THE RICHARD AOKI CASE: WAS THE MAN WHO ARMED THE BLACK
PANTHER PARTY AN FBI INFORMANT?
by
Natalie Harrison
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of
The Wilkes Honors College
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences
with a Concentration in History
Wilkes Honors College of
Florida Atlantic University
Jupiter, Florida
April 2013
THE RICHARD AOKI CASE: WAS THE MAN WHO ARMED THE BLACK
PANTHERS AN FBI INFORMANT?
by
Natalie Harrison
This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate’s thesis advisor, Dr.
Christopher Strain, and has been approved by the members of her supervisory committee.
It was submitted to the faculty of The Honors College and was accepted in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and
Sciences.
SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE:
____________________________
Dr. Christopher Strain
___________________________
Dr. Mark Tunick
____________________________
Dr. Daniel White
____________________________
Dean Jeffrey Buller, Wilkes Honors College
____________
Date
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank, first and foremost, Dr. Strain for being such a supportive,
encouraging and enthusiastic thesis advisor – I could not have done any of this had he
not introduced me to Richard Aoki. I would also like to thank Dr. Tunick and Dr. White
for agreeing to be my second readers and for believing in me and this project, as well as
Dr. Hess for being my temporary advisor when I needed it. And finally, I would like to
thank my family and friends for all their support and for never stopping me as I rattled on
and on about Richard Aoki and how much my thesis felt like a spy movie.
iii
ABSTRACT
Author:
Natalie Harrison
Title:
The Richard Aoki Case: Was the Man Who Armed the
Black Panther Party an FBI Informant?
Institution:
Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University
Thesis Advisor:
Dr. Christopher B. Strain
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences
Concentration:
History
Year:
2013
On August 20th 2012, Seth Rosenfeld, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle,
released an article stating that Richard Aoki, an activist in the Bay Area during the 1960s
and 70s, had been an FBI informant. Immediately following the allegations, numerous
Aoki supporters rose to his defense and accused Rosenfeld of snitch-jacketing –a term
referring to the FBI practice of falsely labeling a prominent member of a threatening
group as an informant to decrease their status and influence within the organization. This
thesis is a historiographical examination of the FBI, COINTELPRO, snitch culture,
Richard Aoki and those who accused/defended him.
iv
The Richard Aoki Case:
Was the Man Who Armed the Black Panther Party an FBI Informant?
Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
The Federal Bureau of Investigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
COINTELPRO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
FOIA and the Unraveling of COINTELPRO; Understanding the Deletions . . . . . .20
Snitch Culture: Being an Informant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
Snitch-Jacketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Richard Aoki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Rosenfeld’s Accusation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Responses to the Accusations (Articles and Interviews) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50
August 21st – Fred Ho Article . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50
August 22nd – Diane Fujino Article . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
August 23rd – Interview on Democracy Now! with Seth Rosenfeld and Diane Fujino . ..56
August 25th – TRGGR Radio Interview with Dr. Jeffrey Ogbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60
August 30th – Tamara K. Nopper Article . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
September 9th – Gavin Aronson, Responses from Fellow Activists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
September 16th – Mo Nishida Article . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
October 3rd – NPR Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68
December 5th – Momo Chang Response Article . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70
Conclusions? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76
v
Introduction
On August 20, 2012, one day before the release of his new book Subversives: The
FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power, Seth Rosenfeld, a reporter
for the San Francisco Chronicle, leaked a minor detail from his research to the world: in
his book, Rosenfeld reveals information that suggests that Richard Aoki, a Field Marshal
in the Black Panther Party, was in fact an informant for the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI). Spanning a period of three decades, Rosenfeld’s research for this
book includes personal interviews with Aoki himself, regarding his potential career as an
informant, as well as two hundred plus pages of FBI documents from the file they kept on
Aoki. While Aoki denied being an informant for the Bureau, the documents left behind
following FBI redaction before the documents were released to the public suggest that, at
least to some degree, Richard Aoki was affiliated with the FBI and provided them with
valuable information on various groups, including the Black Panther Party, over the
course of sixteen years from 1961 to 1977. Backing his allegation with quotes from
former FBI operatives and employees, Rosenfeld justifies his accusations, claiming that
even Aoki hinted at having an alliance of some sort with the FBI.
As soon as the charges were released, opposition quickly rose to defend the
activist. While his role as a Black Panther Field Marshal gained Richard Aoki the most
attention, he dedicated his life to various causes, beginning with the Socialist Workers
Party, moving to the Black Panther Party, followed by the Asian American Political
Alliance, and finally ending with the Third World Liberation Front and a quest to include
1
Ethnic Studies in the curriculum at UC Berkeley, where Aoki had been a student and later
became a professor of Ethnic Studies there as well as an instructor at other local
community colleges. Aoki was close to party leaders and was seen as an inspiration to
those he served with up until the end of his life in 2000. Aoki was welcomed into the
Black Panther Party by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale from the organization’s
beginning at Merritt College, where the three activists were all students. Inspired by a
similar vision and a shared hope, Newton and Seale had Aoki look over their Ten-Point
Plan and it is believed that Aoki may have been the first to supply the group with guns.
Considering Aoki’s close ties and relationships with high party officials, the accusations
made by Rosenfeld shocked and hurt many people, and if the allegations are proved
correct, they have the potential to discredit many of the actions dictated and overseen by
Aoki within these organizations.
Considering that Aoki’s most recognizable position was his awarded rank of Field
Marshal in the Black Panther Party, it is important to consider the implications his status
as an informant would have on the party. Founded in October 1966 by Bobby Seale and
Huey P. Newton in Oakland California, the Black Panther Party, originally called the
Black Panther Party for Self Defense, was a Black Power group whose aim was, initially,
to provide protection to African Americans from police brutality. Attracting a wide
following, the Black Panther Party began to incorporate other socially beneficial
programs including its Free Breakfast for Children Program, initiated in Oakland in
January of 1969, and its other efforts to alleviate poverty and promote wellness, with a
particular focus on the wellbeing of children. However, many of the good works
2
accomplished by the Party were overshadowed by its militant, and at times criminal,
public image. The Panthers also had the unfortunate privilege of being a target of the
FBI’s COINTELPRO, a counter intelligence program aimed at bringing down
organizations that the federal government viewed as a domestic threat.
Under J. Edgar Hoover, the Federal Bureau of Investigation gained more
momentum and power than it previously had. Hoover, who was the Director of the
Bureau from 1924 until his death in 1972, was extremely particular about the projects the
FBI handled and was very skeptical and cautious of any organization he saw as being a
potential threat to the federal government. As a result he oversaw the creation of
COINTELPRO in 1956 through to the program’s end in 1971. Invoking the use of
surveillance, false propaganda, harassment arrests, snitch-jacketing (or planting evidence
that suggests a group member or leader is actually an informant for the Bureau),
fabrication of evidence, and infiltration among other things, COINTELPRO helped the
FBI break down the mental, emotional and physical endurance of party leadership and
membership in groups that Hoover viewed as threatening to the internal security of the
United States. “Every dissident group in the United States was targeted by
COINTELPRO during the late 1960s, but the Black Panther Party was literally
sledgehammered,” notes Kathleen Cleaver, a law professor and former Panther leader.
“Of the 295 counterintelligence operations the bureau has admitted conducting against
3
black activists and organizations during the period, a staggering 233, the majority of them
in 1969, were aimed at the Panthers.” 1
It was into this politically and legally charged environment that Richard Aoki
supposedly placed himself with the intention of providing information about the internal
workings of the Black Panther Party to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Judging by
the huge response in Aoki’s defense, the accusation would not have been lost among the
greater content of Rosenfeld’s book. The section on Aoki only takes up ten pages of the
book, but Rosenfeld did later release the documents and interview transcripts upon which
he based his denunciation of Aoki as an informant. Considering the FBI’s history of
disaccreditation and the huge cultural implications of being labeled a snitch, it is
understandable that those who knew Aoki personally or viewed him as an inspiration
would be offended by the accusation.
It is important to keep an open mind in discussing this very current controversy:
to consider both sides of the debate, to utilize the FBI’s own documents, and to analyze
the personal accounts for and against Richard Aoki. Until recent accusations surfaced,
Aoki was remembered as a passionate and loyal activist who added greatly to the
advancement of the causes and organizations to which he committed himself. But
through the production of a series of previously classified FBI documents, Aoki may just
have been exposed, posthumously, as an informant. While the FBI and its COINTELPRO
1
Kathleen Cleaver, Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party (New York,
NY: Routledge, 2001), 82.
4
units may not have been above destroying the reputations of activists, there is a degree of
credence to the released files. Aoki’s position as a potential FBI informant is still being
debated, and the discussion on both sides raises questions of trust, of loyalty and of
privacy, displaying the masks that people, society and the government put on for the
public and the lengths to which the federal government will go to discredit organizations
they view as threatening.
5
The Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation was officially formed under President
Theodore Roosevelt following a gradual process beginning with the creation of the
Attorney General through the Judiciary Act of 1789. While the position was not initially
connected to any particular department and had no additional staff, the office it stood for
eventually gained more political momentum adding a clerk in 1818, moving into the old
War Department building in 1822, getting a messenger for the clerk and moving into the
Treasury Department in 1839. It was here that the Secret Service was born in July 1865,
when “Congress appropriated money to the Treasury Department to suppress
counterfeiting…The federal government now had its first, and until the FBI was
established, its only force of detectives,” though the Secret Service were not authorized to
investigate all violations of federal law, being limited strictly to investigating
counterfeiting. 2
Matters of federal violations were not handled by the attorney general until the
period following Reconstruction when the federal government sought to dismantle the Ku
Klux Klan, who were promoting disorder, violence and disregard for the new civil and
constitutional rights afforded to new black citizens. Seeing that the task of representing
the government in their case against the Klan was too much for the Attorney General
2
Richard Gid Powers, Broken: The Troubled Past and Uncertain Future of the FBI (New
York, NY: Free Press, 2004), 40-41.
6
alone, Congress turned the office into the Department of Justice on July 1, 1870. 3 In
1871, Attorney General Amos T. Akerman and his new department received “$50,000 for
‘the detection and prosecution of crimes against the United States,’ an appropriation
thereafter renewed annually. And so the Justice Department’s first appropriation for law
enforcement originated in an effort to protect the civil rights of black Americans. That
same appropriation was what the attorney general would use to establish the detective
force that eventually became the FBI.” 4 Utilizing private investigators, most famously the
Pinkerton Agency, the Department of Justice was able to oversee more ground than they
would have been able to cover alone, but when Congress outlawed the use of private
detective agencies by the federal government in 1892, the Department was demoted to
only handling small counterfeit cases, leaving the enforcement of federal policy behind,
and relying on the Treasury Department and the Secret Service if they needed additional
detectives.
Following Theodore Roosevelt’s 1901 election and the resignation of Attorney
General William H. Moody, the President promoted his friend Charles Bonaparte to the
office of Attorney General with the hopes of gaining further federal support for his
progressive policies and reforms. Like Moody, Bonaparte envisioned creating for the
Justice Department its own investigative organization. The idea met much Congressional
opposition, coming predominantly from James A. Tawney, the chairman of the House
3
Broken, 42.
4
Broken, 42.
7
Appropriations Committee, who was extremely suspicious of all federal law enforcement.
In 1908, thanks to research conducted by Tawney himself, revealing that “[t]hroughout
its entire history the Justice Department had always had the power simply to create a
detective force on its own, without any explicit authorization from Congress,”5 and that
the Secret Service had been created through an executive order, Roosevelt and Bonaparte
acted to form the “Special Agent Force” headed by “Chief Examiner” Stanley Finch and
composed of thirty-five investigators, mainly transferred from the Secret Service, on July
26, 1908 – the date recognized as the birthday of the FBI to this day. 6 Later, on March 16,
1909, the new attorney general formally established the organization, designating it the
“Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice” with Stanley Finch as the first
Chief of the Bureau.
