Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-Ups (52 page)

Photo excerpted from the DVD release of The Murder of Fred Hampton © Facets Multi-Media, 2007

Two shots were heard, which it was later discovered were fired point blank in Hampton’s head. According to Deborah Johnson, one officer then said:

“He’s good and dead now.”
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Their informant had provided the police with a map that diagrammed the exact layout of Hampton’s apartment. They knew exactly where to go, and they burst through the door with guns blazing to get there.

Fred Hampton, Jr. was born twenty-five days later.

Here’s the account that his mother gave of the pre-dawn murder of the boy’s father—this is in her own words:

I looked up and saw bullets coming from what seemed like the front of the apartment and the kitchen area in the back. Bullets were going into the mattress. The sparks of light, the bed vibrating—I just knew with all this going on, it was all over. At some point the shooting stopped. Fred didn’t move anymore. I came out with my hands up. There were two lines of police I had to walk though. One of them grabbed my robe and pulled it open. I was eight and a half months pregnant then. “Well, what do you know. We have a pregnant broad.” Another policeman grabbed me by the hair and slung me into the kitchen area. I looked around and saw Ron Satchel on the dining room floor. He had blood all over him. Verlina Brewer was in the kitchen, bleeding. She started to fall. They grabbed her and threw her against the refrigerator. Then more shooting. I heard a voice that wasn’t familiar to me say, “He’s barely alive. He’ll barely make it.” I assumed they were talking about Fred.

The shooting started again, just for a brief period. It stopped. Then another unfamiliar voice said, “He’s good and dead now.”
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BIBLIOGRAPHY

“The Murder of Fred Hampton,” dir. by Mike Gray & Howard Alk (Facets Multi-Media, 2007, dvd).
http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Fred-Hampton/dp/B000O75GWQ

The Assassination of Fred Hampton:
How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther; Jeffrey Haas, 2009

We Are Not What We Seem:
Black Nationalism and Class Struggle in the American Century, Rod Bush, 2000, NYU Press. (Panthers doubling in size through merger: p. 216)

Agents of Repression:
The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement; Ward Churchill & Jim Vander Wall, 1988

The COINTELPRO Papers:
Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States; Ward Churchill & Jim Vander Wall, 1990

“COINTELPRO from the Church Committee Reports” and “FBI COINTELPRO Documents”, Paul Wolf, 1996-2004, ICDC.com.
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/ cointelpro/cointel.htm

“Akua Njeri (Deborah Johnson)”,
Human Constitutional Rights.org.
http://www.hrcr. org/ccr/njeri.html

“Interview with Deborah Johnson, Eyes on the Prize II Interviews”, Terry Rockefeller, October 19, 1988.
http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eii/eiiweb/joh5427.0255.082marc_ record_interviewee_process.html

“Fred Hampton”, John Simkin,
Spartacus Educational,
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet. co.uk/USAhamptonF.htm

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Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D., Mark Curriden & Benjamin Wecht, Grave Secrets: Leading Forensic Expert Reveals the Startling Truth About O.J. Simpson, David Koresh, Vincent Foster, and Other Sensational Cases, Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D. with Mark Curriden and Benjamin Wecht, 1998.

⁴⁵⁴
Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D., et al., Grave Secrets

⁴⁵⁵
Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D., et al., Grave Secrets

⁴⁵⁶
The Murder of Fred Hampton, dir. by Mike Gray & Howard Alk (Facets Multi-Media, 2007, dvd).
http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Fred-Hampton/dp/B000O75GWQ

⁴⁵⁷
The Murder of Fred Hampton, dir. by Mike Gray & Howard Alk

⁴⁵⁸
Ward Churchill & Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (South End Press, 1988).

⁴⁵⁹
HumanConstitutionalRights.org, Akua Njeri (Deborah Johnson),
http://www.hrcr.org/ccr/njeri.html
(accessed 12 Jan 2012).

Vincent Foster — July 20, 1993 White House Counsel

VICTIM:

VINCE FOSTER, WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL

Cause of Death:

GUNSHOT

Official Verdict:

SUICIDE

Actual Circumstances:

Victim found in public park on a Tuesday afternoon. The evidence indicates he was murdered with a low-velocity weapon such as a .22, producing no exit wound. Evidence is not consistent with the official version which purports that he shot himself with a Colt .38 at point-blank range (directly into his own mouth) with high-velocity ammunition.

Inconsistencies:

1. The person who first found Foster in the park examined his body closely because he was very curious as to what had happened. He swore under oath that no gun was present at that time in either hand of the victim, and that he was certain of that fact. The FBI pressured the witness to alter his story, but he refused.

2. A gun was found in victim’s hand according to the official version, but it was a .38 caliber revolver. A .38 produces a powerful recoil after discharge and that recoil typically “throws” the gun several feet from a suicide victim.

