Bob's Troubled Dream

BOB’S TROUBLED DREAM

Just when things were going so well for Bob, he starts having problems with that dream again. Troubled dreams. Problems with interpretations. Sometimes it is hard to figure out what the medicine man is saying. A dream can have so many meanings. So Bob bypassed the medicine man altogether and instead quite possibly had a judge rule on his dream.

And who better to interpret the dream than our own Judge Lisa Cook, who apparently has far reaching jurisdictions and the most unusual powers that would rival any medicine man. And furthermore, as everyone around here knows, her word is law.

Although recently born into this world, it seems that Lisa knows quite a lot about the Reign of Terror days. On the Canadian website http://www.vivelecanada.ca she posted the following: “I submitted these posts regarding the debate on the Anna Mae Aquash murder, and the perspectives involving extradition from Canada to U.S., the availability of justice in the U.S., feelings and thoughts of native women and of the family of Anna Mae Aquash, and the underpinnings of justice on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation which involves, primarily, the Treaty of 1851 and the Treaty of 1868.”

Judge Lisa Cook expounds on the “availability of underpinnings of justice on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.” Wow! I wonder what that means? But on the other hand, that is what people say when they finally get her court orders, ‘wow! What does this mean?’

Then Judge Cook uses as support for her interpretations a document she calls, Statement of Elders on Truth, read by Bernard Peoples, who just happens to be a close relative to Kamook Darlene Banks, recently married in September, 2004, to Bob Ecoffey, Jr. To help authenticate herself, and for spiritual support, she does a little name dropping like, “the Looking Horse family who are keeping the Canumpa Wakan.” I’m not sure here where this is all going, I mean, in Court you have to swear on the Bible that you are telling the truth. So, could Judge Cook be dragging in Orville Looking Horse and the Pipe to verify the truth? Well, I don’t know. I suppose if I were going to tell a great big lie, I would want to bring in the Pope to help verify the truth of it. I certainly hope she gets her witnesses lined up so they can swear on the Pipe. And there’ll be no fooling around with some woman crying over the intercom. Or maybe there was some fooling around, I don’t know. I cannot definitively say.

I remember a meeting held in 1999 attended by Lakotas to protest the building of a gunnery range at the base of Bear Butte. I also have talked with people who attended this meeting, who claim that the meeting had nothing to do with AIM, Anna Mae, Dennis, or Leonard. I think this is called falsification of documents.

Then Judge Cook cites one of Tony Black Feather’s documents to help back up her permission. I know that Tony is spinning in his grave over this one. So, Judge Cook, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of having to speak up for the dead, just as you feel compelled to speak up for……..well, actually, I’m not sure who you are speaking for, or why. One thing I do know is that Tony was very particular about his name and the name of the Treaty Council. He did not lend it out. Maybe you think that because I frequently quoted Tony Black Feather, you have the same right to do so. No, you do not. You were not a friend of Tony’s. I was. From the very first article I wrote for Arlo Looking Cloud, I called up Tony, read it to him, he gave his comments, I wrote them down, and included them in the article after reading the final draft to him for his corrections and/or additions. He strengthened and sharpened my thinking in so many ways. He knew who the enemy was, and, whom, as it turns out, it is you. He always told me, “The elders always told us to be careful of what you say—with your words, you can change the world.” And then he said, “Always be honest. Be honest with yourself. Learn to be broad minded. You must rise beyond the petty to see what is really going on.” In talking about Arlo Looking Cloud, he said, “Arlo is being set up to take the guilt of system. Politics is a dirty word to the Lakota. From the police, to the FBI, the courts and its judges, to Congress and the President, we are all guilty. And every day, the system takes one of my psychologically abused lambs and sends him to the slaughter.”

What a great mind this man had! And I will not have you besmirching his name with the kind of venom you are spewing forth. How dare you drag our honorable men, Tony Black Feather and Orville Looking Horse into your dirty political arena! Without their consent! And, believe you me, I am turning this whole thing over to the Treaty Council.

