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THE FBI AGENT AND INFORMANT BEHIND FRED HAMPTON’S MURDER  
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Aaron J. Leonard
April 19, 2024
Jacobin
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_ Special Agent Roy Martin Mitchell was recognized in the FBI for his
skill in developing informants in “the racial field.” Now we know
the extent of Mitchell’s activities — including how they aided the
killing of the Black Panther Party’s Fred Hampton _

Fred Hampton and Benjamin Spock at a protest rally outside the
Everett McKinley Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago, Illinois, October
1969., AP Wirephoto / Chicago Tribune via Wikimedia Commons

 

_The following is taken from Aaron J. Leonard’s new book Meltdown
Expected: Crisis, Disorder, and Upheaval at the End of the 1970s
[[link removed]] (Rutgers
University Press)._

In the predawn hours of December 4, 1969, fourteen Chicago Police
Department (CPD) officers, claiming they were searching for illegal
weapons, raided a first-floor apartment on Chicago’s Monroe Street.
Inside, nine members of the Illinois Black Panther Party (BPP) were in
various phases of sleep. While police claimed they were fired on, the
fusillade of over ninety bullets hit only Black Panthers. Two of them
— Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Illinois Panthers, and Mark
Clark, who had organized the group’s Peoria chapter — were fatally
wounded.

Initially, the raid was seen as a success for the police, epitomized
by the picture of grinning cops carrying Hampton’s body
[[link removed]] out
of the apartment, which circulated widely in the press. However, the
one-sided nature of the attack quickly gave rise to questions. In
this, not only were the Chicago police under scrutiny, but questions
arose about the role of the FBI, which had been keeping close tabs on
the Chicago Panthers. What would later be discovered was that the
bureau had a well-placed informant within the group. That informant
had passed along a floor plan of the apartment to the CPD, by way of
his FBI handler, to facilitate their raid.

 

To the degree most people today know the story of Fred Hampton, it is
through the 2021 film _Judas and the Black Messiah
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a fictionalized account of the incident. The film, while dramatically
riveting, is in important ways factually dubious. This is made clear
in the movie’s opening when it has J. Edgar Hoover, portrayed by
Martin Sheen, proclaiming the Black Panthers “the greatest single
threat to our national security, more than the Chinese, even more than
the Russians.” In reality, Hoover never said such a thing, nor would
he, given how the bureau and the US government viewed China and the
Soviet Union at that phase of the Cold War. Considering the power of
such a statement, however, it is worth exploring how a variation of it
found its way to becoming common knowledge.

In July 1969, Hoover talked to the media about the bureau’s annual
report, where he highlighted the current threats as seen by the FBI.
In turn, United Press International ran a short piece titled “J.
Edgar Hoover: Black Panther Greatest Threat to US Security
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As the article reported,

The Black Panther Party represents the greatest threat among the black
extremist groups to the internal security of the United States, FBI
director J. Edgar Hoover said today.

Hoover said in his fiscal 1969 annual report
[[link removed]] the
increased activity of ‘violence-prone black extremists group’ had
put more investigative responsibilities on the FBI.

‘Of these,’ Hoover said, ‘the Black Panther party, without
question, represents the greatest threat to the internal security of
the country.’

Given the headline, one could be forgiven for thinking Hoover was
saying the BPP was the greatest threat to the United States, as a
whole — and it is the case that story has been the basis for the
claim that the group was the FBI’s preeminent target, rather than
one of many challenges the bureau confronted, in that period.

FBI agent Roy Martin Mitchell developed and handled the informant
William O’Neal, who helped lead the Chicago Police to Fred Hampton
on the night of his death. (Meltdown Expected by Aaron Leonard)

This, unfortunately, has had the effect of obscuring other matters
also worthy of attention. In that respect, two characters who
intersected with the Chicago Panthers, but also others, are worth a
deeper look: FBI informant William O’Neal and his handler, Roy
Martin Mitchell. William O’Neal was recruited by the FBI in 1968
after he had been arrested by Chicago police. O’Neal had been caught
driving a car he had stolen. Nineteen at the time, he told the
arresting officer that he was an FBI agent and flashed a phony ID. The
police, in turn, referred the matter to the FBI who dispatched Special
Agent Roy Martin Mitchell to meet with him. According to O’Neal
[[link removed]], Mitchell told
him: “‘I know you did it, but it’s no big thing.’ He said,
‘I’m sure we can work it out.’ And, um, I think a few, few
months passed before I heard from him again, and one day I got a call
and he told me that it was payback time. He said that ‘I want you to
go and see if you can join the Black Panther Party, and if you can,
give me a call.’” O’Neal went on to infiltrate the Panthers,
first becoming the Chicago chapter’s head of security and later
chief of staff for Illinois.

O’Neal’s success within the BPP was intimately bound up with his
work with his FBI handler. In the ranks of the FBI, Mitchell was
considered an agent of impeccable quality, as this report from April
1969 affirms: “MITCHELL is a young Agent who has been extremely
successful in the racial field particularly in the development of
informants. He has developed and is handling an informant in the Black
Panther Party who is furnishing extremely valuable information to the
Bureau, and his work in this area has absolutely nothing to be
desired.”