3. No blowback of blood or tissue was found on the gun or on Foster’s hand or on his sleeve. That is literally impossible from a .38 caliber Army Colt Special expending a high-velocity round into his head at very close range.

4. The powder burn patterns on Foster’s hand indicate they were discharged from the FRONT of a gun cylinder. If Foster had been holding the gun himself when he was shot, then the pattern burns would have indicated that they were discharged from the REAR of the gun cylinder.

5. Foster’s fingerprints were not on the gun. The FBI identified two prints on the weapon, but they did not belong to Foster.

6. The gunpowder residue that was found on Foster’s clothing and eyeglasses DID NOT COME from the gun found in his hand.

7. The forensic evidence clearly indicates that the body was moved after the death of the victim. Witness testimony is consistent that there was very little blood at the scene. A .38 caliber high-velocity round produces a huge exit wound and a large pool of blood due to the fact that the heart keeps pumping after a gunshot to the head; an action that lasts until the heart runs out of blood to pump, thereby producing a massive pool at the scene of the gunshot. Its absence is a forensic indication that either the victim was killed somewhere else and then moved, or the gunshot took place after the victim was already dead.

8. The blood evidence also indicates that the body was moved post-mortem. Blood does not run uphill, it runs in accordance with gravity. Yet a dried trickle of blood on Foster’s face did run uphill in defiance of gravity, indicating that the corpse was originally in a much different position. The corpse was not checked for lividity marks at the crime scene (standard police procedure), which would have indicated whether or not the victim had actually died in that position.

9. No soil samples were obtainable from Foster’s shoes, according to the FBI report. However, in two re-enactments, walking from the parking lot to the crime scene in similar shoes, both tests accumulated very detectable soil samples on the exact same type of shoes that Foster was wearing. This fact is yet another indication that the body was moved post-mortem.

10. The “suicide note” supposedly found later in Foster’s office at the White House has been determined to be a forgery by three handwriting experts who analyzed it independently.

11. The “suicide note” contained no fingerprints of Foster’s, even though he supposedly had torn it into twenty-eight pieces.

12. A report from the Medical Examiner uncovered at the National Archives reveals that Foster had an ADDITIONAL GUNSHOT WOUND in his neck that was not reported.

13. There is no evidence that the gun found in his hand belonged to Foster. Nor is there any evidence that the gun fired the fatal shot.

14. The gun reportedly found in Foster’s hand was not his own gun, but was a “drop gun” of the type that is used by professional killers because it is pieced together from various guns and is therefore impossible to trace.

15. The gun in Foster’s hand was a .38, yet he was apparently shot with a .22, a smaller caliber wound which explains why it was not at first disclosed that there was no exit wound. The medical examiner viewing the damage at the scene stated that “it was consistent with a low-velocity weapon.” A higher caliber .38 creates an exit wound with a gaping hole because of its much higher velocity. The much more powerful explosion taking place from a .38 also produces a strong “blowback,” discharging blood and tissue out the mouth of the victim. Yet no blood or tissue was found on the gun.

16. Although the official version is that the bullet exited the rear of Foster’s skull, the bullet was never located. Furthermore, autopsy doctor clearly states that there was no exit wound and there is substantial eyewitness testimony corroborating the absence of an exit wound.

17. The supposed crime scene weapon contained two .38 cartridges, one of which had been expended and one which had not. They were high-velocity .38 rounds of ammunition, which is dramatically inconsistent with the evidence at the crime scene, which displayed the absence of a large pool of blood and the absence of a large exit wound on the victim.

18. One of the first witnesses to arrive at the crime scene was a medical technician who emphatically describes the weapon as an automatic not as a revolver and his detailed description of it is highly consistent with that of an automatic.

19. The gun in Foster’s hand is clearly shown in an ABC color photo and its color is black. Foster’s family members all concur that Vince Foster’s gun was silver in color. Yet when the FBI showed Foster’s widow the gun supposedly from the crime scene, the gun that they showed her was a silver one.

20. When Foster’s widow went to look for her husband’s gun where it was normally stored, she found a different gun there that no one in the family recognized as being Vince Foster’s.

21. The only ammunition found at Foster’s home was of .22 caliber, not .38. The FBI will not reveal the caliber of the silver handgun in their possession.

22. Eyewitness testimony indicates that Foster’s car was not present at the park at the time that his body was first found. Two other cars were. Foster’s car was found in the parking lot AFTER the corpse had been found, and the two other cars were then gone.

23. Foster was a very tall man, nearly 6’5”. Yet the driver’s seat of his car found at the park was pushed so far forward that it was in a position which was appropriate for a person about 5’8” tall. It would have been needlessly difficult for Foster to have driven his car with the seat that far forward. That fact implies that Foster’s car was driven to the park later by someone other than he.