Conspiracies and The FBI - in Black And White

As many of you know from personal experience, the word "conspiracy" is off limits to Black people. No matter how much evidence you produce to not just support, but prove your assertion that the U.S. government has worked to destabilize, discredit and destroy Black organizations through the FBI's Counter Intelligence program (COINTELPRO), Whites, particularly in the media, will reject your assertion. Now, we wonder, how will the mainstream media handle the fact that according to a Newsweek poll, as many as 43% of Americans polled, believe that the FBI is involved in a cover-up, concerning the Timothy McVeigh case?

In reality the whole McVeigh case presents a trial of sorts for White America, which began on the day of the bombing of the office building in Oklahoma City. It is interesting how few people remember that it was Muslims or "Arab-looking" men who were originally sought in the terrorist bombing. Even fewer remember that ABC News broadcast a report, only 1 hour after the bombing, that someone from the Nation Of Islam had claimed responsibility for the bombing. We gather that not too many Whites care to remember such. We also deduct that those Whites - liberals and conservatives - who pride themselves as media watchdogs, in terms of fairness and accuracy, don't notice media bias or lies hurled against Blacks and Muslims or God forbid, Black Muslims, on their radar screens. Some of these outfits and cable TV shows like those on CNN and Fox that style themselves as media critics are pathetic when it comes to noticing race-bias. Well, we shouldn't be surprised, as these shows don't feature a single Black person on their panels.

How "shocking" it was then when it was White men who were arrested and held responsible for the Oklahoma City terrorist attack. Some Whites still can't even get themselves to call it a "terrorist" attack, having conditioned themselves to only see terrorism in the actions of darker-skinned people. In our opinion, the media and the psyche of White America still has not recovered from this episode in White male terrorism, on American soil.

Now, the plot thickens as the US government has been found to have withheld thousands of pages of documents from Mc Veigh's attorneys. The self-righteous indignation of the media and even members of Congress over the incident is almost hilarious. These same media outlets and members of Congress were present when the Church committee revealed that the US government had withheld thousands of documents from Black organizations, planted negative news stories on Black organizations, paid for informants to infiltrate Black organizations and even worked to foment civil wars that turned violent inside of Black organizations.

Then and even now, these media outlets and lawmakers have not lifted a finger to hold the FBI accountable for the lives lost in the Black community, in the 60s and 70s, through the FBI's mischief making.

The public outcry and outrage over how the FBI handled the McVeigh case is a study in and of itself. And it is so peculiar to hear lawmakers and journalists openly speculate that McVeigh did not act alone.

In many cases these are the same individuals who mocked and ridiculed the efforts of the Black community, led by the King family, to demonstrate that more than just one person was involved in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

Even the media reporting on the chronology of FBI mishaps is White-centered. Every mainstream media outlet that we have reviewed over the weekend begins its documentation of FBI mistakes and errors with Waco. It is as if the mainstream media would have us believe that it is only in the last decade that the FBI has shown indications of dishonesty and ineptitude.

Of course conservatives do such to make it look like former President Clinton and Janet Reno are responsible for the recent "demise" of the FBI.

Blacks would beg to differ and some in the community would be more than willing to take White America back to 1921 where an FBI agent named J. Edgar Hoover falsified evidence in order to get a Black nationalist leader named Marcus Garvey deported.

The supposed fourth estate is a joke and their handling of the McVeigh revelations and the FBI's handling of the case is of course, racist. For over 5 years we have been watching White reporters stick the microphones and cameras in the face of grieving White victims and survivors of the bombings, when there were plenty of Black victims - even babies - to cover.

We noticed this same scenario in the Columbine shootings. For the first few days we saw the Black victims covered and then when that Black family began to make race-oriented arguments around Columbine, the White victims began to receive full coverage. Now, Columbine has a White face when it began with a Black one. Columbine is now about troubled White youth. It is no longer even partly about troubled white youth who shot a young Black boy in the face simply because he was Black.

The same can be seen in the hate-crimes debate, which we have warned our viewers about for nearly a year. What started out as a debate over Blacks like James Byrd Jr. being dragged and murdered because he is Black, is now about Whites like Matthew Shepherd being beaten to death because they are homosexual. And now the Black Cincinnati rioters who were upset over the police shooting of a young unarmed black male are now potentially facing hate-crimes charges for the beatings of White motorists.

In the McVeigh case, it was some of the Black families of victims, who for years, have been arguing that McVeigh did not act alone. The media largely ignored their claims in favor of embarking on a journey into the mind of a Bronze-star winning White male soldier who "suddenly" developed an "anti-government" disposition that White liberals argue came, in part, from listening to White conservative talk-show hosts, like Rush Limbaugh, who are consistently critical of Big government.

Now, in a bizarre turn of events, and because of what Blacks have long known about the FBI, McVeigh may now pick up the cause, championed by many Blacks, of promoting a moratorium on death-penalty executions, at least those that are Federal in nature. It is so interesting to see how government lies and deceit may eventually create a coalition against it, made up of people of different classes and races that do not even like or trust one another.

And now, since Whites are allowed to use the c-word, Black leaders may soon be allowed to follow.

And who knows, maybe then the mainstream media will cover it.

Cedric Muhammad

Monday, May 14, 2001

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