Beware of Fake Parties

[flyby]

A recent exposure in the Netherlands documents how intelligence agencies have created whole "encapsulated groups" and parties in order to infiltrate the international communist movement.

Though this article is packed with the bullshit reactionary assumptions and context of the WSJ, it describes an operation that (apparently, supposedly) has now come to light.

----------------------------------------------

In From the Cold:
He Was a Communist
For Dutch Intelligence
Comrade 'Chris Petersen' Was
Big in China and Albania;
'Project Mongol' Tell-All

By ANDREW HIGGINS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 3, 2004; Page A1

ZANDVOORT, Netherlands -- As secretary-general of the Marxist-Leninist Party
of the Netherlands, Chris Petersen traveled the globe during the Cold War,
wowing Communist leaders with his revolutionary zeal and anticapitalist
diatribes.

"I could make speeches for hours and you would think that Mao Tse-tung
himself had been my teacher," recalls the now-retired party chief.

The Chinese Communist Party was so impressed, it regularly gave the ranting
Dutchman the full red-carpet treatment in Beijing: banquets in the Great
Hall of the People, an audience with Mao, envelopes stuffed with cash and
tributes in the People's Daily. Albania's Communists were also big fans.

Now, with communism all but dead, the Dutchman has decided to come clean:
Both he and his party were a sham.

He says he was never a Maoist but an opera-loving math teacher moonlighting
for Dutch intelligence. His name, his politics and his party, he says, all
were concocted in a plot to penetrate militant Marxist subculture.

"Nothing was real," says the ex-Mr. Petersen, who now lives under his real
name, Pieter Boevé, here in Zandvoort, a seaside resort town west of
Amsterdam. The only genuine part of a revolutionary career that lasted
decades, he says, was a fondness for Chinese food: The Chinese Communist
Party, Mr. Boevé recalls, had excellent cooks.

"TYPE=PICT;ALT=[PieterBoeve]"



The Central Intelligence Agency, which got regular updates on the mock
Maoist movement, dubbed it "Operation Red Herring," according to Dutch
intelligence. (The CIA won't comment.) The Dutch called it "Project Mongol."

The unmasking comes at an uncomfortable time for Dutch security services,
now under fire for post-Communist bungling. Having infiltrated Maoist groups
with gusto, they lost track of an Islamic radical blamed for the murder last
month of filmmaker Theo van Gogh.

Mr. Boevé, who appeared on television in a recent documentary about the
Dutch secret service while wearing a fake beard and Groucho Marx plastic
nose and glasses, says his past exploits provide tips that could help con
Islamist extremists, but he doesn't envy anyone who might try: "It's very
dangerous," he says.

In a country where erstwhile Maoists and other radicals have become pillars
of the establishment, the exposure of the phony Marxist-Leninist Party of
the Netherlands, or MLPN, has caused dismay and embarrassment. Frits
Hoekstra, a former high-ranking security official, shocked former colleagues
in September by publishing a book that described Project Mongol and other
escapades. The interior minister ordered an investigation into whether state
secrets were divulged. Former Maoists are aghast.


"TYPE=PICT;ALT=[redherring]"
Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha, gesturing, meets Pieter Boeve, right, in
Tirana, Albania.








"I totally wasted 12 years of my life," says Paul Wartena, an ex-MLPN member
who was so dedicated to the cause he used to donate 20% of his salary to the
fake party. He says he "had some doubts now and then" about the MLPN but
stayed loyal because "I was very naive and Mr. Boevé was such a good actor."
Now a researcher at a university in Utrecht, Mr. Wartena wants Dutch
intelligence to pay him back for all his donations.

Mr. Boevé, now 74, scoffs at his acolyte: "He was an idiot."

Mr. Boevé says he, too, is upset that his caper leaked but that Mr.
Hoekstra's book forced him in from the cold.

Conning so many people, says Mr. Boevé, was "not the most beautiful thing,"
but it was a great adventure. He visited China about 25 times, made frequent
trips to Albania and duped radical leaders in the West. After each journey,
he went to a safe house in Amsterdam to pass on tidbits of information.

