[16 SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 1987 who do not…]

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16 SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 1987 who do not get a hearing in the bigbusiness media.

Such spying is a violation of the ruling class's own laws. Specifically, it violates the Handschu agreement—the result of a 16-year lawsuit by the Black Panther Party and other victims of police spying.

The Handschu agreement requires the NYPD to get permission from a threeperson panel (consisting of two police and a retired judge) before investigating groups or individuals. In addition, criminality must be shown to be involved.

The New York Eight In a press conference soon after the revelations, Commissioner Ward argued that the surveillance was legal, since it had been approved by the panel concerning the New York Eight. Ward could not say what criminal acts were involved, however.

As if to buttress a sagging argument, several of the New York Eight were arrested a few days later on gun-possession charges, which many activists believe to be fabricated.

But later in the same press conference, Ward admitted that surveillance was not confined to the New York Eight.

This is not the first time the NYPD has spied on Black people and their organizations. Its Bureau of Special Services and Investigation-often known as "BOSSI" or the "Red Squad"-has a history of spying on left, labor, and Black organizations that extends back to 1920.

In the words of Anthony Bouza, a former BOSSI agent: "We wiretapped, infiltrated, bugged, photographed, surveyed, investigated, spied, and unashamedly undertook any strategy that enabled it to do its job effectively."

Especially active in the 1960s and early 1970s, BOSSI targeted such organizations as the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, and numerous Puerto Rican nationalist organizations. Antiwar organizations were also monitored.

Sometime in 1965, BOSSI successfully placed an agent named Gene Roberts among Malcolm X's bodyguards.

According to Murray Kempton in the July 3 issue of Newsday: "All Roberts could report of interest to the police was the existence of a plot to kill him [Malcolm], a piece of news that BOSSI took with such frozen tranquility that, when the assassins rose up on schedule that Sunday, there was not a cop in or near the Audubon Ballroom to inhibit them."

Today, a new generation of militants is struggling for a better life for Black people. A program for victory for Black liberation will include important lessons of Malcolm X's life and death. Party primary for district attorney. The Rev. Calvin Butts has frequently been mentioned as a Democratic Party candidate against Koch in the 1989 primary.

Commissioner Ward, in an obvious attempt to deflect criticism from Black leaders, has recently taken to lecturing Black audiences about "our dirty little secret, Black crime."

But the "dirty little secret" is not Black crime, however much Ward might like it to be. It is the fact that the banks and corporations run New York, the police department, and the Democratic Party machineboth in Harlem and elsewhere.

The Democratic Party holds back the struggles of the Black people today just as it did in the 19th century, when it was the party of the slaveholders. Malcolm X described the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats as the difference "between the wolf and the fox. No matter what, they both eat you."

A giant step toward putting an end to racism will come when the Black masses are organized in a political party independent of the capitalist class and the Democratic and Republican parties that it controls.