Much like the first federal investigations carried out by the Department of Justice
in 1871, the first major investigation carried out by the Bureau of Investigation (BOI)
involved race relations between black and white Americans. Following the victory of
Jack Johnson as the first black heavyweight champion in the world, the suicide of his
white wife and his taking up a new white lover, Congress passed the Mann Act, or the
“White Slave Traffic Act,” in an attempt to prevent white women from consorting with
black men across state, and international, lines. Soon after its 1910 passing, Congress
appealed to the BOI to begin investigations into Jack Johnson’s life, so that they could
arrest him and hopefully appease racial tensions caused by his victory and his ‘improper’
5
6
Broken, 52.
Broken, 53-54.
8
lifestyle. Investigating the lives and behaviors of white prostitutes and the men with
whom they affiliated themselves helped to bring the Bureau into the world of
international and national organized crime. According to Powers, “The Mann Act was
actually the Bureau’s first small assignment, since it directed federal law enforcement
away from genuine ‘crimes against the United States’ and set it off in pursuit of symbolic
criminals who represented the fears and hatreds of the masses or the classes.” 7
Moving forward into larger crime, the Bureau slowly expanded its outreach into
American society and when war broke out in Europe in 1914 and America sided with the
Allies in 1917, the Bureau seemed ready to handle the national security issues and
responsibilities which would define the organization for the remainder of the century.
However, as threats to domestic security rose and Americans were convinced that they
had been infiltrated by Germans spies, the Bureau faced a great deal of pressure to
maintain the control they had on domestic affairs and investigations, while overseeing the
draft and numerous private investigations for the federal government. Following the War,
the BOI began concentrating more on internal affairs, especially those regarding crimes
against persons and property, as the United States focused on recovering.
It was into this environment that J. Edgar Hoover entered the Bureau as a special
assistant to the Attorney General. Hoover would end up becoming the Director of the
Bureau for forty-eight years from 1924 to his death in 1972. He was brought in because
of his youth and his work and research against radicalism, with an ultimate goal of
7
Broken, 66.
9
prohibiting sedition in times of peace and of attacking any and all radical revolutionary
organizations, and was quickly placed as head of the Radical Division of the Justice
Department. Hoover’s position and pay ranked him third in the Bureau under the Director
and Assistant Director, though few were quick to follow his ideas on attacking anarchy
and deporting all aliens on a basis of radical organization affiliations. At first he
concentrated on the Union of Russian Workers in 1918, and then focused on the
Communist Party in the fall of 1919 when Hoover devoured any information he could
find on the group, filed three legal briefs against members and leaders of the
organization, and began investigations leading to 2,768 arrest warrants for party members
within a three-day period.8 Hoover’s vehemence against racial groups dictated the
majority of his career with the Bureau and only increased when he was appointed acting
director of the Bureau of Investigation on May 9, 1924.
The Bureau under J. Edgar Hoover moved further to counteract radical groups
and with the increase of surveillance by FBI agents on “Negroes” and the increase of Jim
Crow practices and policies across the nation the federal government was moving
towards harsher treatment and intelligence operations directed against African
Americans, despite the dictation of “separate-but-equal” by the Supreme Court’s decision
of the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896 which allowed African Americans to remain
segregated from whites so long as they received equal treatment. The expansion of the
Bureau’s jurisdiction by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress also allowed
8
Broken, 115.
10
agents to make arrests and carry firearms. 9 When World War II broke out, President
Roosevelt approved a resurgence of surveillance to gather intelligence on “communist
and native-fascist infiltration, includ[ing] a specific ‘Negroes’ category…lumped
generically with ‘German, Italian and Japanese’ [questions].” 10 Following the War,
Hoover condemned extremists on both sides of the racial line, speaking against the Ku
Klux Klan, as a “pretty much defunct” group, and accusing the NAACP of spreading
“racial hatred” across the South, and everywhere Hoover turned he saw evidence of
communist influence and possible infiltration. “Hoover also found communist influence
in the Supreme Court, particularly its decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
declaring an end to separate-but-equal doctrine in the public schools.” 11 In keeping with
Hoover’s investigative vision, the precursor to COINTELPRO was established during
World War II, in the COMINFIL (communist infiltration) investigation. The color-blind
program included surveillance on groups ranging from the nationally recognized
NAACP, to the Catholic Youth Organization, to several radio comedians popular at the
time.12 It was from this program that the first counter-intelligence operation, formed in
1956, stemmed: COINTELPRO-Communist Party.
Kenneth O’Reilly, Black Americans: The FBI Files (New York, NY: Carroll and Graf
Publishers, Inc., 1994), 12.
9
10
Black Americans, 13.
11
Black Americans, 15.
12
Black Americans, 18.
11
COINTELPRO
While initially formed by Director Hoover as an attempt to “disrupt, harass and
discredit” the American Communist Party13, COINTELPRO soon spread to encompass
other dissident groups, later focusing predominantly on the Black Panther Party. 14 A
series of counter intelligence methods were employed to ensure the success of these
programs. Among these tactics were the practices of surveillance,
eavesdropping/wiretapping, spreading false propaganda, snitch-jacketing, or planting
false evidence against leaders that could lead to someone being accused of acting as an
informant, assassinating leaders, and of course, the case most pertinent to the accusation
placed against Richard Aoki, planting or recruiting informants or infiltrators within
groups and organizations targeted by the Bureau15. In this manner, the FBI was able to
get inside the heads and lives of the people running the groups the Bureau saw as radical,
dissident or threatening.
When the FBI, under the direction of Hoover, in keeping with his staunch antiCommunism first launched its Counterintelligence program in response to the increased
13
Athan G. Theoharis, The FBI and the American Democracy (Lawrence, KS: University
of Kansas Press, 2004), 12.
14
Kathleen Cleaver, Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party (New York,
NY: Routledge, 2001), 82.
Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret War
Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (Boston, MA: South End
Press, 1990), 39-53.
15
12
presence and action of the Communist Party in the United States, he bid a select group of
officials
to create extralegal ‘action programs’ aimed at negating the CP’s ‘influence over
the masses, ability to create controversy leading to confusion and disunity,
penetration of specific channels in American life where public opinion is molded,
and espionage and sabotage potential.’ With the exception of the last two areas
mentioned, both of which seem to have been added on an almost pro forma basis,
the stated objectives of COINTELPRO-CP, USA were all entirely legal modes of
activity. The objective was thus plainly to ‘cripple or destroy’ the CP as a
political rather than ‘criminal’ entity.16
The measures taken to ensure the secrecy of this particular organization are evidenced in
the closely guarded status of the private memorandums issued by Hoover at the time of
the program’s initiation. While many other covert operations and proceedings stemmed
from this confidential counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO-CP,USA was the first
of its kind within the Bureau in that it was devoted completely to “extralegal rather than
prosecutorial initiatives” as Hoover was more concerned about the politics of the party
than any specific criminal activities. 17
A more official and less secretive anti-communist program of the Bureau
dedicated to observing, collecting information about, and subverting the activities of the
Communist Party was known as SOLO and is described by the FBI as “a long-running
FBI program to infiltrate the Communist Party of the United States and gather
intelligence about its relationship to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, China, and
16
The COINTELPRO Papers, 33.
17
The COINTELPRO Papers, 39.
13
other communist nations. It officially began in 1958 and ended in 1977.” 18 Where
COINTELPRO-CP, USA was strictly autonomous and was unknown to the higher-ups in
the government and anyone outside the program, SOLO was better known within the
Bureau where it was still being conducted in secret. The program’s capacity to be
maintained in the shadows was mainly due to the observatory nature of SOLO in
comparison with the more illegal approach taken by those involved in the
COINTELPRO-CP, USA. As the initiating memorandum for the program stated, “the
Bureau is in a position to initiate on a broader scale than heretofore attempted, a
counterintelligence program against the CP, not by harassment from the outside, which
might only serve to bring the various factions together, but by feeding and fostering from
within the internal fight currently raging.”19 The nature of this program seems to have
been known to the President though both John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson appear
to have accepted the tactics used by the Bureau. Admitted operations under Johnson’s
administration include instances of feeding the media false information, planting false
evidence to make party officials look like acting informants, accusing members, or their
spouses, of conducting affairs, and barring access to regular meeting places from
members. As time progressed and Hoover received what appeared to be “concurrence
from at least four consecutive presidents that illegal operations against the CP were
‘justified,’ and would therefore be condoned and hushed up,” he moved to escalate tactics
18
The FBI Vault, http://vault.fbi.gov/solo/.
19
The COINTELPRO Papers, 40
14
employed by the program including assassination attempts on core group leaders. 20 Many
of the allowances made for COINTELPRO-CP, USA were driven by Hoover’s own
personal obsession with destroying the Communist Party and by the end of the 1960s the
party had been severely debilitated. This left room for Hoover to apply his program to
other, newer groups that he saw as threatening, including the Black Panther Party.
In 1967, Director Hoover initiated the Black Extremist Division of the FBI’s
counterintelligence programs. In a memo to all departments on August 25 th, he wrote
The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavor is to expose, disrupt,
misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist,
hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership,
and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder…
The pernicious background of such groups, their duplicity, and devious
maneuvers must be exposed to public scrutiny where such publicity will have a
neutralizing effect. Efforts of the various groups to consolidate their forces or to
recruit new or youthful adherents must be frustrated.21
In the document, Hoover also is clear to distinguish that the Black Nationalist HateGroups Counterintelligence Program should not be confused with similar programs
regarding the “‘Communist Party, USA, Counterintelligence Program, Internal Security –
C,’ (Bufile 100-3-104), which is directed against the Communist Party and related to
organizations, or the program entitled ‘Counterintelligence Program, Internal Security,
Disruption of Hate Groups,’ (Bufile 157-9), which is directed against Klan and hate-type
20
21
The COINTELPRO Papers, 45
Memo, Dir., FBI, to SAC, Albany, August 25, 1967.
15
groups primarily consisting of white memberships.”22 Finally, at the end of the directive,
Hoover reminded the readers of the confidential nature of the program and encouraged
agents to be enthusiastic and creative in carrying out the necessary actions to bring down
the groups and organizations classed within this particular category of counterintelligence
operations.
Interestingly, the aforementioned directive does not reference the Black Panther
Party for Self Defense even though it formed in 1966. As M. Wesley Swearingen
explains
The Black Panthers had a ten-point program that resembled a political platform
for a member of Congress or a presidential candidate. Its demands included
freedom, power to determine the destiny of their community, full employment,
the end to robbery by the white man of their community, decent housing,
education that taught black history, exemption of black men from military service,
an immediate end to police brutality and the murder of black people, freedom for
black men in jail, fair trials in court by jury of their peers as defined by the US
Constitution, and peace. The Black Panthers’ platform was legal, but their tenpoint program was unacceptable to Hoover and his all-white FBI. 23
Much like the legal approach the Bureau was able to take towards the Communist Party
because of its political nature, the FBI’s counterintelligence program against the BPP was
justified through the Party’s political platform; however it was not until the party became
more militant and criminal that there was a COINTELPRO initiative taken against its
members. The ten-point program preceded the actual formation of the Party and was
active all through the founding and establishment of the Black Panther Party for Self
Defense, yet it was not until after they dropped the ‘for Self Defense’ and took on a more
22
Ibid
23
Swearingen, FBI Secrets: An Agent’s Expose (Boston, MA: South End Press), 81.
16
radical violent approach to Civil Rights and Black Power that the FBI really started
interceding. Once Hoover directed his attention towards the group, the Panthers quickly
became a major focus of COINTELPRO. The Black Panthers were the target of more
COINTELPRO units than any other party or organization in the United States. A lot of
this attention was the direct result of the Black Panther Party’s ability to garner media
attention and publicity for its cause.
