Who Ordered the Killing of Malcolm X?
New Evidence May Implicate the New York Police Dept., the District Attorney, the FBI, and Even (Unthinkably)   By Jeremy Kuzmarov  Global Research, July 02, 2021CovertAction Magazine  All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version). Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch. ***  [This probe into Malcolm Xs killing is part of a new CAM series on the political assassinations of the 1960s. In January 2019, a group of 60 prominent U.S. citizens called upon Congress to reopen the investigations of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X, which we support. The necessity of the investigation is underscored by recent events; notably the near-fascist takeover of the United States under Donald Trump and January 2021 Capitol riot, which may very well have been instigated by agents provocateurs or served as a dress rehearsal for a full-blown coup attempt. The power of the political right today in the U.S. has resulted from historical factors that were shaped by political developments in the 1960s. The assassination of magnetic liberal leaders at the timeMalcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy and John F. Kennedyleft a leadership vacuum in the liberal movement that has yet to be refilled. The assassinations presented would-be progressives the message that if they challenged the imperatives of class rule in the U.S. and U.S. military empireeven only mildlythen they would be toast. This series will provide updated overviews about what we know about the four major political assassinations of the 1960s and address their political implications. We hope to contribute to a push for official reinvestigation of these crimes and uncovering of the complete truth. This would allow for a better public understanding of the forces that have corrupted and destroyed U.S. democracy, with the hope that they might be effectively counteracted.CovertAction Magazine Editors]  *  On Sunday February 21, 1965, at 3:00 p.m., Malcolm X was gunned down at the Audubon Ballroom on Broadway and 166th Street in Manhattan while delivering a speech to an audience of about 400 people. Born Malcolm Little, Malcolm X had converted to Islam while in prison and emerged as a powerful spokesman for the Nation of Islam (NOI)which he broke with a year before his deathand the radical wing of the U.S. civil rights movement. [1]  Historian John Henrik Clarke wrote that Malcolms assassination extinguished the brightest light we had produced in the 20th century and our movement was set back a generation.[2]  When Malcolm began his speech at the Audubon, a mans voice drowned him out by shouting in the middle of the ballroom, Nigger, get your hands out of my pocket. As heads turned to hear what the commotion was all about, an incendiary device was triggered at the back, sending smoke into the air. With peoples attention distracted, a man stood up in the fourth row with a sawed-off shotgun and fired point blank into Malcolms chest. Two men in the front row further jumped up with pistols in their hands and coolly took aim at Malcolm and shot at him like a firing squad, according to a female eyewitness in the third row. Afterwards, they emptied their revolvers into Malcolms prone body before fleeing the scene. [3]  As Malcolm fell backwards to the floor, the ballroom was filled with pandemonium. Summary of the FBI investigation into Malcolm Xs assassination, February 22, 1965. [Source: cbsnews.com]  NOI Minister Louis Farrakhan characterized Malcolms bodyguards as damn cowardly dogs and damn punks who were ducking and running as the bullets flew, implying that they had been compromised. [4]  Two of the gunmen escaped through a narrow seldom-used flight of stairs leading down to the street, while the others formed a column and tried to escape through the front. [5]  Talmadge Hayer, 22, of Paterson, New Jersey, was shot in the leg, allegedly by Malcolms Secretary, Reuben Francis. He was subsequently trapped by a mob and almost torn apart before he was arrested by two police officers whose squad car was cruising in the neighborhood. Hayer was found with a clip of .45-caliber bullets in his pocket which matched the murder weapons found at the scene. In court, he confessed to the crime, though never said who sent him to kill Malcolm, only that he was a foot soldier, a part of a machine.[6]  Hayer served 44 years in prison before his release in April 2010, at which time he claimed to have had deep regrets about his involvement in Malcolms murder. Wrongful Convictions  The two other men convicted for Malcolms murder, Thomas Johnson (Khalil Islam), 30, and Norman Butler (Muhammad Aziz), 26, each spent about 20 years in prison. Johnson and Butler were both members of the NOIs Harlem mosque and lieutenants in the private Muslim army called the Fruit of Islam. They were out on bail after being charged with shooting Benjamin Brown, a defector from Elijah Muhammad who had opened an independent mosque in Harlem. At the trial, Hayer told the court that Johnson and Butler had nothing to do with Malcolms killing and that he did not even know them. He stated: I was there. I know what happened. I know the people that did take part in it and they (Butler and Johnson) wasnt any of the people that had anything to do with it. I want the jury to know.