The FBI letter:
Peltier
should be kept in prison
(David Williams, Letter to the Editor,
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 21, 2000)
IN RESPONSE:
["EDITORIAL SUBMISSION"<jsedit@onwis.com>, "Williams, Joe, education
reporter:"<jwilliam@onwis.com>]
Editor
The Morning Mail
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
PO Box 371
Milwaukee, WI 53201-0371
Joe Williams' 4/21/00 story on lobbying efforts by the FBI Agents
Association against executive clemency or pardon for Leonard Peltier
is a
welcome crack in the wall around a 25-year old festering wound.
David J.
Williams' letter in the same edition is a continuation of the FBI
Association's 20-year struggle to maintain the veil of silence and
secrecy
around the same story.
In February of this year Leonard Peltier began the twenty-fifth year
of his
unjust imprisonment. Legend has it that the FBI always gets its man.
In
this case, they got their man. However, the voluminous public record
of
what happened at the Jumping Bull Ranch in Oglala, SD, on June 25,
1975,
and during the pursuit and trials that followed, belies the contention
that
their man was the responsible party.
Williams' letter, aside from details, has two major faults. First, it
totally ignores the context. During the early 1970's the FBI and other
federal agencies, in a continuation of the now discredited COINTELPRO
activities, were involved in a reign of terror undertaken to discredit
and
emasculate the American Indian Movement. It included equipping, supporting,
training and collaborating with tribal chairman Dick Wilson's hired
band of
gunmen, who affectionately called themselves the GOONS (Guardians of
the
Oglala Nation). The result was the deaths of almost 300 people. Most
of
these cases were never investigated or remain
open to this day.
Second, Williams and the Agents Association fail to share with readers
the
admissions of judges and federal prosecutors concerning government
misconduct in their pursuit and prosecution of Peltier.
Several examples point to parts of the unmentioned story. Lynn Crook,
the
U.S. Prosecutor in Peltier's original trial, told an appeals court
7 years
later, "We don't know who killed the agents."
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, while denying an appeal in 1986,
said
that FBI misconduct in the case was a "clear abuse of the investigative
process," and that it involved coercion of witnesses, the knowing use
of
perjury, the fabrication of evidence, and the suppression of evidence
which
would have proven his (Peltier's) innocence.
Senior federal judge Gerald Heaney, who presided at the Eighth Circuit
appeal, later came forward and wrote a letter to President Reagan urging
him to commute Peltier's sentence, stating that evidence of unlawful
misconduct by federal agencies, including the FBI, before, during,
and
after Peltier's trial in Fargo demand that he be given executive clemency.
The FBI's publicly articulated core values include "rigorous obedience
to
the Constitution of the United States," "respect for the dignity
of all
those we protect," and "compassion, fairness, and uncompromising personal
and institutional integrity." The ongoing public relations campaign
of the
FBI Agents Association to keep the full story of the Peltier case from
public scrutiny belies those high values. It is a disservice to the
institution, to the agents who serve to the highest standards, and
to the
country. Justice and truth would be far better served by putting the
entire record on the table where the light of day and the flame of
truth
could purge this gross injustice from our public life.
Maintaining the silence about investigative and prosecutorial misconduct
does not advance justice or lead to truth. The tragic deaths of Agents
Ronald A. Williams and Jack R. Coler almost 25 years ago are not
appropriately memorialized by continuation of this charade.
It is time, after all these years, for the words of regret, contrition,
and
remorse that David Williams seeks to come from those agencies of our
government who abetted the reign of terror at Pine Ridge, and who have
collaborated these many years to maintain the concocted story of this
blot
on our national consciousness.
Twenty-five years is enough of this injustice. Leonard Peltier should
be
granted executive clemency now.
Jay Metzler <jaym@execpc.com>
Jay Metzler
5209 W. Hillcrest Drive
Mequon, WI 53092
APPEND: AS TO THE WISCONSIN CHARGES
<<After the Trail of Broken Treaties, Herb Powless and Leonard
Peltier, who had been arrested for trespassing at the Fort Lawton occupation
in Washington State in 1969, returned together to Milwaukee. On the
evening of November 22, 1972 Peltier was sitting in the Texas Restaurant
when two off duty Milwaukee policemen picked a fight with him. As
he left the restaurant later they jumped him, beating him so fiercely that
according to later court testimony, one of the cops broke most of the blood
vessels in his hand couldn't work for several days afterward. In
the struggle they found a gun on Leonard Peltier (which did not work, the
firing pin being broken), and so they charged him with attempted murder.
