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 USA
(Source: ZNET - March 10, 1999)
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