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,
1
17
Gary T. Marx, Thoughts on a Neglected Category of Social Movement Participant: The Agent Provocateur
2
and 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
3
York: 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 A
4
William C. Sullivan, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoovers FBI, (London: W. W. Norton & Company,
5
1979), 129
W. Pincus, The Bureaus Budget: A Source of Power. in Investigating the FBI, eds. Pat Watters and
6
Stephen Gillers (New York: Doubleday, 1973), 76
Gary T. Marx, Thoughts on a Neglected Category of Social Movement Participant: The Agent Provocateur
7
and 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, 128
8
Daniel Widener, Black Arts West: Culture and Struggle in Postwar Los Angeles, (New York: Duke
9
University Press, 2010), 151
How the FBI Sabotaged Black America (Los Angeles: Gil Noble, 1978)
10
See Appendix B
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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://
13
www.commercialappeal.com/withers-exposed/ (accessed April 12, 2014)
Robins, Alien Ink: The FBIs War on Freedom of Expression, 2
14
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
16
Against 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
17
Press, 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
18
Cunningham, (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 C
19
See Appendix D
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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
21
Discourse, 1964-1971, Journal of American Studies, 38, 2, (2004), 353
Sullivan, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoovers FBI, 128
22
Church Committee, Volume 6: Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Adams: January 12, 1976, 144
23
Edward P. Morgan, The 60s Experience: Hard Lessons about Modern America, (California: Temple
24
University 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,
25
2007), 437
Lyndon B. Johnson, The Presidential Recordings: Lyndon B. Johnson, Volume 8. http://
26
www.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
27
Counterintelligence 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
28
Conspired 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
29
Nazification 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,
30
157-9-3
David Cunningham, Theres Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI by David
31
Cunningham, (California: University of California Press, 2005), 68
Abby Ferber, White Man Falling: Race, Gender, and White Supremacy, (California: Rowman & Littlefield,
32
2000), 176
John Drabble, The FBI, COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE and the Decline Ku Klux Klan Organizations in
33
Alabama, 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, 53
34
David Cunningham, Understanding State Responses to Right vs Left-Wing Threats: The FBIs
35
Repression 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, 157-9-57
36
SAC New Orleans to Director J. Edgar Hoover, 10 April 1967, 157-7-3
37
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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, 371
38
SAC Birmingham to Director J. Edgar Hoover, 3 January 1967, FBI Files, 157-8-3
39
Sullivan, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoovers FBI, 129
40
Wyn Craig Wade, The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America (London: Oxford University Press,
41
1998), 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, 58
42
Is the Justice Department & Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith Conspiracy Against White
43
Patriots? 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, 157-9-51
44
See Appendix E for a full copy of the letter drafted by the Bureau
45
David Cunningham, Understanding State Responses to Right vs Left-Wing Threats, 349
46
Sanford J. Unger, FBI: An Uncensored Look behind the Walls (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975) 145
47
See Appendix F
48
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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, 157-9-7
49
SAC Mobile to Director J. Edgar Hoover, April 20 1966, FBI Files, 157-7-20
50
David Cunningham, Theres Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI by David
51
Cunningham, (California: University of California Press, 2005), 68
SAC Mobile to Director J. Edgar Hoover, May 23 1966, FBI Files, 157-8-23
52
SAC Mobile to Director J. Edgar Hoover, July 13 1966, FBI Files, 157-10-13
53
Director J. Edgar Hoover to SAC Mobile, September 18 1966, FBI Files, 157-12-18
54
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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
55
Provocateur and the Informant, 408
Wade, The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America, 372
56
David Mark Chalmers, Backfire: How the Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movement, (Calfornia:
57
Rowman and Littlefield, 2005) 176
Wade, The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America, 372
58
Elaine Woo, Jack Nelson dies at 80; Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter helped raise L.A. Times to national
59
prominence. 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 1970
60
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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
61
Press of Mississippi, 2012), 150
Richard A. Serrano, J.Edgar Hoover was an FBI director with a grudge. Los Angeles Times, 6 November
62
2011, 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:
63
Doubleday, 1979), 363
David Cunningham, Theres Something Happening Here, 75
64
Sullivan, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoovers FBI, 130
65
Gary May, The Informant: The FBI, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Murder of Viola Liuzzo, (New York: Yale
66
University 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
67
Rights of Americans, April 23 1976, 243
Church Committee, Book III: Final Report of The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations,
68
April 23 1976, 206
Gary T. Marx, Thoughts on a Neglected Category of Social Movement Participant: The Agent
69
Provocateur and the Informant, 410
Gary May, The Informant: The FBI, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Murder of Viola, 4
70
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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
71
Investigative 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:
72
Picador, 2013), 4
Bobby Seale, Seize The Time, (Oxford: Black Classic Press, 1991), 34
73
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
75
Alumni, 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
76
Press, 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, 157-8-9
77
Ward Churchill, To Disrupt, Discredit and Destroy: The FBIs Secret War Against the Black Panther
78
Party, in Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party, eds. Kathleen Cleaver and George
Katsiaficas (New York: Routledge, 2001), 3
Ibid., 6
79
Rob Warden, Explosives Offer to Panthers Told, Chicago Daily News, July 2 1976
80
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
82
Panther (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, 137
83
Eyes on the Prize II Interviews, Interview with William ONeal, Washington University, http://
84
digital.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
85
Panther, 62
See Appendix H
86
Haas, The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black
87
Panther, 142
Gabriel San Roman, 1969: The Year the Black Panther Party Was to Be Annihilated, Truthout, http://
88
truth-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,
89
May 8 1970
Paul G. Chevigny, New Yorks Red Squad: the verdict is entrapment, The Village Voice, February 11
90
1971
Churchill, To Disrupt, Discredit and Destroy: The FBIs Secret War Against the Black Panther Party,
91
98
Churchill, To Disrupt, Discredit and Destroy: The FBIs Secret War Against the Black Panther Party, 7
92
Haas, The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black
93
Panther, 75
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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, 38
94
SAC San Diego to Director J. Edgar Hoover, February 20 1969, FBI Files, 106-4-7
95
See Appendix G
96
B. Schultz & R. Schultz, It did happen here: Recollections of political repression in America. (Berkeley,
97
CA: 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
98
Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), (New York: Scribner, 2005) 663
Ibid., 664
99
Reponse of the government to the Black Panther Party in The Huey P. Newton Reader, eds. David
100
Hilliard 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
101
Rights-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, 386
103
The other defendants were Warren Kimbro, Frances Carter, George Edwards, Margaret Hudgins, Coretta
104
Luckes, Rose Smith, Landon Williams, and Roy Hithe
Churchill and Vander Wall, COINTELPRO Papers, 388
105
Austin, Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party, 139
106
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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
David Cunningham, Understanding State Responses to Right vs Left-Wing Threats, 371
107
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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 I
108
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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), 8
109
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Appendices


Appendix A
110







33
Church Committee, Volume 6: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Appendix B: January 12, 1976,
110
Memorandum 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, 65-3350-26
111
110139535

Appendix C
112








Appendix D
113


35
Church Committee, Volume 6: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Appendix B: January 12, 1976,
112
Memorandum by the FBI, Exhibit 10, 370
Church Committee, Volume 6: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Appendix B: January 12, 1976,
113
Memorandum by the FBI, Exhibit 11, 371
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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
114
Line, 9 December 1970, FBI Files, 157-9-62
110139535
Appendix F
115


37
F. J. Baumgardner to W. C. Sullivan, January 19 1965, FBI Files, 157-9-7
115
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Appendix G
116



















38
SAC San Diego to Director J. Edgar Hoover, February 20 1969, FBI Files, 106-4-7
116
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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
117
December 2013, http://inthesetimes.com/article/15949/
how_the_fbi_conspired_to_destroy_the_black_panther_party (last accessed 26 April 2014)
110139535

Appendix I
118















40
Church Committee, Volume 6: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Appendix B: January 12, 1976,
118
Memorandum by the FBI, Exhibit 22, 308
110139535

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