The Informant Quandary (Part II)

...continued.

Read also "The Informant Quandary (Part I)"

However far too often informants have done more harm than good.

Informants often manipulate their status for personal gain. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) use of organized crime figure James “Whitey” Bulger, for example, enabled Bulger to eliminate competition by informing on other organized crime families, then taking over their territories after their members went to prison.

Harvey Matusow, an informant during the “Red Scare” era of the 1950s, later admitted, in a book entitled False Witness, that he had often been paid to provide false testimony about alleged communists, and was even encouraged to lie by Senator Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn, McCarthy’s chief legal counsel, after their anti-communist “crusade” catapulted them into the national spotlight.

Also there is a proclivity for law enforcement to conceal the criminal activities of informants, even at the expense of justice. Recently a judge awarded Joseph Salvati and Peter Limone, and the families of Henry Tameleo and Louis Greco, a judgment in excess of one hundred million dollars after it was revealed that the FBI, in order to shield an informant, allowed these four men to go to prison for a murder they did not commit. Salvati and Limone both served over thirty years, while Tameleo and Greco died in prison.

In addition, informants are prone to lie, especially to please their “handlers.” According to a recent article from the Associated Press, the informant in the Van de Kamp case had stated under oath that he received “no benefit” for his testimony, when in fact he had been given a lighter criminal sentence.

This same type of dishonesty was also used to wrongfully imprison former Black Panther Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt in California. Pratt was convicted almost exclusively on the testimony of an informant, who under oath denied being one. There was also evidence that this informant’s testimony was possibly influenced by jealousy, since Pratt, rather than him, had become leader of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP) after former leaders John Huggins and Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter were murdered in January of 1969 by members of “US,” a black nationalist group founded by Maulana Karenga (aka Ron Everett).

Pratt subsequently spent twenty-seven years in prison, eight of them in solitary confinement, before his conviction was vacated. Even then, despite clear evidence of the perjury used to convict him and a former FBI agent’s admission that Pratt had been framed, the Los Angeles County Prosecutor’s office, then headed by Gil Garcetti, demanded that Pratt remain imprisoned.

Tragically the unlawful methods used to convict Pratt had indirect, and lingering, social consequences. A recent History Channel documentary revealed that many disaffected African-American teenagers in Los Angeles had looked to Huggins and Carter for guidance and structure in their lives. The murder of these two men left a leadership vacuum that Pratt did not have time to fill, since he was arrested a year after Huggins and Carter’s deaths.

Filling this vacuum was fifteen-year-old Raymond Washington, who would ultimately found the gang known as the Crips. During the ensuing years, hundreds of African-Americans would lose their lives due to conflicts with rival gangs or internecine rivalries within the Crips, and hundreds more would become innocent victims of gang violence.

FBI documents, including a memo dated November 29, 1968, would later reveal that the Bureau had intentionally exacerbated tensions between the BPP and “US.” Therefore it appears that a “black nationalist” group headed by the founder of Kwanzaa, and the most powerful law enforcement agency in the world, were directly responsible for the murders of several members of the BPP, and indirectly responsible for the violent, gang-related deaths of countless African-Americans.

Informants are sometimes prone to actually encourage crimes or violence. This way they can get paid for informing on the very crimes and violence they helped to create.

During the late 1960s, an informant named William O’Neal infiltrated the Chicago Chapter of the BPP. During this time the FBI was endeavoring to undermine the efforts made by Fred Hampton, Chairman of the Illinois BPP, to create a “Rainbow Coalition” of political activists from all races. Hampton needed the support of an African-American group known as the Blackstone Rangers. O’Neal covertly worked to deny this support by creating confrontations between the Panthers and the Rangers.

Ultimately O’Neal would provide the FBI and Chicago Police Department with a sketch of Hampton’s apartment. This culminated in a police “raid” where both Hampton and fellow Panther Mark Clark were killed. O’Neal was subsequently paid a “bonus” of three hundred dollars for his “information.” He committed suicide two decades later.

Finally, there is the “snitch” jacket, which is used by law enforcement to falsely label someone an informant. A target of this tactic was William Albertson, a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).