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Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nolan.
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Andrew Treforce Howard. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. In tonight's episode, we are exploring a story of crime, politics, and possibly conspiracy. Building off our earlier exploration into the American Indian Movement, we are focusing on a single individual, a man who, as we record, has been nearly half a century eight years imprisoned for
crimes that he maintains he did not commit. Now, before we roll through this, guys, what's the most important thing people need to remember about our US versus the American Indian Movement episode?
Oh jeez, how do you boil that down? I don't know.
As far as I'm concerned, that reparations are due ward two and they still haven't been paid in many cases.
Yeah, maybe just the formation of this country is the direct result of taking land from peoples that lived here before America was ever a thing, and it continues the country, the company America continues to I would say, disenfranchise and wrong peoples that they stole the land from initially agreed.
The United States has always been an experiment and it is the result of a conspiracy. There is nothing inaccurate about that statement. This is the story of Leonard pell Tier. Here are the facts. We mentioned this in our previous episode, our exploration of the American Indian Movement. Leonard Helltier. You can hear it called that on sixty minutes. You can
hear alternative pronunciations. Last name P. E. L t I E R. Born on September twelfth, nineteen forty four, in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and who he was part of a really big family.
Unbelievably big.
Indeed, he was the eleventh of thirteen children.
At least it wasn't the middle child. That would have been rough with that many similss.
Kind of he's like the end of the middle children, but he's not the last, and he's not the eldest.
One could argue maybe not the worst position, because if you're eleventh or thirteenth, you haven't been totally forgotten by mom and dad yet.
But you're also like kind of old news. So it's sort of a kind of the sweet spot maybe.
But I don't know my ancestors who at some point started just naming the kids based on their birth order. I have for many years a great aunt nine.
Nice.
Wow, you know what, I think we should normalize naming children after prime numbers. I think that's a good idea. I like the way numbers sound.
Six.
There's a character named six, I believe, what was it, ozark AnyWho.
I think there's a nice ring to it.
But his parents divorced when he was four years old, and after this, he and another sibling sister unclear as to which number of sibling she was, were sent to the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribe near Belcourt, North Dakota, in order to live with their paternal grandparents.
Yeah, and his father would later move back to his own parents area. The letter is the opposite of a quote unquote silverspoon kid. You know, like far too many children in the native community. He grew up amid rank poverty and active discrimination. And we mentioned this in our
previous exploration, but we didn't get into the specifics. At the age of nine, he was sent to a boarding school that function to assimilate Native children, the Wapaton School in North Dakota, and he was, like so many innocent children there and in Canada and in Australia, if we're being honest, he was subjected to various forms of emotional and physical abuse. I would also say he was subjected to cultural abuse because he was being forced to erase
his own and sel estual culture. And there's not really in English a word for that kind of brutality visited on people, So I would go with cultural abuse or cultural erasure.
I rasure, Yeah, No, I mean it reminds me of like, you know, the Germans are so good with having words describe like kind of complex emotions or scenarios, like the word for Holocaust guilt, which I think I've talked about before. But no, but I think this concept deserves a word. But I think he did the next best thing, Ben, You're absolutely right, cultural erasure or abuse.
Yeah, So, as a little little child he went through that whole scenario. Then he was sent to another one of these schools, right, this time in South Dakota the Flandreaux or f L A N d r. Eau Indian School, and then he ended up dropping out around the ninth grade and headed back to where his dad was in Turtle Mountain.
And while he is at Turtle Mountain, he witnesses first hand the policy we're talking about earlier, the policy of termination. Termination at this point was not necessarily the media genocide practiced by the Nazi Party, but it did include siege mentality, withdrawing federal assistance, including food assistance, from Native Americans living
on these reservations. It was at the very best, a ham fisted attempt to make people, you know, eat the apple pie right, drink the George Washington mead, assimilate and stop speaking their own languages.
And this is in the late nineteen fifties, I believe, around the time when this is occurring.
And history is far closer than it looks in the rear view mirror. It was at worst, very much like putting a community under siege, like the old medieval warfare style thing. You surround a castle and you try to starve it, and that's what they were doing. And for anyone who would ignore the various broken covenants of the US government and agree to assimilate. They were given promises of jobs and guaranteed housing in urban areas.
Spoiler.
I mean, you know, it seems like almost one of the cruelest cuts of the whole relationship between the United States government and Indigenous people is the continual stringing along, you know, the continual promises and the continual kind of moving of goalposts. It's just, I don't know, it's just a very difficult way to live without any kind of assurance that you are going to be made a whole or that you want to be taken care of.
And just so I get those dates right really quick, guys, it is in the late nineteen fifties when this is when Leonard is experiencing this. But that was a policy either went from nineteen fifty three all I think to nineteen sixty eight.
Yes, officially, I would argue. I would argue the BIA has continued very similar things. Well, as we'll discuss with cointelpro.
That's the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
That's the Eurea of Indian Affairs, right.
So, with those promises of jobs and housing from the US government, folks arrived in many of these cities, and like we mentioned, were kind of left holding the bag.
You know, we're not.
Given the opportunities and assistance that they were promised. This is going to become an ongoing theme. So as a result of said broken promises, many of them became unhoused in the parts of the country where they had no support systems.
