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 


FREEDOM  FOR
TOM  MANNING