Letter of the Day: What’s the difference?...

What’s the difference?...
by Charlet Estes
26 August 2009, Pacesetting Times, Horseshoe Bend, AR


What is the difference between someone who not only follows a blatant, murder-inducing cult leader but becomes the leading spokesperson for the group and is caught red-handed (intended) with a gun pointed at the President of the United States...and someone who was present during a conflict in what was considered a civil war within a “sovereign nation” and was never proven to have ever held the "smoking gun?"

It's a minimum of 13 years and a maximum of when the last trumpet sounds, according to a United States Parole Commission decision handed down on Friday, August 20. The decision states, the parole of 64-year-old Leonard Peltier, accused of the killings of two FBI agents during a 1975 riot, has been denied and his next opportunity for a hearing has been set at 2024.

Lynette Fromme was a teenage runaway who had taken refuge with "the Manson family," and had been arrested numerous times, with the charge of attempting to kill an ex-adherent with an overdose of LSD which Fromme had put in her food included. When Manson and the co-defendants in the Tate-LaBianca murder case were sentenced to life imprisonment, Fromme became the family leader. She took a Colt .45 to an appearance by President Gerald Ford, pointed it at him and was arrested by the Secret Service.

During her prison stay, Fromme hit another prisoner in the head with the business end of a hammer and made at least one temporarily successful escape. She is the only member of the original "family" who has not denounced Manson as her leader/mentor. To paraphrase a statement made by Fromme shortly after her arrest for the Ford incident, you can lay blood in front of them and...they don't think anything of it.

On Friday, August 14, 2009, Fromme was released after serving 34 years of her life sentence for threatening a United States President with death. The reasoning behind her release, she's earned "good behavior time" for every year she's served.

A man who was convicted of killing 270 people, Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, better known as the Lockerbie Bomber, sentenced to life (a minimum of 27 years) for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, was also recently given his freedom. The powers that be lobbied for his release based on compassionate auspices. He’s been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Many questions have arisen as to whether or not there were insidious economic reasons behind that decision.

Regardless of whether she was a good girl in prison…or because we need the oil, the point is, both of these murderer/ attempted murderers were set free amongst much fanfare and media exposure.

During these crime investigations, there was some question as to proof. In Fromme’s case, we know she pointed a gun at the President. She states she ejected the shell from the chamber before leaving her residence, but none the less it had ammo, and her actions signaled her intent. Al Megrahi was a Libyan Intelligence officer. In his case, the evidence was based on clothing fibers found on the instrument of destruction. He maintains his innocence.

They now go free.

Peltier, originally of the Turtle Mountain Reservation, is a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), a group not unlike many of the Black and Hispanic civil rights movement groups of the 1960s and 70s. He joined the Pine Ridge Reservation which, along with his own rez were some of the first places affected by the government’s Termination Policy. Under this policy, the sovereignty of the reservations was dissolved and they were absorbed into mainstream United States. The people there remained and languished in the tumultuous limbo of those changes. A quazi-mafia group known as the Guardians of the Oglala Nation developed during that period.

Run by a man named Dick Wilson, the Guardians, or GOONs as they were known ruled the disenfranchised with an iron fist. The under-educated and at-risk individuals found themselves at their mercy.

AIM members and the GOONs were in constant conflict during the time between 1972-1975 and the reservation was thrown into an atmosphere of civil war. During this period, 64 unsolved NA murders and disappearances, and 350 assaults were committed, making the Pine Ridge area crime rate the highest in the state of North Dakota.

The FBI’s COINTELPRO counter intelligence division became involved in the conflict, conducting a counterinsurgency campaign against AIM. Residents were constantly on edge.

In 1975, a man by the name of Jimmy Eagle, accused of the theft of a pair of boots, was being sought by the FBI. Two agents out of Los Angeles picked up on a red truck which they thought was Eagle’s. They followed it at high speed onto the reservatoin and a ranch where an encampment had been established. The driver exited the truck, as did the agents who were attempting to retrieve their rifle from the trunk of the car.

A gunfight ensued. Bob Robideau, his cousin Leonard Peltier and Dino Butler were among the AIM members present (who stated they thought the pursuers were members of GOON.) Robideau fired two shots from a distance which he later learned had hit the agents after they had exited their car. The shots were non-fatal. During the later course of the shootout however, both agents were shot at point-blank range with .223 rounds. A young resident of Pine Ridge was also a victim, but his death was never investigated on the basis that he was killed by friendly fire during the course of a riot.

Robideau and Butler were acquitted on the grounds of self defense. Peltier was sentenced to life for the fatal shots and remains in prison despite the fact that there was no conclusive ballistic evidence, no fingerprints or other identifying marks at the murder scene, and no reliable witnesses.

The only “witness” brought forth was a mentally challenged woman who admitted at a later date (in 1977) that she had been threatened with the custodial loss of her daughter and, with her own death if she didn’t state under oath that she saw Peltier shoot the agents.

The U.S. Prosecuting Attorney admitted, “The government does not know who killed our agents, nor what part Leonard Peltier had in this.”

Other quotes from the case: “We knew the whole world was watching;” (this was shortly following the Wounded Knee uprising); “Somebody had to pay.”

According to everything that could or has been presented, this should remain an open cold-case.

Peltier has served 33 years, has suffered several brutal prison beatings, and is in poor health. So why are Fromme and al Megrahi walking free based upon “good behavior” and “imminent death” (respectively) while this man remains in lock-up?