Part 1:
Co-conspirator
Dear
Supporters:
(1)
Any attorney who feels compelled to plead the “Fifth” against potential
criminal self-incrimination unquestionably has something to hide. (2) Any
attorney who is incapable of understanding a straightforward government
memorandum, and turns it into something it clearly is not, promotes a
fraudulent agenda. Former Peltier attorney Bruce Ellison is the perfect example
of both.
Occasionally,
old news is good news and life sometimes provides these little gifts.
Recently
added to Peltier’s website is a somewhat dated, bargain-basement film entitled,
WARRIOR The Life of Leonard Peltier.[i] There is much to criticize here, but a good
place to start, and end, is with the appearance of Bruce Ellison.[ii]
The timing of
the offering of this film is odd, and like other Peltier flagging efforts to
bolster his vaporizing folklore, it’s not unexpected Peltier is incapable of recognizing that the film’s credibility is destroyed within the first three
minutes.[iii]
To place
Ellison’s shameful intimacy with Leonard Peltier and the American Indian
Movement (AIM) in its proper context, and to what degree his actions as in-house counsel to the corrupt and
dangerous organization AIM was during the 1970s, we need to briefly review some
AIM history that the vast majority of Native America would just as soon forget.
Woven throughout its sordid past, Ellison’s presence was less as a defense
attorney than the consigliere to the American Indian Mafia.[iv]
AIM
as a Revolutionary Organization: It is a frankly revolutionary organization
which is committed to violence, calls for arming American Indians, has cached
explosives and illegally purchased arms, plans kidnappings, and whose opponents
have been eliminated in the manner of the Mafia. Some of AIM’s leaders and
associates have visited Castro Cuba and/or openly consider themselves
Marxist-Leninist. (Congressional Report, 1976)[v]
This is the
group that Ellison chose to launch his legal career and get in bed with.
Background: Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash, a vibrant
thirty-year-old Mi’kmaq from Nova Scotia dedicated herself as an activist for
native rights, joined the American Indian Movement and participated in a number
of AIM led incidents including the takeover/destruction of the hamlet of
Wounded Knee in 1973, the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties and the occupation and
ransacking of the Department of Interior headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Anna Mae was
well known and respected and intimately familiar with the founders and leaders
of AIM, namely Russell Means, Dennis Banks, the Bellecourts’ (Vernon and Clyde)
and U.S. Penitentiary inmate #89637-132 as well as many others.
Within the convoluted,
greed-filled, conflicted and power-hungry AIM leadership, all was going as well
as could be expected until raging paranoia and infighting created an atmosphere
of suspicion that some among their ranks were disloyal. There were other
reasons—some based on more interpersonal relationships and jealousies, that AIM
leadership began to suspect everyone as a collaborator, or provocateur as they were fond of branding those even superficially
suspect, and unfortunately, Anna Mae was high on the hit list.
This led to a
well documented incident where AIM bodyguard, Leonard Peltier, did what he did
best, certainly not a leader but just a cowardly thug, who, while at the AIM
National Convention in Farmington, New Mexico in June 1975 confronted Anna Mae
to make her confess she was an FBI informant, punctuating his interrogation by
putting a gun her mouth.[vi]
This occurred mere days before Peltier would attack, wound and murder FBI
Agents Coler and Williams at Pine Ridge, SD,
In
quasi-legal terms and AIM’s version of vigilante justice, this was akin to Anna
Mae’s preliminary hearing.
Added to this
was Anna Mae’s misfortune: While escaping with Peltier and others from Pine
Ridge after the agents’ deaths, she heard Peltier’s description (his confession
actually) for the slaughter of the wounded agents. “The M…F… was begging for his
life but I shot him anyway.”[vii] As suspicions persisted, this was even more
dangerous knowledge for Anna Mae to possess.
