The Covert War Against Rock

by Alex Constantine

  31. Michael H. Kater, Doctors Under Hitler, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989, p. 235.

  32. Issels Foundation November 7, 1997 release.

  33. Gary Null and Leonard Steinman, “Suppression of Alternative Cancer Therapies: Dr. Joseph Issels,” Penthouse, August, 1980, p. 186. The article canonizes the late Dr. Issels with lavish praise founded largely on the hostility of the medical establishment toward the German practitioner. The authors glance over Issel’s activities during the war years. Gary Null, co-author, continues to consider him to be alternative medicine’s answer to Lee Salk, and endorsed the clinic in a winter 1999 fundraising appearance on KCET, the PBS affiliate in Los Angeles, in books and elsewhere.

  The medical community, Dr. Issels complained at the time of his arrest, had launched a “conspiracy” to force him out of business. In 1954, he was not allowed to speak at a medical conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil. A couple of years later, he argued, a “conspiracy” of twelve physicians met privately at Hinterzarten in the Black Forest to plan “an end to the charlatan Issels.” In 1960, the doctor was arrested, charged with fraud and manslaughter. The verdict was guilty. Issels appealed, his attorney ushering before the court a parade of whole-body experts and patients supposedly cured by him. He was acquitted in 1964, survived the “conspiracy” and reopened his clinic . . . but there remained sinister cathars within the medical community who disapproved of his methods. The American Cancer Society blacklisted Joseph Issels. And in the early 1970s, a commission of cancer specialists assembled to determine whether his treatments had merit. The commission visited the clinic and concluded in the final report that, though “excellently run,” all of the evidence collected “suggests that Dr. Issels’ main treatment regimen has no effect on tumor growth. He aims to put each patient in the best possible condition to combat the disease, which is admirable, but there is no evidence from our examination and their notes that it makes a significant contribution to their [patients’] survival. We searched for every possible indication of tumor regression not due to cytotoxic drugs and found none that was convincing.”

  34. Bob Marley’s mother to Lew-Lee.

  35. Booker and Winkler, pp. 189–91.

  36. Ibid, p. 179.

  37. Roger Steffans, taped interview, January 16, 2000.

  38. Booker and Winkler, pp. 180–83, 187.

  39. Roger Steffans, “Reasoning with Peter Tosh,” Reggae Times, 1980.

  40. Levy.

  41. Randall Grass, “The Stone that the Builder Refused,” Down Beat, January, 1986.

  42. Williams, p. 20.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Gang War: Sons of CHAOS vs. Thugs A Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. Assassination Digest

  YOU KNOW THAT COP WHO PULLS YOU OVER, WHO DIDN’T REALLY HAVE TO GIVE YOU A TICKET BUT HE GAVE YOU ONE ANYWAY? WE’RE GONNA MULTIPLY HIM 100 TIMES, AND NOW YOU HAVE THE CHIEF OF POLICE. MULTIPLY HIM ABOUT 100 TIMES, AND YOU’VE GOT AN FBI AGENT. MULTIPLY HIM APPROXIMATELY 1,000 TIMES AND YOU’VE GOT A CIA AGENT. MULTIPLY THIS AGENT ANOTHER 10,000, AND YOU’VE GOT THE HEAD OF THE CIA. ICE T, THE ICE OPINION: WHO GIVES A FUCK?, NEW YORK: ST. MARTIN’S, 1994.

  A fog machine in the police establishment conceals the killers of rap artist Tupac Shakur. gunned down at a stop light in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996. The assailants are dim shrouds in a toxic cloud of disinformation. Police officials in Las Vegas and Compton have hinted alternately that the rapper was shot by a death squad under the direction of Marion “Suge” Knight, founder of Death Row Records—implausible because the thug impresario was himself wounded in the attack—or the late Orlando Anderson, a 22-year old Pac fan widely reputed to be a “gang-banger”—an honor student, in fact, not a gangsta. Although Anderson has been publicly identified by evidence leaked to the corporate media, all who knew Anderson maintain he was “not at all violent.”1 It will be evident that a police stonewall, subsequent killings, a strategy of disinformation, the ignoring of witnesses, and the presence of undercover agents from Los Angeles and New York at the subsequent murder of rapper Notorious B.I.G. suggest conversely that both rappers were murdered by hit squads under the sanction of federal officials.

