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Student 'Subversives' And The FBI's 'Dirty Tricks'
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. During the student protests of the 1960s, many activists suspected that the FBI was spying on them and trying to undermine their efforts. My guest, Seth Rosenfeld, has massive evidence that this was true at the University of California at Berkeley, the college that led the way in student protests and that according to Rosenfeld was the target of the most extensive covert operations the FBI is known to have undertaken in any college community.
Rosenfeld filed five Freedom of Information Act lawsuits against the FBI, resulting in the release of more than 300,000 pages of records about events on and around the campus from the 1940s to the 1970s. He reports that these documents show that the FBI mounted a covert campaign to manipulate public opinion about events on the Berkeley campus, it spied on and harassed students, helped force out the university's president and ran a secret program to fire professors whose political views were deemed unacceptable.
These documents also reveal the mutually beneficial secret relationship between the FBI and Ronald Reagan covering the years when Reagan informed on fellow actors through his efforts to suppress the student movement when he was governor of California.
Rosenfeld's new book is called "Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power." Rosenfeld has been an investigative reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner. Seth Rosenfeld, welcome to FRESH AIR. We should just start with an explanation of the what the free speech movement was about at the University of California, Berkeley.
SETH ROSENFELD: Yes, the Free Speech Movement occurred in 1964. It was one of the first major campus protests of the 1960s. It was a nonviolent protest, and it was protest against a rule at UC Berkeley that prohibited students from engaging in political activity on campus. For example, if students wanted to hand out a flyer or collect quarters for the Republican campaign for president, they were prohibited from doing that.
If they wanted to hand out flyers for the civil rights movement, they couldn't do that, either.
GROSS: So there was a big protest. The campus police got involved, the police-police got involved, and why did J. Edgar Hoover, then head of the FBI, care? What was his concern about this student movement?
ROSENFELD: Hoover had long been concerned about alleged subversion within the educational field, and he'd been particularly concerned about the University of California at Berkeley, which was the nation's largest public university at that time and had been involved in the production of nuclear weapons that brought an end to World War II.
So he was particularly concerned about dissent and alleged subversion at UC Berkeley. When the Free Speech Movement happened, he saw this as further evidence of the communist plot to disrupt the nation's campuses.
GROSS: And he eventually was told by his agents that it wasn't a communist plot, that there were in fact some communists and some socialists who were participating in the protest, but they were kind of, like, incidental. They weren't leaders; the protests would have happened with them or without them. They were just, like, people who showed up.
ROSENFELD: Hoover instantly ordered a major investigation of the Free Speech Movement and assigned a lot of agents to look into it and whether it was a subversive plot. And they determined that while there were a few communists and socialists involved in the protests, it would have happened anyway because it was really just a protest about this campus rule. His agents repeatedly told him that it would have happened anyway, and it wasn't a subversive plot, but Hoover ordered further investigation and beyond that dirty tricks to stifle dissent on the campus.
GROSS: So two of the FBI sources within the university were a security officer and a vice chancellor named Alex Sherriffs. So was their relationship with the FBI legal or illegal? Was it legal for the FBI to be going to them and getting information?
ROSENFELD: It was legal, but what is questionable is whether it was appropriate and consistent with the FBI's mission. And as the federal courts ruled in my Freedom of Information Act suit, the FBI's investigation using Alex Sherriffs and using the security officer William Wadman to gather information had no legitimate law enforcement purpose because those investigations had turned into political spying.
GROSS: And what do you mean by political spying?
ROSENFELD: These were investigations that didn't focus on national security or violations of criminal law. They focused on what people were saying or what they were writing or who they were meeting with in regard to positions they took on matters of public policy. So essentially, it was spying on constitutionally protected activity, such as circulating petitions or holding a rally or going to a demonstration.
GROSS: I want to ask you about one of the people who at the FBI's request infiltrated part of the activist movement in Berkeley, and this is Richard Aoki. And you say he had successfully infiltrated several Bay Area radical organizations. I'm particularly interested in hearing what you learned about his not only infiltrating the Black Panthers but in supplying them and helping them get guns, helping them arm.
