Sadiki “Bro. Shep” Ojore Olugbala, who said he used to work in security for Eldridge Cleaver, remembered Brown as sort of a groupie. “At that time, Elaine was dubbed as another girl who wanted to have sex with men in leadership positions which placed her in a higher suspicion in my security files,” Olugbala wrote in a letter to Drums In The Global Village.
He also recalled an incident that he said was incited by Brown but in which Brown claimed to be the victim. During a Jan. 17, 1969 meeting on the UCLA campus, Brown screamed that she’d been assaulted by one of the attendees. Los Angeles Black Panther chapter leader John Huggins, with whom Brown was sexually involved, said Olugbala shot at the accused. A shootout ensued resulting in the deaths of Huggins and Black Panther Party leader Bunchy Carter.
“During the police investigation, Elaine Brown lied…She then continued this lie all the way to the witness stand in LA Superior court,” Olugbala wrote, charging that Brown’s lies led to the wrongful conviction of two people she claimed were shooters.
Brown testified for the prosecution, which in the eyes of the Panthers and Olugbala made her a “snitch.” Olugbala banished her from events, he wrote.
Later in the 1970s, Olugbala claimed that Brown became Huey Newton’s lover and inflamed his “hatred against Eldrgige.”
As the relationship between Brown and Newton soured, “Huey called her out as an FBI agent,” Olugbala wrote.
In addition to Olugbala’s claims, released FBI records revealed more than 500 reports on a wide range of activists and political groups in the Bay Area filed by early Panther member Richard Aoki, who was also an FBI informant. In the files was information on Brown that the FBI was collecting, Reveal News reported.
The question of whether or not Brown was an informant played out on Twitter recently.
Tweeter ghetto intellectual mentions another of Brown’s lovers, Jay Kennedy.
Kennedy was a record executive, and Harry Belafonte’s business manager. He also worked for Frank Sinatra. He was a CIA and FBI informant. It was well known that he and Brown were involved.
While there is no definitive evidence that Brown was indeed an informant, there is circumstantial evidence that she may have been groomed or prepped to become one.
Bramhall believes Gloria Steinem used her influence in the feminist movement, as founder of Ms. Magazine and through a variety of to her platforms to help redefine feminism – and she was nudged by the CIA to do it. She particularly pointed out how Steinhem heavily promoted a book allegedly written by Michele Wallace, a Black feminist activist who was also touted as a leader of the movement.
“In her early twenties Wallace, who like Steinem came out of nowhere (she was a Newsweek book review researcher), was suddenly being touted as the “leader” of Black feminism,” Bramhall wrote. “In the book, Wallace called abolitionists like Harriet Tubman and Sojouner Truth ‘ugly’ and ‘stupid’ for supporting Black men. She called Black Revolutionaries ‘chauvinist macho pigs’ and advised Black women to ‘go it alone.’ Gloria Steinem maintained that Wallace’s book would ‘define the future of Black relationships’ and she pushed hard to make sure the book received massive publicity. Gloria Steinem’s efforts triggered a flood of ‘Hate Black Men’ books and films that continues to this day.”
Bramhall added, “The original feminists of the sixties and seventies didn’t hate men (at least not the ones I worked with). What they hated was patriarchy and the use of male privilege to deny women and children full equality as human beings.”
Fact Check: Black Panther Party's Elaine Brown Groomed By A US Government Informant Fact Check: Did Feminism Prophet Gloria Steinem Really Work For The CIA?