“Fusion paranoia”: FBI informants and agents provocateurs in The Ku Klux Klan and The Black Panther Party, 1964-1971

!Fusion paranoia

FBI informants and agents provocateurs in The Ku Klux Klan and The Black Panther Party, 1964-1971

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HIS3020 - Writing History School of Historical Studies

BA (Hons.) History !Dr. Benjamin Houston !

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Front page illustration taken from SAC Birmingham to Director J. Edgar Hoover, December 22nd

1964, FBI Files, 157-9-4-11 Originally appeared in The Birmingham News, December 8 1964

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!!Contents !!!!

Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 !!Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 !Chapter One: The Ku Klux Klan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

Informant placement Snitch-jacketing and paranoia Agents provocateurs !

Chapter Two: The Black Panther Party . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22 Agents provocateurs Paranoia and the purge Snitch-jacketing !

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..30 !!Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33 !!Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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!Abstract !!

From 1956-1971, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began a series of covert

counterintelligence programs (COINTELPRO) aimed at infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting

domestic political organisations and social movements in the United States. In 1964, the

COINTELPRO-White Hate program was set up to penetrate and report on right-wing organisations,

mainly the Ku Klux Klan. In 1967, the COINTELPRO-Black Hate program (In documents,

officially called Black Nationalist-Hate Groups, later changed to Black Extremist post-1971)

was also set up with similar intentions, focusing on the Black Panther Party and other social

movements in the black community. The use of informants and agents provocateurs in both

organisations was a main tactic used by the FBI to create internal dissension. Informants were also

used to gain potentially disparaging information which would then be used to bring external

criticism and embarrassment to leaders and groups in an attempt to discredit them. The mere threat

of informants was the source of major paranoia, internal arguments and factionalization in both the

Ku Klux Klan and the Black Panther Party and accounted for the large number of false accusations.

In one case, eight Panther members were indicted for the murder of a falsely accused member. The

FBI capitalised on this paranoia and engaged in snitch-jacketing in both organisations, planting

information and forging letters which indicated cooperation with the authorities in an attempt to

damage the reputation of a leader or high profile member. Despite the FBI relying on informants

for the majority of their counterintelligence programs, it has remained a relatively untouched aspect

of the 1960s. This study aims to re-evaluate the experience of both the Ku Klux Klan and the Black

Panther Party in an effort to ultimately compare the use of informants in both organisations.

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!Introduction !!

In an article for Elks Magazine in August 1956, Hoover wrote an extensive article on the rise of

communism and condemned those who indulge in sabotage by semantics they stigmatise

patriotic Americans with the obnoxious term informer, when such citizens fulfil their obligations

of citizenship by reporting known facts of the evil conspiracy to properly constituted authorities. It

would require very little time for these critics to pick up dictionary. Websters unabridged volume

specifically states that an informant is one who gives information of whatever sort; an informer

is one who informs against another by way of accusation or complaint. Informer is often, informant

never, a term of opprobrium. It is obvious from this extract that FBI sources were, and still are, 1

classed as domestic patriotic Americans, and Hoover therefore considered it deceitful and

subversive to describe them with a term of opprobrium, or in any way which is considered

criticism. Arguing semantics, Hoover is inferring that an informant is merely someone discovering

pieces of information about an existing conspiracy and giving this over to the authorities in a

sense of civic duty. Police and Bureau literature often makes the effort to portray those who inform

as performing patriotic, middle Americans. As Frank Donner argues, to look at informants in such 2

a reductive manner is a crude forgery of the FBIs informers relationship and role. 3

Thus, due to their ambiguous nature, the role of informants as used by by the FBI is an often

unexplored phenomenon of social movements and organisations. Whilst the justification for using

informers is quite limited, the FBI relied on their vast network of informant programs in the 1960s

to justify surveillance where there was often no plausible explanation for it, and it was used as their

!5

J.Edgar Hoover, Communist New Look: Grand Lodge Convention Report, Elks Magazine, August 1956, 117

Gary T. Marx, Thoughts on a Neglected Category of Social Movement Participant: The Agent Provocateur 2and the Informant American Journal of Sociology, 80, 2 (1974), 406

Frank Donner, Political Informers, in Investigating the FBI, eds. Pat Watters and Stephen Gillers (New 3York: Doubleday, 1973), 338

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main technique. In much of the recent literature, and especially in recounting of the era, there has

been much attention paid to two main aspects of the Bureaus intelligence work: electronic

surveillance (in terms of wire taps and bugs in hotel rooms, for example) and neutralisation

techniques. The existence of such methods should not be, and has not been, minimised. Yet to only

focus on these main aspects, as controversial and as rich as they may seem to a wider audience, is to

simplify the Bureaus activities during this era. In the 1975 exhibits of the Church Committee, the

U.S. Senate Committee which investigated FBI intelligence gathering for illegality after Watergate,

the final report found that the most frequent intelligence collection techniques were informants

(83%) and police confidential sources (74%) in overall FBI investigations, with physical

surveillance (18%) and electronic surveillance (5%) representing a much lower percentage. 4

According to a former Bureau employee, they spent approximately one million dollars maintaining

informants in the 1960s. Yet this figure is open to interpretation when you consider that their 5

budget for fiscal 1967 was $166 million and given that the majority of their intelligence was based

on the maintenance of informants. These figures make it obvious how important informants were 6

to gain information on domestic subversives, which it makes it all the more vital to assess the

impact on groups and organisations, which has previously received minor attention in previous

scholarship.

In their various roles, informants and agents provocateurs can cause a large amount of

distortion on the life of a organisation, and can serve as mechanisms of containment, prolongation,

alteration, or repression. There are numerous important differentiating factors, such as whether the 7

!6

See Appendix A4

William C. Sullivan, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoovers FBI, (London: W. W. Norton & Company, 51979), 129

W. Pincus, The Bureaus Budget: A Source of Power. in Investigating the FBI, eds. Pat Watters and 6Stephen Gillers (New York: Doubleday, 1973), 76

Gary T. Marx, Thoughts on a Neglected Category of Social Movement Participant: The Agent Provocateur 7and the Informant American Journal of Sociology, 80, 2 (1974), 402

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agent was planted in the group or was already a member before being recruited; and whether their

motives are a product of ideology, Bureau pressure, material ends (typically monetary), or personal

gains. Yet there must be a distinction between an informant, who merely takes an information-

gathering role, and agents provocateurs who makes a concerted effort to influence the actions and

lifespan of a group. William Sullivan, the former head of the Bureaus intelligence operations, said

that informants must always walk the line between observation and participation. Yet in some 8

cases, sources were in fact instructed by their Bureau handlers to take violent action against

organisations in an effort to sabotage aspects such as funding. One example of this would be

