As Rolling Stone reports, the FBI surveilled singer Aretha Franklin from 1967 all the way to 2007. The 40-year campaign prompted Robert Spencer to wonder, “why was the FBI wasting valuable resources tracking someone who was quite obviously not a criminal?”
The FBI tried to link Franklin with the Black Liberation Army (BLA) and searched her Atlantic Records contract in an attempt to link her with the Black Panther Party. In light of the revelations, people have a right to wonder how the FBI performed against actual criminals and “black extremist” groups. As the record shows, these are often the same people.
The FBI failed to stop Joanne Chesimard of the Black Liberation Army from robbing banks, murdering police officers, and escaping to Cuba. Chesimard is now known as Assata Shakur, the icon of Black Lives Matter (BLM). As David Horowitz (Radical Son) learned, the Black Panthers were also engaged in the murder business.
“I agreed to work with the Panthers,” Horowitz explains. “I raised over $100,000 and created the Oakland Community Learning Center.” The school provided free meals for children, and served as “the party’s showpiece and base of operations throughout the seventies.” As Horowitz later discovered, the school was “a front for a criminal gang attempting to control the illegal traffic of the East Oakland ghetto.”
On January 17, 1975, Van Patter was found in San Francisco Bay, dead from a blow to the head. At that time Huey Newton had fled to Cuba and the party leader was Elaine Brown, who denied knowing anything about Van Patter’s disappearance and death. Amara Baltar, Van Patter’s daughter, believes her mother was murdered to be silenced.
“I believe my mother was killed by the Black Panther Party,” Baltar told the East Bay Times. The truth is, I believe they killed her. I know they killed her. The truth is the most important thing. That is what heals you. There’s that old saying, ‘The truth will set you free’ — that’s the truth for sure.”
In her 1993 book, A Taste of Power, Brown (above left, next to Huey Newton) wrote that Van Patter was becoming too nosy about Panther business and wasn’t a benefit to the party. “While it was true that I had come to dislike Betty Van Patter,” Brown explained, “I had fired her, not killed her.” Local police, fearful of Panther reprisals, kept their distance. So did the FBI, which once regarded the Panthers as a major threat to national security.
Elaine Brown continued a career as a “prison activist, writer, and singer,” and in 2008 the former Black Panther sought the Green Party nomination for president. That was one year after the FBI stopped spying on Aretha Franklin. Maybe the bureau was more taken up with innocent singers than murder cases with evidence pointing to the Black Panthers.
During the 1960s, the Panthers were admired by a number of celebrities. For example, actress Jean Seberg (Breathless, Lilith) hosted fundraisers for the group. That caught the attention of FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover, who regarded Seberg as a potential danger.
According to the Washington Post, the bureau tapped Seberg’s telephone, monitored her bank account, and traced her movements. The FBI funneled information on Seberg to the CIA, U.S. embassies, and the Secret Service. The bureau also targeted the actress with a vicious smear campaign.
The FBI charged that Seberg was a “promiscuous” and “sex-perverted white actress” and circulated rumors that she was pregnant by a high-ranking member of the Black Panther Party.
The New York Times cited a letter requesting permission from Hoover to publicize the pregnancy to “cause her embarrassment and serve to cheapen her image with the general public.”
FBI headquarters granted approval, but said “it would be better to wait approximately two additional months until Seberg’s pregnancy would be obvious to everyone.” Seberg “should be neutralized. Her current pregnancy by [name deleted] while still married affords an opportunity for such effort.”
The father of the baby was Romain Gary, Seberg’s second husband. The baby girl, Nina Hart Gary, died three days after birth. In 1970 Newsweek ran an article about Seberg and her baby “by a black activist she met in California.” Seberg and Gary filed a libel suit and won $10,000. According to Gary, Seberg attempted suicide every year on the anniversary of her child’s death.