Set up and run by spooks in 1969, his party, the MLPN, had its own
newspaper, De Kommunist, written and edited by the secret service. As well
as Mr. Boevé playing Chris Petersen, the secretary-general, it had a
chairman (another fraud) and a Central Committee stacked with secret agents.
To add authenticity, the party let Mr. Wartena and a handful of other true
believers join its otherwise nonexistent ranks, telling them that they were
part of a network of underground cells.

Mr. Boevé first started working as an informant for the Dutch secret
service, then known as the BVD, in the late 1950s and started using a fake
name. Invited to Moscow for a youth festival in 1957, he attended a
reception hosted by Nikita Khrushchev and briefed Dutch intelligence.

Mr. Hoekstra, a former head of counterintelligence against Soviet-bloc
countries and author of the recent book, says Mr. Boevé's recruitment wasn't
at first seen as a big deal, but, rather, as part of routine tracking of
local Communists.

"TYPE=PICT;ALT=[FritsHoekstra]"



Shortly after the Moscow festival, however, Mr. Boevé got an invitation to
China, then still aligned with the Soviet Union. While in China, he kept
hearing Chinese officials curse Moscow, which had just cut funding to
Beijing. The move marked the start of the Sino-Soviet split -- and of Mr.
Boevé's role as an unlikely prize agent.

Desperate for allies against Moscow, China searched out Communists in Europe
and elsewhere. Mr. Boevé, encouraged by the BVD, offered his services. He
visited China in the early 1960s for a six-week course on Mao Tse-tung
Thought. He says he got good at mimicking Chinese propaganda. The main
difficulty, he says, was keeping up with the wild zigzags of Chinese
politics: his hosts kept getting purged.

Chinese diplomats in Holland invited the man they knew as Chris Petersen to
their mission in The Hague and gave money to help finance a Maoist newspaper
secretly edited by the BVD. The result was De Kommunist. Mr. Hoekstra, the
former spy and now a business consultant, says he once wrote a screed
against the Dutch government. "As a civil servant, it was very satisfying,"
he says.

After a year, De Kommunist announced with fanfare in 1969 the foundation of
the Marxist-Leninist Party of the Netherlands. "In order to limit as far as
possible the danger of penetration by enemy elements," it explained, "the
MLPN organization shall be based largely on the cell system, obliging all
members to the greatest possible secrecy."

For the next decade, the fake party helped the Dutch secret police divide
Holland's legitimate Communist movement, keep tabs on Maoist groups and gain
access to China's elite. "Petersen" issued regular communiques -- all
drafted by the BVD -- denouncing real Communists as sellouts and urging
voters to reject them.

Mr. Hoekstra, the former intelligence officer, said the facade of Maoist
fervor did sometimes wobble. On one occasion, he says, "Petersen" started
talking in public about how to take advantage of tax deductions, not
something a Maoist is supposed to worry about. He says there was concern the
Chinese might smell a rat, but that faded. The Dutch, he says, had the
Chinese embassy bugged and heard diplomats singing "Petersen's" praises. "We
could hear everything," says Mr. Hoekstra.

By the 1980s, purges and ideological U-turns had exhausted most Maoists in
Europe, and the BVD began to lose interest in the ruse. China was no longer
an enemy but a big trading partner. De Kommunist shut down. The MLPN
fizzled.

Mr. Boevé, though, kept going. In 1989, when troops shot dead hundreds of
protesters around Tiananmen Square, he issued a statement praising the
resolve of the Communist Party in restoring order. Shortly afterward, he was
back in Beijing, hailing the party and its leaders.

In a small apartment crowded with an electric organ and piles of books, Mr.
Boevé rustles through plastic shopping bags full of yellowing MLPN tracts
and other mementos. One is a copy of a photograph of himself meeting Enver
Hoxha, Albania's Communist dictator from 1944 until his death in 1985.

Advancing age has finally slowed Mr. Boevé down. He walks with a cane and
can't climb stairs. His involvement with China is limited to visits to a
local Chinese restaurant. He draws giggles by humming the "East is Red," a
Maoist anthem. "It's a very nice tune," he says.