  Cathy Scott, a reporter for the Las Vegas Sun, penetrated the secretive handling of the Tupac case by authorities, and reported:

  No one followed the mortuary van carrying Tupac Shakur’s body from the hospital to the morgue. The van drove three blocks without being noticed. An autopsy was done the evening of [Friday] Sept. 13, 1996, almost immediately following his death, according to authorities. While the autopsy report is not deemed by Nevada state law to be public information, the coroner’s report is available to the public. However, after I bought a copy for $5, an office employee later said it had been given to me in error, and that they would not be releasing it to anyone because of the ongoing homicide investigation. To my knowledge, I am the only reporter to have a copy of that report.

  Coroners found that Tupac had no illegal drugs in his blood when shot, but he had been heavily sedated at University Medical Center. He had been shot in his right hand, hip and chest just under the right arm. A trauma center surgeon removed a bullet from his pelvic area. “Tupac’s injuries included a gunshot wound to his right chest with a ‘massive hemothorax’ and a wound to the thigh with ‘the bullet palpable within the abdomen.’” The diagnosis was a gunshot wound to the chest and abdomen, and post-operative bleeding.2

  The murder “investigation” has been side-tracked at every turn by detectives in Compton and Las Vegas, who have consistently managed to avoid gathering leads. Key witnesses to Tupac’s murder died in a timely fashion. Others were shunned by homicide detectives.

  Yafeu Fula, the eyewitness, was unable to provide a description of the trigger-man. He was murdered himself two months after Shakur was pronounced dead. On November 14, 1996, the wires reported, “Witness to Tupac’s Murder Killed”:

  One of Tupac Shakur’s backup rappers who witnessed the fatal shooting of the hip-hop star was gunned down in a New Jersey housing project this weekend. So far, police are saying that the slaying of 19-year old Yafeu Fula has no connection with Tupac’s death.

  But Fula’s death will further stymie the slow-moving murder investigation. “It’s another dead end for us,” said Las Vegas police Sgt. Kevin Manning, the lead investigator.

  Fula, a member of Shakur’s backing group Outlaw Immortalz, was riding with bodyguards in the car behind Shakur when the rapper was shot by unknown assailants returning from the Tyson-Bruce fight September 7 in Las Vegas. . . .

  Strangely enough, Fula was also murdered the night of a Mike Tyson fight. Evander Holyfield defeated Mike Tyson just hours before Fula was killed.

  Meanwhile, Shakur’s driving companion and Death Row Records head Marion “Suge” Knight is sitting in a Los Angeles courtroom today accused of drug-related probation violations. . . . Later this month, federal prosecutors will contend he used marijuana in violation of a 1994 firearms trafficking conviction in Las Vegas.

  Think the Tupac killing will ever be solved?3

  Other witnesses, dismissed by police as “uncooperative,” complained to reporters that no attempt had been made to solicit their testimony. Two of Tupac Shakur’s entourage informed authorities that they saw who murdered him but were never asked to identify suspects. These witnesses—Malcolm Greenridge, one of Shakur’s back-up performers, and Frank Alexander, a bodyguard—were also driving behind the rapper when the assailants opened fire. But Greenridge and Alexander were never contacted by homicide investigators about the killing. Metro Police Sergeant Kevin Manning countered with an attempt to discredit them. They “gave us taped statements on the night of the shooting that are totally inconsistent” with their public statements, he said. Manning also assured reporters that investigators had finally contacted one witness and intended to contact the other—several months after witnesses had complained to the press of police inaction.

  Greenridge and Alexander were clear about the ki
lling “I saw four black males in a white Cadillac as it rolled by our car just before Tupac got shot,” he recalls. “I couldn’t see which of those four people pulled the trigger, but I saw the gun come from the back seat out through the driver’s front window, and I saw the driver. I did see all four faces for a few split seconds before the shooting, though, and I told the police that. I can’t promise you I could identify them, but nobody has ever even asked me to try.”

