A recently-filed $40 million lawsuit on behalf of Muhammad Aziz, who was exonerated two years ago for the 1965 murder of Malcolm X, puts the spotlight on J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.

Beyond simply examining the bureau’s role in X’s murder, Aziz’s legal team seeks to expose the “pattern and practice” of the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO program of the civil rights-Black Power era. In so doing, the filing illustrates a notable shift in the historical understanding of the assassination, with the FBI replacing another government entity that many observers originally viewed as the main culprit.

As described by Aziz’s lead attorney David Shanies in the filing, COINTELPRO aimed to “disrupt” and “instigate violence” in order to “destroy groups or enemies perceived to be threats to the status quo, including the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers, and other Black activist organizations.”

Before he left office at the end of 2021, then-Manhattan DA Cy Vance, Jr. initiated the exoneration of both Aziz and the late Khalil Islam, two of the three men convicted for the murder of Malcolm X. During its review of the case, Vance’s office uncovered a substantial amount of exculpatory information withheld by the FBI at the time of the trial in 1966.

Hoover and his deputies appeared determined to protect William Bradley, known as William 25X, one of the five men from the Newark mosque of the Nation of Islam that carried out the murder at the Audubon Ballroom. According to the current filing, the FBI did not inform the Manhattan DA’s office that at least two witnesses described a gunman who appeared to be Bradley.

It seems highly plausible that the FBI helped orchestrate Malcolm X’s assassination. But for decades after the murder, many of X’s associates believed that the CIA was chiefly responsible.

Aziz’s lawsuit names 19 FBI officials involved in the incident, investigation and cover-up, including Hoover as well as another familiar name in the organization, Mark Felt. The bureau’s Chief Inspector at the time of Malcolm’s murder, Felt later became the main source of leaks in the Watergate scandal. So much for law enforcement heroes.

The filing also questions the extent of Bradley’s relationship with the FBI. He had been on the bureau’s radar for at least two years prior to the assassination. Four years after X’s murder, Bradley participated in an armed bank robbery in Livingston, New Jersey. Although his accomplice got 25 years, Bradley went free after the Department of Justice intervened.

After uncovering Bradley’s FBI connections over a decade ago, independent researcher Abdur-Rahman Muhammad shared his findings with the late Columbia University professor Manning Marable. The allegation that Bradley may have been an informant at the time of the 1965 murder surfaced in Marable’s landmark 2011 biography of X. Muhammad repeats that charge in Who Killed Malcolm X?, the 2020 Netflix series that prompted Vance’s office to open its investigation.

In order to illustrate the pattern of COINTELPRO operations, Aziz’s complaint details the FBI’s role in the cases of Black Panther leaders Geronimo Pratt and Fred Hampton. It also addresses the bu- reau’s use of informants in prosecuting members of the American Indian Movement after a 1973 armed siege at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The filing then cites a Massachusetts case from the late 1960s in which the FBI’s reliance on a mafia informant led to the wrongful conviction of four men.

“This is the boldest and most audacious effort yet to determine the nature and extent of the FBI’s role in the assassination of Malcolm X,” says attorney Ron Kuby, whose mentor William Kunstler represented Aziz in the 1970s. “I wish Bill Kunstler were here to see it.”

Shanies tells The Indypendent that in the best-case scenario, the Department of Justice will begin the discovery phase of the case in about three months. The worst-case scenario, of course, is that government lawyers will drag it out for years. “It will be interesting to see the Biden administration’s response,” adds Kuby.

FBI OR CIA?

Given the role played by the bureau in the murder of Fred Hampton and frame-up of Geronimo Pratt, it seems highly plausible that the FBI helped orchestrate Malcolm X’s assassination. But for decades after the murder, many of X’s associates believed that the CIA was chiefly responsible.

Louis Lomax, a leading Black journalist in the civil rights era, speculated about the agency’s role in his 1968 book To Kill a Black Man: The Shocking Parallel Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. After his pivotal trip to Mecca in the spring of 1964, X began to work closely with Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and other anti-colonial leaders. “It was at this point that the CIA began to take an active interest in Malcolm’s activities,” Lomax wrote.

In a 1963 work about Elijah Muhammad, Lomax had identified John Ali, the Nation of Islam’s national secretary, as an FBI informant. In To Kill a Black Man, Lomax repeated the charge, detailing his own fear of Ali. In the book’s conclusion Lomax nevertheless stated, “I am convinced that the American government, particularly the CIA, was deeply involved in Malcolm’s death.”

In the early 1970s, Peter Goldman’s The Death and Life of Malcolm X came out. Goldman, a Newsweek reporter, spoke to many people in X’s circles. Writing in The New York Times Book Review, critic Orde Coombs observed that Goldman “knows that many [of Malcolm’s supporters] believe that the CIA had something to do with the assassination of this Black hero.”

A half-century later, the FBI’s role in the murder may fully come to light. Whether we learn of any CIA involvement remains to be seen.

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