Eighty-Six Years of Editorial Freedom 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Ml 48104 Panthers on the prowl for FBI Friday, February 20, 1976 News Phone: 764-0552 Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan Bush committee a sham EARLIER THIS WEEK, the Presi- dent announced a large-scale re- organization of the United States' in- telligence community. His plan in- cludes the appointment of CIA Direc- tor George Bush to chair a commit- tee assigned to conduct "the man- agement of intelligence." Also, Ford instituted a three-man "independent oversight board" to evaluate the per- formance of intelligence agencies. In light of who was selected to fill the monitoring posts, the reorganiz- ation is nothing more than a token reform designed to pacify an enlight- ened an enraged public. At a time when people are seri- ously questioning the propriety of the broad power delegated to Intelli- gence leaders, the President is mov- ing to increase the scope of the CIA director's clout. BUSH'S COMMITTEE will be ex- pected to "prepare the budget for intelligence agencies and to al- locate their resources," according to White House sources. Also, Bush is a compliant Republi- can assigned to police a body which he himself heads. Using this ploy, the chief executive has side-stepped his responsibility to provide the na- tion with an ifmpartial committee to keep an eye on closed-door intelli- gence sectors. And though one would at least ex- pect the "independent oversight board" to be an unbiased group, it is interesting to note the credentials of two of the three members of that body. Stephen Ailes was Secretary of the Army in the Johnson Administra- By JOHN CONROY and LORETTA SMITH CHICAGO (PNS) - A multi- million dollar civil trial of FBI and state officials now under- way here could determine for the first time whether the FBI sanctioned murder as part of its .efforts against black mili- tants in the late 1960's. FBI documents, recently ob- tained by the Senate Intelli- gence Committee, reveal that these efforts were aimed at pre- venting the rise of a black "messiah" and blocking a coal- ition of black nationalist groups that "might be a first step to- ward ... t true black revolu- tion." They included such counter- intelligence techniques as in- formers, illegal wiretaps, false arrests, forgeries, slanders, raids and armed confrontations. The Black Panther Party (BPP) was a specific target. Now, six years after Chicago Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed in a pre-dawn police raid, their parents and seven Pan- ther survivors are suing for $47.7 million in damages in a civil trial before U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Perry. THEY ALLEGE violations of civil rights and personal injur- ies in the raid, which Panther lawyers will attempt to prove was deliberately planned and executed by the FBI to put an end to the Black Panther Party in Chicago. The civil suit, which has sur- vived countless legal setbacks, was originally filed against state and local authorities in 1970. Earlier that year, a federal grand jury had concluded that police reports of the raid were so contradictory that it appear- ed police had participated in a coverup. Yet the grand jury re- turned no indictments. In 1972, a special county grand jury - convened under public pressure to investigate the raid - indicted six Cook County officials and eight of the 14 police involved in the raid for criminal misconduct. All defendants were subsequently acquitted by State Court Judge Philip Romiti. NOW, HOWEVER, Panther lawyers possess information - much of it previously hidden in police and FBI files - which they claim implicates not just local authorities but the highest echelons of the Justice Depart- ment. Included is a Rockefeller Commission Report on Domestic identity and relocated to another city by the FBI, O'Neal testified in a pre-trial deposition that he provided the local FBI chief Roy Mitchell with a floor plan of the apartment in which Hamp- ton and Clark were killed. The drawing included the notation "Hampton sleeps here." Hampton was shot to death by police during the raid on the precise location marked on the map. According to lawyers for the police, the raid resulted from an FBI tip that the Panther apartment contained an illegal F:":" :Y:11..; "e:Sj fll. . Jf4"}::'.LS':r::}:%1: 4}A y }. ':t,:V:":"t::":ti"::".'" "l""}':.' .",.'."}:: : . :".St:Y: :fN .. t!' iVli .": V "M1'"""" " ": V.i '."r{'t i .titiVl::Vlit:'."i ":':":'i ' x 't:. :.......M".:l. W.. ....t... . .. .1 l Vf i'::'i: :"?.....:L::ti1:I i'i{Y .. . ' 1 4 l Ati: } 1.1 :: :ti":'nf.:Y t ""'i:: 'The FBI itself admits that agent O'Neal gave it the floor plan of the apartment, as well as information on the Panther arsenal. But law- yers for the justice Department deny the FBI planned, conducted or even knew about the raid, let alone took part in it.' r::"se an si'r::"}'?tii:"'?4Lrr::.