[7]  In 1977 and 1978, Hayer gave the names of four men who he said were his accomplices as part of an affidavit given to civil rights lawyer William Kunstler in which he laid out a detailed time line of the assassination plot. Kunstler said that he did not know of any comparable case in American jurisprudence history in which an accomplice described a crime in such detail without a thorough reinvestigation.  The four men Hayer identified were part of the NOIs Newark, New Jersey, Temple Number 25. According to Hayer, a man he knew as Wilbur or Kinly, later identified as Wilbur McKinley,[8] shouted and threw a smoke bomb to create a diversion. A man named Willie, later identified as William Bradley (aka Al-Mustafa Shabazz), 28, a stick-up man, had a shotgun and was the first to fire on Malcolm X after the diversion. Hayer asserted that Bradley and a man named Lee or Leon, later identified as Leon Davis,[9] both armed with pistols, fired on Malcolm X immediately after the shotgun blast. Hayer also said that a man named Ben, later identified as Benjamin Thomas,[10] was involved in the conspiracy. After the assassination, Bradley served time in jail for robbery, aggravated assault and drug possession and then settled in Newark where he ran a boxing gym and even appeared in a political ad for former Newark Mayor and New Jersey Senator Corey Booker in 2010 before passing away in 2018. [11]  Baba Zak A. Kondo, author of the 1993 book Conspiracys (ies): Unraveling the Assassination of Malcolm X, said that he interviewed a retired Newark police officer who knew Bradley and contended that a surprising number of people in Newark knew that Bradley was a killer. The former policeman recalled once sitting in a bar talking to Bradley. Shortly after the assassin left, another brother looked at him and said, You know, thats a killer. Years later, the officer learned that Malcolm had been one of Bradleys victims. [12]  As part of the frame-up, Butler (aka Muhammad Aziz) received a fake $10,000 check right after Malcolms killing with a note congratulating him for a job well done.  The number on the check led to the Harlem Progressive Labor Party (PLP) in an account that had been closed in 1962. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)which had the capability to discover the bank account numbers of the PLPmay have written the check in an attempt to discredit both the PLP and Butler. [13]  On the day of Malcolms killing, Butler, a karate expert, said he was at home recovering from thrombophlebitis of the leg, which made the scenario in which he leaped from the window of the ladys room before making his escape implausible. A doctor who treated Aziz at Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx before Malcolms murder, Kenneth Saslowe, took the stand in Butlers defense, stating that he had treated him the morning of Malcolms death. [14]  Johnsona house painter and former heroin addict who had at one time been part of Malcolms security detailsaid that on the day Malcolm was killed, he was in his apartment across from the Bronx Zoo with his pregnant wife, sick in bed with a rheumatoid arthritis condition, and learned of the killing at 4:00 p.m. when he was visited by his Muslim friends. [15]  Johnson was well-known as an enforcer with the Harlem Mosque #7 and would have been recognized at the Audubon Ballroom if he was there. Later, in prison, he passed a polygraph test that had been paid for by Muhammad Ali. [16]  A Rigged Trial  The Judge assigned to Hayer, Johnson and Butlers trial, Charles Marks, was known for his harsh sentencinghe once gave a confessed rapist and robber 60-100 years in prison, at that time one of the longest sentences for non-murder in historyand fixed enormously high bail for Black Panther Party members accused of plotting to terrorize New York City. The New York Police Department (NYPD) allegedly had films of Malcolm Xs killing that were never displayed at trial. A key witness in identifying Butler, named Sharon, had a connection with the Newark mosque that was never explored. [17]  Her boyfriend, whom she sat next to, Linward Cathcart, the Lieutenant of Newark Mosque 25, wore a pin displaying his loyalty to Elijah Muhammad, was pictured laughing next to Malcolms dying body, and was identified by one investigator as being part of the assassination team. [18]  Another witness identified Ben Thomas of the Newark