Unfortunately for Anderson, memories are long in Mendocino County and his history is well documented.  Again and again, Anderson has shown he will deliberately lie in order to get attention, settle scores, or just abuse people for his own pleasure.  And when the printed word has proven to be an inadequate weapon, he has resorted to threats of violence and actual physical assault.

Because of its brazenness, the hoax got national attention.  Six days after the fake interview was published, Anderson was still telling inquiring reporters that he had just received transcripts of the "interview" from Iowa.  The next day, however, he finally admitted, “Yes, I did it.  I confess.”  (Santa Rosa Press Democrat, 2/10/88)

Seven years later, Anderson would recall the Bosco hoax as his “proudest moment.” (Santa Rosa Press Democrat, 4/25/95)

Anderson was completely unapologetic.  “The feisty owner of the tiny Anderson Valley Advertiser offered no apologies,” said the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.  “And he showed no remorse for the notoriety brought fellow journalist David Yepson.  The Des Moines Register political reporter, purported author of the Bosco interview, spent the week leading up to Iowa's caucuses fielding calls about Anderson's hoax. ‘F--- him if he can't take a joke', said Anderson.”(Santa Rosa Press Democrat, 2/10/88)

Recently Anderson told Los Angeles Times reporter Rone Tempest that he DID apologize for the Bosco hoax (LA Times, 2/28/03, p. E39).  In Anderson's world, it's never too late to add another lie.  For example, he has been quoted as claiming he has never been found guilty of libel, ignoring Anna Taylor's 1995 verdict against him.

Anderson learned that a hoax is an effective attention-getter, and all attention is good. So his history is filled with smaller-scale repetitions of the Bosco scam.  He printed a phony press release announcing that the Mendocino County Office of Education was conducting seminars on how to masturbate more effectively (San Jose Mercury News, 8/16/87).  He regularly wrote absurd, humiliating articles and put the bylines of prominent local people on them, such as “To My Penis on Our 60^th,” under the byline of Bruce Hering (5/3/95).

It's fair to say that dishonesty is one of the core values of the Anderson Valley Advertiser.  As the Wall Street Journal noted in an early, amused profile, “Indeed, Mr. Anderson sometimes simply makes things up, arguing that fiction occasionally gets at essential truth better than fact.” (8/20/85) Most of his targets eventually decide that Anderson isn't worth a libel suit.  As Anderson once bragged, “I can say anything I want, because there's nothing for them to take.” (San Jose Mercury News, 8/16/87)  But one angry target, Anna Taylor of Navarro, represented herself in a small claims court action in 1995 after Anderson described her as a welfare cheat.  She won a $5,000 judgment, but was unable to collect due to a legal technicality.  (Ukiah Daily Journal, 8/2/95)

Anderson was sued again for libel in 1999 by former public radio station manager Phil Tymon after Anderson wrote that Tymon disrupted the station while drunk, was forced to resign as a result, and got his job in the first place only because his mother owned the building (all untrue).  Anderson prevailed because of a technicality—Tymon filed an incomplete response to a motion for dismissal. (Mendocino County Superior Court, No. 80536) 

When lies aren't enough, Anderson uses violence or threats.  In 1988, his incessant attacks on the County School Superintendent Jim Spence finally provoked Spence to refer to him as a “third-rate McCarthyite” at a school board meeting.  Anderson walked up to Spence and punched him, knocking him to the ground.

Anderson was tried and convicted for disturbing the peace, offered probation if he apologized and stayed away from school board meetings for one year, refused these conditions, and was sentenced to 60 days in jail.  Anderson proclaimed himself a political martyr, staged a noisy support rally at the courthouse steps, and announced he would refuse to go to jail (Ukiah Daily Journal, 9/14/88).   But he showed up for jail as scheduled.