ROSENFELD: Well, at first Aoki informed on the Communist Party, then he focused on the Socialist Workers Party. And he did that for a number of years and established his credentials as a leftist. Then in the mid-'60s, he was a student at Merritt College in Oakland and he met Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, who were also students there.
He began to talk politics with them, and when Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party in 1966, they went to see Richard Aoki, and they asked him for guns. They knew that Aoki had a collection of guns, that he was a firearms expert from his days in the Army. Aoki gave them several guns, as well as firearms training.
The Panthers proceeded to use weapons in what they called community patrols of the police. The Panthers were very concerned about police brutality in Oakland, and to try and reduce that, they began these community patrols, in which they would follow police officers around Oakland and observe them as they stopped or made arrests of people.
The Panthers were carrying guns and cameras while they were doing this, and some of those guns came from Richard Aoki. But the Panthers later had a lot of problems concerning guns. They were involved in shootouts with Oakland police. At least one Oakland police officer was killed; several Panthers were killed. And by the end of 1968, 28 Panthers had been killed in shootouts with police around the country.
GROSS: So what you're suggesting here is that the FBI, through this informant, actually helped arm the Panthers.
ROSENFELD: What we don't know is what the FBI knew about Aoki giving the Panthers guns. What we do know is that Aoki was a paid informant for the FBI before, during and after the time he gave the Panthers guns.
GROSS: One of the things you learned is that the FBI did spy on Mario Savio, one of the leaders of the student movement at the University of California Berkeley, and they tried to sabotage him. What did they do to try to sabotage him?
ROSENFELD: The FBI saw Savio as a potentially dangerous person because he was a very charismatic leader. He was very effective in rallying students and, even more broadly, members of the public to the cause of the Free Speech Movement. Hoover tried to counteract that by taking certain steps that would discredit Savio by portraying him in news stories as an associate of communists and socialists.
At one point, the FBI designated Savio as a key activist, putting him on a list of people whom the FBI would attempt to neutralize through intensive surveillance and harassment. At one point, an FBI agent contacted Savio's employer, and sometime later, Savio lost his job.
GROSS: One of the things you did while researching this book was present the Freedom of Information Act files that you found on people to those people. And you did that with Mario Savio before he died. He must have suspected that the FBI had investigated him because I think all student activists suspected that, whether it was true or not. What was his reaction when you told that you'd gotten his files and showed them to him?
ROSENFELD: I should explain. I had some files that I was able to show Mario before he passed away in '96, but most of the files I got were after he passed away. But some of the first files I got showed that the FBI had investigated the free speech movement and attempted to discredit it, and when I showed these to Mario Savio, he was - he said: Well, we always figured that the FBI was spying on us, but we never suspected that they would attempt to disrupt us.
I also obtained a lot of FBI files concerning the president of the university, Clark Kerr, and when I met with Clark Kerr and showed him some of his FBI files, he was quite astonished that the FBI had tried to get him fired from his job as university president.
The documents showed that J. Edgar Hoover had ordered agents to leak information to members of the board of regents in an effort to convince him that Clark Kerr was not being tough enough on student protesters and that he had to be fired.
GROSS: Clark Kerr is such an interesting character in your book because as the president of the university, he felt that he did a lot to open up the campus to more speech. He allowed communists to speak on campus. He refused to punish people for dissident speech. But to the student activists, he was the establishment, who was not allowing them, like, sufficient free speech on campus, but to the FBI and to Governor Reagan, he just wasn't tough enough.
So he lost on all sides, like, to the left and to the right, everyone was against him.
ROSENFELD: Clark Kerr was the man in the middle, and he had done so much for the university. He is one of the towering figures in American higher education. He expanded the university, and he also developed the master plan for higher education, the system of colleges that's now used not only around the country but all over the world.
He also opened the campus to free speech in many ways, but when the student movement in the early '60s began, he was taken by surprise. He didn't expect the students to be as aggressive as they were, and he was not quick enough to more fully open the campus.
The Free Speech Movement was ultimately successful. It reversed the rule against students engaging in political activity on campus. Kerr later said he regretted that he had not acted more swiftly to lift that rule.