His political horizons have shrunk to Zandvoort. He sits on the local
council and lobbies for better housing for the elderly. He has even set up
yet another party: It represents old people. It doesn't have many members,
but, says Mr. Boevé, "This time they are all real."

[redstar2000SE]

I have the suspicion that "Mr. Boevé", the Dutch police, and the Wall Street Journal are exaggerating this "success" far and perhaps very far beyond its actual limits.

I rather doubt, in particular, that his "newspaper" had any significant influence on the Dutch left...even among Maoists. He might have written anything he wished about China...and few would have had the first-hand experience to dispute him. But anything he wrote about the Dutch left would be available for immediate inspection, confirmation or rejection.

Sure, you can call somebody a "sell-out" and even make up a bunch of lies to "support" that contention. But you also have to show that the "deal has been made" -- that the object of your critique is "delivering the goods to the purchaser". If you can't do that, then your case collapses. You might gull a few newbies here and there...but those who are politically sophisticated will be quick to catch on -- and may even start inquiring about your own "creds".

It's also quite possible that the Chinese might also have caught on to him after a while...and deliberately fed him a good deal of "disinformation". The Chinese were not "beginners" at the game of "secret agent", after all.

But I agree with flyby's advice: never join groups that don't allow you to meet more than a few or just one member. You have to assume that something funny is going on under such circumstances.

[mundo did not log in]

Well, I remember reading something here about a group calling itself the "Patriot Party" back in the day that was claiming to be a "white" proletarian vanguard, which turned out to be a total sham, but which during its existence got to rub elbows with the Panthers, Young Lords, and others for the purpose of gathering intelligence.

I also got the feeling that this Dutch guy was exaggerating his success more than a little..and it doesn't help that the reporter doesn't bother to inteview any actual Maoists, except for the one who'd been hoodwinked. But it seems like the point of such orgs is less about attracting members than it is about getting access to conferences and other venues for gathering intelligence on legit groups.

[flyby]

redstar wrote: "But I agree with flyby's advice: never join groups that don't allow you to meet more than a few or just one member. You have to assume that something funny is going on under such circumstances."

For once Redstar claims agreement with me... but unfortunately it is to something i never said and which I don't believe. Some agreement.

There are certainly times when revolutionary movements operate with strict "need to know formations" -- where no one knows (or should know) more than a few people. Redstar's suggestion that this is inherently suspicious is not a view I share. And is riddled with bourgeois democratic illusions.

However it is important not to assume there are no police operations on the left, and that even whole organizations might not be shams created for gathering info.

The point was not that this Dutch outfit or their paper was influential (I don't know anything about it, and don't know that anyone claimed it) -- but that it was able to get into places where the agents wanted info (including the discussions among revs in the center of the world revoultion at that time -- i.e. Beijing.)

And sometimes the bizarre behavior of suspicious groups -- excactly because they are bizarre and non-influential -- are a cointelpro device for turning people off to rev politics.

Certainly there are people posting on the internet (like majdur) that fit such a description.

One important lesson: things are often not what they seem.

[guest]

Are there such groups now? And how can we know?
Or can we only suspect-and-avoid until by luck or exposure they reveal themselves later?

[flyby]

more on this "encapsulated group" from another e-list. A norwegian leftists (former leader ofa "three worldist" party there) describes meeting this "Petersen":

"Petersen/MLPN" first part
My experience with him

...I MET MR "PETERSEN" in Oslo.

As my last posting on Petersen and his "MLPN"
got a rather malapropos appreciation at the time
by a spotter who seemed to read my reaction as a support
for the wiewsk that "crde Petersen"
was

a) a great sucsess
b) typical of intelligence operations (against maoists,
maybe?)

let me repeat my earlier conclutions, with their edges
perhaps sharpened a bit:

1) "Petersen" and his "MLPN" were as genuine as a 13-
dollar bill. At the time, we got their mag, and we
concluded that they were either

+ agents or
+ locos.

