October 3, 2008

Nebraska Supreme Court hears voice of policeman's killer that J. Edgar Hoover kept from jury in COINTELPRO case

Nebraska Supreme Court Hears Voice of Policeman's Killer that
J. Edgar Hoover Kept from Jury in COINTELPRO Case

A hush filled the packed chambers of the Nebraska Supreme Court as attorney Robert Bartle played a chilling 50-second tape recording of the emergency call that lured Omaha police officer Larry Minard to his 1970 ambush-bombing death. A man's deep gritty voice could be heard making a report about a woman screaming at a vacant house.

The Omaha World-Herald described the killer's voice as ‘deep and drawling.' Attorney Bartle told the justices, ‘That isn't the voice of a 15-year old. That is not the voice of Duane Peak.'

Duane Peak was a teenager who confessed to planting the bomb and making the deadly phone call. Peak also implicated Black Panther leaders Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa (formerly David Rice) in exchange for his own lenient treatment and became the state's murderous star witness against the two Panthers. However, if Peak did not make the call as he claimed, the case against Poindexter and Langa unravels, leaving an unidentified killer on the loose.

The scratchy tape, never heard by the jury that convicted the Panther leaders, has a long, troubling history and was kept under wraps by order of J. Edgar Hoover, then-director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Hoover had declared a secret war against the Black Panther Party and other domestic political groups code-named Operation COINTELPRO. The ‘no holds barred' tactics of COINTELPRO directed at the Panthers had a lethal ferocity with false arrests and convictions as one of the techniques. Hoover's agents had already targeted Poindexter and Langa when the August bombing claimed Minard's life.

The FBI arrived at the crime scene soon after the blast and helped direct the investigation. The Omaha Special-Agent-in-Charge worked directly with Asst. Chief of Police Glen W. Gates, who led the murder investigation. While uniformed officers began a massive sweep of Omaha's Near-Northside neighborhood, arresting dozens of people, and technicians sifted through blast debris looking for clues, Gates met with the FBI and agreed to send the tape recording of the killer's voice to the FBI crime laboratory in Washington, D.C. to identify the caller.

The Omaha World-Herald headline told the public ‘Voiceprint in Bombing to FBI Lab'. A police spokesman told the paper the tape would be a ‘good investigative tool'. But the tape was sent to the FBI lab with unusual instructions NOT to issue a formal report and instead orally inform the Omaha FBI office of the results of analysis. The COINTELPRO hidden agenda was not to catch the actual killers of Minard but instead make a case against Poindexter and Langa.

When Ivan Willard Conrad, director of the crime lab, got the memo requesting a secret report on the tape, he spoke with Hoover by phone two days after the bombing. Before Minard's body was buried, Hoover gave the command to withhold an official report, thus limiting the search for the policeman's killer. Conrad scrawled on his copy of the COINTELPRO memo, ‘Dir advised telephonically & said OK to do' followed by his initials and date.

Conrad followed Hoover's orders and issued no formal findings on the identity of the unknown caller. However, the Omaha Special-Agent-in-Charge sent another COINTELPRO memo to Hoover two months later in October. ‘Assistant COP GLENN GATES, Omaha PD, advised that he feels any use of this call might be prejudicial to the police murder trial against two accomplices of PEAK and, therefore, has advised that he wishes no use of this tape until after the murder trials of PEAK and the two accomplices have been completed.'

The hearing was in the austere chambers of the state high court located in the Nebraska Capitol and was filled with supporters of Poindexter and Langa, many wearing T-shirts identifying the ‘Omaha Two' as political prisoners. Questions from the bench focused on the custody of the tape and who was to blame for withholding the recording from the jury.

Assistant Attorney General James Smith argued everyone knew there was a tape and failure of the defense attorneys to introduce the tape at trial was a tactical decision by lawyers for the two Panthers. Bartle's argument is that the prosecution should have provided the tape to defense attorneys as a part of discovery. Regardless of who was at fault for the jury not getting to hear the killer's voice Bartle said, ‘The whole point to Poindexter is that he was still deprived of the use of the tape.'

