By PETER WORTHINGTON, TORONTO SUN
On election day, Nov. 7, U.S. President Bill Clinton pledged to personally review the case of Leonard Peltier for possible executive clemency "in the last 10 weeks of office after the election."
He made the promise to Amy Goodman on the radio show, Democracy Now, which is syndicated to stations across America.
It is the most encouraging signal yet that Peltier might get executive clemency after being found guilty in the deaths of two FBI agents in 1975, during a violent war between the US and AIM on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reserve, near Wounded Knee. While urging support for Al Gore, Clinton told Goodman he didn't have a position on clemency for Peltier "that I can
announce yet," but did say he'll review the case "and will try to do what I think the right thing to do is."
IMPORTANT
He said the case was important to a lot of people "and I owe it to them to give it an honest look-see." He said he'd also review what those who oppose clemency have to say, and "decide one way or the other" before the inauguration.
Interpret that as you will, but the fact that Clinton is commenting at all gives optimism to Peltier supporters -- and makes the FBI nervous. Prior to
the election there was growing euphoria among Leonard Peltier Defence Committees (LPDC) around the world that "something big, something good" is likely to happen in the hiatus between the election of a new president and his inauguration in January.
A couple of weeks before the U.S. vote, there was one significant development: Myrtle Poor Bear, the Sioux Indian woman whose sworn affidavits got Peltier extradited from Canada to stand trial in the U.S., came to Toronto and not only recanted her affidavits before a Canadian judge, but swore that the FBI held her incommunicado for nine months after the deaths of the FBI agents.
THREATS
She testified agents threatened and intimidated her into signing (but not reading) three different and often contradictory affidavits that she was Peltier's girlfriend and that she'd witnessed him kill agents Ron Williams and Jack Coler on June 25, 1975 at Wounded Knee.
It turns out she'd never been to that area in her life, was at home 75 km away washing clothes at the time (her sister Elaine's sworn testimony) and that she wasn't Peltier's girlfriend and had never laid eyes on him in her life. She added the FBI would in a subsequent case have her claim she was another AIM members girlfriend to get him convicted in another murder case.
She swore the FBI agents wrote the affidavits, wouldn't let her read them, and said she'd be killed unless she signed.
She had recanted the affidavits during Peltier's trial, but the judge wouldn't let the jury hear her evidence. In fact, no jury has ever heard her testimony. She's never spoken for the record until now.
At age 22, Poor Bear had mental and drinking problems, and was used by the FBI only to get Peltier extradited from Canada. Then she was dumped. Earlier this year, Justice Minister Anne McClellan insisted the extradition, based on the perjured affidavit, was fair and proper -- contrary to a review by former
Solicitor-General Warren Allmand, who found that the system was abused and Peltier railroaded.
Back in the 1970s I thought Peltier guilty, and wrote editorials to this effect. I've since looked into his case and believe he was framed. I've visited the Ojibwa Indian three times in the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kan., now in his 25th year of two consecutive life sentences.
During the US-AIM war at Pine Ridge, there were some 600 shootings, 18 law enforcement officers killed and 260 unsolved shooting deaths of Indians over a five-year period in the wake of the 1973 71-day siege at Wounded Knee, SD.
To many, Peltier is a fall guy -- a North American Nelson Mandela, serene and dignified. Even the FBI has since admitted they don't know who actually killed the two agents.
From the start, Peltier's case was grotesquely mishandled. Just about every deceit a justice system can perpetrate has been used against him. Various
judges have determined that justice (not to mention law) was abused.
ACQUITTED
Two Indians initially charged with the murder of the FBI agents were acquitted on grounds of self-defence.
Poor Bear and her sister Elaine testified under oath before former Quebec Court of Appeal Judge Fred Kaufman during the extradition hearings. She was
examined by Michael Code, former assistant deputy attorney-general of Ontario, and former federal prosecutor Scott Stanton. The videotape of her
testimony (and possibly Judge Kaufman's assessment) will be forwarded to President Clinton as part of an amnesty submission, as well as to the Canadian government.
The unusual hearing was coordinated by Dianne Martin, a professor at the Osgoode Hall law school and a member of the LPDC, which is headed in Toronto by Frank and Anne Dreaver.
In sometimes halting and emotional testimony, Poor Bear told how FBI agents Dave Price and Bill Wood kept her isolated for close to nine months, taking her to the scene of the shootings, coaching her and insisting witnesses saw her at the murder scene.
Myrtle was told she'd be killed by AIM unless they protected her, and that if she didn't cooperate she might be charged with conspiracy and get 15 years if
she didn't sign the affidavits.
Myrtle signed a series of three affidavits compiled by the FBI, the first saying she wasn't at the scene but that Leonard told her, the others saying she witnessed the murders. All were false. No action was ever taken against the agents.
Before Peltier's trial was over, Myrtle recanted her perjury, but no jury ever heard it.
Myrtle Poor Bear says she's testifying for clemency to atone for the harm she did to Peltier, and hopes he can forgive her: "I was frightened, the FBI scared me, for years I've wanted for years to undo damage I did. I was weak, but I felt I had no choice. I feared for my life."
Peltier has repeatedly told me he holds no animosity towards Poor Bear. "She's an unfortunate woman caught in a trap by those determined to find someone guilty -- even someone they know in their hearts didn't do it."
Myrtle testified that Agent Price wrote the stuff she had to memorize in a notebook. She was coached until she got it right.
DEMONIZED
AIM has long been demonized by the FBI as an anti-american terrorist group instead of an Indian rights group -- complicated by the fact that Moscow and Cuba used AIM for propaganda purposes. And further complicated by AIM's solidarity with international "terrorist" groups particularly the Palestine Liberation Organization, African National Congress and Puerto Rican Liberation Army.
As an oddity, the FBI had Myrtle sign another affidavit that she was the girl friend of one Dick Marshall, and that he'd confessed to her that he shot an Oglala Sioux Tribal Ranger, Martin Montileaux, in 1975. Myrtle's false affidavit was almost a carbon copy of the one she signed about Peltier, and helped get Marshall convicted.
During her testimony in Toronto, she insisted she'd never taken a lie detector test that the FBI claimed she'd passed. Over the years, the Poor Bear affidavits remain infamous examples of FBI deceit and fabrication -- acts more inconceivable 25 years ago than today, when many examples have American justice being corrupted have emerged.
A succession of U.S. judges have blasted the FBI's abuses against AIM and others, causing the FBI and its supporters to close ranks, attack critics and oppose clemency -- even though Peltier has been a model prisoner.
At age 60, Peltier has had a stroke, is partially blind and is a symbol for major Indian organizations in Canada and the U.S.; including the splintered but still viable AIM, who have joined forces to urge clemency.
If clemency is finally granted, as some think (hope) is now inevitable, it won't reflect credit on Canada where a succession of governments have not only ignored Peltier's case, but have been collaborators and conspirators in fabrication and framing him.
