The Messenger, page 16
For its part, the FBI immediately launched a probe of Takahashi and his contacts in America. Hoover also requested an update on Takahashi’s legal status. He was advised that Takahashi was incarcerated in the Federal Medical Center in Springfield, Missouri (under the alias of Naka Nakane), but was scheduled to be released in January 1942.62 On December 23, 1941, the attorney general ordered him detained under a presidential proclamation for the duration of the war. The proclamation was initially used against radicals, but its scope broadened rapidly as the Japanese victories escalated. President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, designating the West Coast a military area. More than 100,000 Japanese Americans were ordered from their homes and herded into internment camps. Takahashi, who was nearly blind and suffering from stomach ulcers, was removed from the hospital and placed in an internment camp by the order of U.S. Assistant Attorney General Frances Booth on April 2. Three weeks later, General John L. DeWitt posted public notices ordering all “persons of Japanese ancestry” living in Seattle to report to internment camps by May 1. Similar orders were issued to Japanese Americans elsewhere on the West Coast.63
After most Japanese Americans were corralled on these makeshift reservations, the intelligence agencies started discussing the possibility of arresting African-American radicals who supported Japan, and even broached the idea of placing them in internment camps as well.64 On April 21, Berge finally gave Hoover the go-ahead for a witchhunt aimed at the NOI. Berge wrote regarding the possible prosecution of Muhammad and David Jones: It is the view of the Criminal Division that these subjects have violated Section 11 of the Selective Service Act in that they have counseled evasion, and there appears to be no reason why these subjects should not be apprehended based on the warrants presently outstanding against them. The United States Attorney for the District of Columbia is authorized to proceed with the prosecution of these subjects under said Section 11.65
CHAPTER SEVEN
MOLES IN THE MOSQUE
Thus it comes about that all armed prophets have conquered and unarmed ones failed.…
—Machiavelli, The Prince1
May it be possible that foreign hire
Could out of thee extract one spark of evil
That might annoy my finger? ’Tis so strange
That, though the truth of it stands off as gross
As black and white, my eye will scarcely see it.
—William Shakespeare, Henry V2
While America trembled in fear of another Japanese attack, the NOI celebrated the bombing of Pearl Harbor as the beginning of the hellfire. Many Muslims wondered how soon the ships would come to take them to their promised new homes in Hawaii, and when they would get their first glimpse of the Mother Plane. Others wrote letters urging their families to join the NOI before it was too late. On December 9, two days after the attack, Milwaukee minister Sultan Muhammad wrote an effusive letter to the Messenger:
The end of the enemy truly has come, and at this time they should able to see it. All Praise is due to Allah; it [Armageddon] truly has come, my Loving and most Faithful Apostle. Oh, how happy am I to see what I am seeing! If I only could speak like I desire to speak.3
In a follow-up letter on December 16, Sultan, who was the Messenger’s cousin, beamed proudly as black Milwaukeeans were suddenly beating down the door to join the NOI.4 His weekly report of February 3 was equally euphoric:
Old Satan is really silent in his Hell. They are just as quiet and never have anything to say concerning his war in our presence on the train or in the gasoline stations. All Praise is due Allah alone, the Great God of the Universe. What is the matter with the Devils? Why are they carrying such long faces? Ha! Ha! They have discovered their ends and what they have carried into practice. Blessed be the name of Allah, Who promised through His prophets that He would overtake the Devil and his host!5
The NOI was clearly confident of a Japanese victory, but no one felt as assured of the war’s outcome as Japan. Sensing its ultimate triumph, the Japanese government printed currency it planned to use in Hawaii, the Philippines, and other Pacific islands once its flag was raised in those places. Germany was also certain that Japan would crush America; after all, Tojo had Mussolini and Hitler on his side. “Exceptionally happy news came during the night about a great naval victory of the Japanese in a battle in the Coral Sea which still continues,” Third Reich propagandist Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary on May 8, 1942. “That, of course, means that the Anglo-Saxon East Asiatic fleet sustained an irreparable loss.”6
At Temple No. 4 in Washington, D.C., Muhammad and his followers reveled in newspaper accounts of Japan’s exploits, though not for long. As the war entered its sixth month, the FBI’s intelligence reports forced Hoover to take a closer look at the NOI, as they indicated that the Muslims and other black nationalist organizations were receiving carbine rifles and sophisticated military weaponry from Japanese espionage agents. These weapons, several field offices reported, were stockpiled in black ghettos in nearly every major American city.7 On the afternoon of May 8, two FBI agents went to the rooming house at 1306 Girard Street Northwest, where Muhammad had moved most of his belongings. The home belonged to one of his followers, a Mrs. Williams. Muhammad, sensing that he would soon be apprehended, traveled and changed residences frequently to avoid arrest.8 One week he’d visit the temple in Philadelphia, then spend the next week in Chicago or Detroit. He was using so many aliases that it’s a wonder that even he was able to keep track of them all. The Mitchells called him Mr. Evans and Mohammed Rassoull, while Mrs. Williams at the Girard Street address was told to call him Ghulam Bogans.
