Murder of Black Panthers linked to JFK assassination?

[Myra Bronstein]

...
Everyone knows of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre where 7 gangsters were killed and all of the outcry and brouhaha it created. The public outrage, etc etc. Yet on Memorial Day in 1937 the Chicago police, without provocation, opened fire on peaceful workers picketing a steel company at 116th st. in South Chicago and 10 workers were killed and scores wounded. The picketers had nothing more dangerous than picket signs in their hands and yet 10 were killed, one more than the horrifying massacre 8 years previous. These were peaceful citizens striking for better conditions and they were murdered by the Chicago police. This wasn't a case of gangsters murdering fellow gangsters so you might wonder where all of the public outrage was? I'm sure you wouldn't be shocked at the news that these murders were suppressed by the media. There was a film crew, a Hollywood newsreel team, which captured this event on film. and another shock, the government suppressed the film.
Just another day in Chicago.

Thanks for posting this David. I googled this incident and added a thread on the subject to our forum board "The War on Workers and Labor Unions."
http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...#post23724

IMO the quest to maximize profits at the expense of the work force--the desire for cheap, ideally free, labor--is the real story, real history.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Then there's the Daniel Groth link in the necessary book, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass.

Then there are radically new insights into the National Security State provided in assassination research like this ON THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE CIA AND CHICAGO POLICE OFFICER WHO WAS INVOLVED IN BOTH THE NOVEMBER CHICAGO 1963 INCIDENT AND THE LATER 1969 MURDER OF BLACK PANTHER LEADER FRED HAMPTON UNDER WHAT MIGHT BE MISLABELED COINTELPRO--check this out; unbelievable!
Sorry for the choppy type, but it sort of matches the choppy material!
------------------
Thomas Arthur valle was quickly identified from intelligence sources as an ex-Marine who was a "disaffiliated member of the John
Birch Society,"....Vallee was also descirbed as a loner, a paranoind schizophrenic, and a gun collector. He fit perfectly the 'lone nut'
profile that would late be used fo characterize ex-Marine Lee Harvey Oswald.

Only after two secret service agents surveilling Vallee found an M1 rifle, a carbine rifle, and twenty-five hundred rounds of ammunition, were
Chicago police officers Daniel Groth and Peter Schurla assigned the task of surveilling Vallee on Novermber 2nd. Interestingly, Douglass notes that
both of these officers were destined for

prominanat roles in police intelligence activites. In 1975, when a reporter tried unsuccessfully to interview Peter Schurla
about Vallee's arrest,
Schurla was a high-level intelligence official at Chicago police headquarters. His companion, Daniel Groth's career on intellignec had by then
become more public and more notorious tha Schurla's

At 4:30 A.M. on december 4, 1969, six years after the arrest of Thomas Arthur Vallee, Sergeant Daniel Groth commanded the police team that broke
into the the Chicago aprtment of Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. The heavily armed officers shot both men to death. ...Groth
(later) acknowledged under oath that his team of officers had carried out the assault of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark at the specific request of the
FBI (JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 203-204)

Douglass goes on to note, however that Northeastern Illinois Prof. dan Stern researched Daniel groths background and found that Groth had taken
several "training leaves" from the Chicago Police department to go to Washington D.C. where Groth' underwent speacialized counterintelligence
training under the auspices of both the FBI and the CIA.

The Chicago Police Department and the Los Angeles Police department seem to have had the closest ties with the CIA. They were pioneer members of the Law Enforcemnt Intelligence Union, a CIA -police liason program that was seen as a rival to similar and older liason-programs that the FBI had
established with most other police departments. The LEIU was formed in 1956. This, of course, does not preclude other CIA-Police programs, but Los Angeles and Chicago seem to stand out as the oldest and largest.

There's lots more on this in Douglass' book. Not bad for the first page I fliped open

One has to wonder if Groth and Schurla knew about Vallee before they were tipped off by the Secret Service. It might sound like too little compartmentalization if they did, but given their earlier involvement with the CIA, and Schurla's later involvement in polical murder, it
seems at least a possiblility.

[John Kowalski]

I appreciate your comments. You're completely right. In 20 years of study and research I've never come across a link between the murders of Hampton and JFK. That doesn't mean there isn't a link but even if there is one I realize what an impossible task it would be to prove it. Where do you start? That's why I posed the question to the experienced long time researchers like yourselves who might have heard about any such connection. I thought it was worth a try because I haven't been able to find a starting point. Even if I was back in Chicago and got the police and FBI files on the raid they wouldn't show any connection. I was told this when I was in SDS in 70 or 71 and I can't even remember who said it. I didn't give it any attention at the time because, like you, I thought the Black Panthers were murdered because of their threat to the political structure. The staus quo didn't need any other reason to murder them. But ever since I started researching the JFK assassination this possible link has bothered me but if no one else knows of a connection then obviously it's a dead end.

There may also be a connection between Hampton's bodyguard, William O'Neal, who gave the floor plan to Hampton's apartment to the Chicago Police. His handler was an FBI agent, Roy Mitchell. If Mitchell was involved with Cointelpro, then, he too may have had a connection with earlier FBI operations that may have involved Oswald or may have worked with former Chicago FBI man, Guy Banister.

John

[David Purcell]

If anyone is interested I have come across a link to the murders of the Black Panthers Hampton and Clark and the JFK assassination. In the Gemstone files it mentions that the Black Panthers were killed because of their knowledge of the scheduled assassination of JFK at Soldiers Field in Chicago. My source had said Dallas, that's one discrepancy. I don't believe the Gemstone files were circulating in 70 or 71 so I don't believe my source read it in the Gemstone files.
This information helps a bit because there was a hit team in Chicago and one of the riflemen was arrested several days before the scheduled visit.
The trip to Chicago was cancelled. The man arrested was released and when I lived in Chicago I tried to see the arrest records but was told they had disappeared. I believe that Abraham Bolden, the Secret Service agent who was jailed and persecuted may know more about this. He has written a book and now I'll have to get a copy. There may be a trail here after all.