Right, yes, and we're further victimized by again I use the word rank not loosely. It is unclean discrimination. You know, they were calling people engine I n jun and things like that. It was very bad and it was not what Uncle Sam promised them. And so in nineteen sixty five, Leonard relocates to Seattle, and you know, he got there way before Microsoft did, and he went because this is the historic homeland of the Nez Pierce. And while there,
Leonard does several amazing things. He takes some odd jobs in construction, He works as a welder. He eventually becomes the part owner of an autobody shop. And here I would argue, no matter whatever, nine to five kind of job the guy has, he finds his true vocation, which is activism, which is supporting the community, and so he becomes evolved in different aspects of the Native American rights movement,
and he he has this greater goal in mind. Right, organizations can be ephemeral, they can have ven diagrams, you know, not everybody affiliated with something like the United Indians of All Tribes, not everyone there as a member of the American Indian movement, but they are gathered toward common cause. And so here Leonard does really awesome stuff. He finds people who have been you know, promised jobs by the
termination policy and then been robbed of those jobs. Or he finds people who have been caught up in the incarceration system and then let out just sort of counting the days before they get arrested again. And he helps them, and he says, come get a job with me, come live here at the autobody shop. We can help you out. And if someone has a car in need of repair and they can't afford it, he helps them out there too.
Yeah, this is a really important thing here. Just when I'm thinking about it, I'm imagining all the people who read about or see, you know, on the news or something some kind of movement that's occurring, like this Native American rights movement. Right there are people who see it and then want to get involved. But then there are also people like Leonard, like his family, like all of the people that were living in these various reservations that in that land that was just taken again by the
United States. To actually experience that, to go through that, to watch yourself, your family, your friends, not have any of the things like to be lied to, let's say, to your face, and then to go through all the hardships that that entails. Somebody who has been through that experience is ready to fully fight back against whatever system wronged them, whatever individuals, whatever group, whatever that thing is
that both took from them and then wrong them. I just think that's a really important thing, Like, oh, yeah, that mean fire that would be in your mind. I don't think would get crushed out by anything.
Yeah, And not to be like mega mega like America sucks or whatever, but it does feel like this is sort of typical behavior, this mo of like, whatever you've got going on isn't as important as what we've got going on, and what we want and what we need completely supersedes any of your concerns, and.
We are going to quote unquote make it right. What we did.
We acknowledge somewhat that we shouldn't have taken your land. Maybe don't even go so far as they shouldn't have, but we're going to give you something in return and then just not get it just completely, you know, leave people hanging after being the one that wronged them in the first place. Now you're the one who's supposed to mitigate that wronging. And I mean, it's it seems like a conflict of interest, is it to the largest possible degree?
What?
No way, But yes, you're absolutely right, and I agree with you. Know, there's much more to the story of the body Shop. Like we were saying earlier, it did become a halfway house for people who had been discharged from incarceration on a federal or local level or a state level from the Native community. Eventually, just like the original attempt to occupy Alcatraz shout out to Ridiculous History episodes,
eventually the autobody Shop did have to shut down. Yet I would argue this showed Leonard the way, This showed him that change is possible. And during this time he also becomes intensely involved with land reclamation issues, with alcohol counseling, and with initiatives to preserve native land in Seattle during the time when real estate is booming. I like check out if you want to learn more about this bick out the takeover of Fort Lawton on March eighth, nineteen seventy.
At this point we mentioned the earlier initiative. You can learn more about it and occupy ALCATRAZM ridiculous history. Leonard was part of the United Indians of All Tribes group that scaled the fences around Fort Lawton, and Fort Lawton is contiguous with the Greater Seattle area. The fort was going to be decommissioned. The local horse traders wanted it to be a park, like a local park, and they were not listening to peaceful means of negotiation from the
native populations, so they got the fence jumped. And when these guys jumped the fence, they are confronted with flamethrowers and machine guns, and then they peacefully surrender and the law enforcement beats the snot out of them, arrest them, and then when they take them to their cells to this stockade, they beat the snot out of them again.
Leonard eventually is released, but he refuses to leave the property until every other protester is also set free because they add no real charges to keep these people on.
Well that's because well, I mean, just to give a little bit more detail maybe around what led to them believing that they were righteous in jumping the fence. The decommissioned fort was very similar to what had happened with Alcatraz, where it was no longer being used as a federal penitentiary.
Or no longer being used.
Therefore, there was a law in the books I believe, I can't remember the exact name that supposedly would grant Native people the ability to petition to have those lands returned to them for use as cultural centers or as heritage centers or what have you.
And that's the Fort Laramie Treaty of eighteen sixty eight, which allows Native American populations to appropriate quote surplus federal land.
There you go.
So what they were doing was technically legal, and yet they were met with a show of force.
It's so weird when we're thinking about the legality of everything we're going to be talking about this episode, it makes your headsp well, yeah, because it really is. It's an authority from a country that officially, on paper runs the land everybody is on except for these little places that they've granted to the original peoples that lived there, right where.
The laws, those covenants yet exactly exactly.
It's when you're thinking about what is against the law or not against the law, or okay for a group of protesters to do or not okay for them to do, it gets so muddied.
Shifts depending on who's in charge and who it benefits. You know, I really, I mean, I would consider myself for the most part of law abiding citizen, but stuff like this really does kind of call into question the whole nature of what is legal and what is right now and the relationship between those things.
And here we find common cause with every long time listener, every fellow conspiracy realist tuning in to stuff they don't want you to know. Ideologies may differ, but a promise broken is a promise broken. And if we exercise empathy, we can absolutely understand the objective track record of various treaties being proposed and then being broken, and then being proposed and then being broken, and then being proposed and proposed and then being broken and then being proposed and
then being broken. I yield my time.