History has
proven that Anna Mae was not an informant, but it mattered little as AIM
leadership ordered her execution and the finger pointing as to who gave the
final order continues to this day. Although, among the Native community, the
list of suspects is very short.[viii]
In late
December 1975 Anna Mae was forcefully removed from Denver and taken to Rapid
City for further interrogation. Included was a brief stay at the Wounded Knee
Legal Defense/Offense Committee (WKLDOC*), of which, Bruce Ellison was an
integral member/collaborator. Not long after, an unidentified female body was
found on February 24, 1976 in a ravine about ten miles from Wanblee, the most
eastern community on the Pine Ridge Reservation and later buried in a pauper’s
grave as a Jane Doe.
It would be a
little later (early March) that the FBI identified the female remains—Anna Mae
Aquash, who had been raped and shot in the head. However, before this announcement, AIM leader Dennis Banks had
informed several AIMsters that the (as yet unidentified) body found near
Wanblee was actually Anna Mae and that she had been shot in the head. Present
during one of these admissions were the Bellecourts.
Dennis Banks, and others, have a lot of blood
on their hands.[ix]
To further
AIM’s obvious culpability; On March 14th,
a cold day of blowing snow, Anna Mae was buried with traditional Oglala prayers
on the bare ridge above the Wallace Little ranch…it was noticed that no AIM
leaders came to honor her.[x]
Enter Candy Hamilton, 1996.
Candy Hamilton, a non-native, self-described reporter from Tennessee, no
friend of the government and an activist for native rights, wrote a scathing
piece for a Native publication entitled No Results After 20 Years. She
criticized the government for grand jury investigations that went nowhere to
solve the crime and find justice for Anna Mae and her family. Hamilton wrote of
the widespread knowledge that Anna Mae was murdered within about two weeks of
her forced removal from Denver and interrogation by AIM members at the WKLDOC
office in December.[xi]
Criticism aside, Hamilton would, however, hammer a well-deserved nail in
the credibility of Bruce Ellison over his knowledge and possible involvement in
the kidnapping, rape and murder of Anna Mae Aquash. Ellison is not being
accused of rape, but his knowledge of the kidnapping and eventual murder of
Anna Mae Aquash cannot be discounted or ignored.
To be clear, Anna Mae believed
she could convince her AIM accusers of her innocence.
Years later, in March 2003, AIM members Arlo Looking Cloud and John
Graham (aka John Boy Patton) were indicted for Anna Mae’s murder. They were
convicted, Looking Cloud in 2004, Graham in 2010, both receiving life
sentences.
Re-enter Candy Hamilton, 2004.
At Looking Cloud’s 2004 trial a crucial witness regarding the
culpability of Bruce Ellison was none other than Candy Hamilton.
Hamilton’s sworn testimony clearly established that on or about December
11, 1975, at the WKLDOC office in Rapid City, Ellison and other AIM members
conducted what can only be described as an interrogation of Anna Mae Aquash.
The others included Laurelie Means, Ted Means, Clyde Bellecourt, Madonna
Gilbert and Thelma Rios.
Hamilton testified of Anna Mae: there
were tears in her eyes, that she had
been crying and she appeared very
unhappy. Hamilton related that she believed Anne Mae would be safe in
Oglala (a hamlet on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation), but Anna Mae replied, I don’t think I will get to, or I don’t
think I will, (something to that effect). Anna Mae then said, I have to go back in there now.
(Back-in-there, of course, was to continue her interrogation by Ellison
and the other AIM accusers. Since Peltier conducted Anna Mae’s preliminary hearing, this then was Anna
Mae’s trial with presiding judge,
Attorney Bruce Ellison, and the jury of her peers. Well, her former peers from
the American Indian Movement.)
During Hamilton’s cross-examination, in response to the prosecutor’s question,
she stated “When, I heard Bruce Ellison
at Thelma’s, I heard him say…” This was met with an objection from the
defense attorney, Rensch, which was followed by a side-bar (out of the hearing
of the jury):
(Assistant U.S. Attorney Mandel)
Frankly, my read on this is that this is a co-conspirator statement made in
furtherance of the course of the conspiracy. I know we don’t have a conspiracy
charge, that’s not the rule of evidence, and in fact I point out that Mr. Ellison, according to Mr.