Once cop received a citation for "saving" his buddy's life by foiling the
"murder attempt" by dramatically thrusting his finger between the hammer
and the firing pin as Peltier allegedly pulled the trigger.
After being released on bond, Peltier fled underground, but he would
eventually be returned to face the murder charge. At the subsequent
trial four years later, it was determined that the entire incident had
been a fraud, set up by the two policemen. Anne Guild, girlfriend
of policeman Ronald Halvinka, testified that, prior to the incident at
the restaurant, Halvinka had shown her a photograph of Peltier and had
told her that "he was going to help the FBI get a big one." >>
#3 Minneapolis Star, November 29, 1972
Blood of the Land: The Government and Corporate War Against the American
Indian Movement by Rex Weyler, p. 60
Last August in response to the Canadian investigation concerning Leonard Peltier's extradition from Canada Warren Allmand made the following observations. Excerpted here from the Toronto Sun article in which they appeared.
Former MP calls for justice, again
By PETER WORTHINGTON
Toronto Sun
As anyone knows who
has ever tried, even in a minor way, to correct an injustice done to someone
knows, it can be a long, arduous, frustrating, tortuous path - just ask
Warren Allmand. When Indian activist Leonard Peltier was arrested in Canada
in 1976 and extradited to the U.S. for the 1975 shooting deaths of two
FBI agents during a range war on South Dakota's Pine Ridge reserve (near
Wounded Knee), Allmand was first Canada's solicitor-general and then minister
of Indian affairs.
He later realized the extradition was fraudulent, based on false affidavits acquired by the FBI from an Indian woman (Myrtle Poor Bear) who had never met Peltier, was not in Pine Ridge at the time, but who claimed to be his girlfriend and had watched him kill the agents. Peltier is in the 23rd year of two consecutive life sentences. At first, I felt Peltier was guilty, but over years of examining the case and evidence, became convinced he didn't do it.
There seems not the slightest doubt that the FBI framed him. Even today, the FBI is determined he'll never go free - even though they now admit they haven't a clue who did the actual shooting. In 1994, Allmand reviewed the case for then-justice minister Allan Rock, as did other justice department lawyers. Allmand released his report this week, after Justice Minister Anne McClellan released her own report (after contacting U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno) that the extradition was on the up-and-up and proper. Here are the highlights of Allmand's 1994 report on the extradition, with comments on memos submitted by Justice lawyers: * Of three Poor Bear affidavits, one was never included in the extradition case in which she said she hadn't witnessed the shooting, and had departed Pine Ridge. The FBI later acknowledged Poor Bear was "incompetent" and her affidavits "unbelievable." (Yet McClellan effectively still vouches for them.)
Evidence 'fabricated'
* No circumstantial evidence was considered by Judge Schultz
in the
extradition and circumstantial evidence in Canada was different
from that
presented at Peltier's U.S. trial. Ballistic evidence accepted
at this trial was
later shown to be "questionable and in part, fabricated."
* After two other Indians were acquitted (Bob Robideau
and Dino Butler)
when their trial was shifted to Iowa, the U.S. Justice Department
and FBI
refused to let Peltier's trial take place in neutral territory
and "pounded the
community with adverse publicity regarding Peltier and the American
Indian Movement (AIM)."
* A Canadian Justice lawyer went to the U.S. and co-operated
with the
FBI on the Poor Bear affidavits. Assistant FBI director Ronald
Moore
noted in a memo that it was on the Canadian lawyer's recommendation
"that only Poor Bear's second and third affidavits were used."
Allmand concludes that if the Canadian lawyer didn't know
about the
excluded affidavit, "the FBI was guilty of trying to manufacture
a case and
mislead the Canadian justice system." (The lawyer himself denied
any
involvement and accused the FBI of trying to cover their butts.)
Three judges questioned FBI integrity. Judge Ross of the
U.S. Court of
Appeal asked "why the prosecutor's officer continued to extract
more from
her (Poor Bear) ... is beyond my understanding."
Appeal Judge Gerald Heaney: "The FBI used improper tactics in securing
Peltier's extradition ..." Judge R.P. Anderson of the B.C. Supreme Court:
"It seems clear to me that the conduct of the U.S. government involved
misconduct from inception." Judge Heaney determined that violence at Pine
Ridge (over selling uranium resources that tribal elders opposed) was the
"culmination of the federal government's refusal to respond to the 'legitimate
grievances' raised by the Indian community."..