It reminds me a lot of wartime reporting, and it depends so much on who's telling you the story right where you're gathering information from or if you hear a story about Leonard Peltier and any of these movements. Whoever's telling you the story specifically in that time period is going to shape a lot of how you view this, this thing, all of these events that we're talking about.
So you just I mean, I know, we have to we talk about keeping that in mind at all times when we're exploring the world, right, but just in this case in particular, especially if you are listening to some of the things the FBI has said about Leonard and all of the various things that Leonard got up to, you're going to have a whole different picture.
So it's nineteen seventy two and Leonard joins the American Indian Movement at the behest of a guy named Dennis Banks, and he joins this to further what he calls the resistance that he started when he was nine years old at that Indian school abusing those kids, and he participates in something called the Trail Broken Treaties March again, peaceful protest should be part of the American fabric. He gets
jammed up. I'm gonna be honest with you. He spent most of the Occupy Alcatraz movement in a jail in Wisconsin, where he was charged with attempted murder related to another protest in Washington, DC. He claimed he had been set up by the police, and that claim turned out to be true. They were stitching them up. As we've mentioned earlier, it was co intelpro in full wingspan. He makes bail that wingspan references for you.
Nolo before we find out, right before he gets acquitted all that stuff, the next thing happens.
Right, Yeah, he makes bail in nineteen seventy three spring April, and he joins a protest in Milwaukee, and then he heads over to Wounded Knee with people he's met before and in the course of that protest movement.
This is the site of the Battle of Wounded Kney.
Yes, well, loosely, and he hopes to he and the group he's with hope to deliver supplies as the siege on Wounded Kney draws to a close. And they also at this point, just like in Occupy Alcatraz, they also know there are rival factions. There are a lot of cooks there are a lot of egos, right, so they want to calm that down and they want everyone to
remember the larger mission. But by this time, by April of nineteen seventy three, the FEDS consider Leonard a fugitive and he is accused of unlawful flight to avoid that attempted murder charge. We'll give you the high level stuff here before we go to the atbreak. Leonard is eventually convicted of murdering two FBI agents. We will give you their names as we dive in. Aside from a brief escape in nineteen seventy nine, and he's convicted in nineteen
seventy seven. He's been incarcerated ever since. Serious questions about the legality of the trial remain, and as we record this evening, he is alive. His supporters consider him the longest incarcerated political prisoner in United States history. So decades later, we are joining many people asking the question that has
haunted thousands since Leonard's conviction. Is this man guilty of the crimes he was convicted for, or has the US government yet again in prison demand for crimes he did not commit.
Let's take a.
Quick break and hear a word from our sponsor and then get into the details.
Here's where it gets crazy. It really like the crimes, whether or not he's guilty, it depends upon whom you ask. Officially, the US government at every single, again practicing level, considers Leonard a convicted murderer. But here's the thing. The guy has always maintained his innocence and numerous supporters, including people who were originally part of the prosecution on his case, they agree.
Right, And to really understand the level of controversy surrounding this whole case, as well as the accusations of conspiracy, we have to first take a look at the events that led up to these alleged crimes. So we've talked about this a little bit before, but let's kind of get into some of the minutias with the timeline of
the shootout and the murders that you mentioned, Ben. Back in the mid nineteen seventies, when Peltier and a handful of other AIM members went to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in the hopes of assisting the Oglala Lakota in helping to plan some community activities, things like religious ceremonies and programs that would help ensure their self sufficiency and also to help organize some teams that could offer them security, you know, because they frankly did
not feel particularly safe from you know, the US government. I mean, I want to backtrek really quickly too. I mentioned the you mentioned Ben that he went to Wounded Knee, and I asked that was the site of the Battle of Wounded Kni. I just wanted to backtrack and say, it's a little bit more like a massacre at Wounded Kny. That is what it is referred to often as, because it was essentially just an absolute slaughter of Native people,
you know, by US soldiers. So the notion of needing security to literally protect themselves from those that might do them harm from outside their community absolutely makes sense as precedent for it.
Yes, agreed, and think about the panthers, you know, co intel again is flapping its wings and sold do dads. It is attempting to infiltrate right, and it is also, I would argue, under the auspice of that sith Lord Hoover, it is attempting to maybe generate conflict when conflict does not need to exist. On June twenty fifth, nineteen seventy five, two FBI special agents, Ronald Arthur Williams and Jack Ross Kohler.
They question one of Leonard's associates, a guy named Norman Charles, and when they talk to him, you know, and they say, hey, tensions are high. There's a guy who has been accused of assaulting to local ranch workers. We think he may have stolen some cowboy boots. His name's Jimmy Eagle. Do you know Jimmy Eagle. We think he drives a red
pickup truck, which will be important later. And so on the next day, on June twenty sixth, nineteen seventy five, these agents return to the Pine Bridge Reservation and they go to a place called Jumping Bull Ranch. They are searching for this guy, Jimmy Eagle. Sometime after eleven am, both agents who are by the way in plane clothing. They are in separate on marked cars. They start following something we mentioned previously, a Chevy suburban correll occupied by
letter Norman Charles and a guy named Joe Stunts. The agents, at this point, very important to note, are not aware of Leonard's outstanding warrant. They're focused on finding this Jimmy Eagle guy and spoiler The FBI's official statement is they believe that Chevy suburban belonged to Jimmy Eagle. The FBI's official statement as.
