The Judas Factor

Book Review: The Judas Factor by Karl Evanzz

In this book, Evanzz documents how the intelligence community, the CIA, the FBI, and the New York Police Bureau of Special Services (BOSSI) using agents provocateurs and infiltrators; set the stage for the assassination of Malcolm X. It outlines the motives for their actions. Evanzz spent 15 years researching over 300,000 pages of declassified FBI and CIA documents. From Page 214 of The Judas Factor:

(A few days after Malcolm X’s press conference announcing his split from the NOI) “William C. Sullivan (FBI) contacted the directors of BOSSI and asked them to recruit several African Americans to infiltrate Malcolm X’s new organization. Among the directors at the time were two men who later would play key roles in the scandal that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation: Anthony Ulasewicz, the infamous bagman of Watergate, and Nixon advisor John J. Caulfield.

“Ulasewicz was all too happy to comply with Sullivan’s request. Malcolm X had been a thorn in the New York Police Department’s side for more than a decade. He told Sullivan that he would have officers ready to infiltrate Malcolm X’s new organizations within thirty days.

“While Sullivan was coordinating the domestic counterintelligence program against Malcolm X with BOSSI, the CIA initiated a similar program to determine the extent of Malcolm X’s influence with Third World leaders. ’What do we have on Malcolm X?’ a CIA official wrote in an inter-office memo dated March 10. The request for information had come from the U.S. State Department. The official ordered a clerk to run a thorough check in the CIA’s database to determine which Third World countries seemed receptive to Malcolm X. . .”

In the introduction to the book, Evanzz writes: “After analyzing these resources, I am convinced that Louis E. Lomax, an industrious African-American journalist who befriended Malcolm X in the late 1950’s, had practically solved the riddle of his assassination. Lomax, who died in a mysterious automobile accident while shooting a film in Los Angeles about the assassination, believed that Malcolm X was betrayed by a former friend who reportedly had ties to the intelligence community � In 1968, Lomax called the suspect ’Judas’. This, then, is the story of The Judas Factor.” There are two major themes in the book: One is the “Judas Factor” and the other is the concern of the FBI and the CIA over Malcolm X’s success in linking the struggle of African Americans with the national liberation struggles in Africa and throughout the Third World.

Evanzz documents that Ahmed Ben Bella, the leader of the Algerian Revolution, had invited Malcolm X ; along with Che Guevara and other leaders of independence movements; to a special conference in Bandung scheduled to begin on March 3, 1965. Malcolm X had also been able to get Ethiopia and Liberia to include human rights violations against African Americans with their petition on South African human rights violations before the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The petition was scheduled to be heard on March 12, 1965.

Part of the Judas Factor was the FBI’s attempts to neutralize Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Elijah Muhammad. Evanzz provides concrete evidence that Martin Luther King was going to support Malcolm X in his project to bring the struggle of human rights before the United Nations and had begun to also identify with the struggles for human rights in Africa.

In light of the CIA’s policies to neutralize opponents of the U.S. government’s political and covert activities in Africa, Evanzz explains that it was necessary to neutralize Malcolm X prior to the Bandung conference. Malcolm X was assassinated on February, 21, 1965, a week and a half before the conference was to take place. Soon after the assassination, several African government officials who had been working with Malcolm X were also assassinated and the Ben Bella government in Algeria was overthrown in June 1965.(Also he would have spoken at the First March Againstthe Vientam Demonstration, in Aprilof 1965.)

From his research into FBI files, Evanzz was able to prove that the FBI had a high-level informant in the NOI. Thus, the FBI was clearly in a position to carry out a campaign to fan the flames of discontent among rising leaders of the Nation and to disrupt the organization’s activities. FBI memos indicate that they maneuvered within the NOI to keep their informant in the best possible leadership position to carry out their covert activities. From the very day that Malcolm X split from the NOI, the FBI worked on a day-to-day basis with BOSSI and the CIA to infiltrate and disrupt his activities. William Sullivan (subsequently of Watergate fame) was the FBI agent in overall charge of both the infiltration of the NOI and Malcolm’s organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).