The next year, Anderson was accused of assaulting two teenage residents of his group home in Boonville.  In sworn statements, Frank Pitts and John Long told the County Social Services Department that Anderson had punched them in separate incidents, giving Pitts a black eye.  The investigator reported that former Anderson associate Mike Koepf told him that “Anderson should never be allowed to take care of young men again.  This response was based on Koepf's opinion that Anderson has continually psychologically abused the young men who have lived at the group home.” (Memorandum, Billy Moore to Dennis Denny, Mendocino County Social Services, 10/4/89). 

The County denied Anderson's application for a foster home license and Anderson appealed.  The denial was upheld in 1990 by an administrative law judge who stated that Pitts' and Long's claims were unproven, but concluded that “Respondent Bruce Anderson has been involved in a number of physical altercations over the years.  Although respondent Bruce Anderson claims he is never the aggressor, he does revert to physical confrontation to solve disputes.”  (Administrative Law Judge Ruth Astle, Case No. 238909501, 2/28/90)

No one knows Anderson better than his own brother Rob, who worked on the Anderson Valley Advertiser for many years until he joined the long list of former Bruce Anderson associates who became bitter enemies. Rob Anderson denounced Bruce Anderson's obsession with Judi Bari and Mike Sweeney: “The AVA is bombing its own credibility every week…chewing over the same cud of rumor, half-truth and baseless accusation,” Rob wrote in March, 2000 in his own newsletter, Mendoland.  Rob had other grievances as well.  Rob referred to Bruce as “Bullyboy,” and berated him in an email on October 7, 2000 as a “liar” for his brutal treatment of his paper's former cartoonist, Mary Miles.   Bruce Anderson's email reply:  “Next time I see you I'm going to kick your gutless ass.” His quest for power and attention led Anderson to run for public office 9 times between 1983 and 1994.  But the voters knew him well enough to prevent him from winning, even by accident.  His races for local school board, county school board, county supervisor, and state assemblyman all ended in abject defeat.  In his last race he polled 8%.

Evan Johnson photo

For years, Anderson displayed the slogan, “Newspapers should have no friends” on his masthead, and has put this principle into practice throughout his troubled life.  In recent years he has dedicated himself to smearing the reputation of Judi Bari, who once used the Anderson Valley Advertiser as an outlet for her environmental advocacy.

Anderson has espoused three different theories about who bombed Judi Bari:

(1)  The timber industry.  “I've been convinced from the first that the attack on Bari was the work of Louisiana-Pacific whose leadership and upper-echelon employees have always conducted themselves in an utterly ruthless manner…Bari was attacked because she was meeting with loggers already hostile to L-P with a view to forming an environmental coalition….”  (AVA, 8/19/92)   “Mike Sweeney certainly didn't do it….the answer lies somewhere in the timber industry.” (AVA, 5/29/91) 

(2)  Judi Bari herself.  As his personal feud with Bari grew, he published a long article implying Bari's guilt:  "A surprising number of people think Bari and a small group of her friends were planning a bombing in the Santa Cruz area when the device exploded prematurely beneath Bari's car seat." (AVA, 10/5/94)  And in 1996:  "What I believe is that JUDI BARI KNOWS MORE THAN SHE CAN SAY ABOUT THE BOMBING BECAUSE IF SHE TELLS THE TRUTH SHE AND SEVERAL OTHER MOSTLY YOUNG PEOPLE WILL BE IN BIG TROUBLE. This is what I have come to think about it. Is it clear enough?" (AVA, 2/14/96)

(3)  Bari's ex-husband Mike Sweeney. This speculation has become a major obsession of Anderson's since 1999.  Sometimes he offers the alternative theory that Sweeney built the bomb and Bari was knowingly transporting it. (“There is also the possibility he built the bomb for some hare-brained scheme of Judi Bari's”) (AVA, 9/29/99)

Anderson's proclamations about the bombing shifted in response to his growing feud with Bari.  The first major battle between them erupted in 1993 when Bari and a group of four friends intercepted the paste-ups of the Anderson Valley Advertiser on the way to the printer.  Bari's group removed an offensive cartoon and substituted their own version, which lampooned cartoonist Fred Sternkopf for his sexist portrayals of naked women and his caricatures of Bari and other Earth First! activists.

