URB Magazine October, 2000 Page 48 MENACE TO SOCIETY In The Covert War Against Rock, writer Alex Constantine investigates the federal connections to the deaths of some of music�s greatest geniuses. By Chris Campion According to a new collection of work by LA-based political researcher Alex Constantine, corporate culture is killing music, literally. The Covert War Against Rock (Feral House) slides through a four-decade hit parade of questionable ends, examining the disputed deaths of politicized musicians from John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley and Peter Tosh to Tupac, Notorious B.I.G. and Michael Hutchence. All were deemed destabilizing threats to society according to the CIA�s Operation CHAOS and/or had unwitting connections to CIA- and Mafia-linked corporate communities which hastened their untimely deaths, Constantine argues. Keen to distance himself from the murky world of conspiracy theorists, Constantine says, �I don�t want anything to do with all the alien stuff and ESP nonsense. I research politics. Fascist politics, specifically. And when I�m talking about fascism, what I�m really referring to is unregulated corporatism.� The fruit of his work is a patchwork of covert culpability painstakingly stitched together from books, news reports, interviews and court documents over a 10-year period. Rather than present scattershot allegations, Constantine draws on a logical web of probable guilt spun directly from the scene of the crime. In his previous books, Psychic Dictatorship in the U.S.A. and Virtual Government, the researcher fearlessly revealed myriad connections between intelligence agencies, organized crime and �unregulated corporatism.� For his pains, Constantine himself claims to have been the subject of intimidation and scare tactics: He�s been warned off by the Mafia, narrowly escaped a �random� knife attack on the street and was almost bowled over by a �runaway� police car. But none of these incidents have deterred him from presenting his research on artist deaths. �There are people who are stuck on the assassination of Martin Luther King, John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy,� says Constantine, �but there are hundreds of political assassinations that have taken place in this country. Many of those took place in the music industry. To the CIA, political rock musicians are a significant threat because they influence millions of young minds.� He believes the bulk of contemporary assassination plots target black musicians, with the eventual aim of de-clawing hip-hop politics and leaving a hollow, jiggy carcass. Sifting through mountainous files of evidence, Constantine came to the conclusion that �the LAPD killed Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. with federal oversight.� He also notes that one of the lead suspects in Tupac�s murder is David Mack, an ex-cop doing time for bank robbery who is tied to the LAPD�s corrupt Ramparts divisions. Skeptics to the theory of coup d��tat are directed to Frank Owen�s May 24 Village Voice cover story revealing a mole inside the Wu-Tang Clan camp in the form of FBI informant Michael Caruso. Using the name Lord Michael, Caruso was acting as Cappadonna�s personal manager until the story broke (he was swiftly fired). In his former life, Caruso was a promoter of the Limelight�s early �90s Future Shock parties and the kingpin of a drug ring centered around the club. He turned in state�s evidence on Limelight owner Peter Gatien and business partner Chris Paciello to avoid doing time. Owens further reveals that the Wu-Tang, and specifically RZA, is currently the subject of an ATF investigation into possible interstate gun-running. It is an attempt to link the weapons found at the scenes of the 1997 murders of Wisegod Allah and Robert Johnson (cited as �close friends� of RZA and Cappadonna, respectively) to guns bought by alleged We-Tang affiliates in Steubenville, Ohio (the location of the group�s base camp and also TZA�s hometown) and brought to Staten Island. Cue an assertion included in Covert War by Tupac�s stepfather, Dr. Mutulu Shakur ( a veteran black activist incarcerated on conspiracy charges) that �the tactics by law enforcement agencies in the past have been to arrest high-profile artists on gun violations.� Shakur also contends that the flames of hip-hop�s East-West feud have been fanned by the establishment in much the same way that bicoastal Black Panthers were set against each other by a wave of FBI-instigated assassinations in the �70s (as part of the COINTELPRO operation, which was designed to destroy the black resistance movement). �It�s incumbent upon rappers to understand what�s happening,� says Constantine, �and study the history of COINTELPRO and the Black Panthers. And to see that these patterns are re-emerging in the present day. Because if you don�t study history then you are doomed to repeat it.� ------------------ The Covert War Against rock is available directly from www.feralhouse.com and most major bookstores for $14.95