mosque as an assassin, though this lead was never followed up. [19]  The testimony of other key prosecution witnesses was riddled with exclusions, distortions and outright lies; the witnesses were coached and manipulated by the police and District Attorneys office. One was arrested on trumped-up charges and had to cooperate with the prosecution to avoid jail. [20]  Another star witness, Cary Thomas, one of Malcolms bodyguards, was held in jail on $50,000 bond. He had previously been admitted to a psychiatric facility for shouting in the streets about killing Jesusa fact the judge refused to admit as evidence in court. [21]  Thomas was a heroin addict and alcoholic and told different stories before two grand juries. Before one, he said that Hayer and Butler caused a diversion and Johnson fired the shotgun that killed X, though in the other he swore that Johnson and Butler caused the diversion and Hayer fired the shotgun. [22]  Neither the prosecution nor the defense called Reuben Francis, Malcolms bodyguard who shot Hayer, to testify at the trial, or Malcolms right-hand man, Benjamin Kamin (aka Benjamin Goodman), who manned the door at the Audubon on the day of the killing. [23]  Karim had actually told police detectives and Assistant Attorney General Herbert Stern that he knew both Butler and Johnson and that they were not in the Audobon ballroom on the day of Malcolms assassination; their only response, however, was to become angry at him. As If They Wanted It to Happen: Police Misconduct  Days before his assassination, Malcolms home in Queens had been firebombed, yet there was no police detail supplied to the Audubon when he was murdered. An exception was patrolman Gilbert Henry who was told to conceal himself some distance from the main auditorium where Malcolm spoke. [24]  Henry testified that he had been told to stay where he could not be seen and communicate by walkie-talkie with a police detail concealed across the street in the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center complex where Malcolms body was taken after the shooting, and to tell them to notify police in the hospital if anything happened. At previous Malcolm X rallies there had been at least half a dozen police officers present. In this case, with no security at the door, the assassins were easily able to walk in. Exterior view of the Audubon Ballroom in the Harlem section of Manhattan where Malcolm was killed. [Source: pennlive.com]  The police later claimed that they offered protection, but that Malcolm refused itthough Malcolm had complained to Alex Haley that the police did not take his requests for protection seriously. On the day of the shooting, journalist Jimmy Breslin received a tip from the NYPD that he should go to the Audubon ballroom, indicating someone in the NYPD knew what would transpire. When the police arrived at the scene after Malcolm had been shot, according to eyewitnesses, they displayed no sense of urgency; it was as if they wanted it to happen [Malcolms death].[25]  Earl Grant said he saw an incredible scene in which a dozen police [were] strolling into the ballroom after the shooting at about the pace one would expect of them if they were patrolling a quiet park. They did not seem to be at all excited or concerned about the circumstances [and] not one had his gun out. As a matter of absolute fact, some of them even had their hands in their pocket.  Afterwards, the NYPD did not secure the scene of the crime as they normally would. A dance at the Audubon went on as scheduled at 7:00 p.m. with bullets still in the wall. A rostrum with bullet holes was found in the basement of the Audubon Ballroom years later; it had never been examined by the police. Ballroom after it was roped off by police. A dance went on as scheduled that night. [Source: pennlive.com]  FBI and CIA Involvement  Historian David Garrow, a biographer of Martin Luther King, Jr., stated on the 2020 Netflix documentary Who Killed Malcolm X that by never taking a serious interest in investigating Malcolms death, white-run institutions and law enforcement agencies sent the message that they did not value what his life represented. In Garrows view, FBI informants within the NOI were likely involved in Malcolms assassinationhe was almost certain of this. The FBI at the time under its infamous Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) was promoting a war within the NOI in an attempt to destroy the organization, fearing that Malcolm was a black messiah who would lead a social revolution. [26]  The FBIs Chicago office, four years after Malcolms death, boasted that it had developed the blood feud between Malcolm and the NOI. On the day that Malcolm was killed, the FBI hadnine informants in the Audubon Ballroom, none of whom was asked to testify at Hayer, Butler and Johnsons murder trial. The day before, Hayer was spotted meeting in the Americana hotel with John Ali, who had stolen money from the NOI while serving as its national secretary and previously worked for the FBI. [27]  Malcolm told Alex Haley the day before his assassination that he no longer believed it was the Muslims who were planning his death but something bigger. Malcolms sister, Mrs. Ella Collins, believed that her brother had been murdered by the CIA.