GROSS: My guest is Seth Rosenfeld, author of "Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power." More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Seth Rosenfeld. He's the author of the new book "Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power." And it's based on 30 years of research and five Freedom of Information Act lawsuits that led to the release of 300,000 pages of documents.
You write about what you learn from the Freedom of Information Act files, about how Ronald Reagan, who was then the governor of California, worked with the FBI to get the University of California at Berkeley President Clark Kerr removed from office. What did Reagan, with the FBI, do?
ROSENFELD: The FBI had been very frustrated with Clark Kerr for a long time. Hoover was very upset when Clark Kerr began to liberalize rules on political activities on campus. He saw Kerr as being too soft on protesters and maybe even a dangerous subversive himself. He tried to get Governor Pat Brown to fire Clark Kerr by secretly giving Pat Brown FBI reports about student protesters, and Pat Brown refused to that. He was a staunch ally of Clark Kerr's.
So when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1966, after a campaign in which he made the protests at Berkeley one of his top issues, Hoover welcomed Reagan as a breath of fresh air and worked with him to stifle student protesters and to remove Clark Kerr from the presidency of the university.
A few days after Ronald Reagan took office, he phoned the FBI, and he requested a secret briefing about student protesters, about liberal members of the board of regents and about Clark Kerr. A few weeks later, at the first board of regents meeting attended by Reagan, Clark Kerr was fired.
The governor didn't have the power himself to fire the university president. However, when he was elected, he was able to appoint new members of the board of regents, and that shifted the balance of power, and Reagan's board of regents fired Clark Kerr as one of its first acts.
GROSS: So this was not the first time that Ronald Reagan had worked with the FBI. Their relationship dated back to when Ronald Reagan was an actor. And you say that you learned from the Freedom of Information Act files that you got that Ronald Reagan informed on fellow actors far more than has been known, or at least more than has been known. I don't want to overstate it.
ROSENFELD: Yes, that's correct. Starting in Hollywood in the 1940s, Ronald Reagan developed a special relationship with the FBI. He became an FBI informer, reporting other actors whom he suspected of subversive activities, and later when he became president of the Screen Actors Guild, the FBI had wide access to the Guild's information. At one point, the Guild turned over information on 54 actors it was investigating as possible subversives.
So the FBI viewed Reagan as an extremely cooperative source in Hollywood. As a result of this, Hoover repaid him with personal and political favors later.
GROSS: And what's an example of one of those favors?
ROSENFELD: The FBI did a personal and political favor for Ronald Reagan in 1965. FBI agents at the time were investigating the Bonanno crime organization. Joe Bananas, as he was known, was one of the most notorious mobsters in America and had recently moved to Arizona.
FBI agents in Phoenix were investigating him when they discovered that Joe Bananas' son, Joseph Jr., was hanging out with Michael Reagan, who was the adopted son of Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman, and they reported this to headquarters.
The agents proposed that they should interview Ronald Reagan to see if he had learned anything about the Bonannos through his son. This investigation, after all, was a top priority. But Hoover interceded. He ordered them not to interview Ronald Reagan, and he instead told the agents to warn Ronald Reagan that his son was consorting with the son of Joe Bananas.
Ronald Reagan was very grateful for this, and I could read a piece of an FBI document.
GROSS: Sure.
ROSENFELD: (Reading) This happened in early 1965, just as Ronald Reagan was about to embark on his first run for public office, the governorship of California. And when FBI agents warned him that his son was hanging out with Joe Bonanno's son, he was very grateful. And according to an FBI report, Reagan said, quote, "he was most appreciative and stated he realized that such an association and actions on the part of the son might well jeopardize any political aspirations he might have." Reagan stated he would telephone his son and instruct him to disassociate himself gracefully and in a manner which would cause no trouble or speculation. He stated that the bureau's courtesy in this matter would be kept absolutely confidential. Reagan commented that he realizes that it would be improper to express his appreciation in writing, and he requested that the agent convey the great admiration he has for the director and the bureau and to express his thanks for the bureau's cooperation.
GROSS: You write that, you know, when Ronald Reagan was rising politically, there were parts of his past that could have been considered questionable because as governor, this meant, you know, overseeing the University of California system, which included, you know, atomic research laboratories and atomic research data. And so that's an important security position.
