Richard Masato Aoki, the only Asian to hold a prominent official position with the Black Panther Party in Oakland during the 1960s and who is credited with giving its members some of their first weapons training, was allegedly an FBI informant, according to a book published this week.

But filmmakers Mike Cheng and Ben Wang, who made the 2009 documentary Aoki, dispute the allegation published in Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power by Seth Rosenfeld, and an article that summarized its contents.

Aoki grew up in Oakland and was a self-described gang member before enlisting in the army in 1957 at 17. He served one year on active duty and seven in the reserves. Aoki worked with several radical groups in the ‘60s before gaining international attention as the Black Panthers’ weapons expert.

By then—according to Rosenfeld’s account of FBI records and interviews with Burney Threadgill, Jr., the former FBI agent who said he was Aoki’s handler—Aoki was regularly reporting to the FBI on the activities of radical groups he was working with.

Aoki later became a teacher, counselor and administrator at Peralta Community College District. He killed himself in 2009 after a long illness.

Cheng and Wang dispute Rosenfeld’s interpretation of heavily redacted FBI documents and question the veracity of Threadgill, who died in 2005. They point out that it was a common FBI tactic to falsely claim radicals were snitches to diminish their reputations; Threadgill offered no evidence of his claims besides his own word and isn’t around to answer questions; Aoki emphatically denied ever being an informant, although Rosenfeld interprets some of his comments otherwise; and FBI documents that assign Aoki an informant designation are vague and almost indecipherable.    

–Ken Broder

To Learn More:

Man Who Armed Black Panthers Was FBI informant, Records Show (by Seth Rosenfeld, Center for Investigative Reporting)

Statement Regarding Allegations that Richard Aoki Was an FBI Informant (by Mike Cheng and Ben Wang)