(ONGOING: see http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/oglala/ Racial Commission Report)
The FBI supplied vigilante snipers with weapons and ammunition. The FBI concealed ballistic evidence indicating that Peltier's rifle could not have fired the shots that killed the agents. This "suppressed evidence" cast a strong doubt on the government's case.
Allmand found it's not unusual for the U.S. government to use illegal methods to return individuals to U.S. territory: a false extradition to get one individual returned from Mexico; kidnapping another in order to return a wanted man; the British House of Lords refused an extradition on grounds that evidence was shaky. The FBI blocked publication of Peter Mathiessen's book, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse for eight years with legal actions at a cost of some $25 million.
One oddity rarely mentioned is that the two murdered FBI agents (Ron Williams and Jack Coler) were supposedly entering the Jumping Bull compound to question one Jimmy Eagle about stolen cowboy boots. Stolen boots are an FBI concern? Give us a break. They were there as the vanguard for concentrated attack - giving rise to the "self-defence" acquittal of Butler and Robideau. In essence, Allmand in 1994 was "convinced that there was fraud and misconduct at both the extradition and the trial."
He recommended contacting the U.S. Attorney General and urging either
a new trial or clemency. Failing that, he urged "an independent judicial
inquiry" into circumstances of the extradition.
<<end excerpt
NOW: Through a commentary written to several newspapers nationwide the FBI once again is attempting to justify its own injustice and malfeasance in the Leonard Peltier case by spreading half truths, and outright fabrication.
Mr. Williams states that Leonard has never expressed sorrow for the deaths of these two agents. Mr. Williams errs. What Leonard has not expressed is culpability. Sorrow? Yes, for both his family as well as the families of these two agents.
In Leonard's words:
here are some words of sadness from Peltier's book for
forwarding to Retired FBI Agent Bob Zane.
(these were passed by Mr Zane, Association of Retired FBI Agents last
November...Ish)
Perhaps Mr. Zane you might wish to hear as well Jordan Dill's
compilation of other deaths around Pine Ridge.
http://nativenet.uthscsa.edu/archive/nl/9408/0156.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From Leonard Peltier:
I HAVE NO APOLOGIES, ONLY SORROW. I can't apologize for what I haven't
done. But I can grieve, and I do. Every day, every hour, I grieve for those
who died at the Oglala firefight in 1975 and for their families -- for
the families of FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams and, yes, for
the family of Joe Killsright Stuntz -- a 21-year old brave-hearted Indian
whose death from a bullet at Oglala that same day, like the deaths of hundreds
of other Indians at Pine Ridge at that terrible time, has never been investigated.
My heart aches in remembering the suffering and fear under which so many
of my people were forced to live at that time, the very suffering and fear
that brought me and the others to Oglala that day -- to defend the defenseless.
[snip]
IF YOU, THE LOVED ONES of the agents who died at the Jumping Bull property
that day, get some salve of satisfaction out of my being here, then at
least I can give you that, even though innocent of their blood. I feel
your loss as my own. Like you, I suffer that loss every day, every hour.
And so does my family. We know that inconsolable grief. We Indians are
born, live and die with inconsolable grief. We've shared our common grief
for twenty-three years now, your families and mine, so how can we possible
be enemies anymore? Maybe it's with you and with us that the healing can
start. You, the agents' families, certainly weren't at fault that day in
1975, any more than my family was, and yet you and they have suffered as
much as, even more than, anyone there. It seems it's always the innocent
who pay the highest price for injustice. It's seemed that way all my life.
To the still grieving Coler and Williams' families, I send my prayers if you will have them. I hope you will. They are the prayers of an entire people, not just my own. We have many dead of our own to pray for, and we join our prayers of sorrow to yours. Let our common grief be our bond. I state to you absolutely that, if I could possibly have prevented what happened that day, your menfolk would not have died. I would have died myself before knowingly permitting what happened to happen. And I certainly never pulled the trigger that did it. .. I swear to you, I am guilty only of being an Indian. That's why I'm here.
Being who I am, being who you are -- that's Aboriginal Sin.
From "My Life is My Sundance: Prison Writings" Leonard Peltier and
Harvey Arden
SIR, It is time to let go of this flawed fabric that has imprisoned
an innocent man. Revenge against an innocent person rings exceedingly
hollow and only perpetuates the pain for all involved.
Respectfully,
Ishgooda Tewehshon'on
PO BOx 344
Wayne, Michigan
48184-0344
Managing Editor
Native News Online