Letters

The Crumbling Conspiracy Theory: Scott Anderson takes on Peltier's champion

Editor's note: These comments by Scott Anderson come in reply to Peter Matthiessen's "Mean Spirit" (October), a rebuttal of Anderson's "The Martyrdom of Leonard Peltier" (July). Letters on this and other subjects follow.

Peter Matthiessen bitterly complains about the time and energy he has wasted "in cleaning up after another man's ill will." Yet, for all of his indignation, what he's once again managed is a construction of fantasy in which I emerge as a shill ("consciously or not") for the FBI and in which he excoriates me for points I never made. In short, his rebuttal is replete with precisely the same sort of suppositions, manipulations, and omissions that are present in his book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. This is hardly to call Peter Matthiessen a liar, as he says I've done. But one might argue that his passionate advocacy in the Peltier case has caused him to overlook some glaring problems.

Matthiessen wastes no time in misrepresenting my report. He says that my initial impression of Peltier--that he possessed a "vaguely predatory air"--draws the reader "at once toward the supposition of his guilt," a clear indication of my bias. But Matthiessen makes the charge work only by lopping off my very next statement: "The impression doesn't last, however. In person, Peltier is genial, given to easy laughter." In fact, my description is more neutral than even some of those by Peltier's supporters. As Robert Redford, who produced the documentary Incident at Oglala, told People in 1992, his first impression of Peltier was that he "looked like a Hell's Angel.... He had a gangsterish look." Matthiessen next takes offense at my description of the 1972 attempted-murder case brought against Peltier in Milwaukee, pointing out that Peltier was ultimately acquitted of the charge--something I make clear in the article. But as I also make clear, the chief significance of the Milwaukee incident is what it led to: Whether or not Peltier was set up, his decision to jump bail made him a federal fugitive and gave him both a reason to believe that the FBI agents were looking for him when they drove onto Jumping Bull on June 26, 1975, and a motive for firing at those agents. By downplaying the significance of the Milwaukee incident--in a 645-page book, Matthiessen himself devotes five paragraphs to the matter--Peltier's supporters are also downplaying the fact that a motive existed.

Matthiessen similarly misrepresents the significance of the murder of Jeanette Bissonette. Nowhere do I place the murder weapon in the hands of Leonard Peltier; rather I simply state the available facts: that by tracking the purchase of .35 caliber ammunition used in the Bissonette slaying, the FBI was led to the Ted Lame ranch at a time when at least some members of Peltier's group were staying there, that Peltier's group left the ranch shortly after the FBI's visit and resettled on Jumping Bull, and that the gun used to murder Bissonette was also used against the FBI agents during the Jumping Bull shootout. It doesn't take a brilliant mind to see a possible connection between the two events or to imagine a potential second reason for why the FBI agents were met with gunfire when they drove onto Jumping Bull.

Finally, in defending the old shibboleth that the FBI agents came onto Jumping Bull on the flimsy pretext of looking for a young man who stole a pair of cowboy boots, Matthiessen bristles when I claim that this incident was actually far more serious and involved torture. According to both the police reports and court testimony, two young men were beaten to the edge of consciousness with fists and gun stocks and threatened with death while knives and loaded shotguns were held to their heads. One of the two, a 14-year-old boy, was forced to crawl into a bed where his genitals were fondled by an older man. To my way of thinking, this bears a closer resemblance to torture than, as Matthiessen describes it in his book, "a friendly party" that got a little out of hand.

Well, one can kick through such rubble for a long time, something I have very little interest in doing here. I would, however, like to make a few larger points about the Peltier conspiracy-theory pyramid, of which Matthiessen has been the principal architect. The fact is, there are now glaring cracks at every level of that pyramid, and they will not go away by discounting their importance or picking fights with me over minutia.

Matthiessen has always maintained that one of the great secret motivations behind the FBI's alleged persecution of Peltier was AIM's effort to win back uranium-rich land ceded to the Sioux under the broken 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, a campaign that threatened energy development on the Great Plains. Matthiessen is now willing to concede that he may have erred. "In hindsight," he writes, "I would probably agree with lawyer James Leach, whose comments and criticisms I invited and Anderson exploited, that I gave too much emphasis to this factor in the U.S.-Lakota confrontations." But the land-grab thesis is not some adornment to the Peltier conspiracy theory. In fact, it is one of its principal cornerstones. As Matthiessen says on the very first page of the 1991 edition of In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, "The ruthless persecution of Leonard Peltier had less to do with his own actions than with underlying issues of history, racism, and economics, in particular, Indian sovereignty claims and growing opposition to massive energy development on treaty lands and the dwindling reservations." Take away this last premise and you also take away a large part of any motive the FBI might have had for railroading Peltier. Nor was Leach's criticism on this point simply a matter of emphasis, as Matthiessen suggests. "It is just impossible to rationally believe," Leach wrote to Matthiessen in 1982, "that anyone in a position of power in this country could have believed that the 1868 [Fort Laramie] Treaty was any threat to energy development of the Great Plains."

If the land-grab theory is the foundation of the pyramid, the next tier of the conspiracy is the FBI's purported campaign of violence and terror waged against AIM and its supporters. Here Matthiessen engages in a peculiar display of self-congratulation at my contradiction of his accounts of the death of James Brings Yellow and the Trudell homestead fire. "It seems to be an unwitting tribute to the essential strength of In the Spirit of Crazy Horse," Matthiessen writes, "that all Anderson can scrape up as evidence of inadequate documentation are two of the most peripheral events in the whole book." But the author seems to have forgotten that I also take issue with his account of the murder of Anna Mae Aquash and of the FBI's "persecution" of Richard Marshall. If he wants further examples, I would suggest he take a closer look at the "suspicious deaths" of Jacinta Eagle Deer and Bobby Garcia and at the actual circumstances surrounding Angie Long Visitor's absence from the Cedar Rapids trial. The reason I did not cite all the troubling inconsistencies I found in In the Spirit of Crazy Horse is that I was writing a magazine article, not a book.

