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Having given that short history of the research process, which made its own legal history on the way, let me turn to the fruits of these labors.

The first investigation of "The Farm," was in the 1970-71 period. Taking it at its most benign reading, a large and roving band of non-conformists, calling themselves "beatniks" had engaged in a series of meetings in San Francisco and had subsequently taken to the interstate highways in a long line of converted school buses, bread trucks, mail vans, and cars. This came to the attention of the FBI as reports from nervous local police agencies filtered in from around the country. (Slide) The civil rights and Vietnam war resistance movements were in progress and protest had become increasingly violent, erupting into riots in several cities. These people looked like protesters (Slide). The FBI followed the group's progress closely.

The justification which the FBI gave for withholding these documents is that the documents were gathered as part of an ongoing law enforcement investigation. Pushed to reveal what violation was being investigated, they stated that the subject was the Voorhis Act,11 Hoover's anticommunist catch-all requiring American communists to register as foreign agents or be imprisoned.

Apparently the Caravan was thought by J. Edgar Hoover to be a communist insurrection on wheels. He ordered the group to be closely tracked and a control file was set up to coordinate the flow of information. (Slide) A teletype was sent to San Francisco to get background on Stephen Gaskin (Slide) which came back with his service records and rap sheet (Slide).

As the group recrossed the country looking for land to settle, FBI agents, on orders from the Director, teletyped their progress to the Memphis control unit, and local agents fed information to newspapers and civic leaders (3 Slides). This led to a number of incidents that had once appeared unrelated but now must be seen to bear the mark of Hoover.

One newspaper clipping from March, 1971 (Slide) warns residents of the small farming community of Carlisle, Tennessee that a "large band of hippies" is moving to Stewart County. The report is apparently based on someone at the county courthouse noticing a number of "hippie-types" running title searches.

A few days later, another newspaper (Slide) reports the sad tale of an Ohio State University student who was on his way to Stewart County to look at a 600-acre farm he hoped to buy, when he was pulled over by a Stewart County sheriff's deputy and asked to return to the County seat in Erin. After being released and leaving Erin, he drove 17 miles and then his 1965 Mustang ran out of gas or suffered a breakdown, near Carlisle, about 1:45 in the afternoon. The Sheriff's department found the young man, beaten and bleeding, his head shaved with a pocket knife, some 8 hours later. "They gave him a right nice trim job, a real nice crew cut," said Deputy Bill McMillan.

The student was not connected to the Gaskin caravan. However, the caravan group did put a down payment on a 590-acre farm near Ashland City (Slide) only to find a sudden surge in press attention and civic pressure on the seller, which forced the deal to be withdrawn. (2 slides) It is clear from the documents that the FBI served as a clearinghouse between their sources in county land offices, local government officials and the press, and was successful in this first instance of keeping the group from acquiring land. J. Edgar Hoover's direct involvement is likely, as evidenced by the "100" numeric prefix on several of the airtels, which identified Hoover's personal "domestic security" beat.

In June, the Memphis office advised the Director that the Cheatham County sheriff reported that the group had left Tennessee and was looking for land in Arkansas. (Slide). The Director instructed all agents working the case that "Inasmuch as this particular group is a roving type communal hippie group... check NCIC records for all individuals in this communal group over 18 years of age to determine if any law enforcement agency has outstanding warrants for their arrests." This was accomplished the following day, but there were no outstanding warrants to serve.

The FBI continued to follow the group's progress, infiltrating an undercover agent (named Jimmy Dooley) who took a series of photographs on August 7, 1971.

Ultimately, the group succeeded in buying land before the FBI learned of the transaction. The second stage of the investigation began in November, 1971, when the caravan settled onto a large tract of land in Tennessee and took up farming. FBI was immediately advised of the transaction by the County Court Clerk, including the purchase price, downpayment, and the Farm's new holding company, "The Foundation."

After a while, watching the Farm became quite boring. They had babies. They bred horses and used them to work their farm. They built houses, erected a water tower, and started some small business enterprises, such as book publishing, textiles, and dried foods. They called their experimental community, "The Farm." Over a decade, the community expanded to more than 1,000 people and its multi-million-dollar businesses became major players in the health food, consumer electronics, and niche publishing markets. In 1974, The Farm started Plenty. (Slide)

After four years of fruitless surveillance, the local agents found evidence of no federal crimes and wired the new Acting Director and asked him to terminate the investigation.

Memphis Branch Office airtels dated December 8, 1975 and January 19, 1976 stated:

"Previous investigation conducted by Memphis Division has determined "The Farm" is located near Hohenwald, Tennessee, is a commune-type operation run by one Stephen Gaskin. There have been as high as 800 members in this commune at various times.

"Previous investigation has determined it is a religious-type organization and is involved in no extremist or subversive activities. Gaskin advocated the use of marijuana but otherwise is law abiding and cooperative with law enforcement officials. They do not tolerate lawbreakers.

