Summary: This Declaration (notarized 31 October 2022) outlines years of FBI abuse faced by a Wall Street mining analyst:

After completing an MBA at Wharton business school in the USA John Wilson worked as a mining analyst for major British investment bank SG Warburg (now part of UBS) in New York on Wall Street in the mid1990s. As part of his job, he followed Freeport McMoran, a large American mining company listed on the NYSE. The company owns the large Grasberg copper and gold mine in West Papua, Indonesia and at the time was under investigation by the US State Department following eye witness allegations it was involved in the killing of indigenous protestors as well as other human rights abuses.

On 12 March 1996, he authored an investment analysis publication for work titled “Grasberg Closure Highlights Political Risks”. The report noted OPIC’s cancellation of Freeport-McMoRan’s Grasberg political risk insurance policy, and heightened political risks resultant from Freeport-McMoRan’s intimate relationship with the Indonesian military, and investigation by the U.S. Department of State. His report was originally published in First Call and was soon thereafter additionally distributed to fund managers globally (attached as “Exhibit 1” in the Declaration). Shortly after, John Wilson asked a question about the State Department’s interim findings of its investigations following allegations of human rights abuses to the CEO Jim Bob Moffett at an analyst briefing in the Freeport boardroom in New Orleans which resulted in a long-winded and angry outburst.

Immediately after the analyst question time Wilson was threatened in the boardroom alcove, apparently by a federal agent, and the next thing he had the FBI (and an Australian intelligence agency, reputedly ASIO and/or ASIS) interfering with his life and career. The matters affecting the Grasberg mine, West Papua, Indonesia and Freeport were political in nature and of legitimate concern to global investors. Notwithstanding this, the FBI sought to “deplatform” and “punish” him for drawing attention to a sensitive matter. It interfered in his career, professional, social and family networks, and attempted to entrap him in a failed drug sting, DUI and other offences.

Following publication of this report and question to the CEO, Wilson was subjected to a multiyear harassment campaign seeking to falsely portray him as an environmental extremist. Part of this harassment and intimidation included death threats against him. Many of his harassers identified themselves to him as being affiliated with the FBI (and in Australia ASIO/ASIS). The agencies’ surveillance of, and interference with, him and his family since then has been completely intrusive and unreasonable. He has been blacklisted and harassed in retribution. It appears this is intended to intimidate and silence not only him, but more broadly, civil society.

It has not been possible in either the USA or Australia to make any meaningful progress seeking accountability through the established democratic oversight channels – media, legal, and oversight agencies, including the DOJ in the USA and IGIS in Australia.

Declaration of Mr. John Wilson

Dated 31 October 2022

I, John Wilson, do hereby declare under penalties of perjury:

1. I submit this declaration based on my personal notes, recollections and knowledge.
2. This Declaration is comprised of four major components:
   • 
     i. Section 1: Overview chronology ………………………………………………………….p6
     ii. Section 2: Statement of John Wilson re Susan Holmes: Disclosures re Freeport McMoran and the FBI: 1994-2003….…………………………………………………….p16
     iii. Section 3: Statement of John Wilson re Steve Garber: Disclosures re Freeport McMoran and the FBI: 1994-2004………………………………………………………..p48
     iv. Section 4: List of attachments, including Declaration made by the Plaintiff in relation to the FBI dated 16 November 2021; (The Declaration is attached hereto as Exhibit 1.)…………………………………………….………………………………….p82
3. I am the Plaintiff in this action.
4. I am a dual Australian and USA citizen.
5. I currently live in Sydney, Australia and have a small equity research consultancy business and live with my wife and two young children.
6. I have tertiary education with the following three degrees:
   • The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA ,
   Master of Business Administration, (Dual Majors in Finance and Management), 1993
   • University of Queensland, Australia, Bachelor of Arts (Major in Economics), 1989
   • University of Sydney, Australia, Bachelor of Engineering (Major in Mining), 1986
7. After completing an MBA in 1993 at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, I moved to New York City and from late 1993 to June 1999 lived at 170 W 74th St, Apt 906, New York, NY 10023.
8. Dialogue reported in this affidavit may be paraphrasing of actual conversation.
9. Dialogue, statements and events reported in this Declaration may be selected for relevance and presented for clarity and brevity, but always to give a true and fair rendering of the situation. Additional details, in cases, may be available.
10. The term “agent” here is used in a generic sense, as in someone being an agent of someone else and does not intend any specific title.
11. Given all the information I have provided to the FBI/DOJ over the years in support of my FOIA requests, including all the disclosures to me by agents of the FBI concerning the agency’s operation targeting me – information set out here-in in greater detail and specificity than previously, it is astonishing that the FBI cannot find records to release to me.
12. I believe that the FBI/DOJ is acting in “Bad Faith” as summarized below and set out in this Declaration, that it holds records on me it has not released, and is potentially shielding some or all of these records under falsely claimed FOIA exemptions. There are two for two reasons I believe the DOJ/FBI is acting in “bad faith”:
    • 
      One: Two operatives of the FBI, Susan Holmes (my then long-term girlfriend, who showed me her black background FBI ID card among other affirmations of her work with the FBI, that included pursuing environmental extremists in the eastern half of the USA) and Steven Garber (who confirmed his work for the FBI on my case), informed me, as set out in this Declaration, that I am the target of a vindictive FBI operation following a work report I published 12 March 1996 as a Wall Street analyst covering US mining company Freeport McMoran’s activities in West Papua, Indonesia.
      According to Holmes and Garber (as set out in the below Declaration), the FBI has falsified evidence to portray me as an environmental extremist, or similar, with an interest in blowing up dams, and having an association with people of interest to the FBI, including high profile environmentalist and co-founder of Earth First! David Foreman (one of Susan Holmes’ FBI work targets). Holmes and Garber’s disclosure of what amounts to a vindictive and “goofy” FBI setup is evidence of FBI “bad faith”.
      Two: The DOJ/FBI repeatedly refused to respond to my assertions, and letters from LA attorney Barry Fisher, that Holmes, Garber, and others named are operatives of the FBI, working as independent contractors, or similar, informants, etc. The DOJ/FBI has consistently sidestepped and never answered the claim Holmes and Garber, etc., are operatives.
      The agency has repeatedly mis-represented my complaint, incorrectly claiming that Barry Fisher or I have asserted that Holmes, Garber, etc., are “employees” or “Special Agents” and then it denies they are either of these. Despite us pointing this out to the DOJ/FBI and providing clarification to them, they have never answered the claim that Holmes and Garber, etc., are operatives or informants, etc., of the FBI. (Refer to my 16 November 2021 Declaration, clauses 109-112 on pages 24-25; plus exhibit 8 – a letter from my LA attorney Barry Fisher, dated June 5, 2020 -this letter never received a substantive response.)
    • 
      The DOJ/FBI’s repeated refusal to investigate, or respond to, my assertions, and Barry Fisher’s, that Holmes, Garber, etc work as independent contractors, or similar, informants, etc, for the FBI, is evidence of agency “bad faith”.
    • 
      The DOJ/FBI’s lack of response to our claims is consistent with the strategy Susan Holmes described to me where the DOJ/FBI routinely misrepresent complaints in a deliberate attempt to delay or avert accountability – the strawman tactic. (Refer to my 16 November 2021 Declaration, clause 46).
13. I believe the FBI is operating in “bad faith”, has created fake evidence intent to entangle me as an extremist as alluded to by two FBI operatives Holmes and Garber (in 2003 and 2004). In creating fake evidence, the FBI has compromised perfunctory oversight screening mechanisms which do not detect fraud on the part of the FBI and other intelligence or law enforcement agencies. Their methods effectively subvert the review process, presumably including efforts by former Australian Attorney General, Philip Ruddock (details in this Declaration).
    I should have the ability to review and respond to the “evidence” held by the FBI on me, that others rely on, and I should have the right to challenge it with the assistance of an attorney.

Section 1

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Overview chronology

14. August-September 1994; NYC; I met Susan Holmes around August-September 1994 while I was attending a Sierra Club volunteer meeting in NYC and we started dating shortly after. We dated from 1994 till late 1997.

I met Steve Garber, through Susan Holmes, also at a Sierra Club volunteer event, sometime in the following month or so after meeting Holmes. After Holmes and I started dating, at Garber’s instigation, Holmes, Garber and I went for a hike one weekend in Harriman State Park about 1 hours’ drive from NYC.

15. October 1994; A week or two after this, around October 1994, Susan Holmes showed me her black FBI ID card. She told me she worked undercover for the FBI, and that Steve Garber did also. She said that the intention of our walk that day had been for Steve Garber to vet me for the FBI. Evidently, I passed the FBI’s vetting.
16. 1994 to 1997; I worked for SG Warburg (and later SBC Warburg) on Wall Street in New York as an equity analyst covering US listed mining companies. One of the companies I analyzed and published reports on for distribution to fund managers globally was U.S.-based and listed Freeport McMoran which through Freeport Indonesia controls the Grasberg Mine, one of the largest copper and gold mines in the world, situated in West Papua, Indonesia.
17. March 12, 1996; Report on Freeport McMoran: I authored a report (hereinafter the “Report”) that flagged concerns about Freeport McMoran, which was under investigation by the United States Department of State following eyewitness reports of human rights abuses against indigenous protestors in the region of its massive Grasberg gold and copper mine in West Papua, Indonesia.
18. March – April 1996; Initial repercussions: After publication of my Report, Freeport McMoran did not extend the usual invitation to me to attend the annual analyst briefing in New Orleans that year, May 1996, an event I had attended previously and a must attend event for analysts that follow the company. I had to ask three times for an invitation before one was eventually extended. SG Warburg also, following publication of my Report, tightened its research publication protocols to require formal sign off by management prior to release of analyst reports.
19. May 1996; Threatened in Freeport McMoran’s boardroom alcove: I asked questions about the investigation to the company’s CEO and Chairman Jim Bob Moffett at an analyst briefing in New Orleans in May 1996 after which I was threatened in the boardroom alcove by an individual who appears to have been a federal agent. (Details in Declaration 16 November 2021).
20. Mid 1996; Befriended by Garber: In mid-1996, after my Report was published and my question to the Freeport McMoran CEO, Steve Garber started to make overtures to me. He began to show up at Sierra Club NYC chapter volunteer events I regularly attended with Susan. In contrast, I had virtually no contact with him in the prior 18 to 24 months or so since our walk in Harriman State Park in late 1994.
21. Mid-late 1996 – 1999; Garber invited me to join him on his regular walks after work in Central Park some days to observe different species of migratory birds that visited the large wooded park at different times of the year.
22. August-September 1996; Irish folk concert and FBI work disclosures – targeting Dave Foreman: Holmes used her FBI card in front of me around August-September 1996 to gain access past a security point at an Irish folk music concert in NYC. After the concert as we walked to my apartment she disclosed many facets of her FBI work to me. She disclosed aspects of her FBI work to me on numerous occasions during the time we dated from 1994 to 1997. Holmes said her focus for the FBI was on environmental extremists in the eastern half of the USA, though she did other things as well. She mentioned some of the people she targeted for the FBI, including David Foreman, a high profile environmentalist and author, co-founder of Earth First!, and the Wildlands Network. Holmes told me, “The FBI is no longer concerned about Dave Foreman doing anything wrong, but it’s the people attracted to him, associated with him, who they have the interest in. The people attracted to him are the people they are interested in.”
23. March 1997; I left my job at Warburg as a mining analyst and had 5 months off before getting another job, with time out West hiking, rafting and camping.
24. Circa July 1997; Holmes invited me on a rafting trip down the Colorado River with Dave Foreman and around 20 others. The FBI had evidently concocted a sting targeting me, and furtively utilising my relationship with Susan Holmes’ and targeting her environmental work for the FBI, most notably Dave Foreman and a campaign to remove dams on the Colorado River (discussed in my Declaration 16 November 2021). The trip “organisers” allocated me to Dave Foreman’s dory for the duration of the trip of several days. Associating me with David Foreman, a person targeted by the FBI, seemed to be a well-planned and deliberate tactic by the FBI to falsify evidence and subvert oversight screening mechanisms intended to stop agency corruption.
25. Around August 1997; I started a new job as a mining analyst with Dresdner Kleinwort Benson (DKB) back on Wall Street.
26. Late 1997; NYC – Garber intensifies interactions with me. Conversations of explosives and more Dave Foreman photos. At this time Steve Garber’s interest in me stepped up a notch, with frequent calls and requests to meet up. He started calling me regularly at work at DKB in 1997 and 1998. At one point, he asked me numerous ridiculous, oddball questions about big dams, dams like on the Colorado, and how I thought they could be sabotaged or blown up. He knew I had a degree in mining engineering and experience with explosives in mining operations. He invited me to join him on various day trips, and at one point surreptitiously entered my apartment building. Around this time, Susan Holmes, while we were still dating, asked me to a lecture with her in NYC to hear David Foreman speak at which photos were evidently taken of me attending.
27. Circa April-May, 1999: Warning from Holmes; and a visit to Steve Garber in Prescott, AZ. When I was out West, I stayed for 2 nights with Garber and his family after they had moved to Prescott, AZ around April-May 1999. Susan Holmes in the weeks before had strongly warned me against visiting him. It turned out to be a trap. Garber apparently recorded our conversation during both evenings I visited him. He covered off on a broad range of topics intended to embarrass, smear or indict, sounding me out on personal or sensitive questions which he evidently recorded for the FBI, something Susan later implied. This would explain why he had lied about the weekend hiking activities – to entice me to come stay. It also explained Susan’s imploring me not to go.
28. NYC. Holmes – Wilson FBI “work files” disclosure. During June, before I left the USA,Holmes and I met up many times when I was back in NYC. She told me that “You would not believe how surprised I was when I saw your name on the work files.” Alluding to “work” was a euphemism for the FBI. We were having dinner at the South Sea Port in NYC and she added cryptically, “I’m not going to let them do this to you!”. It didn’t click with me at the time what she was talking about and she didn’t elaborate when I asked her to explain.