It is clear from the book that a coordinated effort was carried out between all government spy agencies to widen the split between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, to increase tensions between their organizations, and to undermine their support among African Americans. It is also safe to assume that agents, informants, and provocateurs from these different agencies were sent into the NOI and Malcolm X’s organizations and that these agents were also present at the Audubon Ballroom when Malcolm X was assassinated. One of police informants, who later informed on the Black Panthers, told me as I was going to take my normal front row seat that “you are not going to sit there today,” and he had me sit in the front row on the left side of the Ballroom. (The assassins sat in the area where I normally sat to hear Malcolm X speak.) When I look over in that direction to see who was sitting in my usual seating area, that was when I saw the same man that I later saw at the Harlem police station, when I was questioned by the police.

Some of Evanzz’s research was based on books about the NOI by Louis Lomax. Evanzz found in the FBI files a script for a movie on the assassination of Malcolm X, which Lomax was working on at the time of his death. (He died in a car accident caused by brake failure.) Evanzz provides circumstantial evidence that John Ali, a former friend of Malcolm X who became a national secretary of the NOI, was more than likely an FBI agent/informer and hence the Judas Factor. In fact, Evanzz provides quotes from Malcolm X to Lomax indicating that Malcolm X blamed John Ali for his expulsion from the Nation.

Investigative journalist Karl Evanzz, provides the first in-depth analysis of the role the Intelligence Community played (through its counter-intelligence arm CO-INTEL-PRO) in instigating the death of Malcolm X. Based on fifteen years of research, hundreds of interviews, the examination of 300,000 pages of declassified FBI and CIA documents, The Judas Factor, uncovers evidence of a conspiracy to silence Malcolm X and the entire black nationalist movement.

Louis E. Lomax, an African-American journalist, who practically solved the riddle of the assassination, twenty five years ago, believed that Malcolm X was betrayed by a former friend [John Ali] who reportedly had ties to the intelligence community. In 1968, Lomax called the suspect “Judas.” This, then, is the story of “THE JUDAS FACTOR, The PLot to Kill Malcolm X” by Karl Evanzz.

[1928]

Marcus Garvey began circulating a “Petition” that accused the United States and the nations of Europe of violating the Human Rights of Black Americans and other African peoples. Each regional leader of the UNIA was charged with getting signatures supporting Garvey’s Petition, which he planned to submit to the League of Nations. In detroit, responsibility for getting signatures fell upon Earl Little, president of a Detroit-area branch of the UNIA. [1931]

[September 17] Marcus Garvey set sail for London to formally file his Petition with the League of Nations.

[1953]

[Mid-January] Hoover received word from the FBI’s field office in Chicago that Malcolm X, was responsible for the rapid growth of the NOI. Something had to be done to stop him, Chicago suggested. [1954]

[June 8th] New Temples continued to sprout wherever Malcolm traveled by mid-1954. The FBI placed him on its “COMSAB” and “DETCOM” list. “COMSAB” for “Communist Sabotage,” was a list of every American considered a treat to national security in the event of a war. “DETCOM” for “Detention of Communists,” a list of every American whose arrest was to be given high priority in the event of a war or national emergency.

Although the FBI had installed microphones in most of the Messenger’s older Temples, the NOI was growing too fast for its surveillance methods to keep up, so the FBI decided it was time to develop a high-level informant within the NOI. It wanted someone who was close to the Messenger. The FBI wanted someone to be its “Judas Factor.”

[1958]

John Ali replaced, Ernest T. 2X McGhee, as National Secretary of the NOI in Chicago Headquarters in 1958. At the Chicago headquarters, next in power to Messenger Muhammad was John Ali, the national secretary of the NOI, and Supreme Captain of the FOI Raymond Sharrieff. John Ali, had been secretary of Temple Seven and gone to Chicago on Malcolm’s recommendation. Overseeing all the financial interest of the NOI, with a staff of accountants, bookkeepers, assistants, secretaries, typist, and clerks, he received and disbursed all the moneys that came into Chicago from NOI businesses and investments as well as dues, fees, and donations from the membership in all Temples. He ran the NOI bank. Official NOI letters and communications between Chicago and other Temples went through Ali’s office. John Ali was in a highly sensitive and influential position.