An excerpt from an internal report on FBI agent Roy Martin Mitchell,
noting his talent for developing informants in “the racial field.”
(Meltdown Expected by Aaron Leonard)

Mitchell’s file, released in December 2020 after a Freedom of
Information request by the author, runs nearly nine hundred pages.
While the names William O’Neal and Fred Hampton never appear in the
file, there is abundant corroborating evidence that makes clear it was
O’Neal who was the informant supplying the “extremely valuable
information.”

The Hampton Trials

In the wake of the murder of Fred Hampton, the case became a cause
among the Left and the wider progressive community. This in turn led
to several cases that wound their way through the courts throughout
the ’70s. In 1972, Illinois state’s attorney Edward V. Hanrahan
and twelve others were brought to trial for attempting to stop the
prosecution of the police in the case. They were cleared in a trial
[[link removed]] before
a judge.

That, however, was not the end of their trouble. In 1970, a civil suit
was initiated by a group of activist attorneys in the People’s Law
Office (PLO) who represented Iberia Hampton, Fred Hampton’s mother.
That case involved twenty-eight defendants, including Hanrahan, three
assistant state’s attorneys, the Chicago police officers who
conducted the raid, and the FBI’s Marlin Johnson, Robert Piper, and
Roy Martin Mitchell. The case went to trial in 1976 and lasted
eighteen months. The judge, who was belligerent toward the plaintiffs
throughout, ended up throwing out the cases against twenty-one of the
defendants before the jury deliberated. The remaining defendants had
their charges dismissed when the jury deadlocked on their cases.
However, in April 1979 an appeals court reversed the judge’s
decision and called for a new trial. In light of that, the government
settled the case
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and the Hampton family was awarded $1.8 million in damages.

 

In the course of the obstruction of justice trial and throughout the
first few years of the civil suit, the identity of William O’Neal
remained a closely held secret. However, developments in an unrelated
1973 case thrust him into the limelight. In that year, Chicago police
sergeant Stanley Robinson was arrested for the murder of
twenty-two-year-old Jeff Beard. Robinson, as was revealed at trial,
was the leader of a gang of corrupt Chicago cops who, among other
things, carried out murder-for-hire. The government had built a solid
case against Robinson and had established that in May 1972 he, with
the help of another man, abducted Beard — under the pretense of
arresting him — outside a Chicago pool hall. The two then drove the
captive to Indiana where he was shot, stabbed, and beaten to death.

Unfortunately for Robinson, his accomplice was also a government
informant. His name was William O’Neal. While this meant a strong
case for the government, for the bureau and O’Neal it signaled the
end of his role as a confidential informant. It also, when word came
out in February 1973, alerted the attorneys in the PLO then pursuing
the Hampton civil case that they needed to examine O’Neal’s role
in the Hampton killing. While they knew O’Neal had been Hampton’s
bodyguard, they had not known he was also working for the FBI.

With the revelation that O’Neal was an FBI informant, the PLO was
able to push for disclosure in the course of its civil suit. One thing
it learned was that the FBI had paid O’Neal a bonus of $300 for his
work on the raid that killed Hampton. Not known at the time — that
would take the release of Roy Mitchell’s FBI file
[[link removed]] —
was that Mitchell, too, had been paid a bonus, of $200. As J. Edgar
Hoover noted in a commendation letter to Mitchell, “Through your
aggressiveness and skill in handling a valuable source, he is able to
furnish information of great importance to the Bureau in this vital
area of our operations. I want you to know of my appreciation for your
exemplary efforts.” While Hoover was careful not to spell out
exactly what the “vital area of our operations” was, a notation at
the bottom of the letter reads “Re: Black Panther Party.” The
timing, six days after Hampton’s killing, makes clear what the award
was for.

A letter from J. Edgar Hoover commending Roy Martin Mitchell on his
role in the killing of Fred Hampton, and enclosing a financial reward.
(Meltdown Expected  by Aaron Leonard) 

 

J. Edgar Hoover, however, would not be the only FBI director to
commend Special Agent Mitchell for a killing in which his informant
was a key player. In 1975, Eloise Beard, the sister of Jeff Beard,
filed a lawsuit against Mitchell. The case argued that Mitchell had
deprived her brother of his civil rights because of his “reckless
training and use of an informant.” Mitchell, in other words, was
culpable for Jeff Beard’s death because of the way in which he had
trained and handled William O’Neal. Mitchell, however, was
ultimately not held to account. In August 1978, a court cleared him
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That ruling was cause for celebration in the US Attorney’s Office
and the FBI. In a January 1979 letter from US Attorney Thomas P.
Sullivan to the director of the FBI, William Webster, Sullivan was
effusive in his praise of Mitchell: “In October of this year, this
office had the privilege of defending Special Agent Roy Martin
Mitchell in a case in which Mr. Mitchell was alleged to have failed to
supervise and train an informant being utilized by Mr. Mitchell and
the F.B.I. As you are aware, after a three-week trial, the jury
deliberated for approximately forty minutes and returned a verdict
favorable to Mr. Mitchell. We perceive that verdict to be a total
vindication of Mr. Mitchell’s actions and the F.B.I.’s
authorization of informants.” The prosecutor continued: “Mr.
Mitchell is a man of the highest character, impeccable integrity, and
a model F.B.I. agent whose attitude and activities should serve as a
model for all Special Agents to emulate.” Webster duly passed along
the praise to the special agent — while the court decision clearing
him essentially upheld an informant participating in murder.

