WHEN BILL SIMPICH , an East Bay lawyer representing Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, filed suit against the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Oakland Police Department 11 years ago, it seemed like a long shot at best. The two activists were going to federal court to try to nail the U.S. government for conspiring with local authorities to engage in a political smear campaign.

All of this was wrapped up in the environmental politics of the 1990s. Earth First!, a radical group with a take-no-prisoners attitude, had emerged as a popular alternative to more cautious, incrementalist enviros like the Sierra Club and was generating excitement among hardcore politics types – and fear and anger within the timber industry and the FBI.

Bari and Cherney were driving from Humboldt County to Oakland in 1990 to stir up interest in Redwood Summer, a series of demonstrations aimed at stopping old-growth logging, when a bomb went off in Bari's car. She was badly hurt; Cherney was slightly injured.

The Oakland cops and the FBI immediately blamed the victims, saying that Bari and Cherney must have built the bomb themselves. They didn't do much of an investigation beyond that – and when it turned out there was no evidence to justify charging the two with the crime, the case was essentially dropped.

But Bari and Cherney weren't done. They sued – and this spring they finally got their day in court. To judge from the San Francisco Chronicle's coverage of the trial, it hasn't been terribly newsworthy (save for when Cherney sang a song for the judge, which merited a special Chron story of its own). But as A.C. Thompson reports on page 21, the trial was actually something of a bombshell.

Among other things, evidence presented during six weeks of testimony showed that the Oakland Police Department had been spying on Earth First! (and some 300 other political groups) all along. The FBI had scanned Bari's and Cherney's phone records and created files on dozens of other activist groups that one of the two had contacted. The evidence that led the authorities to finger the two activists with bombing themselves was either tainted, bogus, or insupportable.

At press time the jury was still deliberating, and it's not clear what the final verdict will be. Bari died five years ago. Simpich has stepped down from the case (in part so he could be a witness). But the three of them have won a huge victory – truth (at least some of it) is finally coming out.