[28]  During his travels to the Middle East and Africa, CIA agents followed Malcolms every moveboarding every flight he took, watching his hotels and keeping him under surveillance during meal-timeand allegedly tried to poison him twice. [29]  The CIAs Deputy Director of Plans, Richard Helms, was scrutinizing Malcolms activities up to the hour of his assassination. [30] The State Department had required Helms to treat X as a foreign agent or enemy of the United States.[31]  Mysterious Second Shooter  On the day of Malcolms killing, the early edition of both The New York Times and New York Herald Tribune reported that the NYPD had apprehended two suspects. Later editions of both papers, however, changed their headlines and reported that only one suspect, Hayer, was apprehended. [32]  Discrepancy in headlines in the New York Herald Tribune about number of suspects the police arrested. [Source: Breitman, et al., The Assassination of Malcolm X, 53]  Black nationalists and Trotskyites noticing the discrepancy charged that the NYPD had covered up its involvement in the assassination and that the assailant was a BOSSI (Bureau of Special Services and Investigation) agent whom the crowd recognized as one of the killers because they had beaten and then shot him. [33]  The NYPD and mainstream journalist Peter Goldman attributed the confusion about the number of suspects to the fact that reporters had debriefed NYPD officer Thomas Hoy at the scene and another NYPD officer, Alvin Aronoff, at the station house, not realizing they were talking about the same man. [34]  Los Angeles Times article also claims more than one suspect was arrested. [Source: blog.rarenewspapers.com]  However, in a news video made right after the assassination, the NYPDs chief inspector reported two suspects being in custody. Herman Ferguson, a founding member of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), said that he witnessed an olive complexioned man who had been shot being taken by the NYPD away from the hospital across the street (Jewish Memorial Hospitalwhich would have been a natural place given his injury) and in the direction of the Hudson River. [35]  The FBI reported that Hayer was treated after being taken into custody at the Jewish Memorial Hospital across from the Audubon, where Malcolm was also taken, meaning that he was not the one witnessed by Ferguson in the patrol car. Eric Norden reported that the olive-skinned man had been rushed into the patrol car by the cops and told to get down between the seats.[36] Thin-lipped and wearing a turtleneck sweater, he bore an uncanny resemblance to a man who had tailed Malcolm on a trip to London through his return flight to New York one week before the assassination. [37]  Red Squad  After Malcolm gave a press conference announcing his split from the NOI, William C. Sullivan, the FBIs #2, contacted the directors of BOSSI and asked them to recruit several African-Americans to infiltrate Malcolms new organization. Two of the directors, Jack J. Caulfield and Anthony Ulasewiczwho got his start with BOSSI spying on New Yorks annual May Day paradewere later implicated in the Watergate scandal. [38]  They were happy to comply with Sullivans request because Malcolm had been a thorn in the side of the NYPD for more than a decade. Ulasewicz wrote that he considered Malcolm the flip side of George Lincoln Rockwell [American Nazi whom Ulasewicz had also shadowed]. [Malcolms] stated goal was to cut down the white mans forest, move in on his land, and send him packing.[39]  BOSSI agentsseveral of whom were in the ballroomclaimed that Malcolms assassination took them by surprise, though Chicago Police Department Captain William Duffy, head of the citys intelligence division, based on a tip, and Sergeant Edward McLellan, of the divisions subversion unit, revealed that they had warned New York of a possible murder attempt on Malcolm. [40]  When Malcolms home was firebombed, the NYPD blamed Malcolm for setting the fire and BOSSI agents planted gasoline on his dresser. NYPD Red Squad or BOSSI c. early 1970s. [Source: store.cinemaguild.com]  BOSSI had been modeled after the FBI and spent decades infiltrating left-wing and other radical political organizations and spying on New Yorkers. Its detectives were expert in techniques of provocation, that is, in coercing subversive groups to commit violent and unlawful acts that would discredit them in the eyes of the public. [41]  Tony Bouza, a former BOSSI detective and lieutenant from 1957 to 1965, explains that the NYPD, and not the FBI, was the primary agency conducting surveillance of Malcolm, who was considered a dangerous man and grave threat to public order. Bouza refers to Malcolm X as a thug.  