While the FBI and government attorneys would praise Mitchell, some in
the CPD appear to have been less enamored. In a scene that might have
been written for a television police procedural, a report in
Mitchell’s personnel file recounts his harassment at the time of the
Stanley Robinson case.

Specifically, there is a report on an April 1973 “apparently
unwarranted arrest” — two months before the start of the Robinson
trial — of Mitchell by a Chicago police officer for “driving an
unsafe vehicle and for driving while under the influence.” Mitchell,
who is said to have had a flat tire after leaving a dinner with an
assistant US attorney, was confronted by a Chicago police officer who
demanded that Mitchell, who was not drunk, take a breathalyzer test.
When he refused, he was arrested. As an FBI account of its
investigation of the incident reports: “5 other Agents [were
interviewed] who were engaged in an investigative assignment with him
on the day in question. An AUSA [assistant US attorney] who had dinner
with SA Mitchell that evening was also interviewed. There is no
indication whatsoever that SA Mitchell’s version of the incident was
other than factual.” The FBI then took the case to the CPD
hierarchy. As a result, “the Commander, Chief of Detectives, and
First Deputy Superintendent, Chicago Police Department (CPD), all
apologized: and expressed regret over the arrest of SA Mitchell and
advised that immediate steps would be taken to see that no further
harassment was taken against him.” It also reported that “the
arresting officer would be admonished for his action on this
particular occasion.”

In an effort to de-escalate the incident, the report says that “the
best way to handle this current situation in order to avoid
allegations of ‘cover-up’ would be to let SA Mitchell appear in
court and explain his story to the judge.” He was subsequently
cleared in court of the DUI, but because of the flat tire he was made
to pay a $25 fine for “driving an unsafe vehicle.”

While the episode was resolved amicably, it highlights how relations
between the FBI and CPD were not without contention, and that neither
was fully subservient to the other. This dispels a certain monolithic
view often ascribed to the bureau in its relations with the CPD,
including, it would seem, in regard to the Hampton case.

Mitchell and O’Neal’s Complicity

The FBI’s connection to the Hampton killing continues to carry a
certain ambiguity — did it know the Chicago police were out to kill
Hampton, or was it just happy to pass along information that would aid
it in whatever suppressive plans it might undertake? True, they were
pleased with the outcome, rewarding O’Neal and Special Agent
Mitchell. Less clear, however, is O’Neal’s specific role —
substantial as it is — beyond passing along the floor plan.

The Jeff Beard case, however, is less ambiguous on O’Neal’s
participation. He drove to Indiana while Stanley Robinson guarded
Beard in the car’s back seat; he kept watch over Beard when Robinson
stopped to make a phone call; and he “helped throw Beard’s body
over a fence [[link removed]]” once he
was dead. In short, his role in facilitating the murder was essential.
This was the basis for not one but two lawsuits: one against Mitchell,
which was quickly decided against the plaintiff, and the other against
O’Neal, which garnered a similar outcome.

In making a final decision on the lawsuit brought against O’Neal
[[link removed]], an appeals
court cleared him of all responsibility, finding that “the issue, in
this case, is whether that informant breached a constitutional duty
owed to the murder victim and consequently caused the victim’s
death. We conclude, based on the undisputed facts, that he did not and
thus we affirm the judgment of the district court.” Put simply, an
informant had no obligation to stop a murder; indeed, they could
facilitate such, so long as it was in the interest of building a
criminal case. Given the essential nature of the use of informants,
this was a strong affirmation of the use of one of the most
unscrupulous methods by the FBI and like-minded law enforcement
agencies.

The failure to find William O’Neal or Roy Mitchell as having any
responsibility for the Jeff Beard murder and the killing of Fred
Hampton was part of a larger process playing out in the last years of
the ’70s. Not only was there the legitimation of domestic spying
offered by the Levi Guidelines and the establishment of the FISC
(Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court), but a reaffirmation of the
role of the FBI.

_Aaron J. Leonard is a writer and historian. He is the author of A
Threat of the First Magnitude: FBI Counterintelligence & Infiltration
From the Communist Party to the Revolutionary Union -
1962-1974 (Repeater Books, 2018)._

_If you like this article, please subscribe
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* Fred Hampton
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* chicago
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* FBI
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