Transcript of interview with former co-op volunteer / FBI confidential informant

Interviewer: How did you become an FBI informant during the Minnesota food co-op wars of 1975?

Name redacted: Well, when co-ops started forming in the late ‘60s, the FBI thought it was a communist plot. That theory got a lot of traction because many early co-op’ers were actual, literal Communists, mimeographing typewritten Leninist newsletters. You would’ve thought downtown Minneapolis was the Red Square. So it was a case of “let’s just keep an eye on these people.” But since there was a cooperative warehouse in Wisconsin serving as a distribution hub, when co-op-related violence broke out, it crossed state lines. So the FBI went from passive surveillance to active infiltration. When the Minneapolis co-op wars spread to the North Shore in ’75, I was on the short list to infiltrate the Duluth one. A native Duluthian, I had worked undercover before, and I was already a Co-op shopper. I was not a member, but knew some of the early Co-op’ers from church. I wasn’t on the anarcho-communist continuum, and I wasn’t a hippie — I just wanted better food. This made my handlers a little nervous. They started thinking I was a pinko. But I told them, “You couldn’t find a loaf of whole wheat bread in Duluth until the Co-op opened in 1970.” They were eating Wonder Bread baloney sandwiches with mayonnaise, but that convinced them. So the FBI paid for my Co-op membership. Then I signed up for member volunteer work shifts to get on the inside. I stirred buckets of nut butter with a drill attachment, but I heard stuff. I wasn’t the only one, the Feds had an informant in Grand Marais too, and some as far south as Iowa. Minneapolis was the hub, of course; the co-ops down there were popping off like popcorn.

Duluth Herald late-edition special report
Thursday, Jan. 28, 1915
By Joe Crisp, Senior Shipping Reporter

A famed local maritime drinking establishment has shut its doors. This is the ship’s pilot house on the tip of Timber Point in the harbor. For 16 years it has operated as the Pilot House bar. Initially serving a clientele made up exclusively of members of the Great Lakes Life Saving Service, soon it caught on with sailors and dock workers. Older Duluthians recall its origin, as the pilot house of the doomed Marchande which stuck out of the water in the shipping lanes for weeks in 1899. She had sunk by the stern as her cargo shifted, but her nose bobbed up. Using a floating crane, the Life Savers salvaged the pilot house and installed it on Timber Point. There they collectively owned and operated it as a business, until last night.

Because today, as the war in Europe heats up, the 45-year-old Life Saving Service has been officially subsumed into the Revenue Cutter Service. The resulting compound organization forms the newest branch of the armed forces, the United States Coast Guard. The Pilot House is a casualty of new regulations and a wave of retirements. Some old-timer Life Savers don’t wish to adapt, nor to compete against much younger men in basic training, to re-qualify for what will be different jobs. Many jobs are being eliminated. All three of Duluth’s Life Saving stations — at Park Point, Lester River, and Stony Point — have been officially replaced by the single new Coast Guard station in the harbor. The oars and battered wooden surfboats of the Life-Savers have given way to a steel steam-powered Coast Guard cutter, and a modern Life-Saving station complete with radio equipment and a machine shop. Among the sweeping changes are rules prohibiting Coast Guard personnel profiting from salvage. And since all the booze served at the Pilot House was salvaged from local shipwrecks, this effectively puts the bar out of business. Last night was last call.