Fuzzy Logic: The Dangers of Life in a Bubble

The current age favors subjective impressions over rational arguments and clear thinking. In 2016 this led to the first postmodern president, a power-mad fabulist. 

By Greg Guma

Despite their promise and early benefits, digital media have deepened social and political divisions.  Websites, blogs, and podcasts, along with major media platforms, attract mostly like-minded people, and reinforce a segregated news and information environment that reinforces and amplifies extreme ideas and behavior. 

This isn’t completely different from the type of partisanship and zealotry that characterized public communications in the past. But this version is more potent, closed off and addictive. 

Millions live in sound-proof, mesmerizing “silos” and “bubbles.” Truth and facts have meanwhile become debatable and difficult to define.

Conflict drives the news cycle. Partisan sources and individual “influencers” often shape national and local narratives. This makes it more difficult to reach agreement or even have a civil discussion, and easier for opportunists and demagogues to ignore or distort reality, pushing narratives and initiatives based on convenience or self-interest. 

Along the way there has been a loss of faith in almost everything, and a growing escapist mentality rooted in belief that no meaningful progress is possible. Popular culture feeds this attitude, encouraging excess and striking poses while confusing commitment with fanaticism and "straight talk" with hate speech.

Insurgent 1968 presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy once warned that the emerging postmodern age favored “fuzzy logic” and subjective impressions over rational arguments and clear thinking. It recognizes no absolutes, just degrees and disposable attitudes. “This predicament is not altogether reassuring,” he lamented, “as it may lead us to a state of ‘entropy,’ of randomness, chaos and disorder, with little basis for optimism as to what may result.” 

In 2016 it led to the first postmodern president, a power-mad fabulist. That in turn opened the door to an authoritarian cultural counterrevolution. 

Speaking on his own TV network back in the Reagan era, televangelist Pat Robertson made the long-term goal of his “moral majority” movement clear: “to mobilize Christians, one precinct at a time, one community at a time, one state at a time, until once again we are the head and not the tail, and at the top rather than at the bottom of our political system.”

In a country founded on the principle of church-state separation, it sounded unlikely at first. But Robertson’s allies and followers ultimately found an opening and vehicle to redefine civic life and reality itself, while simultaneously promoting themselves as national saviors in a “final” battle between good and evil. 

Demagogues and evangelists had been using different media to do the same thing for generations. We’ve gone from traveling Chautauqua tent shows and radio sermons to Tiktok, Truth Social, and X. Only the specific targets have changed. These days it can be practically anything associated with multiculturalism, progressive politics, reproductive rights, or social justice. 

Fueled by Fox News and conservative powerhouses like the Koch brothers, christian nationalists and white supremacists have mass marketed an extreme, paranoid vision, immersing millions in a false reality. They present specious arguments and patent falsehoods as history, biblical truth or indisputable fact. Too often other “reality based” outlets let the disinformation slide.

It also migrates too easily — from Russian media fronts to Democratic Socialists and US radicals. This is one reason that the current political system is in the process of slowly unraveling.  After decades of open hostility, the far right and far left have finally found some common ground — contempt for “liberal” elites and their “oppressive” governments.

Rather than being at opposite ends of the spectrum, they resemble each other in some ways — two ends of an ideological horseshoe. Political scientist Jeff Taylor argues that the political spectrum “may be linear, but it is not a straight line. It is shaped like a horseshoe.” Some say this may help explain the resurgence of antisemitism on both the right and left.

The common ground is a “shared anti-liberal resentment,” warns Kyrylo Tkachenko. “Of course, there remain palpable differences between the far left and the far right. But we should not underestimate the dangers posed by these left-right intersections.” 

The extreme declarations and leading questions of so-called “defenders of liberty” from Tucker Carlson to Vandana Shiva and Robert Kennedy Jr., are music to many ears. Conspiracy theorists who discounted the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines and other public-health mandates are often portrayed as far right. But many are organic farmers, members of homeschooling and alternative communities, and anti-war hippies. The anti-vax faction is linked to left-libertarian politics and a deep mistrust of institutional authority.

Media echo chambers have helped to create a distorted picture of contemporary reality that makes sense to millions who feel insecure, angry, and hungry for clear answers. In response, some people try to puncture the bubble, putting their faith in exposing the lies and contradictions. When the public finally understands the distorted, illogical views of extremists, goes the argument, they will be exposed, and their followers freed from the bubble. 

