truthaction.org

[Scott N]

White power rally leader was FBI snitch: law center

I'm continually amazed by the number of "Neo-Nazi" leaders who turn out to be intelligence informants. If curtailing racism is their goal, they're not doing a very good job.


Turner

Kingston Mayor Jim Sottile was dumbfounded by the revelation of Turner's FBI informant status. "You can't make this stuff up," the mayor said.

Maybe Turner was acting all the time, Sottile said. "But it wasn't an act when he had this whole community in an uproar and cost us $80,000."

By Paul Brooks
Times Herald-Record
Posted: January 17, 2008 - 2:00 AM

Hal Turner stalked in front of Kingston High School with his neo-Nazi supporters in 2005, tossing white-power taunts at counter-demonstrators.

That was just part of his legacy. He railed against President Bush and Jews, too. He handed out the private addresses of New Jersey Supreme Court justices.

But some government agencies are OK if you work for them — and Turner apparently did.

He was an FBI informant, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that monitors hate groups and extremists.

According to the center, hackers confronted Turner on his Web site Jan. 1 and told him they had broken into Turner's computer server.

What they found were e-mails between Turner and an FBI agent who was apparently Turner's handler. The unidentified hackers posted a July 7 e-mail to the agent. In it, Turner gave the agent a message from someone threatening to kill Sen. Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, the center said in a story on its Web site, www.splcenter.org.

"Once again," Turner wrote to the agent, "my fierce rhetoric has served to flush out a possible crazy."

When the e-mails hit a neo-Nazi Web site, Turner shut down his own Web site. "I hereby separate from the "pro-White" movement. I will no longer involve myself in any aspect of it," Turner said.

Yesterday, Turner said the only thing he can say about the FBI allegation is "no comment." The FBI hasn't commented, either.

The center's Mark Potok didn't object to the FBI's use of informants in general. "There is no question these are groups in many, many cases that really do need infiltrating, but ... this goes way over the line. It is like a game of Russian roulette and we are the bait."

Kingston Mayor Jim Sottile was dumbfounded by the revelation of Turner's FBI informant status. "You can't make this stuff up," the mayor said.

Maybe Turner was acting all the time, Sottile said. "But it wasn't an act when he had this whole community in an uproar and cost us $80,000."

http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080117/NEWS/801170326/-1/NEWS

[Scott N]

Starting to see a pattern?

Neo-Nazi rally was organized by FBI informant

http://www.jonesreport.com/articles/150207_neo_nazi_fbi.html

Neo-Nazi leader 'was MI6 agent

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/aug/13/johnhooper

[Col. Jenny Sparks]

[Johnny Angel]

Former leader and Presidental Canidate for Communist party USA (Gus Hall) spent years gathering his files using the Freedom of Information Act.

Gus Hall lated stated..""its good that FBI agents joined our Party, They are the only guys who paid thier dues"" (this is not a joke)
_________________
All the weapons of mass-destruction constructed on this world, is truly a sign of Human Failure

[Scott N]

[Diane]

These are excellent examples of ongoing COINTELPRO-like activities. Someone should create a collection of links to these, to educate newcomers to political activism, and to prove we're not crazy when we talk about the possibility of agents, disinfo, etc.
_________________
Diane

New York City Activist

[Scott N]

Taken from Paul Wolf's superb article on COINTELPRO:

The Ku Klux Klan

During the 1960's, the FBI's role was not to protect civil rights workers, but rather, through the use of informants, the Bureau actively assisted the Ku Klux Klan in their campaign of racist murder and terror.

Church Committee hearings and internal FBI documents revealed that more than one quarter of all active Klan members during the period were FBI agents or informants. 44 However, Bureau intelligence "assets" were neither neutral observers nor objective investigators, but active participants in beatings, bombings and murders that claimed the lives of some 50 civil rights activists by 1964. 44

Bureau spies were elected to top leadership posts in at least half of all Klan units. 45 Needless to say, the informants gained positions of organizational trust on the basis of promoting the Klan's fascist agenda. Incitement to violence and participation in terrorist acts would only confirm the infiltrator's loyalty and commitment.

