John Potash

[Today marks the 59^th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X. See CovertAction Magazine’s in-depth exploration of the crime as an addendum to this piece.—Editors]

In mid-November, three daughters of Malcolm X (aka el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz) accused the CIA, FBI, the New York Police Department and the Department of Justice with involvement in the 1965 assassination of the activist leader.

The daughters, spearheaded by Ilyasah Shabazz and represented by Attorney Ben Crump, filed a $100 million lawsuit in conjunction with the Malcolm X estate, claiming these agencies were aware of and involved in the assassination, and failed to stop it.

Their lawsuit claims that the New York Police Department (NYPD), working with federal law enforcement agencies, arrested Malcom X’s own security guards days before the assassination, while also removing their own police security detail that was present at all of Malcolm’s events in the previous year or more. These agencies also had undercover agents at the scene of the assassination who failed to protect Malcolm X.^[1]

U.S. Intelligence Documents and Actions Support Daughters’ Claims About the FBI

An FBI memorandum of March 4, 1968, discussed the “long range goals” including: “Prevent the rise of a ‘messiah’ who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement.” Malcolm X might have been such a “messiah.” This and other documents presented how Malcolm X had clearly emerged as U.S. Intelligence’s top threat.^[2]

Malcolm’s influence over large numbers of American Blacks first came through his Nation of Islam (NOI) leadership as its national spokesman. The FBI began their surveillance file on him early in the 1950s.^[3]

As early as 1958, New York detectives shot up Malcolm X’s office, for which the city settled with Malcolm in a $24 million lawsuit. FBI undercover agent John X Ali, who infiltrated the NOI, could provide the floor plan since he was living with Malcolm at the time. ^[4]

By the start of the 1960s, FBI documents revealed that U.S. intelligence wrote up to several reports a week on Malcolm due to his radical influence over Blacks.

Agent John X Ali also reportedly played a part in orchestrating the firebombing of Malcolm’s house in 1965. Ali had risen to a national secretary assignment, one of the highest leadership positions in the NOI. NOI leader Elijah Muhammad’s son, Wallace Muhammad, said several FBI undercover agents in the NOI national staff helped Ali make that rise, as also attested to by FBI documents.^[5]

Evidence of the New York Police and CIA’s Involvement in the Assassination of Malcolm X

High-level CIA whistleblower Victor Marchetti explained in a 1974 expose that the CIA director was “the titular chief of the entire intelligence community.”^[6]

This would include the FBI and the Bureau of Special Services and Investigation (BOSS), the NYPD’s special intelligence unit working against leftist political groups.

In the 1960s, BOSS carried out investigations and operations against political activists and was spearheaded by Lieutenant Angelo Galante who had previously worked for the CIA, specializing in fighting against revolutionary guerrilla forces behind enemy lines.^[7]

From the late 1950s on, Malcolm X’s leadership of the New York NOI mosque also helped him meet with Third World revolutionaries and African leaders at the New York-based United Nations. The CIA grew concerned about Malcolm’s influence amongst these leaders. African leaders soon hosted Malcolm X and had him take part in their political decisions.

Malcolm believed that U.S. Intelligence said CIA agents made their presence obvious to try to intimidate him as he traveled through Africa. They did not want him to present a planned United Nations appeal to African leaders that the U.S. was violating American Blacks’ human rights.^[8]

In late July 1964 Malcolm X ate at a restaurant in Cairo, Egypt, where he said he felt poison in his food. He realized that he recognized the waiter as someone he had seen in New York. Rushed to the hospital, he was barely saved by a stomach pumping. The attending doctor said there was a toxic substance in his food. Malcolm had been concerned about death threats from the NOI he had left that year but he knew that they did not have a global spy capacity.^[9]

Several other disclosures supporting CIA attempts on Malcolm X’s life include one from a high-level African diplomat. He said that the French Counter-Espionage Department reported that the CIA planned Malcolm’s murder, and France barred Malcolm for the first time in fear of getting scapegoated for the assassination.^[10]

Furthermore, the FBI Director wrote a confidential memo on Malcolm’s travel plans through Britain and France. He sent it to the CIA Director, the Army Intelligence (Intel) chief, the Naval Intel Director, and the Air Force Counterintel chief, as well as Intel chiefs in London and Paris.^[11] One such memorandum on Malcolm and African leaders went directly to the CIA director of covert action, Richard Helms, who had a key role in assassination plots.^[12]

The FBI and Malcolm X’s Assassination in New York and Reversal of Convictions in 2021

Gunmen carried out Malcolm X’s assassination on February 21, 1965, in the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. An FBI document said (undercover agent) John Ali met with Talmadge Hayer (aka Thomas Hagan), one of the gunmen who shot Malcolm X, the night before the assassination.^[13]

As the Shabazz daughters’ lawsuit states, at the Audubon Ballroom where Malcolm X gave his last speech, uniformed police left the area despite usually filling the hall inside and outside where Malcolm gave speeches.^[14]

Meanwhile, the New York Herald Tribune also said a “high police official” confirmed that several undercover BOSS agents were in the Ballroom audience at the assassination.^[15]

In 1969, undercover BOSS police agent Gene Roberts testified that he was the first to arrive at Malcolm’s body and he “proceeded to give Malcolm X mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”^[16]

Gene Roberts contradicted any good intentions in his later interviews and actions. For example, in interviews years later he described the actions of his wife Joan Roberts who was with him at the event. When Malcolm X was shot, Malcolm’s wife Betty Shabazz first tried to cover her daughters and screamed, “They’re killing my husband!”^[17]

When the shooting stopped, Shabazz, a nurse, went to run to her husband, but Joan Roberts grabbed her. Shabazz struggled to get free, threw Roberts into a wall and ran to Malcolm. Gene Roberts said he was there checking Malcolm’s pulse. He turned to Shabazz and said Malcolm was dead.^[18]

The actions of Roberts parallel the actions of undercover infiltrator, military intelligence agent Marrell McCollough in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. McCollough disclosed how he raced to and knelt over MLK as he lay bleeding from the shooting.

An MLK friend, writer William Pepper, noted that McCollough was “apparently checking him for life signs,” making sure the assassination was successful and signaling to military intelligence that “the army snipers there as backup shooters” were not needed.^[19]

Undercover agent Gene Roberts later infiltrated Malcolm X’s followers in the Harlem Black Panthers and unsuccessfully attempted to have them convicted of many charges.

And finally, the New York Herald Tribune and The New York Times reported that, just after the shooting of Malcolm, police detained two people whom the crowd had grabbed. Patrolman Thomas Hoy said that Malcolm’s supporters grabbed one suspect and he grabbed a second suspect being chased by some people. Hoy further said, “the crowd began beating me and the [second] suspect” in the Ballroom. In the following days, the Herald Tribune, the Times and a mass of media accounts never mentioned a second suspect.^[20]

In 1966, New York authorities convicted three men of assassinating Malcolm: Talmadge Hayer (aka Thomas Hagan, later Mujahid Abdul Halim), Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Khalil Islam. The latter two had their convictions overturned in 2021, with a re-investigation by The Innocence Project finding FBI documents pointing to other suspects and police ignoring a warning given to New York’s Daily News that Malcolm X would be killed that day.