Smith countered that Frank Morrison, a former-Nebraska governor and Poindexter's court-appointed lawyer, made a tactical decision and Poindexter had to live with it. However, not long before his death Morrison gave a deposition in 2003 about his role in the case and he admitted making mistakes that led to an unfair trial. Morrison's strongest statement about the matter came earlier in 1997 in the form of a public letter.

‘As a citizen and former prosecutor, and Governor of this state, I abhor, detest and condemn the cowardly, cruel, and unjustified murder of officer Minard. My heart aches for his family. The guilty parties should pay the penalty. The self-confessed murderer was turned loose after a slap on the wrist.'

‘I now believe and always have believed that the true role of law enforcement is truth. Real justice can only be built on truth. I hope the Congress and other policy makers will reestablish this policy. I feel both I and the system failed Ed Poindexter.'

In 2006, the tape was subjected to modern voice analysis and vocal expert Tom Owen determined that Peak did not make the emergency call. In 2007, Owen gave testimony in Douglas County District Court that included a detailed phrase-by-phrase courtroom analysis of the fatal call.

No date for a decision by the Nebraska Supreme Court has been set. Poindexter and Langa remain imprisoned at the maximum-security Nebraska State Penitentiary. Duane Peak, the confessed bomber, was freed after 33 months of juvenile detention and lives in the state of Washington a free man. The unknown caller whose deep voice opened the court hearing has never been identified and has not been brought to justice. Larry Minard, the father of five young children, was buried on what would have been his thirtieth birthday.

Michael Richardson is a freelance writer based in Boston. Richardson writes about politics, law, nutrition, ethics, and music. Richardson is also a political consultant.

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/COINTELPRO-prosecution-of--by-Michael-Richardson-080630-589.html

June 30, 2008

COINTELPRO prosecution of Black Panthers
haunts Nebraska justice system while policeman's killers go free

By Michael Richardson

On August 17, 1970, an anonymous caller to the Omaha, Nebraska police emergency hotline reported a woman screaming at a vacant house. Eight police officers responded only to find a booby-trapped suitcase instead of a crime victim. Officer Larry Minard, the father of five young children, was killed instantly when the suitcase bomb exploded in his face. The other seven police officers were all injured in the blast. Minard was buried three days later on what would have been his thirtieth birthday.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation immediately responded to assist the Omaha Police to track down the killers. However, what wasn't known at the time was a secret directive from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to "disrupt" the Black Panther Party by any means possible called Operation COINTELPRO.  The joint investigation, with a tainted agenda under the COINTELPRO mandate, targeted Omaha's Black Panther chapter, called the National Committee to Combat Fascism, instead of a real search for Minard's killers.

William Sullivan, Assistant Director of the FBI under Hoover, was the point person and chief architect of the covert COINTELPRO operation. Sullivan served as Hoover's screener and selected Hoover's daily reading list out of the thousands of COINTELPRO memoranda and field communications that flowed into FBI headquarters each year. Sullivan described COINTELPRO to a Congressional Committee on Nov. 1, 1975, as an operation where, "No holds were barred."

Sullivan's "no holds barred" policy was in effect when a decision was made and jointly implemented by Omaha Police and the FBI Special Agent-in-Charge to let the unidentified caller who had lured Larry Minard to his death go free rather than endanger a plan to convict two Panther leaders, Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa (then known as David Rice). The two leaders had been COINTELPRO targets for two years before the bombing.

The story lay hidden for years behind a secrecy stamp at FBI headquarters in a COINTELPRO file and buried in little-known and long-forgotten testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Internal Security.  Three days of deception in October 1970 that led to Minard's killer's going free are documented in records now available to the public.

Within days after the bombing, a 15 year-old dropout, Duane Peak, was identified as the bomber. Peak named a former Panther, Raleigh House, as the supplier of the dynamite and admitted to making the fatal call that lured Minard to his death. Police stretched out the interrogation for days as Peak gave a half-dozen different versions of the crime. Finally, Peak told the investigators what they wanted to hear, that NCCF leaders Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa helped him build and store the bomb.

But there were problems with the official version of the case. House, the supplier of the dynamite, was never formally charged or prosecuted for his role in the crime, raising suspicion that he was a COINTELPRO informant. House spent one night in jail and was released on his own signature without posting  any bond. The whereabouts of Raleigh House today are unknown.