Rensch, said he is going to exercise his
5th Amendment rights and won’t testify here, and we have had the
same experience we had with the grand jury regarding this on a number of
occasions. Mr Rensch of course has received the transcript through
discovery, he’s exercised his 5th Amendment right. He is a co-conspirator, it is a
co-conspirator’s statement made in the furtherance and course of the
conspiracy. The statement is simply that, you know, she’s here, they have her in town, something like
that. (Emphasis added).[xii]
Hamilton continued that she then left WKLDOC with Ted Means, Clyde
Bellecourt, Web Poor Bear and another individual heading to Sioux Falls,
stopping on the Rosebud Reservation at Ted Means’ brother, Bill Means’ house.
It is widely believed that the stop at Bill Means’ amounted to the final
phase of AIM (in)justice, her sentencing.
Anna Mae had already been convicted by Ellison and the AIM kangaroo court and now
the sentence was handed down. Capital punishment, AIM style, a bullet to the
back of the head and the lifeless body dumped unceremoniously into a barren
ravine.[xiii]
The last to see Anna Mae
alive
This is where Ellison’s culpability becomes evident as he skirmished in typical
AIM fashion to divert attention away from himself and the truth.
After the unidentified body was found it wasn’t until March 3rd
that the FBI confirmed the abandoned body was Anna Mae and her family was notified
on March 5th and made public on March 6th.
Ellison immediately jumped into action “demanding” that the recently buried
Anna Mae be exhumed (the FBI had already applied for a court order) and was
personally and intimately involved in all the activities that followed, most
notably to shed any suspicion of AIM’s involvement while pointing a crooked
finger elsewhere.
So brazen and self-effacing were Ellison’s actions that during a March
8,1976 visit to the FBI’s office in Rapid City, when requested by an agent to
furnish any information he might receive concerning Anna Mae’s death to the
FBI, Ellison replied that it would depend on who they (meaning certainly, he
and AIM) determined was responsible for her death and that would dictate whether or not this information would be furnished to the FBI.[xiv]
So what was the secret that Ellison kept so close to the vest? He knew
that he and the others at the WKLDOC office, those who also drove off with Anna
Mae, were the last to see her alive.
Did Ellison have an attorney-client privilege with everyone in AIM and
particularly those who interrogated Anna Mae before she took her last ride,
before she wound up dead in a ravine? Perhaps he could lamely try to claim that
privilege but nonetheless he had first-hand, personal knowledge of those,
including himself, who knew Anna Mae’s exact last known whereabouts; at WKLDOC.
A secret he kept, a co-conspirator’s intimate and personal knowledge, around
which he wrapped himself in the protection of the 5th Amendment as
the crosshairs of the government’s prosecution swung in his direction. Ellison
knew all too well his criminal exposure was significant.
One must consider how did those hours with Anna Mae in the WKLDOC office
unfold? Odds are the shyster Ellison played the good cop routine (“Annie, we
can work through this, It’s simple, we’ll just feed the Feds with a little
information, just enough to keep them interested but at a distance. Let them
think you’re still cooperating. We can give them some disinformation too, to
throw them off the trail, keep them guessing. We can have a little fun with
them and even make AIM look positive and successful and cast suspicion on those
who are not on board with us.” Or something like that.) While the others played
the bad cop, threatening role, maybe just like Peltier, gun-in-her-mouth and
all.
Ellison knew of AIM’s suspicions of Anna Mae, said nothing, but
continued to work with and represent the very people who were most responsible
and suspected of her murder. Ellison is no better than the worst of the AIM
leaders, this episode being among the most heinous and reducing whatever
existed of Ellison’s character to all the permanence of writing on water.
It was, and is, a damn shame Ellison was not further pursued for his
involvement, knowledge and seeming culpability in Anna Mae’s abduction and
murder.
But then, there is no statue of limitations on murder. Perhaps Ellison’s
day is yet to come, and pleading the 5th will make no difference at
all. We can only hope.