Once upon a time, it felt like a safe bet.

Unfortunately, millions are angry, alienated and worried about their futures and the safety of families and friends. It makes them vulnerable to the politics of paranoia and blame. Bombarded with lies and distortions, they choose to remain inside a toxic bubble, placing their faith and the planet's future in the hands of demagogues and hucksters who offer slogans as answers and the elusive promise of a return to “the good old days.”

It’s a formula for disappointment and disaster.

The Berster Case: False Narrative & Kunstler’s Defense

The Vermont trial of an alleged terrorist revealed the danger of guilt by association and how disinformation creates a false narrative. 

GREG GUMA

 In the 1970s Kristina Berster was part of the anti-war movement in West Germany and joined an alternative therapy project, the Socialist Patients Collective. But when a political crackdown on dissent swept the country, she became a fugitive. She and members of her group were accused of criminal association. 

        Years later, tired of life underground and fearful about her future, she tried to cross the US border into Vermont to seek asylum. And got caught. Labelled a terrorist by the media and charged with conspiracy, she was technically innocent until proven guilty. But after an extensive FBI disinformation campaign she was widely considered a terrorist until proven otherwise. 

        By September 1978 former Chicago Seven lawyer William Kunstler had taken the case. Along with other defense attorneys and the Berster Defense Committee, he dug in at the Burlington home I shared with Doreen Kraft, Robin Lloyd and our infant son Jesse. Bill eventually moved into a spare bedroom. Evenings were often filled with fascinating group dinners and wide-ranging chats. 

        Over the next weeks we also underwent an immersive course in courtroom dynamics and Bill’s blend of legal jujitsu and theatrics. So compelling were the issues, so high the stakes, that I began to devote most of my time to the case. — Greg Guma 

DOCUMENTARY PREVIEW

Kunstler’s Defense, excerpt from a film in development, 

based on an intimate interview with legendary lawyer

William Kunstler during his defense of Kristina Berster

Bill Kunstler with Jesse Lloyd Guma

False Narrative: Eight Chapters

(Click to read)

On the Line

Guilt by Association

On with the Trial

The Defendant Speaks (Sort of)

The Therapeutic State

The Crackdown

Staging Terror

Managing Perceptions

False Narrative 8: Managing Perceptions

The 1978 trial of Kristina Berster revealed the danger of guilt by association and how disinformation creates a false narrative.  

Vermont endured a manufactured terrorist scare, an attempt to warp public perceptions. The FBI lied, so did the prosecutor. Anyone who supported the defendant was a target. 

Vermont Cynic satire, Nov. 30, 1978

By Greg Guma

Chapter Eight

Managing Perceptions

The jury went out on a Monday afternoon. By the next day it was obvious that a verdict wouldn’t come easily. Jurors were snagged on at least two issues: Kristina’s fear and the justification for her actions. Was sneaking across the border necessary to avoid West German repression? They couldn’t decide, and looked to the judge for guidance.

Facing the possibility of a hung jury on the third day of deliberations, Coffrin called them back and read an expanded definition of the “necessity defense.” Fear of harm, he said, could only be a defense if the harm would follow immediately. Having a gun to your head, or facing a tiger, would be enough. But just having a tiger in the neighborhood was no excuse for crossing a border illegally.

But that didn’t settle it. The jury remained stuck. They asked about the meaning of the conspiracy charge and listened to testimony excerpts. By Friday afternoon they had broken Vermont’s record for the length of a jury deliberation.

The verdict, finally delivered by the exhausted group at sundown on October 27, 1978 was a split decision. Felony and misdemeanor conviction, but acquittal on the conspiracy charge. US Attorney Gray didn’t consider this a victory. The jurors had sent a message through their delay and mixed verdict that they were looking for a middle path. 

Thwarted in court, Gray went to the press and broke the agreement he had made earlier with the defense. He revealed that Kristina once lived in South Yemen. While forced to admit that didn’t prove she was a terrorist, he suggested that it did tend to disprove her innocence of terrorist affiliations. Faced with an unfavorable verdict, he had turned back to a desperate line of defense — guilt by association, plus a racist dog whistle. Presumably, he also understood the potential impact of such a last-minute revelation: a renewed crackdown in West Germany, where the authorities and right-wing press were watching the case and viewed South Yemen as a terrorist training ground.

