From: nattyreb@ix.netcom.com
Date: Fri, 07 May 1999 18:02:39
Subject: !*Wages Of COINTELPRO Still Evident In Omaha Black Panther Case

FORWARDED ARTICLE
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Date: Fri, 7 May 1999 03:02:23 -0700 (PDT)
From: Arm The Spirit 

http://www.zmag.org/commentaries/mar10%5F1999.htm

ZNet Commentary

March 10, 1999

Wages Of COINTELPRO Still Evident In Omaha Black Panther Case
by Ward Churchill

In 1980, former FBI Director L. Patrick Grey and Edward S. Miller,
one-time head of Squad 47, the domestic counterintelligence unit in the
FBI's New York Field Office, were convicted of having "conspired to injure
and oppress the citizens of the United States". The context of their
crimes was COINTELPRO, a secret, nationwide campaign conducted by the
Bureau from 1956-1971 for purposes of destroying "politically
objectionable" organizations and individuals through any and every means
available to it. In 1975, an investigating committee headed by Senator
Frank Church found that the operation had, from start to finish, be
"fraught with illegality". 

Neither Grey nor Miller ever spent a day in jail as a result of their
convictions. In April 1981, President Ronald Reagan interrupted their
appeals to announce that he was bestowing pardons on both men. The reason
stated was that their misdeeds had occurred during an especially turbulent
and divisive period in American history. It was time to "put all this
behind us", Reagan said, and "to forgive those who engaged in excesses"
during the political conflicts of the era. 

At the time, it was pointed out that if this were to be Reagan's policy,
it would be at least as appropriate for him to pardon the numerous victims
of COINTELPRO as to forgive its perpetrators. We noted how the Church
Committee had discovered that a COINTELPRO technique had been to use the
courts to "neutralize" selected activists by obtaining false convictions
against them, that the FBI typically involved local police in such
endeavours, and that of all the groups targeted in this manner the Black
Panther Party (BPP) had been hit hardest and most extensively. 

No action was taken by the Reagan administration in this connection,
however, and former Panthers continued to serve time, many of them in
cases showing clear signs of COINTELPRO manipulation. It would be another
decade before the first such prisoner, a once prominent New York BPP
leader named Dhoruba Bin Wahad (Richard Moore), was finally released after
spending 21 years behind bars on a wrongful conviction. His case is
instructive. 

In 1989, it was conclusively established that the prosecution, with the
active collaboration of Miller's Squad 47, had withheld exculpatory
ballistics reports during the 1973 trial in which Bin Wahad was found
guilty of attempting to murder two police officers. It was also shown that
members of Squad 47, working with detectives from the NYPD Red Squad, had
suborned perjury from the state's star witness. The FBI had repeatedly
denied the existence of documents confirming these facts for a dozen years
(1975-87), thereby thwarting Bin Wahad's right to appeal. The conviction
was finally overturned in 1990. 

Similar circumstances attend the case of Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt, former
head of the Panthers' Los Angeles chapter. Charged in 1970 with a 1968
murder in Santa Monica, Pratt always maintained that he was 350 miles away
at the time, attending a BPP meeting in Oakland. At trial he argued that,
since the FBI had bugged the meeting, its electronic surveillance logs
would verify his whereabouts, and thus his innocence. An FBI official then
took the stand and denied that any such surveillance had occurred. 

Years later, after the Church Committee confirmed that the surveillance
had in fact been conducted, the FBI rather implausibly claimed to have
"lost" the relevant logs. Nonetheless, Pratt's conviction was not
overturned until 1997, when it was proven that Julio C. Butler - the
state's star witness and, unknown to the jury, a paid FBI informant - had
perjured himself on key points. By then, Pratt had served 27 years. 

This case is especially illuminating in that a career FBI agent, M. Wesley
Swearingen, has testified that Pratt was deliberately framed by the FBI as
part of its campaign to destroy the Black Panther Party. Swearingen's
testimony corroborates to a significant extent an earlier account provided
by Louis Tackwood, at one time an informant paid by the LAPD Red Squad to
infiltrate the Los Angeles BPP chapter. According to Tackwood, Red Squad
detectives and FBI COINTELPRO personnel simply sat down one afternoon with
a stack of unsolved case files, looking for the murder with which Pratt
might be most feasibly charged. They then orchestrated appropriate
"evidence" and had him prosecuted. 

