[Ppnews] FBI agent in Pentagon Papers case ran COINTELPRO operation against 'Omaha Two'

[Political Prisoner News]

Original Content at  
http://www.opednews.com/articles/FBI-agent-in-Pentagon-Pape-by-Michael-Richardson-090104-861.html

January 4, 2009

FBI agent in Pentagon Papers case ran COINTELPRO operation against 'Omaha Two'

By Michael Richardson



Charles D. "Chip" Brennan joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation  
in 1948, fresh out of military service and college.  Brennan's early  
years with the FBI were in the field where he had been stationed in  
Seattle and Omaha, Nebraska.  By 1956, the ambitious lawman was in  
Washington and in 1970 had risen to be assistant to William Cornelius  
Sullivan, the third ranking FBI official.

Brennan's chief duties at FBI headquarters under Sullivan were  
supervising the logistics of illegal activities against domestic  
political targets of director J. Edgar Hoover's clandestine Operation  
COINTELPRO.  A gung-ho warrior, Brennan approached his illegal  
surveillance and counterintelligence dirty tricks with enthusiasm.   
COINTELPRO was a secret, nationwide assault on anyone Hoover deemed a  
threat and targeted hundreds of innocent political activists for  
snooping, harassment, arrest and even physical harm.

COINTELPRO had five major divisions, including New Left and Black  
Nationalist, which Brennan worked.  It was under the Black Nationalist  
COINTELPRO directorate that Brennan prepared the work orders and  
directed agents against Hoover's most feared targets, the Black  
Panthers.  Brennan's pride and joy however was the New Left operation.  
  Brennan planned the COINTELPRO and first proposed it to Sullivan in  
a secret COINTELPRO memorandum dated May 9, 1968.

"Our nation is undergoing an era of disruption and violence caused to  
a large extent by various individuals generally connected with the New  
Left.  Some of these activists urge revolution in America and call for  
the defeat of the United States in Vietnam.  They continually and  
falsely allege police brutality and do not hesitate to utilize  
unlawful acts to further their so-called causes.  The New Left has on  
many occasions viciously and scurrilously attacked the Director and  
the Bureau in an attempt to hamper our investigation of it."

Brennan continued with his proposal, "The purpose of this program is  
to expose, disrupt and otherwise neutralize the activities of this  
group and persons connected with it."

Two men that Brennan wanted to neutralize were targets of the Omaha  
field office where he used to work.  Since 1968 the FBI and the Omaha  
Police had been engaged in tight surveillance of Edward Poindexter and  
Mondo we Langa (formerly David Rice).  The pair of activists were  
leaders in Omaha's Black Panther chapter, the National Committee to  
Combat Fascism, sometimes called the Nebraska Committee to Combat  
Fascism, where they were the city's leading critics of police brutality.

The August 17, 1970 ambush bombing murder of Omaha patrolman Larry  
Minard gave the COINTELPRO plotters a chance to prosecute Poindexter  
and Langa for the crime.  While detectives and crime scene technicians  
sifted through bomb debris for clues, FBI agents were meeting with  
assistant-Chief of Police Glen W. Gates and making plans to drop the  
investigation of Minard's actual killer.

The newly installed 911 phone system had captured the anonymous  
caller's voice that lured Minard and other officers to a vacant house  
where a woman was reported screaming.  This voice stood in the way of  
convicting the Panther leaders of the crime.  A plan was made to send  
the tape recording to the FBI Crime Laboratory for analysis and keep  
it away from disclosure.

When Ivan Willard Conrad, the FBI lab director, got the COINTELPRO  
memo requesting that no lab report be issued he talked with Hoover on  
the phone to confirm a formal report was to be withheld.  On August  
19th, before Minard's broken body was even buried, the COINTELPRO  
operation to convict the two leaders was underway with Conrad noting  
Hoover's "OK to do" instruction on the memo.

Brennan was on the distribution list of the COINTELPRO memos coming  
out of the Omaha case and his initials appear on the memo proposing  
the withholding of the lab report.  Brennan knew that the killer of  
officer Minard was going to walk free in order to put the crime on his  
two targets.

Brennan's initials of approval appear on the 'Omaha Two' COINTELPRO  
memo but Sullivan's do not, even though he appears on the distribution  
list.  Sullivan was very busy at the time with national issues at the  
White House, the wire-tapping of Henry Kissinger, and development of  
the Huston Plan to reorganize intelligence operations in the United  
States.

Sullivan did admit knowledge of the Omaha case in October 1970 at a  
speech to United Press International.  In summarizing the case for  
reporters, Sullivan misstated the day of the bombing by five days.  
Likely, his knowledge of the case came not from unread COINTELPRO  
memos but an oral briefing from his assistant who had been reading the  
memos, Chip Brennan.

When the Pentagon Papers scandal broke and the FBI was determined to  
know all it could about Daniel Ellsberg the outraged Hoover ordered  
Sullivan to get the case out of the news.  Hoover wanted results and  
Sullivan turned to his chief assistant to personally handle the case.   
Brennan approached the matter with his usual enthusiasm and that was  
his undoing.  Brennan ordered the interviewing of Ellsberg's  
father-in-law, a friend of Hoover, and earned the wrath of the  
director for his efforts.

Sullivan was fired in August 1971 following a move for Hoover's job  
over the Kissinger wiretaps.  Without his mentor and guardian, William  
Sullivan, the reprimanded Brennan finished out his career in a field  
office.

Meanwhile, back in Omaha, the COINTELPRO operation worked and the tape  
recording was dropped and was never heard by the jury that convicted  
Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa.  Both men were sentenced to life  
imprisonment and remain confined at the maximum-security Nebraska  
State Penitentiary where they continue to maintain their innocence.

Poindexter now has a new trial request pending before the Nebraska  
Supreme Court over the withheld evidence and conflicting police  
testimony.  No date for a decision has been announced.

***

Permission granted to reprint




Authors Bio: Michael Richardson is a freelance writer based in Boston.  
Richardson writes about politics, law, nutrition, ethics, and music.  
Richardson is also a political consultant.