}}'?:.;wrrt^:: }}s};}r,::"?:%,;"}'::r.Si:r}??r::}4:::"7r -}:"a sition. But Groth, who has giv- en contradictory testimony on at least two occasions regard- ing other aspects of the raid, refuses to divulge the identity of the second source, saying to do so would endanger the lives of other people. Panther attorneys claim the identity of such a second source is crucial since he or she may still be in their midst - even one of the plaintiffs. Moreover, evidence that Hampton was drugged the night of the raid suggests the second informant may have been the one who drugged him. The evi- dence of drugging was produced by former U.S. Attorney Gen- eral Ramsey Clark's independ- ent inquiry, which found that Hampton had received such a high dose 'he didn't wake when the shooting started. LAST JUNE, Panther attor- neys asked Judge Perry to or- der police to identify any in- former among the plaintiffs. Perry denied the motion, say- ing he didn't want to interfere with the relationship of the Pan- ther plaintiffs to their lawyers. . Perry also refused to compel Sergeant Gorth to name the second informant. Until recently Perry has also repeatedly refused to allow Panther attorneys access to FBI files relating to the Black Panther Party - files the at- torneys claim would help prove a government conspiracy to kill Clark and Hampton. Perry-who read the files in secret session - claimed they were irrelevant to the trial. (Those intelligence documents that were turned over to the lawyers - specifically Chicago police files - were heavily cen- sored, with all notations that might identify police officers or names of informants expunged.) PERRY'S RECENT decision to give the Panther defense team the FBI files followed their submission of documents released by the Senate Intelli- gence Committee which they claimed contradicted Judge Per- ry's ruling. So far, Perry has allowed only one such document into evidence. The files include documents that reveal the Chicago FBI of- fice had been instructed by its Washington headquarters to sub- mit "imaginative and hardhit- ting counter intelligence pro- posals aimed at crippling the BPP" every two weeks. Also among the documents was a forged letter sent to a leader of the Blackstone Ran- gers, a rival black group, warn- ing him that the Panthers were plotting his murder. The FBI said the purpose of the letter was "to intensify the degree of animosity between the two groups ... whichdcouldrdisrupt the BPP or lead to reprisals against its leadership." Relations between Perry and the Panther lawyers have been heated throughout the two years of pretrial hearings. Panther at- torneys have accused Perry of "flagrant abuses" of judicial power and moved to have him disqualified from the case-a motion denied in the Court of Appeals. THE TRIAL-NOW before a jury of one black and five whites-is expected to last sev- eral months, with 400 witnesses or more likely to take the stand. Whether or not it results in establishing, as Panther lawyers charge, that the 1969 raid was the result of a deliberate plot to kill Hampton and Clark, ob- servers here believe it has al- ready revealed why the Pan- thers existed in a virtual state of war with law enforcement agencies. John Conroy is the senior editor of Chicago Magazine. Loretta Smith is a Chicago- based freelance photographer and journalist who has been covering the Ham tpon - Clark case for PNS. George Bush tion. Leo Cherne is a publisher of books on business and has crusaded to rescue people from totalitarian nations. One can hardly expect them to act responsibly on the issue of what constitutes "national security." IN THE EVENT of disagreement among members of Bush's com- mittee, the National Security Council will preside as the appeals judge, de- ciding on the proper action to be taken. This provision is no more ac- ceptable than asking Bush to be his own disciplinarian. We cannot passively sit by and al- low ourselves to be force fed such unsatisfactory reforms. It is time to appoint an independent special pro- secutor to dig into the core of this intelligence quagmire. Spying (released last June) showing that the man sent to conduct the 1970 federal grand jury investigation - Assistant U.S. Attorney Jerris Leonard- was at the same time head of a Justice Department intelli- gence unit that supervised FBI spying on the Black Panthers. Panther lawyers plan to show that Leonard's dual role was part of the FBI's deliberate pro- gram to suppress the Panthers. Other evidence of FBI links to the raid surfaced in 1973, when former Panther Chief of Security William O'Neal testi- fied in an unrelated criminal proceeding. O'Neal - then Fred Hampton's personal bodyguard and the man in charge of the Panther arsenal at the time of the raid-admitted having been a paid FBI informer from 1968 to mid-1970. SUBSEQUENTLY given a new cache of weapons. They claim police opened fire on the occu- pants only when they encount- ered fire. In the 1973 trial in which eight of the police involved in the raid were acquitted, however, testimony revealed that all but one of about 90 shots fired came from police weapons. The FBI itself admits that O'Neal gave it the floor plan of the apartment, as well as in- formation on the Panther ar- senal. But lawyers for the Jus- time Department deny the FBI planned, conducted or even knew about the raid, let alone took part in it. THE CHICAGO