29. June 1999; I moved back to Sydney, Australia.
30. Around 2002 or early 2003, Mark B. Wilson a former school friend from Sydney (an IT specialist, formerly of 50 Ruskin Rowe Avalon Beach, NSW 2107), who, upon information and belief, works for an Australian law enforcement or intelligence agency, one day in Sydney said that Susan Holmes was in Sydney on a “work” trip and he asked me if she had made contact with me. Indeed, based on Susan Holmes’ insights and statements to me in the 2003 interview, it seemed she had travelled to Australia and met with certain people I have known and that she raised in her 2003 NYC interview with me.
31. Late 2002 or early 2003: Kroll Associates, Inc., NYC. Around February 2003, Matthew Levey at Kroll offered me a monthly retainer as a part time consultant mining analyst – a role that went for 12-18 months. Levey had a background of working for the State Department and had tracked me down in Sydney in recent months through an introduction from a mutual friend and former work colleague. It was work I could do remotely, based in Sydney. He did not disclose who his client was, but suggested it was a large fund manager.
32. Kroll had interest in what I knew of Freeport McMoran’s operations in West Papua, Indonesia: At one point, Matthew Levey asked me to use my network of contacts in the US environmental community to call around and speak with activists about environmental and human rights issues in the Indonesian mining sector. Most of my contacts I had met through Susan Holmes. A couple of large US mining companies were operating in the country – most notably Newmont and Freeport McMoran. Levey seemed particularly interested in my work on Freeport McMoran and he asked me in detail about a senior Freeport operation’s executive at the Grasberg mine in West Papua, Indonesia – John Macken, including whether I knew him and had ever spoken with him.
33. May 2003; Holmes subjected me to a series of intense questioning at Cafe Fiorello, 1900 Broadway in New York City on or around Saturday, May 10th, 2003. During Holmes’ invasive interview of me in NYC in 2003, she revealed she had accessed detailed information about my life, myriad specific details spanning many decades, continents, and people – consistent with the investigative reach and powers of the FBI. Indeed, she said that she was conducting the interview at the behest of a US government agency. (Transcript of the interview based on my recollections and notes is available upon request).
34. In the 2003 interview, Holmes raised details of my Freeport McMoran Report and question to the CEO in 1996, and insinuated my work on Freeport was the cause of the interference I had been facing. The details she recounted included but were not limited to information regarding: personal conversations with current and former peers and colleagues going back decades; phone calls I had made on my private home phone; minor traffic offenses incurred in Australia; work records from various companies I had worked at over the years; records of school and university grades; records of purchases; records of state tests; medical history; and camping records at US national parks. Holmes also inexplicably had knowledge of specific phone calls I had received or made from my home phone a year or two after we had split up. She mentioned 3 in detail, all around 1998 and 1999, not just meta data, date, time, number, owner of the number – but she knew the content of the call as well and went through each call with me in explicit detail. During the interview, she told me that she has photos of me with David Foreman including the Colorado rafting trip in 1997 in her “work” files. (Further details available in my Declaration of 16 November 2021).
35. June 2004; Gaber insinuates FBI operation against me, during a walk in Central Park and the Upper West Side in NYC around June 2004. He provided intimate details about aspects of Holmes’ FBI career, projects and trips, much of which I was already somewhat familiar with. Steve raised details and events from my life – travel, work, personal – places in the Southwest I had visited, descriptions of people I had met there, details of private telephone calls from the Roadrunner backpacker hostel in Tucson I frequently stayed at – knowledge of private matters consistent with an FBI investigation. He had no reason to know about these things, and provocatively asked me leading questions, he seemed to be baiting and mocking me about whether I thought the FBI might be interfering in my life.
36. I did not at the time know how, or why, he had so much information about these many and seemingly disparate events in my life. He wouldn’t answer the many questions I put back to him in response to his suggestion. I had done nothing illegal and I had no reason to suspect the FBI would have any plausible concerns for taking an interest in me. The very notion seemed absurd.

37. September 2004; Steven Garber confirms to me that I am the subject of an FBI operation as a result of my work on Freeport McMoran in mid-1996 at the Blue Water Grill, Union Square in NYC. He verified and verbally confirmed to me in person that I had been subjected to ongoing FBI interference as payback for my work in 1996 as a Wall Street mining analyst critical of US mining company Freeport McMoran’s actions in and around the company’s massive Grasberg mine in West Papua, Indonesia. In response to my direct question, he affirmed that he worked for the FBI, and that I was being targeted as a result of my work. I asked him, seeking to confirm his insinuating remarks when we had met earlier in the year – around June 2004, in sum and substance, “You are doing this for the FBI right? To confirm, I’ve been targeted by the FBI on account of my Freeport McMoran work – is that right?” After a short pause without a response, I clearly and deliberately repeated the question. I wanted to hear him reaffirm that it was the FBI that was behind the attack on me, and that their reason was my Freeport work. I wanted to leave no doubt, no uncertainty about who he was working for and what the reason was for the interference I had been subjected to. Garber nodded and said, “Yes.”
38. 2012-13; Sydney; I had three one-hour meetings with Philip Ruddock, the former Australian Attorney General (from October 2003 to December 2007) in his electoral office around 2012-2013 on the topic of FBI, and Australian partnering agencies, interference with me on account of my Freeport McMoran work in 1996. During these meetings I named several Australian operatives who had interfered with me including: Robert Sadleir, son of former ASIO Director General David Sadleir (1992-96); Dr Trent Allen, Sydney, stockbroking analyst; Michael and Claudia Hackman, Sydney business people; Daniel Aitken, Central coast NSW and Boston, USA; Richard Kaan, Sydney, former business consultant; Fabian Babich, Sydney, former stockbroking analyst. Some of these agents in Sydney have at various times from around 2005 indicated specific knowledge with clear and distinct details from the 2003 interview by Holmes, such as Fabian Babich. A number of agents have revealed detailed knowledge of aspects of the 2003 Holmes interview. Their knowledge is a further indication the FBI holds documents or records on me. The email is attached hereto as Exhibit 3.
39. 2004 – 2020: DOJ/FBI “bad faith”: Plaintiff’s correspondence since 2004 to DOJ, OIG, FBI met with evasive and/or highly qualified responses.

The DOJ/OIG/FBI has never investigated the substance of my complaint concerning FBI misconduct. I have named certain FBI operatives, viz., Holmes, Garber and others, which I reported to them repeatedly over the years since 2004 to 2020. The DOJ/OIG/FBI has made only qualified denials and at no point have they provided a narrow, unqualified response.  

40. Following Garber’s confirmation to me in 2004 that I had faced long term interference from the FBI after publication of my work report on Freeport March 12, 1996 I made persistent and multiple requests for information from 2004 to 2020. Over the years since 2004 I have applied under FOIA to the DOJ/FBI; and I, or my LA attorney, Barry Fisher, have sent complaint letters to the DOJ, OIG and FBI and to some of my elected representatives. The most recent letter sent to the DOJ/OIG/FBI is dated June 5, 2020 by Barry Fisher to which there has been no substantive response (Attached hereto as Exhibit 2. This comprises a selection of correspondence: Letters from John Wilson dated March 9, 2015, and February 23, 2016. Letters from Barry Fisher dated June 24, 2016, and June 5, 2020. Letter from the OIG May 25, 2016. Letter from the FBI June 26, 2020).
41. The DOJ/FBI/OIG have repeatedly mischaracterized and then denied Holmes, Garber or others I named are “employees” or “Special Agents” of the FBI; but they have never responded to, or denied my claim, that they are operatives, contractors, “informants”, or suchlike of the FBI.

It seems that the various complaint letters we have sent have gone in a circle between OIG and the FBI, with neither office investigating and responding to the substance of the complaint.

43. The lack of response from the DOJ/OIG/FBI to these allegations is consistent with the agencies’ stonewalling tactics Holmes described to me in 1996 in which the DOJ/FBI evade accountability. The motivation apparent in this evasive behaviour is an indication the FBI holds documents or records on me.

Section 2

Susan Holmes: Disclosures re Freeport McMoran and the FBI: 1994-2003

Declaration of John Wilson

I, John Wilson, do hereby declare under penalties of perjury:

44. I submit this declaration based on my notes, recollections and personal knowledge.

45. I am the Plaintiff in this action.

46. I am a dual Australian and USA citizen.

47. I currently live in Sydney, Australia and have a small equity research consultancy business and live with my wife and two young children.

48. After completing an MBA in 1993 at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, I moved to New York City and from late 1993 to June 1999 lived at 170 W 74th St, Apt 906, New York, NY 10023.

49. Dialogue reported in this affidavit may be paraphrasing of actual conversation.

50. Dialogue, statements and events reported in this Declaration may be selected for relevance and presented for clarity and brevity, but always to give a true and fair rendering of the situation. Additional details, in cases, may be available.

51. The term “agent” is used here in a generic sense, as in someone being an agent of someone else and does not intend any specific title.

Background

52. Susan Holmes and I dated for three years from 1994 to 1997 when we each lived in New York City. Approximately one and a half years into the relationship the FBI purportedly commenced surveillance and interference operations against me when I worked as a Wall Street mining analyst for British investment bank SG Warburg after I published comments critical of US mining company Freeport McMoran in a 12 March 1996 report. Going by Holmes’ detailed disclosures to me about her undercover work for the FBI, and related disclosures, it is evident that at the time of our meeting in 1994 I was not an FBI target.
53. From the subsequent actions and threats made against me, and disclosures from two FBI agents in 2003 and 2004 (Holmes and Garber) the FBI action against me commenced at some point after my 12 March 1996 report was published. (Select details are provided in my Declaration dated 16 November 2021).
54. During the 3 years from late 1994 to late 1997 that Holmes and I were in a relationship, Holmes revealed many details of her FBI work to me. Some of this information is indicated below:

Details of Holmes FBI work disclosures

55. On multiple occasions from 1994 to 1997 when Holmes and I dated, Holmes said she worked undercover for the FBI, and discussed details of her background with the FBI, her role, training, missions and other details. 
56. In late 1994, a couple of months after Holmes and I started dating, Holmes, Steve Garber (who turned out to be an FBI colleague of Holmes), and I did a day hike one weekend in Harriman State Park, about 1 hour’s drive from NYC. According to Holmes, the walk was arranged at Steve Garber’s instigation.
57. Late 1994, Holmes FBI ID card: Not long after the walk with Steve Garber, around a week or two after, Susan Holmes showed me her FBI ID card at her apartment. It was a credit card sized plastic card with an image of her face on it and set on a blackish background. I vaguely recall it had the initials F.B.I in large font emblazoned across it and various other information written on it.
58. An hour or so later, Holmes and I had dinner at a neighbourhood restaurant near my place, Citrus, around 75th and Amsterdam. She confirmed that it was her FBI identity card, and that she worked under cover for the FBI. Holmes said the black background of the card was significant as it distinguished those like herself who worked on a contract type arrangement undercover for the FBI from the “regular” FBI employees, people who were employed by the FBI, who carried an FBI ID card with a white background.
59. She said she and Steve Garber worked together at the FBI. She said that the hike the three of us had taken together to Harriman State Park was intended as an opportunity for him to vet me for the FBI as her new boyfriend. On account of her six month posting to Ireland with the FBI in the recent past, and the fact I was a foreigner (though a dual US/Australian citizen) she said it was not unusual for an agent’s new partners to be “checked out”.
60. Holmes used her FBI ID card in my presence to get access through a security checkpoint in in 1996 to go backstage at an Irish folk music concert in NYC (more details about the ensuing events are included later in this disclosure).
61. I invited Holmes to Australia for 2 weeks over the Christmas holidays in 1994 when I returned to see my family.  Holmes said she would need to get permission from the FBI before she could accept the invitation to travel overseas. She subsequently accepted and travelled with me to Australia.
62. Holmes told me she had an FBI issued handgun that she kept in her apartment. She told me she kept the gun and ammunition in separate places and the locations of each.
63. Holmes said she had received firearms training from the FBI and that she regularly attended FBI training programs at Quantico. In discussions with me about her firearms training she recounted that she did target practice and also was assessed in a mock crime scene shoot out on a purpose-built set. During the assessment, she explained, “good guys” and “bad guys” would momentarily appear on set and Holmes would have to assess whether to shoot or hold fire. She indicated that it was not very difficult, it was obvious who the “good guys” were, and there was lots of time to react before deciding what to do. The main thing was to not shoot a “good guy” – by which she meant an innocent bystander. 
64. Holmes’ FBI branded clothing and wire recording device: Holmes showed me her several FBI branded T shirts and other FBI branded clothing items at her apartment in NYC in 1997.
65. Holmes showed me her FBI wire device she used for covert recording, with two flexible wires, one running over each should and joining at the front. She used this on a sting with a suspected tree spiker from Missoula, Montana, James B. Bechtold who was visiting NYC one evening around 1995-96. Tree spiking is a technique used by activists to defend large tracks of forest from logging companies and involves driving metal or ceramic stakes into trees, dangerous to saw mills – potentially damaging saw blades and equipment, and then notifying the relevant companies of the fact to deter them. He was later convicted for tree spiking.
66. Holmes said to me a number of times, including in 1994-95 that as an environmentalist tactic, tree spiking, had been highly successful in protecting large tracts of wilderness.
67. Holmes explained she could access the FBI’s internal computer systems from her laptop computer at home, via her keyboard (relatively new and cutting-edge technology at the time in the mid 1990s).
68. Holmes explained that she had no FBI recording devices for her home phone, but used her personal tape recorder, situated near the phone, to record any relevant conversations for the FBI. She said the standard of the recoding was not very high, but good enough.
69. FBI “contractors” and “informants”: While notionally retained “full time” by the FBI, Holmes explained people retained as she was, hold their normal day jobs at the same time, if they have one, be it priest, nun, housewife, office worker, environmentalist, corporate exec, congressional staffer – whatever. She explained working for the FBI undercover is not their only job, but it only demands a small portion of their time. According to Holmes, people like her can technically be called upon at any time by the FBI, but in practice this usually doesn’t happen and the role is more like being a “sleeper” agent, and generally not much is asked of them. It is mainly up to the individual to read briefs and accept the assignments they want.

Holmes explained that there are a huge number of people whose services are retained and contracted by the FBI on the same basis as she was. The FBI gets powerful leverage through these extended networks. For example, a daily list of names and maybe photos are circulated to agents, asking if they know any of these persons and, if so, how and what do they know or what have they heard said about any of them?  In this way a lot of information can generally be collected quickly and easily on anyone targeted. Despite having “day jobs”, agents like Susan Holmes (and Steve Garber) are nonetheless available to attend the needs of the FBI when called upon. Operatives typically disclose their FBI role to their day job employer, and if the FBI needs the operative for an assignment, which may involve travel out of town, the FBI can liaise directly with their employer to negotiate time off. Susan said her employers generally accommodate the needs and requests of the FBI as the employer, while not feeling pressured as such, wants to stay in the good books with the FBI.

