John Potash
Covert Action Magazine
Malcolm X’s daughter and grandson, Fred Hampton’s son and Tupac Shakur, son of Black Panther Party leaders, were among those targeted by deadly counterintelligence operations
On November 18, 2021, a judge exonerated two of the three men convicted of assassinating Malcolm X, partly due to newly revealed FBI documents implicating their paid informants at the scene and cover-up regarding the actual assassins.[1]
A mass of evidence supports that U.S. intelligence orchestrated Malcolm X’s assassination and the assassination of numerous other Black leaders, along with murderously targeting their descendants. A sampling of these atrocities reveals the use of similar tactics and personnel in this targeting.
Targeted Malcolm X’s Daughter Qubilah, and Grandson Malcolm
Evidence supports that the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), started in the 1950s, directed police intelligence agents to assassinate Malcolm X. FBI documents revealed in the court case exonerating two of the convicted assassins implicated FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover directly in silencing his paid informants at the scene of Malcolm X’s murder.[2]
Several police intelligence agents have been implicated in Malcolm’s assassination. Convicted Malcolm X assassin Talmadge Hayer detailed in an affidavit that four different people were involved in Malcolm X’s fatal shooting in 1965.[3] These included William Bradley, a former Green Beret who fired a shotgun at Malcolm, and was identified by eyewitness Roland Sheppard as someone that appeared to then enter his own office at a nearby police station.[4]
Roland Sheppard said that Bradley had his seat in front of Malcolm X reserved by Eugene Roberts. After the shooting, Roberts ran to Malcolm X’s body as he laid on the floor dying. Roberts worked in Malcolm’s security unit.[5]
In 1970, Roberts identified himself at a trial as working for the New York Police Department. He admitted working undercover for the FBI-collaborating NYPD Bureau of Special Services and Investigation (BOSSI) at that trial.
The CIA monitored Malcolm internationally.[6]
In 1995, the government dropped a murder for hire charge against Malcolm X’s daughter Qubilah Shabazz. Shabazz said her boyfriend had talked her into a conversation about killing Louis Farrakhan for involvement in her father’s assassination. That boyfriend was a longtime government informant, who Shabazz said entrapped her.[7]
In 1971, activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, and stole thousands of documents, revealing their murderous Counterintelligence Program activities. This led the FBI to officially close COINTELPRO that year.[8] Former FBI COINTELPRO agent Wes Swearingen revealed in a 1995 memoir that the FBI then continued COINTELPRO activities under different names until at least the mid-1990s when his memoir was published.[9]
In 2013, Mexican authorities arrested two men for murdering Qubilah Shabazz’s son, 28-year-old Malcolm Shabazz, in Mexico City. Malcolm had become an activist and was meeting with California-based labor movement organizers there. In a blog post earlier that year, Malcolm said he was being harassed by the FBI.[10]
At that time, Fred Hampton, Jr., whose father headed the Illinois Black Panther Party, said he and Malcolm Shabazz had planned a “Legacy Tour” schedule of events speaking together in many cities.
Fred Hampton, Jr., is National Chairman of the Prisoners of Conscience Committee (and the Panther Cubs). Hampton said that he expelled his Minister of Information J.R. Valrey from his group for continuous sabotage, believing he was a government agent, soon after Shabazz’s death. He said Valrey lured Malcolm Shabazz to the Mexican location where Shabazz was murdered.[11]
Same Tactics and Personnel Targeted Malcolm, MLK, Panthers, Hampton Jr., Afeni and Tupac
Undercover agent Eugene Roberts was the first to arrive at Malcolm X’s dying body. Malcolm’s wife Betty Shabazz (1934-1997), a nurse, first tried to run to her husband, but was initially held back by Eugene’s wife Joan Roberts. Shabazz then threw her against the wall and ran to her husband.[12]
At that 1965 assassination, Eugene Roberts reported checking Malcolm X’s pulse. He then told Shabazz that Malcolm was dead.[13]
Similarly, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s friend, attorney William Pepper, stated in one of his three books covering evidence of the U.S. government’s assassination of MLK, that Military Intelligence undercover agent Marrell McCollough first arrived at MLK’s wounded body in 1968. McCollough checked MLK’s life signs and indicated to Special Forces Group snipers that the assassination was successful and they could disengage. McCullough soon received a promotion to the CIA.[14]
Eugene Roberts belied his reported love “trying to save” Malcolm X, as his police work continued against Malcolm’s followers, such as Lumumba and Afeni Shakur in the Harlem, New York, chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968.
In 1969, New York prosecutors indicted 21 New York City area Panther leaders for a trial that concluded in 1971. Roberts and five other undercover police intelligence agents who infiltrated the Harlem and Bronx Black Panthers revealed themselves in court, in an unsuccessful attempt to frame the Panther leaders.[15]
Afeni Shakur legally represented herself in court while she was pregnant with her son, future rap icon Tupac Shakur. By the age of 18, Tupac was elected National Chairman of the New Afrikan Panthers, before producing chart-topping CDs and starring in six films.[16]
After a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by this writer, a Department of Justice worker admitted that the FBI had a file on Tupac containing more than 4,000 pages.[17]
FBI COINTELPRO Director Richard Held headed the Los Angeles unit when he targeted Tupac’s godfather—Los Angeles Panther leader Geronimo Pratt.[18] Held then directed the San Francisco Bay Area office and was caught lying about Panther National co-founder Huey Newton’s murder there in 1989.[19]
Two years later, police choked Tupac unconscious and passively watched strangers shoot at him in the Bay Area a year after that.[20]
Plainclothes police also shot at Tupac in Atlanta in 1993. Investigating Los Angeles Police Detective Russell Poole believed his fellow police officer killed Tupac at the age of 25 in 1996.[21] Some 25 years later, his influence continues with a Tupac museum that opened in Los Angeles in January 2022, and top rappers Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Eminem paying tribute to him at their 2022 Super Bowl halftime performance.[22]
Panther “cub” Tupac was close in age to fellow Panther cub Fred Hampton, Jr. The 2021 Academy Award-winning film, Judas and the Black Messiah, showed how the FBI orchestrated the Chicago police murder of Illinois Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in Chicago in December 1969.[23]
Chicago police similarly targeted 22-year-old Fred Hampton. Jr., in 1992 when he headed the socialist Democratic Uhuru Movement.
Hampton Jr. said police officer Joseph Grubesette, one of the officers who had arrested his father in 1969, led the arrest of him in 1992, for arson at the time of the Los Angeles riots.[24]
At Hampton’s trial, the judge admitted that no fire occurred but still sentenced Hampton to 18 years in prison. Hampton also reported several attempts to murder him before, during and after his nine-year imprisonment.[25]
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