The FBI's War on the Black Panthers

And how it led us to probe the Betty Van Patter killing

In the mid-1970s, when we were reporters at Rolling Stone, Lowell Bergman, and I decided to look in depth into the FBI’s COINTELPRO campaign to disrupt activist organizations. We focused on the Black Panther Party.

In a 1967 memorandum that we quoted in our article, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, had stated that the program’s intent was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalists.” 

By September 1968, the Panthers had emerged as the leaders of the black power movement in the U.S. A key FBI memo solicited suggestions from its field agents for new ways to “create factionalism between not only the national leaders but also local leaders, steps to neutralize all organizational efforts of the (Panthers), as well as create suspicion amongst the leaders as to each other’s sources of finances, suspicion concerning their respective spouses and suspicion as to who may be cooperating with law enforcement.”

In another memo, in July 1969, Hoover declared that the Panthers were “without question the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.”

Starting late in 1968, there were numerous police raids on Panther offices around the country; sometimes including federal law enforcement officials. Several Panther leaders were killed or wounded, many others were sent to prison, or fled into exile.

In the course of gathering documents under the Freedom of Information Act and interviewing Panthers and ex-Panthers, including Eldridge Cleaver and Elaine Brown, Bergman and I were able to document hundreds of actions taken by FBI agents in pursuit of Hoover’s stated goals. 

Many of these involved “disinformation,” sending letters purportedly from Cleaver to Huey Newton, for example, or vice versa, promoting the growing paranoia and distrust that already was driving the two leaders toward an eventual split.

I interviewed Elaine Brown during this period. She was the head of the party, as Newton was still in Cuba. She was smart, articulate and projected a powerful presence. 

“The government didn’t succeed in destroying us,” she told me. “We survived…These motherfuckers intended to kill every one of us. But it’s too late now. Our ideas are out there – they cannot be erased from the minds of the people.”

After months of work, Bergman and I produced a story that presented an exhaustive catalogue of the federal government’s war against the Panthers. We also noted that the FBI’s relentless attempts to disrupt the organization “encouraged local police departments to harass the group” as well.

But the process of reviewing a huge number of law enforcement files had also exposed to us evidence suggesting there was a sinister side to the Panthers, including internecine violence that had nothing to do with government provocation but more closely resembled ruthless gang activity.

In 1977, once we had founded the Center for Investigative Reporting, we received numerous complaints from people in the community that the Panthers were “out of control;” and that Newton in particular, who by then was back in town, was wreaking havoc inside the inner-city neighborhoods where he was allegedly committing random violent assaults, often fueled by consuming alcohol and cocaine at the same time.

We decided that CIR should look into these allegations, and the result in 1978 was a long investigative article called “The Party’s Over,” by a courageous Berkeley journalist, Kate Coleman, and a veteran police reporter, Paul Avery, published in New Times magazine. 

(Avery was later portrayed by Robert Downey Jr. in the 2007 Hollywood movie “Zodiac” for his work on the unsolved case of a notorious serial killer in the San Francisco Bay Area.)

“The Party’s Over” documented dozens of violent incidents caused by Newton and his “security squad” against members of the party who had provoked Newton’s wrath, as well as non-party members, including a prostitute he killed, a tailor he pistol-whipped to the verge of death, and other victims of his rage.

CIR was heavily criticized by the left for doing this story, but I’d long since grown used to such reactions from the PC crowd.  We were journalists, not political partisans, so naturally both political extremes hated us for exposing their dirty secrets. It came with the territory.

As they were pursuing their investigation, Coleman and Avery had come upon the unsolved murder of Betty Van Patter, and thanks to Avery’s connections, gained access to the Berkeley Police Department files on the case.

Quoting it here:

“11:30 a.m. January 17th, 1975: Sgt. R. Scofield, piloting San Mateo County Sheriff’s Helicopter 2-H-10, was on patrol above San Francisco Bay when he spotted a body floating about a mile south of the San Mateo Hayward Bridge, between markers 670 and 680.

“He immediately put out distress calls to the U.S. Coast Guard, the Foster City Police Department, and the San Mateo Coroner’s Office. Within 15 minutes, the Coast Guard was on the scene, recovered the body, and took it to Old Warder Pier, on the corner of East Hillsdale Avenue and Teal Street, where representatives of the police department and coroner’s office quickly gathered.

“The medical examiner observed that the body was that of an adult female in a state of “moderate to severe post-mortem decomposition.”

“The remains were transported to Chope Hospital for an examination and identification. The body was placed in container #7 and sealed at 2:05 p.m. An autopsy was scheduled for 10 a.m. the following morning.”

It took three days for the coroner to determine an identity through the use of dental charts, but there was little doubt about the cause of death. The victim had been murdered -- killed by a massive blow to the head -- a “fractured calvarium” is noted in the autopsy report.

There was no water in the woman’s lungs, which means she was dead before her body got into the bay. The coroner estimated she was in the water for around three weeks, drifting on the currents, back and forth along the tide lines. 

She was identified as Betty Van Patter.

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