Elsewhere, Bouza suggested that the NYPD failed to take basic and minimal steps to protect Malcolm and failed to disclose all that it knew about the assassination. The investigation was botched, he said, and a parallel tragedy lies in the NYPDs obvious stonewalling of any release of records.  Remarkable Undercover Work  A handwritten note from Japanese-American activist Yuri Kochiyama, written during a meeting of the OAAU Liberation School following Malcolms death, stated that Ray Woods [sic] is said to have been seen also running out of Audubon; was one of two picked up by police. Was the second person running out.[42]  Wood was a black NYPD officer from Chester, South Carolina with an Air Force background who began his career by infiltrating the Bronx Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) chapter in 1964 under the name Ray Woodall. Posing as a 27-year-old graduate of Manhattan College studying law at Fordham University, Wood was named COREs housing chairman and talked chapter chairman Herbert Callender into making a citizens arrest of Mayor Robert Wagner for discriminating against blacks and misappropriating public monies, telling him that the arrest was legal when it was not. [43]  By 1965, Woodall had been reassigned under his real name to infiltrate a group calling itself the Black Liberation Movement (BLM). [44]  He was subsequently credited with foiling a bomb plot by the BLM that targeted the Statue of Liberty and other national monuments, just a week before Malcolm Xs assassination. The idea for the bombing had been Woodsunder the direction of an FBI agentand he did most of the planning, though he lied about this in court to comply with his supervisors directions to not implicate himself. [45]  One of the four arrested and convicted in the plot was Walter Bowe, who co-chaired the cultural committee in Malcolms OAAU. Another, Khaleel Sayyed, was essential to Malcolm Xs security team. [46]  Culprits in Statue of Liberty bomb plot. Bowe is second from the left, and Sayyed is third from the left. Wood is featured on the far right with his back to the camera. [Source: coolopolis.blogspot.com]  Described as the all-American boy with tremendous leadership abilities, Wood was promoted to detective second grade for making the arrests in the Statue of Liberty bombing case, and received New York Citys highest award for heroism, the Medal of Honor. U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach wrote a letter to New York City Police Commissioner Michael Murphy with a note of special congratulations to Wood for his remarkable undercover work.[47]  Dwayne Bey, a photography student and former activist from Brooklyn CORE, said that, in CORE, we suspected the white folks as the cops of the organized leftists but who would have looked at him?[48]  In a 2011 letter relayed through his cousin, Reggie Wood, Wood admitted that he had entrapped two members of Malcolms security team in a criminal plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty, which left Malcolm vulnerable at the Audubon Ballroom. Reggie Wood, left, with Attorney Ben Crump and three daughters of Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz, at a press conference where Ray Woods confessional letter about the Statue of Liberty plot was read. [Source: bluetoad.com]  Wood, who died in 2020, stated that his assignment was to draw the two men into a felonious federal crime so that they could be arrested by the FBI and kept away from managing Malcolm Xs Audubon Ballroom door security on February 21st, 2021.  Wood also revealed that he was inside the Audubon Ballroom at the time of Malcolms assassination along with another NYPD undercover officer, Gene Roberts, a member of BOSSI, who had infiltrated the OAAU (group Malcolm founded after leaving the NOI), and become part of Malcolms security detail. [49]  Wood said that he had been under instructions to watch and not interfere; thus, he did not try to stop a gunman who was running out of the ballroom. [50]  After the shooting, Wood was attacked by a mob who suspected him in the killing and then taken away from the scene in an NYPD patrol car and put in a holding cell for three hours where he realized the significance of the Statue of Liberty plot. [51]  Wood acknowledged subsequently that Johnson was innocent and was arrested to protect my cover and the secrets of the FBI and NYPD.[52]  Socialist and Anti-Imperialist Views  Journalist Eric Norden wrote in a 1967 article that [p]owerful forces, including the U.S. State Department and the CIA, had been deeply alarmed by Malcolms growing impact, particularly his efforts to internationalize the American racial question by bringing it before the United Nations under the Human Rights provision of the UN charter.  