
© Promotional photo/Speakerpedia.comForensic expert Fred Whitehouse suspected ATF of tampering with evidence in Omaha Two case.
Retired
FBI Laboratory supervisor
Fred Whitehurst provided professional consultation to the Nebraskans for Justice beginning in 1999. Whitehurst, a sixteen-year FBI veteran, was for a number of years the FBI Laboratory top explosives expert. Whitehurst turned his forensic investigative skills to the
Omaha Two cases of
Edward Poindexter and
Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa (former David Rice).
Whitehurst ended his career with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1998 as a whistleblower against sloppy science at the FBI Laboratory.
Whitehurst's disclosures uncovered and reported scientific misconduct which forced the Bureau to adopt forty major reforms, including an accreditation process.
Mondo and Poindexter were leaders of Omaha's affiliate chapter of the Black Panther Party called the National Committee to Combat Fascism.
The two men were also named targets of the clandestine COINTELPRO counterintelligence operation conducted by the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. The Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Division was in a fierce rivalry with the FBI over the investigation of bombings and had also targeted Mondo and Poindexter under the so-called
Midwest 22 investigation.
Agents of both the FBI and
ATF joined the Omaha Police Department in making a case against the two Panther leaders for the August 17, 1970 bomb murder of
Patrolman Larry Minard, Sr. One of the key pieces of evidence used against the
Omaha Two were purported dynamite particles in a shirt pocket of Poindexter and pants pocket of Mondo. ATF agents took custody of the clothing and sent the garments to the ATF Laboratory where the dynamite trace was allegedly found. Both Poindexter and Mondo tested clean for dynamite at the time they were booked.
Whitehurst wrote a series of email messages to the Nebraskans for Justice about the pocket particles. Whitehurst wrote,
"It is strange to me that "particles" of dynamite were found in clothing.""Dynamite is not a loose material," explained Whitehurst. "When you stick a blasting cap into a cartridge of dynamite you don't open the cartridge up. You poke a hole into the cartridge and put a cap into it....Something ain't right here."
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