Of now right, and this leads to more murky stuff, the official story being that the Chevy made it to the Jumping Bull ranch, whose owners had allowed Aim to camp out there. The three men in the suburban stopped, got out of the vehicle and began to exchange gunfire with federal agents. Agent Williams radio local dispatch, claiming the vehicle's occupants were firing on them.
Williams says, if reinforcements do not arrive, both he and Kohler will be killed. And we have to remember the context here. Tensions had already been quite high for quite time, and many residents at the ranch. They heard the gunfire, right they saw the unfamiliar cars, They returned that gunfire. As a result, these agents are outgunned. We mentioned this earlier. Another person working for the FBI, agent Gary Adams, responded to the call that Williams put out, which we previously
mentioned in our American Indian Movement episode. But he and other officers working under the auspice of BIA, they encountered gunfire they were held back. They could not get to the scene on time. So Kohler and Williams are murdered. That is true. Those people died, and there are multiple suspects. There are also multiple firearms. However, someone has to go down. And a side note, the charges against Jimmy Eagle for the assault of those two local ranchers and the theft
of those purported boots. Those charges are later dropped. Jimmy Eagle is a free man.
That crazy. The whole reason for those agents to be on that land, in that area at that time, it just goes away. This is something to note here. According to official documents trial documents, the gunfire lasted around ten minutes, So like the firefight that happened, there are very few shots actually fired by these two agents. I think it was five in total that was fired by them. But then there were around one hundred and twenty five bullet holes in the vehicle or vehicles.
And that's a handgun versus AR fifteen situation.
And well there's also a shotgun that one of the officers used, and I think a rifle that the other
officer used at least a few times a few shots. Yeah, But then the craziest thing, and I think that's an important here, is that, as you're saying, Ben, that the other officers finally make it to the scene right to discover the bodies, and what they find is two officers who've been shot multiple times in different places in their body, but each of them have at least one bullet to their head, which doesn't necessarily mean point blank execution style shot,
but these are very specific bullets they're used, and one of the officers has two bullet holes.
Right, which we're going to get into in a moment there. And the only reason I raise the point about the AR fifteen idea is because it does become part of the forensic investigation, the idea of automatic versus non automatic. So the firearms used by the FBI do not include automatic weapons. Tragic deaths, right, they are tragic. These guys are just trying to do their job, you know what I mean. They're not being purposeful dicks, right, They're following orders.
Shout out to Hannah Errand and the banality of evil. There three men ultimately arrested in connection with the murder of these two FBI agents. The first two guys who are arrested before Leonard are Robert Robideaux and Darrell Butler or Dino the I n oh, And both of these guys are at the Jumping Bull ranch during the time of the shootout. And to the earlier point made ten minutes may sound brief, but that's actually pretty long for the fire fight.
Oh yeah. It was described by media at the time as lasting for hours. So that's why that's want to make that ten minute thing, just put it out there. At least that's according to the FBI. The only lasted ten minutes and to testimony given during the trial.
And ten minutes is on the outside of plug ability because it's not a video game. When you get tagged, you bleed, and.
Ten minutes in bullet time feels like ours to me.
I can't imagine well yeah, or a military situation where there's purposeful just firing to try and you know, make whoever you're firing against.
Yeah, that's correct. I agree with that. And Leonard believes he has no chance at a fair trial. Let's remember he already served time for crime that he says he never committed, and so he flees to Canada and goes over the northern border. He buys a station wagon and it's September ninth of the same year. Ammunition in the wagon exploded. According to again official reports, people discovered agent Kohler's rifle and three oh eight and they also found
an AR fifteen in the remains of the vehicle. Over the years, as we mentioned, Leonard has provided multiple alibis, none of which persuaded juries were indeed the Pellet courts, we do know he acquired an RV, a recreational vehicle. He made his escape, He was stopped briefly by a state trooper out in Oregon, and there was an exchange
of gunfire. Again, Leonard fled on foot, and according to the reports, Agent Kohler's handgun was found under the front seat of that RV, which does mean that there was some sort of physical presence during the firefight, But it does not mean he murdered those guys.
Well, it doesn't. But what it does mean is that it looks really bad for Peltier right now, if you take into account these actions. Right, that's the second time that it's known of by whoever's investigating this case, that Peltier was stopped and shots were fired.
Right.
Whether or not shots were fired that first time, whether or not Peltier fired his AR fifteen that they're claiming at those two officers. Originally that's one thing, but in this case, it's being claimed, at least by law enforcement, that he's fired again, this time on a state trooper in Oregon and escaped and or ran. This second time, he's run from a firing against some kind of law enforcement officer.
Further, he took a firearm.
From that agent.
Oh yeah, yeah.
But in this narrative, yes.
You're if you're lining all this stuff up, and let's say you're an investigator hunting down whoever killed these FBI agents, this looks terrible for Peltier.
And so it comes as no surprise that just before Christmas in nineteen seventy five, on December twenty second, Leonard Peltierra is named on the FBI ten Most Wanted List. Now cast your memory back, folks, if you grew up with shows like America's Most Wanted, you will realize that being on the ten most wanted list of the FBI, it does go a long way toward catching people. And
you know, I'm not the biggest fan of copaganda. I'm on record on that I think all of us can agree, but often when people are on that wanted list, they deserve to be.
