"Bob Marley: Blunt Questions" By: I. Jabulani Tafari

“Rasta don’t work for no CIA”

Did the CIA really kill Bob Marley? How’s that for a Blunt Question? This is only one of many Blunt Questions that remain unanswered nearly 22 years after Bob Marley’s translation from this world into another dimension.

When the newz broke in Jamaica on May 11, 1981, that Bob Marley had passed on from this world at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami, the immediate and initial response by politically savvy Rastafarians in Jamaica was that the Reggae Maestro had been murdered, or more correctly, assassinated! At the time, the Rastas didn’t know exactly who, when, where or how, but they knew enough to suspect foul play with extreme prejudice. Of course, anyone who heard that reasoning, scoffed at it. After all, everyone knows that cancer is a fatal disease, and Bob had it and died from it and that’s a great pity… but murdered? How ridiculous! Maybe, or maybe not. Not when you stop and really think about it. Who would want to? Who would be able to and how could it be done so skillfully without suspicion?

It’s almost like the classic scenario that Detective Lieutenant Columbo of TV fame, would stumble and fumble his bumbling way into. Only to find that the seemingly straight forward ‘death by natural causes’, was really the ‘perfect murder’ in disguise. After all, who ever would even suspect the possibility of something as bizarre as that occurring? So for the past 20 years, music lovers around the world have been mourning the ‘untimely’ passing of Bob Marley, accepting that the Reggae Legend died of ‘natural causes’ (really unnatural, because what’s ‘natural’ about cancer?) Thus, as we move swiftly into a new millennium and an impending New World Order, a mounting body of information is seriously suggesting that Bob Marley was the victim of an elaborate assassination scheme that resulted him being literally ‘taken out’ –right there in broad daylight on center stage before the eyes of the whole world.

Since the late 1970’s and on into the early 1980’s, the New York City and Houston, Texas, Police Departments have led the way in compiling official reports on the Rastafari Movement. The NYPD in particular, not only described Rastafarians as dangerous, gun-shooting, drug-dealing, criminal Jamaican Posse members, but actually profiled and described dreadlocked Rastas as “terrorists”. The largest police operation in the history of Washington DC, ‘Operation Caribbean Cruise’ back in the late 1980’s, was designed to prove once and for all the drug-dealing, gun-running connection between Rastafarians and the Jamaican criminal posses that were said to be even more ruthless and trigger happy than the Italian Mafia and Organized Crime. “Operation Caribbean Cruise’ never made the nightly news outside of DC, because the police dragnet came up empty…. But for about five guns (not the high powered automatic weapons anticipated) and a minimal amount of drugs.

Despite these failed attempts to tarnish and taint the reputation of the Rastafari Kulcha, Bob Marley and Peter Tosh continued leading the way for a world wide revolution in thinking and thought. Their militant brand of hardcore Rootz Reggae was revolutionary in its impact. The Word Sound & Power of their Muzik, inspired political, economic, social and religious changes all over the globe. The anti-apartheid movement in South Africa drew inspiration from Marley Muzik; the Zimbabwean freedom fighters engaged in a guerrilla struggle against Ian Smith’s colonial Rhodesian settler regime, drew inspiration from Marley Muzik; even young, rich White kids in America from name-brand families were starting to hang out at Wailers concerts, were starting to dig the message in Marley’s muzik and were becoming inspired to work for social change and to “Chant Down Babylon” That was motive enough for Marley’s murder.

Marley was succeeding in a rhythmic revolution that utilized music as a more efficient tool than guns and bombs. Bob Marley, his mere personae, his instantly and internationally recognized image and look, his use and promotion of the “Wisdom Weed’, his verbal and material support of global Pan-African Liberation, and the fact that Bob Marley had become a millionaire –a Black Jamaican-born, pro-African, independent-thinking millionaire Rastaman- who could now put his own money where his mouth was and finance whatever project he wanted to… All of these factors made Bob Marley a very serious threat to the North American status quo and to the hidden power brokers trying to implement their plan for a New World Order.