Unlike slick Hollywood popularizations of the period, such as Alan Parker's film, "Mississippi Burning," the FBI was instrumental in building the Ku Klux Klan in the South,

"...setting up dozens of Klaverns, sometimes being leaders and public spokespersons. Gary Rowe, an FBI informant, was involved in the Klan killing of Viola Liuzzo, a civil rights worker. He claimed that he had to fire shots at her rather than 'blow his cover.' One FBI agent, speaking at a rally organized by the Klavern he led, proclaimed to his followers, 'We will restore white rights if we have to kill every negro to do it.'" 46

Throughout its history, the Klan has had a contradictory relationship with the national government: as a defender of white privilege and the patriarchal status quo, and as an implicit threat, however provisional, to federal power. Depending on political conditions in society as a whole, vigilante terror can be supplemental to official violence, or kept on the proverbial shortleash. 47 As a surrogate army in the field of terror against official enemies, the Klan enjoys wide latitude. But when it moves into an oppositional mode and attacks key institutions of national power, Klan paramilitarism - but not its overt white supremacist ideology - is treated as an imminent threat to the social order, suppressed, but never destroyed, unlike other COINTELPRO target groups.

These roles are not mutually exclusive. As anti-racist researcher Michael Novick warns: "The KKK and its successor and fraternal organizations are deeply rooted in the actual white supremacist power relations of US society. They exist as a supplement to the armed power of the state, available to be used when the rulers and the state find it necessary." 48

The Klan's "supplemental" role, particularly as a private armed force sporadically deployed to arrest the development of movements for Black freedom, is best considered by comparison to other Bureau operations. Unlike other COINTELPROs, the "Klan - White Hate Groups" program was of a different order entirely. Senior FBI management and a majority of agents in the field endorsed the Klan's values, if not the vigilante character of their tactics; from militaristic anti-communism to extreme racial hatred; from ultra-nationalism to misogynist puritanism. 49

This was evident during the civil rights struggles of the sixties, when Freedom Riders and local community activists directly confronted hostile police forces - many of whom were openly allied with the Klan. Despite clear jurisdictional authority to enforce federal law, the FBI consistently refused to protect civil rights workers under attack across the South. More than once, the Bureau refused to warn those under imminent threat of violence.

FBI inaction in the area of civil rights enforcement wasn't simply a matter of what the Pike Committee of the House of Representatives dubbed "FBI racism." Rather, FBI bureaucratic lethargy, when it came to protecting Black lives, underscored its mission against subversion for constituents whose privileges and power were threatened by a militant movement for Black rights. 50

Strikingly different from anti-communist COINTELPROs that enmeshed broad social sectors in a web of entanglements, FBI monitoring of the Klan was strictly confined to the organization itself. No serious efforts were made to explore the supplemental role of White Citizens' Councils, many of which were active Klan fronts, let alone investigate the obvious and widespread police complicity in racist violence. 51 Bureau surveillance of the Klan was purely passive, hardly the directed aggression reserved for left-wing targets.

In May, 1961, as civil rights activists turned up the heat, the FBI passed information to the Klan about Freedom Rider buses on their way to Birmingham, Alabama. A police sergeant, Thomas Cook, attached to the Birmingham police intelligence branch was plied with reports by Bureau informants. A Klan member himself, Cook furnished this information to Robert Shelton's Alabama Knights and arranged several meetings to discuss "matters of interest." Cook supplied Klan leaders with the names of "inter-racial organizations," the location of meetings, and the membership lists of civil rights groups for circulation in Klan publications. FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe wrote a confidential memo to the Birmingham Special Agent in Charge (SAC) stating that Cook had handed over inter-office intelligence memos on civil rights activists during a Klan meeting. Rowe insisted that Cook not only gave him relevant information that police had in their files, but urged Rowe to "help himself to any material he thought he would need for the Klan." 52