Anderson wasn't amused.  He stopped the presses, ripped out Bari's cartoon, and filed a criminal complaint with the Willits police demanding Bari's arrest for felony theft, conspiracy and violation of his civil rights. (Santa Rosa Press Democrat, 2/13/93) 

The charges weren't pursued, but Anderson's feud with Bari escalated.  He published a Sternkopf cartoon depicting Bari as a Nazi, complete with swastika armband.(see above) (AVA, 3/3/93)  Soon Anderson was waging an all-out campaign against Bari that continues, past her death, to the present day.  Many close observers thought Anderson was simply jealous of Bari's increasing fame, popularity and success.  She had rapidly surpassed him in influence.  While Anderson was widely hated and couldn't keep the friendship of even his own staff, Bari inspired enduring loyalty.

So Anderson heaped personal insults on Bari:

"But her regal personality and often cruel personal behavior wrecks any political group she's involved in." (AVA, May 24, 1995)

"I think now the woman is a complete fraud, a "feminist" who treats other women worse, much worse, than dogs, a leader of Earth First! whose slogan is 'No compromise in defense of mother earth' but who worked out a deal with L-P to squelch enviro protest at Albion because it was in her immediate legal interests to do so, and a woman who has salted away thousands of dollars from donors whom she seldom has had the ordinary courtesy to thank." (AVA, April 26, 1995)

Anderson Valley Advertiser, 5/24/95

"Is Judi Bari herself a violent person? Yes, she is, as anybody who knows her will forthrightly say." (AVA, October 12, 199)

“Judi Bari herself is a very violent person, physically and psychicly [sic], as any of her critics can testify.”  (AVA, 9/13/95)

"The lady's a lie factory.” (AVA, December 6, 1995)

“Bari is a brave person in lots of ways but she's terminally dishonest intellectually, slandering her critics as FBI agents or sexists or liberals or whatevers if they aren't abject at her feet.”  (AVA, 1/24/96)

“I  know her well enough to know that she is not a truthful person and I don't believe anything she says unless I get independent corroboration of it.”  (AVA, 2/14/96)

Anderson mocked her for referring to her injuries from the bombing:  “Judi Bari has used the bombing as a club to shut up her critics, and there's a lot to criticize.  But anybody who dares direct an implicitly critical question her way is met with something like: ‘How can you talk to me like this when I was nearly killed by the FBI and I'm in physical pain all day every day?' Well, gee, Joan of Arc never so much as groaned until the flames licked her chin.  Do you ever hear any sniveling from Bernadette Devlin whose entire family was shot up by Protestant fanatics?...JB has also used the bombing as a sort of political equivalent of a breast implant, becoming a semi-famous person who survived an attack for her political activity which, since the bombing, has been zilch.”  (AVA, 11/16/94)

Anderson accused Bari of trying to harm his newspaper:

“Judi Bari called around to drum up support for a girlcott of the AVA until I agreed to drop the Dr. Doo drawing….I especially appreciated this particular treachery occurring while I wasn't around to defend myself.”  (AVA, 8/14/93)

 “Several times she's gone way out of her way to attempt to harm the paper on the mistaken assumption she and her small group of idolators are a key part of AVA's circulation.  Why? Bari and KPFA types don't like irreverence and they hate even the hint of criticism of them.”  (AVA, 3/30/94)

Beyond baseless personal insults, Anderson falsely accused Bari of a massive sell-out to the timber companies Louisiana-Pacific and Pacific Lumber.  After L-P sued a large group of demonstrators for damages, Bari negotiated a settlement that amounted to a total surrender by L-P.  But Anderson repeatedly claimed that it was a sell-out:

"I wonder if Judi Bari will condescend to explain her blithe capitulation to Louisiana-Pacific….Bari might consider amending the old "no compromise " slogan to "No Compromise in Defense of Mother Earth Unless the Self-Appointed Leadership Gets Bored With It and Decides to Move On to Bigger And More Interesting Photo Ops." (AVA, 3/2/94)