The trial ended as it began, with front page headlines and twisted facts. Kristina remained a pawn of governments, imprisoned without bail, interrogated by agents from two continents, and labeled by both to justify extreme tactics. In Vermont, the rhetoric had softened. But beyond the state line the smear campaign rolled on. In New York City, a banner headline the day after Berster’s conviction trumpeted, “No Asylum for Terrorist.” 

That’s how perception management works: When in doubt, just keep lying.

But the story didn’t end there. First of all, the jury had reached some surprising conclusions. Members said afterward that they found Kristina’s situation compelling and hoped that a guilty verdict on minor charges wouldn’t prevent her from winning asylum. The following February, the Judge sentenced her to a nine month jail term, all but two weeks she had already served. Remarking that her story of persecution and flight was credible, Judge Coffrin called for leniency.

It was a strange turn of events, leading some of us to think she might soon be free. But that was not to be. The Immigration and Naturalization Service had begun deportation proceedings.

Gray briefly also considered whether to convene a grand jury and seek new charges for perjury and conspiracy. Kunstler countered by filing a protest with the judge about how probation officials were conducting the pre-sentence investigation. Moved from Vermont to New York City, Kristina had been questioned without her lawyers present. 

        After the trial, I was one of several spokespersons for Kristina and the Defense Committee. Quoted extensively in a Nov. 29 UPI report, I restated Kunstler’s view “that they are asking questions that are irrelevant and that the information is being passed on to the West German authorities.” The next day, a satire appeared in The Vermont Cynic, UVM’s student newspaper. News of her New York transfer apparently hadn’t reached the campus yet.

BERSTER BREAKS OUT, shouted the headline. The story was a black comic tale of escape and death. “Aided by darkness and near blizzard conditions,” it began,  “a small group calling themselves the Green Mountain Boys sprung Kristina from the Chittenden County Correctional Center, where she was being held. Authorities confirmed the incident last night, and said at least two people died in the audacious pre-dawn move.” 

“Prison guard Mike Moskovitz was brought down by a hail of bullets fired by Burlington police as he pursued the gang into the woods surrounding the facility,” the story continued. “Left dead at the scene were two of the gang which sprung Ms. Berster. One of the victims is reported to be left writer Greg Guma, a member of the Kristina Berster Defense Committee, and another body has been temporarily lost by police in the snow drifts in Tuesday’s storm.

“When notified of the incident, the FBI immediately issued a “shoot to kill order.”

In the fantasy, Berster and the Boys made their way to Cavendish, where they sought asylum “in the closely-guarded estate of exiled Soviet author Alexander Solzenytsyn.” (He did live there but his home wasn’t guarded.) Kunstler vowed to defend Berster again, using the necessity defense. “She was being mishandled in jail and had no choice but to escape. Maybe this time Judge Coffrin will listen to me.”   

It was clever enough, just “fake news,” back when it was mostly harmless. But Berster supporters couldn’t fully enjoy it. I just wondered why I was the first to die. 

The defendant herself was skeptical that the US would ever allow her to stay, particularly not as long as that meant defying a close ally. The way she saw it, no one represented US interests in Europe more forcefully at the time than the Federal Republic of Germany. From monetary policy and trade to the stationing of nuclear missiles, it was to Western Europe what Iran, until the Shah fled, was to the Persian Gulf — a regional policeman. But West Germany had also committed itself to a policy of “counterterrorism” overkill that threatened civil liberties.

As the 1970s ended, repression was being legalized globally. After the kidnapping of Italy’s Aldo Moro produced a NATO alert throughout Europe, West Germany took the lead. Other countries, including the US, followed suit with their own commando units and “grassroots” networks of spies. In such a world, what to make of the Kristina Berster case? At the time few people suspected the whole truth. To some, it looked like a human rights issue. Victimized by shifting international politics, a student activist whose only crime was crossing a border to seek asylum had spent almost two years in prison, in Germany and then the US. He was essentially a political prisoner.

