Atty. General Holder Should Open Up the Files on COINTELPRO

[Im The Truth]

Atty. General Holder Should Open Up the Files on COINTELPRO

Date: Thursday, March 5, 2009
By:By: Gregory Kane, BlackAmericaWeb.com

Feb. 21, 2009 came and went with nary a reference to the 44th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X.

At first blush, that seems perfectly understandable, even reasonable. Most people observe occasions on the decennial anniversary – the 10th, 20th, 30, 40th and so on. Why should anyone have taken note of the 44th anniversary of Malcolm X being gunned down in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom four and a half decades ago?

Why, because we now have a “change” president, of course, who just happens to be the nation’s first black president. And he appointed Eric Holder to be America’s first black attorney general. And it’s the attorney general of the United States who’s the titular head of the Department of Justice. As head honcho at the DOJ, Holder also oversees the law enforcement agency known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

And it’s in the FBI’s COINTELPRO files that there may be information about whether one of the agency’s informants had a hand in planning or ordering the death of Malcolm X.

Louis Lomax, the late black journalist who wrote two books about the Nation of Islam, learned from sources that the FBI had, for years, a high-level informant in the religious sect. Author Karl Evanzz, in his book “The Judas Factor: The Plot To Kill Malcolm X,” repeated the assertion, and implied that the informant may have been John Ali, then NOI secretary.

In one passage of “The Judas Factor,” Evanzz quotes Ali hinting on a radio talk show – and not very subtly, either – that Malcolm should be assassinated. It’s not a stretch to wonder if Ali, assuming he was indeed that informant and given his leadership position in the NOI, masterminded or gave orders to the hit squad from the Newark, N.J. mosque that planned Malcolm’s assassination and then took him out on a winter Sunday 44 years ago.

That kind of stuff – or even evidence discounting it - should be in the FBI’s COINTELPRO files. Holder is the man who can order those files to be opened to the public. And when I say “opened,” I mean REALLY opened. None of that “redacted” stuff the FBI has been chain-jerking the media and public with for years. “Redacted” COINTELPRO files made supposedly public have large sections blacked out, so that we don’t know the names of those involved.

It’s time we know the names of those involved, from the agents who planned all the nasty, despicable things to their weasely informants. Some of those things included snitch-jacketing (falsely labeling someone a snitch, the better to get that person killed); driving a wedge between Black Panther leaders Huey P. Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, which split the group into warring factions and got several people killed; sending letters to Martin Luther King Jr. implying he should commit suicide; framing former Panther leader Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt, and handling informants who committed perjury and other crimes, including the assassination of Los Angeles Panther leaders Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter and John Huggins.

That’s just a partial list. Who knows what we can learn from a complete release of everything that’s in the COINTELPRO files? The identity of FBI agents and informants involved in some COINTELPRO operations has been kept from the public for years, so as not to sully, I assume, their names. I say it’s time to sully away.

Those agents broke the law; in a more just country, they would have spent years behind bars. Those informants willingly chose to be part of the apparatus of repression. If they’re worried about being exposed after years of hiding like cockroaches under some pile of debris, then they can change their names and hide out in Bora Bora for all I care.

Holder is the man who can finally bring some semblance of justice to those who were victimized by COINTELPRO. He had an opportunity to do that a few days before Feb. 21, when he gave a Black History Month speech to DOJ employees. Instead, he took the occasion to chide Americans as a nation of cowards when it comes to race, because we don’t talk about racial matters enough.

“If we’re ever going to make progress,” Holder told DOJ employees, and by extension the nation, “we’re going to have to have the guts, we have to have the determination, to be honest with each other.”

Sorry, Mr. Attorney General, this isn’t about our guts; it’s about yours. You could be the first attorney general in history who had the courage to give the American people a full airing of everything that’s in the COINTELPRO files.

Are you man enough, do you have guts enough, for the job?