Former Panther
Fears Genocide
WASHINGTON (UP)—A former Black Panther testified Thursday he believes freeways in big cities are
designed for easy access of troops to wipe out blacks and new apartment projects are used to concentrate
minority groups for eradication. Clive De Patten told a House internal security subcommittee hearing some of his beliefs carried over from the 10 months he belonged to the Des Moines, Iowa, chapter, which he joined in April, 1969.
The soft-spoken 19-year-old was the latest in a series of witnesses testifying about operations of the Black Panther Party. Unidentified police officers from Des Moines are scheduled to testify when the hearings resume Tuesday. Committee files showed De Patten is awaiting discharge from the Army because "his non-commissioned officers describe him as a troublemaker who fights and reacts negatively to all orders and policies."
De Patten said the Panther Party teaches its new members in a six-week training period that whites are their
oppressors and Panthers must be prepared for a revolution to overcome the oppressors. He referred to a so-called "King Alfred plan" to wipe out all blacks and discussed it as a factual plan drawn up by the government. The names comes from a fiction book, The Man Who Cried "I Am," by John Williams, and is employed in the fiction as a program of black genocide.
"Freeways are built only for one reason and that's to move tanks and troops easily into the ghettos to wipe out the blacks," De Patten said. "Highrise apartments that are put up for poor people are one method of getting a lot of blacks into one small area so the building can be blown up," De Patten said.
De Patten said he joined the Des Moines chapter of the Black Panthers, which is now called "Black Revolutionary Communist Youth," after he was beaten by police who raided a breakfast-for-children meeting of the Panthers. De Patten said the chapter had 30 to 50 members, whose average age was in the early 20's, but membership dropped sharply after the Panther Headquarters
was mysteriously bombed April 26,1969. De Patten said he was convinced the police bombed the quarters. He said when he joined, Charles Smith, was the leader, Charles Knox was deputy minister of education and Michael Harris was Deputy minister of information. De Patten said he eventually became the minister of information.
De Patten told newsmen he quit the Panthers "for personal reasons." He declined to explain the reasons but he did say it was about the same time that the Des Moines chapter "started to pursue the hard core communist line." De Patten said he sympathized with communist goals but that he was not necessarily a communist, although he strongly favored the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong.
Fears Genocide
Ames (Iowa) Daily Tribune, Oct. 9, 1970
designed for easy access of troops to wipe out blacks and new apartment projects are used to concentrate
minority groups for eradication. Clive De Patten told a House internal security subcommittee hearing some of his beliefs carried over from the 10 months he belonged to the Des Moines, Iowa, chapter, which he joined in April, 1969.
The soft-spoken 19-year-old was the latest in a series of witnesses testifying about operations of the Black Panther Party. Unidentified police officers from Des Moines are scheduled to testify when the hearings resume Tuesday. Committee files showed De Patten is awaiting discharge from the Army because "his non-commissioned officers describe him as a troublemaker who fights and reacts negatively to all orders and policies."
De Patten said the Panther Party teaches its new members in a six-week training period that whites are their
oppressors and Panthers must be prepared for a revolution to overcome the oppressors. He referred to a so-called "King Alfred plan" to wipe out all blacks and discussed it as a factual plan drawn up by the government. The names comes from a fiction book, The Man Who Cried "I Am," by John Williams, and is employed in the fiction as a program of black genocide.
"Freeways are built only for one reason and that's to move tanks and troops easily into the ghettos to wipe out the blacks," De Patten said. "Highrise apartments that are put up for poor people are one method of getting a lot of blacks into one small area so the building can be blown up," De Patten said.
De Patten said he joined the Des Moines chapter of the Black Panthers, which is now called "Black Revolutionary Communist Youth," after he was beaten by police who raided a breakfast-for-children meeting of the Panthers. De Patten said the chapter had 30 to 50 members, whose average age was in the early 20's, but membership dropped sharply after the Panther Headquarters was mysteriously bombed April 26,1969. De Patten said he was convinced the police bombed the quarters. He said when he joined, Charles Smith, was the leader, Charles Knox was deputy minister of education and Michael Harris was Deputy minister of information. De Patten said he eventually became the minister of information.De Patten told newsmen he quit the Panthers "for personal reasons." He declined to explain the reasons but he did say it was about the same time that the Des Moines chapter "started to pursue the hard core communist line." De Patten said he sympathized with communist goals but that he was not necessarily a communist, although he strongly favored the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong.
SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS, Wednesday, March 4, 1970
Army's Civilian Spying Said Ended
The army last week ordered the information it collected in a computer the past three years on persons and organizations considered political activists, potential activists and potential participants in riots, destroyed. A Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday the army had completed destroying the files. "Now that the civil disturbance operation has been discontinued, it will give them (Army Intelligence) more time for conducting
security clearances on military personnel," the spokesman reported.
The order to destroy the information, fed into a computer, known as the "Databank of Domestic Political Activities," at Fort Holabird, Md., and supplied from seven Army intelligence units, including one located at Fort Sam Houston and downtown San Antonio, came after U.S. Rep. Cornelius Gallagher, D-N.J., informed the Army he would hold public hearings on the "validity and legality of such a program."
The 112th Military Intelligence Group is located here and was the operation which relayed information to the Data Bank for the 112th Army area although it is not part of the 4th Army. The fact the San Antonio-based 112th was among those units feeding information on the political activities o f civilians from San Antonio was confirmed by Army General Counsel Robert E. Jordan III*, at the pentagon.
Officers in the 112th at Fort Sam Houston and at their downtown offices at the 301 Building, at 301 Broadway (formerly the Manion Building), were unwilling to discuss their operation. They also refused to discuss why the 112th maintained downtown offices as well as a building at Fort Sam Houston, and
newsmen were not allowed inside their second-floor downtown office. Meanwhile, San Antonio Chief
of Police George Bichsel said there was no doubt in his mind same police information had been fed into the Data Bank files.
"From time to time Military Intelligence has checked with the Department on various groups and we always have given them what we had," Bichsel said.
"We share information with the FBI and if they wished they could have given the 112th this information," Bichsel added. He added that the Police Department did not "go around making reports" for the military, but just released information they asked for.
Asked if photographs taken of protestors of multi-family housing in the Edgewood Independent School District outside the Lulac anniversary banquet last Saturday at the Gunter Hotel by policemen were taken for Military Intelligence, Bichsel said he was positive they were not.
He said his department occasionally photographs individuals and groups involved in protests or demonstrations so the department would have a photo file available for its officers, if ever needed. "This does not imply they (demonstrators) are doing anything unlawful," Bichsel said.
SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS Friday, February 26, 1971
By ALICE MURPHY
If Military Intelligence is maintaining a card file on all members of the First Unitarian Church of San Antonio, Church President Glenn Grimes said members have nothing to hide. He said Unitarians are individually controversial and some have taken part in "peaceful demonstrations."The possibility of such a card file came up when Houston State Rep. Curtis Graves told a Congressional committee Thursday he learned from Walter Birdwell, a former agent of the 112th Military Intelligence Group in San Antonio, that he had not only been a snooping target himself for the past 10 years, but the 112th MI Group had a "card file on every member of the Unitarian Church in San Antonio."
Major Stephen Weiss, public information officer for the 112th, said he had been advised, politely, to have all calls on the matter referred to the Information Office of the Department of the Army in Washington, and gave two telephone numbers there. Neither answered Thursday evening. The present minister of the Unitarian Church, the Rev. Rolfe Gerhardt, could not be reached either. Sources said, however, that any such controversy probably dated back to the tenure of the Rev. Bill DeWolle, who left here April 30,1970. Grimes said his major claim to fame was that he had been president of the San Antonio chapter of the Texas Civil Liberties Union, and after leaving here was president of the Texas ACLU.
Attorney Maury Maverick Jr.
, a vice chairman of the national advisory committee of the American Civil Liberties Union, described DeWolfe as "a high class, fine man." He said he wished the Unitarian Church here was "half as militant as the Episcopalians," of which he is one. Maverick, who represents a large majority of conscientious objectors in federal court here, said 80 per cent of that clientele had been Roman Catholics and none had been Unitarians.Rep. Graves' testimony was presented to a Senate subcommittee on Constitutional rights, headed by Sam Ervin, D-N.C. Graves is a Negro. He said that Birdwell also told him the 112th was keeping files on Houston State Sen. Barbara Jordan, boxer Muhammad Ali, several Houston attorneys, and members of the
Ku Klux Klan.
Birdwell is no longer associated with the 112th.
~~~~~~~~~~~
San Antonio Light, October 6, 1972
Lt. Col. Mark A. Miles has been awarded the Legion of Merit upon his retirement at Headquarters, 5th Army. The medal cited Miles' service since April 1970, as deputy commander of the 112th Military Intelligence Group at 5th Army.
