Copyright © 2001 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

Before he leaves office on Jan. 20, President Clinton faces one last controversy - one, this time, not of his own making.

The controversy centers, instead, on Leonard Peltier, an American Indian who was convicted of the murder of two FBI agents in 1975. Clinton must decide whether or not to commute Peltier's sentence.

Peltier's case has attracted national and international attention. An organization opposed to his release, the No Parole Peltier Association, is based here in Cincinnati.

Depending on your viewpoint, Peltier is a cop-killer, or he is an American Nelson Mandela - a man whose conviction rests on, at best, dubious evidence.

As it happens, Mandela is among those who have called for Peltier's release. Other supporters include actor Robert Redford, country singer Willie Nelson, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In Congress, Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii has campaigned for a pardon for nearly 10 years.

On the opposite side stands the FBI. In an unprecedented public display, nearly 500 current and former agents marched on the White House on Dec. 15 to protest Peltier's possible release. In a Dec. 5 letter to Clinton, FBI Director Louis Freeh described Peltier as a ''vicious murderer'' undeserving of mercy.

The trouble with Freeh's letter is that the prosecutors of this case freely admit that they cannot prove that Peltier actually killed anyone.

Everything about this case is disputed. On June 26, 1975, FBI agents Ronald Williams and Jack Coler drove onto the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to arrest an Indian teenager named Jimmy Eagle. Freeh claims that Eagle was a bank robbery suspect. But the FBI's Minneapolis office contradicts the director. According to Amnesty International, Eagle's alleged crime amounted to the theft of a pair of used cowboy boots.

In any event, a gun battle ensued between Coler and Williams and more than 30 Indians. When the shooting stopped, both men and an Indian named Joe Stuntz lay dead.

Such an incident can only be explained by the reservation's violent atmosphere. Between 1973 and 1976, at least 69 members of the American Indian Movement or their supporters were murdered in a dispute with tribal council chairman Richard Wilson and his private police force known as the ''GOON Squad.''

According to a U.S. Civil Rights Commission report at the time, people on the reservation lived in a state of ''fear and tension.'' Acts of violence were commonplace, and the commission received ''numerous complaints'' about FBI activities at Pine Ridge.

These facts were crucial. Of the four Indians indicted for the deaths of Coler and Williams, two were found not guilty.

An all-white jury agreed that they had acted in self-defense. Charges against the third defendant, Jimmy Eagle, were dropped so that, according to an FBI memorandum, ''the full weight of the Federal Government could be directed against Leonard Peltier.'' Evidence used to argue the self-defense claim was excluded from this trial, and Peltier was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison.

However, the government's case against Peltier is anything but compelling. It hinges on the prosecution's claim that he shot Coler and Williams at close range with an AR-15 assault rifle. However, the FBI's own firearms expert reported that the alleged weapon was so badly damaged that it was impossible to link it with any of the bullet casings found by the agents' bodies. Nor, for that matter, has it been established that Peltier possessed the weapon.

These discrepancies are themselves disputed by the No Parole Peltier Association. Speaking at the FBI agents' Dec. 15 march, Eddie Woods, a special agent from Cincinnati, said that this is ''an issue of murder, plain and simple.''

Were that true, Clinton's job would be easy. But the more you look at this case, the more uneasy you become. The government continues to withhold 6,000 documents in whole and another 5,000 in part dealing with this case.

Officials say their disclosure would harm ''national security'' or might disrupt ongoing investigations, claims that are hard to credit given that this case is 25 years old.

Ideally, Peltier would be given a new trial so that the truth could be established once and for all, and not just for Peltier's sake.

A new trial, for instance, might discover why Coler and Williams were sent onto Pine Ridge with no back-up at a time when tensions were so high. For that matter, why were two FBI agents sent to arrest a teenager accused of stealing a pair of boots?

Appeals courts, however, have repeatedly turned down this request.

That leaves Clinton. In America, we are taught that there is ''justice for all.'' But for Peltier, those words have a hollow ring.

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Contact Kevin Matthews, teacher of history at Northern Kentucky University, by phone: 859-572-6072 or by e-mail: ckmatthews1958@aol.com.