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<font size=4><b>The "Omaha Two" Victimized by COINTELPRO
Injustice<br>
</b></font><font size=3> - by Stephen Lendman<br><br>
December 24, 2009<br><br>
After a two week April 1971 trial and four days of deliberation, an 11
white/one black member jury convicted Mondo we Langa (formerly David
Rice) and Edward Poindexter for the bombing murder of police officer
Larry Minard on August 17, 1970. Both men denied involvement, and ever
since consistently maintained their innocence, insisting they were
framed. Supporters agree, including Amnesty International that declared
them political prisoners, and no wonder.<br>
<br>
They were Omaha chapter National Committee to Combat Fascism (NCCF)
leaders, an off-shoot of the Black Panther Party, targeted (as later
revealed) by secret FBI/police Domino task force/COINTELPRO tactics,
following J. Edgar Hoover's orders to infiltrate, disrupt, sabotage, and
destroy their activism for ethnic justice, racial emancipation, and real
economic, social, and political equality across gender and color
lines.<br>
<br>
COINTELPRO is the acronym for the FBI's secretive/mostly illegal
counterintelligence program to neutralize political dissidents, including
communists; anti-war, human and civil rights activists; the American
Indian Movement; and Black Panther Party among others.<br>
<br>
In their book "Agents of Repression," Ward Churchill and Jim
Vander Wall wrote:<br>
<br>
"the term came to signify the whole context of clandestine
(typically illegal) political repression activities (including) a massive
surveillance (program via) wiretaps, surreptitious entries and
burglaries, electronic devices, live 'tails' and....bogus mail" to
induce paranoia and "foster 'splits' within or between
organizations." <br>
<br>
Other tactics included:<br>
<br>
-- "black propaganda" through leaflets or other publications
"designed to discredit organizations and foster internal
tensions;"<br>
<br>
-- "disinformation or 'gray propaganda' " for the same purpose;
<br>
<br>
-- "bad-jacketing" to "creat(e) suspicion - through the
spread of rumors, manufacture of evidence, etc. - that bona fide
organizational members, (usually leaders were) FBI/police
informants," to turn some against others violently; <br>
<br>
-- "assassinations (of) selected political leaders," including
Fred Hampton and Mark Clark on December 4, 1969 by Chicago police while
they slept; and<br>
<br>
-- "harassment arrests (on bogus) charges."<br>
<br>
Individuals and organizations were targeted for their activism, not
crimes that were blamed on innocent victims like the "Omaha
Two."<br>
<br>
In November 1968, a J. Edgar Hoover memorandum ordered his agents
"to exploit all avenues of creating....dissension within the ranks
of the BPP (using) imaginative hard-hitting counterintelligence measures
aimed at crippling the BPP." From 1968 - 1971, they were vicious,
including against Mondo we Langa and Edward Poindexter, targeted by the
Bureau to be neutralized.<br>
<br>
Months before they were arrested, FBI agents and Omaha police harassed
them with tactics like frequent traffic stops, verbal abuse, and more. We
Langa was called before a grand jury, and the Greater Omaha Community
Action Agency fired him. Poindexter was victimized by bogus newspaper
letters and an anonymous phone campaign. For the two men, it was just the
beginning of a long nightmare, ongoing after 40 years.<br>
<br>
Background on the "Omaha Two"<br>
<br>
We Langa joined the BPP in 1969, then later the NCCF. He wrote for the
local underground paper, Buffalo Chip, and in prison created art, wrote
plays, short stories, articles, and five poetry books. He also
contributed poems and stories to literary journals and magazines,
including The Black Scholar, ARGO, Black American Literary Forum,
Pacifica Review, Black Books Bulletin, and many others. <br>
<br>
He's one of several co-authors of "The Race: Matters Concerning Pan
Afrikan History, Culture, and Genocide" published in 1992, and a
contributor to Nebraska Voices, commissioned by the Nebraska Humanities
Council in commemoration of the sesquicentennial of Nebraska's
statehood.<br>
<br>
Like Poindexter, he's been incarcerated for nearly 40 years, during which
time he's been non-violent and mentored young inmates as a model
prisoner. Yet he's bogusly called a "cop killer," repeatedly
(with Poindexter) denied parole, and in June 1968, the Nebraska Supreme
Court ruled them ineligible unless the Board of Pardons commutes their
sentences - unlikely as it's composed of the governor, attorney general
and secretary of state who haven't commuted a first-degree murder
conviction in two decades, and overruled numerous Nebraska Parole Board's
post-1993 unanimous decisions to commute their sentences to time served.