We read his mag more or less in the spirit of the
posadist stuff at the time with flying saucers, "the
children masses rising" etc.

2) This was because the little a4 mag of the "party"
showed absolutely no sign of external activities, but
in the main was about ideology (and with no pix, if
i remenber it!) and cvonsisted of "orthomao" phrases.

As we knew a lot about RECRUITING people - we went from
a movement of tens to several tousand organised people
in less than 10 years - we could see that this was
a thing without ABSOLUTELY ANY MASS APPEAL AT ALL.
Neither did it reflect the least sign that the person(s)
putting this out were DOING anything at all in the real
world - the vietnam demonstrations of the time, the strikes
or union movement, anything.

On the other hand, they were very good at sending greetings
to the CPC at the 1st october etc. To us it seemed that this
mag was MAINLY published to get into the "Peking Rewiew".

Which it was, of course.

3) The reason we werent sure wether this was a police
provocation or simply a loco, was that at this time there
were still a number of old CP people around in different
countries, who were pro china/pro stalin and at the same
time extremely secterian and isolated, existing outside
any type of contact with any kind of the mass and youth
movements wich were growing like mushrooms in all the
countries of the west at the time (including San Marino
etc!)

So we wondered if this might be one old-guard opportunist
who had set up this "party" in order to get free trips
to china - a personal "free travel agency".

These kinds
of guys were quite common in the old parties, getting
the monopoly on "solidarity with Bulgaria" - "solidarity
with Mongolia" etc, going bakck and forth, going to receptions,
getting blue in the face from embassy free likker, etc.
(During the 60s, this was a statum we mainly met at recepitons
in the chinese and corean embassys, where they unerringly
ran on their faltering legs from the entrance to the free bar.)

What we WERE sure of before meeting the guy, was that
THERE WAS NO GENUINE PARTY OR MOVEMENT behind this "party".

4) So he invited himself to Oslo and I met him.

As I remember it, we didnt offer to give him a bed,
nor did we meet him in any kind of office of ours but
I met him in a restaurant downtown (which indicates how
we looked at him).

The guy still was as genuine as a 7-dollar bill. He was
very middle-aged and bzwa, very different from the typical
youth activist of the time, nor did he talk the lingo.

I think I remember that he told that he was a goldsmith(!?!)
and that Petersen was a nom-de guerre (not very impressive,
as the numbers of goldsmiths even in rich, but small Netherlands
arent unlimited).

He had nothing to say about real politix, and what he DID say
was weird -like that they had a SECRET member in some municipal
parliament - and they were a very ILLEGAL party - ...

... again, WHAT is the use of a SECRET parliamentarian?

I see that these recent exposures talks about 1 or several
other "genuine" members. In fact Im a bit surprized, as I thought
after meeting "Mr Petersen" that this was a 1 man operaton and
all the rest was bluff.

5) I believe our counclutions we drew at the time was
that this smelled more of the police than of a private
china travelling agency, as this guy paid his way uninvited
up to Oslo to have some rather inane talks whith us, and
why the hell should he do that if he was genuine?

Then, all this "illegal" talks of him smelt of bluff 100
meters upwind - a guy wanting to give an impression that
there were something where there was nothing. Now again,
why?

This smelled like some kinds of spook coming up to Oslo
with the task of checking us out. (At the time, we had
information that among others the US intelligence services
were rather nervous about us. Norway after all WAS the north
flank of the NATO, and we had many people inside the army,
agitating aganist the NATO, the US and the Vietnam war at
the time. We were even defined as "the enemy" during staff
maneuvers of the NATO at the time.)

I think this fits rather well with the info now given. The
dutch spooks by themselves wouldnt be very interested in
going up to Oslo and checking out those youth maoists at
the time. The US on the other hands might ask the dutch for
this littl service. Secondarily, it might be the brits or
the Israelis (we had rather good PLO/fatah and some Ira
contacts at the time, and both of them sent operatives to
norway infiltrating solidarity meetings, etc).

