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Panther Body Guard FBI Plant

Panther Body Guard FBI Plant image
Parent Issue
Day
22
Month
February
Year
1974
OCR Text

Attorneys for the Black Panther Party in Chicago have released additional information concerning the role played by a paid F.B.l. informer when Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were shot to death in 1969.

Attorneys for Hampton's and Clark's families had revealed last month that the man who acted as Hampton's personal body guard and who was the Chief of Security for the Panthers in the Chicago area was a paid F.B.I. informer. The informer, William O'Neal, has since been given a new identity and transferred to another unnamed city by the U.S. Justice Department.

In a sworn statement released by Hampton's attorney O'Neal has admitted to receiving $100 a week from the F.B.I. during 1969 in return for meeting almost daily with F.B.I. agents.

O'Neal testified that he had been in the apartment where Hampton and Clark were killed by police just hours before the shootout occurred - and that he had revealed to federal officials the number and location of weapons in that apartment.

Ironically, O'Neal stated that one of his prime duties as the Panthers' Chief of Security was to prevent police informers from infiltrating the organization. O'Neal admitted that, while he secretly informed on Panther activities, he also screened potential members of the party -- and that he once even built a home-made electric chair which he threatened to use against other party members if they were ever caught talking to police.

The attorneys for the Clark and Hampton families have filed a $47 million damage suit against the members of the Chicago Police Department and city officials, charging that they conspired to kill Hampton and Clark.

The CHICAGO SUN TIMES reported recently that a special city investigator, appointed to work with the grand jury investigating the Hampton and Clark killings had apparently fabricated evidence in the case. According to the SUN TIMES, investigator John J. Clarke hired two bogus witnesses who testified to the grand jury that the Panthers had fired numerous shots at police during the so-called "Panther-Police Shoot-out" when Hampton and Clark were killed.

The SUN TIMES says it has learned that both of John J. Clarke's eyewitnesses could not have seen and heard what they claimed because they were both in jail at the time of the killings.

Investigator John J. Clarke, incidentally has encountered some problems of his own: he was sentenced to a three-year prison term for tampering with a grand jury investigation.

A federal grand jury which looked into the Hampton and Clark killings concluded that the police fired between 80 and 100 shots while the Panthers fired at most just one shot.

Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark who launched his own investigation of the Chicago killings, says there is evidence to indicate that Hampton may have been drugged, and was asleep, at the time his body was riddled with police bullets.

The Hampton and Clark families allege in their suit that the two men were set up and assassinated by police in a raid coordinated by police informers inside Party.

Edward V. Hanrahan. the Chicago prosecutor who personally directed the early morning raid on the Panther headquarters is currently running for a seat in the United States House of Representatives.