In using someone’s name to hide behind, Benard Peoples, relative of Kamook’s, Judge Cook said, “We demand that the leadership of AIM come forward and tell the full detailed story of what happened her in the 1970’s, and especially the events of 1975 surrounding the firefight on the Jumping Bull property, and the events and people involved in the murder of Anna Mae, whose mutilated body was found in February, 1976.,,We want to know everything Dennis Banks did on June 26, 1975, and exactly where he was that day – for we have the transcript of his Trial in Custer and he was not there that day, so he has no alibi, as he and his apologists have always claimed. Exactly what does Leonard Peltier know, and why does he refuse to this day to reveal the full story?…The People feel betrayed, and we do not feel it is honorable for Peltier and Banks to cover up the truth…If you are innocent, Dennis, say so to the world, and give us the exact names, places, dates, and all the details of these terrible tragedies…”

My, my, my, my, my. If we understand you correctly Judge Cook, you would like Dennis and Leonard to confess to killing Anna Mae? In your whole long tirade, we never once heard you say that Arlo was guilty of killing Anna Mae. We are wondering, why then, is Arlo sitting in prison? Why doesn’t Dennis just come forward and admit to the whole thing? With his accomplice Leonard Peltier? Where is your logic? And where are your facts? This sounds like the work of a jealous wife and a guilty boyfriend as told to the judge on Night Court.

This next statement is so skewed that I must ask if you, Judge Cook, were you on cocaine when you wrote it? “We demand the accused participants in the heinous Tribunal of Anna Mae to come forward and clear their names with the facts – if they can. We know of the implications of Thelma Rios and Bruce Ellison, who still reside in Rapid City, in this case as well as the Peltier case, and their direct connection with Dennis Banks and his associates, including Kevin McKiernan who supplied Banks’ false alibi (and which was repeated stupidly by Peter Matthiessen in his deeply flawed book ‘In The Spirit of Crazy Horse’) while he was 100 miles away in Oglala taping and photographing the Firefight. He could not be in 2 places at once, Dennis. Bruce has played the tapes and bragged that he knew who the “real killers” were, but has arrogantly refused to talk all these years. Why? If you are clean, please prove it.”

I don’t know, Bob. I would seriously think about going back to the medicine man instead of the Judge. I mean, in that last paragraph alone, just think, “lawsuits, lawsuits, let me count the ways!” At least his interpretations aren’t going to lead you into some nasty litigation.

The following account is from Peter Matthiessen’s book “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.” The FBI did not like this book so much that it was actually banned for 8 years. .

Chapter 9, "The Oglala Firefight" (pp. 235ff):
That firefight at Oglala, it ruined things for all of us. The feds set it up, then used it as an excuse for all kinds of violence against us that they couldn't have gotten away with otherwise. They broke a lot of people's spirit after that, and the results are still coming down. --Rick Williams, (AIM Member), Oglala/Cheyenne.

By the early summer of 1975, Wilsonite violence had proven so sustained and pervasive that the ION (Independent Oglala Nation-- the grassroots organization supporting AIM on Pine Ridge, 1973-1976-- J.K.) traditionals were requesting that AIM provide armed security for their homes, persons and communities. The FBI, in a memo prepared during the first week of June, noted this trend and pointed out that, as a result, "there are pockets of Indian population which consist almost exclusively of American Indian Movement ... members and their supporters on the Reservation." The accuracy of this observation is corroborated by AIM member Nilak Butler, at the time a resident of the Tent City, near the village of Oglala, one of AIM's more important defensive centers. She recalls that the concentration had occurred because, "Oglala was so violent at that time, [that] we were asked to be like a peace-keeping force." Roselyn Jumping Bull, the middle-aged proprietor of "Jumping Bull Compound"-- the property on which the Tent City was located said, “We asked...AIM boys to come help us. The boys said "OK. We'll come to help you all we can"... Our [own, non-AIM] boys can't even do nothing. They can't even speak up for themselves 'cause they're so scared of Dick Wilson and his goons.”

The only substantial questions which confronted Bureau strategists were simply how, where and when to provoke a confrontation of sufficient magnitude to warrant another massive application of federal force to Pine Ridge…

The Cowboy Boot Caper
On June 25, 1975, "some time after 4 p.m.," SAs Ronald Williams and Jack Coler accompanied by BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] police officers Robert Ecoffey (an Oglala GOON) and Glenn Little Bird (Nez Perce and a suspected GOON) drove into the Jumping Bull Compound. They claimed to have a warrant for the arrest of a young Oglala AIM supporter named Jimmy Eagle (age nineteen, a grandson of ION leader Gladys Bissonette) [who is named by Ecoffey in the trial of Arlo Looking Cloud, to be the person who gave him the tip on the killers of Anna Mae, after Superintendent Ecoffey did a “land favor” for Gladys].

