Friday, Jul 25, 2008
New Leftists Art Goldberg and Stew Albert fire back at David Horowitz
Plus: Amen to Joyce Millman's "year in TV" round-up; is it little girls -- or their moms -- who buy pink toys?
Dec 20, 1999 |
Who killed Betty Van Patter?
BY DAVID HOROWITZ
(12/13/99)
David Horowitz omitted a key section from my letter in his Salon column. This is what he left out: "If you felt it necessary to have some accounting of the funds you had raised, you should have called [Panther leader] Elaine [Brown], and told her Betty was working for you and if there were any questions about Betty, she was to tell you ... Also, you should have told Betty to bring any irregularities to you and you should have discussed them with Elaine." This, of course, would have made it clear that David was responsible. Instead, he hid behind Betty Van Patter, and let her take the consequences.
Horowitz also chose to omit my reminder that the Panther school had just received a large grant from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, a favorite program of Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell. Since Panther finances were generally chaotic, they would be especially wary of someone poking into their books at that time.
Horowitz has a selective and flawed memory. I warned him several times in the early '70s not to get too close to the Panthers. Newton was in Cuba, Seale was back east, Cleaver was in exile, and a new crew was in charge. They were running many fine programs: the school, Breakfast for Children, sickle cell anemia detection, free health clinics, and job training projects that Horowitz fails to mention. But there seemed to be a dangerous undercurrent, and I and others close to the Panthers chose to pull back.
That's when David, against our advice, blindly rushed in. This was strange, because in the '60s and early '70s, he almost never went to demonstrations. He was always too busy writing. So when he describes himself as a New Left activist, it's simply untrue.
It's also strange that he omits my affiliation with Ramparts. He and I shared an office there in 1968, and in 1971 he sent me to New Haven to cover Bobby Seale's trial. Since my piece ran in Ramparts, he should know the jury voted 11-1 and 10-2 to acquit Seale and Ericka Huggins of murder, and that the judge subsequently threw out the charges against them. Yet in his column, he says the Panthers were guilty of that murder.
Likewise, Horowitz neglects to mention that the police were never able to find out who killed Betty Van Patter. Is he suggesting that the Oakland Police were in cahoots with the Panthers in the Van Patter case?
Horowitz is also mistaken when he says Newton "assigned" me to write a book with attorney Charles Garry. Actually, Newton and Garry were not on speaking terms in 1973 when I began working on the book, at Garry's request. Newton never assigned me to do anything. In fact, I first met Newton when Horowitz assigned me to interview him for Ramparts in 1971.
It's interesting to me that someone who makes a living accusing people of political and other crimes has such a total disregard for the facts himself.
-- Art Goldberg
David Horowitz states that I called him a "police agent" for condemning the SLA for murdering Marcus Foster, the Oakland superintendent of schools. This is a lie. I never called him a police agent -- and the letter he refers to, which appeared in Ramparts, also condems the murder of Marcus Foster.
As for David's work with the Panthers, he began doing this when most of the Berkeley radicals were pulling away from them because we suspected links to criminal activity and gangsterism. That he recruited a politically experienced individual like Betty into that environment boggles the reasonable mind. Art Goldberg is correct -- if David had asked me if it was wise or safe to work would the Panthers, I would certainly have advised against it. But back then David was the sort of guy who always thought he knew the truth better than anyone else.
-- Stew Albert
What Horowitz hoped to gain from printing that private e-mail from Art Goldberg, and his wounded rant in rebuttal escapes me. Those of us who think of the Black Panthers as a wretchedly organized black supremacist militia do so without Horowitz's help; those of us who believe the opposite, or who just don't care, will hardly be swayed by this latest nugget. Using Salon as a bully pulpit from which to execute overkills against ex-friends represents an unworthy lapse in academic good taste.
-- Steven Augustine
Get Salon in your mailbox!