There often, Right, I'm looking for the nineteen seventy five actual list of all the other people that he shared it with. Oh, this is what they put on his wanted for execution type murders of two US FBI agents related to the American Indian Movement.
Yeah, they made sure to put the organization that log line. And he is arrested on February sixth, nineteen seventy six, in Hinton, Alberta by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. We know it's a funny name, but do take them seriously. He is extradited to the US in December of that year. Now a lot of US are hearing the timeline and saying, hold up. Guys arrested on February not extradited until December.
Part of that is because there were already claims of a stitch up, and Canada itself, the government of Canada, later called into question the FBI's paperwork which ostensibly justified this extradition. Do we want to talk about extradition for a moment, Yeah?
Please, Yeah, you can't just call a country and say, hey, we need this guy. It's not that simple, right.
Yeah, it involves a negotiation and bargaining at that point. I mean, unless depending on the laws, but usually there's like some sort of exchange or at least there's an opportunity for one.
Right, yeah, yeah, you nailed it. Even if even if you're talking about two countries that have standing extradition agreements that are bilateral, like let's talk directly and let's hunt bad guys together. Even in those cases like the Canada, keep it in like the Canadas or the United States, is they can deny a request if something doesn't add up.
In Canada originally approved this extradition request based on documents submitted by the FBI, but not too much later or An Almond allma and T, Canada's solicitor general at the time. He stated the FBI's paperwork simply did not match up, and in particular, they were very concerned about witness statements.
Oh yeah, well, there was one one person you'll hear about a ton in the story at least early on in this kind of time period. Right here is Myrtle poor bear. This is somebody who lived around the area where all of this went down in Pine Ridge and at least, the affidavit that was put forward was that this person was Peltier's girlfriend or yeah, I think that's how they put it.
That was the claim.
Yeah, and knew all this information about him, and he had admitted all these things to her. That basically lined up exactly with the FBI's story of how things went down, but.
Right right. But also side note, if you're looking for that name, it is poor Bear, two different words. Peltier and others in the Pine Ridge community seemed to unanimously agree that, no matter what happened during that shootout, Myrtle Poor Bear did not in fact know Leonard, and additionally, despite her affidavit, was not present during the shootout and the subsequent murders. This falsehood appears to be confirmed, as
Poor Bear herself later admitted lying. And as we talk about so often these evenings, Myrtle Poor Bear claimed the FBI agents interrogating her coersed her into making these claims, and indeed she says they threatened her. In fact, later Poor Bear attempts to testify about the FBI intimidation at Leonard's trial. How whoever, the judge bars her testimony on the grounds of mental incompetence.
This is disturbing, it's crazy, it's crazy town. You can hear her say these things on an episode of sixty Minutes titled The Last Sue Brave, and the last time I saw that it aired was like nineteen ninety two. You can find a clip of it on YouTube, though, Do check that out because you can just you can see her say it directly into the camera. This is what they did.
And for the implications, it seems that our friends at the FBI had already decided Leonard would be their sacrificial goat, their culprit, their stone chair, and they were fine ignoring the mental issues documented on poor Bear's behalf so long as poor Bear played ball. But they were also fine assassinating her care character if her narrative did not tell the story that they wished her to tell. This is a very dangerous thing. It is unfortunately a common conspiracy and law enforcement.
It is really creepy. It seems as though somebody high up enough said Peltier's our guy, and let's do what we got to do to get him behind bars. However, we, however, we.
Do that, and perhaps more importantly, for a look at the internal culture and ideology the FBI. They said, two of our guys died, so anything that we can do to help catch the man we believe killed him is for the greater good. And if you find anything that counteracts or contradicts that narrative, then you should think a lot about your loyalty.
Well, and the guy's a convenient I mean, he's a very inconvenient individual to have out in the world because he's an activist. He's doing all this stuff that our counter to the goals of the kind of statu quote. And I mean, I don't know, guys, We've all done a lot of stories and worked on podcasts and talked about here on this show and others cases where Patsy's are kind of you know, picked or identified, and you start to kind of get a sense of some of
the criteria for that. And oftentimes it's like a win win where it's, oh, this guy gets to someone to pin this murder on and also get somebody out of the picture who you know would be a pain in our butts.
Dude, I cannot recall who the individual was. It was interviewed on that sixty Minutes episode, but it was someone representing the FBI's position, and basically what he was saying was, look, the FBI didn't do anything wrong in this case, but if we did, if we did do something wrong, it wouldn't bother my conscience at all because we got the right guy.
Essentially, sure, big Air quotes around right.
Yes, well exactly, but again, in this guy's opinion, who was representing the Bureau at the time, the belief is already there. As you said, Ben, the belief comes first, and then we make the shoes fit.
Not good science, no good law enforcement. So we know that Leonard Peltier fights the extradition charge, he is not successful. At the same time, the other two men additionally charged in these homicides, Robert Rubdeaux and Dino Butler, they are
acquitted on the grounds of self defense. The jury says the forensic evidence proves these two guys could not have been the ones to fatally shoot those FBI agents, and the US government could supply no witnesses capable of proving those two men knew they were firing on FBI officers, right.
And the reasoning for this whole thing it wasn't these two guys is because of the two head wounds from a two to two three tie bullet that were found in both agents that were killed that day, which they reasoned at least on paper and in the trial that was the weapon that Peltier owned.