Further, the voice of the deadly caller was that of a middle-aged man, not that of a 15-year-old, leaving an unidentified accomplice on the loose. Poindexter and Langa, both in their 20's, were never suspected or accused of making the call. Peak's older accomplice was still on the loose because Peak, apparently to protect the older male caller, continued to maintain he made the fatal phone call.

Shortly after the bombing, Omaha detectives rushed a tape of the emergency call to FBI headquarters for vocal analysis. Police also made plans with the FBI to analyze other voice samples in an effort to identify the unknown caller.

At Peak's preliminary hearing in September he persisted in his claim that he made the emergency call and that House supplied the dynamite. However, if the voice on the tape was not that of Peak, the case against Poindexter and Langa, built upon the claims of Peak, would unravel. Assistant Chief of Police Glenn Gates conferred with his COINTELPRO liaison, the Special Agent-in-Charge of the Omaha FBI office. This led to deceit that would seal the fate of Poindexter and Langa and let the deadly caller walk away from the murder.

October 12, 1970, the first day of deceit, would bring William Sullivan's first public admission that he had knowledge of the Omaha case in a rare public speech to a United Press International conference about the Black Panthers, where he falsely denied FBI involvement in a "conspiracy" against the Panthers. About Minard's death, Sullivan would say to the gathered reporters and correspondents, "On August 12, 1970 [sic] an Omaha, Nebraska police officer was literally blasted to death by an explosive device placed in a suitcase in an abandoned residence. The officer had been summoned by an anonymous telephone complaint that a woman was being beated [sic] there. An individual with Panther associations has been charged with this crime."

Sullivan would go on to describe a variety of violent acts for which he blamed the Black Panthers, including the deaths of rival group members in California that later would be discovered as COINTELPRO initiated shootings. Dismissing the growing body of evidence that there was some sort of a coordinated national effort against the Black Panthers that used illegal tactics Sullivan complained, "Panther cries of repression at the hands of a government "conspiracy" receive the sympathy not only of adherents to totalitarian ideologies, but also of those willing to close their eyes to even the violent nature of hoodlum "revolutionary" acts."

October 13, 1970, the second day of deceit, would put Omaha Police Captain Murdock Platner in Washington, D.C. in a committee room of the U.S. House Committee on Internal Security investigating the Black Panthers. It would also be the date of a confidential memorandum from the Special Agent-in-Charge of the Omaha FBI office to J. Edgar Hoover stating: "Assistant COP GLENN GATES, Omaha PD, advised that he feels than any uses of this call might be prejudicial to the police murder trial against two accomplices of PEAK and, therefore, has advised that he wishes no use of this tape until after the murder trials of Peak and the two accomplices has been completed."

The COINTELPRO memo continued, "[N]o further efforts are being made at this time to secure additional tape recordings of the original telephone call." No more recordings, no more voice analysis, and no more search for the identity of the anonymous murderous caller. 

In May 2007, voice analysis expert witness Tom Owen testified about the sophisticated tests he performed on a recording of the emergency call in a bid by Poindexter for a new trial. Owen testified before Douglas County District Court Judge Russell Bowie that to a "high degree" of probability the voice was not that of Peak.

October 14, 1970, the third day of deceit, would again find Captain Platner in a Congressional committee room but this time under oath and testifying, falsely, about the source of the dynamite that killed his fellow officer. Despite Peak's repeated assertions that Raleigh House, the man with the get-out-of-jail-free card, supplied him with the dynamite and testimony against House several weeks earlier at his preliminary hearing, Platner boldly made a sworn false statement to the committee about the explosives to name Mondo we Langa instead of House.

"Duane Peak, a16-year-old boy who was arrested, testified in a preliminary hearing. It is from this preliminary hearing you are bound over to the district court to stand trial. In the preliminary hearing he testified that David Rice [Mondo we Langa] brought a suitcase filled with dynamite to his house or to somebody's house, I'm not sure just which place; that they removed all the dynamite from the suitcase except three sticks, made the bomb, the triggering device, and so on, and put it together; and then packed the suitcase with newspapers and that he left with this suitcase."

