attempted assassination of the key organizers and a well- orchestrated FBI disinformation campaign, thousands came to Redwood Summer, bringing national attention to the destruction of the redwood forest ecosystem.It is a testimony to the power of the movement mobilized by Judi Bari that today, eight years later, protests to save the old growth forests are more dynamic than ever.

It is absolutely foolish to suggest that the FBI was involved in anything that would obstruct justice. -- Richard W. Held, FBI These guys are professional liars, who have raised selective memory loss to an art form. -- Judi Bari, Earth First!FBI LegacyFrom the moment of its birth in 1908 as the Justice Department's "Bureau of Investigation," a key part of the FBI's mission has been to suppress political dissent. In the early years they used deportations and the career-destroying Palmer raids to target union leaders and communists.

Burglary, blacklisting, infiltration, and disruption became standard operating procedure. Later, when the Supreme Court ruled that the Smith Act specifically could not be used to target communists, the FBI took it undercover, developing its "counter-intelligence" program dubbed COINTELPRO.In the words of then-director J. Edgar Hoover, COINTELPRO was designed to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" groups whose views the FBI deemed threatening to the status quo.

Richard W. Held: Constitutional AssassinRichard W. Held was Special Agent-in-Charge of the San Francisco FBI Office 1985-1993 during its extensive COINTELPRO operations against Earth First! Of all the COINTELPRO operatives, Richard Wallace Held's past is particularly brutal and haunting. Held began his career in 1968 in the Los Angeles office of the FBI. He quickly became the lead agent in the "racial matters" squad which focused on what the FBI called "black extremists". Just one year later he was involved in targeting Los Angeles Black Panther Party leader Geronimo ji jaga (Pratt) for "neutralization."

Framed for a murder he did not commit, Geronimo spent 25 years in state prison. He was released in 1997 after a judge overturned his conviction based on prosecutorial misconduct. The key witness in the case, Julius Butler, was an informant for the FBI, LAPD, and the L.A. District Attorney's office; that information was kept secret during Geronimo's trial.An uncanny ability to lie under oath, commonly referred to as "testa-lying," is a trademark of rogue law enforcement professionals.

Under oath in a deposition for Geronimo's federal appeal, Held remarked on his relationship with Julius Butler: "I think that it may have been relevant, your honor, depending on what the contact was at the time and what else I knew, because I don't recall really knowing much about the case at all anyway." In fact, Held was coordinating COINTELPRO operations in L.A., and Geronimo was at the top of the "Key Black Extremists" list.


Even more damning, Held was the control agent for informant Julius Butler. In 2 1/2 years, Held recorded contact and meetings with Butler 33 times. Contrast Held's repeated denials of knowledge and responsibility with the cold, hard facts, including this from a 1/28/70 memo by Held to the FBI Director: "I request Bureau approval ... to attack, expose, and ridicule the BPP... operation number one is designed to challenge the legitimacy of the authority exercised by Elmer Gerard Pratt."

After a few years in Washington, DC as a headquarters intelligence supervisor, Held was back in the field on the Pine Ridge Reservation three days after the firefight between federal agents and the American Indian Movement (AIM) during which two FBI agents and an Indian man were killed. An FBI memo dated 7/26/75 to the Washington Bureau's Intelligence Division notes, "Supervisor Richard Wallace Held arrived at Pine Ridge, South Dakota Indian Reservation Command Post on 6/29/75, to assist in the RESMURS investigation.

He was assigned three important phases of this investigation; namely, the correlation of Bureau-wide informants into the investigation; the establishment of the confidential fund; and the coordination of all intelligence information as it relates to the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the RESMURS investigations... throughout the country ..."Held's work contributed to the framing of noted political prisoner Leonard Peltier, and to covering up the truth about the agents' deaths and the still unsolved killings of 70 AIM supporters on the Pine Ridge Reservation during the extensive FBI's operations.


From 1979 until 1985, Held was Special Agent-in-Charge of the San Juan, Puerto Rico office. There he presided over a politically-oriented paramilitary campaign against the Puerto Rican Independence movement, creating files on 74,000 individuals.In his last operation in Puerto Rico, Held led 300 FBI agents and U.S. marshals in raids all over the island, trashing office and homes and arresting scores of activists. One advocate of Puerto Rican independence said the raids made "even the desire for independence a crime."