Darthard Perry, who was asked to commit arson against the Watts Writers Workshop and their

multi-million dollar Douglass Foundation building in Los Angeles in 1973. In an interview in 9

1978, he claimed that the Bureau had wanted it gone because It looked like there was a

possibility of a grant being given back to the workshops, and if there was no environment then there

would be no grant. 10

Adding to the ambiguity of informants, there are various logistical issues when analysing

Bureau documents during a study such as this. A large amount of the available material is heavily

redacted as the information still remains classified. Names and locations have been blacked out on

the majority of files, and in some instances there are entire pages with only one or two words

visible. There are eighteen exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act, but most of these 11

deletions fall under the exemptions which state that the disclosure of the information would damage

the national security or that it would be classed as an invasion of privacy of the subject or, in this

!7

William C. Sullivan, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoovers FBI, 1288

Daniel Widener, Black Arts West: Culture and Struggle in Postwar Los Angeles, (New York: Duke 9University Press, 2010), 151

How the FBI Sabotaged Black America (Los Angeles: Gil Noble, 1978)10

See Appendix B11

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case, the identity of a confidential FBI source or informant. Thus, FBI informants are almost never 12

referred to by name in documents and instead are given a unique source code which functioned to

make them easier to file. For example, the recent exposure of Ernest Withers (A famed Civil Rights

photographer) in 2012 as an informant was only fully pieced together by The Commercial Appeal

when his informant number was released with original court-ordered files, ME 338-R. The 13

possibility of falsified information is another problem encountered when basing research on FBI

documents. As one ex-special agent was quoted as saying, We get conflicting information all the

time, so a lot of untrue information gets recorded in our files. A lot of what the story is depends on

the questions that are asked by the agent. As William Sullivan highlights, informants get to 14

know the kind of information we want and many of them tailor their stories to suit the occasion., as

the reward for furnishing useful information was often worth a large bonus. To gain a better 15

understanding of the role of informants, it is necessary to delve a lot deeper into oral history with

previous Black Panther and Ku Klux Klan members, as well as the ex-informants.

The impact of COINTELPRO informants on the Ku Klux Klan is a decidedly untouched

aspect of the majority previous scholarship. Some of the most celebrated books which deal with

COINTELPRO on an exclusively large scale have chosen to omit or disregard the impact, whether

minor or large, it had on right-wing America. For example Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall,

who have published some of the most extensive studies on the released documents and the

consequences of FBI involvement in the late 1960s, have almost entirely ignored it in their books. 16

Similarly, Kenneth OReilly and David J. Garrow have documented the fact that the FBI have

!8

Natalie S. Robins, Alien Ink: The FBIs War on Freedom of Expression, (New York: Morrow, 1992)12

The Commercial Appeal, Withers: Exposed The Commercial Appeal. http://13www.commercialappeal.com/withers-exposed/ (accessed April 12, 2014)

Robins, Alien Ink: The FBIs War on Freedom of Expression, 214

How the FBI Sabotaged Black America (Los Angeles: Gil Noble, 1978)15

Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, COINTELPRO Papers: documents from the FBIs Secret Wars 16Against Dissent in the United States, (Boston: South End Press, 1990)

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primarily focused on the disruption of leftist and Civil Rights groups. John Drabble, who has 17

written considerably on the FBIs role in right-wing organisations, is arguably the most prominent

historian on this issue. When the issue has been broached in comparison with another group, it has

been in tandem with the New Left movement, most extensively by David Cunningham when

comparing FBI repressive responses to Left and Right-wing threats. When comparing the Ku Klux 18

Klan and New Left, there is very little to link the FBIs response to the two. When split into

separate sections, the COINTELPRO composite has 6 different elements or outcomes: 1. Attacks

on speaking, teaching, writing, and meeting, 2. Interference with personal and economic rights, 3.

Abuse of government processes, 4. Third party hostility, 5. Factionalization, 6. Propaganda. When 19

looking at the data, the main impact to the New Left was the attacks on speaking, teaching, writing,

and meeting. The main impact to the Ku Klux Klan was factionalization, which we will come to

learn was caused by heavy infiltration. The same can be said for the Black Panther Party, which was

mainly effected by factionalization and propaganda, afforded by informant penetration and paranoia

created through snitch-jacketing. To completely ignore the impact of the FBI, particularly the 20

informants, on right-wing groups is a reductive manner to approach the subject.

In contrast, the role of informants in The Black Panther movement is a generally well-

research topic which has afforded numerous pieces of research. Due to the controversial nature of

FBI infiltration in such a large black social movement, there is new information coming to light

every other year, whether through court orders or new interviews. Thus, to revisit the topic with the

new information in mind leads to improved understanding of the role of these sources and the

!9

Kenneth OReilly, Radical Matters: The FBIs Secret File on Black America, 1960-1972 (New York: Free 17Press, 1989), see also David J. Garrow, FBI and Martin Luther King Jr. (New York: Norton, 1981)

David Cunningham, Theres Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI by David 18Cunningham, (California: University of California Press, 2005) see also, David Cunningham, Understanding State Responses to Right vs Left-Wing Threats: The FBIs Repression of the New Left and the Ku Klux Klan, Social Science History, 27, 3 (2003), 328

See Appendix C19

See Appendix D20

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impact it had on the members, challenging pre-conceived notions about the downfall of the Panthers

and how this can be re-evaluated. The role of informants in both the Ku Klux Klan and the Black

Panther Party followed similar methods at the beginning of their respective FBI programs in 1964

and 1967, yet by the end of COINTELPRO in 1971, the outcome of both groups demonstrates how

there were differences in the approach by the Bureau.

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Chapter One !!The Ku Klux Klan !

The Federal Bureau of Investigations relationship with the Civil Rights-era Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

is still a largely unexplained, complex component of their vast network of political and social

infiltration. Between September 1964 and April 1971, they conducted a covert action program in an

attempt to discredit, disrupt, and vitiate the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist vigilante

organisations. Historians have remained relatively familiar with the role the FBI played in 21

cultivating the wave of anticommunism and infiltrating Civil Rights and New Left movements, yet

the FBI informant role in discrediting the KKK has not yet been thoroughly assessed, despite the

obvious effect it had on falling membership levels. William Sullivan has claimed that the FBI

certainly wouldnt have broken the Klan without them. The actual number of informants in the 22

Klan is a disputed topic, however. Officially FBI documents state that around 6 percent of the total

Klan membership were informants , although this is largely challenged by historians, who deem it 23

too modest. Edward P. Morgan claims that with almost two thousand informants within the

organisation by 1965 they amounted to about 20 percent of the total membership. The reality is 24

that scholars will never be able to place a totally accurate figure on the number of informants given

their obscure nature and difficulty in finding sources.

