William Clinton Has the Nerve to Return to Pine Ridge after Dissing Natives and Leonard Peltier??

16.5.08

For the sake of clarity, let's start here:
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Clinton promises war on diabetes among Native American youths » RapidCityJournal.com: "PINE RIDGE - Former President Bill Clinton promised that his wife will wage a war on diabetes among Native American youths and fight for the 'overlooked' and 'mistreated' if she is elected president."
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Ok, "American Indians" are "proud" to be in the electoral spotlight and courted by the likes of Bill Clinton who is campaigning like a rabid bulldog on behalf of his spouse the 'White workingman's candidate' Hillary Clinton. Despite the fact that I personally find it embarrassing that my people after 500 years of continual abuse, neglect and genocide are amazed that this White man who helped keep them downtrodden only took the time to visit them at the very end of his presidential career and came with a sack full of promises that he never kept, I have yet another bone to pick.

Are the people of Pine Ridge forgetting that Slick Willy promised to pardon our hero Leonard Peltier on that last visit?? And isn't Leonard STILL sitting in a White man's prison after both the judge and the prosecutor in the case said off the record that no one really knows who killed those two FBI (Federal Bureau for Intimidating Aboriginals) agents?

Among the Americans pardoned by outgoing President Clinton were, clockwise from left: Henry Cisneros, Patricia Hearst, Susan McDougal, Roger ClintonHe pardoned his buddy Mark Rich who ran from the U.S. to avoid prosecution as well as Henry Cisneros, Patty Hearst, Susan McDougal and his blood-relation Roger Clinton. But Leonard sites in prison, framed, insulted and charged with a killing he could not possibly have committed. Fellow American Indian Movement warriors Bod Robideau and Dino Butler were freed under the very same charges by an all-White jury who said that if they were trapped in the same circumstances they would have acted in self-defense as well.

Where is our sense of dignity? That's right 'American' Indian, keep flying your colonial American flags while Indians fighting to stand up for our people and our basic human rights languish in the largest reservation system in the United States. Continue to serve in the U.S. military and help them take the lands and lives of other Aboriginal people while you talk of "Native Pride." Continue to delude yourself that you are "free" while your cousins die from preventable disease and abject poverty while big business siphons your natural resources.

That's right Indian. Take the moral high ground of forgiveness while we and they live contented in the illusion that it was they who brought us civilisation and democracy. Continue to look at your children as they wear the Indian mascots that no other ethnicity would allow as a matter of "pride" for their schools. That's right Indian, do the right thing, just lay down and die.

This way the rest of us too proud, too smart for our own good and too angry to commit suicide on the premise of "noble Indianness" can climb over the carcasses of the Vichy amongst us and continue the struggle to exist without regret or apology for having the audacity to insist on being who we are in our own ancestral lands.

Damn all of you who find value in being used as electoral fodder for any of these colonial candidates. Damn you all to the Christian version of an afterlife for the wicked. Damn you all.

- The Angryindian
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Clinton refuses to pardon Leonard Peltier
By Joanne Laurier
25 January 2001

Use this version to print

One of Bill Clinton's last presidential acts was to deny executive clemency to Leonard Peltier, the Native American activist who has been imprisoned for 25 years. Clinton said last November that he would review Peltier's case before leaving office.

Peltier, a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), was convicted of the murder of two FBI agents in 1975 on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota. He has been serving two consecutive life terms at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.

The Peltier conviction was obtained on the basis of coerced and false testimony from witnesses threatened by the FBI and by the government's suppression of evidence favorable to Peltier's case. The government holds 6,000 documents in whole and another 5,000 in part dealing with the case.

A statement posted on the web site of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, entitled Day Of Shame, read: “During the last few days world support for the immediate and unconditional release of Mr. Peltier had reached remarkable levels, with calls and letters arriving from such renowned human rights and religious leaders as Coretta Scott King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Amnesty International, Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchu and the Archbishop Desmond Tutu, amongst many others.”

Also posted on the site was a letter from the United Nations High Commissioner for Humans Rights, Mary Robinson, urging Clinton to grant clemency to Peltier.

The possibility of a presidential commutation of Peltier's sentence enraged the FBI, whose director, Louis Freeh, wrote to Clinton in December, describing Peltier as a “vicious murderer.” In an officially sanctioned public protest, hundreds of FBI agents marched to the White House on December 15. Commenting on this unprecedented display of insubordination, an attorney for Peltier stated: “It's a sad day for democracy when our armed forces march through the streets to influence a decision for mercy and justice by a civilian president.”