But there was even more to it. Berster’s case demonstrated how a government crusade against terrorism can become an excuse for self-serving propaganda, threatening anyone who actively attempts to change the way a society is run – from civil libertarians, lawyers and prison reformers to anti-nuclear protesters and feminists. Across the country, despite claims that the excesses of COINTELPRO were over, new reports were surfacing of harassment, covert agents provoking violence in nonviolent groups, wiretapping, political grand juries, and illegal surveillance. At the decade ended a chill set in, and terrorism became an excuse for virtually any tactic the government found effective. Like an unseen virus, demonization and repression were spreading. 

Returning to West Germany in late 1979, Kristina Berster was freed after the original charges against her were dropped. A “complex arrangement” was worked out between the two governments, making it possible for her to voluntarily return without a deportation order. She went back to school, continued her prison reform work, and eventually became a psychologist.

But her US misadventure revealed a few things — for example, that public officials, working with intelligence agents, were ready to lie in court and sanction illegal surveillance, and that some media outlets could be manipulated to distribute rumors and false narratives. Though the evidence remained circumstantial, it also appeared that Vermont had experienced a manufactured terrorist scare, an attempt to warp public perceptions for political advantage. The FBI had lied, so had the prosecutor. Anyone who supported the defendant was targeted for surveillance. There was even a simulated terrorist “siege,” a staged media event that played in the government’s false narrative.

It looked very much like a covert operation to influence public opinion, what would soon be named “perception management” by the Department of Defense. Basically, this involves both conveying and denying information, as circumstances require, “to influence emotions, motives, and objective reasoning.” That was the DoD’s definition, founded in a Pentagon document. The goal is to influence the perceptions of enemies, but sometimes also friends, and ultimately to provoke the behavior you want. 

As the Defense Department puts it, “Perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations.” 

In the Reagan years the same tactics were euphemistically labeled “public diplomacy,” and expanded to explicitly include domestic disinformation during the Bush I administration. In those days it was mainly about stoking fear of communism, Nicaragua’s Sandinistas, Qaddafi in Libya, and anyone else on the Reagan and Bush hit lists. 

Clinton modifications were added in Directive 68, which still made no distinction between what could be done abroad and at home. When Bush II took office, the name was changed again, this time to “strategic influence.”

Unmasking such covert operations can have high costs, like being watched, losing your job, or worse. In this case, at least the victim was set free and the true story did get out — to some extent. National outlets ignored the verdict, of course. But the Village Voice did buy my feature story, and then send a “kill fee” shortly before publication. In other words, they paid me not to run it. A shorter version later appeared in WIN, the War Resisters League monthly. 

Alex Cockburn gave two main reasons for the Voice’s late decision to back out: the suggestion that Andreas Baader might have been murdered in jail, and, more to the point, an ownership change. Australian press magnate Rupert Murdoch had just bought a controlling stake in the parent corporation. 

Back in Burlington, Jim Martin, the editor who fired me, lasted only a few months. Before the end of the year I was back, this time as co-editor. And a government “perception management” campaign had been derailed. Enough people had seen through the fog of information war. But the battle was just beginning.

NEXT: MAY DAY & THE FIRST RED SCARE

Greg’s investigation of covert operations and perception management continues in another eight-part series on the infamous MKULTRA program: Unwitting: The Secret War on William Pierce.

Staff of the Vanguard Press outside our College Street office. Greg is behind the hat. The weekly hosted a crew of hungry young journalists, activists and thinkers who shook up the status quo. An alternative newspaper wasn’t a political movement, but the dividing line was less than obvious.

False Narrative: Eight Chapters

On the Line

Guilt by Association

On with the Trial

The Defendant Speaks (Sort of)

The Therapeutic State

The Crackdown

Staging Terror

Managing Perceptions

False Narrative 7: Staging Terror

Reality was being skewed by the counter-terrorist narrative. Was anyone who defended Kristina Berster considered dangerous? Did preparedness include manufacturing threats? 

Her Vermont trial was revealing the danger of guilt by association and how disinformation creates a false narrative. 

Fake terrorists staged a siege for the cameras at the Follett House, a local landmark.

By Greg Guma

Chapter Seven

Staging Terror

From the start Kristina Berster was handled with an eye on her propaganda value. Shaping the narrative began on the very first day. After that, she was not permitted to make public statements and gave just one pre-trial interview. Yet officials and media outlets felt free to imply she was dangerous, capable of virtually anything if released on bail. Even in the hands of the professionals, they suggested, the risks were real and large.