This was what we said to all the foreign parties at the
time: We tought that the MLPN was totally fake, either
a one-man loco swindle operation OR a police affair.

Neither do I remember ANY foreign party or org in Europe
we had contact with, who had contacts with the "MLPN"
and regarded them as genuine.

[flyby]

Following Tron's recollections, there was a follow-up by someone else on that elist. I'll excerpt the heart of it here.
______________________________________________

Interesting observations and a useful topic....And useful because it helps a new generation to study what is exposed
about such operations in the past.

As noted, there have been many such operations (including several in the U.S. past I could "spot" -- including the notorious "Patriot Party" and its leader "Preacherman" in the Panther Days, and the notorious "Red Star Sisters" in the 60's days of forming an anti-revisionist communist movement and so on.)

And, as noted, such operations often invoke the thought "these people are either fools or pigs."

The previous post spends a great deal of time discussing whether the particular Petersen group was "a success."

In my opinion it is hard to judge from a distance - since we don't know actually what he was able to ferret out in China (and elsewhere), and what value it was to his masters. And in some ways the PARTICULAR success of that PARTICULAR group is not all that important -- to the larger process of grasping the tactics used by oppressors.

There is an air in this discussion that pooh-poohs such groups and operations. In a somewhat unfortunate way, this tends to dismiss the harm and danger of the police, and (in a related way) tends to dismiss the importance and value of revolutionary forces.

It is true, as Tron points out, that *some* encapsulated groups are as "phony as a 7-dollar bill" -- at least to those savy enough or close enough to see them as phony. But (as the Petersen story shows) what is obviously phony to Tron in Oslo may not be as obvious to someone elsewhere (Aftica?or Foreign Ministry in Beijing? or Tirana? or naive emerging student radicals in Amsterdam, or whatever).

Such "encapsulated groups" serve a purpose -- and the joking
suggestion that it would be fine to have many of them, and to imply they are inherently impotent, kinda works against (what I believe should be) a main point.... which is alerting a new generation of activists to the means and methods of the police. (And even to the very fact that the political police exist and are interested in knowing about such things, or disrupting such things.)

Such groups take their place within an arsenal of other police
tactics. As has been noted in this thread: the political police also (a) send in infiltrators, (b) surveille using mechanical spying means (c) study all public utterances and publications for data, (d) try to "flip" activists when they get them in legal or personal binds.

In addition, in the U.S. (and other places) they simply frame people and assassinate them. And the legacy of that is bitter in the U.S. -- with forces like Malcolm X, King, Fred Hampton, Bunchy Carter, George Jackson, and Damian Garcia killed under very suspicious circumstances (or in some cases by open police assassination). People like Stokely "bad jacketed" by cointelpro operations and forced into exile. Huey, Bobby, Geronimo Pratt etc. framed and facing years in prison. And, of course, by similar means, targetting of Bob Avakian,
forcing him too into exile in the early 80s.

It is also worth noting that "encapsulated groups" have historically (in the U.S. now) played a role in defaming political leaders that other arms of the police are targetting. Spreading the "bad jacketing rumors" etc. True then, true now.

I tend to view the "encapsulated groups" as a part of such a wider range of operations -- used for certain purposes, useless for others. Also they have the purpose of "discrediting" genuine groups -- often
by their bizarre politics which can "rub off" or confuse, or by
spreading rumors. The internet is a perfect modern medium for such operations to thrive -- where "paper groups" can give way to "online only mastheads" -- and where a lie by a pig can easily get repeatedas a rumor among the naive and gullible.

And I believe understanding these various tactics is important.

---------------------------------
note: this topic is also discussed in a thread on E-G, which I don't belong to.

[Esekaese]

Guest-mundo said:

Well, I remember reading something here about a group calling itself the "Patriot Party" back in the day that was claiming to be a "white" proletarian vanguard, which turned out to be a total sham, but which during its existence got to rub elbows with the Panthers, Young Lords, and others for the purpose of gathering intelligence.