<br>
<br>
Edward Poindexter is a Vietnam veteran, a graduate of Metro State
University, St. Paul, MN with a straight A average, and earned an MA from
Goddard Graduate Program in Montpelier, VT. He was imprisoned in
Minnesota to separate him from we Langa.<br>
<br>
He's held leadership positions in the Art Club, Jaycees as president, and
Harambee African Cultural Organization. He also:<br>
<br>
-- received the Insight Program's Antoniak Award for outstanding
achievement; <br>
<br>
-- created the musical drama, Shakedown Blues; <br>
<br>
-- published two Youth Survival Guides booklets for troubled youths;
<br>
<br>
-- recorded Jammer from the Slammer promoting constructive
problem-solving and self-motivation;<br>
<br>
-- participated in Minnesota's Turn Off the Violence Campaign;<br>
<br>
-- was involved in the Juvenile Detention Bed Hotline Information Message
Program producing works to support non-violence;<br>
<br>
-- teaches and is currently writing a workbook for a Minnesota
Correctional System class on building self-esteem;<br>
<br>
-- teaches a health class including AIDS education;<br>
<br>
-- is involved in teaching other classes on the history of intolerance in
America, the civil rights movement, black history, and music;<br>
<br>
-- developed a program for prisoners to encourage attitudinal and
behavioral changes for men who batter women;<br>
<br>
-- produced motivational tapes; and<br>
<br>
-- proposed an audio recording studio, currently operating.<br>
<br>
He's also been a model prisoner, yet he's denied parole.<br>
<br>
Background on the Case<br>
<br>
At trial, jurors were told that, using dynamite, blasting caps, and a
battery, Poindexter made a suitcase bomb in we Langa's kitchen. A week
later, he allegedly instructed 15-year old Duane Peak to put it in a
vacant house, call the police, and say a woman was dragged into it
screaming. Peak was charged with the crime, confessed, and claimed we
Langa and Poindexter put him up to it, but changed his story numerous
times, only once incriminated the "Omaha Two," was sentenced as
a juvenile, and served about five years.<br>
<br>
Initially, he didn't implicate them. In fact, he was in custody three
days before mentioning their names, clearly under pressure, threats, and
believed beatings in return for leniency.<br>
<br>
The defense never heard his taped 911 call. It wasn't introduced at
trial, and the original tape was destroyed. Years later, a copy surfaced
with an accompanying FBI memo suggesting it was withheld because the
voice wasn't Peak's, so perhaps authorities were shielding whoever made
it, someone complicit in the crime to incriminate we Langa and
Poindexter.<br>
<br>
A week after the bombing, police targeted the black community, conducted
warrantless searches, arrested NCCF members, had no evidence to hold
them, so invented it by apparently planting dynamite, other explosives,
blasting caps, and weapons in we Langa's basement, then discovered them
when he was in Kansas City for a speech, prepared a shoddy report, gave
perjured trial testimony contradicting it, yet got the two men convicted
for a crime they didn't commit.<br>
<br>
Years later, one juror admitted believing they were innocent because only
circumstantial evidence was introduced, and Duane Peak's testimony wasn't
credible. Another juror said the only black one thought they were
innocent, yet relented after the others agreed to no death penalty.<br>
<br>
Judicial Hypocrisy<br>
<br>
The entire process was controversial and tainted, including
circumstantial evidence that never should have been allowed pertaining to
the defendants' political beliefs, ones held by millions in the country,
then and now.<br>
<br>
In addition, their fingerprints weren't on the alleged dynamite, skin
tests performed to detect traces were negative, and according to former
Omaha police officer, Marvin McClarty, an improper search procedure found
it. Then shortly after the men's conviction, we Langa's house
mysteriously burned down, eliminating any chance for a post hoc accuracy
check of police testimony.<br>
<br>
In addition, in 1974, a federal court ruled the search illegal, cited
inconsistencies in a police lieutenant's testimony authorizing it,