In June 1964, in the midst of the Mississippi Freedom Summer and after the disappearances

of three civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Cheney in

!11

John Drabble, To Ensure Domestic Tranquility: The FBI, COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE and Political 21Discourse, 1964-1971, Journal of American Studies, 38, 2, (2004), 353

Sullivan, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoovers FBI, 12822

Church Committee, Volume 6: Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Adams: January 12, 1976, 14423

Edward P. Morgan, The 60s Experience: Hard Lessons about Modern America, (California: Temple 24University Press, 1991

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Neshoba Country, President Lyndon B. Johnson was conferring daily with J. Edgar Hoover. I 25

asked Hoover to fill up Mississippi with FBI men and infiltrate everything [the KKK, White

Citizens councils, etc], he told Lee White, one of his low-profile presidential advisers during the

1960s. The primary concern of Hoover in regards to Klan activity was maintaing the integrity of 26

the criminal justice system and its law enforcement. When the FBI originally began covert action 27

in 1964, one of the very first tasks assigned to agents was to furnish Mississippi governor Paul

Johnson with a list of law-enforcement personnel who were suspected of being Klan members, who

were then promptly fired. Despite Bureau agents pressuring local authorities to employ stricter 28

tactics against vigilante activity, the Klan continued to grow in size towards the end of the summer

of 1964, with many areas actually receiving active support from their local or state law enforcement

agencies. 29

In the initial document sent by J. H. Gale in early July 1964, setting out the proposed

investigation of the KKK and other hate groups, the recommendations for the investigation are

based on how these groups are not upholding the legal and moral code, saying organizations like

the KKK and supporting groups are essentially subversive in that they hold principles and

recommend courses of action that are inimical to the Constitution., and then he maintains that the

actions of these hate groups still do not constitute the same the same menace as the Communist

!12

Randall Bennett Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, (New York: Harvard University Press, 252007), 437

Lyndon B. Johnson, The Presidential Recordings: Lyndon B. Johnson, Volume 8. http://26www.texasmonthly.com/story/presidential-recordings-lyndon-b-johnson/page/0/3 (Last accessed April 14 2014)

John Drabble, A Negative and Unwise Approach: Private Detectives, Vigilantes and the FBI 27Counterintelligence in Private Detectives in History, 1750-1950, eds. Clive Emsley and Haia Shpayer-Makov, 456

James Dickerson, Dixies Dirty Secret: The True Story of How the Government, the Media and the Mob 28Conspired to Combat Integration and the Vietnam Antiwar Movement (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), 92

John Drabble, From White Supremacy to White Power: The FBI, COINTELPRO-White Hate, and the 29Nazification of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s, American Studies, 48, 3, (2007), 50

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Party as they were domestically controlled as opposed to influenced by a foreign power. In 30

September, the highly secretive COINTELPRO-White Hate was undertaken to supplement their

aggressive tactics with law enforcement. The use of covert action was necessary and propitious, as

it allowed the FBI to act independently of justice department lawyers who often required the use of

informants in criminal cases which often had rare chance of conviction, as well as avoiding the

uncooperative local police.

The program was targeted at some of the most prominent, active Klan organisations across

the nation, such as the United Klans of America (UKA), the White Knights of the KKK of

Mississippi, the Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Louisiana, and the Florida Knights of the

Ku Klux Klan. The most sustained infiltration was carried out on UKA and its separate factions.

With its status as one of the largest Ku Klux Klan organisations in the United States, it was also

branded as one of the most violent Klan organisations of the 1960s, with links to murders,

bombings, and vigilante killings. Led by Robert Shelton, who David Cunningham called easily the

most visible of the newly resurgent Klan organizations , the popularity of the organisation peaked 31

in the late 1960s and 1970s in reaction to the greater number of Civil Rights organisations. With a 32

peak membership of 10,000 in 1967, by November 1969 this had been reduced to 5,400. In just 33

two years the UKA membership had effectively been halved, which was the result of internal

dissension and aggressive Bureau tactics to turn away members. The power of all Klan

organisations, and particularly the UKA, depended on secrecy of their membership and gaining

support from sympathetic local officials. This was exploited by the FBI, and they used an extensive

!13

J. H. Gale to Mr Tolson, Investigation of Ku Klux Klan and Other Hate Groups, July 3 1964, FBI Files, 30157-9-3

David Cunningham, Theres Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI by David 31Cunningham, (California: University of California Press, 2005), 68

Abby Ferber, White Man Falling: Race, Gender, and White Supremacy, (California: Rowman & Littlefield, 322000), 176

John Drabble, The FBI, COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE and the Decline Ku Klux Klan Organizations in 33Alabama, 1964-1971," Alabama Review, 61, 5, 2008, 35

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group of informants to furnish them with information, information which could then be passed onto

like-minded politicians and journalists as evidence to reveal vulnerabilities and discredit them. 34

Informant placement

In an effort to control the Klan and suppress their violent tendencies, informants were often used to

form independent groups in an attempt to splinter the UKA from within. Unlike the attacks against

the Black Panther movement, in which any sort of participation was classed as subversive, the Klan

was acceptable as long as it remained nonviolent. Generally, white hate informants made an 35

effort to eliminate members who were more inclined to commit violent actions, while also

attempting to sway the organisation of the group to influence the level of violent activity it was

involved in.

Once informant coverage reached a level where the agents could have a considerable

influence over the actions of a group, the decision was whether or not creating conflict would

actually hinder or boost the overall violent activity, as the formation of splinter groups could often

lead to a more militant organisation. One of the most prominent attempts to control the Klan in this

way was the Charlotte field offices formation of an informant-led Klan organisation, created

specifically to lure members away from the most active UKA units in North Carolina. A memo

highlighted how this would be achieved, with the use of selected racial informants, friendly press

media and other logical counter-intelligence techniques. On the contrary, the New Orleans SAC 36

reported in late 1966 that the UKA was in a state of chaos and that it wasnt worth the risk to

splinter the group for fear of a more active faction, and instead proposed that informants ensure that

the Louisiana UKA remained integrated with the main UKA leadership. 37

!14

Drabble, From White Supremacy to White Power: The FBI, COINTELPRO-White Hate, 5334

David Cunningham, Understanding State Responses to Right vs Left-Wing Threats: The FBIs 35Repression of the New Left and the Ku Klux Klan, Social Science History, 27, 3 (2003), 356

G. C. Moore to W. C. Sullivan, 16 September 1969, FBI Files, 157-9-5736

SAC New Orleans to Director J. Edgar Hoover, 10 April 1967, 157-7-337

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In some cases, informants merely worked their way into the leadership to try and warp the

actions of the organisation. One example of this would be a large effort by the Birmingham field

office to place an articulate informant at the height of the UKA leadership in an attempt to change