And there were a couple of things in Reagan's past that the FBI might have been concerned about if it was somebody other than Ronald Reagan. Do you want to discuss that?
ROSENFELD: One of the interesting themes that emerged in reviewing all these FBI documents was how J. Edgar Hoover's FBI used information. In the case of Clark Kerr, at one point he was a candidate to be secretary of health, education and welfare. So the FBI did a background report, and Hoover used this as a pretext to send President Lyndon Johnson a report loaded with allegations that Kerr had associated with various subversives, even though the FBI had already investigated these allegations and knew that they were untrue. And this all comes out in the documents.
In contrast, when Ronald Reagan became governor, he had to undergo a similar background check because as governor, he would be a member of the board of regents and have oversight of the university's nuclear laboratories. During this investigation, the FBI went out of its way to help Ronald Reagan.
When Ronald Reagan filled out his personnel security questionnaire as part of this investigation, he failed to list a number of organizations that he was involved in, in Hollywood in the '40s, organizations that had been designated by the federal government as being subversive.
Normally, this would send up red flags with the FBI. It would be seen as a serious omission. But in Ronald Reagan's case, the FBI did not report that he had failed to include these organizations.
GROSS: Seth Rosenfeld will be back in the second half of the show. His new book is called "Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power." I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with Seth Rosenfeld, author of the new book "Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals and Reagan's Rise to Power." It's based on the more than 300,000 pages of FBI documents released through the Freedom of Information Act about events on and around the University of California at Berkeley, covering the 1940s to the 1970s.
When we left off, we were talking about the secret relationship between Ronald Reagan and the FBI - from the years he informed her fellow actors, through this time as governor of California, trying to suppress the student movement.
We're having some technical difficulties with the interview that I recorded. But I will tell you as we're waiting for the technical problem to be solved, that the 300,000 pages of FBI documents, most of them were gotten through a series of five lawsuits filed by Seth Rosenfeld to get the FBI to release their documents through the Freedom of Information Act. So he's been at work on this story for 31 years. So here's the interview.
Did you learn anything about how the relationship between the FBI and Ronald Reagan developed after Ronald Reagan became president?
ROSENFELD: Ronald Reagan's connection to the FBI begins in Hollywood in the late '40s. This was a time in his life when he was having trouble with his film career, his marriage was falling apart and his faith in the Democratic politics of his father were beginning to falter. It was about - right about this time - that he was first approached by the FBI and told that communists were trying to take over Hollywood. This greatly affected Reagan. As he wrote in his memoir, the FBI agents opened his eyes to a good many things. He made fighting communism his main cause. He became an FBI informer. He supported the FBI publicly in speeches he gave and in return the FBI did certain personal and political favors for him.
One of the arguments in my book is that Reagan's secret relationship with the FBI had a profound impact on his political development. And later as president he goes on to stare down the Soviet Union.
GROSS: So the information that's in your book "Subversives," and that you've been sharing with us today - and there's far more information in your book than you're able to share with us in one interview - this is a result of five Freedom of Information Act lawsuits and 30 years of research on your part. Why did it take five lawsuits to get the files released?
ROSENFELD: That's a good question.
ROSENFELD: I first got interested in the subject when I was a student at the University of California at Berkeley in the late '70s. I was a writer for the Daily Californian student newspaper. The Daily Cal had requested some FBI files on Berkeley under the Freedom of Information Act. So I looked at those files and I wrote a story about the FBI spying on the Free Speech Movement and on the Vietnam Day Committee. They were published back in 1982. But I realized there was far more to the FBI's activities on campus. So I submitted a much larger Freedom of Information Act request. I figured I would get the files in maybe a year or so and write the story and go on to the next project. I had no idea that I was embarking on what would become a 31-year legal odyssey.