Initially, most journalists accepted the official version without asking too many questions. After all, some of the government’s actions did appear to support it. Why else the unique security arrangements, the high bail, a 24-hour guard for the judge, metal detectors, and armed officers on the courthouse roof? But the security was so intense that local reporters eventually began to focus on that. In most of the country the mere threat of terrorism was convincing enough to make any precautions sound reasonable. But once some Vermont journalists directly observed the defendant, a small, fair-haired woman with a mild demeanor and open smile, the security procedures began to look like overkill.

As the coverage began to change and a few reporters reconsidered their initial assumptions, the public also gave the case a second look. News reports began to describe Berster as a fugitive, an activist, or simply as a West German charged with border violations. Some headlines referred to her on a first name basis. Yesterday’s terrorist was beginning to look like a human being, one who might even be innocent — at least of terrorism.

Favorable coverage, with headlines like “Berster Says She Wanted to Start a New Life Here,” did not mesh well with the scenario mapped out the previous July. But the intelligence community had other ways to reinforce public fears and justify their position. On the day Kunstler tried to subpoena FBI Director Webster, for example, a “confidential memorandum” was selectively released by the Burlington Police Department to UPI. Allegedly, new information had been forwarded to the police by the US Marshall, who apparently received it from the Bureau.

The memo warned that two Colombian terrorists were expected to attend the trial, and potentially disrupt it. Security throughout the city was tightened, and experts flew in from New Orleans and New York. The latest “threat” hit the press simultaneously with the Webster subpoena, reinforcing the idea that foreign terrorism loomed over the Green Mountains. But nothing and no one materialized.

That ploy was small potatoes when compared with the “simulation” staged the following week: A live-action terrorist siege, complete with bank robbery, hostages and a SWAT-style police unit called the Threat Management Team. Just as Kristina took the witness stand for her third and final day, the performing “terrorists” made their escape from the Chittenden Bank and fled to the Follett House, an historic building overlooking the city’s waterfront. 

Local “threat managers” arrived promptly, provoking “fire” from the “terrorists” as bewildered bystanders tried to understand what was happening. Was it real, or had they stumbled on a new action movie in production?

Police fired convincing blanks as the “terrorists” held their hostages in the cupola of the old building. Negotiations between the cops and robbers continued into early afternoon, following the common real-life pattern. The bad guys were ultimately “talked out.” By this time news of the exercise and attendant media coverage had reached the courtroom.

Judge Coffrin was “fit to be tied,” said a clerk. He warned jurors to avoid all news media that evening — especially television.

At 6 p.m. Bill Felling, a reporter with the local CBS affiliate, read his account of the siege. The tone was light, but he labeled the event a “terrorist” exercise. The coverage included action-packed footage, made possible by the advance warning provided to the area’s largest TV station. The previous evening a WCAX reporter had taken a call from Sergeant Kevin Scully, a local specialist in security. Scully provided the tip that the station could get a great story if a camera crew showed up at precisely 10 a.m.

Once Felling finished his report, anchorman Mickey Gallagher turned to the next item — the Berster trial. Juxtaposing a “terrorist incident” and the trial of a “suspected terrorist” was as logical as it was tasteless and opportunistic. The local daily newspaper followed suit. The next day the B-section of the Burlington Free Press carried four prominent photos of the “siege” beside two Berster stories. The main head, “Berster Testimony Refuted,” described not only the court action but the intended impact of the media event.

I no longer needed much to stimulate suspicion. Those sympathetic to the defendant were clearly being watched. There had been an unsolved break-in at our house, still being used by the Defense Committee. And when I flew to New York to speak about the case and conduct research, the first familiar face in the airport terminal was a US Marshall who handled security at the trial.

“What brings you to the city?” I asked as I passed him. 

“Just waiting,” he mumbled. For me? I wondered.

Many of Berster’s supporters came to believe that the Follett House siege was purposely staged to influence with the trial. But it might be just an unfortunate coincidence. To find out which, it would be necessary to follow the advice Deep Throat gave Watergate reporter Bob Woodward: “Follow the money.”

The trail began with then-Sergeant Scully, the local cop who turned up whenever activists gathered. He denied what he could, and claimed that the date of the “siege” was determined locally. But that contradicted the normal protocol, in which the US Army Corps of Engineers sets the date.