“Bari privately negotiated an agreement with Cindee Mayfield, L-P's attorney, which keeps protests off more than 15,000 L-P acres!” (AVA, 11/16/94)

Anderson also began a campaign to undermine public support for Judi Bari's and Darryl Cherney's lawsuit against the FBI and City of Oakland for civil rights violations against them after the car bombing.  This campaign would continue with increasing virulence up to the actual trial in 2002.  In the early stages, Anderson asserted the baseless speculation that Bari would sell out:

"In fact, it's more likely that the FBI will settle out of court on condition none of this stuff is ever revealed while B&C become millionaires, convictions being no match for cash." (AVA 3/8/95)

“Prediction: Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney will soon settle their case with the FBI for big money since from the day of the bomb it has been evident there were no grounds for their arrest. The conditions of the payoff will be a sealing of the record and an agreement between Bari-Cherney and the FBI that B-C not reveal either the terms of the deal or discuss the particulars of the case in public." (AVA, 12/6/95)

Bari, of course, fought back against this hate campaign.  When Anderson announced in 1995 that he was disgusted with Mendocino County and was selling his newspaper and moving away(he later changed his mind and didn't quit until 2004), Bari made this comment:  “I think he has fouled his own nest, and that's why he's leaving.” (Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, 4/25/95)

A year before her death, Bari wrote to a concerned supporter, "I don't care what Bruce thinks of my personality or politics. He needs to realize that some things are bigger than his petty rivalries." (Letter to Eric Kirk, reprinted in AVA, 2/14/96, p. 4)

When Bari died in March, 1997 from a fast-spreading breast cancer, there was an outpouring of grief from all over the North Coast, including many former antagonists.  But not Bruce Anderson.  He published an anti-eulogy in his paper (3/12/97), and also as a letter to the editor in the Ukiah Daily Journal (3/13/97).  In it, Anderson called Bari “vain,” “deeply flawed,” and “often not very nice to people.”  He accused her of “vilifying persons she perceived as threatening to her position as the Northcoast's top enviro gun.”  He accused her supporters of “distorting her memory on a scale reminiscent of Eva Peron.”  Bari was ineffectual compared to more conventional timber opponents like Helen Libeu, claimed Anderson, and worse, Bari “capitulated to L-P at Albion and, last summer, to Charles Hurwitz at Headwaters.”

Remarkably, in a transparent attempt to bolster his credibility when criticizing Bari, Anderson would write two years later that "I was a good friend of Judi Bari's." (AVA, 9/29/99)   He apparently assumed that his readers' memories were not only short, but nonexistent.

Following her death, Anderson continued his occasional swipe at Bari and her civil rights lawsuit, until he discovered an exciting new opportunity for attack.  This was provided by Irv Sutley, the Sonoma County radical who Bari had accused of engaging in dirty tricks against her before the bombing.  In the mid-1990's Sutley persuaded free-lance writer and fringe conspiracy enthusiast Ed Gerhman to concoct a case that Bari hadn't been bombed by either timber, the FBI, or Sutley, but instead by her own ex-husband Mike Sweeney.  According to Gehrman's own account, Sutley got him working on this theory in the mid-1990's.

It was a daunting task, since no evidence whatsoever existed then or now to link Sweeney to the bombing, and Bari herself had explained why he couldn't have been the bomber.  "My ex-husband and I have a cooperative relationship in our divorce, and he has no motive at all to bomb me," she wrote in her book Timber Wars, 1994 (p. 139). Sweeney was a hundred miles away, Bari explained.  "…the bomb in my car had a 12-hour timer, so it couldn't have been placed anywhere but Oakland, where I stayed the night before it exploded."  (Timber Wars, p. 313)

This made it impossible for Sweeney to have been the bomber, Judi concluded. "Mike was taking care of our children at his girlfriend's house when the bomb was planted, and she can verify that Mike did not leave her house at any time when he could have had an opportunity to place the bomb." (Timber Wars, p. 139)

As a conspiracy theorist, Gehrman wasn't discouraged by these realities.  His other investigative forays included claims that aliens had landed at Roswell, New Mexico, where secret autopsies were done on their bodies, and that AIDS was a U.S. government conspiracy.  He pieced together malicious gossip from Sutley, Anna Marie Stenberg and Mary Moore to fabricate a story of domestic conflict between Bari and Sweeney.  Then he added a novel twist—supposedly scientific literary analysis suggesting that Sweeney could have been the author of an anonymous letter taking credit for the bombing.  This analysis was provided by Donald Foster, an English professor, who claimed to be able to identify authors by their literary style. 