And as we'll see, Leonard Peltier's trial went quite differently. We're going to pause for a word from our sponsors and won't be right back. We've returned. So the two men of the original three who are accused and go to trial on these homicide charges, two thirds of them get acquitted. This is not the case for Leonard. The FBI claims they have not only forensic evidence, but they also have eye witnesses linking Leonard directly to the homicide
of those special agents. In specific, the court claims the FBI agents are murdered with close up gunshots to the heads earlier point. One has one gunshot wound, another as too, And they're saying that according to the science, these men were murdered wild defenseless due to previous wounds sustained in that shootout.
Coup de gras, right, Yeah, finishing them off execution.
Yeah, it looks as though someone approached the vehicle and killed them afterwards. One of the officers had a bullet wound in his hand that appears to have then gone into his head, so as though you imagine.
Something like he raised his hand to protect himself exactly. Yeah. And because of this, because of this evidence presented at the trial, Leonard is not able to submit what we would call self defense testimony. The idea then is clearly, these people, whomever they may be, whatever their providence was, whether or not you knew they were a they were not capable of defending themselves, and someone executed them. But this is the beginning the controversy. The controversy runs rampant,
their accusations, numerous accusations of prosecutorial and governmental misconduct. Two witnesses in the initial trial that Leonard has to undergo, they recant their statements and they say the FBI threatened me, they coerced me into false testimony. Sound familiar, shout out myrtle.
Yep MRTL by the way, like Myrtle beach.
So what we do know is that at least one of the way that says was given an immunity deal. If they were to play nice and play along with this narrative, they would be saved from further prosecution. And speaking of you, know changing stories midstream. The FBI also changed their story, changing their previous statements during the course of the trial. We also know that agents Williams and Coher originally said that they were pursuing Jimmy Eagle.
You'll recall the red pickup truck.
He was accused of having beaten some people up and stolen some boots. I believe the FBI could affirm this on the day of the shootouts.
And we only know that due to radio intercepts from the time. By the way, because to your point, Noel, all right, First off, Leonard did many things. He did not drive a red pickup truck, and authorities have been stopping red pickup trucks in general in the area for weeks. In fact, he had a Chevy Suburban, which we outlined earlier. Chevy Suburban. For anyone who doesn't know, it's a large suv,
even if you're not a car person. It's difficult to confuse that with a pickup truck because its back half is covered, whereas a pickup truck has an open bed.
Leonards, I would just say on that Chevy suburban, if you look at the actual images of it. The FBI has some images you can look at right now on FBI dot gov and you just search for Resmer's R E. S m U RS case and you can find it. And it is just for my own eyes and I didn't grow up. Then this is like, I don't know exactly what year make that is, but it is a nineteen sixties nineteen seventies looking suv, So it is it does look like a truck that has some kind of
thing over the bed. That's all I would say, is it looks a little more just like a truck to me because it is that old model.
Yeah, And maybe you can help me out with this. As a partially color blind entity, I according to the pictures and descriptions, I am under the impression this was not red. It was orange with a prom white rooftop. Is that correct?
That's exactly right, very white right across the top, and it is a very red orange color, let's say.
Got it? So the FBI to what you were saying earlier. In all, at the time of the trial, despite their earlier evidence, they claimed they had not been looking for a red pickup truck. They claimed they had been looking for a quote, orange and white van the entire time.
Danta da da.
N. We never lie, says Uncle Sam. It's the truth that changes.
It is so crazy because it doesn't resemble a van at all, even a van from that time period.
No, and there were really cool vans in the seventies. Now, we talked a bit about this just a few minutes ago. But we have to get into just the ballistics, right, the claim that prosecution had that there was an AR fifteen or AR fifteen style thing that fired the fatal shots. They never correct me if I'm wrong here. They never provide a cartridge casings for those close up shots. Does that mean someone took the casings had the wherewithal to do so?
For over one hundred bullets fired, right, that's a little I don't know.
They did find other casings of plenty.
Yes, but if one of the prominent weapons that was firing those one hundred shots was an AR style two to two three like bullet bullets, then it is highly unlikely that it would just not be there. Although if someone walked up to the car to execute the officers, you can imagine those particular casings. If there's only three shots fired that we're talking about, those reasonably at least could be picked up right.
Yeah, plausibly possibly, But in the heat of the moment, right at the conclusion of a very long firefight, with knowing that the FBI agents also expended case scenes, would you have would you have the presence of mind to pick your three?
It depends on what's happening and why. Right, If this is like a full on execution or a targeted killing in some way, then maybe if this is in the heat of the moment a firefight breaks out, probably not like who in that moment with all that adournaline running is going to have that thought. This is what the FBI's website says, and it's talking specifically about the AR
fifteen that Peltier owned. It says an examination by the FBI laboratory made a positive match with a two two three shell casing found in the trunk of Agent Kohler's car, So it's one of the vehicles that was fired upon and marks produced by the extractor of Peltier's AR fifteen. But listen to this, guys, no match could be made with the firing pin quote because it was too smooth.
Right, right, right, And we also know that multiple independent witnesses have found there was no hard forensic evidence supporting the FBI's claims. Even here in twenty twenty four, there were different weapons present in the area during the shootout. There was also more than one AR fifteen style firearm in the area. And just to get in front of the emails here, an AR fifteen itself is not a
fully automatic weapon. It's considered semi automatic. So for anybody who's seen maybe too many movies and you're thinking in AR fifteen could not do three discrete shots, it can. And I think that's a ghoulish but important thing to remember. We also know that the prosecutor wrapped up his case by saying, we proved that he being lettered, went down to the bodies and executed these two young men, and
they were young, at point blank range. But later at the appellate hearing, the government attorney conceded the following, and Noel, could you do us the honors?