POLICE ser- geant who led the raid-Daniel Groth - claims the information on illegal weapons came not from O'Neal but, from a second informant - a claim backed up by O'Neal in a pre-trial depo- PIRGIM REPORTS: Ford's great energy loan boondoggle Don't punish press leaks ON WEDNESDAY, PRESIDENT Ford proposed legislation making it a felony for government employees to disclose information on how the CIA and other Federal Agencies gather and evaluate information. The draft, if passed, would extend the sphere of persons liable for criminal ac- tions. The Ford proposal does not ex- tend punitive measures to journalists or anyone else who might receive this information, but by making such leaks felonies, it empowers Federal prosecutors to call on reporters to testify and divulge their sources of information. The proposal comes in the wake of unauthorized disclosures, made by the Village Voice, of the final report of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. TODAY'S STAFF: News: Glen Allerhand, Dana Bau- mann, Maureen Nolan, Jeff Ris- tine, Tim Schick, Bill Turque, Mar- garet Yao Editorial Page: Susan Ades, Michael Beckman, Stephen Hersh, Jon Pan- sius, Tom Stevens Arts Page: David Blomquist Photo Technician: Steve Kagan THE DRAFT BILL PUTS a ple- thora of limitations on what dis- closures would be eligible ;for crimi- nal prosecution, but it enables the Director of the CIA to seek a re- straining order from the Justice De- partment to prevent imminent dis- closure of secret information by a signatory to the secrecy agreement. In the past, leaks of confidential government information have done our country a lot of good. The Penta- gon Papers, for example, helped raise American consciousness of the war in Vietnam as well as setting a precedent in determining just what should or should not be public knowledge. The information revealed in the Village Voice is of equal value and we fully support the continued ag- gressive spirit of the press to print secret documents and other govern- ment information for the benefit of the people. Although it makes sense for those who classify documents as secret to want to keep them from the public, leaking information is sometimes clearly justifiable. And it would be wrong to punish leakers who are act- ing in the right. By RICHARD CONLIN IF YOU ARE New York City, and need federal loan guarantees to help you survive until you've balanced your bud- get, Gerry Ford chastises you for being a wastrel and a spendthrift. But if you're Westinghouse Corporation, and want to take a chance on building a'super nu- clear - reactor which you're not sure is going to work, Gerry Ford wants to give you a slice out of the hundred billion dollar pie that he thinks big corpora- tions deserve to stimulate them into ac- tion to solve energy problems. Incidentally, the hundred billion dol- lars comes out of your tax money - it's about $2,000 from every family in the United States. Now, perhaps some uncharitable soul would suggest that this isn't exactly free enterprise: it's more like a subsidy to some very rich corporations. But Gerry Ford points out that these are very risky investments-too risky for private capital markets to provide necessary financing. On the other hand, Ford notes, while these investments are too risky for the private market, they really don't cost the taxpayers anything, since they are loans which of course will probably be paid back by the companies who receive them. HOWEVER, IF WHAT the company tries doesn't work, and it can't pay the loan back, then the government will just write it off as a bad debt. And the com- pany can apologize and ask for another loan to try again. An added advantage is that the com- pany doesn't have to worry about the government acquiring any financial in- terest in these investments. Absolutely not. This money may come from the taxpayers, but if the company perfects a process that makes a mint, it can keep the profits. It's sort of a corporate uto- pia - the public takes the risks, and the companies get the benefits. And there's another kicker in the bill. One of the conditions of receiving assist- ance is that the company be in sound ors, and billions more in tax loopholes for such struggling companies as Stand- ard Oil. As you can see, this is the boondoggle of all times, the pork barrel to end all pork barrels. And it won't even work to achieve its purpose-energy independ- ence. The reason is that no exotic tech- nology can sustain the energy growth that society has been experiencing. Ev- ery technology either has too many prob- lems and hazards, too long a lead time, or too high a future cost to be economic- ally rational. Only serious conser efforts and low-tech innovations can addre solve our problems foreseeable future. we concentrate on tho are going to stay on a mill. And Ford does lieve or doesn't unde tis.' financial condition. And if it's company, the state's Public Commission has to sign a coni it will assure "adequate earn the company. So if Detroit E Consumers Power blows a coup lion, that's not too serious, si can just pass the costs on to 1 tomers. Of course, that means us. Bu we didn't pay it in