For LA informant
Double agent role backfires
First of a two-part series.
By JERRY COHEN
(C) 1971, The Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — Ever since he was a runty
kid, his cunning and cool have allowed Louis Tack
wood to connive and survive in the hostile world on
the streets of Los Angeles.
...Until now.
Now, at the age of 28, he is caught in a web of his
own intricate contrivance, and for the first time, it
looks like there is no way out for Louis Tackwood.
A criminal by choice and a police informer
because of his fascination with plot and counterplot,
as well as for obviously practical reasons, Louis
has lived by his own rules.
To justify them, he developed a philosophy that
is part ghetto-shaped, part the product of his native
foxiness:
“Crimes are a part of the game. I’ve always
liked intrigue. It’s like chess (which he claims to
play well) —you have to be a master at it.
“A man lives more than one type of life. You’re
two different people with two different conflicts of
interest. You can’t let one take possession of the
other.”
But the games have closed in on Louis. The two
different people he claims to be are at war with one
another, and conflict has taken possession of him.
During the last three weeks, he has told wildly
‘Crimes are part of the game.
I’ve always liked intrigue. It’s
like chess—you have to be
a master at it. ’
conflicting stories which could have vast reper
cussions not only for law enforcement and the
militant left hut even for America itself.
That is, if any of what he said is true or even
partly true.
He claims two of the Los Angeles Police
Department’s elite units, the Criminal Conspiracy
Section (CCS) and the Special Investigations
Section (SIS) - are guilty of dirty, even murderous
doing against militants, both black and white.
Among his allegations in that respect are these:
That CCS had prior knowledge of both last
year’s Marin County Courthouse shootout in Nor
thern California and George Jackson’s fatal escape
attempt from California’s San Quentin Prison - and
allowed both to proceed despite a certainty that
lives would be lost.
That SIS funneled money and arms through
him to Hon Karenga, then head of the US
Organization, with the understanding that the
weapons were to be used to kill Black Panthers.
That Tackwood, upon SIS officers’ in
sructions, made the controversial anonymous
phone call Aug 18, 1965, informing Los Angeles
police that guns were stashed at the Black Muslim
Mosque here During the raid that followed no
weapons were found at the mosque.
—That Melvin (Cotton) hmitn, principal wit
ness in (he current trial of 13 Black Panthers here,
was a police informer and agent provocateur long
before the Dec. 8, 1968. raid on Panther
Headquarters which led to the arrest of the
defendants Officers contend Smith turned state’s
evidence only after the raid
—That CCS and the FBI had organized a special
squad, “Squad 19," to provoke violence at the 1972
Republican National Convention in San Diego,
Calif., which could be blamed on leftists The ob
ject : “to create a situation which would permit the
President to invoke special emergency powers
leading to the arrest and detention of political ac
tivists throughout the country ”
—That CCS had sent him to the San Francisco
bay area to work undercover for the FBI and the
California Bureau of Criminal Identifieationand
Intelligence (C1I). The object: To spy on militants
there and to infiltrate the "Black Caucus,” two of
whose members were elected last April to the
Berkeley, Calif., City Council.
- That because of his long service as an in
former and agent provocateur, dating back to 1962,
the U»s Angeles Police Department granted him "a
license to steal.”
When Tack wood disappeared in mid-September
after making these anil other allegations to a band
young student activists, the latter fireu ofi letters
containing the charges to Los Angeles Dist Atty.
Joseph Busch, California Atty Gen. Evelle
Younger and U S. Atty Gen John Mucoeu
They demanded an investigation, and claimed
“We believe his police superiors have found it
necessary to conspire in the kidnapping or worse of
Mr. Tackwood.”
They also approached representatives of the
Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and
Newsweek Magazine, which jointly began in
vestigating Tackwood’s disappearance and the
allegations.
Spokesmen for those who approached the media
were Mike McCarthy, 28; Robert Duggan, 32, and
Marily Katz, 26. All admitted their leftist leanings.
They claimed to have gotten in touch with
newsmen to prevent a “cover-up” of Tackwood s
disappearance and his allegations.
There are two versions of how Tackwood met
the trio about three months ago.
The one offered most consistently by Tackwood
is this: He went to the Los Angeles Free Press,
where McCarthy then was a staff writer, looking for
work. When McCarthy learned he was an informer,
he put him in touch with Duggan and Ms. Katz who
he knew to be writing a book about police in
formers. Tackwood contends, by this account, that
he did not know the political persuasion of his new
friends at the time.
The other version is that he learned through the
grapevine of McCarthy, who served seven years in
California prisons where he earned a reputation as
a political activist. By this account, Tackwood was
disenchanted with his work for the police and was
looking for someone who would be interested in
what he knew about police intelligence operations.
Duggan, McCarthy and Ms. Katz taped more
than eight hours of interviews with Tackwood,
detailing his allegations.
During this collaboration, he established ms
credibility as an informer by, among other things,
producing information he claimed to have obtained
from secret CCS files from Los Angeles Police
Headquarters.
He said then- and continues to insist even
today-that he was such a trusted informer, “Like
one of the family,” that he had “easy access” to
CCS confidential information.
He even obtained, he would later tell newsmen,
CCS files on Duggan, Ms. Katz and their associates,
plus names of informers and CCS officers spying on
them.
Once, he claimed, he called from a telephone
from inside CCS Headquarters itself to warn
Duggan and Ms. Katz their apartment here was the
subject of a stakeout and agents were going to
arrest Duggan, who was planning to drive to the
airport for a trip out of town.
Meanwhile, Tackwood was acting as a double
agent, feeding police worrisome information about
Duggan and Ms. Katz. Much of it, he claims,
amounted to phony advisories suggested by the pair
to ensnarl police in “a conspiracy.”
He said CCS officers sometime in September
put a phone in the rented home where he was living
with his young wife Gwen, 18, and her mother, then
told him to sign an authorization for a “tap”.
Tackwood claims he believed the authorization
covered only a device they gave him to record his
conversations with Duggan. He said he avoided the
He was such a trusted
informer. . . ‘like one
of the family. ’
phone and talked over it with Duggan only once
about the so-called “San Diego Plan.”
Upon discovering in mid-September the the
telephone had an extension which rang in a nearby
Uis Angeles Police Station, he said he became
frightened and he and his wife “disappeared,’’
moving in with friends.
He also would say that he “hid out” because he
had come to fear Duggan, a karate expert, and Ms.
Duggan
Having been approached by the young leftists
toward the end of Tackwood’s three-week
“disappearance,” newsmen independently turned
up a string of confirmations of what he had related
on tape.
While unable to corroborate tus more in
flammatory allegations, they found he indeed had
met with certain persons at certain places on the
approximate dates he had given.
Among other claims, newmen confirmed that
he was indeed a longtime police informer-if not
necessarily an informer on militant matters and an
agent provocateur.
In a 1966 report, a probation officer wrote:
“Los Angeles Police Department officers
report that this defendant in the past worked for
them as a reliable informant and had been ex
tremely helpful to them in recovering stolen cars
and the apprehension of a number of car thieves.”
Court documents also showed that he had done
suspiciously little “hard time" despite a long record
of arrest and conviction, mostly for auto theft.
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