What [is difficult] to explain [is] the triviality of the offense for which a federal warrant had been issued... what perplexed the Indians was why warrants were issued without investigation, and why a BIA patrolman was not sent out on this errand, which was a matter for tribal court, and why a petty misdemeanor had been transformed overnight into two felonies. For want of a better explanation, one must suppose that a felony was needed to give [FBI] agents jurisdiction on the reservation. The press... were led to believe that a kidnapping (a capital crime) had occurred, when in fact this allegation had no substance whatsoever, and was dropped quickly without explanation. In fact, the whole episode was so inconsequential that all but Eagle were eventually released on unsecured bonds, or in the custody of others, and Eagle himself was tried only on the robbery charge and then acquitted.

Thus, with scores of unsolved murders clogging the investigative docket of the FBI on Pine Ridge-- and the head of the Bureau's Rapid City office, George O'Clock, pleading "lack of manpower" in pursuing these investigations-- two agents had been dispatched to chase down a teenager who, at most, was guilty of stealing a pair of used cowboy boots. The absurdity of this is compounded by the fact that neither of the agents was even in possession of the warrant they were supposedly trying to serve.

In any event, SAs Coler and Williams and their BIA police counterparts, having first performed a warrantless search on the home of Wanda Siers, the residence closest to Highway 18 within the Jumping Bull property (see map), were informed by AIM member Dusty Nelson (an Oglala, aka John Star Yellow Wood) that Jimmy Eagle was not present and had not been seen in the vicinity for several days. From the Siers cabin, "the agents could see a number of Indians watching in silence from the compound, perhaps two hundred yards away... and apparently decided against going any closer." Their preliminary reconnaissance completed, all four law enforcement personnel departed.

Shortly thereafter, Coler and Williams confronted three young AIM members-- Norman Charles (Navajo), Mike "Baby AIM" Anderson (Navajo), and Wilford "Wish" Draper (Navajo)-- who were walking back to the Tent City along Highway 18 after having gone to Oglala to shower. Arbitrarily, as none of the three was accused of criminal activity or remotely resembled "fugitive" Jimmy Eagle, all three boys were ordered into the FBI car and taken to BIA police headquarters in Pine Ridge village. Although quickly released, they were first interrogated, not so much about Jimmy Eagle's possible presence in the Tent City or elsewhere on the Jumping Bull property, as about who else was in residence there. As Peter Matthiessen succinctly points sufficient firepower available to turn back the initial attempts at reinforcement, sealing the two agents-- Custer-like-- in their self-made trap. At about the same time that SA Adams and BIA police officer Two Bulls were driven back from their attempt to enter the Jumping Bull Compound, Coler was hit by a rifle bullet fired at long range; the round, a .44 magnum, first struck the open door of his car and splayed before nearly severing the agent's right arm near the shoulder. The wound, which was probably fatal, put Coler out of action, leaving Williams truly alone. At this point, the initial cockiness he had displayed deserted him, and the FBI radio log records his desperate transmission, "If someone could get on top of the ridge and give us cover, we might still be able to get out of here." Moments later, his radio communications degenerated to the point of repeating over and over again: "Come on guys. Come on guys." His transmissions are reported to have ended abruptly with the mumbled statement, "I'm hit," a moan and then silence. According to the Rapid City FBI office, there were no further transmissions by either agent "after approximately 12:10 p.m."

Coler and Williams were simply abandoned once Adams and Two Bulls retreated. The tactical commander of the BIA SWAT forces prepositioned near Oglala that day, Marvin Stoldt (an Oglala and a known GOON), later stated in an interview with a WKLDOC investigator that:

[T]hey [the SWAT team] were to serve as a backup unit to the two FBI agents, that the FBI agents were aware of the explosive atmosphere which existed at the time and in fact were pre-warned [sic] about the same. Mr. Stoldt expressed his belief that the FBI was testing the situation at Pine Ridge... That they had heard the distress call (radio) come over the air from the two FBI agents, that they (SWAT team) were unable to assist the two FBI agents because of the heavy gunfire.

What is most striking about this is not that Stoldt, a relative bit player, might have decided not to risk his neck on behalf of two FBI agents, but that both SA Adams and BIA police/GOON leader Delmar Eastman must have approved the decision to abort the backup effort at the first sign of serious resistance. Rather than attempting to use the perhaps 200 heavily armed men at their disposal to force their way to their embattled comrades barely 200 yards away, they opted to hang back along the main road and engage for "about forty minutes" in "a long-range and sporadic exchange between the cabins [in the Jumping Bull Compound] and the cluster of official cars out on Highway 18."