KKK rhetoric to a more anti-communist appeal. He gained trust from the high-rank officials and 38

eventually became Robert Sheltons speech writer. In this position of influence, he had a large

impact on Sheltons position on various UKA issues, causing Shelton to take what the Birmingham

SAC called a softened position less racist, critical of violence, more strongly anti-

communist. 39

Snitch-jacketing and paranoia

!The structure of the Klan made them vulnerable to infiltration, as they were only ever visible as

groups, and their secretive nature meant that keeping identities protected was paramount. In the

majority of recorded informant cases, the informant was actually artificially created, either due to

the FBI creating a culture of fear and paranoia which bleeds into the organisations and caused to

members accuse each other and their leadership, or through the FBI specifically planting

information to discredit a group of people on a large or small scale by implying cooperation with

law enforcement. As William Sullivan highlights, because of our informants, we created suspicion

throughout the whole damn Klan, and because of this Klansmen were painfully aware that 40 41

their supposedly closed organisations had been infiltrated, but they were not entirely clear on which

group has infiltrated them. As Klan leaders had no anti-establishment tendencies to class the

!15

David Cunningham, Understanding State Responses to Right vs Left-Wing Threats, 37138

SAC Birmingham to Director J. Edgar Hoover, 3 January 1967, FBI Files, 157-8-339


Wyn Craig Wade, The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America (London: Oxford University Press, 411998), 362

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Bureaus actions as subversive, they were not able to mobilise against COINTELPROs infiltration

techniques until they had become firmly entrenched in the system of the Klaverns.

Often, the UKA leadership and members remained unable to conceive that the FBI viewed

the Klan as subversive, and that it was acting deliberately to actively suppress the Klan 42

organising. Being inherently patriotic and pro-law enforcement, they often blamed government-

infiltrators on the inside of the Bureau. For example, in July 1966, The Fiery Cross published an

article which told Klansmen to pay no attention to the snoopers of the SO called Justice

Department and asked them to evaluate the situation: Since the FBI is guilty of taking pictures

and getting license numbers from cars that are in attendance at the Klan speakings and then days

later these people start receiving this information to harass the WHITE CHRISTIAN CITIZENS?

ARE THEY ALLOWING OTHER ORGANIZATIONS TO USE THIS INFORMATION? These

things do not just happen, they are planned. COULD THERE BE AGENTS FROM THE ANTI-

DEFAMATION LEAGUE OF BNAI BRITH? In this case, they believed that the ADL had 43

used the government to place informants in positions of influence in an attempt to bring dissension

to the Klan.

The infiltration was causing such internal discord that during the National Klonvocation of

the United Klans of America, held in Alabama in early November 1970, the newly-elected Imperial

Wizard Robert Shelton made statements concerning his plans to use sodium pentothal and

polygraph examinations on members of the Imperial Board in order to identify FBI informants.

Sodium pentothal, known colloquially as truth serum, was to be used to try and weed out

dissenters in the top rank and file areas of the Klan. In response to this threat, the directorate send a

memo to field offices which handled active UKA infiltration units, requesting proposals to put in to

!16

Drabble, From White Supremacy to White Power: The FBI, COINTELPRO-White Hate, 5842

Is the Justice Department & Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith Conspiracy Against White 43Patriots? Fiery Cross, July 1966, attached to memo from SAC Atlanta to Director J. Edgar Hoover, July 18 1966

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refute Sheltons plan. C. D. Brennan proposed that the Bureau take this as an opportunity to

discredit Shelton and to frustrate further attempts to use these techniques on Klan leaders or

informants by the glare of publicity, by leaking the information to the popular press in an effort to

demonstrate how Shelton was losing control as a leader. Furthermore, he proposed to point out that

the Klan, which expresses patriotism and democratic ideals, must resort to gestapo-like tactics to

hold its members in line. A press release was drafted to be sent to the press, which quotes 44

reliable sources the FBI informants who had originally furnished the Bureau with the

information. As David Cunningham argues, the widespread use of lie-detector tests would have 45

drained the Klan of valuable sources, but it was still undesired by the FBI as the uncovering of

informants would have been incredibly damaging to their strategy of controlling Klan activities. 46

News stories and editorials exposed the vulnerable, inherent undemocratic aspects of the Klaverns

in instances like this, which created dissension, suspicion, and mistrust.

In late 1964, J. Edgar Hoover came out and publicly proclaimed, We have been able to

penetrate the Klan. There are 480 Klansmen in Mississippi. I had our agents in Mississippi

interview every member of the Klan there just to let those individuals know that the FBI knew who

they were and had an eye on them. This, of course, led to In a memo to W. C. Sullivan, F. J. 47

Baumgardner proposed original cartoons to be prepared by the Document Section which graphically

illustrated the penetration of the Klan by FBI informants which would then by mailed by the field

to Klan members in areas where maximum disruption may be achieved. The resulting cartoons

depicted them in various derogatory lights, with one drawing of two unsophisticated Klansmen

holding a newspaper the caption One things for sure! They cant make idiots out of us! 48

!17

C. D. Brennan to W. C. Sullivan, November 29 1970, FBI Files, 157-9-5144

See Appendix E for a full copy of the letter drafted by the Bureau45


Sanford J. Unger, FBI: An Uncensored Look behind the Walls (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975) 14547

See Appendix F48

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Baumgardner said that this counterintelligence would undoubtedly () disrupt the efforts of their

organizations by compounding existing suspicions within and subjecting them to ridicule from

without. 49

On April 20, 1966, the Mobile field office in Alabama proposed the idea to have an

anonymous police official sell a lost FBI address book to an active member of the UKA. The

book would be a forged address book, but would contain routine names, addresses and phone

numbers of an innocuous nature, as well as the initials of six or seven active Klansmen in the

Montgomery area, with anecdotes next to their names such as UKA, Den II, Not one of the 50

Klansmen in this address book was an actual informant for the Bureau. The names were not chosen

at random, but were actually specifically selected targets, targets who frequently advocated the use

of violence, in an attempt to create an air of suspicion surrounding them. When the Mobile SAC 51

sent the final detailed list of names in the forged book, it demonstrated how deeply elaborate the

system of infiltration was. It contained names of Klansmen who had previously been suspected of

untrustworthiness, something which was only known due to the placement of informants in the

organisation and their information they passively reported back to their handlers, and also the name

of a former agent who has been outed as a Bureau source. When the book had been lost and 52

dropped into their lap, FBI agents would aggressively reinterview Klansmen, who would make a

big production about losing the book in an attempt to legitimise the situation and make it more

convincing as an error of the Bureau. This plan was ultimately cancelled by Hoover , as Robert 53 54

!18

F. J. Baumgardner to W. C. Sullivan, January 19 1965, FBI Files, 157-9-749

SAC Mobile to Director J. Edgar Hoover, April 20 1966, FBI Files, 157-7-2050

David Cunningham, Theres Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI by David 51Cunningham, (California: University of California Press, 2005), 68

SAC Mobile to Director J. Edgar Hoover, May 23 1966, FBI Files, 157-8-2352

SAC Mobile to Director J. Edgar Hoover, July 13 1966, FBI Files, 157-10-1353

Director J. Edgar Hoover to SAC Mobile, September 18 1966, FBI Files, 157-12-1854

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Shelton had recently been convicted of Contempt of Congress for refusing to supply Klan

documents and he argued that the UKA wouldnt absorb the impact as believable and would

give Shelton grounds to bring refute his conviction.

