---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 18:06:10 -0500 From: LPDC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: FBI continues to defame Peltier Dear Friends, The FBI is continuing their misinformation campaign against Leonard Peltier. Their letters are still popping up in papers accross the country. However, many of our responses and letters are being printed as well. Below is a good rebuttal written in a Denver paper by Prof. Morris. Please continue to keep an eye out for the FBI's letters and be sure to send us copies in the mail. If the FBI has not submitted anything in your paper, you can still submit a letter of your own before they do. Please keep up phone calls to the White House, Congress, and Reno. Don't forget to organize phone banks to Janet Reno's office on June 9th and let us know if a vigil is being planned on June 11 in your region. We cannot let them obstuct Leonard's chances of receiving long overdue justice this year. Thank you. Solidarity, LPDC Published Monday, May 15, 2000 in the Denver Rocky Mountain News: Speakout section Truth must lead to pardoning of Peltier by Professor Glenn Morris In reporting the FBI's lates campaign to defame imprisoned American Indian activist Leonard Peltier (April 22 article, "FBI fights to prevent a pardon for Peltier"),the Denver Rocky Mountain News repeated several factual errors and pieces of FBI disinformation that deserve correction. At the outset, it should be stated that Leonard Peltier has now spent 23 years in federal prison for crimes that he did not commit. His convictions on the charges that he murdered two FBI agents were secured through perjured affidavits and testimony, exculpatory evidence was concealed by the FBI, and a judiciary has consistently ignored truth and justice in the case. Peltier's case has been examined by some of the finest legal minds in the world, with the respected human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) concluding that Peltier should be released immediately. AI has been joined in its plea for Peltier's freedom by millions of others, including Nobel Peace Prize laureates Nelson Mandela, the late Mother Teresa, the Dala i Lama, Rigoberta Menchu and Desmond Tutu. In the article reprinted in the News. some of the scurrilous tactics of the FBI's smear campaign were revealed when the FBI continued to suggest that Peltier had attempted to kill other police officers in Milwaukee prior to the 1975 Pine Ridge Indian Reservation shootout that left one Indian and two FBI agents dead. The FBI omits the fact that Peltier was acquitted of all charges in the Milwaukee case. It also neglects to mention that the case was fabricated by two Milwaukee police officers who set Peltier up, in their own words, to catch "a big one for the FBI." Today, given revelations in such cases as Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, the Los Angeles police department's Rampart Division scandal, and Denver's own Mena case, we know that the capacity of police agencies (including the FBI) to railroad innocent individuals for political or racial purposes, is virtually boundless. As documented in Peter Matthiessen's award-winning book, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, the FBI attempted to conceal its own ballistics tests which excluded Peltier's purported gun as the one that killed the FBI agents. Before the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, the U.S. prosecutor admitted to the court that " we can't prove who shot those agents." Later, on CBS' 60 Minutes, the same prosecutor, Lynn Crooks, defended his and the FBI's conduct in the Peltier case, claiming that he didn't think that "we did anything wrong, but I can tell you, it don't bother my conscience one whit if we did." Such is the nature of "justice" in the Peltier case. Despite the FBI's attempts to spread lies about Peltier and his trial, people of goodwill should examine the facts for themselves. Those who are persuaded by truth and justice will join the international call for presidential clemency for the most renowned political prisoner in the United States, Leonard Peltier. ___________________________________ Glenn Morris is a Professor of International Law and Politics at the University of Colorado � Denver, a member of the American Indian Movement of Colorado and an advisory board member of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. Call the White House Comments Line Today Demand Justice for Leonard Peltier! 202-456-1111 Leonard Peltier Defense Committee PO Box 583 Lawrence, KS 66044 785-842-5774 www.freepeltier.org To subscribe, send a blank message to < [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To unsubscribe, send a blank message to < [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To change your email address, send a message to < [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with your old address in the Subject line ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe, send a blank message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, send a blank message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your email address, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with your old address in the Subject: line