Meanwhile, reinforcements to the police poured into the area (by dusk, there were more than 250 on the scene) and, as Bob Robideau later wrote, "By noon our defensive positions were completely surrounded by FBI agents, some of whom were SWAT-trained, BIA police, BIA SWAT teams, state law enforcement, and non-law enforcement who were comprised of local white farmers and goons." Nonetheless, using the cover of brush along White Clay Creek, AIM and ION people were beginning to slip away at a rapid rate. SA David Price, who'd blown the engine of his car while en route, received a ride from WKLDOC researcher Joanna LeDeaux when she happened by. Upon their arrival near the Jumping Bull property at about 12:30 p.m., LeDeaux volunteered to go into the Tent City and attempt to arrange a ceasefire. According to the 302 Report of SA Adams for June 26, she was gone "about an hour" and then returned, stating to BIA Superintendent Kendall Cummings that "no negotiation was possible." Before Adams or other agents could question her, LeDeaux drove away. At about the same time that LeDeaux returned to Highway 18 (1:30 p.m.) another contingent of South Dakota highway patrolmen showed up, followed immediately by a Fall River County "sheriff's posse" headed by South Dakota Attorney General William "Wild Bill" Janklow and his assistant William Delaney. [Note #35: Janklow was in Hot Springs that day, trying Dennis Banks in the Custer Courthouse case. Upon receiving news of the firefight, he raised a "posse" which was ready to go on such short notice that it lends additional credence to the notion that forces had been pre-positioned for this purpose. The whole group then made the approximate 30 minute (high speed) drive to Oglala. Clearly, not a minute was wasted in bringing these vigilantes to bear. A June 26, 1975 Rapid City FBI office Radio Log entry (transcribed 7/16/75; transcriber's initials, "m.j.r.") mentions the arrival of the Janklow group and that they were "armed with M-16's."]

What LeDeaux had discovered was that both Coler and Williams had been dead for some time and that the remaining people within the AIM positions had thinned to a sort of rear guard covering the retreat of others. By 2 p.m., even this much reduced group had divided itself, leaving two or three people to "pin down" the huge police force with random pot shots while the others evacuated along the creek. [Note #36: At p. 161, Matthiessen, op. cit., names the final rear guard as being composed of Joe Sturtz Killsright and Norman Charles, who were covering the retreat of Leonard Peltier, Bob Robideau and Dino Butler. Together, these five would have been the initial rear guard group encountered by LeDeaux.] Although, as Robideau noted, various groups of agents, police and GOONs had worked themselves around the Jumping Bull property-- "flankering," as SA Dean Hughes (head of the FBI SWAT team) was to put it-- it was not until 4:20 p.m. that another effort was made to move to Coler's and Williams' assistance. Even then, the FBI's "probe" of the AIM positions came in the form of sending Edgar Bear Runner-- with hands raised all the way, lest he be gunned down by a brave Bureau sniper-- in to find out what was going on. When Bear Runner returned to Highway 18 approximately a half-hour later, he informed BIA superintendent Cummings that both agents appeared to be dead, and the Jumping Bull property seemed deserted. Bear Runner and Cummings were then "allowed" to walk back in-- both with their hands raised-- in order to verify that the agents were indeed dead.

At 5:50 p.m., according to SA Hughes' 302 Report, he finally "gave the order to assault the houses." In his testimony at the Cedar Rapids trial of Bob Robideau and Dino Butler, Hughes states that while he was "running zigzag fashion," he "heard a lot of fire from the group that [SA David] Price had that was assaulting the green house." He goes on that, moments later he "walked over and observed this dead Indian male... I believe he had a bullet hole in the upper part of his head, although I'm not positive about that. The foremost thing I observed, he was wearing an FBI SWAT jacket which I recognized, and it had the letters 'FBI' on the left breast pocket." The assault group proceeded to shoot up and teargas all the structures within the Jumping Bull Compound, but failed to turn up any more Indians.

