Killing Cardillo: What Did The FBI Know And When Did They Know It?
Judicial Watch -- Investigative Bulletin ^ | April 20, 2015 | Micah Morrison
Posted on 4/20/2015, 3:28:19 PM by jazusamo
Yesterday, the New York Post ran my investigative report on a very cold case: the mortal wounding of NYPD Patrolman Phillip Cardillo inside Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam Mosque #7 in Harlem in April, 1972. The “Harlem Mosque Incident” would become one of the most controversial cases in NYPD history—a tale of betrayal and cover-up, race and politics, played out across a disintegrating city.
I’m grateful to the Post for getting behind a story that raises the disturbing possibility that the FBI was deeply involved in the events surrounding Cardillo’s death. Due to space limitations at the newspaper, some of the supporting material had to be cut. Judicial Watch’s Investigative Bulletin is posting the story here in full. If the Post’s terrific version was enough for you, stop here. If you want more—and with apologies for some overlap between the two—read on.
Exactly 43 years ago today—on April 20, 1972—Phillip Cardillo died in St. Luke’s Hospital in New York, six days after being shot inside the mosque. It was a strange and violent time, when New York and the nation found itself at war not just in Vietnam but on its own streets. Racial tensions were running high. Urban homicide rates had skyrocketed. Radical groups like the Weather Underground and the Black Panther Party were trying to stoke a revolutionary fury in the streets with bombings, murder and mayhem. In New York, an ambitious liberal mayor, John Lindsay, was eyeing a run for the presidency.
In a string of brutal crimes directed against the NYPD, officers Thomas Curry and Nicholas Binetti had been blasted with machine-gun fire as they guarded the home of Manhattan DA Frank Hogan. Officers Gregory Foster and Rocco Laurie were murdered on the Lower East Side, shot from behind. Officers Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones were shot to death outside a Harlem housing project. Radicals associated with the violent Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army were fingered for the crimes.
Then came the shooting at Mosque #7. At the time, mosque leader Louis Farrakhan was in the building. Congressman Charles Rangel arrived within an hour. A young police officer named Raymond Kelly—later to become one of New York’s most storied police commissioners—was one of the guards at the hospital where Cardillo died.
Farrakhan, Rangel, Kelly—all would play important roles in the Cardillo case. All have ignored repeated requests by many journalists through the years, including this reporter, to discuss it.
And death was only the beginning of Phil Cardillo’s troubles. The city’s political establishment turned its back on him, a cop killed in the line of duty. The mayor and police commissioner did not attend his funeral, fearing a political backlash in the African-American community and bad press for the Lindsay’s presidential ambitions. The NYPD rank and file was outraged and to this day “Remember Cardillo” is police byword for the perfidy of the political establishment. NYPD brass threw Cardillo under the bus. A special prosecutor later concluded there was an “orchestrated effort” by members of the NYPD “to impede” the Cardillo murder probe.
No one was ever convicted in the killing. “It’s the only homicide of a police officer in New York City in the last 43 years that has not been solved,” says police historian Mike Bosak.
More than four decades later, controversy still shadows the Cardillo case.
In 2006, then-Police Commissioner Ray Kelly ordered a new investigation by the NYPD Major Case Squad. According to 2006 letter from the NYPD to the FBI, the new investigation had been launched “to determine if there is evidence of a conspiracy in 1972” to kill Cardillo. That investigation has dragged on for nine years. Sources tell me there has been no genuine cooperation from the FBI. As late as 2012, a Cardillo cousin circulated a memo saying that the Major Case Squad assured him the investigation was still “active.”
An attempt to name a small street in Harlem after Cardillo hit the rocks in 2013 when the local community board ruled that the police must first get permission from two local mosques—including the one where Cardillo was shot. In an angry letter to Kelly, Cardillo’s son, Todd, called the decision “a slap in the face to me and my family.”
In 2014, media reports said that Cardillo would finally be commemorated with a street named for him outside the new Police Academy and an NYPD patrol boat christened in his honor—but so far, nothing.
For two years, I’ve been digging among the ruins of the Cardillo case. What happened that day at Mosque #7? Why does every attempt to get justice for a slain cop—the initial police investigation, the second police investigation, the secret police investigation, the two trials of an alleged shooter, the grand jury probe by a special prosecutor, the efforts of former detectives and prosecutors—seem to vanish down the memory hole?
Memory, of course, is elusive. Documents less so. The story the documents tell about the Cardillo killing include:
–According to a White House tape, concern about cop killings in New York went all the way to the Oval Office, where President Richard Nixon and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover launched a secret program to hunt down the murderers.
— A secret NYPD report on the killing, known as the Blue Book, was withheld from the department’s own investigators and from prosecutors in the Manhattan DA’s office.
–A long-forgotten special prosecutor report on the case, buried in state archives for 30 years, raises questions about obstruction of justice.
–FBI documents reveal the existence of high-level Nation of Islam informants and hint at possible dirty tricks at the center of the case.
The ultimate question: can this cold case be solved?
The answers are back in 1972.
Continued |
