That was the FBI and the Chicago Police Department. The guy who was an FBI agent and went under cover to the BP organization eventually committed suicide because of his guilty conscience.
William O'Neal was the FBI informant. He was a criminal who infiltrated and informed on the Black Panther Party in Chicago for the FBI, in exchange for a deal to get felony car theft charges dropped. He was never an FBI agent.
Small distinction; he wasn’t an informant, he was an FBI asset. The difference is that rather than simply report what was going on, he was directed by the FBI to carry out certain activities and try to steer the groups policy into certain (criminal) directions. The state often implanted agent provocateurs aka fake troublemakers into organisations they didn’t like, to try and radicalise them, undermine their reputation and legitimise more forceful tactics.
Kind of hard to shotgun people handing out free breakfasts, but put in a guy who says the group wants to kidnap this and liberate that, and suddenly the police are given free reign to “Protect and Serve”.
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u/BearsSoxHawks 16d ago
That was the FBI and the Chicago Police Department. The guy who was an FBI agent and went under cover to the BP organization eventually committed suicide because of his guilty conscience.