70. Holmes explained to me that a large number of people are contracted to, or retained by, the FBI. She said the FBI employs or retains the services of far more people than it reports on its website – the actual number, including the army of what can best be described as undercover operatives, agents like Susan and Steve, and informants and collaborators, is multiples of that she estimated, though she didn’t know precise the number. The lowball count on the website is intended to deceive the public as to the extent of its operations.

For clarification, I asked her if she was classified as a “Special Agent” She said “No. That term has a specific meaning and not many people have it.” Holmes went on to explain, as with herself, “contractors” are not engaged by the FBI as “employees” nor as “Special Agents”. She mentioned the formal title, some arcane term which I no longer recall, and is not commonly known to the public. She added that such persons are deemed something like “independent contractors”, some legal arrangement intended to create a separation from, and shield, the FBI from responsibility and liability.

71. According to Holmes, the contracts for these agents are renewed every 5 years, subject to satisfactory performance and passing a lie detector test. 
72. Recruits come from a wide variety of backgrounds and locations across the country, are paid a low wage, but combined with their regular income, afford the agent a marginally elevated lifestyle. In the mid 1990s, when we were in a relationship, Susan said the FBI paid her about $60,000 per annum. She explained that around half was paid to her at the time and the other half was escrowed in an account which she could access when she retired or left the FBI, a measure intended to conceal her earnings so as not to alert targets to her otherwise unaccountable financial means.
73. Holmes said she paid tax on her FBI earnings. Special code numbers were used on her tax forms that signalled to the IRS that she received payments from the FBI. The IRS could then look up the relevant numbers and payment amounts to assess her overall tax liability. This way she didn’t need to overtly declare the FBI income on her tax filings and potentially alert others who may come across her tax filings to her role with the FBI.
74. As an example of her work Holmes described to me a not uncommon FBI assignment she might typically self-select for. The FBI online “noticeboard” indicated a former criminal was coming to NY, provided his picture and the details of the train and what time he would arrive at Grand Central Station. Susan’s task was to blend in with the crowd on the platform and wait for him. She said it is easy to pick people out from the crowd as they walked by on the platform and when she saw him, she approached him and said something to him. It was nothing significant, just something he would recognise as personally meaningful. It was a way of letting him know he was under surveillance, even though there would be no further contact after that. Then she would disappear into the crowd and that was it. It was a “friendly” warning to the person not to do anything they might regret while in town. In response to my questions Holmes said it was straight forward to know when targeted people of interest were travelling – via credit card transactions, or other means too.
75. Holmes’ mother discussed Holmes’ role for the FBI with me during our visit to Holmes’ family home in Detroit in 1997.
76. Holmes attempted to recruit me to the FBI in 1997. She pitched me in my apartment on 74^th and Amsterdam Ave. one afternoon and strongly encouraged me to apply saying the FBI was looking to recruit more people who work on Wall Street.
77. I met other FBI agents in NYC through Holmes. These FBI operatives included Steve Garber, Stephen Chenault, and John Klotz, among others, who, along with Susan Holmes, were volunteers in the Sierra Club NYC Chapter.
78. Circa Sept 1997; Holmes’ discussion of engagement, FBI parent vetting, and invitation to Christmas: Around September 1997 I received a call while at work at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson (DKB) from Susan Holmes in a joint call with her mother. Together they invited me to the family home in Detroit for Christmas that year. Shortly after, at dinner on the Upper West Side one evening, Susan addressed me saying, “I’m not getting any younger,” (we were both in our mid 30s). We had spoken about marriage a number of times over the years and Susan said she was now ready. She explained that if we were going to do it, Christmas would be a good time to announce it and that I would need to have my parents review and sign certain security clearance forms that Susan would give me to pass on from her “work” (FBI). My parents needed to be vetted before Susan could get approval from the FBI to get married to me, she explained. I asked her if she had brought the forms to dinner that night and she said no, but she would give them to me.
79. Holmes’ focus on environmental extremists and others for the FBI:  Holmes said her focus for the FBI was on environmental extremists in the eastern half – the eastern states of the USA, though she did other things for the FBI as well. She said she occasionally liaised with her counterparts who covered environmental extremists in the Western half of the US. She frequently mentioned the Unabomber case, a high-profile case at the time Holmes and I dated, though she said that was run by her colleagues in the Western half of the country and she wasn’t directly involved with it.
80. Holmes FBI focus on Dave Foreman:  During the time we were together, on several occasions Holmes mentioned a number of her FBI targets to me. These included:

• David Foreman: a high profile environmentalist and author, co-founder of Earth First!, and the Wildlands Network; was inspiration for Edward Abbey’s environmental protest and sabotage classic novel “The Monkeywrench Gang”; he was investigated but cleared over his alleged involvement in a plot to blow up powerlines in Arizona; and served on the national board of the Sierra Club including for some of the time Holmes was on the board, among other notable roles he’s had. In parts of the West especially, and in certain environmental circles, he is revered as a folk hero for his outspoken passion and maverick role in protecting the environment. At some stage, Holmes clarified the reason for the FBI’s ongoing interest in Foreman, saying: “The FBI is no longer concerned about Dave Foreman doing anything wrong, but it’s the people attracted to him, associated with him, who they are interested in. The people attached to him are the people they are interested in.”
• Paul Winter: a musician, Winter performed at the annual winter solstice concert at The Cathedral of St John the Divine in NYC, an event which Holmes and I attended a couple times. Holmes said that Winter had been a student environmental activist and leader at college many years before.

81. Holmes said the FBI facilitated her campaign for election to the Sierra Club board of directors. The FBI gave her strategic support, helped position her campaign and develop her pitch, among other things. She said the FBI wanted her to be on the board as a way for her to get closer to David Foreman, who was also on the board.
82. Holmes also mentioned David Brower, but not in the context of an FBI target. In the summer of 1997, when Holmes and I were in Detroit, she took me informally on an FBI work trip to meet with David Brower – the high profile and eminent “Archdruid” of the US environmental movement who was visiting nearby. She said the purpose of the meeting was to enhance her visibility and credibility with other members of the Sierra Club board, in particular with David Foreman, to make it easier to get closer to him. The purpose of having me join her in meeting Brower, she said, was that male bonding chemistry may help break the ice and ease the conversation for her with Brower. There may have been other intentions too on the part of the FBI, not disclosed to Holmes, given our long-term relationship. The FBI’s secret meddling in my life, and by association in Susan Holmes’ life, was purportedly underway following my 12 March 1996 report and questions to Freeport McMoran CEO and Chairman concerning alleged environmental and human rights abuses in West Papua, Indonesia, which was subject to an investigation by the state department. In the context of our meeting with David Brower who had campaigned with great influence over the decades against dams on the Colorado River, the FBI had evidently concocted a sting targeting me, furtively utilising my relationship with Susan Holmes’ and her FBI work, to falsely portray me as a close associate of Dave Foreman and supposedly intent on removing dams on the Colorado River by illicit means (discussed in my Declaration 16 November 2021).
83. Narrative: FBI disclosures by Holmes to me on a walk home: 1996, NYC

[Note: The below narrative and recounted conversation excerpt is based on my notes and recollections. Dialogue may be paraphrasing of actual conversation.]

Irish folk music drug bust

The second time I saw Holmes’ FBI card was around July or August 1996. This time I saw her use her card to get through security at an Irish folk music concert in Midtown she invited me to. After joining the FBI, about 7 years before at the age of 27, Holmes was posted, or seconded, to Ireland for 6 months where she had acquired a taste for the Irish culture, loved the Irish people, and as an avid harp player and singer enthusiastically followed the Irish music scene. She explained that being a young American woman active in the Irish music scene was good cover for seeking out extremists and other persons of potential interest. Closely associating herself with the high profile, popular Irish music scene, she said, afforded her good access to, and influence across, lots of groups in Ireland.

While in Ireland, she had been introduced to some influential and well known people in Irish folk music, including Mary Black, and met a host of accomplished but less established performers. Introductions were arranged through the FBI to help her establish the right cultural credentials and standing in her temporary role. A bit of name-dropping might go a long way in trying to infiltrate or establish a small network of informants she said.

Six or seven years later, she would still occasionally receive a call from a musician as they passed through the NYC. In mid 1996, one such associate, Mary someone, I forget her name now, was playing a gig at a large venue in Midtown. From recollection, the usual venue she would have played at is best known for hosting visiting religious leaders and speakers of all religious faiths, but at the time this was undergoing refurbishment, and so she played at an alternative venue. It was rather Spartan inside but provided a suitable ambience for high-spirited Celtic folk music.

Susan and Mary were ostensibly friends and Susan enjoyed going to her concerts. At Susan’s invitation I went with her to attend one of Mary’s New York shows, and after it finished Susan said she wanted to go backstage to say hello. However, it was not the social visit I was expecting.  It turned out Susan had a different purpose in mind. She had been collecting evidence of Mary’s use of soft drugs, something Mary was prosecuted for some months later. It was not Susan’s usual work role she said, but was a “favour” from the FBI to NY police. NY police were cracking down on soft drug use and as Susan knew this particular target, Mary, from her time in Ireland, and had already gathered this sort of background material on her, she was able to help out.

At first, the security guard would not let us backstage and blocked the access ramp. Susan, in a manner that was slightly officious and out of character told me to wait behind her, out of the way. She pulled out a card from her wallet and handed it to him. He scrutinised it very intently in the dim light for a good 30 seconds. Satisfied, he waved us through. Susan sped past him, calling back to me impatiently, “Come on, hurry up!”

I followed her down a slightly inclined ramp at the edge of the stage to a locked door that led to a room underneath. Susan had moved quickly down the ramp, half skipping and hurried walking – she seemed to know the venue well. After trying the handle and realising the door was locked she knocked loudly, several times. I had continued at a more leisurely pace and when I caught up to her, I stood with her and waited as she knocked.

Still no answer. She knocked loudly again. We waited. On the third attempt, the door opened and we walked in. The room was silent, there was virtually nobody there. Mary stood in the middle of what was otherwise a very large empty room, maybe three or four other people around her. No big party, not even all the crew was there, let alone other fans.

Susan walked casually over to Mary and said “hello” and introduced me as her boyfriend. Mary stood there looking her in the face and replied caustically, “Hi Susan, your cover is blown.” She looked at me and back to Susan to see what her response might be. Susan didn’t say anything clear, mumbling something like “Oh” under her breath. It was clear Susan had been caught flat-footed and wasn’t sure what to say or do next, as she later confided to me.

Mary broke the awkward silence explaining, “security called down, said there was an FBI agent coming down with a tall blonde guy”. I was the only tall blonde guy in the room and Susan and I were the only two people to have come through the door. It was a decisive miscalculation. Susan’s cover was indeed blown. A few awkward, stilted pleasantries were exchanged. Clearly Susan wasn’t welcome there and we said goodnight after a minute or two and left.

There was no sign of drug use anywhere. As we walked back up the ramp and outside Susan said to me, “That could have been dangerous. I was expecting a lot more people to be there”. I asked her what that whole exchange had been about, as she hadn’t forewarned me at all. She simply said, “I really am an FBI agent. Mary has been using drugs after her shows and I have been collecting evidence.”

In imploring me to accept her previous disclosures about details of her role with the FBI, including showing me her ID card, she was referring to the fact that I had never taken any interest in her FBI work. I had thought working for the FBI, doing the sorts of things the agency does, detracted from her, and I was in some kind of denial of it, hoping the issue would just go away. Susan was a graduate of Dartmouth College around 1984, intelligent, attractive, and sensitive. I felt association with a nefarious agency like the FBI detracted from the wholesome image and esteem with which I held her. It was anathema to me, indeed contradictory, that she would be drawn to work for an agency like the FBI.

I wondered what it was that she feared, what her aspirations were, what had made her susceptible to work for an agency whose domestic counterintelligence operations were akin to that of a secret-police? What was it that she felt she lacked? Indeed, as she explained it, an undercover career with the FBI was not her Plan A. However, a choppy start to professional life had drawn her to the relative stability of the work, which is why she interviewed at the age of 27 after one of her parents’ friends gave her the agency pitch. As Susan explained, the agency doesn’t pay well, but nor does it ask much of you. You can continue working your regular day job, if you have one, and through the FBI you can develop a second professional network. She also said that one of the other fringe benefits was getting some personal power over others. But one of the things she failed to mention was the job also comes with a second boss, one with unusual access to intrusive tools.

It was late, though a nice, warm summer evening and we decided to walk the 20 or 30 or so minutes back to my place from the concert. Not sure where to start, I asked “Why bother? Is it really worth the effort of pursuing a visiting Irish folk singer for using marihuana backstage. Does anybody really care?” 

Susan said sternly, “Well, if they did it in private, maybe so, but they do it in the middle of big parties, right out in the open. They can’t do that!”

“Haven’t you tried marijuana?” I asked, surprised by her uncharacteristic, strident conservative viewpoint on a matter many regard as a liberal cause. I wondered where her staunch opposition came from.

“Yes, but not flaunting it out in the open. That’s asking for trouble. It has to be policed.”  I couldn’t disagree, but nor did I really sympathise.

“Isn’t she your friend?” I asked naively.

“Yes, she is a friend, but it is really work. I don’t like doing it …..” With that, the conversation trailed off into the summer evening, leaving only the sounds of our footsteps and the late night city traffic. [One evening, in the ensuing 12 months, Susan arrived at my apartment tired and with a migraine. She seemed dejected. I asked her what was wrong and she told me she had been in court all day for a hearing concerning Mary. Mary had been convicted of soft drug use in a Manhattan court and Susan had testified against her.]

On our walk from Midtown to the Upper West Side on that balmy New York evening in 1996, Susan told me a lot about her work at the FBI. We spoke for 15 or 20 minutes or so as we walked up Amsterdam Avenue, hand in hand.

Targeting environmental “extremists” for the FBI

As stated previously Susan’s focus for the FBI was targeting environmental extremists. The Unabomber case was high profile at the time. I asked about it, but she said it was outside her jurisdiction. Her turf was the eastern half of the US. The Unabomber investigation was being handled out of the west. As she was in a confessional mood, I asked whether her main career was FBI agent. or environmentalist. She said she was FBI working as an environmentalist but really she was an environmentalist by empathy.

We chatted and walked in casual conversation, with me asking occasional questions as she talked about some of her assignments and other aspects of working for the FBI. A summary of some of that discussion follows.

