The catfight between Trump and the FBI
19th February 2018 · 0 Comments
By A. Peter Bailey
TriceEdneyWire.com Columnist
As a Malcolmite watching the cat fight between Donald Trump and his Trumpettes, especially Sean Hannity and the FBI, I am inspired to say “Smash each other up!”
Neither the Trumpettes — many of whom are the blood and/or ideological descendants of those who fought against equal rights, equal justice and equal opportunities — nor the FBI have ever shown any concern for Black folks. In fact, they have been responsible for any number of hostile, deadly acts against us.
I don’t remember all those people who are now weeping and wailing about the way the FBI is being treated by Trump and his Trumpettes weeping and wailing when J. Edgar Hoover and his boys were consistently and brutally attacking those fighting in the war against white supremacy. The Washington Post has a front page headline, “At FBI, fears of lasting damage” which led me to wonder where are the articles and commentary about the lasting damage done to the civil and human rights movements by the FBI in the 1950s and 1960s. The agency launched a Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) whose expressed mission was to harass and destroy people who they considered a threat to the status quo.
In his book, Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, Anthony Summers noted, “Although King had been in the public eye for some five years, Hoover lumped him together with advocates of violent struggle such as Malcolm X, ‘We wouldn’t have any problem, he had once grunted over lunch with (Lyndon) Johnson in his senatorial days, ‘if we could get those two guys fighting, if we could get them to kill one another off…’”
Those two guys were Brother Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., towards whom Hoover had a special hostility. He feared that they could launch a national movement. According to reporter Tony Capaccio in the August 28, 2013 Washington Post, “The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech inspired the world. It also galvanized the FBI into undertaking one of its biggest surveillance operations in history.”
A 1976 report of the Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities states, “The FBI program to destroy Dr. King as the leader of the Civil Rights Movement entailed efforts to discredit him with churches, universities and the press.”
The FBI files on the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), which was launched by Brother Malcolm in 1964 includes the following, “A recording of the remarks of Malcolm X at this meeting indicates that the aim of the OAAU is to eliminate differences between Negroes so they can work together for human rights, while the initial objective is to ‘internationalize’ the American Civil Rights Movement by taking it to the United Nations.” (italics mine)
On another of the FBI file pages, it is noted that “This report is classified ‘confidential’ since revelation of information furnished by all sources might reveal sources of continuing value and impair their future effectiveness and such impairment might have an adverse effect on the national defense interests of the government.” (italics mine)
The FBI OAAU files also declared, “The goal of the Counter Intelligence Program is “to prevent the coalition of militant Black Nationalist groups…An effective coalition of Black Nationalist groups might be the first step towards real ‘Mau Mau’ in America, the beginning of a true black revolution.”
Another goal was “to prevent the rise of a ‘Messiah’ who could unify and electrify the militant Black Nationalist movement. Malcolm X might have been such a ‘Messiah’.” After the assassination of Brother Malcolm, Hoover reportedly considered Dr. King as a candidate to be the “Messiah” they so feared.
What really caused Hoover to have nightmares was a possible coalition between Brother Malcolm and Dr. King. Their assassinations conveniently did away with his nightmares.
The FBI’s fear of lasting damage to them by attacks from Trump, Sean Hannity and the rest of the Trumpettes is absolutely nothing compared to the damage done to the civil and human rights movements’ war against White supremacy/racism by the FBI. Rather than taking sides in the current catfight, we should hope they scratch each other’s eyes out.
A. Peter Bailey, whose latest book is Witnessing Brother Malcolm X, the Master Teacher, can be reached at apeterb@verizon.net.
This article originally published in the February 19, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
