FBI treatment of citizens!

FBI AGENT DEFIES LAWYERS AT BARI TRIAL

Combative bomb specialist denies misleading Oakland investigators after
bombing

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/local/news/24bari_b1.html

OAKLAND (Santa Rosa Press Democrat, April 24) -- Attorneys for the Oakland
police and Earth First activist Judi Bari on Tuesday formed an unlikely
alliance in an attempt to discredit trial testimony of an FBI bomb
specialist, who steadfastly denied he shaped a controversial investigation
into a still unsolved 1990 car bombing.

Despite the combined attack on his credibility over three days of
testimony, career FBI bomb specialist Frank Doyle refused to budge from his
courtroom contentions.

Doyle, combative at times, repeatedly denied misleading Oakland
investigators into believing that Bari and companion Darryl Cherney were
violence-prone environmental radicals who were probably guilty of
transporting a pipe bomb that exploded on May 24, 1990, blowing up Bari's
station wagon and leaving her permanently injured.

"We went there to help. That was my only role," said Doyle.

Doyle has been the primary witness in an on-going trial of a false
arrest and civil rights violation lawsuit that is finally before a federal
jury after a decade of legal wrangling.

Bari's heirs and Cherney seek unspecified damages from three Oakland
police investigators and six FBI agents, including Doyle, whom they accuse
of "framing" the two well-known activists in a bid to discredit the then-
fledgling Earth First movement in North Coast timber country.

Doyle, who retired earlier this year from the FBI after a 32-year career,

frequently grew testy during three days of testimony. He punctuated his
testimony with a litany of "I don't recalls," and denials about his alleged
key role in the Bari bombing investigation.

Doyle, in his concluding testimony, refused to acknowledge a key role in
the bombing investigation, or that he was considered the FBI's premier bomb
expert in Northern California law enforcement offices.

Doyle, now a consultant on terrorist tactics in the Middle East for the
U.S. Department of State, conceded he has investigated nearly 200 bombing
cases over his career, and has often been the lead instructor in FBI
training
programs on explosive devices. But he would not agree that experience makes
him an expert in the eyes of local law enforcement.

Why? "Because I don't consider myself an expert," said Doyle during a
sharp
exchange Tuesday with Bari attorney Robert Bloom. Besides, Doyle said, "It
was
not the practice of the FBI in my 32 years to label any of its special
agents
'experts'."

Oakland city attorney Maria Bee Tuesday attacked Doyle's credibility by
citing a series of inconsistencies between earlier sworn statements he gave
at pre-trial hearings, and his courtroom testimony. She concluded by reading

aloud from one document in which Doyle acknowledged he was testifying as "an

expert."

For Oakland police attorneys and Bari's legal team, Doyle's role in the
case, and how it is defined for the jury, is crucial. Bari lawyers have long

argued that Doyle and the FBI led Oakland police in a rush to judgment,
convincing local law enforcement that Bari and Cherney were perpetrators of
a
crime and not victims of a car bombing.

Oakland police investigators led off the trial two weeks ago testifying
that within an hour of the mid-day bomb blast on an Oakland side street,
they
relied almost exclusively upon Doyle and fellow agents in the FBI's counter-

terrorism squad in San Francisco for advice in how to proceed with the case.

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
http://www.anaphoria.com

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