Revolution on Ice

On January 28th, 1971, FBI headquarters reported that one “result of our counterintelligence projects now in operation” was that Newton had recently disciplined several high Panther officials and that he was prepared “to respond violently to any question of his actions or policies.”The memorandum, which was mailed to four field offices, continued:

“The present chaotic situation within the BPP must be exploited . . . . You should each give this matter priority attention and immediately furnish bureau recommendations . . . designed to further aggravate the dissension within BPP leadership and to fan the apparent distrust by Newton of anyone who questions his wishes.”

The clandestine operation intensified. On February 2nd, FBI headquarters instructed 29 field offices to submit new disruptive proposals within eight days to take advantage of “an exceptional opportunity to… possibly neutralize this organization through counter-intelligence.”

A new outpouring of anonymous letters followed. Cleaver received a phony letter from the “New York 21” attacking Newton, and another from a nonexistent member of a New York radical group. Newton’s brother received an anonymous letter revealing an imaginary plot by Cleaver and the New York chapter to assassinate Newton. The FBI reported that both Newton and his brother thought the letter was authentic, and that Newton believed that an informer had infiltrated the highest levels of the party.

The FBI then mailed a letter to one of Cleaver’s associates in Algeria, falsely claiming that the recent death of a Panther was linked to the factionalism within the party. The letter warned that Kathleen Cleaver’s planned trip to the U.S. should be aborted because of the threat of violence.

The bureau sent Cleaver another letter in late February, forging the signature of veteran Panther Elbert “Big Man” Howard:

“I’m disgusted with things here and the fact that you are being ignored . . . . It makes me mad to learn that Huey now has to lie to you . . . . I can’t risk a call as it would mean certain expulsion. You should think a great deal before sending Kathleen. If I could talk to you I could tell you why I don’t think you should.”

The forged letter referred to the contents of a telephone conversation between Newton and Cleaver which had been intercepted by the FBI. The call itself had been prompted by an earlier FBI letter purportedly from Connie Matthews.

The FBI’s capacity to manipulate the growing Newton/Cleaver split was aided by the CIA’s supersecret mail intercept operation, code named htlingual, which monitored communications to and from Cleaver.

The Panther squad planted a damaging story through San Francisco Examiner reporter Ed Montgomery that Newton was living under an assumed name in a $650/month penthouse apartment in Oakland. Newton and the central committee of the Panthers had chosen the apartment for security reasons, and had arranged a financial deal with the owner to cover the rent. But for Newton’s opponents inside the party the story destroyed whatever was left of his myth.

The New York Panthers called a press conference denouncing Newton and demanded that he be placed on trial for misusing party funds.

Then the Newton/Cleaver split, manipulated at every turn by the FBI, reached its climax. In a telephone call to a television talk show on February 26th, 1971, Cleaver criticized Newton’s expulsion of party members and called for the removal of Chief of Staff Hilliard.

Outraged, Newton immediately placed a return call to Algeria. Elaine Brown, who was with Newton at the time, remembers that “Huey had tears in his eyes. He said, ‘Eldridge, I thought we had a party.”‘ For his statements in the TV interview, Cleaver and the entire international section of the party were expelled by Newton.

FBI agent Cohendet says, “We just helped the [Newton/Cleaver] split along . . . . I’m sure they would have split because of the personalities of the men, and [Cleaver’s] fleeing took away all his chance of doing anything. He was yelling out in the desert there. Unless you’re on top of these little flunkies here, they’re not going to listen to you. That’s just the nature of the beast and the people they were working with. ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’

“We absolutely felt Cleaver was a danger,” Cohendet explains. “Matter of fact, the party should be thankful for whatever help they got [from the FBI]. Getting rid of Cleaver was a big thing; he took all those hoodlums with him. And so Huey didn’t have any problems anymore.”

The Panthers themselves say that the Cleaver/Newton split was inevitable — that the ideological breach between the two leaders made a rapprochement impossible.

Cleaver is less certain. “The FBI was very instrumental in the split. They very skillfully fed our egos and our paranoia.”

The militant black movement, which had been building steadily for a decade, now stood at an impasse. The FBI had attained its objective. To insure that Cleaver got the point, the San Francisco office mailed him a copy of The Black Panther announcing his expulsion. And on March 25th the San Francisco Panther squad mailed a bogus letter to Panther European offices which read in part:

The Supreme Servant of the People, Huey P. Newton . . . has ordered the expulsion of the entire Intercommunal Section of the Party at Algiers. You are advised that Eldridge Leroy Cleaver is a murderer and a punk without genitals . . . Leroy’s running dogs in New York have been righteously dealt with. Anyone giving any aid or comfort to Cleaver and his jackanapes will be similarly dealt with no matter where they may be located . . . Immediately report to the Supreme Commander any attempts of these elements to contact you and be guided by the above instructions.

Power to the People
David Hilliard, Chief of Staff
For Huey P. Newton
Supreme Commander

“Read that language in those letters,” says Cohendet. “Would you think that was written by a bunch of white men? When you listen to them every day for a couple of years you get to know their vocabulary . . . . Don’t you think it was a pretty good operation, if you had to give a candid opinion of it?”

The same day of the fake Hilliard letter, FBI headquarters officially declared its cointelpro war against Cleaver and Newton a success. Cohendet summed up the Panther squad’s view of Newton’s expulsion of the party’s “left wing” in a note to headquarters: “A leopard may not change his spots but a Panther might.”