By Michael Munk, The Portland Alliance, November 2000
 

If you’ve been following Mayor Katz’ and Chief Kroeker’s defense of the Portland Police Bureau’s recent attacks on demonstrators, you’re heard them repeatedly claim that their “intelligence” warned them to expect violence. They didn’t say so, but the source of that “warning” is a police unit that uses taxpayers’ money to spy on radicals, environmentalists, unions, peace and civil rights groups.

This is Portland’s infamous “Red Squad,” (current name: “Criminal Intelligence Unit”), one of the Bureau’s most enduring components that goes back to the “Red Scare” of World War 1 and its aftermath. For about 80 years the Red Squad’s mission has been the use of undercover agents, paid informers, provocateurs and surveillance to suppress radical political activity and union organizing. In that context, police attacks on the May Day and Solidarity with the Prague anti-WTO protests are just the most recent additions to the Red Dsquad’s record. Another constant has been the periodic denials by Portland mayors from “Bloody Shirt” Joe Carson to Dorothy Lee to Bud Clark and Vera Katz that the Red Squad doesn’t exist. Ruling class denial doesn’t end there: although in the headlines until the 80s, the Oregonian and Willamette Week have since refused to cover Red Squad activities.

In the city’s Red Squad archives, the oldest documents are 1923-4 police spy reports on public meetings addressed by radicals such as William Z. Foster (at the Odd Fellows Hall), Ella Reeves “Mother” Bloor at the Workers Party Hall (then on SW Yamhill) and James Cannon at the Womens’ Club Building, which still exists as the late Movie House at 1220 SW Taylor.

In the 1930s the Red Squad came under its most intense public scrutiny, with frequent headlines describing its opponents and defenders. Throughout the decade, its undercover agents and provocateurs made desperate efforts to suppress and destabilize radical political groups and union organizing, including pressuring Lincoln High Schools students, artists and anti-fascist organizers.

 In 1938, the Oregon chapter of the National Lawyers issued what is still the only comprehensive study of the underground unit in a report signed by leading Portland attorneys, including future federal judge Gus Solomon. The report made clear that the Red Squad was (1) financed with a combination of taxpayers money and private contributions from employers wishing to finger any organizers among their employes, (2) it hid its office away from police headquarters in the room 428 of the Railway Exchange Building (Now the Oregon Pioneer Building) at SW 3rd and Stark, and (3) It was under the command of Captain John J. Keegan, with its day to day operations under Walter Odale, who supervised William D. Browne, Merriel Bacon and Geroge Stroup. In the face of this expose, Mayor Carson continued to deny its existence. The technology of the time limited Odale’s Red Squad to hidden mikes (Harry Bridges spotted one in his Multnomah Hotel room and confounded it with satirical conversations) and still photographs.

 During the early years of McCarthyism, Mayor Lee relied on the Red Squad’s own “talking points” to respond to ILWU Local 8 charges ofg anti-union undercover agents. By then Detective Browne had moved to take charge of its “anti-Communist” mission, although he was also well known for his “night job” as the American Legions top ‘red hunter’. Browne was even able to scare the Portland school board into denying high school auditoriums for civil rights groups and was the main local HUAC advisor in its Portland hearings in 1954. As McCarthyism waned in the early 60s, the Red Squad became less active. But in 1974 liberals who accepted the mayor’s assurance that its had been disbanded were shocked to learn that in 1974 it was alive and well as the “Intelligence Division” under Lt. Ervin Osbuurn and keeping an active file on the Oregon ACLU!

But in 1986, Mayor Bud Clark was challenged by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom about Red Squad undercover agent,Larry Siewert’s report on a public meeting at Lewis & Clark college addressed by Norman Solomon and  demonstrations by Sandanista support groups.  Police Chief Penny Harrington defended the photographing of demonstrators, and Mayor Clark had to admit that, for “several decades” the Red Squad had been “assigned as a unit in the Detective Division.”

But while Clark also had to confirm alternate media reports that the Red Squad had been secretly “restablished as a separate entity in November, 1986” with the new moniker of the “Criminal Intelligence Division.” Finally he denied the obvious by claiming it  “does not monitor peaceful or public activities” and does not “target groups or individuals.”

In 1992 officer Siewert  (officially detailed to spy on “radicals and subversives”) attended and submitted a “confidential” report on a meeting called by a coalition of peace, labor and environmental groups to discuss a civilian police review board. One of the victims of that surveillance sued Portland for violation of his civil rights and  four years later, won a $2,000 award in court.

Although the court decision was not reported by the Oregonian, it led to public hearings on the Red Squad in 1996 by the Metroplitan Commission on Human Rights. Although denied press coverage even by Willamette Week, the Commission grilled Red Squad Commander Lt. Larry Findling and Sgt Norman Sharp. They admitted they used paid agents, voluteer informers and other techniques to monitor dissenters and agreed that even the “reasonable suspicion” of something as trivial as trespass triggers their response. The MCHR proposed of series of controls on the Red Squad to Mayor Katz. Not only did the mayor reject the proposals, she dismantled MCHR!

A final effort to lease the Red Squad was made in the Chief’s Forum in 1997, when Lt. Ron Schwartz was commander and Sgt Sharp remained as supervisor. At that time, it had a staff of six  with a budget of almost $400,000. Considering that in the heyday of 1936, when the Lawyer’s Guild estimated its budget to be about $15,000 (mostly private funds, the Red Squad has come along way!

Before MayDay when the Red Squad’s black van videotaped the faces of the demonstrators, the last media attention to the Red Squad was in October, 1999. When protesters against Clinton’s air war on Iraq charged an undercover agent joined the protests to spy on them. By then, Lt. Randy Kane ran the Red Squad.

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Sue Phillips, a sharp-eyed reader of this November column, noticed that the undercover Red Squad police officer signing his spy report on a 1992 meeting called to demand a police civilian review board, was "L.D. Siewert." Several years ago, she recalled that "Larry Siewert" had identified himself to her as Mayor Vera Katz's bodyguard. In 1986 Siewert was responsible for surveillance of "radicals and subversives" under Red Squad commander Lt. Greg Clark and Sgt. Larry Kanzler. He admitted he had spied on Portland meetings for Martin Luther King III, Jesse Jackson, protests in Hillsboro against manufacturers of spying equipment and on Norman Solomon at Lewis & Clark College. Since Siewert has been in close contact with Katz, it's possible that her unyielding support of the Red Squad may be related, so Phillips checked on his present post. It turns out he retired from the Mayor's security detail within the past several months, so he has been in fact in a position to influence her.