'We Need You': Former Militant Leader Whose Group Was Surveilled by FBI Co-Chairs Biden-Harris Environmental Justice Council
Brief EPA bio describes Richard Moore, once linked to the Weathermen terrorists, as 'widely respected national leader'
The White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council was created in the first week of the Biden-Harris administration as part of the White House’s effort to, according to an executive order, "increase the federal government’s efforts to address current and historic environmental injustice." The group is composed of individuals appointed by the president who, the White House states, "have knowledge about or experience in environmental justice, climate change, disaster preparedness, or racial inequity, among other areas of expertise."
Leading those individuals is a man named Richard Moore, who co-chairs the council. His brief biography provided by the Environmental Protection Agency describes him as a "widely respected national leader in the area of environmental justice" who "has served on numerous government and nongovernmental committees and panels."
But a Washington Free Beacon review of declassified FBI documents, academic texts, and public reports show Moore’s links to left-wing extremist groups. Some of those groups, including the Weathermen, explicitly called for the overthrow of the U.S. government.
That revelation could spell trouble for Harris, who worked for years to create a federal office focused solely on "environmental justice." In 2020, she introducedthe "Environmental Justice for All Act," which would have created a new environmental justice "working group" tasked with developing a "coordinated interagency federal environmental justice strategy" and funding a new "environmental justice basic training program."
A separate bill proposed by Harris that same year, called the "Climate Equity Act of 2020" would have established a "Climate and Environmental Equity Office." Legislation passed by Congress going forward, the bill states, would require an "equity score" from the newly created environmental justice office.
Harris has maintained close ties with the council. She spoke at its first meeting in March 2021, telling members: "We need your insight, your expertise, your lived experience. We need your ideas and your recommendations. Basically, we need you, period."
In August 2023, CNN reported that Harris invited several council members to her residence at the Naval Observatory for an Earth Day party, along with other left-wing activists and celebrities. "That was around the time we were hearing a lot from them [VP’s office] that she wants to do more" about climate change, one activist told CNN. "She has actively been reaching out to our community, ‘I want to do more on climate, how can I do that.’"
The Harris campaign declined to comment on Harris’s relationship with Moore or whether he attended that party. A spokeswoman for Harris told the Free Beacon that the inquiries were not "a campaign matter" and referred the Free Beacon to the White House, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Moore’s earliest political activities, records show, appear to begin in the 1960s. Moore cofounded a militant group modeled after the Black Panthers in Albuquerque called the Black Berets, archives hosted at the University of New Mexico show.
The Black Berets’ 12-point program included opposing capitalism and the "Amerikkkan Military" while supporting "armed self-defense and armed struggle" as "the only means to liberation." Although the Black Berets’ membership was largely Hispanic, the group affiliated with several far-left groups at the time, including the Weathermen and the Venceremos Brigade, translated to English as "We Shall Triumph."
Moore, along with other members of the Black Berets, soon formally joined the Venceremos Brigade. An offshoot of the far-left Students for a Democratic Society, the brigade was founded for the purpose of American leftists to aid the new communist government in Cuba. Moore eventually served on the brigade’s national committee.
An FBI dossier, now declassified, described the Venceremos Brigade as "a coalition of New Left Organizations to encourage American youth to travel to Cuba in defiance of a ban on travel to that country by the United States Department of State" and "assist the Castro regime in the harvesting of sugar cane and other agricultural products and to give young Americans the experience of living in a revolutionary communist country."
The brigade caught the FBI’s attention in 1970. Declassified agency documents say participants in the trips sponsored by the brigade included members of the Weathermen, a far-left terrorist organization behind a series of domestic bombings in the 1970s.
"Weatherman members have moved into collectives in the major cities of the country and ... keep their whereabouts unknown to local and Federal authorities," an FBI file on the group states. "Persons who participated in the recent trip to Cuba sponsored by the Venceremos Brigade have been furnished by [FBI surveillance]."
The brigade was also the subject of a congressional investigation in 1972, part of broader government concerns about Soviet infiltration during the Cold War. A New Orleans sheriff’s office testified that he infiltrated the group. "To be a member of the brigade," he told lawmakers, "you had to be confirmed as a Marxist-Leninist."
"The people who came together to initiate this project represented a broad cross-section of the radical movements of the era: they were members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) ... the Communist Party, the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords [a Chicago-based street gang], and other organizations on the frontlines of the struggles for socialism and against racism, sexism, and US imperialism and war," the Venceremos Brigade’s websitestates.
The brigade still operates today as a nonprofit organization under the wing of The People’s Forum, a far-left Manhattan-based organization funded by Neville Singham that was also at the forefront of the illegal occupation of Columbia University in May. Singham, a multimillionaire who now lives in China, is a self-described communist who has "long admired Maoism," according to the New York Times.
It’s unclear when Moore formally disassociated from these organizations. He continued his work in left-wing activism, representing several left-wing environmentalist groups, largely based in New Mexico, in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, his influence reaches into the White House.
While the environmental justice council has no formal regulatory power, a Government Accountability Office report from January shows that it holds meetings with senior White House officials at various agencies including the Executive Office of the President.
That report found that White House staff worked closely with the council to implement a sweeping new policy that puts race at the center of government spending called Justice40. That same report found that the White House ordered all agencies to "review and incorporate, where appropriate, recommendations from" the council.
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