[This article is part of a special for Black History Month that looks at the intelligence agency’s war on Black American activists, which the corporate media never spotlights.—Editors]
Activist leaders and rappers have tried to help convert drug-dealing gangs into activist organizations since the 1960s.
U.S. intelligence has tried to hijack these efforts and undermine or even murder these activists, likely due to it thwarting their street-level drug-distribution network that helps them sedate and divide communities of color.[1]
Revolutionary Black Panther Party leader Dr. Alli Muhammad, M.D., was raised by parents who were both medical doctors and were members of the 1960s Black Panther Party.
As of 2017, the Revolutionary Black Panther Party, which Dr. Muhammad helped found in 1992, reportedly had 40 chapters and 700 members nationwide.
Dr. Muhammad gives evidence of a recent example of such murderous opposition in Chicago, Milwaukee and Atlanta, through an interview below.
The Black Panthers, Gang Conversion Leader Larry Hoover and U.S. Intelligence Opposition
The backstory regarding these Chicago gangs is that former Chicago-based Illinois Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton had successfully organized a merger of his Chicago Black Panther Party and one of Chicago’s largest gangs, The Blackstone Rangers, in 1968.
The Blackstone Rangers were inspired to change their name to the Black P. Stone Nation in honor of the merger and activist conversion.
The FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) used undercover agents and sent fake “concerned black citizens” to Black P. Stone Nation’s Jeff Fort and Hampton to help stop that merger.[2]
The FBI’s COINTELPRO employed an undercover agent, William O’Neal, who provided floor plans of Hampton’s apartment and drugged him before he was shot, along with Panther leader Mark Clark.[3]
Fred Hampton’s life and death at the hands of the FBI were made even more famous by the surprisingly accurate 2021 mainstream film about him, Judas and the Black Messiah, which was nominated for six Academy Awards and won two that year.
At least one source said that, in 1969, Chicago’s gang leader Larry Hoover merged his Gangster Disciples with leader David Barksdale’s Black Disciples.
They both then had their new Black Gangster Disciple Nation merge with the Black P. Stones and Vice Lords to form “a peaceful alliance known as the Lords, Stones and Disciples (LSD) in order to lessen bloodshed and unify in an attempt to fight for civil rights,” before the end of 1969.
FBI “Officially” Ends COINTELPRO, but Continues It Against Hoover, Panthers and Tupac?
Former FBI Agent Wes Swearingen reported COINTELPRO’s continuance into the 1990s.
Did the FBI target Larry Hoover and David Barksdale in a similar way that a mass of evidence shows they targeted Panther leader Fred Hampton for working on gang activist conversions?
Larry Hoover was sentenced to more than 150 years in prison in 1973 and David Barksdale was fatally shot in 1974, after which these gang peace alliances were broken up.
Larry Hoover maintains that, from prison, he wrote a book and was working toward leading The Gangster Disciples street gang to turn into the community service organization, Growth and Development, inspiring best-selling rappers Kanye West and Drake to spend a decade making appeals for his release.
Below is my interview with Dr. Alli Muhammad, M.D., the founder and Chief General in Command of the Revolutionary Black Panther Party.
John Potash: And so you were telling me that a rapper and the [Chicago gang] Gangster Disciple’s leader were trying to gain a peace truce with another gang—the Black Disciples. Is that right?
Dr. Alli Muhammad, M.D.: Correct, yes. Rapper FBG Duck was calling for peace. He was with a project called Project 2020, Vision 2020. And in that sense, he was calling for peace. He’s actually a pioneer of a genre of music they call Drill Music. And for those who don’t know, when you understand how U.S. intelligence and other agencies use music and entertainment as a form of social conditioning and social engineering, we understand how serious the drill music thing is. The drill music actually was started in Chicago, Illinois, and he’s one of the pioneers.
For those who know the music genre, there’s a rapper by the name of Chief Keef, there’s a rapper by the name of JoJo. He’s known as FBG Duck, the one that I’m speaking about in particular, also known as Carlton Weekly. And so, there was rivalry with the Black Disciples and this music genre was used. And whenever someone was killed, or was going to be killed, a lot of times it’s rapped in the music, right? So there will be like, you know, “I’m going to roll up on so-and-so and blah-blah-blah’s going to happen.”
