The man who gave the Black Panther Party some of its first firearms and weapons training - which preceded fatal shootouts with Oakland police in the turbulent 1960s - was an undercover FBI informer, according to a former bureau agent and an FBI report. One of the Bay Area's most prominent radical activists of the era, Richard Masato Aoki was known as a fierce militant who touted his street-fighting abilities. He was a member of several radical groups before joining and arming the Panthers. But unbeknownst to his fellow activists, Aoki had served as an FBI intelligence informant, covertly filing reports on a wide range of Bay Area political groups, according to the bureau agent who recruited him, [Burney Threadgill Jr.]. Aoki's work for the FBI ... was uncovered and verified during research for the book, Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power. The FBI ... released records about Aoki in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. A Nov. 16, 1967, intelligence report on the Black Panthers lists Aoki as an "informant" with the code number "T-2." Aoki gave the Panthers some of their first guns. As [Bobby] Seale recalled in his memoir, Seize the Time, the group approached Aoki, "a Third World brother we knew, a Japanese radical cat. He had guns .357 Magnums, 22's, 9mm's, what have you." In early 1967, Aoki joined the Black Panther Party and gave them more guns, Seale wrote. Aoki also gave Panther recruits weapons training.