The Liberty City 7--The Black Panthers Revisited?

The Geek does not consider the recent (non) verdicts to be a "major" setback to Federal efforts directed against "homegrown" terrorism or the domestic funding of overseas terror groups. It wasn't a defeat for genuine law enforcement; it was an example of how the Feds don't learn from history. Not even from their own.

Back in the late Sixties and early Seventies there was a national organisation called the Black Panther Party (BPP). It started in Oakland, CA and spread rapidly across the country with major branches in Chicago and New York City.

To put it simply: The Black Panthers scared the pants off both the US government and most Americans.

The Panthers were labeled "terrorists." Not once or twice but over and over again. Not just by the easily scared and those who pander to fear. No. The label was almost universal in its application.

The BPP didn't help its image by widely quoted outbursts of rhetorical overkill. It didn't cool fears with recurrent photos of its leaders and members brandishing guns and angry expressions.

The Federal government launched a suppressive effort. Local police "intelligence" squads pawed the ground to join the FBI in the effort to squash the BPP like a bunch of grapes.

With a (metaphorical) whoop and holler the local cops and the Feeb went after the Panthers with means that were not fair but most assuredly foul. These included not only the usual employment of "technical" surveillance (you know, wiretaps and bugs), mail covers, physical surveillance including photography, breaking and entering, theft.

The efforts against the BPP relied as well on the use of informers, often cops in radical clothing.

The line between informing and provoking is neither sharp nor clear. Informing might be a legal albeit tasteless practice. Provoking criminal actions, including conspiracy, is not.

The effort paid off with a number of high profile arrests and trials. Most of the trials ended in acquittals, hung juries, or guilty verdicts overturned on appeal.

The reason?

The informers, the centerpiece of the government's case, turned out to have been the driving force of the alleged conspiracy. The informer had become the provoker. Often the only overt action required to demonstrate the existence of a criminal conspiracy was performed by or at the strenuous urgings of the informer.

Now, get a grip on this. The purpose of the arrests, the trials, and all the surrounding media hype was not, repeat, not to obtain a conviction.

In the campaign against the BPP, the intent of all the actions, both legal and illegal, was the organisational disruption of the party. The goal with the Panthers was the same as it had been a decade earlier with the Communist Party USA. Fatal organisational disruption.

The goal was achieved. The BPP joined the CPUSA in the scrap heap of failed political parties.

The efforts taken against the Panthers, the tactics used against the CPUSA, were neither nice nor necessary. Nonetheless, their effectiveness cannot be doubted.

So much for the videotape of history. Now for the Liberty City Seven.

As the government's case unfolded these past weeks, the Geek was struck by the similarities with the Panther trials. The defendants were members of a politically, socially, and economically marginalised segment of American society. They were given to wild talk, boasts that bestowed upon the speaker an aura of potency.

Like so many of the Panthers, the Liberty City 7 talked the talk of potency because their lives gave no opportunity to walk the walk of the truly potent.

The defendants may, again like so many of the Panthers thirty plus years earlier, have had an eye firmly on the main chance. "Hey, man, if there's money in this al-Qaeda dude, lets get ours."

What that means is that the defense contention that the Seven were out to scam the scamster not launch Big Sears into low Earth orbit is inherently credible.

No wonder the jury took nine days to throw up their hands on six of the Seven while acquitting the seventh.

Is there a lesson to this?

Of course there is. The Geek is not given to bloviating for its own sake. The lesson is at least twofold.

The first lesson is this. Organisational disruption works only when there is an organisation to disrupt. There wasn't one in this case. In other cases such as the Holy Land Foundation case there is. Thus, even mis-trials are good.

The second lesson is this. The government at all levels treads a very fine line between using legal (and less than legal) methods to protect society against genuine threats and employing the manifold coercive tools at its disposal against small men with big mouths or unpleasant ideas.

In the Holy Land Foundation matter and others, the Federal government stood on the correct side of the line. With the Liberty City Seven case, it did not.

Moral of the story: Target selection is critical. That means choose only those targets which are genuine threats. With its resources, government at all levels should be able to parse between impotent loud talkers and real deal wannabe terrorists. It ought to be able to identify those whose actions fund or support off-shore terrorist groups and ignore those individuals who support humanitarian enterprises.

At the least the feds ought to realize that every time they come a cropper by failing to properly identify and prosecute a genuine threat, they not only boost the confidence of real blackhats, they lower the trust in the good judgement (and taste) of the government on the part of the rest of us.