  Frank Alexander asked: ‘Could I identify the killer of my friend Tupac Shakur if the police showed me photos or a lineup of suspects? Possibly so. The thing is that the Las Vegas Metro Police never even tried to show me a photo of the shooter. Nor did they call me at any time for a line-up or to ask me anything concerning the shooting and death of Tupac.” Both witnesses stated that they did not pursue the issue with Las Vegas police because they distrusted them. Just after the shooting, “the police shoved guns in our faces and threatened us,” Greenridge said. “They made us lay face down in the middle of the street. Even after they realized we were telling the truth, they never apologized.” Greenridge told reporters, “If you ask me, I don’t think they really care who killed Tupac. [He] was just another black man that had a strong opinion—and now he’s out of the way.”

  Six months after the Las Vegas assault, the “investigation” was still ostensibly bogged down in police apathy. The Sun’s Cathy Scott reported in March:

  When a producer from Unsolved Mysteries called last year and asked me to go on camera, my first response was, “Don’t you have anyone else you can interview?” For six months, Metro homicide detectives have investigated Shakur’s murder. They didn’t want to be interviewed for the Unsolved piece, claiming the publicity “won’t help them solve the crime.”

  Tupac and Biggie each performed for record labels that were the targets of federal investigations. The nights they were killed, each was with their record label producers (Tupac was with Marion “Suge” Knight, owner of Death Row Records on the West Coast, and Biggie was with Puffy Combs, owner of Bad Boy Entertainment on the East Coast). Are the killings connected? That’s one of three questions narrator Robert Stack poses on Unsolved Mysteries.

  “Today, disturbing questions haunt the investigation,” Stack says. “Why were Tupac’s trusted bodyguards unarmed? Why did the killer seem to target only Shakur? In the midst of the jam-packed Las Vegas Strip, how did the gunman know where Tupac would be?”

  In the information vacuum of the “dead-end” investigation, rumors spread like a continental brush fire. Sergeant Manning cl aimed that more than half of the tips following the March 14 Unsolved Mysteries segment on Shakur were theories that the rapper is still alive. “I was at the autopsy,” Manning reported. “His mother was at the hospital when he died. The doctors, the nurses were there, the people from the mortuary and the coroner’s office were involved. For him not to be dead, you would have to have a conspiracy on line with JFK being assassinated by the Central Intelligence Agency.” One tipster claimed Shakur’s close friend, Marion “Suge” Knight, killed the rapper. More than 300 tips were received, but only one appeared promising, claimed Manning: “There was only one that piqued our interest to the point that it appeared the individual probably has at least some information or knowledge about the case, But they didn’t leave a name or phone number.”4

  Richard Fischbein, an attorney for the Shakur estate, complained that Las Vegas police were not really interested in finding the gunmen. “I’ve called and pushed and prodded them,” he said, “and these guys aren’t doing anything. So that leaves us with the mother forced into a position of having to deal with this situation on her own, and that’s an outrage. I have my own theory, and that is that they’re trying to create the Disneyland of the Far West in Las Vegas and the last thing in the world that they want is a story about black-gang drive-by shootings taking place in their town. So this is not something they’re going to bring to a big trial that will be covered by the national press.”5

  Afeni Shakur observed tersely, “It was clear to me from day one that the Las Vegas police never had any interest in solving the case of my son’s murder.” Yet the Associated Press reported five months after the slaying: “Three Los Angeles men are suspects in the drive-by shooting of rap star Tupac Shakur, but police say uncooperative witnesses have stymied their investigation.”6 Witnesses unanimously deny this statement and maintain that it was police who were “uncooperative.”

  In the Spring of 1997, a stink arose over the concealment of the trigger-man’s identity by Las Vegas police: “MTV News reported on Tuesday that it had obtained a 29-page document prepared by police in Compton, California, which was attached to a motion filed in court by attorneys for Death Row Records chief Suge Knight. This document reveals that only days after the shooting in Las Vegas of rapper Tupac Shakur last September, cops already had the name of the man gang informants say pulled the trigger.”