Scully did admit one thing: there had been a last-minute change in the timing. Originally, the exercise was scheduled for July 20, but canceled late due to “conflicting commitments” of local team members. It sounded fishy. Berster was arrested four days before.

How was the final date selected? Scully claimed that decision was made sometime in August. But Colonel Patrick Dalager, Provost Marshall of the New England Corps of Engineers, remembered it differently. “They scheduled it during the first week in September,” he recalled. As the person who ran the training, he was in a position to know. Dalager was an FBI academy graduate and co-author of the Army’s manual on “terrorism directed against the military.” His basic argument was that local police agencies were the only means of protecting Army Corps projects from vandalism, terrorism, or other kinds of violence.

Dalager was candid about the funding source, although he insisted that the juxtaposition of the exercise and the trial was purely coincidental. The money, he explained, came from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), which had been funding programs to protect corporate facilities from potential terrorists since the early 1970s. LEAA also managed the computerized storage of intelligence information, helping to end a long tradition of federal non-involvement in local law enforcement.

And so, LEAA, part of the post-COINTEL “terrorist control” network, provided seed money for the siege and enlisted local police to play terrorists for the local press. Meanwhile, the FBI leaked rumors of a possible terrorist attack by South Americans. The casual consumer of news might well assume that the two were related. And if not, the mere threat of violence was enough to justify intensified security measures.

How far did it go? Was the FBI’s terrorist simulation a device to reinforce the anti-nuclear terrorist scenarios being promoted by LEAA and their private sector partners? Was anyone who defended Kristina considered a potential terrorist by association? Did anti-terrorism preparedness include manufacturing threats? That wasn’t possible to prove, but reports of surveillance and infiltration were accumulating across the country.

In any case, reality was being skewed in Burlington by the government’s terrorist narrative. Like the scare created by Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds, the local “siege” looked authentic enough for some people to complete a circuit of fear and suspicion. The Berster case was certainly real, the FBI did claim she was a terrorist, and the local media said terrorists might be on the way to town. So, why not a violent robbery and hostage seige?

As the list of coincidences grew, the government’s ability to mold mass perceptions looked more formidable than ever. Yet not all the media was playing ball anymore. Immediately after the verdict, one daily paper ran an editorial in support of Kristina’s plea for political asylum. Another printed an ironic cartoon. These breaks with conventional wisdom, despite planted stories and disinformation, reflected a change in public attitudes. Originally, most newspapers reported news about Kristina Berster as if she was guilty before trial. Now they were telling a different story.

In the editorial cartoon, Berster stood before Judge Coffrin. The caption had the judge saying, “Will the dangerous terrorist – I mean, the defendant – step forward and tell the court why she can’t get a fair trial.” It was apt, but at this stage not enough to counteract months of disinformation.

Next: Managing Perceptions

The War Resister’s League covered the case after The Village Voice backed out.

False Narrative: Eight Chapters

On the Line

Guilt by Association

On with the Trial

The Defendant Speaks (Sort of)

The Therapeutic State

The Crackdown

Staging Terror

Managing Perceptions

False Narrative is based on material that will appear in Strange Enough To Be True: Life / Stories 

False Narrative 3: On with the Trial

The FBI was gearing up for possible outbreaks of  terrorism. So far it had only one catch, but was watching 61 alleged threats.

Kristina Berster’s trial in Vermont revealed the danger of guilt by association and how disinformation creates a false narrative. 

By Greg Guma

Chapter Three: On with the Trial

Dennis Schlenker had studied the West German legal situation, but his main concern at the moment was the case of conspiracy and passport violations, which could mean as much as a 20-year sentence for Kristina Berster. Arriving in Burlington on August 28 from Albany, he presented arguments for a delay of her trial so that a survey of local attitudes toward his defendant could be completed.

Schlenker was also worried about access to Berster. Security arrangements at the Albany jail were being tightened, and it had become more difficult to get messages through. “These new rules,” he told US District Court Judge Albert Coffrin, “are not from the Justice Department or the Marshall’s Office. They are for her only, and are designed to deter her from speaking to her attorneys and visitors.” On two occasions, her lawyer said, requests that Berster call him hadn’t even been forwarded by guards.

Meanwhile, a Burlington-based Berster Defense Committee organized a volunteer staff of about 30 to conduct a regional survey. The question was whether Berster, after weeks of publicity identifying her with terrorism, could be judged dispassionately by local jurors.