Some followers of the Messenger believed that policies, Ali, had enacted since moving to Chicago to assume responsibilities as chief financial officer, were damaging the NOI. The whole nature of the NOI changed since 1958, when Ali replaced, Ernest T. 2X McGhee, as National Secretary. Ali’s financial directives were destroying the NOI. Ali’s handling of the NOI’s purse strings led to his dismissal from the position in 1970, to be reinstated two years

[1960]

In a National Security Council meeting following the revocation of the Detwiler contract, Eisenhower concluded Lumumba could not be trusted and, American control of the Congo Central Bank could evaporate as the Detwiler contract, and it would be in America’s best interest to remove Lumumba from power, “we will have to do whatever is necessary to get rid of him,” so an assassination plot against Lumumba was authorized.

[July] Malcolm telephoned Messenger Muhammad to advise him that he wanted to invite Lumumba to a special gathering of African, Arab, and Asian leaders. The Messenger approved.

After receiving a teletype about Malcolm’s conversation with Elijah regarding Lumumba’s visit, FBI director Hoover, had forwarded a summarized copy of the “telephone transcript” to the State Department and the CIA.

CIA’s surveillance of the NOI lay dormant until it was notified by the FBI that Malcolm was making contacts with Castro’s and Lumumba’s representatives in N.Y.

[September 21] The FBI visited Malcolm at the Harlem Temple to discuss what he and Castro talked about, but as usual, they learned nothing.

A CIA agent noted, while no action was necessary as a consequence of Malcolm’s meeting with Castro, “it is felt the above information indicating a direct connection between the NOI and Castro is of particular interest.”

[1963]

The national secretary, John Ali, was attending the rally that day, and he reported back to Chicago immediately. Three days later on December 4th, Malcolm was suspended by Mr. Muhammad for ninety days.

[1964]

[March 20 1964] William C. Sullivan, who was in charge of the high-level FBI informant, received a memo from the Settle field office, advising him that the following passage appeared in Lomax’s book:

“…the finances and other administrative chores of the movement are carried out in Chicago…This decision by Muhammad was made possible because John X [Ali], a former FBI agent and perhaps the best administrative mind in the movement, was shifted from New York to Chicago.”

In a second memo to Sullivan, a FBI official wrote:

It is felt that the Seattle Office should be advised concerning the true status of [John X Ali] Simmons and his alleged connection with the bureau…contact Lomax to advise him concerning the inaccurate statement contained in this book regarding Simmons…”

The memo wanted Lomax apprized of Ali’s “true status” with the FBI, clearly conveying that there was indeed a relationship. The Memo didn’t refer to the allegation as a lie or fabrication, or any other word indicating that it was totally untrue. The memo only stated that the allegation that he was a FBI agent was “inaccurate” or “incorrect,” suggesting, that it was at least partially accurate or partially correct. Was the writer trying to suggest that Ali’s status with the FBI was that of an informant instead of a full-fledged agent?

[March 24] A memo from Hoover to the New York and Settle FBI field offices is instructive on this issue:

New York should contact Lomax (unless files of that office indicate such contact should not be made) for the purpose of pointing out to him that the statement contained in his book is inaccurate.

According to Louis E. Lomax, his sources told him that Ali worked for the FBI before joining the NOI. Lomax shared a close friendship with the publisher of the “New Crusader,” Balm Leavell, one of the first individuals to discover that, high-level officials, in the NOI were FBI agents or informants.

Leavell called Muhammad at his residence in Phoenix and advised him that he had information from reliable sources that at least five ministers or assistant ministers were “working for the government” and “plotting to get” him.

Dorothy Leavell his widow, suggests that the source of his information came directly from Jimmy Hoffa or someone working for him. “Balm and Hoffa were very close friends,” she noted. Hoffa had numerous sources in the FBI, who were also on, the Mafia’s payroll, who might have tipped him off as a favor to Leavell, who was under constant FBI harassment for publishing a column written by The Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

Lomax thought nothing of the allegations about, Ali’s, FBI background since it really wasn’t that unusual. A number of policemen had infiltrated the NOI, only to reveal their roles, following their conversion. In that context, Ali’s past seemed of little moment.

The existence of an informant at Ali’s level would explain how the FBI obtained a list giving the location of every NOI Temple in the country, including the names of every official at each Temple. The list, came from the Philadelphia Temple, of which Ali was a member at the time.

[May] Benjamin X Thomas, a lower-level official in the Newark Temple, a secretary or assistant secretary, began recruiting others into a plot to assassinate Malcolm. The first recruit into the cabal was Leon X Davis. They formed the core of the group into which they recruited Talmadge Hayer. Sometime later, Hayer, Thomas and Davis got together with William X, and Wilbur Kinley. The five continued to meet and discuss, throughout the summer and fall of 1964.

