Publisher Gets Protection After Death Threat Related to Bailey Case

By: E&P Staff Oakland Post Publisher Paul Cobb is putting out the black-oriented weekly under the watchful eye of police, following an informant's report that there is a contract on his life.

According to a report by Thomas Peele of the Chauncey Bailey Project, an unidentified man who had befriended Bailey before the editor was murdered in broad daylight in August, told police two men once associated with Your Black Muslim Bakery offered him $3,000 to lure Cobb to a place where he would be killed.

An associate of the bakery -- which has been linked to cult-like criminality -- confessed to killing Bailey because the editor was reporting on the finances of the establishment.

Cobb told the Chauncey Bailey Project he had no idea why he would be targeted for death four months after Bailey's murder.

The Chauncey Bailey Project is a consortium of 25 newspapers, broadcast stations, journalism associations and j-schools from the Bay Area and around the nation that is investigating the circumstances of the journalist's murder as he walked to work last Aug. 2, and continuing his work.

In the months after Bailey's murder, Cobb received several death threats, and police tightened security around the paper's building. In October, Kevin Westin and Cliff Parker, journalists with New American Media (NAM), a participant in the Bailey Project, reported that economic problems forced Cobb to lay off "numerous" employees -- while others left for fear of violence.

The security at the time, and presumably now, discouraged walk-in advertising business, NAM reported, and some advertisers simply delayed paying invoices betting Post would shut down.

The 60-year-old man who reported the death threat was a witness to Bailey's murder. He was also an associate of the bakery more than a decade ago, and knew the two alleged would-be killer from that time, reported Peele, who is an investigative reporter for NAM.

The man first told Cobb about the threats, and the publisher got in touch with Oakland Police Chief Wayne Tucker on Wednesday night. Both the publisher and the informant were placed under police protection.

"I am worried for my safety and for my wife's safety," Cobb told NAM's Peele. Thursday is the day the Post goes to press, and Cobb's office said he could not immediately come to the phone to talk with E&P about the threats.

Peele reported the informant said two men -- whom he knew only by their Muslim names -- approached him Wednesday morning, and offered him the $3,000 "to set up" Cobb.

Cobb told Peele he was skeptical of the man's report at first, but the informant insisted the threat was real.

Peele told E&P that no journalists on the Bailey Project have been harmed or threatened in the course of their work. The project's former head, Center for Investigative Reporting Executive Director Robert Rosenthal, did not immediately return a phone message for comment.

At the time of his murder, Bailey was working on a story about the pending bankruptcy of the controversial Your Black Muslim Bakery. The shop, which is not affiliated with the Nation of Islam, had been under police investigation for a series of incidents of violence, including murders, robberies, and a kidnapping.

Press reports later said Bailey was working on a story that said the bakery had been taken over fraudulently by a gang-like group.

Days after the murder, 19-year-old Devaughdre Broussard confessed to the crime, according to police, telling detectives he was "a good soldier" who killed Bailey because of negative stories about the bakery. Broussard worked there as a handyman, police said.

Broussrd later recanted the confesion. A police raid on the bakery recovered a shotgun police believe was used to kill the 57-year-old Bailey. Yusuf Bey IV, son of the deceased Black Muslim leader and bakery founder Yusuf Bey III, was arrested in the raid. He has been charged with kidnapping in an unrelated case as well as real estate fraud.