The dead Indian was Joe Stuntz Killsright, apparently among the last remnant of AIM's rear guard. According to the FBI's autopsy report (echoed by Hughes from the witness stand in Cedar Rapids, although he professed to be "not positive" if it were true), Killsright had been killed by a single, long-range rifle shot to the forehead. However, South Dakota Assistant Attorney General Delaney who-- as a prominent member of a vigilante group-- was among the first to view the body, stated on June 28, 1975, that: "[T]he dead Indian was lying on his back, and when he was turned over, it appeared he had... received a burst in the back and there was blood coming from the back of his jacket." NPR reporter (and Minneapolis Tribune stringer) Kevin McKiernan-- who in a momentary, confused lapse in the FBI's usual "security" against on-the-scene press coverage of its anti-AIM operations, was admitted to the Jumping Bull Compound-- also contends the Bureau's "bullet-in-the-forehead story is false." McKiernan, who photographed the body from several angles (none of the photos reveals a facial wound) insists that, "The only blood I saw was coming down the jacket sleeve," and suggests that the SWAT jacket may have been put on Killsright's corpse to hide how he had died, "before outside observers were allowed into the area." Finally, AIM member Mike Anderson later recounted how Norman Charles, Killsright's team-mate in the rear guard action, told him shortly afterward that, as the pair was escaping from the FBI's "final assault," Killsright "had been hit and was bleeding too bad to take along. [Note #46: Matthiessen, op. cit., p. 199. Bruce Ellison is in possession of a full-face picture of Killsright's body taken by an FBI photographer some time after McKiernan's photos were taken; the FBI photo reveals the forehead shot which appears absent in the McKiernan pictures. In the FBI photo, Killsright's head wound is remarkably clean, indicating it had either been cleaned of gore for the occasion, or that it had been administered after the victim had died and blood had drained from the body. No official medical estimation of the range at which the head shot was fired has ever been forthcoming, insofar as no autopsy was performed; Killsright's body was handled by W. O. Brown, the FBI-retained Nebraska pathologist who performed suspect autopsies on Pedro Bissonette and Anna Mae Aquash (see Chapter 7).

None of this squares with the official Bureau version of Killsright's death at the hands of a long-range sniper. No FBI investigation into how Killsright died was ever undertaken, and no independent autopsy was ever performed. There is thus a more than passing possibility that SA David Price's assault unit may have capped a day of FBI provocation, bungling and cowardice-- ingredients which led to the deaths of two of its agents-- with the summary execution of an AIM member. This combination of circumstances goes far toward explaining why, in the face of all facts, Bureau spokesmen began their vehement public insistence that the Indians had held off numerically superior forces for hours by "fighting from bunkers" and that its agents had been unwittingly ambushed while in the normal performance of their duties (see Chapter 10).
In any event, by 5:30 p.m. on June 26, "SAC Joseph Trimbach and a special sniper team from Minneapolis, as well as other [FBI] units from around the country" were flying into Rapid City, and "already, armored personnel carriers and high explosives were on the way to Pine Ridge for the second time in not much more than two years." The Bureau, as Dino Butler puts it, was now prepared "to clear out the last pocket[s] of real resistance on the reservation…."

The day after the shootout, Richard [G.] Held... arrived in South Dakota with a force of 170 armed agents [more than 40 had already been posted to the Pine Ridge area], who began a military style sweep across the reservation seeking suspects. The agents used M-16s, helicopters, tracking dogs, and armored personnel carriers to conduct a series of raids, during which many Lakota said the FBI broke into homes without warrants, physically abused innocent bystanders...

The FBI immediately launched a large-scale search for the suspected slayers which involved 100 to 200 combat-clad FBI agents, BIA policemen, SWAT teams, helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft and tracking dogs. An increasing volume of requests for information regarding the incident and numerous reports and complaints of threats, harassment, and search procedures conducted without due process of law by the FBI prompted my visit to the reservation to gather firsthand information.

[T]he BIA and State Police [both of which operated on Pine Ridge during this period under direct control of the FBI] seemed to make a habit of search and seizure without due cause and/or warrant.

The Bureau's official designation for this conduct was the RESMURS (Reservation Murders) Investigation. However, "[t]he Reservation Murders Investigation was concerned only with the killings of the agents [Coler and Williams]; it did not concern itself with the dozens of murders committed in the past three years on the reservation, almost none of which had been investigated, much less solved." Not unnaturally, the "FBI's tactics caused a great deal of resentment among many traditional Indians, who had watched their friends and relatives killed without a hint of investigation by the FBI."

Indicative of what was going on was the plight of the elderly Jumping Bulls, Harry and Cecelia (parents of Roselyn), who had returned from a trip to sell yearling calves in Gordon, Nebraska, at about 7 p.m. on the evening of June 26, to find their property literally crawling with FBI, police and GOONs. A feisty woman in her mid-seventies, Cecilia immediately confronted a "white officer lawman," presumably from the FBI, wanting to know what they were doing on her property:
Law Officer: Don't you know two men [were] killed?

Cecelia: Is this one of them? (Pointing to somebody laying there, in front of the Green [Long Visitor] House).