“In the
Spirit of Coler and Williams”
Ed Woods
*WKLDOC: There
is no greater example of a despicable group of lawyers than those who defended
Peltier and the others. The court records are replete with specific examples of
Ellison, Et Al, not just ensuring that the government proved it’s case beyond a
reasonable doubt (which was their sworn duties as officers of the court), but
making every effort to subvert, impede and obstruct justice. They sought to
prevent any Native Americans, whether witnesses, knowledgeable or not, to even
talk to the FBI about what they knew of anyone even associated with the murders
of Coler and Williams. They overtly hindered the investigation at every turn. They
purported to represent all Native Americans involved in any way with the events
of June 26, 1975. They engineered witnesses being unavailable, or mysteriously disappearing for trial. Of the
most blatant examples was Angie Long Visitor, only a witness to the initial
attack on the agents, who later told the government the names of those from
WKLDOC who arranged for her “vacation” and absence during the Robideau-Butler
trial. Even pressured and spending time in jail for contempt, this critical
witness would not cooperate because of pressure from the “friends of Peltier.”
At Peltier’s trial, she chose, much to the dismay of Peltier, Ellison and the
rest, not expose herself to perjury and testified truthfully. Long Visitor, a
totally unimpeachable fact witness corroborated to the letter the testimony of
Michael Anderson and Norman Brown as to the position of Leonard Peltier’s red
and white suburban when the shooting started; that there were no other vehicles
aside from the agents’ present at the time and placing shooters, Joe Stuntz,
Norman Charles and Bob Robideau in the same approximate locations they were
placed in by Anderson and Brown. Long Visitor's testimony at Peltier’s
trial made the culpability and involvement of those at WKLDOC clearly evident.
[iii] At just 2:37 into “Warrior” Peltier
biographer, Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), author of In the Spirit of Crazy
Horse, a book described on Peltier’s website as “The definitive work on the
American Indian Movement (AIM) and the Peltier case,” makes a definitive
statement that dismantles Leonard Peltier and this film. Matthiessen was
arguably one of the most well informed writers about AIM, Peltier and the
murders of Agents’ Coler and Williams through unfettered access to those who
were closest to this critical event. Matthiessen states: “…the plight of a young man spending his life in prison for something he almost certainly did not do.”
“Almost certainly?” Through the years of research and involvement with Peltier
and AIM and with his intimate knowledge of June 26, 1975, this is the closest
Matthiessen can come to even suggesting that Peltier is allegedly innocent.
Since Matthiessen, undeniably knew all the dirty little secrets, this is the
absolute best he can reach on this subject, “almost.” Even within the pages of
ITSOCH Matthiessen casts a very large wet blanket of doubt on Peltier’s version
of how it all started at Jumping Bull that fateful day. Late in the book
(p.544), Matthiessen had to inject some measure of conscience into his
reporting and admitted that the evidence demonstrated that the agents “…had
indeed been chasing one or more vehicles…” and “…they heard a warning shot or
had been taken under fire; if there is another persuasive explanation of the
location and position of their cars, I cannot find it.” He couldn’t find it. There
is no better way to destroy Peltier’s version of how the shooting began than
from his own biographer, Peter Matthiessen.
[v] Committee on the Judiciary, United
States Senate, Ninety-Fourth Congress; Revolutionary Activities within the
United States, The American Indian Movement. 76-598 O, September 1976.
(Author’s note: This report, although completed prior to, and published in September
1976, did not include the murder of Agents Coler and Williams, June 26, 1975.
Peltier would no doubt respond with Cointelpro,
however, the response to that can be found here: http://www.noparolepeltier.com/debate.html#unmasked
http://jfamr.org/denise_interview.html (last accessed 1/17/16)
[ix] http://oneidaeye.com/2013/10/03/dennis-banks-foreknowledge-aims-baggage/
(Last accessed 2/2/16)
[x]
Peter Matthiesen, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (New York: Penguin Books, 1991) 262.
[xiv] Matthiessen, 255
