[Ppnews] FBI cover-up in 'Omaha Two' case continued after J. Edgar Hoover's death

[Political Prisoner News]

November 10, 2008
http://www.opednews.com/articles/FBI-cover-up-in-Omaha-Two-by-Michael-Richardson-081110-839.html

FBI cover-up in 'Omaha Two' case continued after J. Edgar Hoover's death
By Michael Richardson

http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/uploaded/foi-20081110-33.jpg

J. Edgar Hoover headed the Federal Bureau of Investigation until his 
death on May 2, 1972.  Hoover's controversial forty-eight year tenure 
at the national police force established a widespread and 
long-lasting culture of secrecy and deception within the 
agency.  Hoover's many years fighting gangsters and then chasing 
enemy spies had taught him to operate outside the law and the mandate 
of his office became what he thought best.  For his long misrule, 
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has sought to remove Hoover's 
name from FBI headquarters calling it a "stain on the building."

Hoover's "no holds barred" tactics used in the 50's against 
Communists had by the 70's grown into a massive clandestine operation 
code-named COINTELPRO that targeted thousands of U.S. citizens and 
domestic political organizations for surveillance and dirty tricks to 
"disrupt" legitimate political activity.  The Black Panther Party was 
the primary target and FBI agents took up their charge with lethal ferocity.

In Omaha, Nebraska two COINTELPRO targets, Ed Poindexter and Mondo we 
Langa (formerly David Rice) headed Omaha's Black Panther chapter, the 
Nebraska Committee to Combat Fascism.  Both men were blamed by police 
and prosecutors for the August 17, 1970 bombing murder of Omaha 
police officer Larry Minard and were charged with his murder despite 
the confession of 15 year-old Duane Peak.  Prosecutors would cut a 
deal with Peak allowing him freedom after several years of juvenile 
detention in exchange for his testimony implicating Poindexter and Langa.

At the time of the murder trial in April 1971, COINTELPRO was still 
largely unknown to the American public.  The jurors had no idea 
Hoover had ordered that no report be made of a critical voice 
analysis in the case.  The break-in at a satellite FBI field office 
in Media, Pennsylvania on March 8, 1971, three weeks before the Omaha 
trial, led to the first public revelations of the massive clandestine 
operation when secret COINTELPRO documents were 
discovered.  Meanwhile in Nebraska, withheld from defense attorneys 
and kept from jurors, the recorded voice of Larry Minard's killer to 
the police emergency hotline was the subject of Hoover's direct command.

Ivan Willard Conrad, head of the FBI Crime Laboratory, was on the 
inside track of COINTELPRO's misdeeds and had received a memo written 
on the day of the bombing urging him to withhold a formal forensic 
report of the emergency tape vocal analysis.  Conrad then talked with 
Hoover over the phone about the unusual request, recording the FBI 
director's answer with a scrawled notation, "Dir advised 
telephonically & said OK to do."  Conrad initialed and dated the memo 
entry and followed orders never issuing a formal lab report on the Omaha tape.

In 1974 and 1976, Congress passed amendments to the Freedom of 
Information Act allowing individual citizens to examine their own 
government files.  Mondo we Langa requested his COINTELPRO file 
receiving a heavily redacted partial file from FBI headquarters.

One redacted COINTELPRO memorandum dated 10/13/70 was released under 
Mondo's Freedom of Information request several years after Hoover's 
death and was from the Special-Agent-in-Charge of the Omaha FBI 
office to Hoover discussing evidence which "might be prejudicial to 
the police murder trial" against the two Panther leaders, described 
as "accomplices" in the COINTELPRO memo.

Blotted out of the released memo was the identity of the Omaha Police 
Department officer who told the FBI that he wanted "no use" of the 
prejudicial evidence and two descriptions of the evidence to be 
withheld from disclosure to the Panther defendants.  The redacted 
COINTELPRO document can be found in a basement storeroom of the 
Douglas County Courthouse where post-conviction files are buried away 
and is marked as Exhibit D in one of the thick court file binders.

Later, another copy of the same 10/13/70 memo was released with fewer 
redactions and is now in possession of Nebraskans for Justice.  The 
second redacted version reveals the identify of the COINTELPRO 
contact within the Omaha Police, Assistant Chief of Police Glen W. 
Gates, who wanted information about evidence withheld until after the trial.

The second memo also reveals what the FBI censors kept from Mondo we 
Langa.  The "prejudicial" evidence was "tapes of this call" made by 
Minard's killer and that "additional tape recordings of the original 
telephone call" were not to be made at the request of the Omaha 
Police Department.

Although Hoover was dead, FBI censors continued to deny the 
imprisoned Black Panthers critical information about the withholding 
of a formal report on the voice of Larry Minard's killer by blotting 
out references to the tape from the COINTELPRO memo.

Ed Poindexter now has a new trial request pending before the Nebraska 
Supreme Court over the withheld tape recording and conflicting police 
testimony about dynamite allegedly found by detectives.  No date for 
a decision has been announced.

Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa remain imprisoned at the 
maximum-security Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln.  Both men 
deny any involvement in the death of Larry Minard.

***
  Permission granted to reprint





Authors Bio: Michael Richardson is a freelance writer based in 
Boston. Richardson writes about politics, law, nutrition, ethics, and 
music. Richardson is also a political consultant.




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San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
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