Agents provocateurs

Agents provocateurs were a contradictory alternative to the passive, information-gathering role of

the standard informant. The COINTELPRO-White Hate program may have provoked Klan violence

in order to arrest the perpetrators. Informants were often given written assurances which stated that

they would be immune from prosecution in several cases of church bombings After the bombing 55

of a synagogue in Mississippi in 1968, the Bureau raised over $28,500 dollars from Meridians

Jewish community to pay for two planted informants to set up Thomas Tarrants, a notoriously

dangerous militant Klansman and professional bomber. In an elaborate ruse, the two paid 56

informants persuaded Tarrants into bombing the home of Meyer Davidson, a Jewish businessman. 57

When he arrived at the residence, with FBI agents and local police enforcement waiting nearby, his

accomplice was a young schoolteacher-turned-demolitions expert, Kathy Ainsworth. In the resulting

shootout, Ainsworth was killed and Tarrants was injured along with several law enforcement

members. In 1970, Jack Nelson, a prominent journalist described as one of the most effective 58

reporters of the Civil Rights movement, wrote an article for the front page of Los Angeles Times 59

titled Police Arrange Trap: Klan Terror Is Target which documented how the FBI had 60

!19

Gary T. Marx, Thoughts on a Neglected Category of Social Movement Participant: The Agent 55Provocateur and the Informant, 408

Wade, The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America, 37256

David Mark Chalmers, Backfire: How the Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movement, (Calfornia: 57Rowman and Littlefield, 2005) 176

Wade, The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America, 37258

Elaine Woo, Jack Nelson dies at 80; Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter helped raise L.A. Times to national 59prominence. Los Angeles Times, 22 October 2009, http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-jack-nelson22-2009oct22-story.html#page=1 (Last accessed 19 April 2014)

Jack Nelson, Police Arrange Trap: Klan Terror Is Target. Los Angeles Times, 13 February 197060

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maintained a role in the set-up of the ambush and how the funding for the informants had been

bankrolled by the Jewish community. Of course, Nelsons investigative reporting into the actions 61

of the FBI did not slip past J. Edgar Hoover and the Bureau. Keep an eye on these characters," the

FBI director wrote in a memo to the SAC LA field offices, referring to Nelson and two of his main

editors at the Los Angeles Times. "They are up to no good. Tarrants later wrote in his memoirs, 62

written whilst in prison, that the FBI did not lure us into doing something we had no intention of

doing, which leaves his role up to interpretation, and whether the paid FBI informants actually had

a large impact on the events that night. 63

Perhaps one of the main examples of the Bureau toeing the line between a passive informant

and a provocateur in the KKK was Gary Thomas Rowe, an FBI on the Bureau payroll who was

riding in a car with the Klansmen who shot and killed Viola Luizzo in Alabama, March 1965. While

the president had appeared on national television to heap commendation on Mr. Hoover and the

men of the FBI for their prompt and expeditious performance in handling this investigation, it 64

remained to be seen to what extent Rowe had actually taken part. His lack of initiative to stop it

from happening led to much controversy. William Sullivan claims that when he got hold of Rowe,

[he] really gave him hell. Why hadnt he grabbed the gun, or hit the killers arm and deflected it? 65

Controversy was compounded even more when information began to surface that suggested Rowe

had been involved in, and had actually provoked violent acts. In 1975, during the Senate Select 66

!20

Jack Nelson, Scoop: The Evolution of a Southern Reporter, ed. Barbara Matusow (New York: University 61Press of Mississippi, 2012), 150

Richard A. Serrano, J.Edgar Hoover was an FBI director with a grudge. Los Angeles Times, 6 November 622011, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/06/nation/la-na-hoover-nelson-20111107 (Last accessed 18 April 2014)

Thomas Tarrants, The conversion of a Klansman: the story of a former Ku Klux Klan terrorist, (New York: 63Doubleday, 1979), 363

David Cunningham, Theres Something Happening Here, 7564


Gary May, The Informant: The FBI, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Murder of Viola Liuzzo, (New York: Yale 66University Press, 2008) 5

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Committee hearings, the Bureaus relationship with Rowe was investigated. The Committee heard

evidence which showed that the FBI had ordered Rowe to join a Klan Action Group which

conducted violent acts against blacks and civil rights workers. It also found that from the outset, 67

Rowe and his FBI handling agents understood that for Rowe to be able to report Klan violence, he

would have to be available for - and at times, involved in - that violence. Rowe testified that he 68

had beaten people with other Klansmen. To be credible, an informant must share at least one or

two of the class, age, ethnic, racial, religious, or sexual attributes of the group that they are

reporting on. As Gary Marx argues, this may actually pave the way for the informant to sympathise

with the group, and may begin to take on the goals and attitude of other members. Gary Rowe had 69

all the strong characteristics of an Alabama Klansman: he was young, twenty six, with a habit of

solving problems with his fists, and because of this he potentially began to take on the attributes 70

of the groups he was asked to inform on. William Sullivan, perhaps understating this to a degree,

said that Rowe was a real headache, and that he was a good man for our purposes and he served

us well.

!!!!

!!

!21

Church Committee, Book III: Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the 67Rights of Americans, April 23 1976, 243

Church Committee, Book III: Final Report of The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations, 68April 23 1976, 206

Gary T. Marx, Thoughts on a Neglected Category of Social Movement Participant: The Agent 69Provocateur and the Informant, 410

Gary May, The Informant: The FBI, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Murder of Viola, 470

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Chapter Two !!The Black Panther Party !!

In 2012, documents were released by journalist Seth Rosenfeld which indicated that Richard Aoki,

one of the earliest members of the Black Panther Party, was an undercover FBI informer from 1961

until 1977 covertly filing reports on a wide range of cultural groups. His handler, ex-Bureau agent 71

Burnley Threadgill Jr. recalled that he had approached Aoki around the time he was graduating from

high school, and had asked him if he would join left-wing groups and report back to the FBI. He

was my informant. I developed him, Threadgill said in an interview. He was one of the best

sources we had. Aoki attended Merritt College in Oakland, where he first met Huey Newton and 72

Bobby Seale. In late 1966, Seale and Newton developed their 10-point program for what would

eventually become the Black Panther Party. It was at this point that Aoki furnished the Panthers

with some of their first weapons. Bobby Seale recalled, Late in November 1966, we went to a

Third World brother we knew, a Japanese radical cat. He had guns .357 Magnums, 22s, 9mms,

what have you. We told him that if he was a real revolutionary he better go on and give them up

to us because we needed them now to begin educating the people to wage a revolutionary struggle.

