Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-Ups
Page 31
* * *
Cause of Death:
MULTIPLE GUNSHOT WOUNDS
* * *
Official Verdict:
SHOT WHILE ASSAULTING POLICE OFFICERS DURING RAID Police said they attempted to peacefully serve a warrant and were met with massive gunfire from inside the apartment, so they fired back. Police testified that in excess of 200 shots were exchanged in a two-sided gun battle that lasted approximately ten to twelve minutes.
Actual Circumstances:
The raid was actually a massive police assault by a special tactical unit of 15 plainclothes officers armed with everything from machine guns to sawed-off shotguns. Contrary to knocking on the door to serve a warrant, actually they stormed into the small apartment from both the front and back at 4:45 a.m. with weapons blazing. Ballistics evidence reveals that only one shot came from inside the apartment, which was fired directly into the door and did not wound anyone.
All other gunfire was from police, directed at those inside. Victim was drugged by an FBI informant and was totally unconscious during the raid. Victim was shot in bed while unconscious, then dragged out of bed and, still alive, was then executed by a police officer with two shots to the head at point-blank range.
* * *
Inconsistencies:
1. The victim was rendered completely unconscious prior to the police raid. Medical testing revealed he was drugged with a very high dose of a strong barbiturate. He was slipped the drugs by a confessed FBI informant and he remained unconscious from the time he went to bed. Witnesses confirmed that he never even woke up, let alone fired a weapon.
2. Forensic expert Dr. Cyril Wecht was shocked when he viewed Hampton’s blood findings: “Hampton’s blood samples contained incredibly high levels of Seconal, or secobarbital—4.5 milligrams per deciliter, in fact, or about four times the amount considered toxic and potentially lethal.”453
3. As Dr. Wecht notes: “This Seconal level is very important evidence that’s been overlooked. If this toxicology report is true, then Fred Hampton was in a very deep sleep or even in a stuporous state at the time the police raided his apartment. If that’s the case, then there’s no way he could have been shooting a gun, let alone initiating a gunfight. And if this is true, then the police have been lying from the beginning and this whole operation may have been nothing more than a political assassination.”454
4. Dr. Wecht immediately recognized that the bullet trajectories tell a quite different story than the Official Version: “If these trajectories were correct, then Hampton was not standing up facing the officers when he was shot; rather, he was lying on his back, and the officer who shot him was standing directly above him and slightly to his right.”455
* * *
“We expected about twenty Panthers to be in the apartment when the police raided the place. Only two of those black nigger fuckers were killed, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.”
—FBI Special Agent Gregg York
“Fred understood he was a marked man ... “
—Attorney Jeffrey Haas
“As the old law enforcement saying goes, even in the most carefully thought-out crimes, a criminal will make a mistake. I suppose it is no different when police officers become criminals.”
—Dr. Cyril Wecht
Fred Hampton was a gifted student and athletic star who planned on becoming an attorney. He graduated with honors from his high school in Chicago and gradually became politically active. Hampton came to embrace the philosophy of self-defense as a legal and intelligent response to racism and overt political oppression. His murder by the police is perhaps the best example of the organized oppression he sought to socially overcome.
Hampton studied pre-Law in Junior College and used what he learned to employ justice in his own neighborhood. To combat police brutality in poor urban neighborhoods of Chicago, Hampton and his fellow group members followed police around in the city to let them know that their actions were being monitored by residents. So when the Black Panther Party came along, it was the perfect vehicle for Fred Hampton.
Much contrary to how it was intentionally maligned in the media, the Black Panther Party was actually a political defense organization—if you didn’t mess with them, they didn’t mess with you. Their complete name was actually the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. They advocated and maintained a strict no-drugs policy (no personal use or trafficking) and stressed a Ten-Point Program that advocated strong educational principles, community health centers, political activism and education, a Free Breakfast Program and other assistance for those who needed it most. As Doc Satchel, founder of the Chicago Black Panther Health Clinic interpreted it:
“The Panthers were an armed propaganda unit that raised the contradictions, set the example, and provided the vehicle that the people could ride to revolution. We do not say the Black Panther Party will be ovethrowing the government; we heighten the contradictions so the people can decide if they want to change the government.”456
Hampton galvanized national attention by engineering a strategically brilliant alliance between the Panthers and other groups. The first and most important was a Non-Aggression pact between the Black Panthers and the major gangs that controlled the streets of south and west Chicago, in neighborhoods so tough that the police were literally afraid to enter.
The truces with these huge groups—the Blackstone Rangers (over 5,000 members), and particularly with the Black Disciples (approximately 5,500 members) allowed the Panthers to recruit in the roughest neighborhoods of Chicago which contained the ripest audience for new members. This brilliant coup instantly supercharged Panther membership and solidified an incredible power base at the heart of the movement—the poorest of the inner city poor, com-posed of much disenfranchised minorities.
