FBI SNITCH SENTENCED TO LIFE 
FBI SNITCH SENTENCED TO LIFE | In the series
of trials which followed the capture of the Ohio 7, the government relied
heavily upon the testimony of an informant named Joseph Aceto (aka: Joseph
Balino), a former member of Statewide Correctional Alliance for Reform
(SCAR), a prisoners-rights organization founded in Portland, Maine during
the early 1970s by Tom Manning and Ray Luc Levasseur. Aceto offered
considerable "evidence" concerning the original formation of the SMJJ,
its evolution into UFF, and supposedly first-hand recollections of the
defendants' having described their bombing and bank-robbing exploits to
him. Only later did it emerge conclusively that the government's star witness
had consistently lied under oath, passing off third-hand gossip and utter
fabrications as conversations in which he himself had participated.
It also came out that Aceto had been diagnosed as psychotic and administered
heavy doses of the tranquilizer Mellaril - to "increase his veracity" -
prior to testimony. To top things off, it was revealed that,
in exchange for such testimony, the FBI had arranged for him to be released
from prison where he was serving a life sentence for a brutal stabbing
murder and placed on the federal witness protection program (a package
with an $800 per month stipend). All this information had been
withheld from the defense - and consequently from the jury - at trial.
FROM - The COINTELPRO Papers, Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars, Against Dissent in the United States by Ward Churchill & Jim Vander Wall |
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TOM MANNING |
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