30 Years Later...

 
Much Unresolved 30 Years After FBI Agents, AIM Member Killed

CARSON WALKER
Associated Press


OGLALA, S.D. - Calvin Jumping Bull was away at college when the names Stuntz, Coler and Williams were added as casualties of the 1970s battles between the American Indian Movement and federal government.

Jumping Bull, 75, now lives on the family ranch where 30 years ago, tension between the two camps escalated when FBI agents Ronald Williams and Jack Coler were shot in the head at point-blank range after being injured in a shootout. They had come here to serve arrest warrants.

AIM member Joseph Stuntz also was shot that day, June 26, 1975, on the southwest corner of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The Justice Department concluded an FBI sniper killed Stuntz, who was clad in Coler's FBI jacket when his body was found.

"This is the place he was found," Jumping Bull said of a spot now green from a recent rain.

Stuntz' gravesite at a nearby cemetery reads: "Incident at Oglala Warrior, American Indian Movement Patriot."

Two AIM members, Robert Robideau and Dino Butler, were acquitted of killing Coler and Williams. Robideau now is a spokesman for another AIM member, Leonard Peltier, who was convicted of the agents' deaths in 1977 in Fargo, N.D., and sentenced to life in prison.

Peltier, 60, has maintained his innocence. His lawyer and others have said the FBI framed Peltier. The agency denies the allegation.

Numerous appeals have failed to overturn the convictions or order a parole hearing. Several human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, have called for Peltier's release.

Before President Clinton left office in January 2001, he considered granting Peltier clemency. Among those who urged Clinton to keep Peltier behind bars: then-FBI Director Louis Freeh, former U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle and former Gov. Bill Janklow, who said he flew to Washington and had a long meeting with Clinton at the White House over it.
In April at St. Paul, Minn., a federal judge admonished the FBI for withholding some documents on Peltier's case but denied a request by his lawyers for quicker access to information used to convict him.
And most recently, at a hearing this month in Fargo, Peltier lawyer Barry Bachrach argued that the government had no right to send Peltier to prison. Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Schneider said the claim is frivolous and the only way Peltier could get back in court. A ruling is expected within months.

Though it's been Peltier and his lawyers drawing most attention to his case, federal prosecutors also have introduced a possible link between Peltier and the 1975 slaying of another AIM member, Anna Mae Pictou Aquash. Her body was found in February 1976 on the Pine Ridge reservation.

At the February 2004 trial of Arlo Looking Cloud, one of two men charged with the killing, the former wife of AIM leader Dennis Banks testified she heard Peltier say he thought Aquash was a government informant.

Darlene Nichols also told jurors she was with Aquash when Peltier bragged about killing the two FBI agents.

Bachrach vehemently denied the accusation and said the prosecution's purpose was to smear AIM and cover up history.

The issue likely will resurface if John Graham, the other man charged with killing Aquash, is extradited from Canada. His Canadian appeal is still pending.

Jumping Bull, like many other Indians, believes Peltier's claim that he didn't kill Coler and Williams.

"He probably knows who did it but he'll probably never tell," he said. "A lot of people come here. You'll hear stories. I don't know if anyone actually knows what happened."

On the Net:
Peltier defense: http://www.freepeltier.org