The FBI refused to release the files until I paid thousands of dollars in fees. So the first thing I had to do was filed a lawsuit challenging their refusal to give me a fee waiver. The law provides that when releasing the records would primarily benefit the general public, government agencies are supposed to waive the fees. So once I won the fee waiver, I went back to the FBI and asked them to release records, but they were producing it so slowly we filed a second lawsuit. The court ordered the FBI to expedite its release of the files. When the FBI finally released a chunk of the files, they were heavily redacted. So we filed a third lawsuit challenging the redactions in the FBI documents. The FBI refused to release a lot of the information on the ground that it concerned law enforcement operations or personal privacy. A federal judge looked at the records and concluded that they actually concerned - in many cases - unlawful political surveillance and efforts to get Clark Kerr fired from the presidency of the University of California. And the court ordered them released. The FBI appealed the decision and it went up to the federal appeals court. A federal appeals court affirmed the lower court's ruling and the FBI then filed a notice with the Supreme Court that it was challenging the appeals court decision. It was at that point that I reached a settlement with the FBI under which it would release the records and pay my attorney's fees of more than $600,000.
GROSS: Whoa.
GROSS: That's a lot of money.
ROSENFELD: Yes.
GROSS: Yeah. It wasn't pro bono, huh?
ROSENFELD: It was pro bono. I was very fortunate to have the pro bono assistance of a small army of attorneys. Under the law, the attorneys were allowed to request that the court order the FBI to pay their fees and the FBI did pay more than $600,000 in attorney's fees. But even then it was clear that FBI was still withholding records, so I filed a fourth lawsuit seeking records on Ronald Reagan. The FBI initially refused to release the records, but ultimately released more than 10,000 pages. This is the most complete record of FBI documents concerning Ronald Reagan in his pre-presidential years that's been released. These documents show that during the Cold War the FBI sought to change the course of history by secretly interceding in events, by manipulating public opinion and taking sides in partisan politics. The FBI's efforts decades later to be improperly withhold these records from the public about its activities is in effect another attempt to shape history this time by obscuring the past.
GROSS: Well, I want to thank you very much for talking with us.
ROSENFELD: Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure.
GROSS: Seth Rosenfeld is the author of "Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals and Reagan's Rise to Power." You can read an excerpt on our website FRESH AIR.npr.org.
Coming up, we listen back to a 1986 interview with comic Phyllis Diller. She died yesterday at the age of 95.
This is FRESH AIR.
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RBI Classic helps open All-Star Weekend
The second annual Jr. Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) Classic, which will be held until Monday and features eight baseball teams and four softball teams made up of 11- and 12-year-olds from all around the country, is part of the festivities for All-Star Week that lead up to the 81st annual MLB All-Star Game at Angel Stadium on Tuesday.
The 40-game tournament certainly opened with a bang with a fun-filled skills session hosted by USA Olympic Softball gold medal winner Natasha Watley and recent Angels Draft pick George Barber with the help of the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation and more than 100 volunteers from KPMG.
"It was awesome," Watley said. "It's what it's all about. I was telling the kids that I remember being a young kid and loving the game and having a passion for it. So to see their excitement and passion is nice."
The participants had a chance to learn drills about nearly every facet of the game with clinics on hitting, fielding and throwing.
It brought back memories for Barber, who has participated in the RBI program in Miami since 2003 and was rewarded by being selected by the Angels in the 2010 First-Year Player Draft last month.
"It's great to help these kids with what I've learned," said Barber, who is one of more than 180 RBI players to have been drafted by a Major League team. "It's all about the kids and helping them. It's a great experience."
And after the skills session, the 12 teams all participated in the opening ceremonies for the tournament with MLB vice president of community affairs Tom Brasuell, Angels community relations coordinator Lindsey McHolm, KMPG RBI partner Mark Thomas and Watley talking to the participants about the program.
It was a fun way to start the tournament for the teams, which hail from Orange County, Calif., Oakland, Chicago, Puerto Rico, Louisiana, Minnesota, Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, Milwaukee, Hawaii, San Diego and Grand Rapids, Mich.
And it was especially exciting for the local Angels' RBI baseball and softball teams because they were the only city to have both a softball and baseball team in the tournament.
"I think it's phenomenal," said Andy Kim, coach for the Angels' RBI baseball team in Orange County. "These younger kids get a great experience with this. They don't care about winning or losing. They just smile and just have fun."
It was also a special tournament for the softball teams involved because this is the first season that softball was part of the Jr. RBI Classic, which was created last year as an expansion of RBI, a program that provides the chance for young people ages 5-to-12 in inner city communities to play baseball and softball.