She told me she had been invited to a party on Adnan Khashoggi’s boat when in NY on one occasion. He was a Saudi Arabian businessman and international arms trader implicated in money laundering and the 80’s US Iran-contra scandal. Susan was not the only FBI agent in attendance, a handful of other agents had been “invited” to the party as well, mostly young women, she said. The FBI operatives had just shown up as regular guests, mingled, but none of them handed out their “day job” cards; if asked for a card they replied they didn’t have one with them, she said. In response to my questions she explained that they did not plant bugs on the boat, that was too risky, they might be found, but they did take note of who was there.

On another occasion, she ventured that she was one of about 30 young female FBI agents in a bar stake out where the son of a crime group target had arranged to meet friends. The FBI knew this through prior surveillance. The intention was that one of the women might successfully bait and strike up an ongoing relationship with the son, as a way of then getting an FBI introduction to the father and the family home. This particular “honey trap” was successful.

Honey traps   

On a personal level, the FBI is evidently a job description with a broad remit! Training includes “kissing practice” classes and other teachings about sexual activities that are used to arouse and seduce in order to deceive and compromise their targets – the training of so called “honey traps”. Female agents practice undressing in erotic ways, artful, coquettish moves to entice, to pull their targets in, increasing their desire, how to seduce their targets, slowly pulling their tops up over the top of their head to reveal a full profile of their chest, frontal rubbing of her pelvis against a male, and other seductive and erotic moves. Susan explained and demonstrated the movements for illustration. The endgame can be to sleep with the target to compromise them or someone associated with them. The sex is covertly recorded or videoed for the state files.

I learnt some interesting things about the FBI, not only from Susan, but also from Steve Garber and the many other agents I subsequently met over the years.  Baiting with “honey traps” is de rigour as one agent told me later, saying, “It is much more common than you think.”

Dissidents   

Susan and I continued our conversation as we walked. She said that agents spend a lot of time targeting dissidents. I didn’t have a clue about such things in the USA. Over the years I had read things about secret police agencies: the Stasi in Eastern Europe, Russia, China, the Nazi’s in WWII; I’d had a summer job in Chile when Pinochet was in power terrorising civil society opponents and critics.

“What does the FBI do to them – maybe in extreme cases kill them, jail them?” I asked thinking of the Gulags.

“No,” she said. “Mostly they smear them, try to marginalise them, get them blacklisted, turn their personal life upside down to the extent they can.”

“How do they do that?” I asked, mindful that we lived in a democracy with purported separation of powers, with supposedly independent oversight and judiciary.

“They find out who their friends and family members are, where they hang out, what they do, and get them to help; to say and do things to them; to attack them verbally and un-befriend them.”

“How do they do this?” I again asked. “How can you recruit someone’s friend or family and expect them to turn against the person just because you ask them to?”

“There are ways. They generally get the targeted person to say something negative about another person; reveal something, say something that is not nice about them. Whether it is true or not doesn’t matter. The FBI secretly records it then shows it, or plays it, to that person to get them onside,” she explained.

“And then what?” I asked. “That doesn’t sound like much.”

“They will video the person doing something sexual. In their bedroom having sex with someone, or masturbating, or whatever and then maybe play it to their friends who have been recruited by the FBI,” she said.

“Don’t their friend’s tell them?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “They have been recruited by the FBI, have security clearance and the information they are receiving is classified. They are not allowed to tell. If they did, they would get into serious trouble,” she said.

“Well, doesn’t this turn people off the FBI, seeing this sort of stuff, seeing the sort of things they do?” I said, a bit surprised.

“No,” she said. “In fact many people like to see it. It’s part of the payback of the friend who said something bad about them. And it makes it harder for them to do business if they’ve shown their business colleagues.”

“Don’t business people just ignore it and get on with things?”

“No,” she said. “Once the material had been viewed, whatever its contents, it’s very hard to hold that person with the same level of respect or maintain the same level of rapport that had existed before,” she explained. “It’s very hard to treat someone normally when you’ve seen them doing this stuff. It’s very hard not to let it show in some way.”

“Don’t tell me anything you shouldn’t. I don’t want you to tell me anything that might get you in trouble,” I said, wondering whether she might be saying more than she ought to be about her work.

“I won’t. Don’t worry, it’s OK,” she said. 

FBI oversight

Susan’s discussion was of a general nature. She once said the friends and family she disclosed her FBI roles to had always shown great interest in her work there. They were intrigued and curious she said and she wondered why I was not more so. My initial instinct had been to run the night she had first told me when we were reading the menus in Citrus on the Upper West Side near my apartment. It was shortly after we had started going out in 1994, and she had shown me her black FBI identification card. I had shown no interest then, but now, given the events of this evening, my interest was piqued.

And so I continued.

“Don’t the people they target complain? Aren’t there oversight mechanisms that stop this sort of thing from happening?” I asked incredulous at what she had described. It was totalitarian sounding, like something from the Stasi, or out of Orwell.

“Yes. People complain once they realise that the FBI is involved. But a lot of people don’t realise, they don’t know that something has happened because of the FBI. If they do find out and complain, the FBI delays responding and then misrepresents the complaint they are responding to, when they do eventually respond,” she said.

“Don’t the people targeted just complain again, or get a lawyer to complain?” I continued.

“Yes. Even so, there are all sorts of ways the FBI can delay responding and mis-frame the complaint,” she said matter of fact.

“Like what sort of things can they do?” I asked

“The DOJ and FBI can mis-frame complaints saying the people someone complains about do not work for the FBI, that they are not “employees” for example, when in fact they are contractors. But the FBI or DOJ does not tell the person making the complaint that this is the case and continues to make only limited denials hoping the person making the complaint doesn’t notice. In this way the FBI and DOJ refuse to engage with the complaint, or delay doing so, and evade accountability,” she said.

“So the person never gets an answer?”

“They normally get one. Eventually. But it might take a very long time,” she said.

“So what happens in the meantime. Does the FBI destroy the evidence of their own wrong doing?” I queried.

“No, they are not meant to. Though I suppose they could. But years pass and people forget or information is lost and eventually statutes of limitation kick in,” she offered ambivalently, obviously not herself satisfied about the integrity of the process.

Fishing expeditions

“What else does the FBI do to them?” I asked, assuming there must be a lot of things they could do to their targets, things they wouldn’t like.

“They try not to do physical things, not leave a physical trail to get the police and courts involved,“ she said.

“Another thing they do is smear them with sexual assault or complaints of abuse. They undertake a major fishing expedition,” she continued. “They look back to peoples’ college days – they almost always find something. And if they don’t find it there they look wider, they go back through the teen and tween years if need be till something comes up. Somewhere they over stepped the mark, it doesn’t need to be rape or anything like that, it doesn’t matter how innocent or slight, so long as it was not welcome or out of line. The FBI can find something like this on virtually all men, and even many women.”

“You would be surprised,” she said continuing, again matter of fact. “Every male has something. The FBI always finds something. They even find something on a lot of females. If it is not in college, they look closely in later years’ and also go back to high school years or earlier. They recruit people close to the person in that time period or place they are looking at, find the people and ask them the questions. “Did so and so ever do anything inappropriate to you. Just curious. I heard something, I don’t know if it is true, and am just asking around. It doesn’t matter, they eventually find someone where something has happened. They can get someone to say something. Anything at all that could be construed as sexual assault; an unwanted kiss, an inappropriate hug, or something more.”

“But does this work? What does this do? Does anybody listen or care if it is a minor thing? High school, or puberty age, everyone seems a bit awkward, unsure, looking for boundaries,” I responded trying to understand what damage the FBI could do with this tactic.

“Yes. You can always get someone to listen, someone they [the dissident] cares about. It always has an impact somewhere, no matter how small.” Susan continued. “If it is college age, 18 or over, it is sexual assault. It is relatively easy to get someone to make a formal complaint about it to the police, even years later. They just encourage them to do it for the record. If it is a relatively minor thing, or at a younger age in high school, or even primary school, it still takes a toll on the target. There can still be a police report, the information leaked or given to people around the target to embarrass them. It still takes a toll, no matter what. But if it is serious, the person could go to jail. If they have done something wrong, they will get them a long sentence, the harshest punishment permissible. And sex offenders are treated as the scum of the scum in jail and prison life is very unsafe and hard for them.” 

“If they find something to prosecute them for and the matter goes to court, the FBI gets a reporter friendly to the agency to cover the case, someone they are close to, maybe on the payroll, maybe gets preferential treatment from the FBI. They put it in the newspaper, whatever newspapers they can get to carry it, local, state, national – whatever level of coverage they can get for it. It doesn’t matter. They try to destroy them in the public eye.”

“They try to make the target look like a monster. Find out what they have done to hurt others. They will find out if they ever killed an animal, a bug or insect, did something cruel to someone or something then portray them as sadistic or cruel. Often it is only things they may have done as a young child, an infant, killing ants, pulling wings off flies. Wantonly killing or hurting something. Everyone has done it, but it can be painted to make the target look like a monster. It’s not hard to do. It’s easy to find out and virtually everyone did something when they were very young to insects or some little creature. They use whatever they have covertly recorded them saying, make them appear evil, describe the person to make them appear like a hideous monster. Didn’t you ever kill or hurt something?” She continued.

“Like swatted a fly or mosquito?” I asked for clarification.

“No. Pretty much everyone has done that. When you were a young child, a toddler even. Did you ever pull wings off a bug, stamp all over a line of ants? As a little kid, you probably did, most people have!” she said. Nothing came to mind and I didn’t respond.

She continued. “They will try and make the person think they have done something they never did. Hurt someone, done something, have others react to them as though they did something deplorable, despicable.”

“It’s a big fishing expedition,” I remarked indignantly.

 “Yes. A witch hunt,” Susan confirmed.

“But how do they get away with that,” I challenged circling back. “Doesn’t the FBI get accused of bullying or unethical behaviour? Isn’t there some kind of oversight process?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t stop it. So it doesn’t look like a witch hunt, the FBI waits till they find some legitimate reason to investigate the target, or can manufacture a reasonably plausible reason, to justify their investigation, make it less obvious that it is vindictive,” she said. “Judges don’t like witch hunts, and there is a backlash against the agency if this is what it looks like. So they conceal it, try to make it appear legitimate, like a discovery that came out of a routine, impartial investigation. Not a stitch-up. But some judges are motivated by ambition, not integrity, and are complicit.”

“How do they tell judges what to say or do?” I asked sceptically wondering if they too were part of this conspiracy to undermine democratic protections and justice.

“Not exactly. You can’t tell judges what to say or do, but they can be given certain incentives to do what the agency wants,” she said cryptically.

“What do you mean?”

“They are supported by the agency for promotions, appointments or honours, that sort of thing, or something else they want, not a direct bribe or quid pro quo, more subtle than that, but they get rewarded if they do what is wanted. I don’t really know exactly how it works, but the agencies have undisclosed access and influence over many decision makers, decision makers whom they can influence in favour of one candidate, or in cases may themselves be agents – one of the hidden army of agents the US has positioned throughout civil society,” she said matter of factly. “Once they have identified judges whose integrity is malleable, they work with them whenever they can. They can’t select their judge for a particular case, but they can direct the case to a jurisdiction where they have someone groomed and ready, increasing the chances, at least, that they will have one of “their” people appointed to the case.”

More on Dissidents

The traffic was thin. Even in Manhattan main streets can be quiet late at night. The occasional car went by, yellow cabs, but it was as if we had the street to ourselves.

“What did these people do?” I asked moving back to the topic of dissidents. “What makes them dissidents?”

She answered, “Dissidents oppose the system. They are bellicose, obnoxious, outspoken, persistent critics and troublemakers who fight against what America stands for. They try to undo all the good things about our country.”

“Do they target environmentalists?” I said provocatively, asking for clarification. “What makes someone these things?” I asked. What about free speech for example, or “wholesome disruption”, the civil rights movement – was everyone a dissident who disagreed with or was opposed to elements of some government policy, inequality or systemic discrimination?

“No, not environmentalist!” she said. “Dissidents are not good people. They are really bad people. And they deserve what they get.”

I continued, “Aren’t some of them smart. People like university professors for example. Intellectuals opposed to policy and certain ideologies. Don’t a lot of protest movements originate in universities?”

“Some are not educated, though sometimes they are smart people. The FBI generally tries not to target highly intelligent people. They cause too much trouble, create problems for the FBI which then has to spend too much time and effort in dealing with such people and the problems their complaints cause. They do if they feel they don’t have a choice. But they try to find people who won’t add anything to the economy, or country, whose removal from the system won’t really be noticed or missed. They don’t want to take out top research academics, people who may be one of a kind, but pretty much anyone else is fair game. The less smart or educated a target is, the less likely they are to figure out what is happening to them and to fight against it. Ideally, they want people who won’t know what is happening and won’t fight it,” she replied.

[Comment: The conversation changed tack and broadened in scope as we continued.

Despite Susan’s strident denouncement of “dissidents” that night in 1996 her certainty and attitude stood in stark contrast to her reaction when she found out I had been branded just such a “dissident” or “environmental extremist” or similar, and that she had been caught up in it as well.

Ironically, she had already told me in detail about the FBI’s treatment of dissidents, what they do and how, on that night as we walked home. This was an interesting conversation, all the more so on account of how things turned out. It was innocent enough at the time in 1996. Though in fact, it was a chilling foretelling of the strategies and tactics I was to experience firsthand, as was Susan, each of us as victims of the very tactics of the agency we were discussing. I was dispensable by the standards of the FBI.]

A personal relationship: Reconnecting with Susan, 1998-1999

Later in 1998, though we had broken up, we had started to catch up again casually. She was incredulous and defiant, and reassured me in an exasperated tone, if somewhat cryptically on several occasions in 1998 and 1999 when I had no idea of the circumstances behind it.

“I am not going to let them do this to you!” she exclaimed. Holmes continued, “You would not believe how surprised I was when I saw your name on the work files!” Her alluding to “work” was a euphemism for the FBI. On this occasion we were having dinner at the South Street Seaport in Manhattan near Wall Street around June 1999, not long before I moved back to Australia. I asked her what she meant but she refused to explain to me either who the “they” were, or what the “it” was that she was intending to defend me against. She was stonewalling me, and she knew I knew she was, but she did nothing to assuage my concerns beyond that. She didn’t know how, or what to do or say next. She was evidently fearful of the repercussions from her employer, the FBI, of disclosing to me what she knew – that I was a target.

Not long after, in late June 1999, on the night before my departure from NYC when I was scheduled to return to Australia, Susan sat on my bed in my apartment. We had been out all evening and she had come back to talk. All the years of our relationship had come to a dramatic crescendo.