Oh gosh, the dishonor.
We had a murder. We had numerous shooters. We do not know who specifically fired what killing shots. We do not know quote unquote who shot the agents.
Yeah, it's the government saying it.
It is the government saying, how do you walk that back? It's messed up, man, And for me, it's even further messed up to watch that sixty minutes episode and here Leonard say, yeah, I fired at those agents, he says, He says, yeah, I fired at those agents, but I did not kill them.
Yeah.
But in your mind you think, well, somebody, at least on that side, somebody making that specific quote, would think, oh, well you you admit to firing at them. Well that's enough, yep, and it it's just awful.
He's always been on record saying he participated in the firefight, and multiple other people have because again the context of this time, right, we know co intel pro let's get the all right, we got to say this. In two
thousand and four, Foy Act goes through. There's another examination of the original FBI ballistics report and an impartial expert evaluates what was referred to earlier, that firing pin linked to the gun that must have everybody agrees probably was the same firearm, so the same firearm that executed FBI special agents Williams and Kohler. This impartial expert finds that cartridge cases from the scene of the crime, when recovered, did not come from the rifle that was tied to
Leonard Peltier. There's just no way it could have happened exactly well.
And also it's like, I mean, to a certain degree, when you're exchanging in fire with these agents, given the history and given everything we know about the government's relationship to these groups, it's like a.
Form of self defense in a way.
I mean, these people are coming for you, They're coming for what you have. It's like you are not being treated like a citizen, and.
You are not.
They are not your friends, they're not there to protect you. So I just I don't even hold it against him that he entered into a firefight because at a certain point, you are just protecting yourself.
And he had no way of knowing who these people were.
That's right, but even yeah, exactly, But I'm just saying, what to Matt's point earlier in the episode, just how this casts so much doubt on like what is legal, who is who are the good guys. It's just really hard, you know, to think of like the FBI in this case, as being out for anything other than just protecting this legacy that we've been describing.
I think it gets murky when you're talking about good guys and bad guys anytime both sides are holding guns, right, oh oh.
Boy, fog of war, I think they call it right.
Well, yeah, And I want to bring something in here, just because we're in the timeline in the two thousands now, but in the I think it was in the nineties, there was this person that came forward and gave an interview. I think it was to Peter Matheson who called himself mister X. He gave an interview on camera where he covered his face, they altered his voice, and he gives a first person view of him killing these two FBI agents. He said, I approached the wounded agents. One of them
brought up a pistol and fired it at me. I didn't give him a chance to fire again. I shot him.
The other one and pulls up the hand.
I immediately turned and put two bullets in the other agent because I didn't think I just shot the other agent. This is a person that was never verified. And then it came forward that this person appears to have been lying, and it was, at least according to the FBI, it was a lie.
And if you want to learn more about the Foyer request that we're talking about, check out who is Leonard Peltier dot info. You can read the fullness there, and I appreciate the point also about the questionable witness testimony, which we see again. Whenever you hear somebody doing the part of voice with their facial pixelated, you have to wonder.
That's it.
Oh yeah, no, for sure. Well and in the sixty minutes episode as well, just sorry, last piece on this. You can hear you hear the host ask Leonard, did you kill those agents? He says no. He says do you know who killed those agents? And Leonard's response is, I can't tell you. I'm not a rat, I'm not an informant. We believed in what we were fighting for. I lived it, I experienced it, I witnessed.
It, which is very much an answer to a different question. And that is honestly a little bit of media training there, because you know, if you have ever been in media training, up to and including your favorite politicians, the rule of thumb is always answer the question you wish you were asked.
It's a man who's also, more or less, as much as this could be possible, made peace with his fate, you know, like this, I am in prison. This is my contribution to the movement is not ratting some money out or not, you know what I mean, like taking one for the team more or less.
I'm glad you mentioned that because maybe not in the same spirit. But we're going to end on a couple of things before we get to this. We have to note everything that you were taught as a US resident about the justice system. In theory teaches us and a person is innocent until proven guilty or wealthy at some point I walk down the street from that one. We're going to keep it at some point. Ideology and group
think aside. We have to ask why this individual in specific was chosen as the evidence aside the murderer of two FBI special agents, Why did that happenqu bono, Who does it benefit? I think it's time we reintroduce our buddies, that counter and Tetelligence.
Program co intel pro for short.
Yeah, it's such a terrible ACRES because they just capitalized the C and the O encounter and then the intel and intelligence.
It's barely an acronym. It's kind of like a missmash rely.
I mean, they could have called it under Jens Graham, but they went with co intel Pro.
Yeah. Well, it's you know it. Well, this is what we've got.
So co Intel pro is, of course the infamous street name for the counter intelligence program. As you said, Ben meant to their mission, should they choose to accept it, and they did, was to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discreditor, otherwise neutralize inconvenient individuals.
Yeah, and which includes just people that they put on a official rabble Rouser index that was floated around every field office the FBI ran, which is just it just it's a list. They just got bigger and bigger and bigger of people who either talked to much or were a part of some group they didn't like, or were highly influential in bringing members into those groups.
Or just vegans, just vegans, Pete Seeger, you know.