* * *

"The Farm believes in non-violence, is vegetarian in diet, spiritual in nature, and is a self-sufficient working farm. Gaskin advised it is not the kind of atmosphere people of a violent nature would attempt to seek."

A third investigation relates to a subsidiary or satellite farm operated in West Virginia. Apparently the West Virginia farm was under surveillance by the FBI at the time when it was decided to close that operation and bring the personnel to Tennessee. (Slide) Surveillance extended to FBI background checks on not only on all members, but on all visitors to the farm. The Charlotte office investigation ended when the West Virginians sold the land and moved to Tennessee. (Slide) The surveillance was handed off to Memphis, which saw no reason to continue it.

The fourth investigation relates to the request in 1977 for information in the FBI Central Records System on Stephen Gaskin and The Farm which the FBI responded to by refusing to provide information unless fingerprint records were furnished, resulting in an impasse.

Looking at the pages released to date, it is readily apparent that whenever the group had a problem of a criminal nature it called the police. It did not harbor fugitives. With the possible exception of an early incident of growing marijuana for which four members served prison sentences,13 if members discovered wrongdoing within The Farm community, they turned the wrongdoer over to local authorities.

When the Farm was harassed by overzealous local police who arrived with 100 heavily armed officers, two helicopters, and three TV networks to assault the community in the middle of the night with a bogus warrant, derived from a dubious source, to search every house, business, school, church, and outbuilding for marijuana and drug paraphernalia (and discovered nothing), members of the Farm filed a state civil action against the District Attorney General and initiated a federal civil rights complaint. (Slide) This civil rights complaint was the subject of the fifth FBI investigation, in 1980.

The Sixth investigation was prompted by the Jonestown massacre and a subsequent anticult letter emanating from an anonymous source in Albany, New York and addressed to the FBI branch office in Asheville, NC. (Slide) This letter warned the bureau to "Beware 'The Farm,' near Summertown, TN!... It is in the same category as the 'Jones Cult' ... The conditions are much the same, except that the 'Farm' cult is far more degenerate! We were there! We escaped by a miracle but lost everything - a small price to pay for our freedom!" (Slide) The FBI investigated this report (Slide) but concluded: "There is no indication to anyone of any restraints placed on the inhabitants as movement appeared to be uncontrolled."

When The Farm was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan, it called the FBI. The seventh investigation took place in February, 1982, and related to this complaint of bombing. (3 slides) Notable in this report is the request from Stephen Gaskin, after the perpetrators were identified, to not arrest them, but instead to leave them alone and allow him to win their friendship so they will not want to hurt residents of The Farm in the future.

The eighth investigation concerning The Farm was initiated by an airtel from the San Juan office requesting information for a police inquiry on Dominica, where Plenty's chartered sailing ship, the Fri, was delivering alternate energy and sports equipment to schools and orphanages. As I indicated earlier, the FBI detailed field agents in Memphis, Miami, New Rochelle, New York City, San Diego, Washington D.C., and Ottawa to conduct a sweeping investigation.

The ninth investigation, also in the 1981-84 period, was part of the much larger Justice Department probe of the "sanctuary movement" and protest against United States foreign policy in Latin America. This investigation was the subject of Freedom of Information Act litigation by the Center for Constitutional Law on behalf of eight individuals and five organizations investigated,14 which resulted in the suspension of six FBI supervisors, an agreement to transfer the FBI's files to the national archives and a public concession by the FBI's Director that the investigation was beyond the scope of law enforcement.15

When Farm members uncovered a possible criminal conspiracy at a nearby nuclear plant, they called their Senators and Congressman and demanded an FBI investigation. The tenth investigation concerned this allegation, which brought an exchange of letters between Senator Albert Gore and FBI Director William Webster. (Slide)

It appears from the general tenor of these documents that Farm people - and Stephen Gaskin in particular - were deemed by local FBI agents to be consistently reliable sources for information, and were frequently consulted about whether wanted fugitives had been seen in the vicinity or other matters of police interest. There was regular and open cooperation with local law enforcement agencies. These contacts did not relate to a law enforcement investigation of The Farm, but to other investigations, some criminal, some not, involving suspects or other persons who may have contacted The Farm.

Antipathy to many early experiments was driven from the pulpit, with the dominant religions seeing groups like the Anabaptists, the Ghost Dancers, the Mormons, the Shakers, Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others as inspired by the Devil, worshipping false prophets, preaching dangerous heresies, and otherwise infringing into the domains of existing franchises. In the 1940s and 1950s, groups of pacifist war resisters and social activists - including those who founded the Fellowship for Intentional Community - were viewed as communists and fellow travelers. In the 1960s and 1970s, radical ethnic groups like the Black Panthers, the MOVE church in Philadelphia, the White Rastafari in Florida, and the Sanctuary Movement were deemed to be terrorist organizations and were systematically harassed or even destroyed in police actions of the Waco variety. As Michael Barkun has observed, the first stage of police involvement seems to be labeling these groups as "cults," a word that tells far more about those who use it than those to whom it is attached.16 A cult is a group which is too far removed from the mainstream to be considered safe to have around.