admitted the dynamite might have been planted, and ordered a new trial,
upheld by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1975. <br>
<br>
However, in 1976, the Supreme Court applied a post hoc jurisdictional
technicality to deny it by ruling that when states provide full and fair
Fourth Amendment litigation opportunities (a dubious conclusion in this
case), the Constitution warrants no habeas relief. Later rulings blocked
the appellate process, and the statutory time limit for filing in
Nebraska courts expired while the men awaited the federal outcome.<br>
<br>
A major obstacle is that the Court of Appeals won't address whether the
men were fairly tried, whether tainted evidence was introduced, whether
key witnesses committed perjury, only if under legal system standards the
process was fair, true or not. <br>
<br>
Most important, the likelihood that political targets can get due process
and judicial fairness is nil when authorities want to convict and have
complicit judges allowing it. The courts today are corrupted with them,
hanging ones of the worst kind, so what chance have two black men under a
system structured against them and always has been.<br>
<br>
On June 19, 2009, the Nebraska Supreme Court showed it by denying
Poindexter a new trial despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence as
well as we Langa's - with added closing statement emphasis saying:<br>
<br>
"We affirm the judgment of the district court denying Poindexter's
motion for post conviction relief," meaning that to be Black in
America grants you none.<br>
<br>
In the 1980s, Nebraska Chief Supreme Court Justice Norman Krivosha
commissioned a study of the state's judicial fairness that concluded it
was equitable with one exception - race. People of color were more likely
to be arrested, indicted, convicted, and given longer sentences than
whites, including the death penalty for capital offenses. It's no
surprise that Nebraska's 3% black population comprises over 40% of its
inmates, and the same disparity holds nationally. <br>
<br>
Blacks make up around 12.4% of the population, but almost half of those
incarcerated. Around 50% of them are for non-violent offenses, and about
half of those are drug related. In 2000, Human Rights Watch reported that
in one-third of the states, 75% of all drug related offenders were black.
In Illinois, it was 89%. Shockingly, with less than 5% of the world's
population, America has almost one-fouth of its prisoners, by far the
largest total at around 2.4 million, growing at about 1,000 per week,
mostly affecting blacks and hispanics.<br>
<br>
It's no wonder that we Langa and Poindexter couldn't reopen their case
despite later FBI documents (released in 1978) showing police and the
Bureau collaborated to suppress exculpatory evidence to convict two
innocent men. Jack Swanson, the chief detective in charge of the
investigation, told the BBC why:<br>
<br>
"I think we did the right thing at the time because the Black
Panther Party....completely disappeared from Omaha after we got the two
main players." In other words, neutralize the leadership and the
organization dies.<br>
<br>
Yet former Nebraska Governor Frank Morrison (1961 - 1967, who with Thomas
Kenney represented Poindexter as a public defender) believed the
men:<br>
<br>
-- "were convicted for their rhetoric, not for any crime they
committed....The only thing these fellas did was try to combat all the
racial discrimination of the time the wrong way....They weren't convicted
of murder."<br>
<br>
It was for their activism and prominence to stifle dissent, keep them
imprisoned to assure it, and continue a long tradition of defiling due
process and judicial fairness for people of color, the poor, and
disadvantaged in a democracy for the privileged alone, as virulent under
Obama as earlier.<br>
<br>
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on
Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.<br>
<br>
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to the
Lendman News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US
Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on
world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy
listening.<br>
<br>
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