So this was going on. So after it happens, they would rap about it. So it would keep the feud going on. One would get killed; they rap about it. Next one would get killed, they rap about it—they’re going to do it. And they called it smoking the opp, is the term that they use [Dr. Muhammad later calls it “smoking ops” which are murder operations—see video example here where rapper tries to exploit Tupac image while glorifying senseless murder]. So it got so bad to where he begins to stand up and say, “enough is enough.” He was pushing peace. And he said he wanted this peace and truce to go on to save the young people in the community. He did this in March of 2020. Well, people started looking for him. And before you knew it, August 4, 2020, he was assassinated in a very upscale community in Chicago, Illinois. People can actually do a Google search to see where it was and who he is—FBG Duck is his name. Very popular and a pioneer of this music genre.
John Potash: FBG Duck was killed?
Dr. Muhammad: Yes, and his actual name is Carlton Weekly. So he was gunned down and the Chicago PD—you can see on video, it’s in public media and news media—actually sat there and watched him die. They didn’t let the EMS or anybody service him or anything like that. They let him die and the shooters got away. As the shooters got away, there are cameras that actually show a marked police car escorting the shooters into this area they call “O Block.” O Block is where the BDs [Black Disciples gang] are at [called “the most dangerous block in Chicago” by The Chicago Sun Times-Eds.]. You can see five people on the video running out of the car, somebody coming back to get a black bag, and they talk to the officer in the vehicle—the officer is dressed in white—then the vehicle pulls away.
There’s a murder trial going on right now for FBG Duck. The FBI is involved in this murder trial. On trial—and it’s documented—they’re asking the Chicago PD, “who’s driving the vehicle?” And they said they can’t identify what vehicle that is from them, though it’s their marked vehicle. But when he died, the mayor at that time gave a press conference assaulting his character, calling him all these disparaging things. Then the police in the audience clapped when his death was announced. And so, this helped to exasperate the promo between the two.
The area where the BDs are at is called “O Block.” The official name of the facility is called Parkway Gardens. It’s where Michelle Obama actually was from. And the other area is called 63rd, it’s at Saint Lawrence and Martin Luther King and they called it 63rd. So the two popular rappers at that time were Saint Von and FBG Duck. And the music is like laced with a lot of stuff involving people who are dying. But my point in talking about this, is that drill music is actually very dangerous in the urban community. I’m talking about to the point as to where it’s part of the culture now. You have a rivalry with a neighbor and these young people are talking “smoking opps” and they’re children and they’ll even make up songs and do all sorts of things that are disparaging. It’s a part of the culture now and it’s very detrimental. It’s all over the world and when they do it, it involves formulating gang violence or personal violence with the music genre. And Chicago is really bad because when FBG Duck was killed it just made it worse. And the other rapper who was popular, King Von, he was killed in Atlanta but it still made it worse.
And in his trial, it comes up that the other rapper allegedly paid $100,000 to have him killed, but again, there are informants that are admitted U.S. informants in this trial. Right now, if you looked it up, there’s an informant who’s an influencer and is called Trenches News. He actually, at one point in time, was on that O Block side where the BDs are. Then he went to 63rd with the GDs. So he infiltrated both of them, but all this time no one knew. I’m going to say even I would watch Trenches News sometimes. No one knew that he was actually a federal informant and now he’s listed in the trial right now. He’s a federal informant. They paid him $25,000 to infiltrate and give them news.
So, U.S. intelligence is all over this particular thing and this whole drill music thing is just totally insane. And the mother of FBG Duck, Christina Weekly, who I’m in correspondence with is very devasted by all of this. She wants justice for her son. They tried to make it difficult for her to actually sue. Whenever you’re in a city, they try to do that and give you the run around. She wanted to sue the city, I mean sue the county, and the sheriff’s department, and the emergency fire rescue people for letting her son just die like that. So there’s more coming out of that.
John Potash: Okay, got you. When they use the word informant, I believe that the best evidence of this means agent, paid agent. Informant sounds like they’re just passively sending across information, but often they’re being manipulated, told, or instructed to do particular things that can include murder. Informant is just a euphemism that makes them sound innocuous. They usually are working directly for the FBI or police intelligence. Obviously, this sounds like a latter day COINTELPRO operation used to stop a peace truce between these two gangs that sounds like Carlton Weekly—or FBG Duck—was trying to do to continue the gang peace truce movement, which of course Tupac was instrumental in helping out way back when and had spread throughout the country. It’s great that FBG Duck was continuing it. It’s incredible how they’ll target anyone trying to cause peace. Partly because sometimes when these leaders—like FBG Duck—are trying to gain peace truces, they’re curtailing some of the drug dealing. I don’t know if this was the case with FBG Duck, but I know a lot of other gangs were cutting down or cutting out the drug dealing, as part of the peace movement. That cost the money launderers and the CIA and others that are trafficking the drugs, billions of dollars.