The Farm was only a year old when J. Edgar Hoover shed his mortal coil, but it lived with his legacy and confronted the obstacles of suspicion planted by Hoover. It fought evil with good, through unrelenting public works and the diplomacy exercised by Stephen Gaskin toward local law enforcement authorities and federal agencies.

Ironically, the seeds to Hoover's antipathy were in a philosophy which he shared with Stephen Gaskin. Hoover frequently wrote for publications such as Boys' Life and Reader's Digest that no amount of extra police or new prisons would accomplish crime control or ease civil strife. Domestic tranquillity, Hoover preached, could only be derived from a strong moral fabric in the general population, a fabric woven from an overriding sense of Christian ethics, from the family bond between children and strong parental role models, and from taking personal responsibility for civil conduct, not blaming strife and unrest on external, larger forces beyond anyone's control.17 The ultimate irony is that Hoover, whose private life can only be called depraved, persecuted all groups, such as The Farm, which attempted social innovations that diverged from the white, button-down, chauvinistic, straight jacket social order that Hoover idealized. In the final analysis, The Farm may have done far more to accomplish the Great G-Man's goals than did J. Edgar Hoover himself.

1 As he told Fletcher Knebel in 1955. Summers, A., Official and Confidential (NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1993) p. 32.

2 Powers, R. Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (NY: The Free Press, 1987) p. 83.

3 Summers, p. 38.

4 Id. at 48 and Lynum, C., The FBI and I (Bryn Mawr: Dorrance & Co. 1988), p. 118.

5 Lymun, Id. at 119.

6 Id. at 253-255. See too: von Hoffman, N., Citizen Cohn (NY: Doubleday 1988); Zion, S., The Autobiography of Roy Cohn (NY: St. Martins Press, 1988).

7 See too: Bates, A., "Technological Innovation in a Rural Intentional Community," Bulletin of Science and Technology in Society 8:183-199 (1988).

8 Bates, A. "Night Train: You Don't Need a Ticket, Just Get on Board," in Natural Rights 2:3:1-3 (March, 1987).

9 While we are aware of published accounts of at least one visit to The Farm by a KGB Colonel Zaitsev accompanied by a Naval Intelligence Officer tasked to the CIA (Jacque Srouji), we were unable to make a FOIA request of the CIA, which Congress exempted from FOIA at the time of the passage of the Privacy Act. At some time in the future we may be able to examine the KGB file.

10 Only 11 days ago, on October 5th, President Clinton, with a nod to his Vice President, issued an order to all heads of federal departments and agencies to speed up compliance with the Freedom of Information Act and to place many documents into public domain on their own initiative via electronic information systems. The attorney general simultaneously directed that henceforth requests will not be opposed simply because the information might technically or arguably fall within an exemption to the Act, but that the Justice Department would come to the assistance of the agencies only where disclosure would directly harm a substantial governmental or private interest protected by the exemptions. In most cases, defense would be waived.

11 The Voorhis anti-communist legislation, 54 Stat. 1201-1204 (1940), 62 Stat. 808 (1948), codified at 18 U.S.C. ? 2386, requires the registration of foreign agents under penalty of fine or imprisonment.

12 It appears that Stephen Gaskin was considered a paid confidential informant ("PCI") and assigned a code, although he does not now recall ever soliciting or receiving remuneration. He frequently and openly provided information to state and federal law enforcement agencies.

13 Among the four convicted was Farm founder Stephen Gaskin, whose undisputed testimony at trial was that although he did not condone the marijuana-growing and had forbidden that activity, he took personal responsibility for everything done at The Farm. Gaskin was arrested at his home, nearly a mile from the site where marijuana was found. He defended himself at trial and was convicted and sentenced to a 1 to 4 year term in the State penitentiary, which he served.

14 Committee In Solidarity with People of El Salvador (CISPES) v. Sessions, 738 F.Supp. 544 (D.D.C. 1990) ;aff'd: 929 F.2d 742, 289 U.S.App.D.C. 149 (D.C.Cir. 1991).

15 See: "Leashing the FBI," Los Angeles Times, Sept. 17, 1988; "FBI Offers to Clear Files on Salvador Protesters," Los Angeles Times, Sept. 17, 1988.

16 Barkun, M., "Reflections after Waco: Millennialists and the state," The Christian Century (Jun 2-9, 1993) 596-600.

17 Hoover, J., Persons in Hiding (1938), Masters of Deceit (1958), and A Study of Communism (1962). See too: De Toledano, R., J. Edgar Hoover (1973); Messick, H., John Edgar Hoover (1972); Nash, J., Citizen Hoover (1972); O'Reilly, Kenneth, Hoover and the Un-Americans (1983); Powers, Richard G., Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (1986); Theoharis, A.G., and Cox, J.S., The Boss (1988).