According to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Birmingham SAC called Cook and informed him of the progress that Freedom Rider buses had made and when they were scheduled to arrive in the city. According to Rowe, Cook and Birmingham's public safety director, arch-segregationist Eugene "Bull" Connor conspired with Klan leaders and directly organized physical attacks on Freedom Riders when the buses reached their destination. According to one FBI memo, Connor declared: "By God, if you are going to do this thing, do it right." 53

In consultation with Shelton's group, Birmingham police agreed not to show up for 15 or 20 minutes after the buses pulled in, to give Klansmen sufficient time to carry out their attack. Assailants were promised lenient treatment if through some fluke, they managed to get arrested. During a planning meeting that finalized logistical details, Grand Titan Hubert Page advised Klansmen that Imperial Wizard Shelton had spoken with Detective Cook, and was informed that Freedom Rider buses were scheduled to arrive at 11:00 am.

Earlier that day, the KKK intercepted another bus on its way to Birmingham, beating the passengers and setting the vehicle ablaze. As agreed during consultations with Klan leadership, when the buses arrived no police were present at either of Birmingham's bus terminals, but 60 Klansmen - including Rowe - were waiting. Klansmen attacked civil rights workers, reporters and photographers, viciously beating anyone within reach with chains, pipes and baseball bats.

According to ACLU attorney Howard Simon, "We found that the FBI knew that the Birmingham Police Department was infiltrated by the Klan, that many members of the police department were Klan members, that they knew a person in intelligence was passing information directly to leaders of the Klan, and they also knew their undercover agent had worked out an agreement with the police department to stay away from the terminals. They knew all that and still continued their relationship with the police department." 54

Though the Bureau claimed that its "Klan - White Hate Groups" COINTELPRO was launched in order to stifle white supremacist activities, the historical record proves otherwise. The more well known, but by no means only examples of Klan terror during the period - the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church that killed four black children; the 1964 murders of civil rights workers Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner in Mississippi: and the 1965 assassination of Viola Liuzzo and her companion near Selma, Alabama, point to knowledge of the crimes, and complicity in subsequent cover-ups by FBI officials.

Bureau informant Gary Thomas Rowe was a central figure in some of the most publicized crimes of the period, indulging in freelance acts of racist terror. He was suspected of involvement in firebombing the home of a wealthy Black Birmingham resident, the detonation of shrapnel bombs in Black neighborhoods and the murder of a Black man during a 1963 demonstration. He became a prime suspect in the Birmingham church bombing after he failed two polygraph tests. His answers were described by investigators as "deceptive" when he denied having been with the Klan group that planted the bomb. 55

Despite enough evidence to open a preliminary investigation, the FBI refused, covering-up for Rowe even when another informant, John Wesley Hall, named him as a member of a three-man Klan security committee holding veto power over all proposed acts of violence. Years later, an independent inquiry uncovered evidence that Hall became a Bureau informant two months after the bombing and despite the fact that a polygraph test convinced the Alabama FBI that he was probably involved in the attack himself, Hall admitted to having moved dynamite for the plot's ringleader, Robert E. Chambliss, a Klan member since 1924. Even though court testimony and a wealth of evidence linked Hall, Rowe and other members of the Alabama Knight's to the bombing, the suspects were convicted on a misdemeanor charge - "possession of an explosive without a permit." It took more than a decade and three bungled investigations to finally convict Chambliss of the crime. 56

In July 1997, almost 35 years after the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, the FBI re-opened its investigation based on "new information." However, mainstream news accounts failed to report the pivotal role played by Bureau informants. The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a target of a 1963 Klan assassination plot, believes he knows why only one man was convicted for the bombing. "It is well known," the 75-year old civil rights leader said, "there was collusion all along between the FBI, local law enforcement and the Klan." Rev. Shuttlesworth should know: Bureau informant John Wesley Hall was the man who proposed killing the minister. 57