It was actually Fred Hampton, not Reverend Jesse Jackson, who first employed the term Rainbow Coalition. His coalition included not only the Black Panthers and the city’s two largest street gangs, but a diverse network comprised of the Young Lords, the Young Patriots, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, the Brown Berets, and the Red Guard Party.
Hampton’s efforts also began visibly changing the most impoverished parts of the city. He changed the activities of these street gangs from just being criminal, to becoming political. Instead of expanding their drug dealing, gangs like the D’s (the Disciples) began massive picketing campaigns protesting the lack of minority hirings at Chicago construction sites and were so successful in their socio-political efforts that they actually forced sites to shut down until they agreed to hire inner-city workers. The Stones street gang focused on political efforts against the well-known city political machine and actually got activists and other community members elected to posts in which they formally represented their inner-city neighborhoods. Hampton’s achievements prompted the national leadership of the Black Panther Party to appoint him as the party’s National Spokesman.
Hampton held a press conference in May, 1969 and publicly announced the truce among his Rainbow Coalition; it was a noteworthy advancement in both the unification of diverse socio-political interests and their ability to effect serious political change.
This progress, politically, brought Hampton to national attention—and not just in the Black Panther Party either. The threat to the power structure from Hampton’s organizational brilliance was that it united white students with inner-city blacks, and Hispanics, and people of all classes.
The FBI targeted the Black Panther Party with its COINTELPRO Program, generally, and targeted Fred Hampton, specifically.
Hampton’s eloquence further advanced his young career as he coined phrases still remembered today:
“You can kill the revolutionary, but you can’t kill the revolution.”
“I know of no other intelligent way to act in an extreme situation other than extreme.”457
While Hampton’s eloquence was gaining him followers, it was still his organizing brilliance that made a difference in the
streets and politically. He was reportedly on the verge of pulling off a huge merger with the largest street gang on the south side of Chicago that literally would have doubled membership in the Black Panther Party overnight.
On the night of December 3, 1969, Fred Hampton taught a Political Education course at a local church.
That night, after returning home from teaching his course, he was murdered in his sleep, under the “official cover” of a police raid. To make matters worse, the entire event was witnessed by Hampton’s girlfriend, who was 8-months pregnant with their child.
Forensic experts determined that the police version of a two-sided gunfight was an outright lie. It was scientifically determined that of the hundreds of gunshots in Hampton’s apartment, all but one had been fired by police.
This is the bed on which Hampton was shot as he slept, before being dragged onto the floor and executed at point-blank range.
Forensics also determined that a wounded and completely unconscious Fred Hampton had been dragged out of his bed and into the hallway, then executed by police with two shots to the head at point-blank range.
According to eyewitness testimony at the scene, this is how the murder of Fred Hampton was set:
“Automatic gunfire then converged at the head of the bedroom where Hampton slept, unable to wake up as a result of the barbiturates that the FBI infiltrator had slipped into his drink. He was lying on a mattress in the bedroom with his pregnant girlfriend. Two officers found him wounded in the shoulder, and fellow Black Panther Harold Bell reported that he heard the following exchange:
“That’s Fred Hampton.”
“Is he dead? ... Bring him out.”
“He’s barely alive; he’ll make it.”
Photo excerpted from the DVD release of The Murder of Fred Hampton © Facets Multi-Media, 2007
Two shots were heard, which it was later discovered were fired point blank in Hampton’s head. According to Deborah Johnson, one officer then said:
“He’s good and dead now.”458
Their informant had provided the police with a map that diagrammed the exact layout of Hampton’s apartment. They knew exactly where to go, and they burst through the door with guns blazing to get there.
Fred Hampton, Jr. was born twenty-five days later.
Here’s the account that his mother gave of the pre-dawn murder of the boy’s father—this is in her own words:
I looked up and saw bullets coming from what seemed like the front of the apartment and the kitchen area in the back. Bullets were going into the mattress. The sparks of light, the bed vibrating—I just knew with all this going on, it was all over. At some point the shooting stopped. Fred didn’t move anymore. I came out with my hands up. There were two lines of police I had to walk though. One of them grabbed my robe and pulled it open. I was eight and a half months pregnant then. “Well, what do you know. We have a pregnant broad.” Another policeman grabbed me by the hair and slung me into the kitchen area. I looked around and saw Ron Satchel on the dining room floor. He had blood all over him. Verlina Brewer was in the kitchen, bleeding. She started to fall. They grabbed her and threw her against the refrigerator. Then more shooting. I heard a voice that wasn’t familiar to me say, “He’s barely alive. He’ll barely make it.” I assumed they were talking about Fred.