In September of 1979, the New York Times reported, “Miss Seberg was found last week in Paris wrapped in a blanket and lying in the back seat of her automobile. She died of an overdose of barbiturates and left a suicide note. She was 40 years old.” Romain Gary blamed her downward spiral on the FBI, and he was in the best position to know.
It was said of bank robber John Dillinger, slain by the FBI in 1934, that he was crooked but not twisted. It would be hard to find a government official more twisted than J. Edgar Hoover, advancing a fake story against an actress who had committed no crime. Had Aretha Franklin been aware of the FBI campaign against her, she too might have entered a downward spiral.
After taking over from Hoover, William Webster proclaimed that FBI use of derogatory information was over and criminal conduct would be the basis for all investigations. Then and now, the people have cause to wonder.
The FBI used fake derogatory information against candidate and President Donald Trump, who committed no crime and did not collaborate with Russia. None of the FBI bosses faced a criminal prosecution. The same bureau that failed to stop 9/11, Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon bombing and deadly terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando, now finds a domestic terrorist in anyone less than worshipful of Joe Biden.
As arson, murder and looting spread across the country in 2020, the FBI looked the other way. The FBI now stages heavily armed arrests of pro-life activists and others who pose no threat to the public. This should not be surprising. FBI headquarters still bears the name of J. Edgar Hoover, and the bureau serves as Joe Biden’s private Gestapo and KGB.
Time to have the Black Panthers, BLM, Antifa declared Domestic Terrorists are all those who support and Finance them should all be arrested
And the ensuing riots should be put down using the National Guard and the rioters should be prosecuted. There are plenty of laws that could have been used against BLM and Antifa
It might be different if there were the slightest thread of constitutionality to the existence of the FBI as presently constituted. Teddy Roosevelt wanted an investigative branch in the Department of Justice. Franklin Roosevelt made the FBI into a federal police force, something the Constitution reserves to the states except on the specific federal locations mentioned among the 18 enumerated powers of Congress. It is little wonder that and organization that imagines it has powers nowhere considered by our founders should become a tool of autocrats.
Are there good FBI agents who are serious law enforcement people? Yes, I’m sure they exist. However, none of them can be located on the 7th floor of the J. Edgar Hoover building.
I dont think so. So very few whistle blowers have come forward and none during the very obviously false Russia Russia hoax. They certainly know what we know and more. Much more. Is a pension worth the immorality? I guess so.
The leadership and unprincipled employees have so disgraced the FBI that it must be replaced. It is beyond being reformed.
The FBI is a typical buraucracy that now exists primarily to serve itself.
As such 9/11, Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon bombing, San Bernardino and Orlando attacks serve to increase powers and funding given to the FBI., Why would the FBI want to stop that?
On the other hand, conservtive and tea-party type groups, who want to limit government spending and powers, are a threat to the career of an FBI employee..
So their actions in this regard are perfectly logical and predictable..
The FBI was tipped off to the Tsarnaev brothers TWICE, and did nothing more than ask “Are you guys terrorists?” to which they shrugged and said “Of course not.” And with that, the Bureau of Keystone Cops called it a wrap.
So you have a solid point. (Perhaps if the Tsarnaevs had been accused of attending Tea Party rallies, the FBI would’ve paid more than just scant attention.)
Until recently I’d trusted the FBI (as most fellow Americans also did) as a “clean-as-a-hound’s-tooth” Federal law enforcement agency in the immaculate, heroic mold of “Inspector Erskine” (played by Ephrem Zimbalist, Jr., in the long-running TV series).
But no longer.
And it’s not “just a few at top management.” It’s all of them, including the Agents who “just follow orders” to conduct the armed, threatening, warrant-less (or, rather, with warrants issued by corrupt judges rubber-stamping perjured FBI affidavits, as in “Operation Crossfire Hurricane” and the raid on Mar-A-Lago) midnight raids with orders shouted and guns pointed as they kick down doors in the middle of the night.
