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During Perente's lifetime, his true identity was treated by his organization as a state secret. Paul Rauber reported in a 1984 East Bay Express exposé of the group that Perente once responded to a journalist who revealed he was Gerald Doeden with a menacing, but ultimately baffling diatribe.
"But don't blame it on the cops," Perente told the journalist. "They do it for a living. I started this in '58 —'53, actually; I was born young. Name-calling doesn't do it. Some guy calls him pig, will call you CIA, and some poor bastard will get whacked for it. This is work, dammit."
The odd secrecy continues to this day. It's almost impossible to contact NatlFed. There's no listing of an official headquarters, and efforts to reach Perente's supposed successor, Ribar, were unsuccessful. I was unable to find a number for Ribar, and a known associate of hers — Phyllis Garrett, who was arrested during the 1996 raid in New York — simply told me, "I'm sorry, but there's nobody here who can help you."
Leaders of organizations that seem very much like NatlFed front groups, meanwhile, publicly deny their association with the larger group. However, they share similar protocols for dealing with the press — protocols established by NatlFed, according to investigations by the FBI and other news organizations.
Former volunteer Whitnack has a boilerplate document on handling the media from his days with the group. "It starts off with 'Of course we'll ...' and ends with the journalist having to submit something on letterhead," he said. "Looking back, the document seemed more for internal use — instilling among members that NatlFed is alpha dog over the press."
It may still be official policy, however. When I called two representatives for NatlFed-linked groups, each told me almost identical things — to put my request in writing on SF Weekly's letterhead. I never heard back from them after doing so.
After a month of research, I'm still left with the question: Who are these people? And what is it, really, that they do?
When Whitnack recently wrote on the Physicians Organizing Committee's Yelp page that the group was part of NatlFed, committee member Brian Tseng wrote him a private message via the page. "First of all, POC uses the same method of organizing, systemic organizing, but no, we're not part of the National Labor Federation," he wrote. "You may also note that there are a lot of people who have good things to say about those organizing drives, because they do great work, period."
"Systemic organizing" is NatlFed jargon for methods compiled by Perente during the 1970s in The Essential Organizer, a collection of stapled, photocopied pages ex-members say has been recited as if it were the group's bible.
Although the FBI's investigation did not name the Physicians Organizing Committee as a NatlFed spinoff, it certainly seems to have NatlFed links. Fahlberg says that during her time with the group, she saw documents referring to the committee as a NatlFed entity. A former Perente aide confirmed it was part of the Provisional Communist Party's medical fraction. The Physicians Organizing Committee received a $5,000 grant in 1999 from NEJA, NatlFed's apparent funding arm. In 2005, Geoff Wilson, who was identified as the Physicians Organizing Committee's manager in a Pacific Sun story six years ago, donated more than $20,000 worth of stock to NEJA. And Whitnack, who volunteered with the group in 1984, said he worked alongside Wilson in the Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals, described in NatlFed's FBI file as a front group.
A few days after speaking with Tseng, I called the Physicians Organizing Committee a second time and left a message saying I wanted to discuss the group's links to NatlFed. Tseng didn't respond, so I visited him in the committee's small 18th-floor office on Sutter Street.
"So is it correct to say you refuse to state whether you are linked to the National Labor Federation?" I asked, after having the door closed in my face twice.
"Look, this is starting to constitute harassment," Tseng said. A young woman at his side added, "We only do interviews with people who submit a letter," and shut the door in my face again.