Susan and I had been circling around each other now for months, but there was something not quite falling into place. All the strange comments she made about protecting me, the intimacy, but also the aloofness on things she never had been aloof about before, inconsistencies concerning my laptop being smashed, people entering my apartment, Steve Garber’s awareness of so many issues about us; it was a muddied and muddled vista. We had seen each other most days for the past week and she had spent the previous night at my place.

She was confused, as was I, and both a little tense. After talking on the bed for a while, she stood up and walked over to the window. I waited expectantly for her to say something. But she didn’t say anything, she didn’t move, she was looking out and after a time I went over to her. Her response was not what I expected. She snapped sharply, “Stand away!” officiously in a resolute voice as if she were a police officer on duty.

I had delayed my departure on a daily basis for the past week, but I could delay no longer. If I was to arrive for my agreed start date at work I had to take a plane the next morning. It was a definitive move and a big decision as to whether to leave the US after eight years. Six of those years spent in NY, where my social life was centred and my professional life had been.

Susan seemed to be pondering my permanent and imminent departure, as I was, and the impact it would have on what was left of our relationship. A flicker of self doubt must have transited her mind as to whether the new assumptions she held about me, from the FBI’s “criminal investigation” file, were indeed right.

“Did you do something illegal?”: She asked me a question in great earnestness and I detected an edge of frustration and hostility, “Did you do something illegal?” The question had come out of the blue for me. I was so surprised by it that at first I needed to appraise whether she was being serious or whether it was a light hearted rhetorical question to lighten the mood. Slightly stunned by the intensity and directness of her manner I realised she was absolutely serious.

After a few seconds I repeated aloud, more to myself than to her “Illegal. Illegal?” Then I looked at her and asked, “What do you mean – ever done anything illegal? In my life? “

“No” she replied testily, “I mean recently. At work.” I sat in silence. I was absorbed and lost in thought. I was amazed that she was asking this, really asking me. It was a serious question and she was deadly serious. She wanted an answer.

Still surprised, I wracked my brain. “What could I have done? What could she be talking about?!” I thought to myself.

There was absolutely nothing I could think of that came even close. I had walked a straight line at work, shunned impropriety, loathed and detested that aspect of banking culture – the greed that drove and the vanity whereby some people tried to deviously outsmart the system and enrich themselves as if they deserved wealth and the privileges it brings, no matter what the cost, or as if by divine right.

After a long pause, I felt Susan looking at me. She had watched me intently as I sat on the bed fathoming the depths of my mind for an answer to her question. I was searching the possibility that there could have been something I had done, something I had overlooked, anything I might have done unintentionally, in error, anything that was even remotely possible or that I had heard or seen within my small group at work. I could think of nothing that came even close to what she was asking.

I said, “No, nothing. I haven’t done anything illegal. I can’t think of anything at all! Where did you get that idea from?!”

She was still looking at me intently and her face completely softened. Susan sat down next to me and spoke to me with a tenderness I had not heard from her for some time. She said in a gentle, supportive way, “Well, you seem to be telling the truth”. She seemed confused. She was confused.

I waited a moment and then again asked her, “Wherever did you get that idea. Who said I had done something illegal?” But again she didn’t answer.

84.  2003, Holmes’ NYC interview: During Holmes’ invasive interview of me in NYC in 2003, she revealed she had accessed detailed information about my life, myriad specific details spanning many decades, continents, and people – consistent with the investigative reach and powers of the FBI. Indeed, she said that she was conducting the interview at the behest of a US government agency. The details she recounted included but were not limited to information regarding: personal conversations with current and former peers and colleagues going back decades; calls I had made on my private home phone; minor traffic offenses in Australia; work records from various companies I had worked at over the years; records of school and university grades; records of purchases; records of state tests; medical history; and even camping records at US National Parks. Holmes also, inexplicably, had knowledge of specific phone calls I had received or made from my home phone a year or two after we had split up. She mentioned three in detail, all around 1998 and 1999, not just meta data, viz., date, time, number, owner of the number, but she knew the content of the call as well and went through each call with me in explicit detail (further details available in my Declaration of 16 November 2021).

85. 2003-04, Holmes and Garber link FBI operation to my work on Freeport McMoran: During the 2003 interview of me in NYC, Holmes strongly intimated that I had been subjected to ongoing FBI interference as payback for my critical 1996 analyst’s report on US mining company Freeport McMoran’s approach to, and actions in and around, the company’s massive Grasberg mine in West Papua, Indonesia. 

86. Circa June 2004, Central Park walk with Steve Garber confirms details of Holmes’ FBI work: Around June 2004, during a walk in Central Park and the Upper West Side of NYC Steve Garber disclosed to me personal details concerning Holmes’ “work”, many of which I was already familiar with. He revealed to me that he was aware of a number of Holmes assignments, revealing and corroborating multiple details, which he insinuated were undertaken at the behest of the FBI. These included: A Save the Wolf campaign for which she received a $5,000 grant received from the FBI around 1997 to augment her credibility in environmental circles; a trip to the Kamchatka Peninsula around 1995; a trip to meet with a Californian congressional hopeful in 1996 prior to the US Presidential election which Holmes herself had portrayed as a “honeytrap” meeting; and election to the Sierra Club board of directors. 

87. September 2004, NYC, Garber confirms FBI operation: In September 2004, Steve Garber and I again met in NYC, this time at the Blue Water Grill in Union Square. In response to my direct question, he affirmed that he worked for the FBI, and that I was being targeted as a result of my work. Here he verified and verbally confirmed to me in person that I had been subjected to ongoing FBI interference as payback for my work in 1996 as a Wall Street mining analyst critical of US mining company Freeport McMoran’s actions in and around the company’s massive Grasberg mine in West Papua, Indonesia.

I asked him, seeking to confirm his insinuating remarks when we had met earlier in the year – around June 2004, in sum and substance, “You are doing this for the FBI right? To confirm, I’ve been targeted by the FBI on account of my Freeport McMoran work – is that right?” After a short pause without a response, I clearly and deliberately repeated the question. I wanted to hear him reaffirm that it was the FBI that was behind the attack on me, and that their reason was my Freeport work. I wanted to leave no doubt, no uncertainty about who he was working for and what the reason was for the interference I had been subjected to. Garber nodded and said, in sum and substance, “Yes.”

88. 2012-13; Sydney. I had three one-hour meetings with Philip Ruddock, the former Australian Attorney General (from October 2003 to December 2007) in his electoral office around 2012-2013 on the topic of FBI, and Australian partnering agencies, interference with me on account of my Freeport McMoran work in 1996. During these meetings I named several Australian operatives who had interfered with me including: Robert Sadleir, son of former ASIO Director General David Sadleir (1992-96); Dr Trent Allen, Sydney, stockbroking analyst; Michael and Claudia Hackman, Sydney business people; Daniel Aitken, Central coast NSW and Boston, USA; Richard Kaan, Sydney, former business consultant; Fabian Babich, Sydney, former stockbroking analyst. Some of these agents in Sydney have at various times from around 2005 indicated specific knowledge with clear and distinct details from the 2003 interview by Holmes, such as Fabian Babich. Multiple agents have revealed multiple instances of such detailed knowledge. Their knowledge is a further indication the FBI holds documents or records on me. (The email is attached hereto as Exhibit 3.)

89. I believe the FBI is operating in “bad faith”, has created fake evidence on me as alluded to by FBI operatives Holmes and Garber (in 2003 and 2004), and has compromised oversight screening mechanisms. Their methods subvert the review process, presumably including efforts by former Australian Attorney General, Philip Ruddock (detailed in this Declaration).

90. I should have the ability to review and respond to the “evidence” held by the FBI on me, that others rely on, and the right to challenge it with the assistance of an attorney.

Section 3

Steve Garber: Disclosures re Freeport McMoran and the FBI: 1994-2004

Declaration of John Wilson

I, John Wilson, do hereby declare under penalties of perjury:

92. I submit this declaration based on my notes, recollections and personal knowledge.

93. I am a dual Australian and USA citizen.

94. I currently live in Sydney, Australia and have a small equity research consultancy business and live with my wife and two young children.

95. After completing an MBA in 1993 at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, I moved to New York City and from late 1993 to June 1999 lived at 170 W 74th St, Apt 906, New York, NY 10023.

96. Dialogue reported in this affidavit may be paraphrasing of actual conversation.

97. Dialogue, statements and events reported in this Declaration may be selected for relevance and presented for clarity and brevity, but always to give a true and fair rendering of the situation. Additional details, in cases, may be available.

98. The term “agent” as I use it here is used in a generic sense, as in someone being an agent of someone else and does not intend any specific title.

