The Secret Army Organization (SAO) was a short-lived

right-wing Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, authorit ...

paramilitary A paramilitary is an organization whose structure, tactics, training, subculture, and (often) function are similar to those of a professional military, but is not part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces. Paramilitary units carr ...

organization in

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...

, set up in 1971 in the aftermath of the breakup of the

Minutemen Minutemen were members of the organized New England colonial militia companies trained in weaponry, tactics, and military strategies during the American Revolutionary War. They were known for being ready at a minute's notice, hence the name. Mi ...

group by local law enforcement. The ACLU has claimed that the organization had FBI support.

History

The Secret Army Organization was headquartered in

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

and consisted of around twelve local members with a handful more spread across

. from the original on 28 July 2019
Original scan available.
/ref> Its creation was the product of a meeting held on October 16–17, 1971; its leaders, Howard B. Godfrey and Jerry Lynn Davis, had been members of the

, a right-wing extremist organization. In 1971 and 1972, the Secret Army Organization engaged in a variety of criminal and provocative behavior. They fire-bombed cars, burglarized the homes of antiwar protestors, and ransacked places of work.

ACLU report

On June 26, 1975, the American Civil Liberty Union of

filed a report with Senate investigators alleging that the FBI was instrumental in the creation and operation of the SAO. The filing of this report came two days after the FBI publicly acknowledged its involvement in the illegal domestic counterintelligence program

COINTELPRO COINTELPRO ( syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program; 1956–1971) was a series of covert and illegal projects actively conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrati ...

, with activity spanning from May 1968 until April 1971.

Allegations of Government Support

The ACLU has claimed a connection between the SAO and the FBI, but this has not been substantiated. In April 1972, the FBI initiated a new operation, this time recruiting a member of the

San Diego Police Department The San Diego Police Department (SDPD) is the primary law enforcement agency for the city of San Diego, California. The department was officially established on May 16, 1889. History Prior to the establishment of the San Diego Police Departme ...

’s antisubversive “Red Squad” unit, Gil Romero, because he had experience as an FBI

informant An informant (also called an informer or, as a slang term, a “snitch”) is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law-enforcement world, where informan ...

, and J.M. Lopez, an undercover San Diego police officer. According to the ACLU report, Lincoln Bueno, a member of the left-wing

Chicano Chicano or Chicana is a chosen identity for many Mexican Americans in the United States. The label ''Chicano'' is sometimes used interchangeably with ''Mexican American'', although the terms have different meanings. While Mexican-American ident ...

organization

Brown Berets The Brown Berets (Spanish: ''Los Boinas Cafés'') is a pro-Chicano paramilitary organization that emerged during the Chicano Movement in the late 1960s. David Sanchez and Carlos Montes co-founded the group modeled after the Black Panther Par ...

, and Bohmer were to be lured over the border to a remote location in

Tijuana Tijuana ( ,"Tijuana"
(US) and < ...

, Mexico, where they would be murdered by

Mexican Federal police The Federal Police ( es, Policía Federal, PF), formerly known as the (Federal Preventive Police) and sometimes referred to in the U.S. as "Federales", was a Mexican national police force formed in 1999 and folded into the National Guard in 2019. ...

over a contrived cache of smuggled firearms. ACLU lawyer H. Peter Young reported that this conspiracy was abandoned when the Republican convention was moved to

Miami Beach, Florida Miami Beach is a coastal resort city in Miami-Dade County, Florida. It was incorporated on March 26, 1915. The municipality is located on natural and artificial island, man-made barrier islands between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay, the ...

. Allegations of White House Support The White House was alleged to have maintained its own liaison to the SAO,

Donald Segretti Donald Henry Segretti (born September 17, 1941, in San Marino, California) is an attorney best known for working as a political operative with then-U.S. President Richard Nixon's Committee to Re-elect the President during the early 1970s. Segret ...

. Segretti was quoted by the ACLU as having told the SAO that anyone causing trouble at the 1972 Republican convention would be "gotten rid of," apparently in reference to the so-called "Liddy plan" as described in the

United States Senate Watergate Committee The Senate Watergate Committee, known officially as the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, was a special committee established by the United States Senate, , in 1973, to investigate the Watergate scandal, with the power to inve ...

. The plan was named for

G. Gordon Liddy George Gordon Battle Liddy (November 30, 1930 – March 30, 2021) was an American lawyer, FBI agent, talk show host, actor, and convicted felon in the Watergate scandal as the chief operative in the White House Plumbers unit during the Nixon admi ...

, former counsel of the

Committee for the Re-election of the President The Committee for the Re-election of the President (also known as the Committee to Re-elect the President), abbreviated CRP, but often mocked by the acronym CREEP, was, officially, a fundraising organization of United States President Richard Nix ...

, and entailed the kidnapping of protestors and sending them to Mexico.

Dissolution

The ACLU claims that the FBI prevented prosecutors from pursuing Godfrey for his activity with the SAO. Having been a firefighter before his work with the FBI, by 1975 he was employed by the California State Fire Marshal's Office.

References

{{Reflist

External links

(October 30, 1973) Far-right terrorism Organizations designated as terrorist by the United States Defunct organizations designated as terrorist Right-wing militia organizations in the United States