For the press the case was still hot news, but denials and clarifications are never quite as dramatic as the original accusations. WCAX’s Wadi Sawabini was on hand at the committee’s first press meeting. He filmed the event, but no report was ever aired and the local TV station continued to call her a “suspected terrorist.”

Judy Polumbaum, a reporter from the Montpelier Times-Argus, wrote an accurate account, and attempted to arrange an interview with Berster, as did Susan Green, a Burlington Free Press reporter with magazine contacts. But Kristina wasn’t interested in answering more questions. Between lawyers and intelligence agents, the interviewing had already been going on for weeks.

Berster’s lawyers examined a variety of technical issues, including details of her apprehension and other physical evidence. Although there were originally four defendants, the situation changed at the August 28 court session when one defendant, Michael Ditterlizzi, who drove the car to the border, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy, and another, Marie Amendola, decided to become a witness for the state.

According to Ditterlizzi’s lawyer, Fred Cohn, his client’s guilty plea wouldn’t hurt Berster’s case. “He made the best deal he could,” said Cohn. “For him, this is not a political case.”

The new developments left two defendants, Berster and Ray Kajmir. But the two cases might be separated before the trial began. If so, the focus would be on Berster and the intelligence agencies could again get into the act. Her attempt to enter the US had already provided FBI Director Webster with a publicity boost: evidence that terrorism was a growing “problem” in this country.

Back in March Webster had called the effort to combat terrorism one of the Bureau’s top four priorities. The FBI, he said, was “gearing up for possible outbreaks of urban terrorism,” and planned to develop “sophisticated profiles of terrorist groups.” So far, Berster was the Bureau’s only catch, although Webster warned that the FBI was watching 61 terrorist threats.

For the FBI, under persistent attack for past abuses, the chance to place terrorism in the public spotlight was evidently too much to resist. The labeling and subsequent retraction were similar to the tactics used during the COINTELPRO era. The terrorist label, code for political criminal, provided the justification for a new round of surveillance, seizures and wiretaps, as well as inclusion of broader powers in the agency charter under congressional scrutiny.

All this gave the case a deja vu quality for both Berster and Kunstler. During her last months in Germany, surveillance of the New Left increased. Even her lawyers were not immune to intrusive investigation. For Kunstler, set to return to Vermont when the trial started on October 3, it harked back to his role in the Chicago Seven case. In fact, on August 25, he had filed the most recent motion in that decades-old case, asking that a federal court set aside contempt convictions against himself and several defendants because a defense strategy meeting had been bugged by the FBI.

Kunstler said that at the Chicago Seven trial “there was extensive bugging of the defense camp before the trial, during it and after it.” Whether the same thing would happen in Berster’s case remained an open question (At the very least, there was photo surveillance, according to FBI documents released years later). Judging from the presence of German agents and FBI personnel, the intelligence community was giving the border affair more than passing attention.

In a word, the case was ironic. Kristina Berster awaited trial in Burlington because she left her homeland after rejecting the violence that had begun to envelop the country. Yet the specter of that violence followed her, and might yet be used by the American intelligence community to create another terrorist scare. It was certainly “good copy.” 

By mid-September Kunstler became blunt and defiant. Most Vermonters were “irreparably prejudiced by publicity identifying Kristina as a suspected West German terrorist,” he charged. It was a long shot, but he asked Judge Coffrin to dismiss the case against the 28-year-old defendant, who was facing eight counts for attempting to enter the US illegally. 

Greg Guma,1980

To buttress this claim of prejudicial pre-trial publicity, the Burlington Free Press reported, “Kunstler put Burlington journalist Greg Guma on the stand to testify that newspapers, television and radio stations in Chittenden County consistently have identified Miss Berster as a member of a terrorist gang.” In other words, I had become the first defense witness to explain my investigative work.

By then, to be frank, I was also helping to conduct research on the jury pool for the defense. 

At the federal building, the security force was ready for a siege. US Marshals, security specialists and assorted agents roamed the five floors of the downtown building with walkie-talkies. Packages and handbags weren’t permitted into the courtroom, and no one except the lawyers could speak with the now-infamous defendant.

After a week of jury selection, the defense wasn’t optimistic — and mostly working toward a hung jury. The air was thick with intrigue. US Attorney William Gray insisted that he was merely prosecuting a simple border case, but one in which the bail was initially set at $500,000. Kunstler shot back that the issues were far from simple and the FBI was very much involved.

