The NEWS & OBSERVER (Raleigh)
July 24, 1982 P. 3C
CWP says it has proof
FBI had role in deaths
From Staff and Wire Reports
CHARLOTTE — Members of the
Communist Workers Party said
Friday that they have evidence
that the FBI conspired with Ku
Klux Klan and Nazi members to
kill five communists at a 1979 anti-
Klan rally in Greensboro.
"The facts point clearly to an
FBI cover-up of massive proportion," CWP spokesman Nelson
Johnson said at a news conference
in front of FBI offices in downtown
Charlotte. "We have conclusive
evidence that they were involved
in the assassinations in Greensboro."
As Johnson spoke, a half-dozen
demonstrators unfurled a large
green and white banner bearing
the message, "The FBI Killed San-
di Smith and the CWP 5, Indict
Gov't Agents, Klan and Nazis."
Several carried smaller signs saying, "Indict the FBI, Stop the Cover-up."
Johnson said a letter dated May
1, 1981, written to Marv Glass of
Santa Barbara, Calif., and signed
by special FBI agent Robert
Pence, referred to an investigation
of the CWP made by the FBI and
on file at the agency's headquarters in Washington.
Johnson said Glass, whom he described as an anti-government
researcher, wrote to the FBI requesting copies of reports and investigations on the CWP.
"In response to your request for
'your agency's investigation of the
Communist Workers Party in
Greensboro, N.C, and surrounding area, that began on or about
October $, 1979, and ended on No
vember 2, 1979,' this information
had been previously reported to
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Headquarters, Washington, D.C,"
Pence wrote in the letter.
"I think this shows without question that the FBI did investigate
the CWP, which they have denied
all along," Johnson said.
"I don't think you can plan an
assassination without an investigation. The government has given
us no cooperation in this case. We
have had to be our investigators.
But who will investigate them (the
FBI)?"
Johnson said he would demand
the entire FBI file on the 1979
deaths and that the CWP would demand that a special prosecutor be
appointed in the case.
Robert J. Heibel, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI
Charlotte office, said Johnson and
an attorney met Friday with two
FBI agents. He declined to comment on the CWP allegations and
Johnson's interpretation of
Pence's letter.
"They're free to make any interpretation they want to make of it,'
Heibel said in a telephone interview. "We're not going to comment on anything in connection
with the incident back in November 1979 or concerning the Communist Workers Party."
An FBI agent in Greensboro said
after the shootings that the FBI
had closed an investigation of the
CWP one day before the five were
killed. Other FBI officials later denied such an investigation had taken place. 9