Dr. Muhammad: In 2017, you can actually look this up, there’s a social media trail. I had organized with some of the top BD [Black Disciple] people who can actually have a truce. GDs [Gangster Disciples] as well. At that time, the reformed GDs let me say that because when they joined us, they were doing a positive thing, The Chicago Revolutionary Black Panther Party and also the Black P. Stones and the Vice Lords. This is a documented dynamic that can actually be verified. There were two meetings. They had the first meeting with just these hedge meetings first before they met with me. The second meeting was going to be with me…
John Potash: So you were doing this in Chicago, Dr. Muhammad?
Dr. Muhammad: It was organized in a national gang truce, but a treaty starting in Chicago with the Vice Lords, BDs, GDs, and Black P. Stones. This was in 2017—May of 2017. The heads of the BDs, GDs, Vice Lords, and Stones at that time that could actually make this change happen had got together. We organized it very well. I’m going to mention the actual name that they would know of the person who headed our Chicago Chapter, who at that time was a GD that goes back to Larry Hoover. His nickname is Hot Rod and I’m just going to say his first name, Rodney. They’ll know exactly who I’m talking to you about. General RT, who was the leader of our Chicago Chapter at that time.
What happened is, at the meeting, they met at this bar and he got poisoned. He was poisoned with antifreeze and almost died. So we couldn’t have any further truce going on. I know U.S. intelligence is involved, but it clarified to me how deep they’re involved. In the Midwest, we march with guns. In the Midwest, we do different trainings, we have programs in the community. As soon as you start talking about peace, there’s something else that happens. And documented as well, prior to that, I had gotten poisoned in Milwaukee. It was similar, but it was in my food though. I don’t want to compare what was worse. He actually vomited and defecated a lot and had to stay in the hospital for two days. Me, I was comatose for over a week going on two weeks. It was a whole different type of thing. Doing the same thing. That same year, you can look it up yourself, it shows the Revolutionary Panther Party doing a lawsuit against Milwaukee Police Department for $400 million—look it up. They tried to kill me in Milwaukee, not just was that poisoning, but also at a liquor store that I was trying to shut down.
The car that preceded before me, which was my security team. Plain clothes police covered their car and you can see them on camera talking about, “Where is he? Where is he?” I was nowhere to be found, so they gave them a ticket for loitering. The liquor store owner had to come to court. The man cried in court—documented in court. He said that the police told him that when I came there, they were going to seriously body harm me or kill me. And that’s documented as well.
That’s how deep this stuff is. But the same thing in Milwaukee. Milwaukee is an hour and a half from Chicago. Same thing was going on there—we organized the Vice Lords, the GDs, and the Stones in the same type of process. Like you said, there’s an under road in Chicago and we know how it goes. The police department, U.S. intelligence, and they choose. Some people may get mad at me for saying this, but we were organizing at that time.
A lot of people said, I’m not going to say who, but I’ll say what gangs they were from—the Vice Lords, the GDs at that time, and the others said that they didn’t want the Stones to participate in the truce. And I was like, “why?” They say that whenever the police did anything to them, it was always through the Stones. The Stones got away, so their opinion at that time was that the Stones were working in law enforcement. I’m going to say this, my opinion at this particular time, I believe that the BDs from O Block are working with law enforcement because that night when they killed FBG Duck they had a whole platoon of officers surrounding that area of O Block to protect it—even with tanks, so you couldn’t get in there. Where the shooters were at and where the shooters were from. They did that.
Dr. Muhammad: Thank you, I appreciate you. Thank you, John.
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Personal interview with Peter Dale Scott on November 23, 2012. When this author asked Canadian writer/researcher Professor Peter Dale Scott if he thought the oligarchs used drugs to sedate and divide the masses, he said, “Yes. I don’t think I can prove it, but I think that’s the case.” Scott is a former Canadian diplomat whose books include: Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1998), with Jonathan Marshall, and Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia and Indochina (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2003). Also see Gary Webb, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998). And see the book/film, John Potash, Drugs as Weapons Against Us: The CIA’s Murderous Targeting of SDS, Panthers, Hendrix, Lennon, Cobain, Tupac and other Activists (Walterville, OR: TrineDay Press, 2015). ↑
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“The backstory… stop that merger.” Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States (Boston: South End Press, 1990), pp. 135-36. Also, Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (Boston: South End Press, 1988), pp. 63-67. ↑
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Churchill and Vander Wall, Agents of Repression, pp. 69-77. ↑
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About the Author
His latest film is Shots: Eugenics to Pandemics (2022).
John’s work can be found at johnpotash.com and he can be reached at: jlpotash@gmail.com.
