FRIENDS OF JUDI BARI
PO Box 943, Mendocino CA 95460-0943

www.FOJB.org

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Media Contact: Nicholas Wilson, info (at) fojb.org

• Estate of Judi Bari Asks for Withdrawal and Correction of Smear Book

• L.A. Times Reviewer Blasts Coleman For "Dubious Speculation"

• Friends of Judi Bari Offers Documentation of Facts About Book

 The Estate of Judi Bari, the Earth First! activist who died of cancer in 1997, today requested that Encounter Books "withdraw The Secret Wars of Judi Bari from publication until it can be corrected." 

In a letter to publisher Peter Collier, estate executor Darlene Comingore cited 351 factual errors in the new book, and said, "A book can't claim to be a biography with this level of error....That doesn't mean that Judi Bari is above criticism.  But everyone--dead or alive--is entitled to a certain base-line honesty in the telling of the story of his or her life."

Comingore told Collier that the on-line critique of the book at www.colemanhoax.info that has been prepared by family, friends and associates of Judi Bari will help in the task of correcting the book, since it lists the 351 errors page-by-page and includes documentation that immediately disproves 15 key assertions by author Kate Coleman.[A copy of Comingore's letter is below].

• L.A. Times Reviewer Pans Coleman's Book

The book received another setback today in a scathing Los Angeles Times review. Mark Hertsgaard wrote that Coleman's book "could be assigned in journalism schools to each how not to do investigative reporting."  The review said Coleman's "reporting is thin and sloppy and the humdrum prose is marred by dubious speculation."  He adds, "You can't cherry pick 'facts' to fit your thesis."

 In dismissing Coleman's book, the review states, "Coleman doesn't explore the very plausible theory that angry loggers may have bombed Bari.  Her thesis is that Bari was a pot-smoking egomaniac who latched onto the timber wars to fulfill her dream of political martyrdom--a dream the car bombing fulfilled six years before her 1996 (sic) death of breast cancer." (note: Bari died on March 2, 1997, and over a thousand people attended her memorial seven days later in her hometown of Willits, California.)

 In a letter to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat today calling attention to errors in a Sunday column by Chris Smith, Friends of Judi Bari coordinator Nicholas Wilson offered a list of facts about the Coleman book that he would happily document if asked. The fact list appears below, after the text of Bari estate executor Darlene Comingore's letter to Encounter Books.

• Text of Bari estate letter to Encounter books

Estate of Judi Bari

January 25, 2005
Peter Collier, Publisher
Encounter Books
665 Third Street, Suite 330
San Francisco, CA 94107-1951

RE: Request for withdrawal of "The Secret Wars of Judi Bari"

Dear Mr. Collier:

Regardless of political allegiances, it is sometimes possible for people of differing persuasions to agree that something just isn’t true. Although you run an ideologically-based publishing house, I trust that you have the intellectual integrity to want to avoid knowingly printing false information under the guise of non-fiction.

Any book can have a few mistakes. But Encounter Books’ recent title, "The Secret Wars of Judi Bari," seems to have broken some kind of record. A page-by-page listing of its factual errors and false assertions has reached 351 entries, and the book is only 232 pages long. These errors range from small ones—like the constant misplacing of people, dates and events—on up to serious libels, like the claim that Bari abandoned environmental activism and instead promoted her image as a martyr in order to benefit financially.

You may quarrel with some of the listings, but most are indisputable. Fifteen key errors are refuted with on-line documentation, and many more will be included in the "Instant Proof" section as additional documents are assembled.

As someone who was a friend, political colleague, and ally with Judi from 1979 to the day of her death in 1997, the portrait painted in this book is not one that I recognize. Please don’t take my word for this. In his LA Times review of your book published January 25, 2005, Mr. Mark Hertsgaard writes, "‘The Secret Wars of Judi Bari’ could be assigned in journalism schools to teach how not to do investigative reporting." As a person who Judi named to protect her interests, Ms. Coleman neither contacted me nor to my knowledge attempted to contact me to verify any assertions she presented in her book.

A book can’t claim to be a biography with this level of error, whether it is deliberate or just the consequence of a lazy author or incompetent fact-checkers. That doesn’t mean that Judi Bari is above criticism. But everyone—dead or alive—is entitled to a certain base-line honesty in the telling of the story of his or her life.

For these reasons, the Estate of Judi Bari requests that you withdraw "The Secret Wars of Judi Bari" from publication until it can be corrected. The extensive critique that has been posted by her family, friends and associates at www.colemanhoax.info should be helpful.

I look forward to hearing from you. You may contact me by phone at (916) 806-6913, by email at darlenegrace@juno.com, or in writing in care of my attorneyMr. Daryl J. Weinroth, Esq., 750 Grant Avenue, Suite 250, Novato, CA 94947.

Very truly yours,

Darlene G. Comingore
Executor

------------------end text of Bari estate letter----------------

•  Offer of Proof

In a letter to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat Tuesday morning, Friends of Judi Bari  made the following offer of proof:

We can document each of the following facts and would be happy to do so:

• Coleman was recruited and paid to write the book (by her own admission, on videotape).
• Although she claims progressive credentials Coleman has a record of writing articles attacking figures on the left, including Black Panther leaders, and publishing them in avowed right wing publications like David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com .
• Encounter Books is a nonprofit publisher with a conservative agenda that was begun with a $3.5 million start-up grant from the ultraconservative Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation which has granted Encounter additional millions in operating capital. They don't publish books to make money, like most publishers do. Instead they use conservative foundation grant money to publish stealth propaganda books like "The Secret Wars of Judi Bari."
• The Bradley Foundation, with reported assets in 2001 of about $600 million, was founded by ultraconservative brothers who were early members of and major donors to the John Birch Society. It is one of the top two or three financial backers of conservative causes in this country.
• The Bradley Foundation, before starting Encounter as its publishing arm (according to The Nation), directly funded such books as "The Real Anita Hill" and the racist "The Bell Curve," among scores of other examples of right wing smear and propaganda books.
• Ms. Coleman did not talk to any of a half-dozen sources who are essential for any valid biography of Judi Bari, people who were her close colleagues, associates and family members: not Karen Pickett or Alicia Littletree, both of whom knew Judi well enough that they were at her side right up to the moment of her death; not Betty or Gary Ball, who ran the Mendocino Environmental Center in Ukiah -- Judi's main base of operations -- from the late '80s until after Judi's death; not Tanya Brannan who heads the nonprofit Redwood Justice Project that Judi founded; not Darlene Comingore, Judi's longtime friend who is executor of her estate. All these sources and dozens more were interviewed by Pulitzer Prize winning author Susan Faludi, whose book about Judi Bari is expected to be released next fall.
• The handful of named sources Coleman relied on had all split with Bari over one thing or another by the early 1990s, and all have carried on famous personal feuds with her, as we would be happy to document.
• The book contains countless falsehoods, because the author relied on biased and misinformed sources, based the book largely on the work of others (without clearing it with them), and fact-checked either not at all or without due diligence.
• The author has committed many important errors of omission due to her lack of informants among those who truly knew Judi Bari well, especially in the last five years of her life when her environmental activism was at its peak.

Kate Coleman's book is a classic example of the principle: garbage in, garbage out. Encounter Books should be investigated for false advertising for calling the book non-fiction. It's fiction from the title through the final sentence.

Nicholas Wilson
Coordinator, Friends of Judi Bari (FOJB)
PO Box 943
Mendocino CA 95460-0943
Relevant websites: www.fojb.org  www.colemanhoax.info  www.judibari.org 

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