[Ppnews] FBI Agent revealed as cofounder of Common Ground in New Orleans

[Political Prisoner News]

Printed from the Gambit Weekly website: gambitweekly.com

POSTED ON JANUARY 26, 2009:

Grounds for Suspicion

A cofounder of the Katrina relief organization 
Common Ground is revealed as an FBI informant, 
leaving members angry ­ and wary.

By David Winkler-Schmit
[]


Brandon Darby, who helped found Common Ground 
with Malik Rahim and Scott Crow, confirms he is 
an FBI informant. This photo was taken in 2006.
Photo by Ann Harkness

Brandon Darby is proud of his work in New 
Orleans. As one of the cofounders of the 
organization Common Ground, formed in the days 
after Katrina and the levee failures, he and the 
group's volunteers were among the first to 
distribute water, food and essential supplies. In 
the months after the storm, Darby, along with 
hundreds of Common Ground organizers and 
volunteers, established health clinics in the 
city, provided legal services and gutted homes.

And, at some point, Brandon Darby ­ once a 
self-proclaimed anarchist who advocated for 
overthrow of the U.S. government ­ became an informant for the FBI.

That much is public record. But when Darby became 
an informant ­ and whether he was keeping tabs on 
Common Ground for the federal government ­ is still a mystery.

When Malik Rahim found out Brandon Darby was an 
FBI informant, "It broke my heart," he says. 
Rahim, a New Orleans community organizer, former 
Black Panther and recent Green Party candidate 
for the U.S. Congress, formed Common Ground with 
Darby and Scott Crow, activists from Austin, 
Texas, on Sept. 5, 2005, less than a week after 
the levee failures. Headquartered in Rahim's 
house in Algiers, Common Ground became one of the 
first large-scale, nongovernmental relief efforts 
and has had more than 22,000 volunteers work for it since.

Darby, who says he was "very radical" when Common 
Ground started, served as the organization's 
interim director, but left when he became 
disillusioned with some of the group's 
anti-government leanings. According to him, he 
was approached by the FBI in late 2007 and asked 
to infiltrate a group of Austin activists 
planning to disrupt the 2008 Republican National 
Convention (RNC) in Minneapolis, Minn. Based on 
information Darby provided, FBI agents arrested 
and charged two men in a plot to firebomb a 
parking lot. One of the suspects, Bradley 
Crowder, has pleaded guilty, and the other 
suspect, David McKay, is scheduled for trial this 
month. (In an article by David Hanners in the St. 
Paul Pioneer Press, Darby said he contacted the 
FBI because activists were planning violence; 
however, in a more recent interview with The 
Gambit, Darby claimed the FBI approached him and 
insisted "The investigation wasn't into a threat of violence."

Darby says he didn't start working with the FBI 
until November 2007, but Rahim and Crow suspect 
his spying began as early as the founding of 
Common Ground. Darby denies this, and says Common 
Ground has never been the focus of an 
investigation, though he adds, "However, because 
(Common Ground) is a large organization and there 
are a lot of people who have sometimes come 
through ­ just like any other organization ­ who 
may or may not be wrapped up in a separate 
investigation, then it's not like investigating on [sic] Common Ground people."

Darby had an off-again, on-again history with the 
group he helped found. When he first arrived in 
New Orleans from Austin, he was an anarchist and 
believed in the overthrow of the government. His 
views changed, he says, as the community began to 
accept the organization and he started to feel he 
could work with the government and not against 
it. When he left New Orleans for Austin in early 
2006, he was at odds with some of those in Common 
Ground, but says he was asked to return in 
November 2006 as the group's interim director.

His tenure didn't last long. Lisa Fithian, an 
Austin activist and early Common Ground organizer 
who left the group in October 2006, says she 
began hearing numerous complaints from personnel 
about Darby in December, only weeks after he took 
his new position. Fithian says many volunteers 
described Darby as a divisive force ­ pitting 
people against one another, carrying guns, 
verbally abusing women and purging the volunteer 
ranks of those who didn't agree with his methods 
­ and the organization started to fall apart.

Fithian returned to New Orleans in January 2007 
for an emergency meeting of Common Ground 
leaders. She says Darby screamed at her and Crow 
during the meeting and accused them of conspiring against him.

"Man," Fithian recalls telling a friend, "this 
guy's not only crazy, but this is COINTELPRO."

Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover started the 
FBI's Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) 
in 1956. It was intended to undermine dissident 
political organizations by using covert 
operations to, as Hoover's directive stated, 
"expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or 
otherwise neutralize." Bureau agents used the 
tactics against groups including the Black 
Panthers, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern 
Christian Leadership Conference, women's 
liberation organizations and Vietnam War protest 
groups ­ and used counterintelligence techniques 
in order to degrade members, spread false rumors, 
harass and prevent exercise of the First 
Amendment rights of speech and association.