As noted in a letter from the San Francisco office to the Director on May 27,
1968, the organizations garnering the most attention in the area at the time were the Black
Panther Party and the Black Student Union at San Francisco State College. The
information is included in a letter to the Director of the Bureau from the San Francisco
office under a section titled “Summary of Black Nationalist Movement San Francisco
Division (As of 5/15/68)” which also states that while members of the BSU were
generally college-aged, the members of the local BPP were often high school aged. 24
These members would be the people who understood the social implications of their
membership and wanted to help change things and escape the conditions, especially the
police brutality which was confronted at the heart of the Panthers Ten Point Program, and
which they faced on a daily basis. 25 A major reason for the Party’s extraordinary
popularity among urban blacks during the late 1960s, Ward Churchill points out, was its
‘serve the people programs’ (redesignated ‘survival programs’ in 1971). There were
24
Memo, SAC San Francisco to Dir., FBI, May 27, 1968.
25
http://www.blackpanther.org/TenPoint.htm
17
several of these, ranging from liberation schools to free clinics, but the first and most
important was the Free Breakfast for Children Program, begun in 1969. Hoover was quite
aware that it would be impossible to cast the party as merely ‘a group of thugs’ so long as
it was meeting the daily nutritional requirements of an estimated 50,000 grade-schoolers
in forty-five inner cities across the country.” 26 So instead of allowing the federal
government to be bested by the organization, Hoover decided to falsify the reasons why
the Panthers were providing the services. In a memorandum he ordered COINTELPRO
agents not to attack the social welfare programs, but rather to spread the word that “the
BPP is not engaged in the ‘Breakfast for Children’ for humanitarian reasons. This
program was formed by the BPP for obvious reasons, including their efforts to create an
image of civility, assume community control of Negroes, and to fill adolescent children
with their insidious poison.” 27 One document, from October 21st 1968, in the above
mentioned COINTELPRO Black Extremist Division files states that “Black Nationalist
extremists seek to show an area in its most unfavorable light and to portray to the Negro
the worst aspects of his plight in the ghetto,” 28 and so the Bureau encouraged promoting
a positive image of community, integration and acceptance in order to discredit the
claims of varying groups who sought to serve the people and as a result gain members in
their organization. By offering jobs and programs to benefit the African Americans who
26
“To Disrupt,
Discredit and Destroy: The FBI’s Secret War against the Black Panther
Party,” 87.
27
Memo, Dir., FBI, to SAC San Francisco, May 27, 1969.
28
FBI Vault. COINTELPRO Black Extremist section 5 pages 6-9 of 11.
18
may have been tempted by the Black Extremist groups, like the Black Panther Party who
offered a Free Breakfast Program for Children, the government, both local and federal,
attempted to draw recruitment potential away from the groups they were trying to bring
down. Initiatives such as the one discussed in the letter were nonviolent, nondestructive
methods of accomplishing the goals of the counterintelligence programs. That is not to
say that all these techniques were equally as peaceful and socially beneficial.
19
FOIA and the Unraveling of COINTELPRO; Understanding the Deletions
The programs and initiatives launched against the varying groups over the sixteen
year course of COINTELPRO, from 1956 to 1971, were highly secretive and private, and
while the groups themselves knew they stood as targets for the FBI, no one really knew
the extent of Hoover’s disdain for radicals until the operations and connected files were
exposed in “March 1971 when a ‘Citizen’s Committee to Investigate the FBI’ removed
boxes of files from an FBI resident agency office in Media, Pennsylvania and released
them to the press. Gradually, more files were obtained through the federal Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA), which had been temporarily strengthened to help restore public
confidence in the government in the wake of Watergate and the exposure of official lies
about the Vietnam War.” 29 Following the initial exposure, the program came to a halt,
as several agents and informers defected from the Bureau, and multiple files were quickly
hidden, destroyed or heavily redacted before their release to the public. The full extent of
the program is still unknown to this day, but gradually the pieces are being put back
together.
In order for the released FBI documents on Richard Aoki to make sense, in spite
of the redactions, it is necessary to understand why the deletions occurred in the first
place. Classifying documents as secret and releasing only certain parts originates in the
early 1950s when President Truman issued Executive Order 10290, which extended the
29
Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, The COINTELPRO Papers (Cambridge, MA:
South End Press, 2002), xi.
20
military system of national security classification to agencies engaged in counterespionage and counter-intelligence programs. 30 This system was modified two years
later by President Eisenhower to simplify the classification categories to “Top Secret,”
“Secret,” and “Confidential.” 31 The Bureau also added in its own categories of internal
classification, “Strictly Confidential,” “Sensitive,” “JUNE,” and “Do Not File.” 32 When
the Freedom of Information Act was passed in 1964, the Bureau found a loophole that
would allow the Bureau to continue hiding its files for another decade: if they had just
cause to mark information as crucial to the interest of national security, they had license
to withhold the document. 33 However, the Bureau quickly began to take advantage of
the national security label, extending exemptions to any document that could injure third
parties, such as government officials, federal employees, witnesses and informants. A
final exemption not mentioned or recognized by the FOIA or the Privacy Act of 1974, is
the FBI’s ability to determine what information is released to the requester. If they do not
believe certain facts to be pertinent to the specifications of the request, they can choose to
hold back documents and details. While a whole document may never be released as
30
COINTELPRO Papers, 23.
31
COINTELPRO Papers, 25.
32
COINTELPRO Papers, 25.
33
COINTELPRO Papers, 26.
21
pertaining to a particular request, it is possible to compile an entire document or file
through multiple requests and releases. 34
34
COINTELPRO Papers, 32.
22
Snitch Culture: Being an Informant
Being an FBI informant provides a sort of safety net when it comes to
confidentiality: once you have signed up your identity is not going to be revealed unless
absolutely necessary or the situation has passed and your involvement no longer matters
and your safety is not threatened. This confidentiality is both for the benefit of the
informer and those who are receiving the information. The risk of being exposed as an
informer could put the life of the individual in danger and inescapably removes them
from the previous access they had as all trust placed in them vanishes with their exposure.
This, in turn, then means that the information being obtained halts and so the
person/people using the informant have lost what could have been a crucial information
source. According to John Madinger, author of Confidential Informant: Law
Enforcement’s Most Valuable Tool, “every informant is unique in his or her access to
information.”35
There are several different kinds of informants who each have different types of
access to varying levels of information within a group. Madinger traces the development
of spies and informants back to what Sun Tzu wrote about these “spies” in his The Art of
War, stating the different uses for each kind as well as the sorts of behavior expected
from them all.
Having local spies means employing the services of inhabitants of a district.
Having inward spies, making use of officials of the enemy. Having converted
35
John Madinger, Confidential Informant: Law Enforcement’s Most Valuable Tool, 8.
23
spies, getting hold of the enemy’s spies and using them for our own purposes.
Having doomed spies, doing certain things openly for purposes of deception, and
allowing our spies to know of them and report them to the enemy. Surviving
spies, finally, are those who bring back news from the enemy’s camp. 36
These different types are recognized under different names today, but they are still used
in similar ways. Madinger writes that “local spies” are “the good citizens of our
society”37 who call in to report crimes they may have witnessed or who recognize the
face of a wanted fugitive from the news. They are everyday people who have a one-time
piece of useful information that helps with a crime, not people with criminal histories or
who have been developed as informants but people interested in doing their civic duty.
Their information may be limited and they may never be able to be of use to the
government again, but in this one instance they are of use to their community. “Inward
spies” are probably the most similar to the modern-day confidential informant. They
belong to the group or organization being investigated and for some reason have decided
to give up information which, by virtue of their position, they have particular access to. If
the accusations of Richard Aoki are true, he would fall under this particular category.
“Converted spies” are what today’s society refers to as ‘double agents.’ “The true worth
of the converted spy or double agent comes from two critical factors: the trust reposed in
him by his original master and the access this trust provides. Because a spy knows so
much more of the ‘big picture’ than an ordinary foot soldier, this type of spy is more
36
Sun Tzu, The Art of War, “The Use of Spies,” XII: 9-13.
37
Madinger, 8.
24
prized by the opponent who can convert him.” 38 These spies are often very useful in
pointing out potential new recruits or even just people who could be used to give false
information to the organization leaders. The new recruits are often what Sun Tzu referred
to as “doomed spies,” as they are passing along information that the group’s enemy wants
them to have. This position goes beyond reporting to an outsider, to bringing false
information in and so increases the risks of being discovered as a spy. Today they may be
considered agent provocateurs whose main purpose is to incite an action or belief within
the targeted organization that will lead to its downfall or at least the downfall of one or
more of its leaders/members. The final category, “surviving spies,” is different from the
others as the spy is a complete outsider who goes in undercover. This could be an agent
doing plainclothes investigation or even going completely undercover and joining the
organization under false pretenses. By utilizing the work of Sun Tzu’s Art of War,
Madinger is further solidifying the symbolic connection between what the FBI and
federal government are doing to suppress resistance groups and actual war. Foucalt once
stated “Power is war, the continuation of war by other means. At this point, we can invert
Clausewitz’s proposition [that war is a mere continuation of policy by other means…War
is not merely a political act, but also truly a political instrument, a continuation of
political commerce, as carrying out of the same by other means39] and say that politics is
38
Madinger, 9.
39
Vom Krieg, book 1, chap. 1, xxiv, in Hinterlasse Werke, bd. 1-3, Berlin, 1832.
http://www.clausewitz.com/readings/OnWar1873/TOC.htm.
25
the continuation of war by other means.”40 So in effect, Hoover’s FBI declared internal
war by means of political manipulation against the Panthers and other activists as part of
the larger political struggle. Instead of the “war” on radicalism being an instrument of
policy, public policy became an instrument in Hoover’s war against Communism.
The FBI under Hoover mastered the art of using informants, mainly as the
director was reluctant to let his own agents enter the field undercover for fear that they
would be converted in the process of trying to recruit from within the groups they
targeted.
Hoover is best remembered for his fanatical obsession with Communists. But the
investigative techniques he pioneered at the FBI are far more important to the
growth of the Snitch Culture than the exact people and organizations he targeted.
More than anything else, Hoover understood the value of using the American
people as informants. In remarks prepared for the Attorney General in 1925, he
wrote, ‘The Agents of the Bureau of Investigation have been impressed with the
fact that the real problem of law enforcement is in trying to obtain the cooperation
and sympathy of the public and that they cannot hope to get such cooperation
until they themselves merit the respect of the public.’ As the FBI director, Hoover
would not allow his agents to personally infiltrate suspected Communist
organizations. He was afraid the subversives would ‘turn’ the agents and use them
to gather information on the bureau. So Hoover recruited state and local cops as
undercover operatives, establishing a critical working relationship between the
FBI and the police which still exists today. 41
In using the local and state police forces, Hoover inevitably also gained another ring of
connections: informants and sources that were associated with all the officers in these
divisions. Many of these connections had their own motives for alliances and for giving
40
Society Must Be Defended, Trans. David Macey, New York: Picador, 2003, 15.
41
Jim Redden, Snitch Culture, 83.
26
up information to law enforcement or the government. “In the 1950s, Malachi Harney
and John Cross, two federal narcotic agents developed a series of lectures on
informants…in which [they] describe the motives which can be attributed to
informants…Harney identified an informer as a ‘person who gives information to an
investigator because of a definite personal motive.”42 He categorizes these six as 1) Fear,
2) Revenge, 3) Perverse, 4) Egotistical, 5) Mercenary, 6) Repentance or desire to reform,
which can then be further simplified into what “an intelligence community counterpart to
Harney’s list is known by its acronym, MICE, and describes the typical motivations of
spies who betray their countries. This list which includes all of Harney’s categories, is as
follows: 1. Money 2. Ideology 3. Compromise 4. Ego.”43 While these four categories help
to streamline the motivation categories and generally encompass the previous six, the
ideological classification is something Madinger says is rarely seen in law enforcement.
The category refers to people who will spy for ideological reasons, who do not see their
actions as treasonous because they are merely following their beliefs. This was an issue
during the Cold War as young communists in the United States were being recruited by
the Russians from the Soviet Union whose ideology they sympathized with.
Expanding on Harney’s list of the most common motivations provides a better
understanding of why people choose to betray the confidences of a person or group that
they have been a part of. The fear motive most often applies when a person either feels
42
Madinger, 51.
43
Madinger, 58.
27
threatened from within a group and wants protection or is being threatened with a long
period of incarceration that they wish to avoid or shorten in exchange for information.