[July 2] FBI headquarters sent a memo to field offices in New York, Omaha, Philadelphia, and Chicago advising them that the Philadelphia office was requested to determine whether, John Ali, had left Philadelphia and arrived in Chicago. John Ali arrived in Chicago, where Malcolm was scheduled to appear on “Hotline,” a Chicago radio program hosted by Wesley South, on station WVON, on July 2nd.

[1965]

[January 12] Several high-ranking officials from the Chicago headquarters of the NOI, including Elijah Muhammad Jr., John Ali, and Raymond Sharrieff, addressed a meeting of FOI at the Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm frequently held his own meetings.

Elijah Muhammad Jr., did not mince his words as he addressed over five hundred top NOI security officers from around the nation, “cut the n!&&#^’s tongue out and put it in an envelope and send it to me, and I’ll stamp it approved and give it to the Messenger.”

[1965]

[January 24] Jack Anderson, nationally syndicated columnist, broadcasting on WINS radio, revealed why the CIA was interested in Malcolm and the and Intelligence Community might have been motivated to see him dead before the end of February. Anderson stated:

Malcolm has been secretly contacting African governments to strengthen ties between African and American Negroes. He is expected to be a star attraction at the coming Afro-Asian conference in Algiers where he will join in propaganda attacks on his own country for its racial discrimination.

Anderson revealed a secret Malcolm hadn’t shared with anyone. Two weeks before Anderson’s broadcast, Malcolm accepted an invitation from Ben Bella to attend the conference.

[January 25] Malcolm told two of his closest aides that he was going to Los Angeles in a few days to check on the welfare of Rosary and Williams, the two Secretaries on whose behalf Attorney Gladys Root had filed paternity suits.

[January 28] At two o’clock, Hakim Jamal, Malcolm’s cousin and close friend, and Edward Bradley arrived at the L.A. Airport to wait for Malcolm. While waiting they spotted a well dressed black man, sitting in the lounge, whom Jamal thought looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite place the face. Suddenly, Jamal realized he did know the man, it was John Ali, national secretary of the NOI, the Messenger’s top aide.

John Ali’s appearance at the terminal was ominous, since only seven people, Betty, two aides, Bradley, Jamal and the two secretaries, were supposed to know he was coming.

How, John Ali, found out was anyone’s guess. Since FBI agents, in response to a June 24th recommendation from Hoover, were monitoring Malcolm’s telephone calls, it is reasonable to suspect they might have notified him, or he found out from the FBI’s high-level informant, who infiltrated Muhammad’s inner circle, assuming they were not one and the same.

[February 19] According to Hayer, John Ali arrived in New York City and checked into the Americana Hotel.

[February 20] John Ali was seen in the evening, in the Americana hotel’s restaurant with a young black man named Talmadge Hayer, a believer from the Paterson, New Jersey Temple, who had been recruited as an assassin in May, 1964.

[February 20] Hayer later went to the Audubon with, four co-conspirators to rehearse the assassination of Malcolm, and spent several hours simulating an event scheduled for the next afternoon.

(In the 1970s, the public learned about COINTELPRO and other secret FBI programs directed towards infiltrating and disrupting civil rights organizations during the 1950s and 1960s. J Edgar Hoover, who led the government’s COINTELPRO said… “there must be a goal of preventing a coalition of militant black nationalist groups, prevent the rise of a black messiah that can unify and electrify the black nationalist movement, along with preventing militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining respectability, by discrediting them to the community”. John Ali, national secretary of the Nation of Islam, was identified as an FBI undercover agent. Malcolm X had confided in a reporter that Ali had exacerbated tensions between him and Elijah Muhammad. He considered Ali his “archenemy” within the Nation of Islam leadership. On February 20, 1965, the night before the assassination, Ali met with Talmadge Hayer, one of the men convicted of killing Malcolm X. — Gene Roberts: The Undercover NYPD Agent Who Betrayed Malcolm X —R.S. 2010 Update)