"It's amazing," said Dianne Suss, coach for the Angels' RBI softball team in Orange County. "They've treated us well from the time we got here. We have nice buses and a great place to say. It's first class."
Friday simply kicked off the friendly tournament, which has much more in store for its participants. In addition to the games, the players will participate in FanFest Legends clinics, receive uniforms, equipment and All-Star Game apparel, and will attend the XM All-Star Futures Game, Taco Bell All-Star Legends & Celebrity Softball Game and the State Farm Home Run Derby.
"This is something they'll never forget," Watley said. "I was telling them to soak it all in because it's is going to fly by with all the fun they're going to have."

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Now that Darth Maul has returned to the Star Wars universe, we can expect him and his brother, Savage Opress, to kick up more mayhem in the fifth season of Clone Wars. But Maul isn't the biggest, baddest Sith Lord in the galaxy; Darth Sidious will finally show himself in the flesh, and he won't be happy. And what has prompted an alliance between Obi-Wan Kenobi and the deadly Mandalorian warrioress Bo-Katan?
Spoilers below.
Supervising director Dave Filoni and writer Matt Michnovetz came to San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend, accompanied by a retinue of Clone Troopers, to tease season five of Clone Wars, which launches later this year. Filoni started off talking about what we can expect from Maul and Savage this season.
Filoni admitted that he had doubts when George Lucas asked him to bring Maul back from the dead, but felt that the Sith witches made Maul's return more believable. Now that they have him back, the Clone Wars team is excited to explore the keener, more intelligent side of Maul. "We don't want the Sith to be blunt weapons," Filoni explained. This Maul is sinister, tactical, and understands why Darth Sidious has been so successful. Michnovetz added, "We want audiences to empathize with him, to dig deeper and find the right motivation with him." Savage, on the other hand, doesn't yet realize the wickedness of his newly restored brother. As for whether we can expect Maul's mechanical raptor legs to stay (which replaced the spider legs as the lower half of his bisected body), Filoni said, "We do nothing if not change things all the time."
Anakin and Padme's relationship will also be explored in the coming season, and we'll see that "it's not always a picnic on Naboo." With Anakin so childish and Padme so mature, there are bound to be some strains on their romance. We'll also get some hints as to how much Obi-Wan knows about their relationship. Ahsoka will see some major character developments this season, and "we see some pretty big things happen to her." Hopefully, nothing that will permanently scar young Ahsoka fans, but more on that later.
The big news, though, takes us away from the main cast. Despite the death of actor Ian Abercrombie, who voiced Emperor Palpatine, earlier this year, Abercrombie's voice will be heard throughout the fifth season. For the first time in the series, Palpatine will appear as Darth Sidious in the flesh, not merely as a hologram. The so-called "Rule of Two," which holds that there can be only be one Sith master and one Sith apprentice, hasn't been followed of late, and the Dark Side of the Force is looking less like a line and more like a flowchart. "Darth Sidious isn't a hologram because he's not happy about this flowchart." Also, for some Force choking with a little side of Imperial March, check out the clip below.
This clip also teases another big addition. We'll be seeing much, much more of Bo-Katan, the female Mandalorian of the Death Watch. Why has she teamed up with Obi-Wan? It's unclear, but Filoni told the audience, "Bo-Katan will do more this season than Boba Fett ever did." This resulted in jeers, but those turned to applause when Filoni admitted that part of his thought in bringing Bo-Katan to the forefront was, "Let's give the ladies some cool armor." Boba Fett won't appear in this season.
The audience response to the new footage was pretty positive, to the extent that one person came up to the mic, admitted that he'd never seen the show before (he was just waiting for the Halo panel to start), but he was so impressed that he was going to start watching as soon as he got home. One mother, though, got the most profound response out of Filoni. She said that she was often mocked for her love of Star Wars growing up, and thanked Filoni and Michnovetz for giving her six-year-old daughter a role model in Ahsoka Tano and making it cool for her to like Star Wars. Then she said, "But," and paused.
Filoni ducked, clutching his head. "I know where this is going."