Despite his aliases and fancy footwork to dodge the draft, the FBI picked up his trail. On May 8, agent Frank J. Holmes knocked on Mrs. Williams’s door. Holmes knew Muhammad was there because one of the FBI’s moles in the local mosque had seen him go in but hadn’t seen him leave, and his car had been parked out front for several days. When Mrs. Williams answered the door, Holmes asked whether Bogans was inside. Mrs. Williams said that indeed he was, but asked Holmes the nature of his visit. Holmes identified himself as an FBI agent, and said he had come to see Bogans, who he said also used the aforementioned aliases. Williams nervously summoned Muhammad, who came down the stairs wearing a pinstriped suit and freshly shined duckbill shoes. When Holmes asked to see his draft registration card, Muhammad informed him that he did not have one.9
“Did you register on February 16 at Local Board Eleven?” Holmes asked.
“No,” Muhammad replied, nor had he any intention of doing so, he added. “Then you’re under arrest,” Holmes said. Muhammad knew how this hand was going to be played. Though it was a warm, sunny day, he carried his overcoat, for he expected his stay in jail to be a long one. Passersby stared as Holmes led him down the busy street. One could hardly blame them for staring, as it was rare to see a well-dressed black man walking down U Street—the center of a black community—with a white man. Those who stared long enough saw what press photographers captured for posterity. Holmes’s left arm and Muhammad’s right moved in unison because they were connected at the wrist by handcuffs. Muhammad turned his head away, but the cameras kept clicking as the photographers in front of him walked backwards. Each time he looked forward for a moment to see where he was walking, shutterbugs snapped feverishly.
That evening, the paparazzi devoted their attention to Paul Robeson, a true Renaissance man, who was in Washington to give a concert. The son of a fugitive slave, Robeson was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Rutgers University and the first black All-American football player (he played professional football before graduating from the prestigious Columbia Law School). He also was a gifted actor and a superb baritone. As Muhammad was being taken to the D.C. jail, Robeson was across town in a studio rehearsing Elijah, the oratorio composed in 1846 by Felix Mendelssohn.10
Shortly after ten o’clock that same evening, FBI official D. Milton Ladd dictated a memo addressed to Assistant Director Edward A. Tamm regarding Muhammad and the mysterious Japanese agent mentioned in the intelligence report of September 20, 1940:
SAC McKee of the Washington field office telephonically advised that they had picked up Mohammed Rassoull on a warrant.… As a matter of interest in connection with this matter, Mr. McKee advised that Rassoull had in his possession a newspaper clipping, which was yellow from aging, relative to the Japanese Takahashi (phonetic). Mr. McKee further advised that Rassoull had been living in Chicago, [and] that although he is a Georgia negroe [sic], he looks like a Japanese, having slant eyes.11
Days after this embarrassing admission, the FBI updated its records to reflect that the so-called Japanese agent its Washington field office had been trying to identify for two years without apparent success was none other than Elijah Muhammad.