New light was shed on Rowe's privileged position as an FBI provocateur tasked to "disrupt and neutralize" the civil rights struggle. During a subsequent investigation into the murder of Viola Liuzzo, evidence surfaced that it was Rowe who actually fired the fatal shots that took her life. But instead of prosecuting Rowe, the Bureau placed him in a federal witness protection program. 58

In 1978, Rowe was indicted by an Alabama grand jury as Liuzzo's killer. But complicity in shielding Rowe and the Bureau from exposure came to light when the contents of a J. Edgar Hoover memo to President Lyndon Johnson became public. Hours after the killings Hoover wrote: "A Negro man was with Mrs. Liuzzo and reportedly was sitting close to her." In a subsequent memo to aides, Hoover said he informed the President that "she was sitting very, very close to the Negro in the car, that it had the appearance of a necking party." 59 While providing a glimpse into the pathological nature of Hoover's racism and misogyny, the Director fails to enlighten us as to the mechanics of a "necking party" during a 100 mph car chase in the dead of night, a "party" by terrorized individuals fleeing armed Klan thugs intent on killing them in cold blood. However twisted, Hoover's slander was calculated to establish a motive; one that would "justify" Mrs. Liuzzo's murder on grounds of breaking one of nativism's primal laws: the prohibition against sex between the races.

On November 3, 1979, a posse organized by Klansmen and neo-Nazis murdered five members of the Communist Workers Party (CWP) in broad daylight. The CWP had organized a "Smash the Klan" demonstration in Greensboro, North Carolina among the city's mostly black and working class mill workers. CWP members included union organizers and activists who had upset "the fundamental order of things." 60

An essential component for the operation, organized by night-riding Klansmen, was U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) agent, Bernard Butkovich. The BATF agent, a Vietnam veteran and demolitions expert undercover in the local branch of the American Nazi Party, helped the Klan obtain automatic weapons, and also in making their escape. 61

The posse had been organized and led by an FBI infiltrator, Edward Dawson. Dawson was also a paid informant for the Greensboro Police Department. 62 Dawson reported to his handlers that eighty-five Klansmen meeting in nearby Lincolnton had expressed their intent to counter-demonstrate on November 3. 63

The night-riders had stated they intended to arm themselves for their counter-demonstration and that Klan leader, Grand Dragon Virgil Griffin, was actively calling out Klansmen from other states to participate. It was also rumored that neo-Nazis from the Winston-Salem area had obtained a machine gun and other weapons. Dawson reported to Greensboro detective Jerry Cooper that Klansmen and neo-Nazis were assembling at the home of a local Klan member and that they were armed. 64

The police/FBI informant had received a copy of the parade route the day before the CWP-initiated march; a map had been supplied by Detective Cooper. Dawson had driven over the parade route three hours earlier with a contingent of out-of-town Klansmen. Dawson also alerted Cooper that the Klansmen and neo- Nazis possessed three handguns and nine long-barrelled rifles, including automatic weapons supplied by BATF agent Bernard Butkovich. 65

Prior to the beginning of the CWP's march and demonstration, Cooper and other police officials drove by the house where the Klansmen and neo-Nazis were assembling. They jotted down license plate numbers and then declared a lunch break -- at approximately 10 a.m. 66 Less than an hour later, Cooper, trailing behind the Klan caravan reported, "shots fired" and then "heavy gunfire." The tactical squad assigned to monitor the march were still out to lunch. 67

Two other officers, responding to a domestic disturbance call, noted the absence of patrol cars usually assigned to the area. They arrived at the Morningside projects, the site of the CWP march. Officer Wise later reported having received a most unusual call from the police communications center. The officers were asked how long they anticipated being at their call; they were subsequently advised to "clear the area as soon as possible." 68

Moments later, five demonstrators lay dead, murdered in broad daylight by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. 69 According to Michael Novick, the Greensboro massacre "set the tone for neo-Nazi organizing by the KKK and other white supremacists in the ensuing decade." 70

A subsequent civil suit brought against the neo-Nazis, the Klan and the Greensboro police resulted in a partial award to the surviving family members. FBI and BATF agents walked away scott-free.