So he gave us an M-1 and a 9mm. In early 1967, Aoki formally joined the party and supplied 73

them with even more guns, this time helping new Panther recruits with weapons training alongside

his supplementation. Wes Swearingen, an ex-informant, said that Someone like Aoki was perfect

to [infiltrate] the Black Panther Party, because of his great links to leadership. Although there 74

!22

Seth Rosenfeld, Man who armed Black Panthers was FBI informant, records show, The Center for 71Investigative Reporting, http://cironline.org/reports/man-who-armed-black-panthers-was-fbi-informant-records-show-3753 (Last accessed 20 April 2014)

Seth Rosenfeld, Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power, (New York: 72Picador, 2013), 4

Bobby Seale, Seize The Time, (Oxford: Black Classic Press, 1991), 3473

The Man Who Armed the Panthers, (Center for Investigative Reporting: The I Files, 2012)74

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were a number of Asian Americans in the Black Panther Party, Aoki was the only one who reached

a formal leadership position. 75

In instances such as this, when information comes to light forty or fifty years after the

original incident, it causes you to re-evaluate how you perceive an event. Were the guns Aoki

provided a gift from the FBI? Were the guns actually part of his own personal collection? Was he

an agent provocateur sent in to provoke Black Panther members into violence? Was he forced into

informing, and did he furnish any particularly evasive material which the FBI used to infiltrate at a

later date? These are the sort of questions we may never have the answers to, but evaluating how

informants had have a decisive impact on a group, even from its earliest inception, is important to

understanding the trajectory of it.

J.Edgar Hoovers involvement with the Black Panther Party began just as the party was

beginning to gain traction during 1967 and 1968. In August of 1967, the Bureau launched

COINTELPRO-Black Hate, and within the year of their formation Hoover had called the BPP,

without a doubt, the greatest threat to the internal security of the country. This shift in focus from

the Communist Party to black groups signified how Hoover was focusing on the black menace,

not the red menace during the last of few years of the 1960s. Robert Wall, an ex-FBI agent, 76

argues that the FBI, Having itself created the threat, and publicly creating the idea of the Black

Panther Party being a violent, subversive group, they then set out to neutralise it. By 1968, the

Bureau maintained a stable number of approximately 3,300 racial ghetto-type informants, and by

1971 this number had climbed to around 7,000. Their purpose was to create an elite informant

squad and send it around the country and the world in pursuit of domestic subversive, black

!23

Its About Time, Another shade of Black Panther Richard Aoki, Black Panther Party Legacy and 75Alumni, http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/Our_Stories/Chapter3/Richard_Aoki.html (Last accessed 20 April 2014)

Kenneth OReilly, Racial Matters The FBIs Secret File on Black America 1960-1972 (London: Free 76Press, 1991), 261

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militant movements Of these numbers, at least 67, upon whom the FBI lavished $7.4 million in 77

payouts were active informants within the Black Panther Party in 1969. This general number of 78

informants in the BPP, as we have seen with the exposure of Richard Aoki, could have been much

higher with no lasting documentation. The figure given by Churchill is an extrapolation of figures

given during the 1975 court proceedings by Roy Mitchell stating that he had a stable eight to ten

informants in his local BPP chapter in 1969. Some of the informants used by the FBI also reported

to local police departments, such as Larry and Jean Powell, who were considered shared assets as

they furnished information to the Bureau and the Oakland police department. 79

Agents provocateurs

The use of agents provocateurs in the BPP was extensive and intense, and demonstrates how

informants were often used to instigate or facilitate violence. William ONeal, one of the most

prominent infiltrators of the Chicago Black Panther chapter, regularly suggested violent activities.

He offered Panthers explosives that could be used to blow up armouries and the safe door or a

McDonalds he suggested they rob, according to a reporter. He also created an elaborate plan to 80

bomb City Hall using a radio-controlled model airplane he had modified. In an attempt to divert 81

attention from himself, he also proposed and built an electric chair which he intended to be used

when conducting interrogations with potential infiltrators. It was only with intervention from Fred 82

Hampton, who had become increasingly suspicious of ONeals activities, that none of these violent

!24

Director J. Edgar Hoover to SAC Baltimore, 16 July 1970, FBI Files, 157-8-977

Ward Churchill, To Disrupt, Discredit and Destroy: The FBIs Secret War Against the Black Panther 78Party, in Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party, eds. Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas (New York: Routledge, 2001), 3

Ibid., 679

Rob Warden, Explosives Offer to Panthers Told, Chicago Daily News, July 2 197680

Curtis J. Austin, Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party, 81(California: University of Arkansas Press, 2008), 137

Jeffrey Haas, The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black 82Panther (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2011), 67

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acts came into fruition. Although the group voted to strip him of his position as chief of security, it

was collectively decided not to remove him completely. 83

ONeal officially joined the BPP in November 1967 after SAC agent Roy Mitchell recanted

a crime he had committed and said that they could work it out, which ended up with ONeal

being asked to join the party in exchange for not pressing charges for a stolen vehicle. He was 84

allowed to become a Panther before becoming an FBI informant to build up some credibility

within the membership. by helping take charge of repairing damage sustained during the October 4

raid just a few weeks before he joined. He supplied the Chicago field office and local law 85

enforcement with a floor plan of Fred Hamptons apartment before a raid, complete with marks

indicating where each inhabitant slept, which saw Hampton shot and killed in an planned,

systematic attack. ONeal had originally tried to direct attack from himself and directed distrust 86

towards Louis Truelock, who had been stationed near the front door on security. Jeffrey Haas

maintains that the Chicago chapter never regained the size it was before Freds murder. No-one

could replace Freds charisma, energy, or organising ability. Elaine Brown has said that O'Neal 87

was there to instigate certain kinds of acts and behavior that would jeopardize and otherwise

undermine the party. 88

In another example of informants provoking criminal activity, in May 1970 it was reported

in the New York Times that an agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation had made an

!25

Austin, Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party, 13783

Eyes on the Prize II Interviews, Interview with William ONeal, Washington University, http://84digital.wustl.edu/e/eii/eiiweb/one5427.1047.125williamo'neal.html (Last accessed 25 April 2014)

Haas, The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black 85Panther, 62