The second motive on the list, revenge, is a short lasting type of motivation, much like
the emotion that drives it. If a person has been wronged in some way, they may wish to
cause the inflictor similar pain and so will give up information to help bring them down.
Informants acting out of revenge will generally only give up the information once, while
they are still hurting before realizing the extent of what they have done. The third
category is perverse, which means that the informant is giving up the information to get
something out of it themselves; for example, they may want to eliminate their
competition or deflect attention away from their own actions. Egotistically motivated
informants give information so that they can feel empowered and mercenary informants
are giving up information for monetary gain. The final type of Harney’s motives is that
which comes from an individual’s desire to repent and move away from their
involvement. “The informant may be trying to burn bridges to his old life by ‘burning’
his associates,” writes Madinger.44
In addition to these common motives, there are also the people who are looking
out for their community and thus do not want to see crime or violence present. There are
the people who played cops and robbers as children and want the opportunity to fulfill
their childhood fantasies as adults, sometimes even embracing both roles at different, or
congruent, points in their lives. And then there are the people who want to further serve
44
Madinger, 57.
28
their country and see being an informant as an act of patriotism, as it is assisting the
government in obtaining the information that they need or want. So while many
informants do arise out of situations concerning personal motives, such as monetary gain
or carrying out vendettas, people do still choose to give up information to the government
or other local branches of government because they believe they are helping protect and
advance their community and country. Being labeled a snitch is harmful to a person’s
reputation within the group that they are informing on, but that does not mean informants
all seek to bring harm to those they are reporting. A type of scenario which falls into this
category of spying for the greater good would be one in which an honor code were being
broken and an observer reported what he saw to those in a position of power. The ethics
of this situation are questionable as the breach of trust is viewed negatively but the
information passed along is expected. Aoki may have turned in information about the
organizations he was affiliated with but that does not necessarily mean he was providing
information against them. Or Aoki may have agreed with group or party, yet been off put
by a single aspect that he thought the government should know about. If this is the case
then the accusations laid against him could be true, but that would not diminish his actual
influence or legitimacy as a civil rights activist.
If Richard Aoki was an informant he would have been classified as an “inward
spy,” by virtue of his position within various groups around the time that Rosenfeld cites
him as beginning his career with the FBI. However, due to the transitory nature of Aoki’s
membership and affiliation with different groups, his status may have changed to that of a
29
surviving spy, or a plant in an organization. For while his mobility among different civil
rights activist groups could have been a result of his own changing interests, it is also
possible that he moved to where the FBI could use him most and where his credentials
would not incite suspicion. In another light, however, Aoki’s speculative status as an
informant could have been completely fabricated by the Bureau in an effort to discredit
Aoki’s name and influence within the groups he sought to join. This practice, of
intentionally labeling an individual as an informant of any kind, is known as snitchjacketing.
30
Snitch-Jacketing
The opposite of choosing to be an informant and having your identity and service
kept safe and confidential is being exposed as an informant without actually having been
one. This practice was employed heavily by the FBI through COINTELPRO to help stir
up distrust and dissent within a party’s leadership. Once a member has been accused of or
has been exposed as an informant they are likely to lose all semblances of trust and
loyalty within their organization. Whether or not the accusations are true, it is extremely
difficult to fully trust that person again for fear of there being any truth to the accusation.
If a person’s name has been associated with providing information from within to outside
organizations, it does not matter whether an individual was trying to hurt or harm his
party: they are still viewed as having betrayed some degree of trust. There are such
negative connotations connected to snitching that, as seen previously, it takes a lot for a
person to “tattle,” thanks to social taboos instilled from childhood. While honesty may be
a prized character trait and social convention, withholding information from prying third
parties is also expected within society and so passing along information to people outside
the immediate group, whether it be harmful or helpful, holds negative connotations.
Regardless of whether the information is passed along out of spite or to uphold a moral or
social code or principle, the people betrayed are not likely to appreciate the person who
reported them. No child wants to play with a child who is going to tell parents or teachers
every time they do something wrong and this unspoken rule carries from the playground
into adulthood. The idea of ‘once a cheater, always a cheater’ applies to all aspects of
31
social relationships and so once a trust has been broken, literally or fictitiously, the seeds
of doubt are always there and take a long time to be discarded and repaired.
Thanks to these unspoken social conventions, one of the most common means of
stirring dissent within a group or organization utilized by the FBI and its
counterintelligence programs was snitch-jacketing: the practice of planting fake
information or evidence on or around a person of standing within a group to make it
appear that this individual has been acting as an informant. Snitch-jacketing, also referred
to as bad-jacketing, “refers to the practice of creating suspicion – through the spread of
rumors, manufacture of evidence, etc – that bona fide organizational members, usually in
key positions, are FBI/police informers, guilty of such offenses as skimming
organizational funds and the like,” according to Ward Churchill and Jim VanderWall,
authors of Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret War Against the Black Panther Party
and the American Indian Movement. “The purpose of this tactic was to ‘isolate and
eliminate’ organizational leadership.”45 Of course, the irony that the evidence is most
often planted by an actual informant should not be overlooked. In some ways, snitch
jacketing was used to preserve the safety of actual informants as it directed any negative
or suspicious attention to the individual being targeted.
One of the most cited cases of snitch-jacketing employed by the FBI to stir
distrust within a targeted organization was aimed at the Black Panther Party. In 1968,
Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret War
Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, (Boston, MA: South End
Press, 1988), 49.
45
32
when the Panthers were gaining national popularity and attention, there was a move to
form a coalition with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and
several prominent members of SNCC adopted leadership positions within the Black
Panther Party. Stokely Carmichael was named a Prime Minister of the Panthers and
James Forman was named Minister of Foreign Affairs. Soon after the group collaboration
was announced, the FBI began to act to disrupt it. Following the COINTELPRO tradition
of feeding false information to the media, a story broke about James Forman being
tortured by a group of Panthers. “With media depictions of the alliance becoming
increasingly demeaning, SNCC formally withdrew from its relationship with the Panthers
in early August, while Forman, already reduced to a state of ‘paranoia’ by FBI operations
targeting him, checked into a hospital for psychiatric treatment.” 46 While the coalition
was successfully broken down, Stokely Carmichael chose to remain and even distanced
himself from SNCC in the process, committing himself to the advancement of the Black
Panther Party. Unfortunately for Carmichael, “he had long been a priority target for
COINTELPRO neutralization, and now efforts against him were quickly intensified. In
July, an effort had been made to bad-jacket him by way of having an infiltrator…plant a
forged document making it appear that Carmichael was a CIA informant.” 47 The resulting
distrust only expedited his decision to relocate to Africa when his mother received a
death threat from an anonymous friend warning of a Panther hit squad that was coming
for him.
46
Disrupt, Discredit and Destroy, 89.
47
Ibid.
33
The discussion of snitch culture and snitch-jacketing is important for considering
the accusations made against Richard Aoki by Seth Rosenfeld. When the first accusation
was released on August 20th 2012, many of Aoki’s friends and followers called
shenanigans and Aoki’s biographer, Diane Fujino, among others, said that Rosenfeld was
attempting to snitch-jacket Aoki posthumously. Of course, it does not follow the original
definition and intentions of the act of snitch-jacketing as Aoki was not alive at the time
Rosenfeld published his article - he died in 2009 - and so is not stirring up any trouble for
the government, the Bureau or American society in general. Aoki was a strong influence
on the progress of integrating multi-ethnic studies into US schools and universities. He
did a lot to help with social welfare and betterment programs and he influenced many
lives as a professor and a student mentor. But, as he aged, he moved away from being an
active social and civil rights activist. The accusations have no effect on the internal
structure of any of the organizations he is affiliated with or on any of the causes he
aligned himself with and so accusing him now cannot harm the groups or work to break
them apart – if anything they have caused people to band together in his defense. So if
Rosenfeld, or the FBI, was attempting to slander the name of Richard Aoki in order to
raise dissent among activist groups viewed as threatening to the government, why would
they wait until now to try and discredit Aoki? The technique only works when the
individual targeted is active and powerful and when there is a lot riding on the trust others
have on him or her at the present moment. It makes little sense to snitch-jacket someone
when he or she is no longer contributing to a group, be it due to renounced membership,
switching to a different group, or no longer being able to serve or lead the organization.
34
Aoki’s alignments and affiliations changed over the course of his life as his own views
and concerns evolved, yet none of his connections directly point to his being an
informant or to any reasons that might explain why the Bureau may choose to tarnish his
name now.
35
Richard Aoki
“I’ve been told that my early years, before the war, were the happiest period of
my childhood. I was adored by my extended family. Yet I don’t remember it. I was born
November 20, 1938, in the year of the tiger and in the European zodiac, Scorpio. I’ve
heard that my birth was a bit of a surprise.”48 With this statement Richard Aoki’s account
of his life, as cited in the biography written by Diane Fujino, begins. Aoki was the oldest
son of a Japanese American family who lived in the Bay Area of California. Following
the start of World War II, his family was relocated to an internment camp in Topaz, Utah
in 1941 when Aoki was about three and half years old. While his family was interned, his
parents split and when the war was finished and everyone was released Richard and his
younger brother went back to West Oakland to live with his father’s family. In an
interview conducted with Peralta College, Aoki referred to the area as “little Okinawa”
due to the large Japanese American population there, though he mentions how gradually
the Asian American population decreased and was replaced by African Americans during
World War II when all the Japanese families were sent to internment camps.
In terms of education, Aoki was an avid reader and an exceptional student, though
he lacked the social restraints to be a model student. He was homeschooled until he was
thirteen and moved to Herbert Hoover Junior High School where he graduated as covaledictorian. For high school he was meant to go to McLymont High School but due to a
riot on the first day he moved in with his mother and began attending Berkeley High
48
Samurai Among Panthers, 1.
36
School which was one of the top ten high schools in the country. He remembers that there
was a stark racial and class difference in the classrooms, with the white and Asian
students being placed in the college prep classes and the poor and black students being
placed in the vocational classes. However, Aoki spent his time outside of school
immersed in African American culture by virtue of where he lived and he says that he
saw a lot of similarities between the “concentration camp experience and racial
segregation.”49 Aoki completed three years of high school in two and half and after
graduation he joined the United States Army.
Aoki claims that he had always wanted to be a soldier, and remarks that his family
always had divided feelings about the military due to the tensions caused by their
internment and their American citizenship. When the army had been in dire need of extra
men during World War II, his father had refused to enlist, yet his uncle had proudly
signed up.50 Following Russia’s invasion of Hungary in October 1956, Aoki went to the
military induction center to enlist. Because of his age, Aoki had to have his mother sign a
consent form and he had to promise her that he would register to be a medic as she was
convinced that ‘medics don’t get shot.’ Aoki’s basic training was delayed until three days
after he graduated high school in January 1957, despite the automatic eligibility he had to
study at UC Berkeley by virtue of his attending Berkeley High School. About his
enlisting Aoki said, “I was eighteen. I’d been sworn into the United States Army. Even
49
Peralta documentary footage.
50
Samurai Among Panthers, 15.
37
though I couldn’t vote and I couldn’t drink legally, I was a man by the standards of the
‘hood!”51 Aoki passed his medical training, including surgery and x-ray qualifications,
and then transferred to the infantry after consulting with his mentor Dr. Harry Cochran.
In total, Aoki served with the United States military for eight years before receiving an
honorable discharge after declining a promotion. He had become disenchanted with some
aspects of military service and had started hearing stories about the actions authorized by
the President in Vietnam, including the killings of women and children, of which Aoki
said “I don’t play that, even on the streets I don’t play that.”52 So despite being offered an
officer position and a $3,200 cash bonus Aoki walked away from a military career. He
said that he did not want to accept blood money, stating that “mercenaries kill for money,
sadists kill for pleasure; we kill for both” and he did not want to do that with his life.
Instead he used his medical training to get a job at a hospital which did not work out so
he got a job driving a truck and then got a union job at a factory which included classes at
Merritt College. After taking some classes there for two years as a chemistry major, he
transferred to the University of California, Berkeley thanks to his previous eligibility
from his high school.