I don't know from where do you get your info, but the Young Patriot Party, mostly made up of white youth from the Appalachia's decaying mining towns was a legitimate expression of young white proles, similar in ideological scope, but to a much lesser extent and impact of the YLO/YLP. That it too, like almost all revolutionary organizations in the 70s, was targeted by the state and probably was infiltrated, but not more no less than other organizations, including the BPP where.

There is a list in yahoo groups called "leftist_trainspotters" dedicated exactly to digging up this stuff.

groups.yahoo.com/group/leftist_trainspotters/

IN the archives, if you manage to get the search to work, you can find lengthy discussion on the YPP.

But I must say, this is the first time I have heard anyone say the YPP was a state run organization in perspective, althougth I wouldn't be surprised to hear this was currency in some groups at the time. I would be a millonaire if I got a dime every time the BPP was accused of such things by people as revolutionary as the CPUSA.

Ironically, the sectarian paranoia of calling organizations with whom one disagree "state assets" actually made it easier for the state to actually turn them, as happened to the BPP, the YLP and many other revolutionary minority nationalists and many grouplets of the NCM.

sks

[redstar2000SE]

Flyby wrote: For once Redstar claims agreement with me... but unfortunately it is to something i never said and which I don't believe. Some agreement.

There are certainly times when revolutionary movements operate with strict "need to know formations" -- where no one knows (or should know) more than a few people. Redstar's suggestion that this is inherently suspicious is not a view I share. And is riddled with bourgeois democratic illusions.

My apologies, flyby.

I took your publication of this information "at face value" and assumed you were specifically warning people to stay away from "groups" like this one.

I completely overlooked your "dialectical" approach: never say anything that can be pinned down to a specific choice.

I suppose your advice would be: "be suspicious...but not too suspicious."

Very helpful.

[hominid]

On the Patriot Party:

Inspired by the radical “community organizing” of Black groups like SNCC, a growing number of white radicals from SDS started various organizing projects in white working class communities.

In Chicago, there was a focus on the white proletarian neighborhoods of Uptown where many people came from the South. Over time a radical (and even at times revolutionary) organization formed, known as Rising Up Angry, that associated itself closely with the Black Panther Party in Chicago, and its leader Fred Hampton. Rising Up Angry was one of several different revolutionary currents that emerged at that time in Chicago – looking for “roads to the proletariat.” Their strength was that they were intensely anti-racist, and their distinctiveness came from their decision to culturally identify with (and project) the “greaser culture.” They put put out a pretty interesting radical newspaper (where I used to love to read the radical comix).

Over time RUA traveled the road taken by the Huey Newton wing of the Panthers – “Serve the People” programs and related “community projects” became increasingly reformist, and they increasingly overshadowing revolutionary politics. The group went through several incarnations, and its members gravitated toward full bore Chicago-style Democratic Party ward politics (with some of their forces participating in the campaigns and administration of Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago).

I tell this background to get to the Patriot Party.

As an intro I want to say clearly that I have not seen a definitive documentation of what was behind the Patriot Party (i.e. of the kind we are discussing in relation to the Petersen group in Holland or that emerged about some other operations covered in the cointelpro papers).

Somewhere around 1971, a guy who called himself Preacherman (aka Bill Fesperman) claimed to have emerged from this radical organizing among “greasers.” He announced himself the leader of a group called the “Patriot Party.” He put out a newspaper (I only saw one issue, did anyone ever see more?), participated in at least one conference called by the Black Panthers at that time, and was mentioned as the white component of a “rainbow coalition” of radical organizations (around the panthers). With that as his creds, Preacherman then toured around the country meeting with various radicals.

There was, from the beginning, something very wrong about his whole operation.

This was a time when radical forces of many different oppressed nationalities were forming organizations patterned on the then-revolutionary Black Panther Party. The Young Lords Party (among Puerto Rican youth, especially in NYC), Brown Berets among Chicanos, I Wor Kuen and the Red Guards among Asian communities on the coasts, and so on. Despite their common inspiration, these groups were very different – in seriousness, in political line, and in their political trajectories. But there was a built-in question to this essentially Bundist approach to organizing revolutionary organizations: What about white revolutionaries and radicals?