See Appendix H86


Gabriel San Roman, 1969: The Year the Black Panther Party Was to Be Annihilated, Truthout, http://88truth-out.org/news/item/21382-1969-the-year-the-black-panther-party-was-to-be-annihilated (Last accessed 28 April)

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unsolicited gift of dynamite to an alleged co-conspirator of 13 Black Panthers who had been

accused of conspiring to bomb public buildings. The dynamite was seized by police after a raid of

the house of the co-conspirator, Trudie Simpson. Her defence lawyer declared during her trial that

the sticks, approximately 60 in total, had been purchased by Roland Hays, who was an FBI agent,

who had provided it without any request. This was not an isolated incident. In other cases 89

involving the Panther chapters in Indiana and New York, informers had reportedly instigated black

militants to rob and vandalise, whilst offering them weapons and maps, and even a getaway car. 90

In Baltimore, for example, six Panthers were detained in February 1969 for interfering with the

arrest of another member. Yet the seventh arrested Panther was actually an undercover Bureau

operative who had been planted to try and cause dissension. 91

Paranoia and the purge

Taken in consideration with the number of local law enforcement officers, Ward Churchill estimates

that around ten percent of BPPs membership was made up of law enforcement personnel by the

end of 1968. Bobby Seale was keenly aware of this infiltration, and in November 1968 had set out 92

with the Panther Central Committee to internally purge the group of suspected infiltrators designed

to eliminate internal criminal intent. The task of removing infiltrators fell on the security units

which had been set up within each chapter, and yet a number of these units were headed by FBI

informants themselves, such as William ONeal, who also served as Fred Hamptons bodyguard for

a period of time in 1968. The result of this meant that security personnel could bad-jacket 93

!26

Edith Evans Asbury, Panther Lawyer Says Dynamite Was Gift from Ally of F.B.I., New York Times, 89May 8 1970

Paul G. Chevigny, New Yorks Red Squad: the verdict is entrapment, The Village Voice, February 11 901971

Churchill, To Disrupt, Discredit and Destroy: The FBIs Secret War Against the Black Panther Party, 9198

Churchill, To Disrupt, Discredit and Destroy: The FBIs Secret War Against the Black Panther Party, 792


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legitimate members, assisting with ejections and discrediting while the infiltrators could become

more established in the specific chapter. Bobby Seale argued that the raids upon the BPP were

directly related to the purge that the party had, as this in itself stopped the FBI infiltration

operation into the BPP, and made sure that no-one could come in and try to distort the real

objectives of the BPP, which had been lost in the militant reaction to informants. 94

In 1969, the SAC in San Diego field office proposed the release of caricatures which

depicted BPP members in undermining situations. The purpose of these cartoons was to indicate to

the BPP that the US organisation feels that they are ineffectual, inadequate, and riddled with graft

and corruption. One of the five attached cartoons suggests the possibility of Bobby Seale as a 95

police agent, with a BPP member kissing his feet while Seale passes Secret Panther Papers to a

pig behind him, obviously representing the law enforcement. These cartoons were to be sent to 96

friendly media to be published nationally in an attempt to bring embarrassment and mistrust to the

group.

Akura Njeri, formerly Deborah Johnson, of the Chicago Black Panther Party, discusses how

this feeling of mistrust that was running through the party, I vowed never to get in another

organisation, not from fear of getting killed or arrested or anything like that, but because I just

didnt trust people. I always believed that there were - and I still do to this day believe there were -

so many more informants than well ever know about. It makes you really kind of leery of trusting

people. Its like you have been robbed, beaten, and raped. Stokely Carmichael also holds similar 97

view, stating that there was a mood of growing paranoia, an air of interpersonal mistrust and

suspiciousness [and] there was some vicious, illegal stuff intended to create confusion, mistrust,

!27

Seale, Seize The Time, 3894

SAC San Diego to Director J. Edgar Hoover, February 20 1969, FBI Files, 106-4-795

See Appendix G96

B. Schultz & R. Schultz, It did happen here: Recollections of political repression in America. (Berkeley, 97CA: University of California Press, 2001), 236

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and suspicion in order to set up confrontations. Carmichael also lays some of the blame with the 98

fact that the Panthers never had, far as I could see, that kind of incubation period [in comparison

with SNCC], where they formed strong bonds through shared experience. There was no national 99

leadership, and thus Seale, Newton and Cleaver couldnt control the increasing number of factions.

There was no centralised leadership which maintained total control which was to be its own

detriment. The later split of the Newton and Cleaver factions can be blamed on various factors, with

mistrust and dissension as an important aspect, along with an ideological dissimilarity.

Snitch-jacketing

The risks of falsely accusing someone carries with it a serious potential risk to the reputation, and

in some cases, the safety of that person. Yet with counterintelligence efforts intensifying 100

throughout 1969, the suspicion that had been firmly entrenched into the mindset of Black Panther

members eventually boiled over into intense violence and crime which led to the torture-murders of

two suspected FBI infiltrators, Alex Rackley and Eugene Anderson. By April 1970, police arrests

and infiltration had succeeded in destabilising the entirety of the Baltimore chapter. Seventeen 101

Baltimore Panthers, which consisted of nearly the entire leadership, along with Arthur Turco, a

white lawyer, were accused with murder and torture of suspected informer Eugene Anderson in July

1969, along with an unrelated offence of the shooting of a police officer. The charge of trying to kill

a policeman was used as a diversionary tactic to exaggerate the bail, and was dropped by the

prosecution. The case finally dissolved when the states key witnesses Mahoney Kebe, Donald 102

!28

Stokely Carmichael with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, Ready for Revolution: The life and struggles of 98Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), (New York: Scribner, 2005) 663

Ibid., 66499

Reponse of the government to the Black Panther Party in The Huey P. Newton Reader, eds. David 100Hilliard and Donald Wise, (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2011), 349

Rhonda Y. Williams, Black Women and Urban Politics in Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil 101Rights-Black Power Era, ed. Peniel Johnson (London: Routledge, 2006), 90

Chevigny, New Yorks Red Squad: the verdict is entrapment, 102

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Vaughn, and Arnold Loney were FBI operatives who had been placed into the Baltimore BPP

chapter.

On August 21 1969, Bobby Seale was arrested in California in connection with the alleged

murder of Alex Rackley in New Haven, Conneticut. Rackley was a young Panther recruit from 103

New York. Along with Seale, seven other Panthers, who were mostly members of the New Haven

chapter, were indicted. The main witness against the defendants turned out to be George Sams, an 104

informant who had managed to work his way into a position in the party before being removed by

Seale. Sams had ordered the shooting of Rackley after pretending to be from the headquarters in 105

Oakland, and because all of the Panthers knew there was rising suspicion and mistrust in the party

given the large scale purge being undertaken, he told unsuspecting Panthers that he was there to

perform inspections and straighten people out. Sams was later used as a prosecution witness 106

against the other defendants. These two instances of snitch-jacketing clearly had a profound impact

on the public image of the Black Panther Party, caused by intense paranoia and mistrust.