Held left Puerto Rico in 1985 to head the FBI's San Francisco, California field office.Held Turns His Sights On Earth First!In the year before the car bombing of Bari and Cherney, a shocking and classic political disruption campaign was conducted against Earth First! in Northern California. In the months just prior to Redwood Summer, the disruption was intense. Bari, Cherney and other Earth First! organizers received over 30 death threats from March to May, 1990.

Fake Earth First! press releases were circulated in the community and to the press, falsely connecting the Earth First!ers with violence and sabotage.Local law enforcement refused to investigate the death threats, signaling their tolerance for violence against environmentalists. "If you turn up dead, Judi," Mendocino County Sheriff's Sgt. Steve Satterwhite told Bari, "then we'll investigate."The FBI's very act of blaming Bari and Cherney for the bombing that nearly killed them, and their repeated feeding of damaging and bald-faced lies to the press about evidence in the case, are both classic components of a "counter-intelligence" campaign.

The FBI's own files refer to the use of informants, yet even now the full scope of their actions remains hidden.Coincidence or COINTELPRO?In depositions in Bari's and Cherney's civil rights lawsuit, FBI agents repeatedly denied that there was an investigation against Earth First! in California prior to the bombing. Yet, documents at first withheld and blacked out, then later released, show that the FBI field reports written at the time of the bombing stated Bari and Cherney were "subjects of an investigation in the terrorist field."

The Arizona FBI Sting Operation In 1988, a major FBI sting operation was launched against Earth First! in Arizona. In a cynical attempt to discredit and criminalize Earth First!, the FBI spent $3 million and employed over 50 FBI agents, extensive wiretaps, body wires and overt entrapment in order to arrest Arizona Earth First!ers for conspiracy to down power lines.At the heart of Operation THERMCON (short for "Thermite Conspiracy") were undercover FBI agent/provocateur Michael Fain and informant Ron Frazier, who infiltrated a group of environmental activists in Prescott.

Though unsuccessful, the FBI worked long and hard to entrap these individuals into using explosives to down power lines. Apparently the FBI sought to involve Earth First! with explosives in order to create a sensational case against them.This would serve to discredit Earth First! and provide justification to conduct illegal investigations and operations against the political and First Amendment activity of the environmental movement nationwide.

Busted on May 30, 1989, in the Arizona desert, four people were caught with a cutting torch attempting to disable a power transmission tower leading to a pumping station of the central Arizona project (CAP). CAP is a billion dollar pork barrel project to carry Colorado River water uphill across hundreds of miles of desert to water the lawns of Phoenix and Tucson.Judi Bari laughingly called this, "the only joint FBI-Earth First! action ever to take place." Undercover FBI agents picked the target, drove the truck, and taught the activists to use an acetylene torch.

The FBI paid informant Ron Frazier $54,000 cash in exchange for implicating the Earth First!ers, and granted him immunity from prosecution for various crimes."The first lesson in activism is that the person that offers to get the dynamite is always the FBI agent," joked Judi Bari.FBI Lies ExposedIt was in the context of such a massive undercover operation against Earth First! that the FBI terrorist squad responded en masse to the bombing of Bari and Cherney in May of 1990.

Special Agent John Conway, who was one of the main case agents assigned to the bombing, had also handled the San Francisco FBI office's substantial field work on the Arizona "THERMCON" sting.It is striking that after failing in a major COINTELPRO operation to tie Earth First! with explosives in Arizona, the FBI again tried to smear and defame nonviolent environmental activists as terrorists by falsely charging Bari and Cherney with transporting the bomb that was meant to kill them.

In his deposition in the Bari/Cherney lawsuit, Held insists that he was completely out of the loop and unaware of the case, even though other FBI agents contradict his testimony and have said that they briefed him on a regular basis.Key Questions RemainWere Judi Bari, Darryl Cherney or Earth First! subjects of an ongoing investigation in "the terrorist field" as agents claimed in FBI reports? If so, where are the files? Was this investigation authorized?