Think think John Lennon, you know, I mean that level of outspoken, you know, public figure.
Bob Dylan, notorious communist, you know, shadows of McCarthy, shout out to the red scare. And also I'm not joking about vegans. Some people got popped or observed, monitored, came to attention because of their dietary habits alone.
Yeah, or Martin Luther King, notorious you know, aggressive person who just wanted he walked around the country and just talked about you need to shoot people, right, Oh no, no, he talked about what you need to come together and uh, you know, be kind and peaceful. But he was on that list, and it was he got targeted by this, by this whole system for a long time.
I think it wasn't just his civil rights work. I think it was the extenuation of that into questioning the class system of a country that often purports itself to be a meritocracy. In past episodes as well as interview segments, we've explored what we call the mission creep of co Intel Pro and related subsidiary operations.
I think it's because he questioned the Vietnam War.
I think that's a huge part of it, and I think in doing so, doctor King also questioned the inherent and visible class system of the United States. Right. Oh yeah, he said there are more of us than there are of them.
Oh what's he saying?
Right? And this is where we go to the official ending of co Intel Pro April of nineteen seventy one.
Finally we're past that.
Right. We are on record as well here at stuff they don't want you to know, saying that the name may have changed, yet the methods exist. They simply evolved. You know, like, what's that? What's that? Merk squad? Blackwater? Wait a damn I wait, academy, academy.
That dude's going around having weird meetings, you guys trying to convince, trying to trying to convince world leaders that hey, why don't you just let us handle it because you know we're not a part of your military or their military or that military.
Right right? Yeah, well Wagner left a vacuum. Yeah, so shout out to mister prince.
Uh dude, just think about go and tell pro right now, Like with those the requests that you could put into Verizon or Exfinity or any.
Well, think about this too. Why aren't we democratizing the obsessive surveillance state? What happened to co intel? Amateur? You know what I mean? I want to hear Cointel open mic, co Intel, bro co Hotel, bro Co Hotel, am Why are we bringing this up now? It tells us a great deal about the context surrounding the FBI's behavior toward
Aim and ultimately toward Leonard. In particular, FBI deployed all the co Intel practices against AM, one of the first being the wholesale, the wholesale hoovering of leadership not proud of it, yeah right, and incarcerating these leaders by hooker by crook. For grassroots organizations, this is also a death by a thousand cuts. You see big corporations doing this
as well. Like if you want to fight a DuPont, if you want to fight you know, like other whistleblowers we've talked about in the past, a big oil, a big pharma, then their first move is to tie you up in court in a way that bleeds you dry. So then the fact that you're telling the truth doesn't matter because you don't have the money for the lawyers. Dang.
That's not to mention a group called the Church Committee, which had intended to investigate aim as another dissident group targeted by the FBI. Witnesses have been investigated by congressional staff and called to give testimony, but one day after this firefight in question here, the Church Committee canceled those hearings. There was something coming, something wicked.
Something in the wind. Yeah, and the Church Committee did a good job on other things, but you could argue they did to due diligence on the case of Leonard and the case of the American Indian Movement. The political cost perhaps got too high for them. As we're recording now, Leonard is alive. He is serving two consecutive life sentences. As of September of twenty twenty four, he turned eighty years old. As of last month, he is eighty years old, and he has spent the majority of his life in prison.
And I suggest that our most important last word for this episode is not our own. I think we read an excerpt from the elder himself. You can find his full statement on his birthday over at places like MR Online, Letter M Letter, R Online. We hope you do check it out. This is a piece of a longer thing. But gentlemen, I suggest we round Robin and Matt. Do you want to start us off?
Of course, so these are Leonard's words, My friends, I need you to fight for you. Police are beating children in the streets. The Parole Commission still illegally holds many of us long past our release dates. The Supreme Court has made it impossible for people to challenge wrongful convictions. And let's just put this in there. His first habeas corpus that he put forward was in nineteen eighty two, before I was born, and he's still fighting for this.
Yeah, Indigenous people are still being forced from our land.
We protect Mother Earth.
They have stripped her bear and now want our resources. Our people go missing at a staggering rate, and no one blinks.
And please read the full We're going to end with this excerpt. The elder continues. We are awaiting the Huru verdict to deta German whether free speech exists, a verdict that may well come down on my eightieth birthday, and I am still in prison. The Constitution reads, we the people. We must tell those in power we are the people. Sobering words. On July second, twenty twenty four, Leonard was
again denied parole despite multiple activist groups seeking clemency. If you'd like to learn more about Leonard Peltier's ongoing case, check out podcasts like Wondery's Leonard Political Prisoner. Red Nation has a great interview with FBI agents who are close to the case. If you'd like to learn more about other controversial cases of people who may have been swallowed by a system, check out our friends at Wrongful Conviction
and we talked about this a little. If you would like to write to Elder Leonard Peltier directly, his address is the following.
Leonard Peltier p E L T I E R number eight nine six three seven DASH one three two USP Coleman one, US Penitentiary, pobox one zero three to three Coleman, Florida three three five two one.
He can only receive letters, cards, postcards, no polaroid photos, and he can get money orders for commissary accounts. We do have it on good authority that he responds to all of his mail. Thank you so much for tuning in, folks. Again, we cannot over recommend the fantastic work that has been done by many justice organizations, law enforcement professionals, and countless others who, as individuals or as institutions continue to ask the hard questions about this case. So let us know
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