"But," she reiterated, "my daughter would be devastated if something terrible happened to Ahsoka, even though I explained to her that she's a doomed character."
Filoni thrust a finger at her. "That's on you!"
After pointing out her daughter, who was sitting in the audience (and gave a happy wave), the mother continued, "Is it safe to keep watching, or do I have to start screening the episodes?"
Filoni got a little misty-eyed here. "I take that very seriously," he said. "I wouldn't want to upset your kid at all." He talked a bit about the importance of Ahsoka to the show's young fans, and assured the woman, "I don't make the decision to kill characters lightly."
I've always thought there were ways the show could get out of killing Ahsoka within the Clone Wars timeline, but after seeing how stone-cold serious Filoni got at that moment, I'm a bit worried for the plucky Padawan.


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With the passing of Clara Coley this week, I thought I would put together a quick little history with the photos I have of her. A good portion of this is written around Clara's obituary. I have an autobiography of Ivan so I will create a separate post for him in the future.
Clara McMurdie was born 26 January 1914 in Paradise, Cache, Utah with a twin brother Clarance (1914-1919). She was one of 11 children born to Sarah Amelia Checketts and Joseph Kay McMurdie. She grew up in Cache Valley and her family moved to Richmond, Cache, Utah when she was a few years old. It was while they lived in Richmond that she met Ivan Coley who was a few years older than her. Clarance died and is buried in Richmond. Her family moved to Buhl, Twin Falls, Idaho in 1928.
Ivan hitchhiked all the way from Utah to Idaho to be with Clara after her family moved to Buhl. They were married 22 October 1930 in Buhl. After marriage, they moved and lived at the Coley Ranch in Richmond. They were later sealed 10 February 1932 in the Logan LDS Temple. An interesting side note, the great grandson of the Bishop who married them presided as the Bishop over Clara's funeral.
Ivan and Clara moved back to Buhl and survived the Great Depression there. They purchased a 160 acre farm in Melon Valley in Buhl. That farm was sold in 1961 and they purchased five acres just outside of Buhl and kept that property for 36 years.
I have in my records that there were five children born to Ivan and Clara although the obituary only has 4 listed. I will have to determine which is correct.
Sarah Colleen Coley born in 1932 in Richmond.
An unnamed son was born 12 February 1934 in Buhl. He died the same day. If I understood it correctly, this little boy was stillborn. Apparently he is buried on the McMurdie Farm in Buhl. I wonder if the present owner is aware of the grave or if it is marked?
Lorus Ivan Coley ("Bud) was born 1 August 1936 in Buhl. He died 23 October 1962 while on a hunting trip down near the Nevada border. Initially reported to me as an hunting accident, I later learned it appears to have been a murder framed to appear as a suicide. Apparently there is an open investigation ongoing at this time on this matter. I will be interested to learn the outcome of the matter.
I was told there was an unnamed son born in 1938 who also died the same day who was stillborn. I do not have an exact date for this one so I suppose what makes me question it is that Clara's obituary does not mention him. I will have to find out more from the family.
In 1942, Ivan's father Herbert came to visit for part of the summer. At Ivan and Clara's home near the well, he fell and broke his hip. This injury would lead to his death in September.
Lastly, Clarene RaNae Coley born in 1947 in Buhl.
Clara dedicated her life to love and care for her family and friends. Even into her late 60's she was known to outrun her grandchildren. Ivan and Clara dedicated their lives to their grandchildren. Grandchildren often spent many nights, or even weeks, on the farm. Clara loved to quilt and made beautiful blankets. She also made rugs from all the fabric scraps. She was left-handed. She worked at a number of jobs including bus driver.
Ivan and Clara celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in 1990. It is about this time that I have my first memory visiting Ivan and Clara with my grandmother Colleen Jonas (technically a niece-in-law).
Here is a photo from May 2012. She was 98 years old and looked to be in great shape and pretty classy. I visited with her about this same time and she identified a number of individuals in photographs for me and still had a sense of humor.
Clara passed away on Christmas Day 2012 at the St. Lukes Regional Hospital in Twin Falls. Her funeral was held 4 January 2012 in Buhl with the burial between her husband and son in the West End, Buhl, Idaho cemetery.