A measure of the persecution and injustice suffered by Peltier, whose health is failing, is revealed in a statement by former Congressman Don Edwards, longtime chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, which oversaw the FBI. Edwards, himself once an FBI agent but a forceful advocate of clemency for Peltier, wrote on December 14: “Even the government now admits that the theory it presented against Mr. Peltier at trial was not true. After 24 years in prison, Leonard Peltier has served an inordinate amount of time and deserves the right to consideration of his clemency request on the facts and the merits.

“The FBI continues to deny its improper conduct on Pine Ridge during the 1970's and in the trial of Leonard Peltier. The FBI used Mr. Peltier as a scapegoat and they continue to do so today. At every step of the way, FBI agents and leadership have opposed any admission of wrongdoing by the government, and they have sought to misrepresent and politicize the meaning of clemency for Leonard Peltier. The killing of FBI agents at Pine Ridge was reprehensible, but the government now admits that it cannot prove that Mr. Peltier killed the agents.”

So blatant is this injustice that even 8th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Gerald Heaney, who had previously denied an appeal by Peltier, now confirms his support for Peltier's freedom.

Just hours before the end of his presidency, Bill Clinton issued pardons to more than 100 people. Among others, presidential pardons were bestowed on a former director of the CIA, John Deutch, accused of mishandling secret information; former Arizona Governor Fife Symington, whose overturned conviction on charges of bank and wire fraud was being challenged by prosecutors; and Marc Rich, a fugitive billionaire indicted on tax evasion, whose ex-wife was a major contributor to Hillary Clinton's senatorial campaign.

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Imprisoned Native American activist and convicted murderer Leonard Peltier blasted former President Clinton on Monday for refusing to include him among several other controversial figures pardoned on his final day in office.
Leonard Peltier
Peltier is serving two consecutive life sentences for the murders of two FBI agents in 1975

Peltier was convicted in the slaying deaths of two FBI agents in a 1975 gunbattle on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Peltier and his supporters say he was wrongly convicted.

"What Bill Clinton did to us was cruel," wrote Peltier in a two-page letter released by his legal defense committee. "The White House gave my attorneys indications that there was a good chance for my clemency to be granted. I had to prepare myself for being released because there was no sign that my petition would be denied."

Rumors that Clinton was considering a Christmas pardon for Peltier swept through the FBI, angering agents from coast to coast and prompting an unprecedented march of thousands of current and former FBI agents in Washington in December to demand that Peltier's clemency request be rejected.
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Bill Clinton's legacy


Peltier, 56, is housed in the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas. He has been in federal custody since February 1976. In his letter, he accused Clinton of approving pardons because of political favors.

Clinton's most controversial pardon was granted to fugitive billionaire Marc Rich, who has been living in Switzerland since a 1983 indictment on charges of wire fraud, racketeering, tax evasion and trading with Iran in violation of a U.S. embargo. Rich's ex-wife, Denise Rich, was a major donor to the campaigns of both the president and his wife, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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Among Americans pardoned today by outgoing President Clinton were, clockwise from left: Henry Cisneros, Patricia Hearst, Susan McDougal, Roger Clinton

"We can see who was granted clemency and why," Peltier said. "The big donors to the President's campaign were able to buy justice, something we just couldn't afford."

"Meanwhile many political prisoners continue to languish unjustly, proof that this nation's talk about reconciliation is nothing but empty rhetoric."

Sources familiar with the process told CNN a Peltier pardon never appeared to be a likely action because of intense opposition from law enforcement agencies and prosecutors at all levels of government.

But human rights activists were equally vocal in their support of Peltier, who they say was wrongly convicted. His supporters argue that evidence that would have helped Peltier's case was kept from his defense attorneys.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela leads a list of prominent figures in Africa and Europe who support Peltier's campaign for clemency.

FBI documents released in the early 1980s disclosed that ballistics tests that aided Peltier's defense had been concealed from his attorneys. About 6,000 pages of FBI documents in the Peltier case remain under seal, and his defense committee said it would pressure the U.S. government to declassify that information.

Labels: american indian movement, americas, clinton, colonialism, genocide, Leonard Peltier