By 1980, Bob Marley was the most popular ‘Third World’ muzik star on the planet and his immense influence was growing geometrically. The final straw that prompted clandestine covert operations against Marley was probably when Bob put the immortal words of HIM Emperor Haile Selassie I to muzik in the brilliant composition entitled “War”. When they heard: “Until the color of a man’s skin makes no more significance than the color of his eyes, there will be war… Until there are no first or second class citizens of any nation - war… Until the ignoble and unhappy regimes that hold our brothers in Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, have been toppled and utterly destroyed - War. And until bigotry, prejudice and malicious and inhuman self interest have been replaced by tolerance, understanding and good will… everywhere is war.” When the CIA types heard that song, they brought in the heavyweights and the battle went to another dimension. Unfortunately, Bob Marley never really knew that he had already been “Marked For Death”. And as Del Jones chronicles inhis “Culture Bandits” series of books, Bob was soon eradicated as a revolutionary 3rd World Icon and replaced in the early 1980’s by an androgynous (blurred gender), surgically altered, cosmetically bleached Michael Jackson.

O.K., so now you agree that they had a reason and a motive to kill Marley, but now you’re wondering, how could they give him cancer? According to the popular version of events, Bob is supposed to have contracted cancer after bruising his toe and losing a toe-nail while playing soccer in France in 1977. In his revealing book, “Marley And Me”, former Wailers manager Don Taylor notes that an unknown doctor came and gave Bob a still unknown injection in his toe right after the ball game was interrupted Malignant cancer, originating in the same toe, was diagnosed some time after. But the origin of the melanoma (the most virulent and deadly kind of cancer found in Humans) that took Bob’s life, may be concealed in little known events that took place at an even earlier time.

In a very interesting cover article published in the February 2002 issue of High Times magazine, the authors disclose that in 1976, Carl Colby, son of ex-CIA Director William Colby, visited the Hope Road home of Marley and gave the Reggae Star a gift in the form of a pair of boots. The High Times article quotes eyewitnesses as saying that Bob cried out “Ow!” when he stuck a foot in one of the boots. Something had jucked (stuck) him in the toe(s). Talk about being aware or beware of “Greeks baring gifts”. Subsequent investigation of the boot by hand, retrieved a piece of copper wire that had been sticking up inside the footwear. Entitled, “Chanting Down Babylon: The CIA and the Death of Bob Marley”, the High Times article went on to pose another Blunt Question: had the copper wire found in Bob’s new boot been chemically treated with a carcinogenic toxin? There is no doubting that with today’s technology, carcinogenic (that is cancer-causing) substances can be introduced into the human body very easily by a variety of means. By food, drink, smoke, sex, a pin/wire prick, or with the spike of an umbrella.

As the High Times article also observed, 1976 was a time when Jamaica, under the leadership of the Democratic Socialist and pro-Castro Prime Minister Michael Manley, was known to be under direct destabilization efforts by the CIA. According to High Times, Marley and Tosh as Reggae musicians, were targeted in particular because they were using their music to alert the Jamaican people to the dangers of the ongoing CIA covert operations. The visit to Marley by Carl Colby, who was supposedly posing as a member of a foreign film crew, took place a week after the “Ambush In the Night” during which Bob and Rita Marley and Don Taylor were all shot and wounded during the first upfront assassination attempt. Most people took that attack as involving only local partisan politics, with the opposition JLP not wanting Marley & the Wailers to perform at the PNP-Government sponsored and free Smile Jamaica concert days before a hotly contested General Election in Jamaica in December 1976. Marley appeared and performed for a mostly inner-city, urban audience on the Smile Jamaica Concert in the National Heroes Circle, in spite of the gun attack.

At the other, final end of this melodrama, we find Dr. Josef Issels, the supposedly holistic immuno-therapist who treated Bob in Germany after his collapse in Central Park, New York, in late 1980. Information is coming to light that Issels is an ex-Nazi doctor who may be implicated in some of the more nefarious practices associated with German medical studies and practices from the Hitler era. This may explain the painful, starvation-diet based treatment program inflicted on Bob by Dr. Issels. So we want to know: Who exactly is this Dr. Josef Issels? Does he indeed have a Nazi past? And what precisely did his ‘unorthodox’ cancer treatment entail? These Blunt Questions also need Blunt Answers.

At the end of the day and at the end of this article, we’re basically at the same place we were when we started. Just like the following truism indicates: “There are more questions than answers”. Nevertheless, muzik fans and people of good will owe it to themselves and to Bob Marley, to continue asking these Blunt Questions, and should demand that answers be given by the powers that be and those in the know. In the meantime, the final Blunt Question for all of you reading this, is: Bob Marley was willing to get up and pay the price for Standing Up for his Rights and for seeking Liberation from political and mental slavery for his people. Are you?