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1965–1972 RECORDS OF THE U.S. ARMY’S ACSI TASK FORCE
...All in all, this collection provides an excellent look into the difficulties of a state spying on its own citizens. The bureaucratic difficulties are well illustrated in the various documents trying to track the size and the scope of army surveillance, as well as the documents outlining surveillance regulations. The collection provides agood picture of how divided liberals and conservatives can be over a certain issue, in this case military surveillance, illustrated here through newspaper articles and personal letters. Finally, the difficulties of containing a secretive organization and the worries that go along with it are probed in the various newspaper articles, the congressional investigation, and the recalcitrance the army showed in the face of accusation and investigation.
Other LexisNexis collections that deal with the theme of the state spying on its own citizens are: Surveillance of Radicals in the United States, 1917–1941; The Johnson Administration’s Response to Anti–Vietnam War Activities, Part 1: White House Aides’ Files and Part 2: White House Central Files; The FBI Files on the
American Indian Movement and Wounded Knee; Federal Surveillance of Afro-Americans (1917–1925): The First World War, the Red Scare
, and the Garvey Movement; FBI Files on Black Extremist Organizations; FBI Wiretaps, Bugs, and Break-Ins: The National Security Electronic Surveillance Card File and the Surreptitious Entries File; Records of the National Commission on Violence; The Communist Party USA and Radical Organizations, 1953–1960: FBI Reports From the Eisenhower Library; and Communist Activity in the Entertainment Industry: FBI Surveillance Files on Hollywood, 1942–1958. 112th MI Group, 1970–1971.
Major Topics: Fort Sam Houston surveillance; Oklahoma’s Office of Interagency Coordination.
113th MI Group, 1970–1971.
Major Topics: Local police cooperation with army surveillance; John O’Brien; Niles North High School; Philip Crane; reaction to army surveillance; extent of army surveillance; University of Minnesota; Malcolm Moos; Sam Ervin Jr.; Eugene Eidenberg; Barbara Jordan; Curtis Graves; Walter Birdwell; USAIRR; army
surveillance records; ACLU; Dave Dellinger; King Alfred Plan; Thomas Filkins; army halt on surveillance; Ed Jurenas; Laverne Armstrong; Jesse Jackson; Otto Kerner; Adlai Stevenson III; Abner Mikva; spying at Martin Luther King Jr. funeral; W. Clement Stone.
112th MI Group [January–February 1971].
Major Topics: USAINTC civil disturbance pamphlets; Walter Birdwell; organizations and individuals on file; ACLU; KKK; SDS; Unitarian Church; Curtis Graves; Bob Eckhardt; Cassius Clay; Adlai Stevenson III; Abner Mikva; Otto Kerner; press coverage; army agent undercover as postman; Barbara Jordan; Oklahoma Office of Interagency Coordination.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
JORDAN ROBERT ELIJAH JORDAN, III
(Age 73) Died on May14, 2010 after a lengthy illness. He is survived by his wife Deborah A. Jordan, of Sarasota; three daughters, Janet Harding, Jennifer Dunnebacke, and Maggie Jordan; one son, Robert E. Jordan IV; 11 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Bob enjoyed being around his family and friends. He was a great storyteller: favorite topics were college pranks, courtroom comeuppances, and family history. He loved dogs. It was rare to see him out and about without at least one four-legged friend. He maintained a lifelong enjoyment of model trains, both designing layouts and running them for the entertainment of others.
A well respected member of the legal community, Mr. Jordan was former president of the D.C. Bar, and a former executive committee chairman of and partner at the Washington office of Steptoe Camp; Johnson since 1971. Prior to joining the firm, he served as General Counsel of the Army, Assistant U.S. Attorney, and in enforcement with the U.S. Treasury. He was considered an expert in legal ethics and conflict-of-interest policy making, and chaired two committees for the D.C. Bar Association that dealt with ethics and professional conduct of members.
He was an Editor of the Harvard Law Review. Military service began with ROTC in college and culminated in the rank of Captain in the Army of the U.S. He was honored to serve as Staff Director, President''s Committee on Equal Opportunity in the Armed Forces, and subsequently Special Assistant for Civil Rights at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he implemented the committee''s recommendations.
Bob believed in the volunteerism, duty, hard work, and the uplifting power of education. He inspired this in others, leading by example. He could often be found hammering away at a Christmas in April project or personally arguing a pro-bono case for someone who could not afford an attorney. Over the course of his lifetime, he served in many civic and academic leadership positions, including class president at M.I.T.
A Memorial Service will be held on Tuesday, May 18, at 10:30 a.m. at Toale Brothers, 40 N. Orange Ave., Sarasota. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made in his honor to either CASA - Court Appointed Special Advocates or the American Civil Liberties Union.
Published in The Washington Post on May 16, 2010