The shooting started again, just for a brief period. It stopped. Then another unfamiliar voice said, “He’s good and dead now.”459
BIBLIOGRAPHY
“The Murder of Fred Hampton,” dir. by Mike Gray & Howard Alk (Facets Multi-Media, 2007, dvd). http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Fred-Hampton/dp/B000O75GWQ
The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther; Jeffrey Haas, 2009
We Are Not What We Seem: Black Nationalism and Class Struggle in the American Century, Rod Bush, 2000, NYU Press. (Panthers doubling in size through merger: p. 216)
Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement; Ward Churchill & Jim Vander Wall, 1988
The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States; Ward Churchill & Jim Vander Wall, 1990
“COINTELPRO from the Church Committee Reports” and “FBI COINTELPRO Documents”, Paul Wolf, 1996-2004, ICDC.com. http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/ cointelpro/cointel.htm
“Akua Njeri (Deborah Johnson)”, Human Constitutional Rights.org. http://www.hrcr. org/ccr/njeri.html
“Interview with Deborah Johnson, Eyes on the Prize II Interviews”, Terry Rockefeller, October 19, 1988. http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eii/eiiweb/joh5427.0255.082marc_ record_interviewee_process.html
“Fred Hampton”, John Simkin, Spartacus Educational, http://www.spartacus.schoolnet. co.uk/USAhamptonF.htm
* * *
453 Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D., Mark Curriden & Benjamin Wecht, Grave Secrets: Leading Forensic Expert Reveals the Startling Truth About O.J. Simpson, David Koresh, Vincent Foster, and Other Sensational Cases, Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D. with Mark Curriden and Benjamin Wecht, 1998.
454 Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D., et al., Grave Secrets
455 Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D., et al., Grave Secrets
456 The Murder of Fred Hampton, dir. by Mike Gray & Howard Alk (Facets Multi-Media, 2007, dvd). http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Fred-Hampton/dp/B000O75GWQ
457 The Murder of Fred Hampton, dir. by Mike Gray & Howard Alk
458 Ward Churchill & Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (South End Press, 1988).
459 HumanConstitutionalRights.org, Akua Njeri (Deborah Johnson), http://www.hrcr.org/ccr/njeri.html (accessed 12 Jan 2012).
Vincent Foster —
July 20, 1993
White House Counsel
* * *
VICTIM:
VINCE FOSTER, WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL
* * *
Cause of Death:
GUNSHOT
* * *
Official Verdict:
SUICIDE
Actual Circumstances:
Victim found in public park on a Tuesday afternoon. The evidence indicates he was murdered with a low-velocity weapon such as a .22, producing no exit wound. Evidence is not consistent with the official version which purports that he shot himself with a Colt .38 at point-blank range (directly into his own mouth) with high-velocity ammunition.
* * *
Inconsistencies:
1. The person who first found Foster in the park examined his body closely because he was very curious as to what had happened. He swore under oath that no gun was present at that time in either hand of the victim, and that he was certain of that fact. The FBI pressured the witness to alter his story, but he refused.
2. A gun was found in victim’s hand according to the official version, but it was a .38 caliber revolver. A .38 produces a powerful recoil after discharge and that recoil typically “throws” the gun several feet from a suicide victim.
3. No blowback of blood or tissue was found on the gun or on Foster’s hand or on his sleeve. That is literally impossible from a .38 caliber Army Colt Special expending a high-velocity round into his head at very close range.
4. The powder burn patterns on Foster’s hand indicate they were discharged from the FRONT of a gun cylinder. If Foster had been holding the gun himself when he was shot, then the pattern burns would have indicated that they were discharged from the REAR of the gun cylinder.
5. Foster’s fingerprints were not on the gun. The FBI identified two prints on the weapon, but they did not belong to Foster.
6. The gunpowder residue that was found on Foster’s clothing and eyeglasses DID NOT COME from the gun found in his hand.
7. The forensic evidence clearly indicates that the body was moved after the death of the victim. Witness testimony is consistent that there was very little blood at the scene. A .38 caliber high-velocity round produces a huge exit wound and a large pool of
blood due to the fact that the heart keeps pumping after a gunshot to the head; an action that lasts until the heart runs out of blood to pump, thereby producing a massive pool at the scene of the gunshot. Its absence is a forensic indication that either the victim was killed somewhere else and then moved, or the gunshot took place after the victim was already dead.
8. The blood evidence also indicates that the body was moved post-mortem. Blood does not run uphill, it runs in accordance with gravity. Yet a dried trickle of blood on Foster’s face did run uphill in defiance of gravity, indicating that the corpse was originally in a much different position. The corpse was not checked for lividity marks at the crime scene (standard police procedure), which would have indicated whether or not the victim had actually died in that position.
9. No soil samples were obtainable from Foster’s shoes, according to the FBI report. However, in two re-enactments, walking from the parking lot to the crime scene in similar shoes, both tests accumulated very detectable soil samples on the exact same type of shoes that Foster was wearing. This fact is yet another indication that the body was moved post-mortem.
10. The “suicide note” supposedly found later in Foster’s office at the White House has been determined to be a forgery by three handwriting experts who analyzed it independently.
11. The “suicide note” contained no fingerprints of Foster’s, even though he supposedly had torn it into twenty-eight pieces.
12. A report from the Medical Examiner uncovered at the National Archives reveals that Foster had an ADDITIONAL GUNSHOT WOUND in his neck that was not reported.