Judas and the Black Messiah: Who is the Guyanese, William O’Neal?

Mar 17, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – A serious movie, Judas and the Black Messiah, about a tragic event in the life of Black struggles in America, is a formidable contender for best film at the forthcoming 2021 Oscar ceremony. Because of the popularity of the movie among the non-White communities of the US and radical academia, the film should evoke memories of betrayal inside the WPA in Guyana that led to a number of assassinations of its committed activists including its leader, Walter Rodney.
Judas and the Black Messiah is a drama that is not for the faint-hearted. It is the story of cruel betrayal in the Black Panther Party (BPP) of the USA. The FBI got a Black teenage criminal, William O’Neal, to infiltrate the Chicago chapter of the BPP. He rose through the ranks to become part of the BPP’s security department. He became the personal bodyguard of one of the most admired leaders of the BPP – Fred Hampton.
O’Neal gave the FBI the architectural layout of Hampton’s house, cooked dinner for him, spiked his drink with barbiturates, and in the uncivilised hours of the morning, the police came and shot Hampton in his sleep along with another high-profile BPP Chicago leader.
No one knows if O’Neal is dead or alive. After he surfaced 21 years after the 1969 assassination of Hampton to give public interviews, he was supposed to have committed suicide by walking into traffic. But the scriptwriter for the film said on that very night, a man died in similar circumstances and the FBI may have used the incident to put O’Neal in a safe house once more.
Here in Guyana, the story of the Walter Rodney’s betrayal is yet to be told. One would hope that with the rising popularity of the movie, Guyanese would begin to ask that seminal question – who was the William O’Neal in the WPA? Actually, there were three O’Neals in the WPA. Walter Rodney’s daughter publicized 20 declassified documents on the Rodney-Burnham confrontation obtained by the George Washington University in which a top WPA leader was cited as a government mole.
I commented on these documents in my column of Thursday, July 16, 2020, captioned, “Declassified documents reveal Rodney may have been betrayed by a top leader.” When I published that article, I received 79, yes 79, emails asking for the cache. Kit Nascimento called to say he couldn’t find the name. I made his job easier by citing the specific reference.
I don’t think that mole was as well placed as the other two O’Neals. Of the other two O’Neals, one was blackmailed by President Burnham, who had torrid information of a terrible thing he had committed. If he didn’t cooperate, that would have been the end of his career, his family and the WPA. He chose to betray the WPA.
The third O’Neal was equally dangerous. These two O’ Neals literally devastated the WPA and they betrayed Rodney. It was one of these two O’Neals who introduced Gregory Smith to Rodney. Smith was seen by Rodney as a key figure in Rodney’s contemplation of overthrowing Burnham. Smith was presented to Rodney as a special person who must not be introduced to anyone at all. This explains Rodney’s wife testimony at the commissioner of inquiry that she never knew or met Smith.
Betrayals stalked the WPA but none of the big leaders of the WPA thought of looking among themselves because they couldn’t imagine among them were betrayers feeding Burnham intelligence data. Hamilton Green is the only person since the 1970s to reveal that the government had penetrated the WPA.
In an interview with Green, he told me he, Burnham and the PNC knew everything about the guns Ohene Koama had in his car trunk and had the police waiting on Koama to kill him. See my interview with Green in KN of Monday, October 16, 2017, titled, “Explosive Interview with Hamilton Green.”
The assassination of Koama should have alerted the WPA leadership that there were moles amongst them. Every top WPA leader was at the Tiger Bay head office when Koama drove off. The police knew he had the guns but didn’t know where he was heading. It was at that office that Koama was instructed where to drop off the guns.
The police were given that information. There weren’t cell phones in those days so the meeting ended when Koama left. It meant that the mole used a telephone to inform Burnham and Green where Koama was heading. Only the top WPA leaders knew David Hinds was arriving at the airport with a gun in a false suitcase bottom. He was promptly arrested. Security was waiting for them. Space has run out. More another time.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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