But Platner was not the only member of the Omaha Police Department who would give false sworn testimony in the case. The questioning of the killer's family and Delia Peak, simultaneous with the police search of Langa's house, led to Lieutenant James Perry's false testimony in court to justify the search.  U.S. District Judge Warren Urbom best tells the story of Lt. Perry's false sworn statements.

"Lt. Perry's testimony that Delia Peak told him that Duane Peak, Edward Poindexter and David Rice were constant companions is in no way corroborated by the remainder of the record before me. The police report of her interview reveals nothing about Duane Peak's being a constant companion of David Rice's, and the rights advisory form she signed indicates that only Sgt. R. Alsager and Richard Curd were present for her interview. Moreover, her interview did not begin until the very hour police first approached David Rice's house and was not completed until after the decision has been made to enter his house. The police report of her interview also reveals that she had seen Duane Peak at about 5 p.m. the night before. Thus, it simply is not so that Duane Peak's family had not seen him in the two days before they had entered the petitioner's house and is persuasive that Delia Peak's family did not make a contrary statement. Finally, there is no indication in the police reports of interviews with Duane Peak's family prior to the entry of Rice's house that they were concerned that he might have been eliminated. On the basis of the entire record before this court and having heard and seen Lt. Perry testify, it is impossible for me to credit his testimony in the respects mentioned."

Sergeant Jack Swanson testified at the murder trial that he went down to the basement and found the dynamite. Sergeant Robert Pheffer backed up Swanson, saying he first saw the dynamite when Swanson carried it upstairs. Pheffer testified he never went down in the basement.

At an Omaha court hearing in May 2007 in Poindexter's bid for a new trial, Pheffer testified that his trial testimony was not correct and that he, not Swanson, found the dynamite. The dynamite was never seen in the basement by anyone else and only first appears in an evidence photo pictured in the trunk of a police squad car. Robert Bartle, Poindexter's attorney, describes the contradictory testimony in an appeal brief to the Nebraska Supreme Court where the case is now pending.

"At Poindexter's trial, Sgt. Swanson testified that he found dynamite in Rice's basement at 2816 Parker and that Sgt. Pheffer was also in the basement when Swanson found it. Contrary to Swanson's trial testimony, Pfeffer testified at trial that he (Pheffer) never went down into Rice's basement and that he (Pheffer) first saw the dynamite found by Swanson when Swanson carried it up from Rice's basement. At Poindexter's post-conviction hearing on May 30, 2007, Pheffer's testimony about finding the dynamite in Rice's basement was significantly different from his sworn trial testimony 36 years earlier. On May 30, 2007, Pheffer testified that he was the one who found the dynamite in Rice's basement at 2816 Parker on August 22, 1970. Pheffer claimed that Swanson was right behind him and that when Pheffer saw the dynamite, he became scared and told Swanson that they needed to 'get the heck out of here.' When confronted with the discrepancy between Pheffer's sworn trial testimony in 1971 and his recent testimony of actually being the officer who found the dynamite, Pheffer swore that this trial testimony in 1971 was not correct, that 'the court reporter, somebody got it wrong.'"

The unknown man who made the fatal call that lured Larry Minard to his untimely and tragic death was dropped from the case following the three days of deceit in October 1970 because his existence interfered with the story told by killer Duane Peak and further investigation would only undermine the state's case against Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa, the COINTELPRO targets. Raleigh House, the supplier of the dynamite, did one night in jail before being released on his own recognizance. Peak, the confessed bomber, served 33 months of juvenile detention and was released.

Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa are serving life sentences at the maximum security Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln. Both men deny any involvement in Larry Minard's murder. The Nebraska Supreme Court is reviewing Poindexter's request for a new trial. No date has been set for a decision sometime this fall.

This article is featured in the third issue of Abu-Jamal News (to be released July 4th) published by the media-activist group Journalists for Mumia Abu-Jamal whose website is Abu-Jamal-News.com   Permission granted to reprint.

Author's Bio: Michael Richardson is a freelance writer based in Boston. Richardson writes about politics, election law, human nutrition, ethics, and music. Richardson is also a political consultant on ballot access.

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