Aoki was a full time student at Merritt College in 1964. As a requirement for his
chemistry degree he had to take a German language class which introduced him to the
writings of Hegel and Marx. It was here that he met Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton,
51
Samurai, 69.
52
Peralta
38
the later co-founders of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Bobby was a preengineering student who had received a dishonorable discharge from the Air Force, and
Huey was a pre-law student, four years younger than Aoki, whose brother had been a
friend of Aoki during his street days. Of the classes he took at Merritt College, Aoki
recalls that there was a large emphasis on cross cultural learning, including Black
Nationalism and Marxism and by the end of his second year Aoki was a self-proclaimed
revolutionary socialist and the head of a socialism discussion club. He also was part of
the Vietnam Day Committee, which protested against the war, and had looked into
helping various civil rights groups, expressing special interest in CORE (Congress on
Racial Equality) and SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee). Aoki’s
interest in SNCC surprised him. “For years I’ve wondered why I would gravitate toward
SNCC because the very inclusion of nonviolence was a no-no personally. But to me,
SNCC’s voter registration was one of the few successful civil rights actions because it got
to the issue of power.”53 Aoki settled with the Socialist Workers Party, because he
believed that their political line was something he could get behind; a manifesto mainly
driven by Trotskyism. When Aoki got to Berkeley “the first thing I did was join the TriContinental Students Committee” 54 and pursue a degree in sociology which he saw as
concurrent with his growing role as a social activist.
53
Samurai, 99.
54
Samurai, 114.
39
In October of 1966, it became obvious to Aoki, as well as many other activists in
the Bay Area, that self-defense was the best way to counteract the violence against
minority groups. It was then that Bobby Seale and Huey Newton developed the idea of
the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and they even ran their ideas for their Ten Point
Program by Aoki. At this time, Aoki recalls Huey telling him “I know you’re not black
but I’m asking you to join because the struggle for freedom, justice and equality
transcends racial and ethnic boundaries.”55 These ten points included housing, education,
medical facilities and most importantly combating and controlling police brutality
directed against minorities. On these grounds, the Panthers began to police the police.
Aoki had never seen actual combat during his time with the Army, but he did get to
“play” with all the weapons he wanted to during his training, so by the time he left the
army he was something of firearms expert. He had amassed his own collection of
handguns and so when Bobby Seale asked him to donate some to the cause, Aoki was
happy to oblige. During their patrols of the streets of West Oakland, the Panthers carried
guns supplied by Aoki from his personal collection. They recorded and photographed
police brutality; Huey, being a pre-law student, quoted the law directly to the police.
While the Party initially started with six members, the self-defense aspect of their
platform attracted many youth from the streets and Aoki commented on how crime
records and rates actually went down during that time period as the party was actively
mobilizing the ‘young thugs’ who would have otherwise been causing trouble on the
streets. With the help of Eldridge Cleaver, the party took on a more political stance rather
55
Peralta
40
than a criminal one, and so became more effective and legitimate, and gradually became
more of a threat to the state because of its organization and its clearly defined platform.
Aoki became the party’s first Minister of Education and was put in charge of setting up
internal education classes where he taught the writings of African American leaders, the
autobiography of Malcolm X and the Mao’s Red Book which became very influential in
the literary structuring and basis of the party. This social welfare aspect of the Black
Panthers was what appealed most to Aoki and when he left the Panthers it was to
concentrate on getting a master’s degree in social work.
A major step for the Black Panther Party was when it started its Free Breakfast for
Children Program. This program, as well as other social survival programs, appealed to
the communities and the people that benefitted from it and also served to enhance the
political agenda of the party, by convincing the community that the Panthers were not
just a group of armed street thugs and gangsters and were instead a legitimate
organization who wanted to serve the people. Aoki remarked, “The federal government
has now co-opted the Free Breakfast Program, now they are giving out free lunches to
those who qualify but it was really the pioneer idea of the Black Panther Party to address
a serious social problem.” 56 The government recognized the power and support that the
Panthers were attracting through their serve-the-people programs, starting with their
efforts to feed the hungry, help the elderly, provide medical services, visit and represent
the incarcerated in prison, etc., and so they acted to try and steal the support for
56
Peralta
41
themselves from the group they were beginning to perceive as a serious threat. These
were the programs that Aoki was in position to take over before he began his master’s
degree and discovered the causes of the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) and
the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) which began at Berkeley.
The Third World Liberation Front was formed in December 1968 when the
leaders of three major minority activist groups decided to form a coalition in order to
present a more united front for their parties. The three main leaders of the group were
Manuel Delgado, representing the Mexican American Student Confederation, LaNada
Means, for the Native American Student Union, and Richard Aoki for the Asian
American Political Alliance; they were all pushing for a representative Ethnic Studies
Program. To achieve their goals they organized strikes and picket lines on campus. At a
press conference on March 6, 1969 Aoki, speaking for the TWLF said, “We will settle for
nothing less than a full Third World College for the Fall of 1969. Developed by the Third
World faculty, by Third World students and Third World community people. We have
had a strike. We have a strike. We will continue to strike."57 The strikes were an eventual
success and UC Berkeley became the first college in the United States to have an Ethnic
Studies program. Delgado even credits the AAPA as being the driving force behind the
57
San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive,
https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/208092
42
success of the strike, saying “They were the best organized, hardest working and most
committed to the common struggle of the Third World.”58
Aoki is one to emphasize the primacy of practice in transforming people’s
consciousness; that ‘reality speaks for itself.’ While in 1969 he may not have
articulated a revolutionary position on the struggle for Ethnic Studies, his
immersion in the movement dramatically changed his life and solidified his
commitment to Third World Solidarity. As he burned out from the intensity of
grassroots organizing, Asian American Studies offered him a professional career
through which he could carry out his desire for racial and class equality. His
reality speaks to how he resolved the duality of formal education. He went on to
have a twenty-five year career as an instructor, counselor and occasional
administrator in the East Bay community college system. He was proud of his
work to bring marginalized students into higher education, to teach a critical
pedagogy, and to connect students with the community. But before getting there,
he would teach some of the first classes and serve as an early administrator in the
newly formed Asian American Studies program at UC Berkeley.
Aoki continued as an educator until his retirement in 1998 and remained an activist for
racial justice and equality until his death in 2009. Aoki took his own life on March 15th,
by shooting himself in the stomach, after battling kidney disease and diabetes for several
years, though the official report that went out shortly following his death said that he died
“due to complications from longstanding medical problems.”59 Before he died, he laid out
his United States Army and his Black Panther Party uniforms, perfectly pressed and
preserved. In his biography, Diane Fujino emphasizes the measures that Aoki’s
supporters took to celebrate his life and activism, rather than concentrating on his suicide.
She remarks that “[a]fflicted by an incurable illness and a rapidly declining body, Aoki
58
Samurai, 211.
59
Samurai, 277.
43
chose to end his life on his own terms.” 60 She also states, though, that “Aoki’s selfinflicted gunshot wound represents both the vulnerability and fear that makes his act so
human and the honor, courage, and dignity he embodied throughout his life.” 61 Richard
Aoki was a prominent activist throughout his life, working with many different groups as
his own personal ideologies and issues of interest changed. He gave himself fully to the
causes that he concerned himself with and spent his life working to better the lives and
conditions of others, something demonstrated by both his formal degrees and his adopted
and developed programs. It is in this light, that of a dedicated activist, that the accusations
of Seth Rosenfeld surfaced, tarnishing the memory of a strong ideological hero with the
idea that Aoki may have been acting for someone else at the height of his involvement
with the Black Panther Party and the Third World Liberation Front.
60
Samurai, 278.
61
Samurai, 279.
44
Rosenfeld’s Accusation
On August 20th 2012, Seth Rosenfeld published articles in the San Francisco
Chronicle and with the Center for Investigative Reporting, promoting the release of his
new book, Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power
which would be published the following day. Rather than merely explaining the research
and new approaches he took, Rosenfeld concentrated the article around a seven page
section of the new book where he named activist, and former Black Panther Field
Marshal, Richard Aoki as an FBI informant. Using the striking headlines “Activist
Richard Aoki Named as Informant” and “Man Who Armed Black Panthers was FBI
Informant, Records Show,” Rosenfeld quickly attracted the attention of left-wing
advocates and many supporters of Aoki, as well as historians and scholars of the time
period. Some called the article a publicity stunt, while others cried “snitch-jacketing,” but
one thing was for certain: interest in and book sales of Subversives the next day were
extremely high.
Interestingly, though, when Rosenfeld was interviewed about the upcoming
publication of the book by Diane Molleson from Publisher’s Weekly on June 15, 2012,
he did not mention his findings regarding Richard Aoki at all.
Molleson: What surprised you the most in your research?
Rosenfeld: The incredible volume of files that the FBI accumulated concerning
the university and the campus community, and the FBI’s surveillance of various
student organizations. Also, [its] efforts to manipulate public opinion of events in
45
the university by secretly leaking information to friendly news reporters, and [its]
efforts to get [University of California President] Clark Kerr fired. 62
So despite his claim to uncover a prominent radical activist as an informant after three
decades of research, suing the Federal Government through the Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) for the release of documents and conducting multiple interviews to try and
piece together as much of the story as possible, Rosenfeld neglected to even mention his
discoveries about Aoki until he published his own articles the day before his book came
out.
The actual articles published on August 20th contained quotes from interviews
with former FBI agent Burney Threadgill, who claims to have recruited and developed
Aoki as an agent, from Aoki’s friends and from Aoki himself, as well as references to
FBI documents and codes that point to Aoki being an informant. Rosenfeld explains that
when he asked Aoki about being an informant during an interview, Aoki merely replied,
"'Oh,' is all I can say," and then later stated that Rosenfeld must have been mistaken
before adding "People change. It is complex. Layer upon layer."63 Rosenfeld took this
statement as Aoki skirting away from an answer, while leaning more towards a
confession than a denial.
Diane Molleson, “Many Movements: PW Talks with Seth Rosenfeld,” Publishers
Weekly, June 15th 2012, http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/52584many-movements-pw-talks-with-seth-rosenfeld.html .
62
Seth Rosenfeld, “Activist Richard Aoki Named Informant,” San Francisco Chronicle,
August 20th 2012, http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Activist-Richard-Aoki-named-as-informant63
3800133.php#page-2
46
The book Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to
Power, was published on August 21st by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The section regarding
the Third World Liberation Front and Richard Aoki only covered about ten pages total,
including Rosenfeld’s accusation, his supporting evidence and other instances and events
that Aoki participated in. Rosenfeld introduces the accusation through a discussion of the
FBI’s concern about the TWLF:
Hoover ordered his agents to investigate the TWLF on the ground that it
potentially threatened internal security and civil order. But one of the strike’s
most militant leaders had a long – and until now secret – history of working as a
paid FBI informer. His name was Richard Aoki, and at the bureau’s discretion he
had infiltrated a succession of Bay Area radical organizations. He had given the
Black Panthers some of their first guns and weapons training, encouraging them
on a course that would contribute to shootouts with the police and the
organization’s demise. And during the Third World Strike, he encouraged
physical confrontations that prompted Governor Reagan to take the most severe
law-enforcement measures against the Berkeley campus yet – one that ultimately
would have fatal consequences. 64
Straightforward and to the point, Rosenfeld encompassed the entire scope of Aoki’s
supposed career with FBI in four sentences and as a result sparked a chain of reactions
that were mostly in defense of Aoki. After the initial accusation, Rosenfeld proceeds to
provide a brief biography of Aoki, compares him to several other FBI informers who
have come out about their infiltration of other left-wing groups, and details a scene in
64
Subversives, 418-419.