Were they under FBI surveillance when they were bombed? What does the FBI know about who bombed Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney? And finally, why have they never made any attempt to catch the real bomber?In search of answers to these questions, the Redwood Summer Justice Project will continue to expose secret FBI operations against Earth First! as we pursue the civil rights lawsuit against the FBI and the Oakland Police.

COINTELPRO: The FBI's Secret War Against DemocracyThis article refers to the actions of FBI Special Agent Richard Wallace Held. For clarification, his father Richard G. Held was Associate Director of the FBI.* Between 1987 and 1990, in a conspiracy to entrap and "pop Dave Foreman [founder of Earth First!] to send a message," the FBI spent $3 million, used 50 agents and conducted more than 1000 hours of wiretaps.

A key informant was paid a total of $54,000.* 1981-1990, activists opposed to the U.S. foreign policy in Central America (as well as a dozen U.S. Senators and Congressmen) were subject to FBI harassment. The FBI's "investigation" of CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador) involved 59 field offices and 200 incidents of death threats, intimidation, and break-ins.*

In August 1985, Richard W. Held led 300 FBI agents and U.S. marshals in raids throughout Puerto Rico, trashing offices and homes and arresting scores of activists. The FBI's overall operations resulted in the creation of files on 74,000 individuals.* In 1975, Richard W. Held was involved in the FBI's cover-up of the 70 deaths of American Indian Movement supporters at Pine Ridge in South Dakota. On the scene after an FBI operation which resulted in the deaths of two FBI agents and one Indian man, Held helped lay the groundwork for the framing of AIM leader Leonard Peltier for murder. Peltier remains wrongfully imprisoned to this day.*

On April 27, 1970, Richard W. Held requested and received permission from J. Edgar Hoover to "neutralize" actress Jean Seberg. Held placed an anonymous letter with a Hollywood gossip columnist regarding the parentage of Seberg's unborn child. On August 7, 1970, Seberg, nearly 7 months pregnant, attempted suicide.

On August 23rd, she gave birth prematurely to a baby girl. Weighing less than 4 pounds, the baby died. Seberg's transgression? Her support of the Black Panther Party.* Beginning in 1970, FBI agent Richard W. Held, an architect of COINTELPRO vs. the Black Panthers in L.A., helped orchestrate the 25-year false imprisonment of Geronimo ji jaga (Pratt). Held and others engineered the frame-up of Geronimo by withholding critical information that the prosecution's key witness, Julius Butler, was an FBI operative.*

On Dec. 4, 1969, Chicago police and the FBI assassinated Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Hampton, who was alive but wounded after the initial assault, was then executed at close range. William O'Neal, an FBI informant, provided a detailed floor plan of Hampton's apartment; he was paid $30,000.*

In 1963, the FBI turned their attention to Martin Luther King, Jr., and sought to destroy him through a campaign of wiretaps and harassment. In one incident, the FBI confronted King with a compilation of secretly recorded tapes, threatening to release them to the press if King did not commit suicide before accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.*

From 1943-63, the federal civil rights case Socialist Workers Party v. Attorney General documents decades of illegal FBI break-ins and 10 million pages of surveillance records. The FBI paid an estimated 1,600 informants $1,680,592 and used 20,000 days of wiretaps to undermine legitimate political organizing.* * *


Redwood Summer Justice ProjectP.O. Box 14720Santa Rosa, CA 95402Tel: (707) 887-0262Fax: (707) 887-0865E-mail: bari@monitor.netWeb: http://www.monitor.net/~bariSources available on request. To order more copies of "AMERICA'S SECRET POLICE," 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: contact Redwood Summer Justice Project at the address above.Prison Radio (a project of the Quixote Center) challenges mass incarceration and racism by airing the voices of men and women in prison.

Our educational materials serve as a catalyst for public activism.P.S.: In order to be on the ZAP alert e-mail list send your email address to radioqc@sirius.com. In order to be on the mailing list send us a contribution of $25 or more. Prison Radio/Quixote P.O. Box 5206 Hyattsville, MD 20782[posted May 2, 1998]