Muhammad’s bail was set at $5,000, but he had less than one-tenth of that at his disposal.12 Clara learned of his arrest from radio reports at her home in Chicago, where she started a fund-raising drive for bail money. Meanwhile, the prophet of the NOI sat in a musty cell at the D.C. jail. On May 14, Minister Sultan Muhammad arrived at the jail with Minister Willie Muhammad Jr. of Detroit to see what they could do about securing the Messenger’s release. A prison official quickly but quietly notified the FBI’s Washington field office of their presence. Agents arrived at the jail within minutes to interview the two men, who admitted that they were of draft age but had not registered for the draft. When asked if they preferred to do so immediately, they replied in the negative. The agents consulted with Assistant U.S. Attorney John Conliff in Washington, who called prosecutors in Milwaukee and Detroit.13 Sultan and Willie Jr. were detained overnight in the D.C. jail. The next morning, formal complaints were lodged against them in their respective hometowns, and they were extradited the next day. With their arrest, there were only a few prominent ministers still free, and on May 19, one of the others lost his freedom, too. David X Jones, the regular minister of the Washington temple, was arrested at his 9th Street home on draft evasion charges. He was placed in a cell near Muhammad’s in the D.C. jail. When U.S. Commissioner Needham C. Turnage asked him why he had failed to register for the draft, he replied, typically, that he had “already registered with the Nation of Islam.”14
“When there is a conflict between the law of Allah and any other law,” explained Jones, who acted as his own legal counsel, “the law of Allah will be followed by the Nation of Islam.”15 The defendant’s speech clearly angered the commissioner, who ended up sounding like a prosecutor. “Real Muslims have been fighting for hundreds of years, Mr. Jones,” Turnage said sardonically.16 With that, he ordered the marshals to take Jones back to his cell. On June 4, over thirty Muslims (more than half of them women and young children) from the Washington temple marched to the jail to protest the Messenger’s incarceration. They demanded to be jailed with their leader, a spokesman said, because they were equally guilty of failing to register for the draft.17 A few local newspapers noted their protest with a paragraph here and a photograph there, but their efforts proved futile. After fourteen grueling hours of standing and squatting on the jail’s cement steps, the last of the demonstrators went home. Muhammad, David, and others who had been apprehended remained in the jail for several more weeks.18
Two days before the demonstration, a senior FBI official wrote in a memo to Hoover that there was a direct link between Takahashi’s groups, the NOI, and the MSTA. Under the title “Development of Our Own, aka the Onward Movement of America,” Assistant FBI Director Percy E. Foxworth wrote:
When this cult [SDOO] was founded, it was directed toward the extermination of the White Race and this motto still stands, as during meetings and services a large sign is always displayed bearing the inscription, “The Paleface has to go.”
Among at least five nationally prominent leaders who reported to Takahashi, Foxworth stated, were Walter Davis-el of the MSTA and Elijah Muhammad.19 A follow-up memorandum added Emmanuel Pharr of Detroit as the leader of the OMA in Takahashi’s absence and also listed Kallatt Muhammad as a high-profile member of the movement. Kallatt “said that he has had no connection with the organization recently, but it was informant’s opinion that he is still connected to the group.”20 The informant also said that Kallatt was employed at the Wheel Mill of the Carnegie Illinois Steel Corporation in Gary, Indiana, as were many OMA members.
