Activist Richard Aoki named as informant

[jdhoch]

The man who gave the Black Panther Party some of its first firearms and weapons training - which preceded fatal shootouts with Oakland police in the turbulent 1960s - was an undercover FBI informer, according to a former bureau agent and an FBI report.

One of the Bay Area's most prominent radical activists of the era, Richard Masato Aoki was known as a fierce militant who touted his street-fighting abilities. He was a member of several radical groups before joining and arming the Panthers, whose members received international notoriety for brandishing weapons during patrols of the Oakland police and a protest at the state Capitol.

Aoki went on to work for 25 years as a teacher, counselor and administrator at the Peralta Community College District, and after his suicide in 2009, he was revered as a fearless radical.

But unbeknownst to his fellow activists, Aoki had served as an FBI intelligence informant, covertly filing reports on a wide range of Bay Area political groups, according to the bureau agent who recruited him.

That agent, Burney Threadgill Jr., recalled that he approached Aoki in the late 1950s, about the time Aoki was graduating from Berkeley High School. He asked Aoki if he would join left-wing groups and report to the FBI.

"He was my informant. I developed him," Threadgill said in an interview. "He was one of the best sources we had."

The former agent said he asked Aoki how he felt about the Soviet Union, and the young man replied that he had no interest in communism.

"I said, 'Well, why don't you just go to some of the meetings and tell me who's there and what they talked about?' Very pleasant little guy. He always wore dark glasses," Threadgill recalled.



MORE...

http://www.systemiccapital.com/activist-richard-aoki-named-as-informant/

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

Wow, that's pretty scary.

[Homo Songun]

I don't know man.


"My Initial Thoughts on the Richard Aoki Controversy
by Scott Kurashige on Monday, August 20, 2012 at 11:33am

The story of Richard Aoki being an FBI informant is all over the web. The published stories are drawing simple conclusions that need to be questioned and scrutinized. The stories are based on an article for the Center for Investigative Reporting by Seth Rosenfeld, who has just released a 720-page book on FBI efforts to disrupt radical activism.



I’m not afraid to learn new things. As a historian, I want to get to the truth, and I won’t evade contradictions. I want to see the records and the draw the best possible conclusions. However, there is clearly more to this story than what’s out there right now.



Here’s what we ALREADY knew: 1) In the aftermath of WWII, young Japanese Americans were a bundle of contradictions—still facing intense racism but also being embraced as a model minority. Richard embodied this contradiction—he was a stellar student but also got into fights and trouble with the law. He joined the army in the 1950s ready to be a gung-ho soldier but left soon after and later was a part of many radical groups in the 1960s. 2) The FBI infiltrated and disrupted many civil rights, Black Power and left wing groups in the era of J. Edgar Hoover. One tactic used was to have agent provocateurs spur radical groups to violence to justify the state using repression against it. Although Hoover’s COINTELPRO was ended, the FBI and police are still spying on and trying to undermine activist groups today. 3) Richard Aoki supplied the Panthers with guns. The Panthers advocated armed self-defense in the age of intense police brutality and a time when most in the black community saw the cops as an occupying army. The Panthers inspired wide support from the community for their militant opposition to white supremacy AND their survival programs. The Panthers were heavily infiltrated and got into many violent clashes with the state that devastated their ranks and led to increased internal dissension.



So what exactly is NEW about this story: 1) Rosenfeld says he dug up records saying that Aoki—around the time he graduated from high school in the 1950s--was commissioned by an FBI agent named Burney Threadgill to give reports on the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party. This was at a time when Aoki does not claim to have any radical political consciousness and had been put in a compromised position by getting into trouble with law enforcement. Let’s accept this for now and accept that this is historically significant. But let’s keep it in context. It’s the height of the Cold War and both the CP and SWP would have been viewed by the public as fringe groups—moreover, they had little mass appeal to young people of color at this time. We know from here that Richard went on to join the army. 2) Rosenfeld has one document from 1967 that identifies Aoki as an FBI informant. It spells his middle name wrong. It does not say whether he is still actively on the FBI payroll. It doesn’t specify that Aoki did anything to aid the FBI’s work against the Panthers. Note that Hoover has yet to declare war on the Panthers at this time and is more concerned about SNCC and MLK. And to keep things in perspective, Geronimo Pratt will be fighting for the US military in Vietnam winning two Purple Hearts until 1968. 3) That’s it—at least all that’s on the internet right now. Everything else is speculation based on connecting dots that we already knew existed.



SETH ROSENFELD’S NARRATIVE



Again, we can’t draw definitive conclusions, yet. What we can saw is that Rosenfeld has not provided any evidence that Aoki was actively working to undermine the Panthers on behalf of the FBI.



What Rosenfeld says is that Aoki supplied the Panthers with guns and that the Panthers were undermined by violent clashes with the state. But these are things we ALREADY knew. All this story is doing is tapping into the simplistic white liberal narrative of the 1960s. The story goes like this: all the activism in the early 1960s was wholesome, nonviolent, and integrated but then the late 1960s was dominated by urban rebellions, violent militants, and black separatists who undermined all the achievements of the early 1960s and provoked a white middle-class backlash that led to Nixon, Reagan, and now the Tea Party. In the minds of white conservatives and liberals, the Panthers have always symbolized the turn toward the so-called bad activism of the late 60s (and of course conservatives never embraced the "good" early 60s and many liberals were slow to embrace them). The only twist to the story is that Rosenfeld wants to use Aoki to say the FBI was the source of the violent turn—and now after years of Aoki being largely unknown, he is almost being portrayed as the single figure who influenced the “extremist” turn in Bay Area activism. (The FBI certainly provoked violence--it's just not clear that it did so through Aoki.)



The simple story of the 1960s—already ripped to shreds by many, many historians—takes everything out of context, as if the US liberals didn’t push Vietnam and the Cold War, as if white suburbanites weren’t already against civil rights and integration, as if there wasn’t a Third World movement for liberation that led US communities of color to see themselves as fighting a war against internal colonialism. By the mid-to-late 1960s, MLK had declared the US government to be world’s greatest purveyor of violence and activists from the center-left to the far-left were looking for ways to transform the street force of the rebellions into disciplined, political organization. The Panthers heightened the political contradictions and the physical confrontations with the police and the state to unprecedented levels. Just as Fanon wrote, they tapped into a sense among the people that white supremacy and imperialism were breeding militant opposition. Aoki provided Huey and Bobby with some of the theoretical readings that guided them when they were Merritt College students and then helped them get guns. But what the white liberals refuse to accept is that young African Americans—sent to die in Vietnam, abused by the occupying force of the police, denied jobs from the shrinking industrial economy, watching nonviolent protestors repeatedly lynched, beaten, and jailed, and portrayed as the enemy by whites guarding their segregated suburbs—did not need any outside force to convince them that America was so rotten at its core that it was time to either burn the whole thing down or organize to overthrow the ruling class. All the liberals could do at this point in history was try to co-opt the insurgent movements in order to preserve their hold on power. Meanwhile the right wing went after the movements with savage ferocity.



Where does Richard Aoki fit into this? My best guess based on the available evidence is that Aoki—like millions of other young people of all races and especially people of color—developed a new identity during the mid-to-late 1960s, renouncing earlier attempts to fit into America and moving instead to be a Third World revolutionary. Had he previously worked for the FBI, he would of course have been tormented by this for the rest of his life. And it’s possible if this ever came out that he would have been discredited (fairly or unfairly) by his movement peers—if it came out during the FBI-heightened internal Panther wars of the late 1960s he might have been killed. Remember that one outrageous tactic COINTELPRO used to discredit Panther members and spur infighting was to send bogus mailings to other Panthers “outing” FBI informants within the BPP!



The idea that Aoki gave Huey and Bobby guns at the direction of the FBI does not make sense—at least not based on the evidence provided at this point. Aoki met Huey and Bobby when they were community college students and before the Panthers were a significant force—there was nothing for the FBI to disrupt at that point. Aoki also helped them do serious reading and study—something FBI informants would not have bothered with. We know that the FBI knew who Aoki was in 1967 but have no evidence that Aoki was doing anything for the FBI. Look at the Timeline provided with the Center for Investigative Reporting story—there’s no there there.



What other evidence does Rosenfeld provide? a) Aoki gave the Panthers guns--we already knew this; b) Former FBI agent Wesley Swearingen says he reviewed Rosenfeld’s records and concluded Aoki was probably an FBI informant. Swearingen is an important witness in general—he has renounced his former work with the FBI and sought to undermine COINTELPRO (giving testimony to help acquit Geronimo). But Swearingen does not say he had any connection to Aoki—the only FBI agent Rosenfeld interviewed with a connection to Aoki says he stopped working with Aoki with 1965 (and is there any report from the FBI agent who supposedly took over the Aoki relationship after 1965?). Swearingen, like Aoki, is rife with contradiction. It’s good for him to generally renounce COINTELPRO but he offers no insight one way or the other in this case. EXCEPT that is, to offer this ludicrous comment:



“Someone like Aoki is perfect to be in a Black Panther Party, because I understand he is Japanese,” he said. “Hey, nobody is going to guess – he’s in the Black Panther Party; nobody is going to guess that he might be an informant.”



Who in their right mind would think that a Japanese American would be the perfect person to infiltrate the Panthers? You would immediately stick at out and arouse suspicion as to why you were there and where your loyalties really lay. Again, there are better experts than me on this, but my best guess is that given Aoki’s history and identity that he went out of his way to be an extra-loyal and extra-committed member of the Black Panther Party and lots of testimony I’ve read substantiates this.



Swearingen, on this specific point, clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about, has no real knowledge of Aoki, and has never heard of the model minority (as in you mean to tell me that at the same time the media is pushing the image of Japanese Americans as a model minority the Black Panther are going to think they are THE model black militant?). Rosenfeld is playing up his “testimony” in an opportunistic way. Then Rosenfeld and Swearingen say the FBI is withholding further documentation—ok, that’s probably true but that’s also probably because the evidence generally implicates the FBI in nefarious acts against the Panthers rather than offering more specific evidence implicating Aoki.



The story goes even further to say that Richard promoted violence in the Third World Liberation Front at Berkeley and even suggests his singular presence shifted the whole Bay Area left toward militancy. No doubt the TWLF was born out of militancy, but Aoki would have hardly been alone here--though perhaps he may have been more into "offing the pigs" if he had previously been under their spell. But all Asian American movement activists were trying to be more militant in order to counter the dominant trend of the model minority rather than impress the FBI. And if Aoki had such a big impact on the whole Bay Area it’s quite strange that San Francisco State’s TWLF strike erupted into much bigger clashes with law enforcement than UC Berkeley did—but again, the story is so much more simpler when we forget about Reagan’s and Hayakawa’s role in deploying excessive policing and state repression to put down an educational social movement.



But let’s remember that Rosenfeld is probably some kind of liberal, so let’s conclude by bringing the scrutiny back where it belongs in this case. White liberals don’t want to believe that there was an organic drive toward militancy and armed resistance in the age of Third World liberation: the spirit of the Tet Offensive was in the air and the rebellion was against not only the right-wing ruling class but also against liberalism and the "revisionist" Old Left. Richard Aoki clearly had a soldier's mentality—Geronimo Pratt fought for the US government and switched sides. Aoki seemingly did the same though allegedly under far more controversial circumstances. Perhaps that was the symbol he left when laying his US army uniform alongside his Black Panther Party uniform before he died. If this is the case, then Aoki’s story is part of a long line of people of color drafted to fight American wars (in the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and yes, US cities) but forced by their own experience to question the whole enterprise of US imperialism.



Aoki remains a historically intriguing figure. Personally, I have not studied or written much about Aoki and only knew him in passing—mostly in his later years when he was connected to the RCP and my own radical politics had moved well away from the “agitation and confrontation” approach to movement building. We need a general rethinking of the role of militancy and armed self-defense in movement building, and I always say we need to read more MLK. But the fact that we are even discussing Aoki under these questionable circumstances demonstrates how much more Asian Americans are a subject of US history than we were not long ago, so we might as well use this as a teachable moment. At the same time, it’s probably true that we rush too quickly to create icons rather than embrace internal contradiction as the source of true knowledge and change.



These are quick and incomplete reflections. I don’t know where this story will end. What I do know is that people need to take it in a different direction than the one it’s headed on right now."

[KurtFF8]

^That article brought up some good points

[DaringMehring]

History is full of people who started out as state intelligence agents but, after infiltrating the revolutionary organization, changed their views and became revolutionaries.

See: The Irish revolution, the Russian revolution.

It is a credit to the justice of our cause.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

It's more than plausible that he "switched sides," as much as anything else it would be a huge scandal on the right and moderate wings of American politics if it came out that the FBI was arming people who were shooting coppers. His reaction to the question described in the article seems to indicate as much. I imagine if its the case he must have struggled with guilt for a long time.

[Igor]

History is full of people who started out as state intelligence agents but, after infiltrating the revolutionary organization, changed their views and became revolutionaries.

See: The Irish revolution, the Russian revolution.

It is a credit to the justice of our cause.

And from the other end of things, Hitler was an army intelligence agent in what would become the Nazi party. It's not at all uncommon.

[Andropov]

History is full of people who started out as state intelligence agents but, after infiltrating the revolutionary organization, changed their views and became revolutionaries.

See: The Irish revolution, the Russian revolution.

It is a credit to the justice of our cause.
Who are you referring to specifically with regards to Ireland and which "Revolution" exactly?

[Leftsolidarity]

I've heard a lot of people say that it's bullshit anyways and that the FBI is just trying to discredit him

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Reposting this from FB


LEE LEW-LEE ON RICHARD AOKI

I once heard Dick Gregory say...
"Thousand points of light? Shit. That's not power. Now when the Sun rises in the morning and knocks darkness clear out the sky... Now... That's Power!"

Richard Aoki has always been held in the highest esteem by everyone--and I mean by every last comrade who knew him--and that should be good enough for everyone.
For me, there are two ways to look at this allegation made by Seth Rosenfeld.
Either, Richard used his knowledge of the system to game the system and fucked up an old and dead FBI agent who was trying to settle an old final score from back in the day. (Maybe he was the ONE guy who successfully double-crossed the agent?)?
Or it was an attempt to smear his name in the 60s that lay dormant as a document time bomb, only to be misunderstood 44 years later.

Wes Swearingen, who was cited, is (I feel) a well-intentioned man of conscience, whose honest testimony freed Geronimo Pratt.

From what I read in this flurry of accusations by the Rosenfeld, though, Swearingen may have been merely analyzing the specific documents given to him to see if the Bureau actually produced them. Period.

Frankly, if they had any specific context that is now long gone, especially if the other agent mentioned in the story said he had not seen Aoki since '65, and we are presuming this is many years later.

We must remember that people were 'bad jacketed' all the time back in the day and these documents may have been from a result to do the same back in say 1968-9.
Regarding his weapons, I have no clue... and think that is perhaps way over blown. However, I do know that he was the one that brought the Red Book into the Party, and no matter what one may feel about that, it absolutely changed the course of the struggle. That is history, and certainly led to many things, pro and con, that will be debated for many years to come. Again, put this into historical context. Remember, this was 1968. That was an early period in the BPP.

I say that because 20/20 hindsight can be a terrible thing when taken completely out of context. I cannot personally accept anything said about anyone “back in the day” unless it is verifiably documented. Not hearsay from a man who was an enemy of the movement and is dead today. People must remember to check the SOURCE.

Personally, I never heard anything bad from anyone in the party in the day about the comrade and was shocked to hear these allegations. To my point of view, if he was dirty, people would have been suspicious back in the day, as we always said that 'actions are the criterion of truth'

Remember it WAS 43-44 years ago and the brother is not now here to speak for himself or defend himself, so this is manifestly unfair... and I imagine that this was written by someone who never was in the real struggle back then.

We will all find out in the next life who was for real and who was a fake... if you believe that this life was not by accident... then the final judge(s) will be a lot more powerful than we are. That is for sure.

There was Field Marshal Aoki, my brother Guy Kurose in Seattle and myself as the only 3 bona fide Asian members in the BPP, and we all came out of the Asian American movement.

Bro. Richard, I only met once in the late 90s and I felt he was a fine brother when I met him, and now he is gone. I did not even know that he had passed until this came up yesterday.