our utility b pay it in our taxes, so maybei make a lot of difference. OH, AND ALL this is on top o lion annual subsidy to nuclea through the federal energy bud of billions for favored defense rvation nology 'ss and in theOnly serious conservation efforts and in thte low-technology innovations can address U'nless and solve our problems in the foresee- able future. Unless we concentrate on )Se, we those, we're going to stay on a tread- treadi- mill. And Ford either doesn't believe or n'tbe- doesn't understand this. nt't tae- Perhaps the ultimate irony is that 'rstand Karl Marx predicted that capitalist so- ciety, with its emphasis on constant growth, would collapse due to a short- age of capital. Gerry Ford seems to buy that analysis - and wants to des- a utility perately throw money into the sys- Service tem to sustain it. tract that nings" to A MORE RATIONAL conclusion might Edison or be to step back and take a close look at ple of bil- your system, and maybe tinker a lit- ince they tle with its operation instead of pre- their cus- tending that every problem can be solv- ed by tossing money at it. Funny, that's if thebsamecriticism Gerry Ford used to )t then' make about social welfare programs. 'ills, we'd it doesn't PIRGIM is organizing and working for energy programs that make sense, like tax exemptions for solar and wind home f a $4 bil- energy units, which are small-scale, ar power technologically feasible, and offer num- Iget, tens erous other advantages. We're also contract- working for utility rate reform, to re- Gerald Ford ward energy conservation efforts and penalize excessive consumption. We helped design and pass an appliance lab- eling act in Michigan, so consumers can compare energy efficiency before they buy appliances. And ie testified in hear- ings in thefederal energy research bud- get, asking for more money for solar and wind research, and an end to the costly and inefficientasubsidy of nuclear power. There are other actions that could be taken, such as spending some serious amounts of money on alternative energy source research, or mandating energy conservation standards in building con- struction codes. These actions would be far preferable to the Ford $100 billion dollar rip-off of the, taxpayer. Richard Conlin is a member of the PIRGIM staff. WE M6 EGANO YOU A -S} cover. ? To The Daily: TALKING ABOUT covert op- erations - what's going on be- tween the Daily and President Fleming? From the mild cover- age the Daily has given to the ongoing conflict (Regents meet- ing and February 18 Debate) between Fleming and the Coali- tion to Stop CIA/NSA Recruit- ment on Campus, it is appar- ent that the Daily staff has a relationship with Fleming it does not want to jeopardize. To set matters straight, which the Daily's Feb. 19 brief and "objective" coverage fail- ed to do, the confrontation was Letters which was documented by a member of the coalition. Flem- ing's condemnation of the emo- tonal response of protesters just reinforced the very "political" (and un-ethical) nature of uni- versity policy which cannot bring itself to condemn political assasinations, d e s t r u c- tion, murder and war. This intimacy between Flem- ing and Daily must end, if stu- dents who supposedly have freedom of choice, are also to experience freedom to read the news as it really happens. We would be wise to heed the words of Malcolm X: "If you are not careful, the newspaper to kering between tions of UAW Local 2001 (Uni- versity Clericals) has passed the point of being a nuisance, and has instead become coun- ter - productive to the interests of union members. The Clericals for a Democra- tic Unuion can only deal with democracy when they are in the majority. The Unity Caucus' clamors for unity at any price, and only on their terms. The bigwigs of the UAW, rather than encouraging soli- darity within Local 2001, have instead sent Carolyn Forrest to Ann Arbor. Ms. Forrest has willfully allowed herself to be- The Daily the two fac- with our local. From the out- set, the UAW should have seen to it that their liaison to our local was working to heal the deep divisions within the local rather than consciously exacer- bating them. SO LONG AS THE CDU and Unity factions continue to ex- pend their energies solely in the pursuit of power, the is- sues vital to the interest of university clericals will remain obscured in rhetoric. In a few months, negotiations for a new contract will begin. Unless the leadership of the local can pre- sent at least a facade of unity, we will be bargaining from an Forrest remained arrogant and hostile to the end. The CDU majority on the executive board showed a similar political naiv- ete when they subsequently en- dorsed a petition. denouncing Carolyn Forrest, giving Unity clericals both a new issue and a martyr. ONE THING ALL clericals (especially the leaders of CDU and Unity) would do well to heed is the petition now being circulated which calls for an election that 6old decertify the union. Decertification would be a mistake, but it will be- come more and more attractive so long as our union cannot or will not devote its energies :' ' I I-- r I ml , I I I -Mrs I a ' _..