The reality of today’s FBI is the opposite of its promoted public image. It’s become our own, domestic, present-day Geheimestaatspolizei.
Until the Bureau is thoroughly cleaned out from top to bottom, with fire hoses, hundreds (or rather thousands) of arrests, and long prison sentences imposed AND SERVED, the “Bureau” will remain the organized crime syndicate, the Racketeering Enterprise, and the lethal threat to honest citizens and to our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and our Republic, that it is now known to have been for decades.
I’m not sure why, exactly, my Comment was instantly blocked for “awaiting moderation.”
There’s no obscenity, profanity, or blaphemy in it; no threats or slander. No “Disinformation,” either.
Does FPM now use a “platform” with “algorithms” that instantly block anything critical of anything that disagrees with the views of a certain Hungarian-born oligarch?
They tend to go through, irregardless of even profanity. (Don’t be too concerned with it. FYI)
Good post. I fully agree.
So what do we do about the other chickenshit organizations like the IRS, CIA, OSHA, NLRB, FEMA, EPA . . .
That horrible Joe Biden willingly allows those who a far more intelligent than him in their insidious and manipulative ways to control the now politically correct corrupted FBI that has been thoroughly influenced and infiltrated by those active in the Red/Green alliance to come down hard on Conservatives.
Biden going so far as to slanderously label them as “extremists” and White supremacists” All the while ignoring and eve supporting the real extremist as those violent and murderous Marxist hooligans of Antifa and BLM.
The Biden regime now uses the FBI as it’s tool to come down hard in persecution of that average American patriot citizen,
For that treasonous treacherous villain, “president” pretender Biden has cause and will continue cause tremendous harm.
Furthermore, as declared before and worth declaring again. Which is that “Joe Biden is an affront to the Presidency of the United States and a disgrace to the US Constitution as well as a catastrophe for America and a disaster for the American people.”
The tragedy might be that America has reached the end of her being a Republic. With the now corrupted FBI with its abuse of its power as observed that it took a sinister part in the insidious set up against the patriots on January 6, 2021 and the later FBI harassment of American Patriots who attended that January 6th rally and the Biden gulag for tyrant Joe’s political prisoners from the day of 1/6/22 and now the FBI raid invasion of residents of Donald Trump, along which many awful other event sines that have occurred since Biden took Office on 1/20/21 those are omens that are overwhelming that United States is come to the very end of her Republic. This is indeed, very tragic and sad.
With the infected and thoroughly infiltrated leftist FBI and considering all the terrible harm Joe Biden has done to the United States is still doing and will continue to do is so very horrendously terrible that the damage might be irreversible. I really hope I’m wrong.
President imposter Joe Biden is leading America to ruin. The terrible harm that Biden is doing to the USA might even be irreversible. As Abraham Lincoln had said, “You can’t unscramble eggs.”
The FBI is no longer the grand all American patriotic law enforcement institution to it once was in the past. Now it’s only been influenced thoroughly infiltrated and corrupted and infected by the politically correct insidious and sinister activists of the Red/Green alliance and now the FBI is their tool as well as the stooge organization acting for Nancy Pelosi and the others of the “power elate” un-American subversives as her.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation was once a good decent all American law and order institution.
Now it’s been terribly corrupt by subversive influence of such Socialists ,Communist pro -Sharia characters as Nancy Pelosi and that overseas villain ,George Soros ,and likewise the FBI ,as seen in that invasion /raid that the FBI is now a tool organization of Kamala Harris with their comrades of the Red/Green alliance.
To corruption of the FBI by the insidious sinister forces .just mentioned above, is so extensive that reform would be able to straighten that now crooked institution.
Therefore, that means that the FBI can no longer be numbered or counted as all American organization engaging in the right actions for the Republic of the United States and the security and safety of the American citizens.
Such horrendous as this is a reflection of the Wisdom found in the Bible. Which reads, “What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be numbered.” Ecclesiastes 1:15. [N.K.J.V.]