Foster was an old-fashioned charlatan who could have walked right out of the pages of a Mark Twain novel.  He was able to pass himself off as an expert literary detective for several years (to the indignation of legitimate scholars) until he exposed himself as an utter fraud.  He got caught offering himself to both sides in the sensational JonBenet Ramsey case, first telling the mother that he knew “absolutely and unequivocally” that she was innocent, and then turning around and telling the police he could identify her as the perpetrator.  Earlier Foster became obsessed with the internet postings of a fan of the case, and faxed his literary agent that he had discovered that this fan was actually JonBenet's male half brother and had certainly written the incriminating ransom note.  It turned out that the internet fan was a 48-year-old North Carolina housewife.

The epilogue to the Don Foster scam came in 2002 when he was forced to admit that his original claim to fame, the discovery that William Shakespeare was the anonymous author of an obscure Elizabethan funeral elegy, was false. (New York Times, 6/20/02). [More on Foster.]

But before his self-destruction, Foster was recruited into the Judi Bari mystery.  Ed Gehrman claims he gave Foster a selection of writings from a small number of people associated with Judi Bari, and Foster obliged Gehrman by asserting that Sweeney's writings most closely resembled the anonymous letter claiming responsibility for the bombing.  But Foster hedged by noting that there was no assurance that Gehrman's small pool really included the actual author of the anonymous letter.  And he would later admit the link to Sweeney was “inconclusive” (email, 5/11/00). But it was enough for Gehrman.  He published an article in an obscure conspiracy theory magazine demanding that Sweeney be investigated as the likely bomber.

This bizarre stew was very tasty to Anderson, and he quickly forgot his past assertions, including: “Mike Sweeney certainly didn't do it.” (AVA, 5/29/91) and “The simple truth of the matter is that Bari and Sweeney separated peacefully and cooperatively.” (AVA, 5/11/94).  Anderson became the leading booster of the Sutley-Gehrman theory, adding numerous inventions of his own to the story and claiming that Bari herself was his source.

Anderson demanded that the Mendocino County District Attorney, Norman Vroman, open an investigation of Sweeney.  Vroman declined:  "I am not investigating anything. I have nothing to investigate and you can quote me on that." (Ukiah Daily Journal, 5/30/99, p. A8)  When questioned on a radio call-in show about Anderson's claims,  Vroman, dismissed them as "conjecture, innuendo, speculation, guesses." (KZYX radio, 5/24/99).

Outraged, Anderson widened his net.  He claimed Sweeney was being “protected by the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, the Northcoast media, and Mendocino County law enforcement.” (AVA, 5/17/00)

Undeterred by this formidable array of imaginary conspirators, Anderson set out to use the bogus accusation against Sweeney as a weapon to try to undermine financial support for the federal civil rights lawsuit by Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney against the FBI and City of Oakland.  The lawsuit stemmed from the outrageous conduct of the FBI and police at the bombing.  Despite obvious physical evidence to the contrary, the authorities arrested Bari and Cherney for knowingly transporting the bomb.  For weeks, the authorities defamed Bari and Cherney as the bombers, lying about the physical evidence, and generally trampling on their civil rights.  Suing the federal government is practically impossible for ordinary citizens, but it was Bari's dying wish in 1997 that the lawsuit be fought to the finish.

Anderson ran a long article on December 29, 1999, by none other than Kate Coleman, which faithfully repeated Anderson's slurs against Bari, quoted him extensively, defended the police decision to arrest her, and praised Donald Foster. Her article is filled with the factual errors and bizarre distortions that she sold to the right-wing publisher, Encounter Books.