Guy Kurose I first met in '69 and we were life long friends when he died of cancer in 2002. Guy worked with the gang youth until his dying breath. I will always be happy and honored to know him

I went blind with the tumor and aneurysm in 2003 and had my 2 corrective brain surgeries on the first day of the Iraq war.

Guess I am the only one left of the 3 of us, and that is a very heavy feeling, today. There were so many who gave their lives so that the most basic things could be done for the human rights of all poor and oppressed people nationwide.

We must always think about how to help the poor and oppressed and fight prejudice, and the shit-stem of apartheid... no matter what our position in life. That is our obligation.

Every society, so called civilization, is only as good as the condition of it's poorest people and deepest attempts to eradicate poverty, exploitation and massive suffering.
I am sure that Brother Richard Aoki demonstrably and sincerely dedicated the vast majority of his life and his every living thought to achieve the overcoming of racism, poverty and inequality, without giving up.

Those who fought and died in the 50s- 60s for US human rights were not Gods and having been there does not make us Gods. Those who died were usually motivated by love as the reason for risking their lives to fight for the simplest things that today this entire nation takes for granted.

If we look at the balance of a person's life and it was lived totally without duplicity, we must take that person for their word. I think Richard was indeed, exactly who he claimed to be, who is exactly what people back in the day of the struggle also knew him to be: a dedicated, brilliant revolutionary.

If people were proven liars and grand standing opportunists 'back in the day'... Then they would now be remembered as such by the survivors who worked with them in the field back in the day.

That final judgement is certainly not the place of authors who were never there in the 60s U.S. human rights struggle, never shed blood, sweat nor hard bitter, excruciatingly painful tears for all the fallen comrades, tears that often flowed yesterday... and we often try to forget today.

August 21, 2012 Lee Lew-lee (Harlem Chapter of the Black Panther Party, known in 1969 as Comrade Tsing), and director of the documentary film ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
1Unlike · · Share

[Lenina Rosenweg]

If this wasn't already mentioned, Kasama has an interesting discussion on this

http://kasamaproject.org/2012/08/22/fred-ho-richard-aoki-was-not-an-fbi-informant/

[Prometeo liberado]

The jury seems to be still out on this guy. It looks as if there are several possibilities here. One, that he never worked with the FBI, and that the the author along with the feds are merely trying to add confusion to protect its real spy. Aoki's best friend, and the last person he spoke to swears that he was never a spy. There are still thousands of pages of relative documents that the FBI has been court ordered to make public which still remain in their hands. Why? If Aoki was a spy what more do they need to hide? At the very least his role as an alleged spy may have been embellished by the author, Seth Rosenfeld. The truth will never be known even if the feds release the court ordered documents, which by that time may have been doctored. All this plays into the hands of the feds, causing paranoia and finger pointing amongst the ranks. Kassma has some great related articles on identifying agent provocateurs and such.

[RedHal]

They did a segment on this on Democracy Now! with the reporter Rosenthal and Aoki's biographer Prof Diane Fujino. Evidence against Aoki seems weak and inconclusive.

The FBI document could be interpreted both ways, Aoki is the informer or Aoki is actually being spied on.

Statements from 2 former FBI agents, ummm right......

And Rosenthal's interview with Aoki could either be interpretted as Aoki's admission or Aoki mocking Rosenthal's ridiculous questions of being a former FBI informant. Video of the interview:

http://californiawatch.org/public-safety/man-who-armed-black-panthers-was-fbi-informant-records-show-17634

And I have to agree with Aoki's friend Fred Ho who would know Aoki's sense of humour and it sounds like Aoki is mocking Rosenthal's questioning.
http://sfbayview.com/2012/fred-ho-refutes-the-claim-that-richard-aoki-was-an-fbi-informant/

5. The supposed admission that Rosenfeld has on tape is typical Aoki humor in answering “Oh.”

The subtext, as Aoki knew he was talking to a reporter, is really:

“Oh, you motherfucker, so that’s what he said, well, stupid, then it must be true!”


There's no new evidence presented in the book, so if this is all Rosenthal has, sounds like sensationalism to sell his book.