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

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

paramilitary A paramilitary is a military that is not a part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the use of the term "paramilitary" as far back as 1934. Overview Though a paramilitary is, by definiti ...

organization in

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, set up in 1971 in the aftermath of the breakup of the Minutemen group by local law enforcement. The ACLU has claimed that the organization had

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

support.

History

The Secret Army Organization was headquartered in

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California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

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 Minutemen, 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, 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's antisubversive Red Squad unit, Gil Romero, because he had experience as an FBI informant, and J.M. Lopez, an undercover San Diego police officer. According to the ACLU report, Lincoln Bueno, a member of the left-wing Chicano organization Brown Berets, and Bohmer were to be lured over the border to a remote location in

Tijuana Tijuana is the most populous city of the Mexican state of Baja California, located on the northwestern Pacific Coast of Mexico. Tijuana is the municipal seat of the Tijuana Municipality, the hub of the Tijuana metropolitan area and the most popu ...

, Mexico, where they would be murdered by Mexican Federal police 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, United States. It is part of the Miami metropolitan area of South Florida. The municipality is located on natural and human-made barrier islands between the Atlantic Ocean ...

Allegations of White House support

The White House was alleged to have maintained its own liaison to the SAO, Donald Segretti. 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, former counsel of the Committee for the Re-election of the President 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 organizations in the United States Right-wing militant groups Organizations designated as terrorist by the United States Defunct organizations designated as terrorist Right-wing militia organizations in the United States Anti-communist organizations in the United States