Anna The Snitch
http://www.newtimesbpb.com/Issues/2006-06-22/news/tailpipe.html
Anna the Medic Have Wire, Will Travel
Listen, my children, to the story of Anna the Medic, who travels the
land, bringing the harsh scrutiny of federal law enforcement to
Americans engaged in political protest.
In the past two years, Anna, whose real name may be Anna Davies or
Anna Davidson, has turned up at rallies and marches from South
Florida to Northern California, with a lot of stops in between. She
has demonstrated for animal rights and protested the Iraq War, all
the while meticulously gathering information on political dissidents
for the FBI. According to FBI affidavits, Anna has been a paid
informant in 12 investigations of “anarchist” groups. She’s a
veritable Scarlet Pimpernel, on the federal government tab.
As a confidential informant, Anna is topnotch. She has a way of
inveigling herself into meetings and revving up the emotions of young
dissidents, protest group leaders say.
For example, days before planned protests in June 2005 at the Broward
Convention Center, where the Organization of American States held its
annual meeting, Anna showed up out of the blue in crisp black scrubs
and a kit bag with a red cross on it, says Ray Del Papa, a member of
the protest planning committee.
Del Papa says his suspicions were immediately aroused. “I had just
had a phone conversation with the defense headquarters set up in Fort
Lauderdale to handle arrest situations,” he says. “I told them we
needed medics. The next day, Anna shows up, dressed as a medic. I
knew our phones were tapped, so I thought she might be an infiltrator.
“Anna, in her mid-20s, seemed more interested in the planning for the
protest than in medical contingencies. She asked a lot of questions
and seemed to have prior knowledge of all the preliminary planning
sessions, Del Papa says. “She’d come up and ask me, ‘What happened at
the legal observer training session?’” Del Papa says. “I’d say, ‘How
did you know about that?’ And she’d say, ‘Well, I heard you were
there. ‘”
During the protest on June 6, Anna was called upon to use her
supposed medical skills. She was summoned to help an elderly woman
who was apparently suffering from heat exhaustion. She gave the
woman, Barbara Collins, a drink of Gatorade. After her symptoms
persisted, though, Anna declined to return to assist the woman again,
says Collins’ friend Linda Belgrave, a University of Miami sociology
professor.
“She told us to walk over to where some air-conditioned buses were,”
Belgrave says. “Anna was too busy hanging out to help. Eventually,
[Barbara] collapsed by the side of the road, and the cops called an
ambulance.” Things went smoothly at the protest until a small group
of teenagers decided to stage a sitdown in front of a squad of police
officers in riot gear. Here’s where Anna showed her true calling. Del
Papa and others say the teenagers had been orchestrated by the
charismatic Anna. The setting was at a bottleneck in the march to the
convention center, and cops seemed to be preparing to step in. “I
said, ‘This is a trap,’” Del Papa recounts. Other protest leaders
eventually interceded, persuading the teenagers to move along before
the cops moved in.
Anna showed up later that month at the so-called Bio-Democracy
protests in Philadelphia, at which demonstrators protested
experiments on animals. Some 15 demonstrators were arrested during
street protests at and around the Philadelphia Convention Center,
where biotech companies were meeting. Anna posted an “article” about
the protest on an independent media website. “How empowering!” she
crowed, recounting how she had chanted “Puppy killers, GO HOME!” She
made subsequent appearances at protests and meetings in Boston,
Pittsburgh, and Asheville, North Carolina.
But Anna’s big coup was in Northern California, where she became the
prime prosecution witness in federal conspiracy charges against three
alleged “eco-terrorists.” The three plotted to blow up a dam, a
genetics lab, a U.S. Forestry Service facility, and cellular
telephone towers, federal authorities say. Anna was there, recording
the whole plot with a body wire. However, according to attorney Mark
Reichel, who represents one of the defendants, Eric McDavid, it was
actually Anna who recruited the three during the Philadelphia
protest. McDavid, Zachary Jenson, and Lauren Weiner traveled with
Anna to Auburn, California, where Anna rented a cabin and assisted in
preparations for manufacturing bombs and scoping out targets. Reichel
says Anna promoted the plot and bought the supplies (including
“canning jars, coffee filters, a mixing bowl, a hot plate, petroleum
jelly, a gasoline can, bleach, an extension cord, and battery
testers,” as a court document recorded it) that were purchased to
make bombs.
The three alleged conspirators, supposedly members of an Eco-
Liberation Front (ELF) cell, were arrested in January; Weiner has
agreed to testify against the other two.
South Florida lawyer/activist Jennifer Van Bergen began to connect
the dots in Anna’s headlong career as an informant in a June 8
article for Raw Story, a progressive online newsgathering
organization. The truth about Anna’s involvement with the ELF plot
was by then beginning to surface in court hearings. An FBI agent
revealed that Anna referred to in court as “the source” was paid
$75,000 and expenses over the past two years to serve as an FBI
confidential informant. He also conceded that Anna had rented the
cabin and purchased at least some of the bomb-making supplies.
Attempts to reach Anna at her e-mail address
(annadavies99@yahoo.comannadavies99@yahoo.com) got no response.
Judy Orhuela, spokeswoman for the FBI Miami office, said the agency
wouldn’t comment on confidential informants.
Tailpipe remembers stories from the dark, Nixonian 1960s and ’70s
about undercover operatives who used insidious tactics to ratchet up
the violence, then showed up in court as paid informants. (”When
somebody in a crowd shouts ‘Let’s get some guns,’ you know he’s a
paid informant,” activists used to say.) But hasn’t that kind of
questionable law enforcement activity been attacked in federal court?
In the Bush era, all civil-rights bets are off. The ‘Pipe asked the
world-bitten Reichel about the possible fallout should Anna be shown
to have been a provocateur rather than an impartial observer.
“Please,” he said. “They’ll give her the Medal of Honor.”