A strong proponent of pan-Africanism, Malcolms travels overseas had put him in contact with socialist and anti-imperialist leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara, with whom he established a firm bond when they met at the UN in December 1964. At the time, Malcolm was disillusioned by growing authoritarianism and corruption within the NOI, and split with his mentor, Elijah Muhammad, to form a new movement, The Muslim Mosque Inc., which was aligned with the OAAU. Planning to coordinate voter registration drives and local organizing against police brutality, Malcolm was gunned down on the very day he was to announce his call for the United Nations to denounce American racial practices as human rights violations. The week before, on February 14th, he had given a powerful speech condemning the Western rape of Congo because of its rich mineral wealth, and bombing of the country by CIA-trained mercenaries,[53] which most white liberals were silent about. Like Martin Luther King, Jr., at the time of his death, Malcolm increasingly identified as a socialist. [54]  He established contacts with the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party (SWP), urging his followers to read its publication, The Militant, and told its 1964 presidential candidate, Clifton DeBerry, that he hoped to live long enough to build a viable organization based on his current ideas. [55]  Comparing capitalists to vultures and bloodsuckers, Malcolm said before his death that the domestic exploitation of American Negroes was part and parcel of American imperialisms world-wide drive to control the poorer, predominantly non-white nations.[56]  In an interview with the The Militant, Malcolm noted further that this system is not only ruling us in America, it is ruling the world.[57]  Malcolm X. speaking before a large crowd in Harlem. Before his death, Malcolm increasingly espoused socialist and anti-imperialist views. [Source: liberationschool.org]  Elsewhere, he noted that the racists and segregationists in power exercise the same form of brutal oppression against dark-skinned people in the South and in North Vietnam, or in the Congo or in Cuba, or in any other place on this earth where they are trying to exploit and oppress; that is a society whose government doesnt hesitate to inflict the most brutal form of punishment and oppression upon darker skinned people all over the world.  Malcolm was an uncompromising opponent of the U.S. war in Vietnam long before Martin Luther King, Jr. He told a meeting of the Militant Labor Forum in 1964: What America is doing in South Vietnam is criminal, but the oppressed people of South Vietnam  have been successful in fighting off the agents of imperialism. Little rice farmers, peasants, with a rifle, up against all the highly mechanized weapons of warfarejets, napalm, battleships, everything else. And America cant put those rice farmers back where they want them. Somebodys waking up.[58]  In 1958, Malcolm had similarly noted that Korea had won the war against the white man with just a bowl of rice, sneakers and a gun.[59]  By the time of his death, Malcolm was adopting mostly pro-Chinese positions on international questions, stating that the explosion of Chinas first atom bomb was one of the greatest things that has happened because up until now, the nuclear devices have been in the hands of Europeans.  Malcolm went on to express hope that the Chinese would in the future be able to build bigger and better nukes because the only language that America understands is the language of power and a dark nation has to be in a position to talk or speak the language that these imperialists understand.[60]  Gangland Execution  The media coverage after Malcolms murder was indicative of the deeply engrained prejudices directed against Black Muslims and radical Black groups in the 1960s. The New York Herald Tribune ran an editorial on February 23, 1965, titled Hate Full Cycle, which stated that the slaying of Malcolm X has shown again that hatred, whatever its apparent justification, however, it may be rationalized, turns on itself in the end. Now the hatred and violence that [Malcolm X] preached has overwhelmed him and he has fallen at the hands of Negroes.[61]  The New York Times, in an article entitled Malcolm X Lived in Two Worlds White and Black, blamed Black nationalist extremists for Malcolms death, describing him as an extraordinary and twisted man, turning many true gifts to evil purpose  Malcolm had the ingredients for leadership, but his ruthless and fanatical belief in violence not only set him apart from the responsible leaders of the civil rights movement and the overwhelming majority of Negroes. It also marked him for notoriety and for a violent end.