!!!!!!!

!29

Churchill and Vander Wall, COINTELPRO Papers, 386103

The other defendants were Warren Kimbro, Frances Carter, George Edwards, Margaret Hudgins, Coretta 104Luckes, Rose Smith, Landon Williams, and Roy Hithe

Churchill and Vander Wall, COINTELPRO Papers, 388105

Austin, Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party, 139106

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Conclusion !When collating the different actions against various White Hate targets, it ultimately shows that the

program was not merely a token gesture which existed only to create an illusionary sense of Bureau

concern. Yet the volume and scope between the actions against the Ku Klux Klan in comparison to

the Black Panther Party are revealing, however, as the means to these actions have overarching

strategies for either group: a clear effort to control the Klans violent tendencies through infiltration

and placement of informants in positions of power and manipulation, in contrast with an attempt to

eliminate the breadth and scope of the Panthers entirely through the use of informants to create a

catalyst of mistrust and paranoia with no effort to control or steer them, but rather to induce the

removal of them altogether. Hoover wasnt interested in stamping the Klan out completely, just the

factions that were particularly violent, which he attempted to infiltrate and bring under the authority

of the Bureau where he could keep a close watch on everything they did. He saw the Black Panthers

as a complete threat to what John Drabble terms the domestic tranquility of American society

before the 1960s.

Although the Bureaus efforts were directed to controlling Klan behaviour, its own figures

show a significant decline in membership after 1968. By 1970, the number of active Klansmen in

North Carolina had decreased from 600 to 246. The Klans geographical concentration meant that 107

a small number of field offices could have a greater chance of success engaging only in a few

limited activities. In 1978, when the full scope of COINTELPROs actions were released, Robert

Shelton conceded that the FBIs counterintelligence program hit us in membership and weakened

us for about ten years, yet the COINTELPRO actions did not succeed in removing their full

influence, unlike the results of the BPP infiltration. The composite graphs created for the Church

Committee Report demonstrate just how many Bureau resources were put into the Black Hate

!30


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program in effort to maintain social order. With White Hate beginning in 1964, the graph shows

minor spikes, with a large increase in 1966 before tailing off significantly in 1969. In contrast, the

Black Hate spikes in 1969 and 1970, to the point where it almost doubles the White Hate levels at

their highest peak. So whilst the program did have an impact on the Ku Klux Klan, and whilst it 108

wasnt merely one or two token informants placed in one or two organisations, it is quite clear that

there was a concerted effort to remove any sort of influence that black nationalists could possibly

receive.

The FBIs intentions were to protect the nation from threats to the political, economic, and social

equilibrium that was already in place. In the case of the KKK, the FBI chose to adapt it from the

inside to suit its own needs. By planting informants in positions of power, or letting them work their

way to positions of power, this gave the Bureau the opportunity to maintain an air of control over

the violent tendencies of the KKK, as well as creating a fear culture which created mistrust, a major

catalyst in their downfall. Employing similar tactics against the BPP saw the same level of paranoia,

yet the shaky, splintered leadership did not manage to come through unscathed.

! The killing of Panthers, raids of questionable nature, surveillance, and use of informants

helped - to some extent - make Hoovers original statement about BPP true. The frustrated response

to infiltration reinforced the Bureaus assessment of them as a violent revolutionary group. Thus,

through the use of informants and other counterintelligence actions, the FBI were almost creating

the party that they had originally perceived the Panthers as, which gave their agents and informants

legitimate reasons to suppress it. For a lot of informants, they merely believed that they were doing

their civic duty, to keep an eye on a subversive group. Yet it would also be reductive to assume

that all of the Panthers woes were a result of the FBI infiltration, as is often the case in scholarship

surrounding the organisation. Joe Street has argued that this issue has become central to the

!31

See Appendix I108

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historiographical debate swirling around the BPP. and that friendly scholars will always be able to

point to the FBIs nefarious activities to explain the paranoia. This study has only scratched the 109

surface of the source of the paranoia in the Black Panther Party, and it would be beneficial for

further study on this.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!32

Joe Street, The Historiography of the Black Panther Party, Journal of American Studies, 2, 44 (2004), 8109

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Appendices ! !Appendix A 110

!!!!!!

!33

Church Committee, Volume 6: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Appendix B: January 12, 1976, 110Memorandum by the FBI, Exhibit 8, 367

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!Appendix B 111

!!!!

!34

Director J. Edgar Hoover to SAC New York, February 3 1950, FBI Files, 65-3350-26111

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!Appendix C 112!!!!!!!!

Appendix D 113

!

!35



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!Appendix E 114!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!

!36

A. W. Gray to C. D. Brennan, Imperial Wizard Plans To Use Lie Detector and Drugs to Hold Klan In 114Line, 9 December 1970, FBI Files, 157-9-62

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Appendix F 115

!

!37

F. J. Baumgardner to W. C. Sullivan, January 19 1965, FBI Files, 157-9-7115

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Appendix G 116!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!

!38

SAC San Diego to Director J. Edgar Hoover, February 20 1969, FBI Files, 106-4-7116

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!!!Appendix H 117!!!!

!!!!!! !!!!! !!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!39

G. Flint Taylor, How the FBI Conspired to Destroy the Black Panther Party, In These Times, 4 117December 2013, http://inthesetimes.com/article/15949/how_the_fbi_conspired_to_destroy_the_black_panther_party (last accessed 26 April 2014)

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!Appendix I 118

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!40


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Party (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2006)

Carmichael, Stokely, and Charles V. Hamilton. Black power: the politics of liberation in America

(New York: Random House, 1967)

Carmichael, Stokely, and Michael Thelwell. Ready for revolution: the life and struggles of Stokely

Carmichael (Kwame Ture) (New York: Scribner, 2003)

Churchill, Ward, and Jim Wall. Agents of repression: the FBI's secret wars against the Black

Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1988)

Cleaver, Kathleen, and George N. Katsiaficas. Liberation, imagination, and the Black Panther

Party: a new look at the Panthers and their legacy (New York: Routledge, 2001)

!41

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Cleaver, Kathleen, and George N. Katsiaficas. Liberation, imagination, and the Black Panther

Party: a new look at the Panthers and their legacy (New York: Routledge, 2001)

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Repression Of The New Left And The Ku Klux Klan." Social Science History 27, no. 3

(2003) 327-370

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(2008) 68-87

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Dickerson, James. Dixie's dirty secret: the true story of how the government, the media, and the

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Documents

“Fusion paranoia”: FBI informants and agents provocateurs in The Ku Klux Klan and The Black Panther Party, 1964-1971