47
which it appears that Aoki may have been snitch-jacketing another, more moderate,
member of the TWLF, Richard Rodriguez, by accusing him of being a mole for the
administration and proceeding to physically beat him. 65 Rosenfeld states that it was after
this incident that Aoki came clean to Manuel Delgado, the head of the Mexican Student
portion of the TWLF, about being a member of the Black Panther Party and that it was
“his job to stay close to the black strikers to make sure they weren’t unduly influenced by
black nationalists who were rivals of the Panthers. 66 Regarding the TWLF Strike to get an
Ethnic Studies program created and recognized by the university, Rosenfeld quotes Aoki
as saying “it was the longest, bloodiest, costliest, student strike in the history of the
university.”67 The violence associated with the strike, and the arming of the Black
Panther Party, are two things the FBI has never accounted for under the role of Aoki as
an informer for the bureau and “in response to the author’s inquiry and his Freedom of
Information Act lawsuit, FBI officials refused to confirm or deny whether Aoki was an
informant or reveal whether the bureau was withholding additional records about him.”68
Rosenfeld ends the chapter, and his section containing information about Richard
Aoki, by detailing what Aoki did with the rest of his life following the strike and by
briefly explaining the circumstances around Aoki’s death. Rosenfeld does not include any
65
Subversives, 435.
66
Subversives, 435.
67
Subversives, 445.
68
Subversives, 446.
48
of the actual documents he referenced regarding Aoki in the book, but in a follow-up
article on September 7, 2012 entitled “Documents: Richard Aoki’s Paper Trail,” he
released 273 pages of FBI documents he had obtained from the FBI through the FOIA
giving readers and critics a chance to explore the documents for themselves.
49
Responses to the Accusation (Articles and Interviews)
The number of people whose lives were touched by Richard Aoki was evident in
the number of people who immediately jumped to his defense following the release of
Seth Rosenfeld’s article on August 20th. These people ranged from his biographer, Diane
Fujino, to notable scholars of the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement like Jeffrey
Ogbar, to people who had worked alongside him, like Fred Ho and Bobby Seale, to
students he may have taught, to people he had never met but had inspired through his
actions and his legacy. AS Diane Fujino puts it, “Aoki’s own radical imagination
coincided with the momentous social movements of the 1960s and 1970s and enabled an
ordinary person to make extraordinary choices, involving him in the creation of new
societies and new histories.”69 However, while the accusations caused a collective
sensation of shock, not all Aoki supporters blindly defended his legacy and many even
gave consideration to the evidence Rosenfeld provided.
August 21st – Fred Ho Article
The first response to the accusations came out the same day that Subversives was
published. On August 21st 2012, Fred Ho wrote a reaction article, to Rosenfeld’s prepublication announcement, in Richard Aoki’s defense, citing a close personal relationship
with the accused and rebutting the main claims laid out by Rosenfeld as evidence. “Aoki
NEVER was an agent, and unlike many of the prominent Panthers – notably Bobby Seale
69
Samurai, 294.
50
and Huey P. Newton – remained a revolutionary for life and never degenerated into selfobsession and egomania.”70 Ho then goes on to outline why he believes Aoki was not an
informant and how Rosenfeld’s claim is not adequately supported. His first point of
criticism lies in the vagueness and ambiguity of the FBI documents cited as well as the
incorrect listing of Aoki’s name and the particular form of identification listed. Ho’s
second point of rebuttal uses a colleague’s assessment who stated that Aoki may have
gotten involved when he was younger, before he had developed his own ideologies, and
that “he couldn’t admit what he had done earlier as it would have cast huge aspersion and
suspicion around him among the Panthers who were quick to be intolerant and unwilling
to accept past mistakes.” Fred Ho states though that “even if this were the case, that
Richard had naively agreed to be an informant in his youth, prior to being radicalized,
and couldn’t admit to it later, what is impossible to reconcile is that the entire 50-year arc
of Richard’s life and work has helped the movement far more than hindered or harmed
it.”71 Ho’s final complaint with Rosenfeld’s accusation is with the over- and underemphasis Rosenfeld puts of different aspects of Aoki’s revolutionary career and all the
unanswered questions raised by naming Aoki as an informant, including how much he
was paid, how long he was an informant, and what he got out of it. “The over-emphasis
upon Aoki providing the Panthers their first firearms is sensationalist fodder. What is
Fred Ho, “Fred Ho Refutes Claim that Richard Aoki was an FBI Informant,” San
Francisco Bay View: National Black Newspaper, August 21st, 2012,
http://sfbayview.com/2012/fred-ho-refutes-the-claim-that-richard-aoki-was-an-fbi-informant/.
70
71
Ibid.
51
conveniently ignored is what he contributed most to the Panthers and to the legacy of the
U.S. revolutionary movement: promoting revolutionary study, ideology and disciplined
organization. That’s why he was field marshal – because the cat could organize and
tolerated no indiscipline and lack of seriousness.” 72 Following this train of thought, Ho
also asserts that the main reason Rosenfeld published the article and included his
accusation in Subversives was to sell books. Fred Ho rounds out his response by stating
that it does not even matter now if Aoki was an informant as his legacy outweighs the
gravity of the implications and that “if Aoki was an agent, so what? He surely was a pisspoor one because what he contributed to the movement is enormously greater than
anything he could have detracted or derailed. If it is implied that Aoki promoted firearms
and violence to the Panthers, well, here’s some news: The Panthers were well on that
direction as part of the trajectory set by Malcolm X…and so many others.”73 This follows
from a statement expressing how the arming of the Panthers was a destructive move for
the group due to the retaliation they received from the police and the government
compared to other nonviolent organizations. The final thought Ho’s article leaves the
reader with is a cry to encourage the exploration of facts and the questioning of media
hype and hegemonic labeling. In a nutshell, Fred Ho curses out anyone willing to believe
and promote the accusations.
Fred Ho was the first to respond to Seth Rosenfeld’s accusation against Richard
Aoki and his article carries a defiant tone of shock and disbelief. While he makes sure
72
Ibid.
73
Ibid.
52
that he points out the faults in Rosenfeld’s argument, Ho does give consideration to what
it could mean if Aoki does prove to have been working with the FBI. He concludes that
Aoki’s life work, when taken as a collective whole, cannot be diminished for any work he
did was more helpful to the organizations he aligned himself with and the communities in
which he worked than it could possibly have been for the federal government who were
working to break down the organizations and communities Aoki is accused of infiltrating
and reporting on.
August 22nd – Diane Fujino Article
Following the release of Rosenfeld’s book, the first person to question his formal
accusation was Richard Aoki’s biographer: Diane Fujino. She labels his announcement as
“dramatic,” saying that it “provoked an enormous response” and accuses Rosenfeld of
making “definitive conclusions based on inconclusive evidence.” Fujino raises the
prospect of the accusation being a form of snitch-jacketing and also questions
Rosenfeld’s own motivations, much like Fred Ho did, and implies that the publication of
Rosenfeld’s book the day following the news breaking may have been planned to
increase publicity above anything else . She then proceeds to list the four main points of
evidence Rosenfeld offers and explains the flaws in each of his arguments. First, she
discusses the FBI document from November 16, 1967 which is the first piece of evidence
Rosenfeld holds against Aoki even though his name is spelled wrong and the document is
heavily redacted; the use of the T-2 symbol is also ambiguous considering that it is
53
usually used to reference informants of technical sources of information. Fujino asks,
“was Aoki the informer or the one being observed?” 74 Second, Fujino explains how
Rosenfeld cited Burney Threadgill as a source, even though Threadgill has died and there
was no direct mention of the agent-handler relationship Rosenfeld cites in any of the FBI
documents released. Next, Fujino critiques Wesley Swearingen’s claim that as a Japanese
American Aoki would have been the prime candidate to act as an informant on the Black
Panthers as no one would suspect him of being with the FBI. Fujino counters that due to
his different ethnicity, Aoki would have logically been the most suspicious as he could
not claim the same racial struggles as the African Americans who composed the nearly
homogenous membership of the Party. Finally, Fujino refers to the responses Aoki gave
to Rosenfeld while being interviewed as insubstantial evidence of a confession as those
who knew Aoki knew “that he spoke with wit, humor, allusion and caution.” 75 Following
her examination of Rosenfeld’s main point, Fujino begins to explain the idea behind
snitch-jacketing and how it could be applied to this situation. She mentions another FBI
document that connected Aoki to the Red Guard, but notes she received no confirmation
of this relationship in interviews with both parties or in any subsequent FBI documents.
“Simply put, because of the FBI's political motives, FBI reports must be carefully crosschecked with non-FBI sources. But the entirety of Rosenfeld's evidence relies on
Diane Fujino, “Where’s the Evidence Aoki was FBI Informant?”San Francsico
Chronicle, August 22nd 2012, http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Where-s-the-evidenceAoki-was-FBI-informant-3808396.php.
74
75
Ibid.
54
FBI sources.”76 Fujino’s final argument is similar to Fred Ho’s response as she also
points to Rosenfeld’s elevation of Aoki as an iconic legend of the Black Panther Party
and the Civil Rights activism which took place in the Bay Area of California. Rosenfeld
implies that Aoki's guns, given to the Black Panther Party, triggered the police's,
FBI's and government's backlash. Yet he ignores the police brutality that inspired
the Black Panther's police patrols, and the violence of racism and poverty that
inspired the Panther's free breakfast programs. Instead, Aoki used the symbolic
power of violence to stop the greater violence of the government's failing to
actively counter poverty and institutionalized racism at home and in imposing war
in Vietnam.
In my book on Aoki, I write that instead of being the trigger, Aoki acted as
the "safety on the gun." He was careful to teach gun safety. Neither the Panthers
nor Aoki expected to win a military battle with the government. Firing the gun
wasn't their intended goal. Instead, Aoki used the symbolic power of violence to
stop the greater violence of the state.77
Much like Fred Ho’s response, Diane Fujino’s article carries a tone of shock, disbelief
and scholarly outrage. Having interviewed Aoki and worked alongside him on his
biography, she had developed a close relationship with him and so would have been
naturally skeptical that he was ever working with the FBI as there were no indications on
his part, or through her extensive research to fill in the blanks and place his life and
narrative into a larger collective story of his life that would make that claim plausible. In
a much more civil conclusion than Ho’s, Fujino states that Rosenfeld “failed to meet the
burden of proof.”78
76
Ibid.
77
Ibid.
78
Ibid.
55
August 23rd – Interview on Democracy Now! with Seth Rosenfeld and Diane Fujino
Three days after Rosenfeld released the initial accusation and two days after his
book was published, he was interviewed on Democracy Now!, a daily independent global
news hour with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez.79 Gonzalez began the segment by
introducing the topic:
We begin today’s show with explosive new allegations that the man who gave the
Black Panther Party some of its first firearms and weapons training was an
undercover FBI informant in California. Richard Aoki was an early member of
the Panthers and the only Asian American to have a formal position in the party.
He was also a member of the Asian American Political Alliance that was involved
in the Third World Liberation Front student strike. The claim that Aoki informed
on his colleagues is based on statements made by a former agent of the FBI in a
report obtained by investigative journalist Seth Rosenfeld, author of the new
book, Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to
Power. Over the last 30 years, Rosenfeld sued the FBI five times to obtain
confidential records. He eventually compelled the agency to release more than
250,000 pages from their files. 80
Setting up the rest of the discussion in a manner that would hook listeners, Gonzalez
proceeded to play clips from interviews that Seth Rosenfeld had had with Burney
Threadgill, Richard Aoki, and Wesley Swearingen. Following the segments, Rosenfeld
breaks down his evidence into four sections: his interview with Threadgill, the documents
he obtained through his FOIA lawsuits, his interview with Aoki and his conversations
with Swearingen. Interestingly, Rosenfeld claims that he had never heard of Richard
Aoki until one day when he was reviewing some of the documents he had obtained with
Democracy Now!, “Was Bay Area Radical, Black Panther Arms Supplier Richard Aoki
an Informant for the FBI?,” August 23rd, 2012,
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/23/was_bay_area_radical_black_panther .
80
56
Threadgill, utilizing his expertise as a former agent to see through the redactions, and
Threadgill said something along the lines of “Hey, I know that guy. He was my
informant,”81 after seeing Aoki’s name on a page. From there Rosenfeld began to look
further into Aoki’s life, scouring the FBI documents he already had, along with public
records and new documents which he petitioned for, and then finally, in 2007, he was
able to interview Aoki himself. It is in this time that Rosenfeld states that he uncovered
the story of a “very well-known political activist”82 even though the Bureau claimed that
there were no FBI reports or files on him.