In 2000, the lawsuit was moving closer to trial, and supporters were working hard to try to raise enough money to keep the legal team together.  Anderson falsely claimed that Sweeney was one of the plaintiffs, and therefore would reap ill-gotten gains from a successful verdict.  On his front page May 17, 2000, Anderson proclaimed:

“The Bari-Cherney-Sweeney axis is attempting to collect $20 million from the Oakland Police Department and the federal government for a crime begun by a private citizen right here in Mendocino County.  The Bari-Cherney-Sweeney swindle is the biggest fraud to hit Mendocino County since Jim Jones, and like Jim Jones, Mendocino County has so far functioned as co-conspirator in an effort by three unscrupulous persons to bilk taxpayers out of $20 million...For ten years a small group of liars and hustlers have claimed that Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were targets of an FBI and/or Big Timber murder plot.  Why?  Darryl Cherney has parlayed the bomb into a PC show biz career for himself while other media-driven opportunists associated with him have similarly earned their livings peddling this mythical version of events.” (AVA, 5/17/00)

A year later, Anderson got his hands on a fund-raising appeal by the lawsuit's support group, Redwood Summer Justice Project, and accused the group of “brazen, mercenary mythologizing…in the hopes they can convert it all to a $20 million federal payday for themselves.”  And later, “The Redwood Summer Justice Project, fastened ghoulishly and profitably to Judi Bari's corpse, has engaged in fraudulent fundraising practices and circular pay-outs to its friends and allies for ten years now.”  (AVA, 2/7/01)

Anderson's theories became increasingly strange.  He proclaimed that “Mike Sweeney was most likely the FBI's primary snitch here during the Redwood Summer period which accounts for the FBI's failure to arrest him and charge him in the bombing of his ex-wife.”  Anderson also proclaimed that Bari's key organizing center, the Mendocino Environmental Center(MEC), “was established as a federal listening post.”  Anderson demanded to know, “Why were the MEC's phone lines re-wired immediately after the Bari bombing?”  (AVA, 6/8/01)

Anderson's attacks were unsuccessful, and the lawsuit supporters were able to raise enough money to keep their legal team working on a shoestring.  Against all expectations, the case came to trial in Oakland in April, 2002.  Anderson and Mary Moore offered themselves as witnesses for the FBI against Bari and Cherney, but were ignored.  After a long trial and long deliberations, the jury stunned the nation with a $4.4 million damage verdict in favor of Bari and Cherney, unanimously finding that the FBI and police had violated their civil rights by falsely arresting them and defaming them after the bombing. Fully 80% of the damages were for violating the pair's First Amendment rights, vindicating Bari and Cherney's claim that law enforcement tried to frame them for the bombing so as to discredit them and disrupt their political organizing in defense of the forests.

Cherney wasn't amused and filed a complaint with the District Attorney.  So Anderson ran it again. [The complete Bruce Anderson story available at www.LiarUnlimited.com]

Mary Moore is another late-comer to the theory that Sweeney bombed Bari.  At the time of the bombing, she believed the culprits were anti-abortionists.  “There are many theories being bantered about, but as I learn more about the death threats that Judi received before the bombing I am more and more inclined to think that this may have more to do with the issue of abortion than with the issue of timber. There are some real crackpots in the so-called pro-life movement, and they also have a certain propensity toward bomb-making.  It's no secret that Judi pushed their buttons when she used song and humor to taunt them during one of their rallies in front of Planned Parenthood in Ukiah.  As my daughter pointed out, it was like poking a mad dog with a stick.” (Sonoma County Free Press, August, 1990)

But that was before Moore started her own famous, long-running feud with Judi Bari.  It's a tangled tale.  But Moore is essentially a repeat of Stenberg and Anderson—an unstable, egotistical publicity hound who comes off badly in a dispute with Bari, jealously watches Bari ascend to national prominence, and launches on a vindictive campaign to pull Bari down in any way possible.