--

Read the full article here:

http://www.whale.to/b/wolf_coin.html#The_Ku_Klux_Klan_

[Diane]

Thanks for the info. At some point I should dig deeper into this history. I was already generally aware of the 1960's/1970's COINTELPRO program and the subsequent hearings about it, but I have not yet dug into this issue in great detail.
_________________
Diane

New York City Activist

[dicktater]

Hal Turner On FBI Payroll When Urging Lynching of Cynthia McKinney While She Was Serving In CONgress

Govt-Funded Reporter Urged Lynching of Black Congresswoman
by David Swanson
Mon Aug 24, 2009 at 06:30:10 AM PDT
http://watchingthewatchers.org/article/37863/govt-funded-reporter-urged-lynching-black

Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney sent an Email around on Sunday in which she wrote:

"[I]t has just now come to my attention that a 'journalist' who suggested that I be lynched was actually being paid by our own government to say that. Now, when I reported it to the FBI, how in the world was I to know that he was at that time on the FBI's payroll?"

"Hate blogger" Hal Turner's lawyer said last week, and prosecutors agreed, that Turner was "trained by the FBI on how to be deliberately provocative" and "worked for the FBI from 2002 to 2007 as an 'agent provocateur' and was taught by the agency 'what he could say that wouldn't be crossing the line'."

Turner is being charged with making death threats against Connecticut legislators and Illinois judges and is apparently going to claim that his actions were legal because he did the same sort of thing when employed by the FBI:

"Prosecutors have acknowledged that Turner was an informant who spied on radical right-wing organizations, but the defense has said Turner was not working for the FBI when he allegedly made threats against Connecticut legislators and wrote that three federal judges in Illinois deserved to die. 'But if you compare anything that he did say when he was operating, there was no difference. No difference whatsoever,' [his lawyer] said."

This story has been written up by Wired and by The Southern Poverty Law Center, but without the McKinney angle.

[Huh? The SPLC omitted the McKinney angle? Gee, I wonder how that could have happened?]

McKinney wrote in her Email: "Interesting that charges stem from his comments against Connecticut lawmakers and Illinois judges, but not from the threat made against me, a sitting Member of Congress at the time!" And, apparently the threat against McKinney was made when Turner admits to having been on the FBI payroll.

[Oh, Cynthia. You're just paranoid. You know this was just a minor oversight on the part of the SPLC. They only do good. Give them a break. They're just really, really busy keeping track of all these hate groups they manufacture, er uh I mean, uncover. Really!]

John Judge, who worked for McKinney, writes of Turner:

"This is the guy who announced a program topic suggesting that Cynthia McKinney be lynched on her way to the polls to vote in 2006 and published her campaign office address on the website. He asked how she would look swinging at the end of a rope and what message it would send to other 'uppity' Blacks. I called NJ Homeland Security and FBI at the time.... The FBI agent I spoke to said 'We know all about Mr. Turner'. Looks like they did."

While Turner's website is down, another website has what it claims was posted on Turner's:

"LYNCHING CONGRESSWOMAN CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: SHOULD IT BE DONE BEFORE HER JULY 18 PRIMARY ELECTION?
Tune-in to 'The Hal Turner Show' this Wednesday evening from 9:00-11:00 PM eastern US time as we talk about this topic!
"Cynthia McKinney is a violent, black, racist, bitch whose official re-election campaign web site calls white people 'crackers'. As such, on this Wednesday evening's show I will ask the question 'Given the prevalence of black crime in America, would it serve the public good to LYNCH Congresswoman McKinney within the next few weeks, while she's on the campaign trail, so as to send an unmistakable message to other blacks: white people are tired of your bullshit, behave or die."

Now, I realize that this sounds like ordinary civil discourse in tea-partied America, and yet it's fairly easy to imagine altering it in ways that would have "crossed the line." For example, Turner might have targeted a Republican, or a Democrat in good standing, or a white person. Surely that would have crossed some line.
This commentary originally appeared on Daily Kos
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In a dictatorship, no one can hear you scream.