At this point in the interview, Amy Goodman turns to Diane Fujino and asks for
her opinion on the matter. Fujino begins by commending the amount of research that
Rosenfeld put into the book, but soon turns to the discussion at hand saying “It’s a very
thick book, 734 pages. There’s a tremendous amount of research. And I had expected to
find a lot more information detailing this accusation that Aoki was an FBI informant. But
when I read the book, I was very surprised that there was little more than what’s already
been said, than what was said already just this morning on this show. And in my mind as
a scholar, I remain open to whatever truth is there, but the evidence needs to be
substantial, that needs to meet a certain burden of proof, and it did not in this case.” 83
81
Ibid.
82
Ibid.
83
Ibid.
57
Then, as she had done in her own response article, 84 she breaks down Rosenfeld’s four
points of research and questions how so much information could have been included in
just a single footnote in the book. When Goodman quotes Aoki, using the previously
played excerpts from the interview conducted by Rosenfeld, as saying "It’s complex,
layer upon layer,” and asks Fujino if she thinks there could have been a chance that Aoki
did start out with the FBI, Fujino responds:
Well, I mean, we—from what, you know, is out there on the FBI, it seems like
there were many, many informants in the '60s and anything is possible. But I don't
know. The evidence isn’t there for me to be able to make any informed judgment
on this. If he did start off as one, this is—this is what I would have liked to have
seen before public charges made against somebody of this magnitude, is really
specific evidence that goes beyond the things that have been said. 85
At this point, Gonzalez pulls Rosenfeld back into the conversation to defend his claims
and Rosenfeld reiterates that Fujino is correct in asserting that Aoki was not political at
the time he is believed to have been recruited as an informant, but he does say that, in
regards to Swearingen’s assessment of why Aoki would have been a good informant
“there would be less suspicion that an outsider like that would be working for the
government, which in those days, certainly the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, was largely
all white, almost totally white and male.” 86
84
See previous section
85
Ibid.
86
Ibid.
58
After the break, Diane Fujino gives a brief summary of Aoki’s life, detailing his
early years where he was in the concentration camps and when he was homeschooled and
including his stint with the Army and his growing political involvement through his time
at Merritt College where he met Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. Then another audio clip
was played featuring sound bites of Kathleen Cleaver and Bobby Seale speaking about
Aoki and his contributions to the Panthers, including his giving them guns, and then
Fujino discusses the term snitch-jacketing and how it could be applied in the situation.
The interview ends with Diane Fujino considering the “big if.”
It's unclear if there was—if he was an informant, what kind of damage he did to
undermine the movement is completely unclear. But what he did as a contribution
to the movement is clear. He was a leader of the Black Panther Party. He was one
of the foremost architects of Afro-Asian unity. He was the second chair of the
Asian American Political Alliance, which was one of the most influential youth
groups of the Asian American movement and the group that’s credited with
coining the very term "Asian Americans." He helped to start Asian American
Studies at Berkeley, both as an activist and then, in late ’69, became one of the
first instructors and an early coordinator of Asian American studies at Berkeley.
And he went on to be a counselor and instructor at East Bay community colleges,
where he supported ethnic studies and supported working-class students in their
pursuits of higher education. And he made multiple contributions throughout his
life, up through past his retirement, where he served as inspiration and a political
mentor to many young people.87
The tone of this interview is more accusatory than Fujino’s response article, maybe
because she is talking directly to Rosenfeld about his research and his accusation, though
she is also very civil and professional in the way she confronts the issue. It is important
that she is open to changing her opinion on Aoki’s status as an informant but she is also
very clear that she requires more evidence to support the claims made. There is also a
87
Ibid.
59
strong implication that Aoki’s contributions and legacy are unlikely to be tarnished by the
accusation, whether it prove true or false, and so if the case does bear any connection to
snitch-jacketing, Aoki’s supporters, Fujino included, will not allow the FBI, as
potentially assisted by Rosenfeld, to achieve their purpose.
August 25th – TRGGR Radio interview with Dr. Jeffrey Ogbar
On August 25th, now four days after Rosenfeld’s book was published, TRGGR
Radio host Chris Tinson conducted a phone interview with Jeffrey Ogbar, “professor and
author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity, and current
University Vice Provost for Diversity at the University of Connecticut.” 88 Before
beginning the interview, Chris said “anybody who’s studied American political culture
knows that such allegations come with a heavy weight.”89 When Ogbar is first asked
about his initial reaction to the allegations he responds “shock, just shock and awe. I was
taken aback significantly… [Aoki] was an iconic figure for the period, for Bay Area
radicalism. [He’s] one of the three most famous Asian American radicals of the period.”
90
The rest of the interview is a discussion of ‘radical ethnic nationalism,’ a term Ogbar
coined in his book Black Power to describe intimate coalitions and radical nationalist
organizations, such as the Black Panther Party. He explains how important the Panthers
Chris Tinsen, “TRGGR Radio: The Aoki Controversy” TRGGR Radio, August 25th,
2012, http://trggradio.org/2012/08/25/trggr-radio-the-aoki-controversy/ .
88
89
Ibid.
90
Ibid.
60
were as a model for ethnic nationalism and how many groups modeled themselves on the
Panthers in all different aspects from dress, militancy, leadership hierarchies, platforms,
social work, etc. Ogbar says that he first heard about Aoki when working on his
dissertation on the Nation of Islam and the Black Panther Party and was given access to
the archives at Berkeley where he found information about the TWLF and the AAPA as
well as about Merritt College and Aoki himself. Ogbar laments how he was never
actually able to interview Aoki himself but he did talk to Bobby Seale about him. Ogbar
says that he found the evidence Rosenfeld provided “compelling” and that he found
himself prone to believing the accusation, however he added that the evidence was not
conclusive and so it is impossible to say for certain. Ogbar then goes on to talk about
snitch-jacketing and other informant type situations that were utilized by the FBI during
the COINTELPRO years against subversive organizations. He mentions agent
provocateurs, who would move a group to action that would result in arrest, infiltrators,
who were formal FBI agents who would purposefully join organizations with the goal of
bringing them down, informants, who were paid to join groups or who were already
members of groups who would provide information on the organization either while an
active member or once they had left, and psychological warfare, where the FBI would
create paranoia through instilling the idea that the state was so intrusive that any
colleague could be an agent. Snitch-jacketing was often achieved by planting false
evidence, leaving checks or documents in cars or mailboxes or by arranging for certain
messages to be heard on police radios once other members had been arrested, or by
sending anonymous letters directly targeting a member as an agent. In this respect, Ogbar
61
expresses how much work would have had to go into manipulating and falsifying
documents concerning Aoki now, over 40 years later. He also states that the reluctance
shown by the FBI in releasing the Aoki file to the point of denying its existence is
extremely suspicious as it would not make sense for them to not have a file on a
prominent leader.
Speaking of Aoki’s possible involvement with the FBI, Ogbar believes that if the
information is correct and Aoki was recruited out of high school he would not yet be
mature in his political ideology and so would have seen helping the federal government
as a form of patriotism. He also looks at Aoki’s dislike for the Communist Party, after
they supported the internment of the Japanese during World War II, as a potential reason
for Aoki being eager to help the FBI gain information on them. Ogbar then expresses
how he believes that as Aoki matured politically and evolved personally he may have had
reservations about his career as an informant. He also states that he does not believe that
the push for an Ethnic Studies program should have been viewed as a threat to Hoover,
though Rosenfeld says otherwise, and that of the degree of activities that the state might
find threatening, ethnic studies should not be high on the list. This topic leads into Chris
Tinson asking Ogbar about the reliability of the FBI files and Ogbar talking about the
dangers of having a premeditated view of informants that would transfer into their
acceptance or dismissal from a society. Ogbar believes that Aoki may have become
sympathetic to the causes that he was reporting on and that he truly may have believed in
the ideology and activities of the groups he affiliated with and that he may have only
62
been giving the state surface information that might not have affected anything. Ogbar
recognizes that these situations are not as simple as black and white, that relationships
with the government are often very complicated – as mentioned above, Aoki stated that
“People change. It is complex. Layer upon layer.” Ogbar does not think that Aoki hated
the freedom movement as it related to the organizations he was affiliated with, and he
cites Aoki laying out his Army and his BPP uniforms before he committed suicide.
Jeffrey Ogbar does say that he is leaning towards believing that Aoki was an
informant, mainly for the very reason that it does not make any sense for the FBI to make
up the information and the false evidence at this point in time, so many years later. Ogbar
states that he does believe that these revelations open up room to humanize iconic
figures, like Aoki, who are idolized by those who they influenced and impacted. Much
like Fujino and Fred Ho, Ogbar also believes that Aoki’s legacy will not be affected
negatively if the allegations prove to be true, as his work goes beyond the Panthers and
the Third World Liberation Front to the students he taught and the programs he helped to
initiate. So, what if Aoki was an informant, if he still helped everyday people along the
way?
August 30th – Tamara K. Nopper Article
The next response to come from the accusations came from Tamara K. Nopper, a
writer and lecturer of Asian American studies and sociology at the University of
63
Pennsylvania. While she admits that she “was, to put it mildly, upset by the allegation,”
she is quick to clarify that even though she admires Aoki’s legacy, she refuses to support
an informant regardless of the good he/she did in their lifetime. She asks, “Why were so
many of us so devastated by the claim and apparently blind-sided by the possibility?”91
Nopper also expresses how defendants of Aoki should be willing to accept that he could
have been an informant and that he may not be the perfect icon of Asian America that so
many have built him up to be:
Some have argued that we need to remember that politics is ‘complicated’ and
that even if evidence were to convince us that Aoki was working for the FBI, it
would not tarnish his legacy or symbolic significance… Although Aoki could be a
victim of ‘snitch jacketing 2.0,’ I am concerned with how willing some are to
forgive him if he was an informant. Although an informant may differ from other
FBI infiltrators such as provocateurs, that person would have to be willing to
support and watch the FBI destabilize people and organizations. And I am
bothered that some people are more concerned with preserving their individual
relationships to Aoki—whether personal or symbolic—than to prioritize the
people whose lives he would have negatively affected if he was an informant. 92
Nopper is willing to acknowledge Aoki’s legacy, but does not believe it should be
maintained at the cost of others for the sake of preserving a cultural hero. After briefly
giving a synopsis of Aoki’s biography and explaining how the FBI may have used Aoki
for their benefit, Nopper concludes by saying that she does not want Aoki to have been
Tamara K. Nopper, “Why Couldn’t Aoki Have Been an Informant?” The New Inquiry,
August 30th, 2012, http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/why-couldnt-richard-aoki-have-been-an-informant/
91
92
Ibid.
64
an informant, but that if the evidence becomes irrefutable she will “reject the defense of
informants” and accept the “task of coming to terms with his legacy.” 93
Nopper’s discussion is a lot more realistic than those of Fred Ho, Diane Fujino
and Jeffery Ogbar as she sets aside any personal connections to Aoki and recognizes that
being an informant would tarnish his legacy. After all, if he did provide the FBI with
information there is no way to judge how much they got from him and how much they
were able to use his involvement to infiltrate and break down radical groups in the Bay
Area. Just as Ogbar spoke about humanizing an icon, Tamara K. Nopper faces the idea
that most Aoki supporters are choosing to overlook and brush off allegations to maintain
a positive image of a deceased friend.
September 9th – Gavin Aronsen: Responses from Fellow Activists
Reporting on a meeting that took place in Oakland, Gavin Aronsen, a reporter for
Mother Jones, speaks about the responses of once prominent Black Panther leaders and
other local activists to the accusations put forth by Seth Rosenfeld about Richard Aoki.
Bobby Seale called the charges “an attempt to defame a comrade,” and is quoted as
telling Seth Rosenfeld to “Fuck it,” when he was called for an interview. Scott Johnson,
an Oakland based activist, said that “I think people are skeptical for the right
reasons…They’re trying to rescue as much of his legacy as possible while grappling with
93
Ibid.