It got so bad that by May 21, 1995, Moore was quoted in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, "Judi's not real fond of me these days."   

In the early 1990's, Moore had a boyfriend who called himself Kwazi Nkrumah.  Bruce Anderson mocked Kwazi for his adopted name and aggressive black-nationalist style.  Moore defended Kwazi, accused Anderson of racism, and accused Bari of siding with Anderson.  For her part, Bari had heard from her friend Tanya Brannan about how Kwazi had threatened, abused and insulted her.  It wasn't long before Bari, still debilitated from the bombing, got a taste of this treatment herself.  Moore brought Kwazi to Bari's cabin outside Willits in late 1991, and Kwazi shouted at Bari until she broke down in tears.  “His tone and mannerisms were violent and threatening,” Bari wrote.  “He paced, gesticulated, stood over me, placed his hand on my shoulder, talked over me, shouted me down…And he kept it up until he broke me down.” (AVA, 1/15/92)

After this incident, Moore defended Kwazi, marking the start of a more vicious stage of her feud with Bari.  At first, Moore focused her attack on Bruce Anderson, whom she saw as Bari's ally at the time.  Moore complained: “During this time Judi never once spoke up publicly to confront her friend Bruce about the racism in his weekly tirades about Kwazi.”  (Sonoma County Free Press, April, 1992) 

In April, 1992, Moore published several pages of attacks on Anderson in her occasional newspaper, the Sonoma County Free Press, including quotes from 29 radical activists attacking Anderson as a liar, bully, disrupter, and drunk. Moore pointedly announced at the end, “Judi Bari and Tanya Brannan were asked to comment but declined to do so.”

Moore's own contribution was:

“First of all Bruce is a pathetic bully.  It frankly surprised me when he put his racism out there so clearly for the world to see as he always claimed to be fighting racism instead of perpetuating it.  Unfortunately the same thing cannot be said about Bruce's sexism which is a concept he has never claimed to understand. Whether Bruce is paid by the F.B.I. or not he is doing the job in terms of divisiveness.  He appeals to the worst instincts in people and in the name of ‘humor' and ‘criticism' he aims to hurt and destroy and cares nothing for the objective truth.  He claims to be a radical but I see him as a rigid reactionary and extremely destructive to the progressive movement.”  (Sonoma County Free Press, April, 1992)

Kwazi Nkrumah ran up to Anderson at a rally on May 20, 1992 and punched him in the back of the head.  (Santa Rosa Press Democrat, 5/21/92)

It wasn't long after this that Moore took sides with Irv Sutley against Bari. Since 1991, Bari had been accusing Sutley of being a police agent. By siding with Sutley, Moore was repudiating her own writing on the subject.  In the August, 1991, Sonoma County Free Press, she had alluded to Sutley's “past behavior toward women” and suggested that he be brought before an “elder tribunal.”  But after her split with Bari, Moore flip-flopped.  In June, 1994, she published a long article in which she criticized Bari for her association with Anderson (even though the Bari-Anderson feud was well underway), and demanded that Bari answer two questions:

• “Why do you continue to use and be used by Bruce Anderson?”
• “Why do you continue to accuse Irv in public forums of being an agent without coming forth with any proof?”

(Sonoma County Free Press, June, 1994)

Moore accused Bari:  "You are using McCarthy-like tactics that are unworthy of you and using disreputable journalists as your mouthpiece."  (Sonoma County Free Press, June, 1994)

Moore made her occasional newspaper a mouthpiece for Sutley, including statements by him like this one:  “It's appalling that Judi Bari continues to make untrue, unproven and unprovable accusations against not only me but numerous others in the movement, the horror of the bombing attack on Cherney and Bari may have become unsolvable—precisely because of Bari's unprincipled fictions and deceptions.”  (Sonoma County Free Press, April, 1994)

In February, 1996, Moore published a petition-like “Message to Judi and Darryl,” bearing her name and 23 others, demanding that they “immediately stop the unfounded and unproven public allegations about Irv Sutley.”  (Sonoma County Free Press, February, 1996).