In the 1970s, the public learned about COINTELPRO and other secret FBI programs directed towards infiltrating and disrupting civil rights organizations during the 1950s and 1960s. J Edgar Hoover, who led the government’s COINTELPRO said… “there must be a goal of preventing a coalition of militant black nationalist groups, prevent the rise of a black messiah that can unify and electrify the black nationalist movement, along with preventing militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining respectability, by discrediting them to the community”. John Ali, national secretary of the Nation of Islam, was identified as an FBI undercover agent. Malcolm X had confided in a reporter that Ali had exacerbated tensions between him and Elijah Muhammad. He considered Ali his “archenemy” within the Nation of Islam leadership. On February 20, 1965, the night before the assassination, Ali met with Talmadge Hayer, one of the men convicted of killing Malcolm X. — Gene Roberts: The Undercover NYPD Agent Who Betrayed Malcolm X

In the 1970s, the public learned about COINTELPRO and other secret FBI programs directed towards infiltrating and disrupting civil rights organizations during the 1950s and 1960s. J Edgar Hoover, who led the government’s COINTELPRO said… “there must be a goal of preventing a coalition of militant black nationalist groups, prevent the rise of a black messiah that can unify and electrify the black nationalist movement, along with preventing militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining respectability, by discrediting them to the community”. John Ali, national secretary of the Nation of Islam, was identified as an FBI undercover agent. Malcolm X had confided in a reporter that Ali had exacerbated tensions between him and Elijah Muhammad. He considered Ali his “archenemy” within the Nation of Islam leadership. On February 20, 1965, the night before the assassination, Ali met with Talmadge Hayer, one of the men convicted of killing Malcolm X. — Gene Roberts: The Undercover NYPD Agent Who Betrayed Malcolm X

In the 1970s, the public learned about COINTELPRO and other secret FBI programs directed towards infiltrating and disrupting civil rights organizations during the 1950s and 1960s. J Edgar Hoover, who led the government’s COINTELPRO said… “there must be a goal of preventing a coalition of militant black nationalist groups, prevent the rise of a black messiah that can unify and electrify the black nationalist movement, along with preventing militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining respectability, by discrediting them to the community”. John Ali, national secretary of the Nation of Islam, was identified as an FBI undercover agent. Malcolm X had confided in a reporter that Ali had exacerbated tensions between him and Elijah Muhammad. He considered Ali his “archenemy” within the Nation of Islam leadership. On February 20, 1965, the night before the assassination, Ali met with Talmadge Hayer, one of the men convicted of killing Malcolm X. — Gene Roberts: The Undercover NYPD Agent Who Betrayed Malcolm X

In the 1970s, the public learned about COINTELPRO and other secret FBI programs directed towards infiltrating and disrupting civil rights organizations during the 1950s and 1960s. J Edgar Hoover, who led the government’s COINTELPRO said… “there must be a goal of preventing a coalition of militant black nationalist groups, prevent the rise of a black messiah that can unify and electrify the black nationalist movement, along with preventing militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining respectability, by discrediting them to the community”. John Ali, national secretary of the Nation of Islam, was identified as an FBI undercover agent. Malcolm X had confided in a reporter that Ali had exacerbated tensions between him and Elijah Muhammad. He considered Ali his “archenemy” within the Nation of Islam leadership. On February 20, 1965, the night before the assassination, Ali met with Talmadge Hayer, one of the men convicted of killing Malcolm X. — Gene Roberts: The Undercover NYPD Agent Who Betrayed Malcolm X

[February 21] Malcolm, or somebody speaking in his name, had directed that nobody be search coming into the meeting. Malcolm had begun worrying that, talk of death and the martial aura of policemen and armed guards and body-searches were, frightening people away from his meetings. But the result was to lay him wide open to men who had been hunting him. It was almost, as if, he were delivering himself to his assassins.

[March] The “New York Times”, under the headline “World Court Opens Africa Case Monday,” it reported in part:

The International Court of Justice will open oral proceedings Monday in a case linking the segregation struggle of the American Negro and the fate of 430,000 African Bantus and bushmen….

This hearing was exactly the thing the Johnson administration and the Intelligence Community was determined to prevent. Had Malcolm lived until March 12th, the story would have made front-page headlines instead of a small story buried inside the newspaper, and the embarrassment to America would have created a scandal instead of a historical footnote.

Malcolm’s presence at the World Court hearings on a petition he had helped to reshape might have led to the United States and South Africa being placed on equal footing. This seems to have been the Intelligence Community’s MOTIVATION in seeking his silence.