Call Number:

C1702

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

70 linear feet ((70 boxes))

Language:

English

Date:

1966-1999 (bulk 1970-1975) (inclusive)

Creator:

Bin Wahad, Dhoruba, Boyle, Robert J., United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Fink, Elizabeth M. (1945 June 7-2015 September 22)

Abstract:

Dhoruba Bin Wahad is an African American writer and activist, formerly a leader in the Black Panther Party. Robert J. Boyle is a criminal defense attorney in New York City who has worked in appeals and post-conviction motions, and has also been involved in civil rights and police misconduct litigation. The collection consists of approximately 110,000 pages of redacted FBI and NYPD photocopies about the Black Panther Party (BPP) and its top leaders, obtained pursuant to a court order in the legal case Bin Wahad v. FBI, et al.

Dhoruba Bin Wahad, born Richard Moore, was born in the Bronx in 1944. As a youth he had several run-ins with the law and served time in prison. He began his political education in prison and when released in 1967 he became politically active on the street. Motivated in part by the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he joined the Harlem, New York chapter of the Black Panther Party in the summer of 1968. He quickly rose to the statewide position of Field Secretary and was responsible for organizing BPP chapters within New York State. On April 2, 1969 he was among 21 NY BPP members indicted and arrested on conspiracy charges (the "Panther 21" case). He was held in lieu of $100,000 bail. By March of 1970 the BPP had raised enough money to post bail for one of the Panther 21 defendants. National BPP leadership chose Bin Wahad for release due to his speaking ability. Thereafter, Bin Wahad traveled around the country speaking in support of his still-incarcerated co-defendants and the BPP's program. Because of that notoriety he became a target of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) counterintelligence program, known commonly as COINTELPRO. On May 13, 1971, the Panther 21, including Bin Wahad, were acquitted of all charges. Two weeks later Bin Wahad was arrested and charged with the May 19, 1971 attempted murder of two police officers. In 1973, after three trials and a case based entirely upon circumstantial evidence, he was convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years to life imprisonment. In 1974, while incarcerated in a maximum-security prison in upstate New York, Bin Wahad became aware of hearings conducted by Congress into FBI misconduct, including illegal and/or unconstitutional acts committed against the Black Panther Party. As a result, Bin Wahad sued the FBI and NYPD (Bin Wahad v. FBI, et al., 75 Civ. 6203 [USDC/SDNY]). After many years of litigation, the lawsuit was successful and Bin Wahad's conviction was ultimately reversed in 1990. After his release, Bin Wahad moved to Ghana, where he founded the Campaign to Free Black and New African Political Prisoners. Bin Wahad currently lives in Africa and remains politically active.

Robert J. Boyle is a criminal defense attorney in New York City who has worked in appeals and post-conviction motions, and has also been involved in civil rights and police misconduct litigation. Boyle obtained the files in this collection pursuant to a court order in his legal case Bin Wahad v. FBI, et al. Dhoruba Bin Wahad, who had been convicted of the assault of two NYPD officers in 1973, was the first BPP member whose conviction was eventually overturned as the result of these FBI disclosures, particularly Cointelpro. Bin Wahad was released from prison in 1990 after 19 years. The case has been the subject of two documentaries, Framing The Panthers In Black And White and Passin' It On.

Elizabeth Marsha Fink was an American attorney specializing in civil rights and prisoner's rights cases. Fink graduated from Brooklyn Law School, and was best known for filing and ultimately settling a class action suit on behalf of incarcerated people killed and injured in the Attica Prison uprising of 1971. Fink, as co-counsel with attorney Robert Boyle, represented Dhoruba bin Wahad in Bin Wahad v. FBI, et al., winning his release from prison in 1990.

The collection consists of approximately 110,000 pages of redacted photocopies of FBI and NYPD investigatory documents about the Black Panther Party (BPP) and its top leaders. The content includes photocopies of BPP leaflets, bank records, phone transcripts, meetings, daily activities, speeches, travel records, and mainstream media articles. It documents the FBI's monitoring of the BPP, the FBI's efforts to stymie and break the organization, and COINTELPRO, the FBI's illegal and secret project to disrupt and discredit legitimate American political organizations.

By 1971, the FBI produced biweekly multi-page intelligence summaries on the BPP. Many of the FBI's memos start with the clause "The BPP is a violence-prone Black militant organization headquartered in Berkeley, California with chapters located throughout the United States."

Much of the FBI's efforts to disrupt the BPP involved exploiting the rift between Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton, as well as creating dissension between the BPP on the East Coast and the BPP on the West Coast.

Through COINTELPRO, the FBI mailed dozens of anonymous letters to Eldridge Cleaver, H. Rap Brown, Huey Newton, and others. The letters often threatened the men, created discord (i.e. suggested that Huey Newton wasn't sharing all his speaking fees with the BPP), and gave them false information. The geographic scope of the collection includes Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, New Haven and Middletown, Connecticut. While the names of confidential informants are frequently redacted, very little of the COINTELPRO materials have been removed. Thus, the collection includes the fake letters mailed to the BPP leadership and the letters to the newspaper editors actually written by FBI agents.

The documents in the collection were disclosed during court-ordered discovery in a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by former Black Panther Party (BPP) leader Dhoruba Bin Wahad (formerly Richard Dhoruba Moore). The lawsuit, Bin Wahad v. FBI, et al., 75 Civ. 6203 (USDC/SDNY) was part of a decades-long effort to win freedom for Bin Wahad, who was wrongfully convicted of the 1971 attempted murder of two New York City Police officers. Among other things, the lawsuit charged that Bin Wahad was framed as part of COINTELPRO.

After many years of litigation the lawsuit was successful in proving that the government suppressed evidence of Bin Wahad's innocence. Bin Wahad was released from prison in 1990 after being incarcerated for nearly 19 years. The civil lawsuit continued. A monetary settlement with the FBI was reached in 1995 and a settlement with the New York City Police Department was reached in 2000.

Content Warning Many of the FBI and NYPD documents contained in this collection were created as part of its COINTELPRO, which actively engaged in a disinformation campaign to undermine and stymie American political organizations. Therefore not all of the information contained within the collection is true. For example, an FBI document may falsely state that an individual has committed a certain crime or was planning to commit a crime. Documents may also mischaracterize the BPP and its motives. Finally, some documents may make false assertions about BPP members' personal lives.