The program's activities were exposed in 1971, 
and the U.S. Senate's Church Committee, named for 
chairman Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho), held 
hearings on COINTELPRO. After studying more than 
20,000 pages of FBI documents and testimony from 
agents and the program's targets, the committee 
concluded in its report: "Many of the techniques 
used would be intolerable in a democratic society 
even if all of the targets had been involved in 
violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond 
that. The unexpressed major premise of the 
programs was that a law enforcement agency has 
the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat 
perceived threats to the existing social and political order."

Although COINTELPRO was officially terminated in 
1971, many activists, including Crow, Rahim and 
Fithian, believe the FBI still employs similar tactics.
[]


Scott Crow (left) and Brandon Darby were 
photographed together on Nov. 3, 2007, at a party 
in Austin hosted by KUT Radio.

(The Gambit asked the FBI's New Orleans field 
office if Common Ground Relief was being 
investigated. Spokesperson Sheila Thorne says the 
FBI will not announce an investigation until 
there is something in a public record, or until a suspect has been charged.)

Crow and Fithian now believe Darby was an FBI 
informant since at least early 2006, a charge he 
denies. Darby dismisses Fithian's accusations of 
undermining Common Ground, and says he worked as 
an FBI informant for less than two years. He 
won't elaborate on whom he's informed, but he 
offers a rationale, which ironically uses the 
First Amendment to justify the FBI's involvement: 
"Any time a group of people get together and 
organize with an expressed intent, a publicly 
expressed intent, to prevent other people from 
exercising their constitutional right to assemble 
and say they're going to stop it by any means 
necessary, it is the responsibility of the federal government to look into it."

Fithian and Crow are members of the Austin 
Informant Working Group, an Austin-based group of 
community organizers. The group has examined 74 
pages of FBI documents pertaining to Darby's 
informing, and Fithian says the documents prove 
Darby reported on conversations she and Darby 
held while they both still worked with Common 
Ground. She adds she was involved in the RNC protests, but did nothing illegal.

When accusations of Darby's involvement first 
surfaced, Crow confronted Darby, who said he 
didn't want to talk about it. When Crow asked 
again, Darby admits he lied and said the rumors 
were false. Today, he won't say whether or not he 
informed on Crow, but he does say his former 
friend was indirectly involved in the RNC protest.

"I don't have that much to say about him," Darby 
says. "Some of his views are a little concerning, 
but I don't consider him a violent person."

Now that Darby's role in the arrests of Browder 
and McKay has been confirmed, Crow is looking 
back at the three years since Hurricane Katrina 
and says he finds it unusual that he ­ a 
self-proclaimed anarchist for 20 years ­ wasn't 
considered a public threat until he became a part 
of Common Ground. He points to a specific example.

For a number of years, Crow was on the approved 
visiting list for Herman Wallace, who, along with 
two other prisoners, was accused in the 1972 
stabbing of an Angola guard. Wallace was 
convicted and has spent three decades in solitary 
confinement. In September 2006, Crow received a 
letter from the prison saying his name had been 
removed from the approved visitors list because 
of information from an outside law enforcement agency.

Nick Trenticosta, Wallace's attorney, says there 
was a hearing that month about Wallace's 
incarceration, and due to security concerns, a 
judge decided to hold the hearing in the prison 
instead of a Baton Rouge courthouse. Prior to the 
hearing, Trenticosta says, he was shown a 
document stating the FBI provided information of 
potential trouble at the hearing. The reason 
given was that Crow had recently purchased a 
rifle. When the hearing was held, supporters 
weren't allowed in and SWAT teams were posted 
outside, something Trenticosta believes is 
directly related to Darby's informing: "There's 
not a chance that the ATF (U.S. Bureau of 
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) would have flagged 
Scott Crow buying a rifle," Trenticosta says. "Somebody had to do that."

Fithian says she will make Freedom of Information 
Act requests to determine when Darby became an 
informant. With so much information redacted 
because of ongoing investigations, though, she 
says uncovering the truth will be a challenge. As 
for Common Ground, she feels Darby's behavior as 
interim director had long-term consequences for 
the organization and made it less effective.

Darby maintains it is only because of his 
association with the FBI that his associates in 
Common Ground have turned against him and tainted 
his reputation there. Besides, he hints, he may 
not have been the only the one supplying the FBI with information:

"I will also say if you are called a 'reliable 
source' by the bureau, that means that info you 
have given has been cross checked by other sources."

(The Gambit called Darby on Tuesday for a 
follow-up interview. His phone had been 
disconnected, and there was no forwarding number.)

URL for this story: 
<http://bestofneworleans.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A49882>http://bestofneworleans.comhttp://bestofneworleans.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A49882 





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