a series of raids carried out in the Bay Area by around 200 Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents. The indictments followed two car bombings targeting law enforcement officers in northern California, which were blamed on the Hells Angels. The bombings prompted the California Department of Justice to issue a warning to police departments that the Angels were engaged on a campaign to eliminate law enforcement personnel who investigated their drug activities. The RICO case against the Hells Angels was the most substantial effort in federal history against the club at the time, and charged the defendants with various crimes dating back to 1971, including manufacturing and distributing methamphetamine; conspiring to commit murder; assault; use of false identification; intimidation; and bribery. Barger was held on a $1 million bail and spent 14 months in San Francisco County Jail before and during the trial. In a jailhouse interview with Cynthia Gorney of The Washington Post in October 1979, he stated: "I can tell you why they want to get rid of the Hells Angels, what I think. First of all we're a virtual army. We're all across the country, and now we're in foreign countries also. And they have no idea how many of us there are...We have money, many allies that are outlaw bikers that are not Hells Angels, that would probably do anything we asked them to, if something happened". Barger and 17 of his co-defendants went on trial in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California at the San Francisco federal courthouse beginning on October 4, 1979. The prosecution team, representing the federal government, attempted to demonstrate a pattern of behavior to convict Barger and other members of the Hells Angels of racketeering offenses related to illegal weapons and drugs. According to U.S. Attorney William Hunter, the "cornerstone" of the Hells Angels' drug enterprise was the "large‐scale manufacture and mass distribution of methamphetamine". Prosecutors claimed that the Angels accumulated $160,000 per day in street sales of the drug. The defense maintained that the club should not be held accountable for crimes committed by individual members. Barger himself admitted during the trial that he had used and sold narcotics in the 1960s, but asserted that his actions did not involve the Hells Angels. On July 2, 1980, following an eight-month trial in which 194 witnesses testified, a mistrial