The Albert/Gumbo/Kunstler Surveillance Case—
an Ulster County FBI Warrantless Entry Operation
from the 1970s
Woodstockers are rightly concerned about the surveillance and Cointelpro-esque potential under the
regime of Attorney General Ashcroft. Here's a chrono-track from our files on the early and mid-1970s,
before FBI practices such as these, done without the supervision of any court at all, were made illegal.
Now, of course, the Patriot Act has restored some of the ghastly police state practices of the
American Secret Police.
November, 1974
Several times that year
the last being in November
—apparently there were five or six—
FBI agents “staged warrantless entries”
into a cabin off Hurley Mountain Road
near Kingston, NY
rented by activists Stew Albert and Judy Gumbo
Putatively the break-ins were to investigate
“Capbom” and “Penbom”
the bombing of the Capitol and the Pentagon
(done by the SDS Weatherman faction)
plus the FBI opined that Stew/Gumb were perhaps harboring
Weather Underground fugitives, as well as Abbie Hoffman
They put electronic listening devices in the cabin
Stew and Judy, by 1978, were suing the gov’t for $10 million
The FBI acquired their local bank records
& addresses of all correspondence from “local postal officials”
& used informers to keep them “under watch.”
Their attorneys in lawsuit, as of 1978
were Michael Ratner & Paul Chevigny
(The NY Civil Liberties Union & the Center for Constitutional Rights
were involved. Wooodstock Times 12-2-76 NY Times 6-27-78)
December, 1975
attorney William Kunstler & attorney Margaret Ratner
noticed weird clickings on Kunstler’s phone in Ulster County
and “women taking their pictures in a neighborhood bar”
and there was found
attached to the car of house guests Stew Albert and Judith Clavir
a battery-operated tracking device
So the four sued some police agencies
and the weekend of June 18, 1976
the Justice Department, Edward Levi as AG
& Clarence Kelley as FBI director
notified them in a three-page response
that on December 11, 1975
“a tracking device was installed by agents of the FBI
in a vehicle registered to plaintiff Clavir.”
The FBI/Justice Dept denied any phone tap
or about the bar photos
but said “certain of the plaintiffs have been subject
from time to time
to mail covers or physical surveillance.”
(New York Post Wednesday 6-23-76)
There was an article by John Crewdson in The New York Times
around Nov. ’76
which described an operation apparently called “Weather Fug”
apparently an effort to locate Weather Underground “fugitives.”
Stew and Judy were living in Hurley, off Hurley Mountain Road
& were suing the FBI for burglary of their home, mail cover, car tracker,
and “illegal electronic surveillance.”
(Woodstock Times, 11-11-76)
Mid-November 1976
A deposition from a Ms. Schufeldt, postmistress of Hurley, and Ms. Pece, an
employee of the p.o. there
that they had, illegally, copied the texts of postcards,
copied down records of incoming/outgoing mail of Gumbo/Albert
and sent the data to FBI agents Jack H. Lupton of Hurley Heights
& George T. Twaddle of Elmendorf Drive in Hurley
And it also came out that the FBI
monitored the couple’s bank accounts
at Kingston Trust
Trust officials said FBI had said that Stew and Judy
were connected with members of the Weather Underground
Banks auditor Mr. Troop xeroxed checks and
personally delivered them to the Kingston FBI office
(Note: we're not certain what happened to the law suit; we'll contact
Mr. Alpert and find out)
In the meantime, it's important for
American citizens to stand up against
reimposition of aspects of the
illegal secret police practices of the past..
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