Currently, attention is shifting to still another case involving former
Black Panthers and bearing the indelible imprint of COINTELPRO. From its
inception, the allegation that one-time Omaha BPP leaders Mondo we Langa
(David Rice) and Edward Poindexter were involved in the 1970 murder of
Police Officer Larry Minard has been strained. Duane Peak, the only person
known for certain to have participated in the bombing that killed Minard,
mentioned neither man in his original confession. Nor did he in his
second, more detailed statement to the police. Indeed, he testified at a
preliminary hearing that Rice and Poindexter were not involved. Meanwhile,
Peak had named six other men, none of them active BPP members, and none of
them ever charged. His story changed only after prosecutors offered him a
deal in which he could plead as a juvenile - thereby serving only two
years - in exchange for incriminating the local BPP leadership. 

Rice and Poindexter were convicted in April 1971, mainly on the basis of
Peak's testimony. There is ample indication he perjured himself. As to
physical evidence supporting Peak's account, a federal court ruled in 1974
that the search through which it was allegedly found was illegal (a matter
admitting to the possibility that it was planted, as Rice has insisted all
along). A new trial was ordered at that time, but prevented by a
jurisdictional technicality applied post hoc by the Supreme Court in 1976. 

Further appeals were blocked by yet another technicality: the statutory
time limit for filing in Nebraska courts had expired while Rice and
Poindexter awaited an outcome in the federal process. One result has been
severe constraints on their ability to reopen the case in light of FBI
documents released in 1978. These reveal that police detectives
collaborated with FBI personnel to suppress exculpatory evidence during
the 1971 trial. 

Such subversion of the judicial process is consistent with the COINTELPRO
methods employed against Bin Wahad and Pratt, as well as the fact that the
Omaha BPP chapter - Rice and Poindexter in particular - were targeted for
COINTELPRO neutralization in mid-1968. The motive underlying police
performance in the Rice/Poindexter case was recently spelled out by Jack
Swanson, the detective who headed up the 1970 bombing investigation. "I
think we did the right thing at the time", he told a BBC interviewer,
"because the Black Panther Party...completely disappeared from Omaha
[after] we got the two main players." 

Former Nebraska Governor Frank Morrison has observed that Rice and
Poindexter "were convicted for their rhetoric, not for any crime they
committed." Amnesty International, the NAACP, Jericho '98 and the
Congressional Black Caucus have all taken up the case. Since 1993, the
Nebraska Parole Board has voted unanimously and repeatedly to commute both
men's sentences to time served. Yet, to date, the Nebraska Board of
Pardons has refused to schedule a hearing in the matter. One Board member
has even asserted that there are "no circumstances" under which he would
consider commutation. 

Simple justice demands reversal of this position. Surely, even if one
believes Rice and Poindexter were involved in Minard's death, it must be
conceded that 28 years of incarceration is sufficient punishment. After
all, Nebraska's Board of Pardons commuted the sentence of even the
notorious Caril Ann Fugate - an admitted participant in 11 murders - after
less than 20 years. Moreover, the fact that Rice and Poindexter were
denied the due process rights to which all citizens are and must be
entitled leaves a quite reasonable concern that they are innocent of the
offense for which they have been imprisoned for more than a
quarter-century. Contrary to the sentiment expressed by the Board member
quoted above, there are no circumstances in which prolonging the situation
is an acceptable option. 

Ultimately, and perhaps ironically, Ronald Reagan had it right. By 1981,
it was indeed time to forgive those whose offenses, real or perceived,
accrued from the sociopolitical vortex of the Vietnam era. Can there be
serious doubt that the principle is as applicable to former Black Panthers
as to former FBI officials? Anything else would be a travesty of justice,
and the country has already witnessed far too many of these. 

What is done cannot be undone, but the future can be changed. Mondo we
Langa and Ed Poindexter deserve at this late date not just to be heard but
to be free men, reintegrated with and contributing their undeniable
talents to their community, participating fully in the ongoing process of
healing and reconciliation about which President Reagan spoke so glowingly
18 years ago. 

Those desiring further information on the Rice/Poindexter case and/or
wishing to support their petitions for commutation of sentence should
contact: 

Tekla Johnson Lincoln Justice Committee
P.O. Box 4756
Lincoln, NE 68504

(c) 1999 ZNet/Z Magazine


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