Peltier the Victim of an FBI Frame-up? Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - dsmoke @ julian.uwo.ca December 28, 2000 Peltier could be victim of FBI frame By Peter Worthington -- Sun Media Newspapers In a gesture unprecedented in its 79-year history, the FBI authorized several hundred agents to march around the White House 10 days before Christmas to protest possible clemency by President Bill Clinton for Leonard Peltier. To some, this unusual act indicates how close Clinton may be to granting executive clemency early in the new year -- something he has promised to consider. The FBI is almost pathologically determined that Peltier never be freed and its protest underlines both the oddity of this case and the intensity of feelings. A Sioux-Ojibwa Indian, Peltier was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences for the deaths of two FBI agents during violence on South Dakota's Pine Ridge reserve. Peltier has never denied joining the firefight that erupted June 26, 1975, but denies killing agents Ron Williams and Jack Coler at point blank range. I've fretted about the case ever since it turned out Peltier was extradited from Canada on the basis of perjured affidavits by Myrtle Poor Bear, claiming she was Peltier's girlfriend and had witnessed him kill the agents. In fact, she didn't know Peltier, had seen nothing and had never been to the area. Three contradictory affidavits were composed by the FBI and dictated to Poor Bear under threats of vengeance. The deeper one probes into the case, the more it seems the FBI framed Peltier and withheld evidence. At the time of the FBI demonstration, I was on CBC Radio with former Canadian solicitor general Warren Allmand discussing Peltier with host Michael Enright. Allmand, also a former minister of Indian Affairs, has relentlessly criticized the way Peltier was extradited. During our discussion, Enright played a tape of prosecutor Lynn Crooks who not only insists Peltier is guilty, but is proud of the way he was convicted. As he's been repeating for 23 years, Crooks is proud of helping put him away for life. It's unsettling hearing an officer of the court and a justice system official boast about getting such a controversial and disturbing conviction. What's especially disturbing in the Peltier case -- and is rarely mentioned -- is that two other Indians went on trial for the murder of the agents a year before Peltier did Bob Robideau and Dino Butler. The FBI and prosecution argued these two killed the agents at point blank range. Their trial was held in 1976, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a hotbed of anti-Indian sentiment. Nonetheless, the jury acquitted the pair, ruling self-defence. If Butler and Robideau may have killed the agents in self-defence, how come Peltier is now the lone killer? He'd have been acquitted, too, if he'd been tried with the other two. I'd argue that Peltier is in prison not because the FBI thinks he did it, but because the FBI can't bear the idea that agents can be killed with no one being punished. Guilt or innocence is irrelevant, so long as someone is held responsible. The corruption of evidence also shows, in my view, how dangerous it can be when police are convinced they've got a guilty person and justify any means to get a conviction. One of Peltier's appeal judges, Gerald Heaney (whom I've interviewed), even wrote a letter aimed at then-president Ronald Reagan urging clemency for Peltier to "heal wounds." Heaney found FBI behaviour in the case reprehensible and held that the FBI was equally responsible for the deaths of the agents. Over a three year span at Pine Ridge, troubles resulted in 200 to 300 shootings of Indians, 60 of them fatal, most were Indians associated with the American Indian Movement (AIM), which the FBI then considered a communist-backed, terrorist organization. At Peltier's trial, Poor Bear's recantation of her affidavits was inadmissable. Judge Paul Benson made the astonishing ruling that, if believed, Poor Bear's testimony of the FBI intimidation, coercion and fabrication would "shock the conscience of the court" and might persuade the jury to acquit Peltier. An FBI Web-site aimed at preventing clemency (www. noparolepeltier.com) shows the American eagle and starts off with patriotic music. America the Beautiful blends into The Battle Hymn of the Republic, which blends into God Bless America, all setting the mood for slamming Peltier. The site carries enormous documentation on the case which, for those who casually browse, seems persuasive that Peltier is a dangerous radical (a "mad dog," according to one FBI agent) who should never be freed. If FBI propaganda were true, the likes of Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and the archbishop of Canterbury, down to individuals like myself (I have visited him three times in Leavenworth prison), Allmand, ex-NDP MP Jim Fulton and the Canadian Alliance's John Reynolds wouldn't be protesting Peltier's continued imprisonment. Peter Worthington is a columnist for Sun Media Newspapers. His column appears Thursdays. All My Relations Dan Smoke - Asayenes & Mary Lou Smoke - Asayenes Kwe Producers/Hosts "Smoke Signals" First Nations Radio Program Radio Western, CHRW, 94.7 FM www. chrwradio. com on Sat. 1-3:00 p.m. (5l9) 659-4682 & fax (5l9) 453-3676 ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrc-01.05.01-03:01:17-27726