John Potash - The FBI War on Tupac Shakur: The State Repression of Black Leaders from the Civil Rights Era to the 1990s

THE FBI WAR ON TUPAC SHAKUR

State repression of Black Leaders from the Civil Rights Era to the 1990s

2007, 2021 John Potash

This edition Microcosm Publishing 2021

eBook ISBN 9781648410529

This is Microcosm #538

Edited by Sarah Koch

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Contents

introduction to the second edition

Introduction to the First Edition

Civil Rights, Black Liberation, and the FBI

Malcolm X

Martin Luther King

The Civil Rights movement radicalizes into the

Black Panther Party

u.S. Intelligence Begins Murderous Targeting &

Harassment of Panthers

Murders in LA and the New York 21

The murder of fred hampton and attempt on geronimo Pratt

FBI RAIDS and the manufacture of the East/West

Panther Feud in NYC

The Panther 21 Tragicomic Trial

Labelled Terrorists

CIA-Linked Dealers hook afeni and Newton

Tupac, huey Newton, and the Anniversary Murders

FBI Orchestrates Armed Attacks

LA Riots and Fred Hampton Jr

The Code of Thug Life

Tupacs FBI File, republican attacks, harassment Arrests, & Specious lawsuits

Atlanta police shoot at tupac

cover-ups and links to tupacs nyc Shooting

CIA & Time Warners Grip on the music industry

Penal Coercion and Fbi COINTELPRO tactics set up

east/West Rap Feud

Death Row Signs Tupac

death row Police and suge knight work to end gang truce

Murder in Mob Land

Police Cover-ups and the reignition of the bloods vs Crips war

Threat-timing Tactics and a suspect killed

FBI & ATF Watch again As death row cops are nailed in biggies murder

media fuels The gang war and biggies family fights for justice

death row & feds target afeni, snoop dogg, and dre

FBI and New Yorks national police COINTELPRO targeting of rappers

targets: Spearhead, Rage against the machine, wu tang, dead prez, the coup

NYPD vs hip-hop summit rap moguls russell simmons and sean puffy combs

the nypd vs. AcTivist latino gangs

Epilogue

introduction to the second edition

I started researching this subject regarding the FBI targeting of Tupacs Black Panther family in 1991, and specifically started researching Tupac in December of 1994. I first published initial conclusions in a local magazine in the Spring of 1995, before Tupacs death.

In 1999, I published a more comprehensive article in the award-winning Covert Action Quarterly , started by CIA agent whistleblower Phil Agee. Tupacs political mentors, such as his former Black Panther business manager, Watani Tyehimba, and his national lawyer, Chokwe Lumumba, urged me to turn that article into this book.

Over twelve years of investigation revealed the murderous targeting of not only Tupac Shakur but other prominent members of the Civil Rights Movement and Black musicians. This investigation included primary source information along with my personal interviews with hundreds of eyewitnesses to these events, including the five police-linked attempts to murder Tupac Shakur before his death. Thousands of pages of government documents also support this claim and I have meticulously footnoted these sources for examination.

Some may question the central thesis of this book, based on the information theyve been given from television news programs or other mainstream news sources. For that reason Ive included an in-depth analysis of what I believe to be an American oligarchy of the wealthiest families, the U.S. intelligence agencies they mostly control, and the mainstream media over which they have the most influence. I quote both U.S intelligence and media insiders on these topics.

These far reaching agencies and their unconscionable actions have had an irreversible effect on the Black community and the Civil Rights Movement. When I researched this book, national Black Panther leaders such as national Spokesperson Kathleen Cleaver told me in an interview that after all the attacks, traumas, and friends murdered at the hands of U.S. intelligence groups, she needed counseling. She reached out to several counselors about a group she could attend. They told her that the only applicable group they could recommend was one for Jewish Holocaust survivors.

I would later be able to help Kathleen Cleaver with a court case just after my book came out by sending her copies of my source information. A Black Panther late-comer, Elaine Brown, sued Cleaver and Los Angeles Panther leader Elmer Geronimo Pratt (later Ji-Jaga) for defamation in December of 2007. That year, Kathleen and Pratt were concerned that Brown was working to take away votes from their friend, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who was running for President in the Green Party elections. Cleaver and Pratt accused Brown of working for U.S. intelligence when she entered the Panthers in 1968. A judge dismissed Browns claims of defamation in January of 2009.

Since I published the first edition of this book in 2007, segments of police forces nationwide have increased their brutality against the Black population in particular, often using similar tactics that will be outlined later in this book. While the names of so many victims would take up many pages, some of the more notable unarmed deceased victims include Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, and Philando Castile.

Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists have organized to protest police and other government officials involvement in these deaths. The FBI has now placed them on watch lists as possible Black Identity Extremists, whom they call a greater threat than Al Qaeda and white supremacists. The BLM movement has inspired athletes such as Colin Kaepernick to protest murderous police brutality, and see the National Football League settle with him out of court after they blacklisted him. Lebron James and other athletes had Eric Garners famous last words, I cant breathe repeated eleven times, emblazoned on their protest shirts. It would take five years for the police officer fatally choking Garner to be fired from the police force (though not charged with murder).

These attacks are tragic and must be stopped. Though such events are not the central theme of this book, a number of the activists discussed in this book mention the attacks on their Black communities as fueling their activism. This book has always hoped to put more of a spotlight on such racial and social justice issues, partly through the community activists and musicians working to change them.