[62]  Time magazine a few days later editorialized that Malcolm had been a pimp, cocaine addict and a thief. He was an unashamed demagogue. His gospel was hatred.[63] Life magazine followed suit by describing Malcolm as the shrilled voice for black supremacy, while The Saturday Evening Post considered his death the result of a gangland execution.[64]  Spread in Life magazine after Malcolms death in which he was characterized as the shrilled voice for black supremacy. [Source: discovernikkei.org]  These depictions soured the public on an investigation and ensured that no outcry was raised when the wrong men were convicted. Other Suspicious Deaths  Like with the Kennedy assassination, Malcolms assassination resulted in other suspicious deaths. One was of Louis Lomax, an African-American journalist who befriended Malcolm X in the late 1950s and claimed to have solved the riddle of the assassination. [65]  On July 31, 1970, Lomax died in an auto accident in New Mexico. [66] At the time, he had a contract from 20th Century Fox to make a movie about Malcolm that would expose the U.S. intelligence communitys role in his assassination. The brakes on his car failed and Lomax skidded across a highway and died. Lomax believed that Malcolm X was betrayed by a former friendthought to be John Aliwho reportedly had ties to the intelligence community. Lomax called the suspect Judas.[67]  The second suspicious death was of Leon Ameer, Malcolms New England representative and Cassius Clays (Muhammad Alis) former secretary, who had vowed to carry on Malcolms work after his assassination. [68]  The former karate teacher was found unconscious in the bathtub at Bostons Sherry Biltmore Hotel on March 13, 1965, hours after he had appeared at the Socialist Workers meeting in Boston. In a speech there, he said that the government was responsible for Malcolms death and that he would shortly produce tapes and documents of Malcolms to prove it. Ameer stated in his speech that he had facts in my possession as to who really killed Malcolm X, and that this is probably the last time youll see me alive.[69]  The Suffolk County medical examiner stated initially that Ameer, only 31 at the time, died of natural causes and suffered from an overdose of a medical drug called Domadeen which induces sleep. [70]  Later, it was claimed that Ameer died of an epileptic fit or heart attack and had been found with froth in his mouth. But his wife said he had a medical check-up one month before and there was no hint of epilepsy or heart troubleand he had not had an epileptic fit in the previous 11 years. On his death, Ameers blackened tongue protruded between his lips. In an epileptic seizure severe enough to cause death, the tongue is usually swallowed, causing asphyxiation. [71]  Conclusion  Malcolms supporters appear to have had the right intuition in thinking that he was murdered on orders from the U.S. government.[72]  Precisely who gave those orders, however, remains unknown. The Innocence Project is currently working with civil rights attorney David Shanies and the Conviction Integrity Program of the New York County District Attorneys Office to re-investigate Butler and Johnsons convictions. In February 2021, New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance reopened the case in order to determine if the wrong men were convicted. Vance tapped experienced prosecutors Charles King and Peter Casolaro, who was a member of the team that investigated and cleared the Central Park Five. Whatever the outcome of their investigation, Malcolm Xs death, alongside those of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., in the 1960s had a profound impact on American politics, helping to usher in a period of conservative ascendancy. [Source: pinterest.com]  The tenets of American exceptionalism presume that political assassinations only occur in totalitarian states like Russia and China; an investigation into Malcolm Xs killing, however, reveals that this is simply not the case. *  Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, @crg_globalresearch. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc. Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obamas Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: jkuzmarov2@gmail.com. Notes  Related Articles  In March of 1964, Malcolm X announced his official departure from the Nation of Islam where he had spent twelve years working on behalf of the organization led by Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm had been suspended and silenced for ninety days in the aftermath of an address he delivered at the  11 February 2014  21 February 2015  24 February 2021The original source of this article is CovertAction MagazineCopyright  Jeremy Kuzmarov, CovertAction Magazine, 2021  https://www.globalresearch.ca/who-ordered-killing-malcolm-x/5749174