What the Elle? When corporate media tackles anarchism, the FBI, informants, and the ELF

from infoshop, 23 April 2008:

Perhaps Andrea Todd deserves a little credit. She was, after all, attempting to write an article about someone who lies for a living. Getting true, accurate information from such a source can be difficult at best, impossible at worst. Which, of course, makes the subject matter of the article on page 266 of Elle Magazine's May issue inherently problematic to begin with.

When Andrea decided to write an article for Elle Magazine about “Anna,” the informant in the case of Eric McDavid, she took on a difficult task indeed. How do we get a clear picture of who “Anna” actually is and what role she actually played in the creation of the case of Eric McDavid? To do this, we need to dig a bit deeper, engage in some critical thinking, and connect a few dots.

Who is Anna?

She’s there – on page 266! With a look of sly disdain on her face and a smile just ready to curl up the sides of her face. But not quite. How did she get there? It’s baffling, really, since in September 2007, great pains were taken to conceal her identity in a stuffy, federal courtroom in Sacramento, CA.

White noise was played over the speakers as she was sworn in, so none present would hear her real name. Courtroom artists were not allowed to draw her face. A spectator was nearly booted from the room when it was suspected that they might have been attempting to take her picture with their cell phone. And Eric’s lawyer – Mark Reichel – was only able to learn her true name one week before trial, making any meaningful investigation of her ultimately impossible.

It was claimed that Anna’s identity had to be kept hidden because her life was being threatened by radical “eco-terrorists” who were angry with her for entrapping their friends and comrades. But the half-page, full body picture of Anna on page 266 – in an internationally distributed magazine - would certainly seem to belie that line of argumentation.

(As well as other events in recent history – such as the known identity of the person responsible for the arrests of almost a dozen of his former friends in the northwest, Jake Ferguson. Jake has been walking the streets of the dreaded Eugene – seen by many as a “hot-bed” of “shadowy anarchist” groups since the WTO protests in Seattle, 1999 - for years now, and no harm has ever come to him.)

So why all the hubbub? And why the sudden shift in security consciousness? One has to question the validity of claims made by both Anna and the government about threats to her safety. And, of course, we then have to question why those false claims were made in the first place.

Like most things related to this case, it seems apparent that the secrecy surrounding Anna's true identity was just part and parcel of the larger story manufactured by the government – a secrecy that implied her heroism and courage in front of the jury, while simultaneously creating a sense that Eric and his friends were menacing, dangerous individuals with sinister plans for Anna's demise.

And, again, with Eric's lawyer only knowing her true identity a week before trial, nobody could do any meaningful investigation about Anna – which, in an entrapment case, is necessary and elemental to a fair trial (not that anyone has any illusions about that actually happening...).

Read the full article here

For more information on Eric McDavid and his case, you can visit his website at http://www.supporteric.org

Those who haven't read the Elle article can have a look at it here:
http://veganxjen.livejournal.com/4471.html