Secret Army Organization

The Secret Army Organization (SAO) was a short-lived right-wing paramilitary organization in Southern California, set up in 1971 in the aftermath of the breakup of the Minutemen group by local law enforcement. The ACLU has claimed that the organization had FBI support. History The Secret Army Organization was headquartered in San Diego, California and consisted of around twelve local members with a handful more spread across Southern California. Its creation was the product of a meeting held on October 16–17, 1971; its leaders, Howard B. Godfrey and Jerry Lynn Davis, had been members of the Minutemen, a right-wing extremist organization. In 1971 and 1972, the Secret Army Organization engaged in a variety of criminal and provocative behavior. They fire-bombed cars, burglarized the homes of antiwar protestors, and ransacked places of work. ACLU report On June 26, 1975, the American Civil Liberty Union of Southern California filed a report with Senate investigators alleging that the FBI was instrumental in the creation and operation of the SAO. The filing of this report came two days after the FBI publicly acknowledged its involvement in the illegal domestic counterintelligence program COINTELPRO, with activity spanning from May 1968 until April 1971.