  Sergeant Manning acknowledged to reporters that detectives had “no suspects” in the case—nevertheless, Orlando Anderson had not been “ruled out.” The sergeant wasn’t accusing anyone . . . exactly. “It may be a play on words a little bit,” he explained, “but that’s just the way we do business.”7

  Official “word play” stoked the fog machine obscuring the identities of the killers, recalling the smears of political activists in the COINTELPRO/CHAOS period. Compton police prepared an affidavit in October citing unnamed “informants” falsely placing Anderson in gang activity. He was arrested during a sweep of the city and questioned about another, unrelated case, the murder of Edward Webb, but no charges were filed. Detectives from Las Vegas arrived and grilled him about the Shakur killing but were unable to establish a connection. There was also no evidence that he had shot and killed Webb. Deputy District Attorney Janet Moore released Anderson but refused to explain her decision to reporters.8

  While detained for questioning, Anderson was publicly condemned by police, described falsely as a street thug and a murderer. It was hinted at press conferences that Compton police had apprehended the killer of Tupac Shakur. But “if Orlando was indeed a gang-banger,” Details reported, “he certainly wasn’t a run-of-the-mill one. ‘He wasn’t that type of person at all,’ says Tyrise Tooles, a friend and former classmate of Orlando’s at Dominguez High School in Compton. ‘He was a real friendly person.’” The accused killer of Shakur also attended William Howard Taft High in the Valley, a school of advanced students. He was immersed in family life, had never been convicted of a crime, did not indulge in drugs, even marijuana or tobacco, loved sports, planned on running his own recording studio—not exactly the profile of a gangsta Crip, as police alleged.9

  On March 21, Anderson spoke to reporters from CNN: “I want to let everybody know ... I didn’t do it,” he said. “I been thinking that maybe I’m like a scapegoat or something.”

  His lawyer, Edi M.O. Faal, was on hand for the interview, and added, “This young man is almost acting like a prisoner now. He is very careful where he goes, he is very careful when he goes out.” Anderson denied publicly that he was a member of the Crips, and there is no indication that he ran with the gang, but police in his hometown of Compton defamed him anyway.10 The bogus charges didn’t help Anderson’s reputation in Compton, particularly with the Crips. After his release, he confided to his lawyer, “You know, I don’t think I’m going to have a long life.” The comment was prophetic— Orlando Anderson was shot and killed by a Corner Pocket Crip in a street confrontation on May 29, 1998.

  The Tupac Shakur GeoCities Web Site suggests that the famed rapper was a political target, the latest in a series of covert operations waged against his family:

  The tale of Tupac Shakur, who lived so fast and died so young, is at once more tender and more tragic than that of the woman-hating thug we saw in stories about him. Quiet as it was kept by the media and by Tupac himself, the effusively talented singer/writer/actor was the heir apparent of a family of black revolutionaries, most of whom wound up jailed, exiled o
r dead during the 1970s and 1980s. His ties to the remarkable Shakur family must have been a weighty psychic burden for the rap artist. The individual members of the extended clan commanded almost mythic respect from radicals of the black power period, especially in New York. This denning part of Tupac’s background, incredibly, has been generally glossed over by the music and social critics trying to make sense of the contradictions that permeated his life. Given the radical diehard commitment of those relatives, it is no wonder that Tupac believed police agents were trailing him, like hunters after their prey. What was truly amazing was the grace with which, as an actor and rapper, he tied together feelings of love with the righteous anger that was a family legacy.

  Tupac Amaru Shakur was born in 1971 to Afeni Shakur, a Black Panther, who carried the rapper-to-be in her womb while she was in jail, accused in a bomb plot. The Manhattan District Attorney tried to link 21 Panthers to the alleged plot, but the prosecutor’s office found itself red-faced when a jury quickly rejected the charges. It is now believed the defendants were victims of an FBI-led attempt to neutralize Panther Party members across the country.

  Afeni never revealed publicly who Tupac’s father was. But one thing she did acknowledge: that the father was not Afeni’s husband, Lumumba Shakur, who was the lead defendant in the Panther case. Exhausted from the trial and angry at the romantic betrayal by Afeni, Lumumba left his wife and her newborn son; but Afeni quickly moved in with Lumumba’s adopted brother, Mutulu, who would become Tupac’s stepfather and spiritual counselor for the rest of the younger man’s life. Those who knew the family describe Mutulu Shakur as the most influential male figure in Tupac’s life, the man who taught him to stand up for himself and never to back down from a fight. But Mutulu, later to be known as Dr. Shakur, because of his training in acupuncture, was eventually to be taken from Tupac. In 1986, he was arrested as the reputed mastermind of the 1981 Brinks robbery, in which two Nayack, New York policemen and a Brinks guard were killed. To this day, Dr. Shakur denies that he had anything to do with the holdup, but he was nonetheless convicted and is now doing 60 years.