Assassination of Fred Hampton, Black Movement Activist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton

BRIEF SUMMARY:
Fred Hampton (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969) was an African-American activist and deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP). He was killed as he lay in bed in his apartment by a tactical unit of the Cook County, Illinois State's Attorney's Office (SAO), in conjunction with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Hampton's organizing skills, substantial oratorical gifts, and personal charisma allowed him to rise quickly in the Black Panthers. Once he became leader of the Chicago chapter, he organized weekly rallies, worked closely with the BPP's local People's Clinic, taught political education classes every morning at 6am, and launched a project for community supervision of the police. Hampton was also instrumental in the BPP's Free Breakfast Program. When Brown left the Party with Stokely Carmichael in the FBI-fomented SNCC/Panther split, Hampton assumed chairmanship of the Illinois state BPP, automatically making him a national BPP deputy chairman. As the Panther leadership across the country began to be decimated by the impact of the FBI's COINTELPRO, Hampton's prominence in the national hierarchy increased rapidly and dramatically. Eventually, Hampton was in line to be appointed to the Party's Central Committee's Chief of Staff. He would have achieved this position had it not been for his death on the morning of December 4, 1969.

Subsequent investigations have shown that FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover was determined to prevent the formation of a cohesive Black radical movement in the United States. Hoover saw the Panthers, and radical coalitions like that forged by Hampton in Chicago, as a frightening stepping stone toward the creation of just such a revolutionary body that could, in its strength, potentially overthrow the government of the United States.

The Bureau released a batch of racist cartoons in the Panthers' name, aimed at alienating white activists, and launched a disinformation program to forestall the realization of the "Rainbow Coalition." In repeated directives, J. Edgar Hoover demanded that the COINTELPRO personnel "destroy what the [BPP] stands for" and "eradicate its 'serve the people' programs".

The FBI, determined to prevent any enhancement of the effectiveness of BPP leadership, decided to set up an arms raid on Hampton's Chicago apartment. The raid was organized by the office of Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan using officers attached to his office. At 4:00 a.m., the heavily armed police team arrived at the site, (2337 W. Monroe, Chicago, IL) dividing into two teams, eight for the front of the building and six for the rear. At 4:45, they stormed in the apartment.

Automatic gunfire then converged at the head of the bedroom where Hampton slept, unable to wake up as a result of the barbiturates that the FBI infiltrator had slipped into his drink. He was lying on a mattress in the bedroom with his pregnant girlfriend. Two officers found him wounded in the shoulder, and fellow Black Panther Harold Bell reported that he heard the following exchange:

"That's Fred Hampton."
"Is he dead?... Bring him out."
"He's barely alive; he'll make it."

Two shots were heard, which it was later discovered were fired point blank in Hampton's head. According to Deborah Johnson, one officer then said:

"He's good and dead now."

Hampton's body was dragged into the doorway of the bedroom and left in a pool of blood. The officers then directed their gunfire towards the remaining Panthers, who were hiding in another bedroom. They were wounded, then beaten and dragged into the street, where they were arrested on charges of aggravated assault and the attempted murder of the officers.

A federal grand jury determined that the police fired between 82 and 99 shots while most of the occupants lay sleeping. Only one shot was proven to have come from a Panther gun. Mark Clark, sitting in the front room of the apartment with a shotgun in his lap, was on security duty. He was killed instantly after firing off a single round, which was later determined to be a reflexive reaction in his death convulsions after being shot by the raiding team; this was the only shot the Panthers fired.

The federal grand jury did not return any indictment against anyone involved with the planning or execution of the raid. The officers involved in the raid were cleared by a grand jury of any crimes.

James Douglass, in "JFK and the Unspeakable", pp. 203-204, revealed that one of Fred Hampton's murderers- Daniel Groth- had also arrested the designated patsy for the Chicago plot- Thomas Arthur Vallee- on November 2, 1963.

"The two Chicago police officers who arrested Vallee, Daniel Groth and Peter Schurla, were themselves destined for prominent roles in police intelligence activities. In 1975 when a reporter tried unsuccessfully to interview Peter Schurla about Vallee's arrest, Schurla was a high-level intelligence official at Chicago police headquarters. His companion Daniel Groth's career in intelligence had by then become more public and notorious than Schurla's.

At 4:30 A.M. on December 4, 1969, six years after the arrest of Thomas Arthur Vallee, Sergeant Daniel Groth commanded the police team that broke into the apartment of Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. The heavily armed officers shot both men to death. In 1983 the Black Panther survivors of the raid and the families of Hampton and Clark were awarded $1.85 million in a lawsuit against federal, state, and Chicago officials and officers including Daniel Groth. Groth acknowledged under oath that his team of officers had carried out the assault on Fred Hampton and Mark Clark at the specific request of the FBI.

Northeastern Illinois University professor Dan Stern researched Daniel Groth's background. He discovered that Groth had taken several lengthy "training leaves" from the Chicago Police Department to Washington, D.C., where Stern and other researchers believed Groth "underwent specialized counterintelligence training under the auspices of both the FBI and CIA." According to Stern, "Groth never had a normal [Chicago] police assignment, but was deployed all along in a counterinteligence capacity," with an early focus on the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. From his research Stern concluded that "the CIA and the Chicago police were very tight," and that while technically a member of the Chicago police, Daniel Groth probably worked under cover for the CIA. When a journalist confronted Groth and asked him point-blank, "Are you CIA?" Groth just shrugged it off."

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Which leads me to suspect that Thomas Arthur Vallee's arrest by Daniel Groth came as a result of a tip from the CIA- which had groomed Vallee to be a "disturbed loner".

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p. 213

"The time at which Thomas Arthur Vallee was arrested, 9:10 A.M. Central Time (10:10 A.M. Eastern Time), by Chicago police intelligence officers Daniel Groth and Peter Schurla, is significant. Whereas the [White House] press announcement of the Chicago trip's cancellation was made at 10:15 A.M. Eastern (9:15 A.M. Central), even a quick decision to cancel the trip would have been nade at least ten minutes before the public announcement- with government authorities therefore being aware of the trip's cancellation by about 10:00 A.M. Eastern (9:00 A.M. Central).

Why did the police officers who had been watching for hours overnight a potential presidential assassin wait until after the president had cancelled his trip before they arrested their suspect?"

Thanks Richard. Another book I have to read...

Living in Chicago, I knew that Hampton was murdered at the time, the timing of murder, an action to arrest Hampton taking part at that time of the morning could only be to force a shoot out and the killing of the Blacl Party party leader. Cook County States Attorney Edward Handrahan was a major player in the invasion & killing of Hampton. Mr. Handrahas was defeated by Republican Bernard Carey in 1972, the black vote went heavily for Carey. In 1970 Mr. Carey was defeated by 10,000 votes bfor Cook County Sheriff by Richard Elrod, whose late father Arthur Elrod was a close friend of Jack Rubys friend Lenny Patrick. Patrick was a member of the Chicago mob. Patrick & Ruby exchanged many phone calls in the weeks prior to JFK murder. Richard Elrod served 4 term, 16 years as Cook County Sheriff, he later became a judge here.