************************************************************************* Disclaimer: DSANET is an unmoderated list open to the public. The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author. Please observe a voluntary limit of no more than one message per day. ************************************************************************* The author of this message is ANDERSON DAVID <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> In discussion of spying on left, someone mentioned the murder of Communist Workers Party activists by Klansmen and neo-Nazis in 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina. Five were killed and nine others were wounded. All-white juries on two occasions refused to convict the killers. Four TV crews had filmed the murders. I saw a tape of the killings and you can clearly see who is shooting who (all the victims were CWPers). Six years after the massacre, a civil suit on behalf of the survivors and injured, alleging government complicity with the Klan and neo-Nazis, was partially won. In the book "It Did Happen Here: Recollections of Political Repression in America" by Bud and Ruth Schultz, Paul Bermanzohn, one of the injured, is interviewed. He says that "Bernard Butkovich, an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, was exposed in the Greensboro Daily News as having been part of the planning sessions for the massacre. The BATF had sent Bernard into Winston-Salem to infiltrate the Nazis in July of 1979... Butkovich helped arrange the coalition of the Nazis and the Klan, called the United Racist Front. The only thing the Racist Front ever did was carry out the massacre in Greensboro. It was Butkovich who incited them to violence and offered to train them in commando tactics. And, interestingly enough, this federal firearms agent offered to provide them with explosives, including grenades. "...Edward Dawson had been a longtime informer for the FBI. Dawson was the guy who, at our press conference, told us he couldn't believe that the Klan existed in a city like Greensboro. Dawson was the same guy who organized and recruited Klansmen for the caravan. He was a leader of the group. He confessed to that. During the Klan-Nazi trial in Greensboro, several Klansmen testified that Dawson showed up at the rendezvous point with maps. He kept walking around looking at his watch, they said, hurrying everybody up. "Dawson was in the lead car. He yelled out of the window something like 'you communist son of a bitch' to me. Our eyes met, and at that moment I remembered him from the press conference two days before. I told the police about this guy later, after I got out of the hospital. But they never brought any charges against Dawson. Why should they? This was their boy. There is not a shadow of a doubt that Dawson was working with the Greensboro police while he organized this murderous caravan. On the morning of November third, Eddie Dawson talked two times on the telephone to his police contact, Jerry Cooper, alias 'Rooster.' He warned Cooper that the Klan was heavily armed--'everybody had a gun'--and that they are planning a confrontation. The police record shows that Dawson reported this at ten-thirty on the morning of November 3, 1979. The murders took place at eleven twenty-two. "Where were the police? The police were sent for sandwiches. The police assigned to duty for the march were ordered to go to an early lunch, only to arrive on the scene too late, minutes after the massacre. "Earlier, Cooper himself had gone out to the rendezvous point of the Klan. Cooper watched them for a long time. He photographed them. He followed them seven miles through Greensboro. The caravan consisted of nine cars of Klansmen and Nazis and one unmarked car with Detective Cooper. One block from the site of the murders, Cooper turned away from the caravan. He never made any effort to stop them. When he was later asked why, he said he didn't want to violate their civil rights, God forbid." The Communist Workers Party was a small national Maoist group which had been founded in NYC's Chinatown. Dave Anderson