At the time the Revolutionary Union was forming in the Bay Area and arguing that it was wrong to form “white only” organizations – and instead taking the road of forging common, multinational communist organization.

But the Patriot Party portrayed itself as the natural representative of “white greaser youth,” and as a “whites only” organization. And the very way it identified as “Patriot” was only the start of the problem: They took as their symbol the racist Confederate flag (of slavery) and displayed it prominently across the masthead and back page of their newspaper. They adopted as their slogan the confenderate revanchist motto “The South Shall Rise Again!” (instead of the revolutionaries’ slogan of the times “All Power to the People!”)

In other words, unlike Rising Up Angry (which was seriously trying to connect white proletarian youth to an anti-racist radical/revolutionary movement) and unlike the emerging communist forces of the RU and others, this “Patriot Party” was openly tailing both American nationalism and (worse) white racist nostalgia for the Confederacy.

This alone raises the question of “Dude, you are either a fool or a pig.”

In any case, it is clear that this “Patriot Party” was not a genuine organization or radical force AT ALL – even if on the surface it imitated the Young Lords and Panthers (who were genuinely revolutionary organizations for a number of years.) Some people have raise the issue of “chapters” of the “Patriot Party.” But there is very little evidence of them (or any real membership for that matter). If anyone knows of such chapters (in say Chicago or NYC, where Preacherman hung out) they should mention it – cuz I never heard of any evidence of them.

There was a picture circulated of Preacherman talking, backed by three or four guys with greaser haircuts and shades…. whether this was a “membership” or something else is not clear. There was one man identified with Preacherman named Arthur Turco, who was an attorney around the Panthers (in Baltimore?). www.stevenkasher.com/html/Detail.asp?WorkInvNum=968&whatpage=artist

And Chuck Armsbury, in Eugene Oregon claims to have been a member of the Patriot Party. However if you read Chuck’s stories of those days, you can see he seems to be an honest white guy who was married to a member of the BPP, and worked closely with the BPP chapter in Eugene, and only “identified” with the Patriot Party in a distant way. www.itsabouttimebpp.com/home/pdf/ItsAboutTime_V6N2_fall_2002.pdf (Chuck Armsbury claims Preacherman visited him in prison,dding that after that he never heart of the Patriot Party or Preacherman again.)

About this time, Preacherman went on a tour in which he met radicals. In the east coast, a meeting was set up for him by George Demerle (spelling?), and various people were asked to attend. George Demerle is one of police agents to be exposed in the 60s. He was an actual badge-carrying New York cop (from the NYPD’s notorious red squad) who infiltrated the revolutionary movement in the late sixties there – and who (if I remember correctly) exposed his true nature when he testified for the prosecution at the famous Panther 21 trial in NYC. (anyone confirm that recollection?)

In any case, Demerle was for a while putting himself forward as a revolutionary streetfighter (wearing bizarre costumes with helmets and plumes, and calling himself “Captain Crazy…. But that is another story….)

This prominent redsquad cop George Demerle was Preacherman’s entre into radical circles in New York.

From what I heard, people contacted for this tour thought the whole thing stank (even before Captain Crazy was exposed) – because of the whole racist flavor of Preacherman’s operation, and the obvious hype of claiming there was a “Party” when there was none. This operation was denounced as a police operation… and Preacherman simply disappeared. (I can’t find any records of anyone hearing about him again, or of any existence of the “Patriot Party” anywhere - aside from that solitary member in Eugene.)

At the time, I heard from people who actually met with Preacherman, and from members of the Black Panthers that he had been exposed as an agent and just disappeared.

Those are the things I know about this (which as you can see involves things I learned at that time, not reports distilled from histories or whatever). If anyone has additional facts (including corrections) I would be interested in hearing them.

[KnowWhatUSpeak]

A simple Google search would tell you Preacherman Bill (as we called him) was alive and living in North Carolina. So your claim that he "disappeared" throws shade on your knowledge. There's been much written about the YPO. While I'm no expert, I can testify that it was a party and I was a member and Bill wasn't a plant..