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.