The legendary lawyer had taken the case pro bono. Known for defending political dissidents, he saw it as a significant battle: a defendant seeking political asylum from a country that had been indicting even “radical” lawyers. “This case goes far beyond Kristina Berster,” Kunstler claimed. “I am very concerned with West Germany’s treatment of so-called terrorists and the so-called left wing lawyers who defend them.”

By late September he and other defense attorneys, along with the headquarters for the Berster Defense Committee, had dug in at the Maple Street home I shared with Doreen Kraft, Robin Lloyd and our infant son. Kunstler moved into a spare bedroom and evenings were often devoted to hours-long, fascinating group dinners and personal chats. Over the next weeks we all underwent an immersive course in courtroom dynamics and Kunstler’s blend of legal jujitsu and theatrics. So compelling were the issues, and so high the stakes, that I began to devote most of my time to the case.

No big surprise, I was laid off. Rather than welcoming “insider” coverage of the state’s hottest story, the Vanguard’s editor, Jim Martin, wanted no more of it. Fortunately, I was reaching a national audience nightly on WBAI and other Pacifica radio stations.  

Maybe it was naive, but I didn’t seriously consider the possible consequences at first. Specifically, I didn’t appreciate how the Department of Justice and intelligence community would react to growing support for the defendant. In fact, when the US attorney claimed that no local surveillance had been initiated, I wanted to believe him. Three years later we found out that he was far from candid.

From Berster’s first appearance in court, it turned out, the FBI conducted an intensive covert investigation of her allies and supporters. The operation’s code name was TERCROSS; the tactics included stake outs and surreptitious photography, along with follow up long after the trial ended. FBI documents subsequently obtained by members of the Defense Committee showed that the case provided a pretext to continue and extend surveillance of the local left, which had begun years before. 

After exposure only the operation’s title changed. In its revised form, TERCROSS was supposed to trace links between Vermont activists and “foreign terrorists.”

Among other things, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents revealed that the US Attorney personally approved surveillance during the trial, as long as it was handled discreetly “and without detection.” According to FBI analysts, this was necessary because some of Kristina’s supporters may have known her prior to her arrival from Europe. One memo indicated that the FBI told the US Marshall and local police about a possible link between the Defense Committee and “terrorist activity in the United States.”

TERCROSS was later merged with another project, GILROB, the label for a bank robbery investigation. Gray was advised “that special agents from the Boston division would be traveling to Burlington for the purpose of observing and possibly photographing Kristina Berster supporters present at the trial.” Gray may have acted under pressure. In any case, he lied in court, voiced no reservations to the feds, and simply urged secrecy.

During the trial we had no evidence that surveillance was underway. All Kunstler could do was subpoena FBI Director Webster, a maneuver that didn’t impress the judge. After eight days in court just to reach the opening statements, Judge Coffrin was impatient. He sometimes looked not at the lawyers but at the clock.

“Something happened before July 20,” Kunstler shouted. He was talking about the media campaign launched with Webster’s press conference. “The FBI was up to something. If the jury found out that the FBI pursued this case on the basis of an agreement with a foreign government, they could acquit the defendant.”

The normally calm prosecutor was equally adamant. Gray reminded the judge that Kunstler often used the FBI as a “whipping boy.” He had successfully made a similar argument to prevent West German experts and US lawyers from testifying about conditions in Germany. “If selective prosecution is tried before this jury, then Assistant US Attorney O’Neill and I would have to testify,” Gray argued. “Really, the FBI has no significance on the issues involved.”

Kunstler took another tack. “Mr. Gray says this is like all other cases,” he reminded the room. “He made this a jury issue in his opening statement. We have the right to rebut, and we need to determine what went on. Who did Webster talk to, and what did the Germans want?”

“It was my decision to prosecute,” Gray protested.

Kunstler shot back, “Your honor, this may have been beyond Mr. Gray’s control.”

Coffrin wasn’t swayed. After a lunch break he denied Kunstler’s subpoena request without explanation. 

Next: The Defendant Speaks

False Narrative: Eight Chapters

On the Line

Guilt by Association

On with the Trial

The Defendant Speaks (Sort of)

The Therapeutic State

The Crackdown

Staging Terror

Managing Perceptions