1: 1994: Vetted by Steve Garber

99. I met Susan Holmes in the second half of 1994 while I was attending a Sierra Club volunteer meeting in NYC and we started dating shortly after. I met Steve Garber, through Susan Holmes, also at a Sierra Club volunteer event. After Holmes and I started dating, at Garber’s instigation, Holmes, Garber and I went for a hike one weekend in Harriman State Park about 1 hours’ drive from NYC.
100. A week or two after this, around October 1994, Susan Holmes showed me her black FBI ID card. She told me she worked undercover for the FBI, and that Steve Garber did also. She said that the intention of our walk that day had been for Steve Garber to vet me for the FBI. Evidently, I passed the test.
101. After that, I rarely saw him in the following 18 months to two years, maybe once or twice, and beyond a courteous salutation he made no particular overtures to me. In mid-1996, that changed after my Freeport McMoran work report of 12 March 1996 evidently came to the FBI’s attention.
102. A couple of times around 1994 and 1995, Susan told me Garber worked for the FBI. The first time was after showing me her FBI ID card and related disclosures, but I had never cared much nor placed much heed in it. (Garber confirmed his role with the FBI to me, and my targeting, in September 2004 – details later in this Declaration).
103. Steve was around 10 years my senior, in his early 40s at the time, medium height, with still dark though balding hair. He had a PhD in herpetology (study of reptiles and amphibians) published a number of books, including The Urban Naturalist (1987, John Wiley and Sons) . His day job was with the Port Authority of NY where he focused on developing bird strike abatement strategies for JFK airport. Overly rounded, he would have clearly failed his body mass index (BMI) weight test with the FBI if they had bothered with continuous checks after recruitment. He lived with his wife, Andrea, who I met on occasions, on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, which was also my neighbourhood. Over the coming years he had two sons, Micah and another whose name I now forget, possibly Jeremiah.
     • 2: Mid-1996: Freeport McMoran report – Garber resurfaces
104. Report: On March 12, 1996, I authored a report (hereinafter the “Report”) that flagged concerns about Freeport McMoran, which was under investigation by the United States Department of State following eyewitness reports of human rights abuses against indigenous protestors in the region of its massive Grasberg gold and copper mine in West Papua, Indonesia. I asked questions about the investigation to the company’s CEO and Chairman Jim Bob Moffett at an analyst briefing in New Orleans in May 1996 after which I was threatened in the boardroom alcove by an individual who appears to have been a federal agent. The company denied any role in human rights abuses and eyewitness reports were never proven in court. (Details in Declaration 16 November 2021).
105. Background: From 1994 to 1997 I worked for SG Warburg (and later SBC Warburg) on Wall Street as an equity analyst covering US listed mining companies. One of the companies I analyzed and published reports on for distribution to fund managers globally was U.S.-based and listed Freeport McMoran which through Freeport Indonesia controls the Grasberg Mine, one of the largest copper and gold mines in the world, situated in West Papua, Indonesia.
106. Befriended by Garber: In mid-1996, after my Report was published and my question to the Freeport McMoran CEO, Steve Garber started to make overtures to me. He began to show up at Sierra Club NYC chapter volunteer events I regularly attended with Susan.
107. He invited me to join him on his walks after work in Central Park some days to observe different species of migratory birds that visited the large wooded park at different times of the year. On our walks Steve would often come with a pair of binoculars around his neck and his young son in a backpack on his back.
     • 3: 1997: The Colorado River, dams and FBI talk of explosives
108. Susan Holmes told me during the three years we went out (1994-1997) that her focus for the FBI was on environmental extremists. Based on my experience and disclosures from Holmes (in 2003) and Garber (in 2004), the FBI appears to have duplicitously portrayed me as one of her work targets – as an environmental extremist or suchlike, as discussed below. (In 2004, Steven Garber confirmed to me that I was subject of an FBI operation as a result of my work on Freeport McMoran in mid-1996; details later in this Declaration).
109. It appears the FBI endeavoured to associate me in close contact with David Foreman in mid-1997, a high-profile environmentalist and one of Susan’s FBI work targets. I believe Susan was an unwittingly participant in this scheme at this time in 1997.
110. FBI targets our relationship: Adding credibility to the FBI’s purported portrayal of me as an environmental extremist or similar, or perhaps as part of their efforts to turn my life “upside down”, the FBI targeted my relationship with Susan, endeavoring to damage and ultimately end it. Susan in 2003 in her NYC interrogation of me indicated our relationship was targeted by the FBI. (A transcript of the 2003 interrogation based on my notes and recollection is available on request; 200+ pages).
111. In this way, the FBI, if it chose, could falsely portray the relationship was part of Susan’s work, as opposed to what it was, a heartfelt and genuine romance commencing in 1994. Whether our relationship would have lasted beyond the 3 years it did without their interference is conjecture, but what is clear is that the FBI went to some lengths to sow distrust, confusion and doubt between us. This apparently extended to deleting key phone messages Susan and I left for each other at a sensitive time, among other things, arranging “honey-traps” (sending Susan as a “honey-trap” to California, and baiting me with others), sowed doubt about Susan’s loyalty and commitment, and an attempted predatory undercover drug sting speculatively directed at me. (Some of these FBI undertakings are described in this Declaration, and the Declaration 16 November 2021 I have submitted.)
112. The FBI’s intrusions into my life seemed to be part of what Susan had referred to when she told me in 1996 that the FBI goes after dissidents and other targets, to disrupt or otherwise attempt to “turn their lives upside down”. Susan neve expected that she would be targeted by her own agency. The FBI targeted her personal life too, one of its own agents, by intruding into her private relationship. She was evidently collateral damage as far as they were concerned. The FBI knew we had been in a long-term relationship since 1994, and that Susan had invited me to her home for Christmas in 1997 with a view to getting engaged and in due course married.
113. March 1997: An invitation to raft down the Colorado. Holmes, Foreman and others: In March 1997, I left my job at Warburg as a mining analyst and had 5 months off before getting another job.
114. Around March, before leaving Warburg, I was invited by Holmes to join her on a large environmentalist campaign rafting trip down the Colorado River organised for July 1997. A range of high profile environmentalists and others were involved, including a journalist from Time Magazine, the young Chairman of the Sierra Club, and David Foreman, whose dory I was allocated to in advance by trip organizers. The intention of the trip had been to raise publicity for dismantling of dams on the Colorado. In inviting me, Holmes said all the 20 or so participants domestic partners were invited, however when I showed up there, I realised I was the only one. Dave Foreman was a co-founder of Earth First! and on an FBI watchlist, targeted by Susan Holmes for the FBI she said. He had advocated removal of dams on the Colorado River and reported to have been investigated as part of a group that blew up power lines in Arizona, though he was later exonerated. (Refer to Declaration of 16 November 2021).
115. Holmes said at the interview in 2003 she had photos in her “work files” (a euphemism for the FBI) depicting me in association with David Foreman in the summer of 1997 on the Colorado River but that she had forgotten to bring them for me to dinner that night. She also alluded to photos from a talk by Dave Foreman I attended later in 1997 in NYC. My attendance at both encounters was by Holmes’ invitation.
116. Between 1994 and 1997, Susan had told me in response to a question I asked about her work interest in Dave Foreman, “The FBI is no longer concerned about Dave Foreman doing anything wrong, but it’s the people attracted to him, associated with him, who they have the interest in. The people attracted to him are the people they are interested in.”” Given her intense and unusual focus on what I thought and knew of Foreman that evening while she was evidently recording the conversation, this seemed further reason to think this to be the category the FBI was now trying to set me up in. (Refer to Declaration of 16 November 2021).
     • • 4: Late 1997: Garber intensifies interactions with me after I start work at DKB
117. Around August 1997, I started a new job as a mining analyst with Dresdner Kleinwort Benson (DKB) back on Wall Street.
118. At this time Steve Garber’s interest in me stepped up a notch, with frequent calls and requests to meet up. He started calling me regularly at work at DKB in 1997 and 1998. His calls at work were at times odd, he seemed to have taken a heightened interest in my work, my career ambitions, and my relationship with Susan. He frequently asked me questions about my relationship with Susan, what was going on, how I felt. His questions and interest seemed more intense than a passing interest would merit.
119. Garber and I walked in Central Park on 8 or 10 occasions or more around 1997 and 1998. At this time I did not know I was being targeted by the FBI (he later confirmed in 2004 that I was being targeted by the FBI); he was reaching out to me, building trust and empathy. One day he invited me up to his apartment after our walk to meet his wife and show me his library and some of the reports he was working on. He also invited me on a couple of day trips, one up to his mother’s place in suburban Connecticut where he was very familiar with the forests and we went looking for tortoises in the local creek. She wasn’t home that day, but he had the key and we went inside for something and he showed me around. I would never remember where it was, if that was a consideration in his exposing family members to one of his targets, no matter how harmless. On another occasion we participated in the Audubon annual Christmas Bird Count in one of the counties in Connecticut. In this way, we spent quite a bit of time together, he would drive and we would talk, then hike and we got to know each other.
120. Garber secretly enters my apartment building: His intrusions into my life were pronounced and, at times, odd. Around this time in 1997, shortly after I had started working at DKB, Steven Garber entered my apartment building unannounced. He had accompanied Susan past the concierge/security then once inside the building went to the basement while Susan came up to get me and we went out. Susan and I had given each other keys to our respective apartments early in our relationship for mutual convenience and as a sign of our commitment to each other. However, the light in my apartment which had been off when we went out, something Susan had asked me to double check and confirm as we went out, was on when we got back. The doorman later told me Steve Garber had left the building sometime after we had gone out. When I later asked him, Garber denied he had been in my apartment or that Holmes had given him a key.
121. Around this time, there was also a large article in the NYT on Steve Garber and his day job at the Port Authority of NY where he had worked as a biologist on a bird plane strike avoidance project at JFK airport (15 September 1997). (The article is attached hereto as Exhibit 4.) Susan suggested in 2003 that the FBI planted this article as a means to help build Steve’s status and influence with me to support his efforts to build rapport with me.
122. Also, around this time, Garber drove me from Manhattan to a townhall community gathering about 1 hour away near Harriman State Park one evening after work around August-September 1997. It was at his request that I go in his car, despite the fact Susan was going there as well. Susan and I went in separate cars which was unusual and after, back in NYC at my apartment with Susan, she showed a heightened level of interest as to what Steve Garber’s reasons had been I go with him and she pressed me to find out what he had discussed with me.
123. Shortly after this, Susan and I broke up at my behest. I had already accepted her invitation to Christmas that year at her parents’ house in Detroit. She had also brought up and discussed with me the “work” documents for security clearance my parents would need to review and sign before we could get engaged. After breaking up, over the next week or so, she asked me on three separate occasions with increasingly impassioned emotion and irritation, “Did Steve Garber say something to you about me? Is he the cause of this?” She was clearly annoyed by his intrusion into our relationship and her social life. It was evident she did not trust him, though she did not explain her reasons and suspicions to me at the time.
124. On one occasion, not long after Susan and I broke up, Garber was quick to introduce me to a woman he knew, a romantic prospect for me he explained, Jennifer, and who Susan, in 2003 in her NYC interview of me, insinuated was a “honey-trap”. Susan knew many of the details of our brief encounter and the distinct, unusual details of Jennifer’s calls to me at work.
125. During this time Garber and I continued our walks some evenings into Central Park to look for wildlife
     • .
126. FBI initiates conversation – Explosives and blowing up dams: Late one afternoon around August – September 1997, not long after the rafting trip when I was back in New York with a new job at DKB, I met up with Steve Garber for a bird watching walk in Central Park after work. I thought at the time how odd and bizarre his behaviour seemed, the strange things he was talking to me about, the questions he asked.
127. After an hour or so of general chat, Garber proceeded to ask me about explosives and blowing up dams. It was represented initially by him as an exploratory conversation with me in which I might be able to help him protect dams, etc from threats, troubleshoot potential threats and weaknesses.
128. I worked as a mining engineer for a large Australian multinational mining company, BHP after graduating from The University of Sydney with an engineering degree in the mid-1980s. He knew I had started my career as a mining engineer and also that in that capacity I had some work place experience with explosives and he asked me about it.
129. But his conversation soon took a twist. He asked numerous ridiculous, oddball questions about big dams, dams like on the Colorado, and how I thought they could be sabotaged. It was late afternoon, and he was pressing me to answer his insistent questions, wanting to know how I would blow up a dam wall if I “had” too. I knew nothing of consequence about dams, my experience was in mining. But he was insistent, he wanted an answer. Any answer – “Just say anything,” he said. “Blow it up” seemed clear enough – I had seen a few war films over the years – call in the air force or army I suggested light heartedly. But what was meant by if I “had too”? At first, I treated his questions as a joke, and responded with light hearted tongue and cheek. Was conscription back on the government agenda again? I asked him what he meant. He asked, “What if you were a demolition engineer for example?” I said I still had no idea – and I asked him why was he asking all these inane questions about blowing up dams?
130. As time passed his questions became increasingly ludicrous and increasingly seemed to have a personal agenda. He wanted to know if I had ever thought about blowing up a dam, dreamt about it, what mining industry technology could be applied, even hypothetically he prodded. He asked hopefully, just imagine he said, think of anything. It was hypothetical he said but he pushed for firm answers. “Surely there is something you could think of,” he insisted eventually in frustration at my having no answer.
131. Having some inkling of his law enforcement background, during the conversation I asked him by way of confirmation, “I assume you’re trying to stop this sort of thing,” to which he said “Yes”. “You’re asking about this to try and identify risks and threats – right?”. He answered “Yes.” Eventually, after a further tedious conversation, thinking he was goofing around, I came up with a completely implausible, impractical and dismissive response: a Walt Disney “Roadrunner” cartoon style slap stick scenario, to placate him and he seemed satisfied.
     • 
       Again, jumping forward, some years later at the dinner in NYC at Café Fiorello in 2003, Susan working on duty undercover for a federal agency, presumed to be the FBI, asked me to clarify points on the same topic of blowing up dams and asked me if I remembered the conversation I had with Steve Garber in 1997. She now confirmed that scenario was implausible and asked me for something else, this time more plausible. It seemed as if the FBI had done some research and determined conclusively the scenario “devised” was implausible and impractical – which was the same point on which the conversation with Steve had ended at the time! It seems the conversation may have been recorded or summarised in a file note or similar.
132. Section summary: Based on my experience, and disclosures from both Holmes and Garber, my inclusion in the trip down the Colorado River in 1997, and invitation to hear Foreman speak in NYC later in 1997 seems to have been part of a set-up. This seems to extend to my meeting with Susan Holmes and David Brower that summer in Detroit in 1997; and subsequently Steve Garber’s bizarre and duplicitous conversation with me about explosives and blowing up dams in late 1997.
133. It now seems Garber’s intention was to help the FBI construct a fake dossier of misinformation and fake evidence about me. According to disclosures from Holmes and Garber, associating me with Foreman gave the FBI the photos to create and seemingly support a fake profile about me, to place me on some kind of watch list. Indeed, Susan insinuated this in 2003 during her extended interrogation of me at Café Fiorello in NYC. Garber confirmed in 2004 that the FBI had targeted me as “payback” for my work on Freeport McMoran, (detailed later in this Declaration). It appears that placing me on a list of some description relying on fake evidence to do so, was sufficient to get through any preliminary and perfunctory oversight screens that might otherwise legitimately uncover illicit schemes. (Refer to Declaration of 16 November 2021).
     • 5: 1999: Susan’s veiled warning not to visit Steve Garber in Prescott, AZ
134. 1998: Garber moves to Prescott, AZ: Around late 1998, or early 1999, Garber and his family left NYC and moved to Prescott, AZ for a couple of years. Steve looked terribly stressed prior to leaving NY. His job at the NY Port Authority for some reason had come to an end at about the same time my work at DKB ended. He had put on a lot of weight and looked pale and generally unwell. I had caught up with him in NY prior to his departure and I was surprised at how distressed and worn out he had looked then: very tired, completely frazzled – clearly things had not been going well for him but he didn’t want to discuss it.
135. Before he left NYC, he offered me a standing invitation to come stay one weekend if I was out West, which frequently I was, and we could head off for a two or three day hike somewhere.
136. Reconnecting with Susan: In the meantime, in late 1998 and early 1999, Susan and I were contemplating getting back together.
137. She had some months before invited me to Boston for her father’s birthday, which I attended. And I invited Susan out to Utah in early 1999 for a few days, where I was spending some time and we went backcountry hiking and camping in the lesser visited back canyons of Zion National Park – arguably the most magical national park in the West.
138. We still weren’t back together as such, there was something weird going on in the background with Susan and the FBI which was causing us both some issues. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the FBI had shown her my FBI files she later revealed, apparently sometime in 1998.