It took nearly three months, but Clara finally secured enough cash to bail her husband out of jail. She waited for an hour on July 23 while a clerk counted the $5,000 she had brought along, much of it in small bills.21 Several hours later, Muhammad was taken before a U.S. District Court magistrate. Instead of the expensive hand-tailored suit he was wearing when arrested, he was dressed in a long white robe and a white turban, apparel that Clara had brought to the jail along with the money. She was similarly attired. The Messenger was freed and greeted by cheering supporters as he and his wife left the modern-day dungeon.22
Before Muhammad was released, Hoover approved a counterintelligence plan by which professional makeup artists were hired to apply cosmetics and even shoe polish to the skin of white FBI agents (at that time the agents were all white) so that they would appear to be black. After they were made up, these agents were assigned to various NOI temples to determine whether the speakers were violating the Smith Act. While they discovered that it was possible to fool a few attendees in the darkness outside the temple, the agents complained about looking wholly unconvincing as black men once the sun rose or if they encountered blacks in well-lit areas. Their problem was summarized in a memo dated August 21, 1942, from FBI official Alex Rosen to Tamm:
While talking with SAC Johnson of Chicago regarding an investigation presently being conducted on the above group, he mentioned a matter which I thought might prove of interest. Johnson stated that this particular meeting was in a colored district and it was extremely hard for the agents to operate without being detected. He said, however, that when the meetings have been held, arrangements have been made to have the agents made up by professional make-up artists so that by wearing dark glasses, the agents could mingle unnoticed in a group of colored people. He advised, however, that under strong sunlight this make-up does not prove to be so effective.23
Contrary to Tamm’s belief and some of the agents’ own illusions, few were ever deceived for long by the Al Jolson routine. On September 4, for instance, four agents in blackface arrived at the Washington temple for the Friday night service. According to Dorothy X, who headed the temple in David Jones’s absence, the agents were stopped at the door and asked why they were there. After giving her a song and dance about how much they were “interested in the teachings,” the agents were told to get lost. The next day, the incredulous secretary mailed a letter to the Messenger to tell him how “four devils attempted to get into the temple.”24
Out of exasperation or embarrassment, or both, Hoover asked the chiefs of the New York Police Department, the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, and the Chicago Police Department, among others, to release black police officers for temporary assignment with the FBI for counterintelligence work. Among the officers placed on loan were Raymond Weaver of the Metropolitan Police and several officers from the New York City force.25 The wisdom of having African Americans as agents—a move Hoover opposed because he regarded blacks as intellectually deficient—became readily apparent in the first weeks of Weaver’s assignment. Weaver alerted the Bureau to the connection between the NOI and Ashima Takis (Mimo De Guzman), who fled Washington only days after Muhammad’s arrest on May 8. Takis was arrested in Harlem on July 27, then extradited to Washington to face draft evasion and sedition charges.26 Upon being questioned, prior to being bound over for trial, Takis admitted that he had founded the St. Louis chapter of the SDOO, and had done so upon the orders of Takahashi.
Muhammad was indicted two weeks later on several counts, the first charging him with violating the Selective Service and Training Act of 1940. His arraignment, along with those of eighty-one other Muslims, was set for August 25. Most of those expected at the arraignment that day were present, but not the Messenger. After Clara had posted bail on July 23, he had fled to Chicago. The court declared him a fugitive, and notices were circulated that the Messenger was wanted by the FBI.27
On September 1, a complaint was lodged and a warrant issued against Elijah Muhammad and his top aides, charging them with violation of the draft registration laws. The government had planned to indict Nannye Beverly, the third most powerful woman in the NOI (after Clara Muhammad and Pauline Hatchett Bahar), but she fell ill before the grand jury heard the full case against her. She died of tuberculosis at Gallinger Hospital in Washington a month before the second warrants were issued.28 A grand jury sitting in Chicago handed up yet another indictment against Muhammad on September 15. Five days later, FBI agents found the fugitive from Washington hiding in a carpet under his mother’s bed.
On September 21, Albert Johnson, the FBI’s Chicago SAC, called a press conference to confirm media reports of a nationwide raid on black nationalists and pro-Japanese organizations. Johnson, who said that the Bureau had evidence that the NOI, the PME, the PMEW, and an organization known as the Brotherhood of Liberty for the Black People of America were all were linked to BDS. The FBI’s three-day search for Pauline Bahar ended where it had begun on September 20, at her home.29 She was one of eleven black nationalist leaders seized that day, and one of the few females among the seventy people apprehended over the weekend. What baffled FBI investigators was the large amounts of money that many suspects had on their persons at the time they were arrested, and how well they all dressed. “The leaders we took into custody on Sunday and yesterday have lavish and expensive costumes, and have plenty of money,” an FBI spokesmen told reporters. “Even their followers,” he continued, “many of whom are poorly dressed, seem to have some means.”30 Another federal agent added that the search for Japanese expatriates believed to be financing the black organizations was continuing:
