Why All the Fuss?

If it's so clear that Peltier did it, why make a martyr out of him? The FBI didn't exactly keep their nose's clean either. During the trial of Butler and Robideau it was found that the FBI had threatened a key prosecution witness to change his testimony completely. Peltier was extradicted from Canada on the strength of an affadavit by a mentally incapacitated women who had never met him. The FBI had used her before to swear that she was the girlfriend of a suspect and had seen him commit the crime. All three of the Indian boys who testified to seeing Peltier, Robideau, and Butler walk down to the cars were denied lawyers when they requested them. However, the government isn�t alone. There is evidence that the organization defending Peltier also pressured witnesses into changing their testimony. Really, any faith I once might have placed in the image of the oppressed Indian activists was destroyed when I discovered that earlier this year a grand jury indicted two AIM members for the murder of Anna Mae Aquash, another AIM activist whose body was found by the side of the road on the same reservation just a few months after the incident. AIM had long claimed her murder was part of an FBI conspiracy because of an unbelievably incompetent first autopsy (the doctor failed to notice the gunshot wound to the back of her head), the failure of the lead FBI officer in search of her to identify the body, and the bizarre decision by that same FBI officer to cut off her hands and send them to Washington for fingerprint identification. As it happens that FBI officer was also responsible for the bogus affadavit used to extradite Peltier. The grand jury which convened in her case seems to believe testimony that the leaders of AIM believed Anna Mae to be an FBI informant and ordered the hit. There were plenty of other actual FBI informants in the organization at the time, and they were spreading rumors that Anna Mae was the mole to cast suspicion away from themselves. The bottom line is that foul play runs so deep on both sides that there is really no one you can trust. I remain unconvinced of any orchestrated FBI conspiracy, but the behavior of the particular agents involved in this case was reprehensible, and I doubt that is uncommon.