139. None-the-less we had a good time exploring Zion’s back country canyons in their various stages of geological formation, camping out in the desert fields, and walking down through the incredible main canyon into the spectacular valley that opens into a magnificent clearing framed by a sheer rock face that rises nearly 1000 feet. She had come out for an extended weekend and later I dropped her back at the small local airport nearby.
140. After Susan had returned to New York I continued on to the desert town of Moab in Utah. It was in the days before the ubiquitous mobile phone and I called Susan from a public phone box down the road from the backpackers hostel where I was staying.
141. Holmes warns me not to visit Garber: In our conversation over the public phone from Moab, she was chatty, friendly and supportive as always, however gave me a strange and cryptic warning; she said no matter what happens, she was not planning on another trip out West in the next week or two, and whatever I did, “Do not go and visit Steve Garber,” in Prescott, AZ.
     • 
       She said cryptically, “Some strange things might happen. Just ignore them. Call me first if you are thinking about going to Steve Garber’s. I want you to promise me you will call me first.” She was insistent and emphasised the point several times. She told me to promise her that I would talk to her first and not to go to Garber’s home. She emphasised this last point several times, “Don’t go to Steve Garber’s”. Intriguingly, she had said a number of times recently, in an abstract sense, refusing to elaborate, “I’m not going to let them do this to you!” It was strange, but at the time I didn’t know what she was referring to; and I wasn’t going to let an abstract warning govern specific decisions in my life.
142. I called Steve to discuss his plans and whether a time would suit for me to drive over. Intriguingly, he let slip something he said he shouldn’t have, that Susan was coming over too for a surprise visit. Odd given Susan had said she definitely wasn’t coming over.
143. I called Susan back to clarify; and also because she had told me to speak to her and not make a decision without talking to her first if I was thinking about going to stay at Steve’s. But she didn’t answer her phone. The whole situation was getting weirder. I was undecided as to what to do and Prescott was not far out of my way as I was heading in that direction anyway. I had not been able to get in touch with Susan despite my efforts, and in the end, I went to stay at Steve’s.
144. [Comment: Susan knew some of the FBI’s processes and had given me a veiled warning without disclosing specifics of the threat – that this “friendly” catch up with Steve was a trap to be avoided, without explaining that I was at risk: targeted in the manner she had once talked so openly about in a general context of the FBI’s treatment of dissidents and others.
145. For all her loyalty to the FBI, through this period of time, I see in hindsight how loyal Susan had also been to me, evidently caught in a tight spot, she had gone out of her way to help me as best she could, giving me the clues and advice she felt she could within the bounds of the law. She didn’t seem to have any idea as to why I was on the FBI’s radar, a person of interest, they had evidently not given her all the key details; not mentioned the Freeport connection but kept it secret from her for now, presumably out concern for her potential adverse reaction. (Details in this Declaration in the section about Susan Holmes).]
     • 6: Circa April-May, 1999: A visit to Steve Garber in Prescott, AZ
146. It was around April or May 1999 when I visited Steve, Andrea his wife and their two kids at their home in Prescott for two days. Steve had moved to Prescott a number of months before having taken a teaching job at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University; he said he was lecturing on the local eco-system, a topic of interest to me; and taking students on fieldtrips out into the desert.
147. If the original plan in coming to stay that weekend had been to head off hiking, it was only a ruse. Steve had no intention of heading out into the desert. Instead, we did some short walks in the surrounding neighbourhoods, but otherwise hung around Prescott, reading and looking at a few minor sites.
148. Steve used the evenings to covertly sound me out on personal or sensitive questions which he evidently recorded for the FBI, something Susan later implied. This would explain why he had lied about the weekend hiking activities and possibility Susan might show up unexpectedly – to entice me to come stay. It also explained Susan’s imploring me not to go.
149. [Comment: Susan knew the FBI’s modus operandi, and what was awaiting me there was evidently a trap with Garber leading and recording our various conversations intended to capture personal disclosures from me that could be the basis of a smear campaign, or worse. Apparently, this trap was his sole purpose in inviting me to stay, and what had so alarmed Susan about my visit to Steve’s place. I didn’t have much to say to Steve that was personal, let alone incriminating, indeed he seemed to have more to say about himself in the afternoon when presumably the tape recorder wasn’t whirring.]
     • 7: Garber’s fishing expedition
150. Steve apparently recorded our conversation during both evenings I visited him in Prescott in early 1999. He covered off on a broad range of topics intended to embarrass, smear or indict.
151. One evening he started on a slight tangent, and asked me about the “California incident” which involved Susan‘s visit to a Californian congressional candidate prior to the US presidential election in late 1996. This was the election that saw Bill Clinton re-elected. He implied she went there as a “honey-trap”. Garber now went on at length about it, he was well informed of the details. He seemed aware of how extreme was her embarrassment when I showed her an article and picture of the congressman in my apartment one evening. He asked prodding, pointedly, wanting to know the details of how she had responded and what I had thought of Susan’s reaction. He honed in on it and wanted to know what I had been thinking – always coming back to my thoughts, feelings, reactions. His insistence and persistence in his questions left me feeling a bit baffled.
152. Steve turned the conversation squarely to me. He asked me about my previous romances, going through each in detail. He wanted to know if there had been any one-night stands. He was evidently on a fishing expedition, looking for anything derogatory, asking leading questions to identify anything that might be met with rebuke society wide, within certain circles, or from specific individuals should the information be distributed beyond our “private” talk.
153. He asked details about any drug and alcohol use, wanted to know if, or what occasions, I may have drunk too much, who was there, dates, locations, occasions. He asked about whether I had ever attended strip clubs, red light districts, prostitutes; anything that might be compromising, or embarrassing in certain company. He asked if I was gay, had ever had any gay relationships, or gay friends, and a number of other questions along similar lines.
154. He then asked about whether I had gone out with anyone under age, a category of questioning about which he seemed passionate and became very persistent. It was all so speculative and he was seeking not only any outright admissions from me but also any possible point of uncertainty, any ambiguity. He wanted to know how I could be certain someone might not have been under age, that they might have lied to me, deceived me about their age and so on. He pressed on with this line of questioning, speculating, reaching for any possibility. In hind sight he was pushing hard to establish a link to a label, even if it was only conceptually possibility; he wanted to be able to accuse me of pedophilia or in the absence of that, possible pedophilia. But he was grasping and was unsuccessful. The lengths he went to were absurd and his intentions completely dishonorable.
155. [Comment: Some years later Steve explained to me the FBI aims to tarnish dissidents and others, brand them with some undesirable social label. Anything that they could make stick. In previous times it was homosexuality. Today it is pedophilia. Susan had once said the FBI wants to brand dissidents as sex offenders, because if they end up in jail on some charge or other, they are treated especially harshly by the jail population which dislikes sex offenders. But anything would do, Steve now disclosed taunting me, anything that goes against the grain, against social norms – substance abuse, deviant activity, sexual misconduct, anything the FBI could get its hands on.
156. I hadn’t done anything wrong, why should I be suspicious of the FBI? Why should I think the FBI would come after me? And why would I think that even if they should have some unforeseen reason to take an interest in me that they would do it in this fashion – trying to destroy my relationships, my career and any semblance of a normal social life?]
     • 8: Circa June, 1999: Back in NYC with Susan Holmes
157. When I subsequently met Susan back in NYC a couple months later, around June 1999, and told her of my visit to Steve’s place she was visibly upset. “I told you not to go. And you said you would call me first if you were thinking of going,” she said alarmed and a little gloomy. It seems she thought the veiled warning she gave me was enough to keep me out of harm’s way.
158. “I did call you but you didn’t answer,” I said. She sighed, recognising I had tried to speak to her, and seeming to recognise the flaw in her own plan. I asked, “Why does it matter? What difference does it make?” She said optimistically, if a little disparagingly, resigned to what couldn’t be changed, “Probably none.”
159. At some point around that time, Holmes said to me “You would not believe how surprised I was when I saw your name on the work files.” Her alluding to “work” was a euphemism for the FBI. We were having dinner at the South Sea Port in NYC and she added cryptically, “I’m not going to let them do this to you!”. It didn’t click with me at the time what she was talking about and she didn’t elaborate when I asked her to explain.
160. Later in June, one evening back in my apartment, she asked me outright, albeit still cryptically, “Did you do something illegal?” It was evident she had been led to believe by the FBI that I had done something illegal, something criminal. (Refer to this Declaration section on Susan Holmes)
161. The next morning, in late June 1999, I left the USA and moved back to Australia to start a new job in Sydney.
     • 
       [Comment: In early 1999, Susan seemed to be trying to walk a fine line between rescuing me while at the same time evidently trying to preserve her career and commitments to the FBI. I don’t know what was going through her mind, whether she didn’t care enough, whether she was too confused and conflicted by the FBI’s “investigation” of me: She could have told me outright what was happening to ensure there was no room for misinterpretation and misunderstanding, but she didn’t. Susan was in a moral bind. Clearly, the FBI had refrained from giving her my file while we were going out; it no doubt foresaw the conflict they had placed Susan in. For now, Susan seemed to be hedging loyalties between me and the FBI.]
     • 9: 5 years’ later: June 2004 – A walk with Garber, Central Park, NYC
162. Now 5 years’ later, during a brief trip back to NYC around June 2004, I met up with Steve Garber. At different times during the 10 year period that I had known Garber since 1994, I had been told he worked for the FBI, but I had never cared much nor placed much heed in it.
163. Garber and I had spoken on the phone one morning in June 2004 shortly after I had arrived in NYC and he suggested we should catch up and go for a walk in Central Park. Unbeknownst to me, he had a message to deliver from the FBI.
164. Steve Garber picked me up in his car later that day drove us to nearby Central Park. We had gotten to know each other reasonably well since publication of my report on Freeport McMoran in 1996, 8 years’ earlier. We found a place to park on Central Park West near the 72nd Street entrance.
165. As we were getting out of the car my phone rang. It was an urgent call from Matthew Levey at Kroll. Steve locked the car and stood on the footpath near me, positioning himself to overhear my end of the conversation.
166. Matthew Levey explained to me that an important opportunity had come up to open an office for Kroll in Australia and there was an urgent need to talk to me about whether I would be interested in the role. He insisted the window of opportunity to talk was strictly limited to the next hour or so, as he said the position was about to be awarded to someone else, a Brazilian, but I was the preferred candidate. If I wanted to talk, I would need to drop everything right away, whatever I was doing, and come over to his office immediately. Immediately he repeated. That would mean standing Steve up and not continuing with our walk into Central Park.
167. The urgency of Matthew Levey’s call was odd and I felt the substance of it lacked credibility. If Kroll had such an important and strategic opportunity to fill, surely it could wait a couple hours till later in the day or early the next morning; and surely, if I was a serious candidate for the role they would have contacted me earlier in the search process. I declined his pressured invitation to drop everything and come straight in – and I’m glad I did. He did not set a firm time to meet later that day nor early the next morning. Indeed, despite my calls back to him, he never followed up with another time to meet.
168. Background on Kroll: Matthew Levey was my consulting manager at Kroll Associates, Inc., in NYC. Around February 2003 he had offered me a monthly retainer as a part time consultant mining analyst. Levey had a background of working for the State Department and had tracked me down in Sydney in recent months through an introduction from a mutual friend and former work colleague. He had an anonymous client, Levey told me, and Kroll needed a mining analyst, part time, to work on gold mining related issues. The fact I was in Sydney was fine, I could work remotely, though there would have been any number of suitable candidates living in NY. He did not disclose who his client was, but suggested it was a large fund manager.
169. At one point, Levey also asked me to use my network of contacts in the US environmental community to call around and speak with activists about environmental and human rights issues in the Indonesian mining sector. A number of large US mining companies were operating in the country – most notably Newmont and Freeport McMoran. Levey seemed particularly interested in my work on Freeport McMoran. However, most of my environmental contacts I met through Susan Holmes, so I called her and briefly filled her in on the assignment. With her input I developed a list and called through it, but nothing of note came out of the calls. This seemed to be Matthew Levey’s main interest in my work, and once the call around had been completed, my consulting contract came to an end shortly after.
170. The Kroll assignment was ill defined and ran for 12-18 months. At one point he mentioned a long term senior executive of Freeport McMoran, John Macken, who according to a press release in November 2003, had left the company to go to work for Ivanhoe. What Levey’s motive may have been in asking me about Macken is unclear, but the press release said he had a nineteen year career with Freeport that included “13 years with Freeport’s operating unit, P.T. Freeport Indonesia (PTFI), culminating in the position of Executive Vice-President and General Manager at Freeport’s Grasberg mining complex in [West] Papua,” which spoke to a consistent, if unstated, Freeport related theme in Levey’s dealings with me. Levey asked me if I knew Macken, had ever met him, or ever spoken with him. His focus on this individual was unusual and from recollection, this was the only operations person he asked me about during the time I worked for him.
171. [Comment: The timing and urgency of Levey’s call was odd, as was Steve’s response. Indeed, Steve looked more than a little surprised when I got off the phone and told him that it had been someone from Kroll calling to invite me to an urgent meeting that afternoon. His face dropped and he gave me another one of his penetrating, soul searching looks as if he were aware of something that I was not.
172. As it turned out, the Kroll connection, my work touching on Freeport McMoran’s operations in West Papua, Indonesia, Matthew Levey’s call to me and timing, added authenticity and credibility to what Garber was about to tell me that afternoon; and later that year, in September 2004, his confirmation that I had been targeted by the FBI on account of my Freeport McMoran report and questions to the CEO in 1996.]
173. Steve drops a bombshell: After I got off the call from Levey, Steve and I continued with our plan and walked along Central Park West, entered Central Park at the 72nd Street entrance where we had walked numerous times before when I still lived in NY.
174. This afternoon he led the way in. We veered off the footpath adjacent to one of the main roads and walked down to the lake, over the bridge by the boathouse and along a quiet path into the woodlands on the other side.
175. After we walked over the bridge and into the woodlands there was no one else around. The track narrowed and wound its way through dense shrubs, over boulders and skirted in and out around hidden edges of the pond. As we walked, Steve repeated various facts and figures about Central Park he had told me on previous occasions, then he turned the topic to Susan Holmes.
176. He asked me what I knew of Susan’s “work”; he seemed to assume I knew little of her work at the FBI, which in a sense was true as I had always tried to block it out, it was something that had repulsed me and I had never really wanted to know about it. Then he proceeded to disclose details about aspects of her FBI career, projects, trips, people much of which I was already somewhat familiar with, though despite her attempts to tell me more than she did, I never had much interest in, nor understood exactly what it was she did for them, her second career that ran in parallel to her real passion – her work as an environmentalist.
177. Steve talked about some of Susan Holmes’ assignments, a former role she had had as a Program Officer at the Harriman Institute, a “business trip” to the Kamchatka Peninsula, a mysterious small grant that had suddenly materialised out of nowhere for a “save the wolf” campaign – cover for a volunteer activist program at the Sierra Club in NY, attendance at “training” programs in Washington, the “California” incident, and so on.
178. Steve continued talking, disclosing, always assessing my reactions and answering or deflecting my questions. He asked me rhetorically whether I thought Susan was more loyal to me or to the state; then opined that she was a devoted and obedient FBI agent before all else, that she was a loyal and virtuous agent for the state. He extolled her virtues as such; her motivation and allegiance in all things, first and foremost to the state. He was attempting to drive a wedge into the history and meaning of our relationship, it seemed. In saying these things, things I knew not to be entirely true about Susan, about us, she who I still felt fondly toward as a friend, Steve was attempting to be a trouble maker. I had known she was an FBI agent, at least she had told me a number of times and shown me her FBI identification card about 2 years before the Freeport note came out, shortly after we had started dating in 1994, and made various disclosures to me. Our relationship had not been an FBI sting operation from the outset as Steve was now at pains to disingenuously suggest. Susan had disclosed to me things no undercover agent would disclose during a sting operation, especially her role as an undercover FBI agent!
179. Garber continued to bait me, “Do you think you will ever be with Susan again?” he said turning to observe how I reacted to his question. “Maybe I already have,” I remarked taunting him in return, not answering his question, and now observing his reaction to see if it gave any clues as to why he would ask such a question. A look of surprise crossed his face as if he had just realized something, his faced dropped as though I had suggested something he hadn’t contemplated. Why would he care so much about my answer? I wondered. His comments were all the more tainted given Susan was now married, and he knew she was pregnant with her first child. It seems his barbs were intended to stir or sting any residual feelings I had for her.