65
these new allegations.”94 Interestingly, the article alludes to what Aoki himself might
have thought of the accusations and suggests that he would not have expected anybody to
jump to his defense. This idea is congruent with one of the final FBI documents released
concerning Aoki, where he is cited as saying that he would be unwilling to reveal his past
for fear of becoming alienated from his associates, friends and students, and so the FBI
concluded that he would not be a problem or a risk if he was released from their control.
While the activists mentioned in the article all lean towards Aoki’s innocence, the
author of the article seems to approach the situation with a more open mind, perhaps the
benefit of being more removed from the situation than Aoki’s colleagues who are now
being faced with the possibility of having to reexamine their entire relationship with a
man they considered a dear friend and comrade.
September 16th – Mo Nishida Article
Another friend of Aoki’s who rose to his defense following Rosenfeld’s
accusation was Mo Nishida, who was a fellow activist in Oakland. Nishida begins his
article by saying how close he and Aoki were and by calling Rosenfeld an “opportunistic
jerk” who was practicing yellow journalism and destroying other people’s reputations in
order to sell books. He does say, though, that the attacks should have been expected. “If
Gavin Aronsen, “Activists Question Black Panther FBI Informant Story,” Mother
Jones, September 11th, 2012, http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/09/richard-aoki-fbi-black94
panthers
66
we study the history of the left and those who have stood up to ‘the man,’ we shouldn’t
be [surprised]. The question isn’t why but when. And how, what excuse? ‘The man’ will
try to criminalize you or kill you. Defame you and/or jail you.”95
Nishida’s tone does change, though, at the very end of the article, when he
examines the lessons that should be learnt from COINTELPRO, which “killed over 30
Panthers and jailed scores of others, all by writing slanderous letters, setting up and
railroading many others.” 96 The first two lessons seem to be warnings about accepting
cases of potential snitch-jacketing, while the third hints at an underlying sense of
uneasiness and distrust that should be eliminated in order to foster better relationships
between people as a whole. He says that the first thing to be learned is not to jump to
conclusions; rather, we should make sure we have all the facts before deciding anything.
Then he warns against giving in to paranoia and suspicions and to state your opinions in
an open and frank way. “That’s what ‘they’ want, to chill and scare folks off, to force
people to live on their knees.” 97 His final take away point advises that, “[w]e have to
think of ways to effectively screen folks, without being overly protective and selfrighteous. After all, I believe our goals and the process is to develop ourselves to become
more open, caring, trusting and loving human beings who will fit in and help to develop
Mo Nishida, “My Thoughts on the Unprincipled Attack on Richard Aoki’s Character,”
San Francisco Bay View: National Black Newspaper, September 16th, 2012,
95
http://sfbayview.com/2012/mo-nishida-my-thoughts-on-the-unprincipled-attack-on-richard-aokischaracter/.
96
Ibid
97
Ibid.
67
the new society that is needed right now, in our people-to-people relations and our
people-to-Mother Earth relations.” 98 Noshida’s response to the Aoki allegations was the
most defensive in regards to language choice, with the exception of Bobby Seale, and in
the force of his denial. Unlike the scholars mentioned above, Noshida does not even
consider what it could mean if the accusation turns out to be true, he merely points to
what can be leant from the situation at hand, regardless of the current outcome.
October 3rd – NPR Report
As part of the “All Things Considered” show on National Public Radio, Audie
Cornish and Richard Gonzales break down the accusation against Aoki and reference
clips from interviews with Bobby Seale, Richard Aoki, Seth Rosenfeld, and Diane
Fujino. While this broadcast was mainly a summary of the progression of the allegations
and a look at the general response to the idea of Aoki being an informant, and was not as
insightful or as opinionated as the response articles and interviews discussed above, it
does contain some interesting information in its own right. Following a sound bite of
Bobby Seale, Richard Gonzales said, referring to Oakland in the 1960’s, that “[it] was a
time of high emotion as the Black Panthers armed themselves for community patrols.
That eventually led to gun battles leaving dead police and dead Panthers. A couple of
years later, Seale published a memoir revealing that some of the very first guns the
Panthers got their hands on came from, in his words, a Japanese radical cat. His name
98
Ibid.
68
was Richard Aoki.”99 In this portion of the discussion, Aoki is credited as being a
founding member of the Black Panther Party (for Self Defense), though his main
contribution was providing guns for the first street patrols, and there is no mention of his
reading through the Ten Point Plan or helping to actually train the initial Panthers in
properly using and maintaining the weapons. Aoki’s background is explored through a
brief biography and the sound bite of Rosenfeld provides a look at the contrasting
dichotomy of Aoki’s character as it is divided by his proposed career as an FBI
informant: “On the one hand he was Japanese; on the other hand he was American. On
the one hand he was a gangster; on the other hand he was a brilliant student. On the one
hand he was a militant activist; on the other hand he was working for J. Edgar
Hoover.”100 This statement shows exactly how much being an informant would have torn
apart Aoki’s life and loyalties, and while it appears strange to suppose that the FBI may
have fabricated all the documents in order to tarnish Aoki’s name posthumously, there
are still aspects of the accusation and the evidence used to support it that should be
questioned. It is in this light that a sound clip of Diane Fujino is used to call into question
the validity of Rosenfeld’s sources. Fujino states that Burney Threadgill violated FBI
protocol by naming Aoki as an informant and observes that it is odd that Threadgill so
nonchalantly breached policy by pointing out Aoki’s name to Rosenfeld without any
provocation, as Rosenfeld mentions multiple times that he did not even know who Aoki
was until Threadgill brought him to his attention. This portion of “All Things
99
Ibid.
100
Ibid.
69
Considered” helped to shed some further light on both Rosenfeld’s and Fujino’s view of
Aoki as an informant and assist in the examination of the documents cited as evidence
against Aoki, though it certainly still leaves room for questions.
December 5th – Momo Chang Response Article
The most recent addition to the growing discussion of Aoki’s potential status as
an FBI agent was written by Momo Chang. The article explores Aoki’s biography, the
accusatory charges and the responses to the allegations. An interesting turning point
contained in this response comes when Chang states, “some of Aoki's closest friends and
allies have come to the conclusion that Aoki was indeed informing for the FBI and joined
Communist, socialist, and anti-war groups at the behest of the FBI — but later had a
change of heart after becoming heavily involved with and influenced by members of
radical militant groups in the mid- and late-Sixties.”101 While the FBI may not have
released any further information or any more supporting files and documents, many of
the people who quickly stood up to defend Aoki’s legacy have begun to come to terms
with the idea that their hero may, at some point in his life, have provided information to
the FBI about the organizations and groups he was affiliated with. Chang notes that while
Aoki may have been giving information, he most likely would not have been aware of
what the FBI was doing with the information and it is unlikely that he would have even
Momo Chang, “Ricard Aoki: Informant Turned Radical?,” East Bay Express,
December 5th, 2012, http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/richard-aoki-informant-turnedradical/Content?oid=3405947&showFullText=true .
101
70
heard of COINTELPRO or any of the actual attempts to suppress and disassemble the
groups he was informing on. Mike Cheng, one of the producers of a documentary on
Aoki’s life, suggests that the omission of details was more than likely double-sided as
there is no record of Aoki telling the Bureau that he armed the Panthers and it makes little
sense for the FBI to have instructed an agent to help form a black nationalist group if they
would later want to see it destroyed. At the same time, Chang talks about how it is
important to distinguish between informant and other types of agents, i.e. agent
provocateurs and infiltrators, as Aoki was only ever listed as being an informant and so
would not have been given any directions that would have led to assisting the Bureau in
ruining the organizations.
Chang also makes sure that Aoki’s contributions to society, whether instructed
and provoked by the FBI or entirely personally driven, are acknowledged along with the
great lengths people took to defend him when the news first broke. “The reaction to the
first report and the length to which people went to discredit Seth Rosenfeld showed how
deeply embedded that distrust is in communities of color of mainstream journalists and of
white journalists who are trying to shape or form the story of people who lived through
this time.”102 Apart from Mo Nishida’s response, this instance is the first time that race is
brought up as a factor in Rosenfeld’s accusation. Yes, Rosenfeld respectfully
acknowledges that Aoki is a Japanese American, but it is not until this article, about four
months after the initial accusation was published, that someone speculates that Rosenfeld
102
Ibid.
71
may have selected Aoki for reasons other than his affiliation with various prominent Civil
Rights groups targeted by Hoover during the COINTELPRO years. Yellow journalism
has now joined snitch-jacketing as a rebuttal to Rosenfeld’s claims. However, amid the
critical assessment of Rosenfeld’s actions and allegations many activists and supporters
of Aoki are starting to consider that he may have also been working for the government
systems that he claimed to be working against.
72
Conclusions?
When Rosenfeld’s accusation became public, an overwhelming number of people
--scholars, friends, and followers of Aoki--rose to his defense, proclaiming the
implausibility of the allegations. Yet, if he had been an informant he would not have told
anyone about it for fear of being discovered and having his cover blown. If he lost the
trust of the people he was informing on, he would have nothing to report. Unfortunately,
both Aoki and the man who self-identified as his FBI handler, the man who Aoki would
report to while in the field, Burney Threadgill, are deceased and so can provide no
commentary on the information or accusation beyond what they had already asserted
during their lives. In interviews with Rosenfeld, Threadgill identified Aoki as an
informant, claiming that he had developed him as an agent. In similar interviews, Richard
Aoki denied knowing Threadgill and stated that he was not, nor was he ever, an agent of
the FBI or a paid informant for the Bureau. But, again, why would he admit to it? It
would discredit his contributions to the various organizations and groups he participated
in and would invalidate the friendship and relationships he had with those he worked
alongside. All his motivations would be questioned, both within the time he supposedly
was an agent and even in the periods before and after. Ultimately, his whole life would be
written off as a lie. His impact on and position as a role model for both Asian and African
Americans would be undone and he would be labeled a snitch, a traitor, a liar by society
and those who had believed in him. All the events and ideas he provided to the parties
and groups he worked with would be reevaluated for hidden incentives and any FBI
interference directed against people he knew would be tainted by the possibility that he
73
had enabled them to happen. While informants may help to bring down societal evils,
destructive plots, threats to national security and groups which wish harm on the United
States, their betrayal still hurts no matter the benefits of their providing information and
they are never viewed favorably by society for “tattling,” something children are
conditioned against from a young age.
The debate and discussion over whether Seth Rosenfeld’s claims of Richard Aoki
being an informant for the FBI between 1961 and 1977 are in fact accurate is new and
controversial. Due to the sensitive and recent nature of this accusation, the purpose of this
thesis was not to take a side, but rather to examine the history of the FBI, of
COINTELPRO, of snitch culture, and of Richard Aoki himself. This thesis sought to lay
out the facts rather than defend one argument against the other and to track the
progression of the reactions to allegations over time. I hope that by providing this general
background to the topic and the associated organizations and programs, my work has
made it easier to understand where the two sides, those for and those against Aoki’s
possible role as an informant, are coming from and what the implications of the
accusation will be regardless of whether it is proven that Aoki was or was not an FBI
agent or operative. No one can know what Aoki was thinking when/if he signed up to be
an informant following the supposed phone conversation he had with a friend whose
parents were involved in the Communist Party. It cannot be determined whether or not he
viewed being an informant as a patriotic act, an act of revenge or if he was forced into it,
but, as many of his supporters stated, Aoki did a lot to help the community and to better
74
society, especially in regard to educating children and ensuring that they were healthy
and hopefully off the streets, and so his contributions should not be tarnished by the
accusation. However, as expressed by Tamara K. Nopper and supported by John
Malinger, once a person has been accused of being an informant they do lose some of
their validity and their genuineness – this is why snitch-jacketing was/is such an effective
tool – and their motivations are suddenly scrutinized for a small detail that could help
shed light on the truth. Burney Threadgill violated FBI protocol when he told Seth
Rosenfeld that he had developed Richard Aoki as an informant, but now the only way
that the truth will be exposed will be for another leak to take place.
75
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