By the mid-1990's Sutley had realized that his best defense against Bari would be a good offense.  He made the absurd claim that Bari, through a friend, had solicited him to kill her ex-husband in 1989.  Moore noisily supported Sutley's claim and tried to set up meetings with Bari about it.

Four years later, when Bruce Anderson decided to take up Sutley's cause as his own, Moore accepted him as an ally, forgetting her own proclamations that he was a “pathetic bully.”  Soon they were issuing joint press releases and making joint appearances on the radio and at public meetings with Stenberg, making accusations against Sweeney and blasting Bari's lawsuit.  Forgotten were their denunciations of each other over the years.  The temptation to settle scores with Judi Bari, now that she was dead and could no longer answer back, was sufficient to overcome all of their past enmities.

As Betty Ball remembers, “Their mutual hatred/jealousy of Judi brought them all together—into the remarkable I Hate Judi Cult—boy—what a combo of personalities—They all lie, they all can't stand not being in the limelight. They all hate like no other people I have ever met.”  (email, 5/16/03)

Any writer with integrity would look at the “case” offered by Stenberg-Anderson-Moore and just laugh.  But Kate Coleman thinks there is a market for a sensationalized rewrite of Judi Bari's life.  So she laps up even the documented falsehoods put out by Bari's enemies--silly mistakes like the claim of “insider knowledge of the burning of the Bank of America” in Sweeney's 1970 article in Ramparts magazine.

Coleman also seems blind to the fact that the arguments of Bari's enemies are self-contradictory.  The source for most of their accusations is supposed to be Bari herself—in private conversations Bari allegedly had with them.  For example, the claims of domestic abuse, and Sweeney's alleged arson at an airport, are backed up by nothing except Stenberg-Anderson-Moore's recollections of what Bari supposedly told them privately.  There is no documentation of any of this alleged hearsay, not even written notes or a tape recording.

But Bari did go on the record to refute such gossip.  In her book Timber Wars, she specifically denies any strife between her and Sweeney and any involvement by either of them in airport arson.  Stenberg-Anderson-Moore are well aware of Bari's denial.  Therefore they are asserting that Bari is a liar, and, in fact, they all vehemently denounced Bari as a liar over other issues at one time or another.

So, if Bari is supposed to be a liar, how could anything she says be taken seriously?  It's this absurdity that prompted District Attorney Norman Vroman to dismiss their “case” as nothing more than "conjecture, innuendo, speculation, guesses."

The claim that Bari was a silent, secret victim of domestic abuse is absurd in the context of everything that is known about her.  She was a brown belt in karate, famously tough in all her disputes with people, and a militant feminist.  To suggest that she would suffer beatings without calling the police, getting a restraining order, or even just moving away, is ridiculous.  There is no documentation of any kind to substantiate domestic violence against Bari—not a medical report, photograph, eyewitness statement, or any comment in Bari's voluminous writings or interviews.  A deputy sheriff, who kept close eye on his neighbors, lived next door to Bari and Sweeney from 1987 to 1990, and never reported any sign of domestic strife.

There's another compelling reason to dismiss the Stenberg-Anderson-Moore theory—they didn't believe it themselves. Bari's alleged secret admissions are supposed to have occurred in the period 1988-90.  But nothing Stenberg-Anderson-Moore now claim they heard in 1988-90 prompted them to suspect Sweeney when the bombing happened in 1990.  Instead, Stenberg proclaimed the bomber was Mike Koepf, Anderson named Louisiana-Pacific, and Moore accused the anti-abortionists.

Only after they had become bitter enemies of Judi Bari, and only after she had died and could no longer answer them, did Stenberg-Anderson-Moore dare to accuse her ex-husband.  Their motives are transparent.  For Kate Coleman to suggest that they have anything credible to say about Judi Bari is nothing more than a literary hoax.

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This website edited by Mike Sweeney.  Many thanks to the contributors, reviewers and supporters who make this project possible.