180. This was just the beginning salvo, Steve’s groundwork for the bombshell he was about to drop, one that would lead right back to the jungles of West Papua, Indonesia.
181. As we walked, he raised details of the strange things I had been experiencing since 1996. He was aware of the details of many of these things since publication of my 12 March 1996 report on Freeport McMoran in 1996 and described aspects of the interference I had faced in my personal and work life but he did not directly link it to Freeport. He asked me about the report and why I had written it. Steve raised details and events from my life – travel, work, personal – places in the Southwest I had visited, descriptions of people I had met there, details of private telephone calls from the Roadrunner backpacker hostel in Tucson I frequently stayed at – knowledge of private matters consistent with an FBI investigation. He had no reason to know about these things, and provocatively asked me leading questions, he seemed to be baiting and mocking me about whether I thought the FBI might be interfering in my life. I did not at the time know how, or why, he had so much information about these many and seemingly disparate events in my life. He wouldn’t answer the many questions I put back to him in response to his suggestion. I had done nothing illegal and I had no reason to suspect the FBI would have any plausible concerns for taking an interest in me. The very notion seemed absurd.
182. At one point during the afternoon he asked hypothetically if I would take the proverbial “tap on the shoulder” if ever I was asked – would I join the FBI if asked. I said, “No”. It was the same answer I had given Susan years ago in 1997 when she had tried to recruit me in my apartment.
183. We spent 2 or 3 hours in Central Park talking and walking, then meandered back through the streets of the Upper West Side and eventually made our way into Riverside Park where Steve said he knew a good place we could go for a beer. The park is a thin strip of land along the Hudson River abutted by a boat marina full of sailing boats and cabin cruisers, and a long line of well tended community gardens.
184. Not far from the gardens, Steve pointed out a small cafe pavilion and directed me up a small hill towards it. We sat down at an outside table with sweeping views over the river, ordered a beer each and continued to talk as it got dark. At one point as Steve lent forward over the table he surreptitiously stole a nervous glance down the inside of his shirt, apparently, I supposed in hindsight, to make sure he wasn’t accidentally revealing his microphone, or wire, he apparently used to record the conversation.
185. We spent the late afternoon and early evening talking. He disclosed a lot of details without connecting everything and without answering my many questions. Innuendo, enough pieces for a puzzle, not a black and white confession. In telling me these things, he had disclosed something significant, something I had not been aware of before from all the facts and insights he had given me: that the FBI was targeting me – had me under surveillance and was interfering in my life. But the big mystery remained: What did I do; what was its interest in me?! The connection to me was not clear. The pieces of the puzzle Steve had handed me still did not make sense. What was I to make of Susan’s role in it; when did she turn on me? For much of the relationship I thought we were set for marriage, and indeed, it was a sentiment she reciprocated, I believe, and invited me to her family home in Detroit for Christmas in 1997 with the expectation we would get engaged.
     • 
       I was surprised and confused. Steve tactfully had not filled in all the details, but left gaps for me to join the dots: where had he got all his information from, what were his sources, what were their reasons and who were they taking their orders from? How and why did he know so much about personal and private details of my life? Why so much talk of Freeport McMoran, comprehensive details of Susan’s work, detailed knowledge of my life, the odd looks, his unusual concern at Matthew Levey’s call: what was going on I wondered?
     • 10: June 2004: Kroll – questions focused on Freeport McMoran:
186. I called Matthew Levey back. I tried a few times to get through to him, starting late that afternoon while I was still with Steve and over the next day or so, and left messages. But there was no call back.
187. Several days went by and I met with the mutual friend, Julie who had introduced me to Kroll, where she now worked too, fulltime. Julie and I met for a coffee at a small street cafe near Kroll’s midtown office as a prelude to a tentative more formal meeting with Matthew Levey. Julie came down with another Kroll employee but before confirming Matthew Levey’s availability to meet, she had some questions for me. She was acting as gatekeeper. During the general chit chat that ensued, out of the blue, out of context to anything else we discussed, she asked me what I thought of Freeport McMoran; what I thought of CEO Jim Bob Moffett; did I think there might be any connection between the new pressures and uncertainties in my life and Freeport she asked me rhetorically. It echoed Steve Garber’s recent disclosures to me in Central Park. Co-incidence? It seemed unlikely. I was surprised. They were strange questions – but at the time I had still not made the connection to Matthew Levey at Kroll and Freeport. A number of people, independently it seemed, were suddenly raising Freeport McMoran with me. Julie then asked me to wait while the two of them went back up to check if he was still available to meet with me.
188. After 10 minutes they remerged and I was ushered up the lift and into Kroll’s foyer. Evidently, my naiveté secured my pass upstairs. From there, I was led directly down a corridor and introduced to Kroll himself as we walked by his corner office before I was shown into Levey’s office.
189. Matthew Levey was sitting behind his desk ensconced in his work when we walked in seemingly unannounced. Several State Department acknowledgement awards hung prominently on his office wall for some undisclosed endeavours. He dressed carefully, all in trendy black, a black skivvy, slacks and shoes as if out of the set of the popular 1960s kids TV show “Thunderbirds”. He was around my age, affable and we chatted for a while.
190. He said he had not been at Kroll that long, and that his management of my assignment had helped him establish his credibility with the firm and show them the sort of thing he was capable of achieving.
191. June 2004: Reflection on Garber’s disclosures: It wasn’t till later that evening that all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. I came to the realisation my life had been turned upside down by events associated with Freeport McMoran, and years of interference from the FBI! (Steve Garber verbally confirmed this a few months later in September 2004 – details later in this Declaration). Slow to connect the dots perhaps, but to an innocent, a regular citizen as I was, not a veteran agency insider, the dots seemed implausibly far apart. How could I be caught up in something like this? I seemed so remote from the issue; so peripheral. It seemed inconceivable. Steve Garber told me most people have no idea they have been targeted by the FBI, so I shouldn’t feel bad on that count.
192. But at the time in June 2004, my immediate response to Garber’s disclosure to me in Central Park was to wonder if I might have overlooked something, drawn the wrong conclusion, perhaps I had done something illegal by mistake which I hadn’t realised. I also wondered whether it might be possible that the FBI had made a mistake – a case of mistaken identity – in targeting me.
193. However, as Garber was to clearly reaffirm in September 2004, the FBI had targeted me intentionally and Freeport was the reason. From Holmes and Garber’s focus on my 12 March 1996 analyst report, the threats I had received in Freeport’s boardroom alcove in 1996, the odd occurrences in my personal life and invasions of privacy, the disparate people that had raised details of Freeport with me, nothing else made sense and nothing else came close to explaining and tying everything together, something Steve Garber subsequently confirmed in September 2004.
194. My work on Freeport McMoran emerged as the sole possibility for the FBI’s extensive interest in me: Why Freeport, why would the FBI get involved? A friend succinctly summarised the situation: There’s so much money at stake; it’s a huge US company; the people involved (Kissinger, former US ambassadors, military advisers, intelligence agency personal). That’s the sort of thing the FBI is interested in. That’s exactly what they do – protect money and power.
195. I was hearing it from the FBI – Holmes and Garber. Others echoed the same: the huge money at stake for Freeport, the killings in West Papua, Indonesia, the people involved, deep connections to Washington. The issues ticked all the right boxes. It was a no brainer to someone who understood the FBI’s ways.
196. As I discussed Kroll, I relayed how Matthew Levey had me call around the activist community in the US in 2003 to find those interested in Indonesian mining issues. “That just reaffirms it,” my friend said. “These are patient people,” they added referring to Kissinger and other Washington types associated with the company. “You don’t get into positions of power at the top like that without patience and attention to detail. They are probably just being exceedingly careful, checking every possible angle, just to see on the off-chance if you know someone or something they had overlooked who could potentially implicate them in this [the killings of indigenous West Papuans around the mine]. They’re taking no chances.”
197. The immediate aftermath of the Report: Events of the recent years came flooding back with a new significance. I remembered the mild rebuke I received at work at SG Warburg after the research report I authored on Freeport in March 1996, the distribution ban that followed – analyst reports could no longer be released without the personal sign-off of the head of research; I then recalled the cold treatment that followed from Freeport McMoran itself which initially denied me an invitation to the analyst briefing in May that year at Freeport’s HQ in New Orleans; then the threat I received in the Freeport boardroom alcove after raising the issue again during an analyst briefing about the State Department’s investigation of the company for human rights abuses; I remembered the first thing Warburg did when it hired my replacement later that year was to send him on a Freeport McMoran sponsored trip to West Papua, Indonesia to see the controversial but hugely valuable Grasberg mine. In subsequent years I became aware of 7 or 8 other professionals targeted around this time for their work on Freeport McMoran (refer to my Declaration 16 November 2022).
198. What does the FBI have to hide? The connection between my work at Warburg, the FBI and Freeport McMoran had been clearly established in the days following my talk with Garber and reconfirmed in September 2004, but there were other questions that remained unanswered. Steve Garber’s disclosure to me had set off alarm bells, raised doubts and more questions about the potentially unpalatable role of the US government in West Papua, Indonesia and in backing Freeport.
199. [Comment: If the FBI is doing all this to me to intimidate others to stay away from sensitive issues, then it seems there was something they feared in relation to my report and my question to Jim Bob in Freeport’s boardroom about the State Department investigation into the company. But what exactly was it that they were afraid of? If the FBI or Freeport had done nothing wrong, if the eye witness accounts of murder and torture of indigenous protestors coming out of West Papua, Indonesia were wrong, if they had nothing to hide, what was it they were so sensitive about? Why so much interest in a young analyst’s comments if there was no truth to what was said. But highly sensitive they were.
200. Steve’s disclosures had opened Pandora’s box – what does it say about what the FBI and/or CIA secretly think or know Freeport McMoran is up to in West Papua, Indonesia; what is the extent of their own involvement in West Papua, Indonesia supporting Freeport; who were the Americans the FBI was attempting to protect – presumably Henry Kissinger, Jim Bob Moffett – but who else? What had been done and what was at stake and for whom? It raised new questions about what was going on in West Papua, Indonesia. (Refer to my Declaration of 16 November 2021 for some background details).
201. It also raised questions about a parallel sphere – issues of civil liberties, privacy and due process, indeed the integrity and health of democracy in America.]
     • 11: September 2004: Another meeting with Steve Garber: The Blue Water Grill
202. A few months passed since Steve Garber had made his chilling revelations to me during the walk in Central Park that the FBI had been interfering in my life for the past 8 years. That was June 2004. It was now September 2004 and I had returned to NY for a conference and I arranged to meet Steve again.
203. I wanted to disclose to him that I had now comprehensively joined the dots, find out whatever else I could about the circumstances, and discuss what he had implied to me in June about the FBI and Freeport. I called Steve and after he checked with his “work” (FBI) before committing, called me back the next morning and offered to meet me at a lecture I was attending at Tibet House that night. The lecture was presented by Columbia University professor Bob Thurman on Buddhist philosophy, a topic I had an interest in.
204. True to the FBI’s harassment campaign, Steve arrived late, after the talk had started, and evidently in order to embarrass me in front of people I knew, made a prominent entry, pretended to be drunk, slurring his words with an attendant and swaggered slightly as he walked through the gallery space to take a seat at the back. After the talk, I mentioned to a few people we bumped into as we left that Steve was an undercover FBI agent and he was just affecting a cover. They looked oddly at him but weren’t sure what to make of his behaviour or my disclosure. Some people believed it, some didn’t, and some were confused – the usual mix of responses I received when exposing details of FBI interference. As Steve and I emerged onto the street and started to walk down 15th street away from the others he promptly “sobered” up, acted completely “normal”.
205. We walked to the Blue Water Grill nearby in Union Square, a seafood bar and restaurant he suggested. We took a seat at the plush bar with dimmed light and background music, ordered a drink and watched as an attractive barmaid went about her work. A large mirror behind the bar lined the wall in front us in which various liquors were placed and staff came and went. A few people mingled nearby.
206. Garber confirms the FBI’s operation: I turned to Steve and got down to business. I asked him about the Freeport – FBI connection. I asked him, seeking to confirm his insinuating remarks made to me when we had met earlier, in June that year, in sum and substance, “You are doing this for the FBI right? To confirm, I’ve been targeted by the FBI on account of my Freeport McMoran work – is that right?” After a short pause without a response, I repeated the question. I wanted to hear him reaffirm definitively that it was the FBI that was behind the attack on me, and that their reason was my Freeport work as he had insinuated. I wanted to leave no doubt, no uncertainty about who he was working for and what the reason was for the interference I had been subjected to. Garber nodded and said, in sum and substance, “Yes.” Then, only partially joking, I asked him if the FBI was planning to kill me now that I had made the connection to Freeport. Steve took the question seriously, saying, “No. They don’t kill people for this sort of thing…though they might kill criminals,” he added nonchalantly with an inscrutable poker face.
207. The most consistent thing about him was that he came across as not particularly enthusiastic about his work. He later confided in me that he felt each of his two careers had been very average to date: at the FBI and as a biologist – he expressed a sense of genuine disappointment. The ambiguity between agent, target, companion or friend was pronounced at times, a bond of convoluted emotions. It seemed that with every encounter with the FBI I was learning a little more about the agency, its people and their motivations and I hoped Steve might let something slip that would reveal more about my situation.
208. Steve excused himself from our conversation and went to the men’s room. As he came back, from behind, he fixed his gaze on me not mindful I could see him in the mirror. He screwed up his face and drew a deep breath revealing something humane – it looked like he felt some degree of reticence or remorse. Perhaps Steve had not lived up to his own humanist standards in his role with the FBI or in his life.
209. As Steve momentarily stood there silently looking at me, he seemed apprehensive, uncertain, possibly surprised that I had contacted him. I felt he was eyeing the fruits of his labour, a labour undertaken with regrets, as he faced the meaninglessness and challenge to his values of what the FBI directed him to do. I thought he was dealing with issues of his own conscience acting on state orders he evidently didn’t always agree with. There was a worn and slightly tired look that comes with years of carrying burdens, surrendering and compromising ones will to the will of others, of using people; a frayed and thwarted conscience that manifests as an indifferent and apathetic attitude to a job that seemingly lacked satisfaction and meaning for him. He had a doctorate in herpetology but now found himself a henchman of the state, Plan-B, a job whose demands were frequently at variance it seemed with his own personal inclinations and judgement, including the political targeting of me, the onetime partner of one of his own agents, a work colleague of his. The FBI must know that the directives it gives to agents will at times be met with resistance, go against the grain, against a good person’s sense of justice and fairness, not legal, and Steve must have been tempted to resist their orders on occasions as did Susan, to be disobedient. Harming the innocent was not his thing it seemed, however, despite whatever reservations he might have had, he had obviously not resigned from the agency.
210. I wondered if Steve had been particularly ambitious and eager to climb through the ranks of the FBI, but he didn’t strike me as overly energetic or hard line. He seemed like a normal middle-aged man, a little stressed, facing the pressures of family life, career and mortgage. He followed through on their orders and did as directed, not, it seemed, out of ideological alignment, he was too experienced, he knew enough to know what the game was, but presumably for the money and career, like 99% of the population evidently would if given the chance. He was making a buck out of it. It appeared he just went along looking after his own interest and didn’t care enough about the harm he caused others to be deterred. Personal self-gain. He was working for powerful people in a dog-eat-dog world.
211. He took his seat again. Sensing his reservation, I asked him how often he did this sort of work, targeting innocent people as payback for the FBI, turning ordinary citizens’ lives upside down. With surprising candidness, he said, “Fortunately not very often.” Then he taunted, revealing limits to his empathy, “but if I was ever called to testify in court about this, I would probably lie.”
212. DOJ- False information: Some years later, I came across a newspaper article, from 2002, the year before this conversation with Steve, in which US judges had found the FBI and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) had deliberately provided “false information” to the courts, with the intention of misleading them in applying for “more than 75 applications for search warrants and wiretaps” . The FBI and DOJ also improperly shared information with prosecutors the report said. (The article is attached hereto as Exhibit 5.)

John Wilson Declaration 31 October 2022

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