Law Officer: No, down there. (Pointing toward the west, towards the corrals...).

Cecelia: What is that lying there?

Law Officer: That's just an Indian.

Cecelia: Can I see it?

Law Officer: Yes. (Calls to another officer to uncover his [Killsright's] face).

(Cecelia walks over to the body and mourns.)
The elder Jumping Bulls, whose home had been teargassed and shot full of holes (family photos had also been shot at pointblank range), even after it became obvious that the building was harboring no AIM snipers, were summarily evicted. Seventy-nine-year-old Harry spent the next several days unsuccessfully attempting to obtain permission even to visit his home, while Cecelia began to show signs of a nervous breakdown. Finally, "[o]utraged that their respected elders should be forbidden access to their property, the traditional people of the White Clay District, more than two hundred strong, marched on the BIA roadblocks, which rapidly dissolved." With that, the Bureau grudgingly "authorized" the Jumping Bulls to return.

On July 2, seventy-five-year-old Wallace Little, Sr.'s residence-- near the Jumping Bull property-- was surrounded by a dozen federal cars and SWAT vans containing approximately fifty battle-clad agents. Although Little protested that they had no right to be on his property and demanded to see a warrant, he was detained at gunpoint while "two agents ransacked his house." On July 12, SA J. Gary Adams led a similar raid on AIM member Oscar Bear Runner's home in Porcupine, by which time the FBI's "[b]ursting into houses and threatening and scaring people had caused the death [by heart attack] of an old man named James Brings Yellow, in Oglala, and as these searches spread across Pine Ridge, the Indians signed a general petition demanding that the FBI leave the reservation."

The breaking-and-entering, threats, harassment, and many other illegal procedures entirely alienated the Lakota, even Wilson supporters who might otherwise have helped; "the Sioux Tribal Council chairmen, after a special meeting on July 12, demanded an immediate withdrawal of most of the FBI agents and U.S. marshals from Pine Ridge and other reservations; they suggested that Oglala tribal officials, Dick Wilson included, be removed from office if they failed to reinstate constitutional procedures, and they also asked [South Dakota] Governor Kneip to reprimand Attorney General Janklow for his inflammatory statements. For once, the BIA's Indian governments were supporting all the Indian people they were supposed to represent…"

[The FBI's presence in such force] has created a deep resentment on the part of many reservation residents who feel that such a procedure would not be tolerated in any non-Indian community in the United States. They point out that little has been done to solve numerous murders on the reservation, but when two white men are killed, "troops" are brought in from all over the country at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Flemming's letter might be seen as a followup of sorts to another, written by South Dakota Senator James Abourezk to President Gerald Ford on June 27, requesting that the chief executive intervene directly to forestall the invasion of Pine Ridge. Abourezk noted that he had entered a number of appeals to both the Justice Department and the FBI over the preceding two years, to the effect that they do something to curtail the mounting violence on the reservation, only to be met with a "bureaucratic" response and "no action." The Senator concluded that, "[a]t the very least, they [the FBI] have an interest in keeping things stirred up." Ford, of course, did nothing at all.

The Bureau was able to quash such objections through the ample utilization of propaganda, first through a series of press conferences in Rapid City to provide grossly inaccurate information as to what had actually happened to Coler and Williams (see Chapter 10), and then by release of equally fictional documents purporting to show that the Oglala firefight was merely the opening round of an incipient wave of "AIM violence…"

[Summing up the FBI's resulting legal maneuvers, etc., and ending Chapter 9:]
The way the FBIs worked this, offering money to poor people to tell lies about each other, offering to drop charges against people in exchange for testimony-- false testimony-- about other people, it was sick. They didn't get many people to take 'em up on it, but all they needed was one or two. Then instead of trust, you had suspicion. Then, instead of a movement, you had individuals, or individual families, trying to look out for themselves, to protect each other no matter who else got hurt. It's a normal human reaction to what the FBIs were doing to people. And, you know what? It never did the FBI no good in court, even though it sure messed up a lot of lives on this reservation. A lot of folks never have got back their self-respect after what the FBIs put 'em through. But, maybe that was their point, eh? [Theda Nelson, long-time Oglala resident and AIM member].

Like the invasion of Pine Ridge and the Oglala firefight itself, the FBI's utilization of grand juries, subpoena power and related incarcerations during its RESMURS Investigation had little to do with law enforcement, pursuit of justice or the desire to punish the guilty. Rather, from beginning to end, the entire operation was simply a drive to break the spirit of a people, to break their will and ability to resist the imposition of an unjust authority.