[Ppnews] FBI's secret war against the Black Panthers - Omaha COINTELPRO case

[Political Prisoner News]

Original Content at 
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_michael__070829_the_fbi_s_secret_war.htm

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August 29, 2007

The FBI's secret war against the Black Panthers 
is under close scrutiny in Omaha COINTELPRO case

By Michael Richardson

Omaha, Nebraska, birthplace of Malcolm X, has a 
long history of racial tension. In September 1919 
a white crowd of 4,000 burned the Douglas County 
Courthouse to gain access to an accused black 
prisoner, Will Brown. Brown had been erroneously 
accused of the rape of a white woman and was in 
custody at the courthouse when the lynch mob 
gathered in the streets of downtown Omaha.



Mayor Edward Smith sought to quiet the mob and 
was dragged to a lamppost and hanged with a 
makeshift noose. Pulled down by a quick acting 
policeman the mayor hovered near death for 
several days. Will Brown was not so lucky. The 
mob hanged Brown and then dragged his body 
through the downtown streets behind a car before burning it on a street corner.



Fifty years later an Omaha policeman shot a 14 
year-old girl, Vivian Strong, in the back to 
disperse a crowd. The death of the youngster 
triggered a year of intense tension between Omaha 
police and the black community.



Chief critics of the Omaha police were Black 
Panthers Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa 
(formerly David Rice). Poindexter and Langa were 
the leaders of the Panther group National 
Committee to Combat Fascism and were at the center of attention.



But it was not just the Omaha police that were 
watching the two Panthers, the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation was conducting a nationwide secret 
war against the Panthers code-named COINTELPRO. 
Poindexter and Langa were targets of the COINTELPRO agents.



It all came to a head one night in August 1970 
when police were called to a vacant house to 
investigate an emergency call about a woman 
screaming. Instead, a suitcase bomb was waiting 
for the police. Officer Larry Minard was killed 
and seven others injured in the blast.



Police dragnets swept up dozens of people, 
multiple arrests were made but in the end a 15 
year-old, Duane Peak, confessed to placing the 
bomb. But the COINTELPRO operation did not want a 
15 year-old in custody, they wanted to silence 
the Black Panthers in Omaha. Freedom of 
Information requests have revealed that the FBI 
worked closely with Omaha police on the case and 
that critical information was later withheld from 
defense attorneys for Poindexter and Langa who were charged with the crime.



Peak was given a deal and sentenced as a juvenile 
in exchange for his testimony against Poindexter 
and Langa. The tape of the emergency call was 
withheld and later destroyed without ever being 
heard by a jury. Evidence implicating an uncle of 
Vivian Strong was not pursued by police. 
Conflicting testimony by police was made over 
dynamite allegedly found in Langa’s residence.



Poindexter and Langa both denied their 
involvement in the crime and continue to proclaim 
their innocence from their prison cells, 
thirty-six long years after the trial that 
resulted in life sentences for the pair.



However, a now-deceased police dispatcher, 
perhaps suspecting COINTELPRO dirty trick tactics 
would be used in the case, quietly made his own 
copy of the emergency call that lured police to 
the deadly trap. It took years for the existence 
of the copy to become known but finally, in May 
of this year, Douglas County District Judge 
Russell Bowie listened to the tape in open court 
and heard testimony from an expert witness that 
the voice on the tape was not that of Peak.



The Nebraska chapter of the American Civil 
Liberties Union has filed an amicus brief with 
the court bringing judicial attention to the 
abuses of COINTELPRO, a then secret operation 
unknown to the jury that convicted Poindexter and Langa.



Judge Bowie has spent the summer reviewing the 
1971 trial transcript, studying the legal briefs 
and considering the contradictory testimony of 
police detective Robert Pheffer who claims he 
found dynamite in Langa’s home­dynamite never 
seen by the crime scene evidence technicians.



While the public waits for Judge Bowie to 
conclude his review of the COINTELPRO tainted 
trial, two men wait more anxiously than the rest 
from their cells in the Nebraska State 
Penitentiary. For Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa justice is long overdue.



Permission granted to reprint




Authors Bio: Michael Richardson is a freelance 
writer based in Boston. Richardson writes about 
politics, election law, human nutrition, ethics, 
and music. In 2004 Richardson was Ralph Nader's 
national ballot access coordinator.




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