Finally, we come to the top of the conspiracy pyramid, the FBI's campaign against Leonard Peltier himself. With Matthiessen now conceding that the Mr. X story appears to be a lie, he is forced to fall back on the old standbys of the case--the Myrtle Poor Bear affidavits, the controversial FBI ballistics telex--and takes me to task for neglecting "these very strong exculpatory elements in Peltier's favor." When he attempts to describe these strong exculpatory elements, however, he quickly runs into trouble.

The disputed FBI ballistics telex, he says, "stated that the 'Wichita AR-15' allegedly used by Peltier during the shoot-out could not be linked to the critical .223 casing found near the bodies." In fact, the telex says nothing of the kind, but it is a convenient springboard for Matthiessen to make his most breathtaking assertion: "Apparently Anderson does not know, or does not care, that his 'AR-15 murder weapon' was eliminated as the murder weapon 20 years ago."

As I pointed out in a response to a letter from William Kunstler last month, somehow this sensational bit of news failed to come to the attention of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals--and even to Peltier's lawyers--when the matter was investigated in 1984. "When all is said and done," that appellate court wrote, "a few simple but very important facts remain. The casing [from the trunk of Agent Coler's car] introduced into evidence had in fact been extracted from the Wichita AR-15. This point was not disputed."

What possible motive, one might ask, does Matthiessen have for resurrecting these worn-out and largely discredited "exculpatory elements"? In fact, his motive appears quite obvious. Having conceded that his land-grab premise is flawed and that the much-vaunted Mr. X tale is in tatters, he is left without important suppositions on which the conspiracy theory is based. When these suppositions are replaced by the evidence and verifiable facts of the case, some of which I laid out in my original article, a very different portrait of Leonard Peltier emerges. All of a sudden, his "persecution"--his murder convictions, his rejected appeals--looks less like the handiwork of an international cabal of plotters than a result of the preponderance of evidence against him.

That this inspires Matthiessen to outrage is understandable, but it is not a result of any ill will on my part. Quite simply, Leonard Peltier has never been the man and martyr that Matthiessen and others would have us believe. As a journalist, I feel that any conspiracy theory, and certainly one that is as deeply faulted as the one built up around Peltier, deserves scrutiny--and that much more scrutiny when the specious nature of the theory has finally failed its author as well as its hero.

Book Burning
Keith Schneider's article about Gregg Easterbrook's book A Moment on the Earth ("A Moment on the Goofs," Dispatches, August) asks why the Environmental Defense Fund is spending time correcting the book's errors while the House and Senate are busy rolling back 25 years of environmental protection. "Rome is burning," the headline announces. "So why are greens throwing water at a book?" One look at Washington's current legislative proposals confirms that Rome is indeed burning. But the fire is fueled by precisely the kind of misinformation contained in Easterbrook's book, which is why EDF has issued a 52-page analysis correcting some of his myriad scientific errors that mistakenly understated the significance of basic environmental problems such as ozone depletion, species loss, and global climate change. The impact of dismissing these scientific certainties--and therefore ecological understanding--can be seen in Washington every day.

Fred Krupp
Executive Director
Environmental Defense Fund
New York, New York

Looking for Traces
I read Randy Wayne White's story on the three young men who disappeared off the coast of Florida with great interest and appreciation ("Without a Trace," August). Perhaps I should say our story, because my son, David, and his friends Omar and Kent are the missing subjects. I would like your readers to know that we are still vigorously pursuing the mystery of what happened and that a reward still stands. We welcome any information that might assist our search at Box 334, Mississauga A, Mississauga, Ontario L5A 3A1, Canada.

W. M. Maddot
Mississauga, Ontario

Character Witnesses
Outside shot itself in the foot with Scott Anderson's piece on Leonard Peltier ("The Martyrdom of Leonard Peltier," July). The impetus behind this article seems less that American Indian affairs are "a matter of concern to us at Outside" than it was to publish a sensationalist hatchet job on Peltier, who has already done 19 years in the slammer, and on Peter Matthiessen. Anderson's article casually impugns the integrity of Matthiessen, one of the greatest living writers working in any language, who over the years has lent your magazine priceless dignity by gracing its pages with his words. A number of us subscribe to Outside patiently awaiting the next installment from David Quammen, Tim Cahill, Barry Lopez, and--most of all--the occasional Matthiessen. I'm afraid we may be waiting a long time.

Doug Peacock
Two Ocean, Wyoming

I've known Peter Matthiessen for over 20 years and regard him as an individual of the highest character and integrity. His efforts to obtain justice for Leonard Peltier are based solely on his deep conviction that an injustice has been done; to imply otherwise is itself an injustice to one of the finest men I have ever known.

Victor Emanuel
Austin, Texas

Parkland in Congress
Thanks for recognizing the beauty of Utah's Capitol Reef National Park in "Parkland Incognito" (Destinations, August). It may be of interest to your readers to know of the considerable threat posed to the wildlands surrounding Capitol Reef by the Utah Public Lands Management Act. Introduced by Utah's prodevelopment congressional delegation and on a fast track to passage this year, the bill would designate a grudging 1.8 million acres of wilderness out of the state's 22 million acres of BLM land. Development would be permitted--and encouraged--on the remaining 90 percent of Utah public lands. Outside readers should write to their senators and representatives immediately, asking them to oppose the Utah Public Lands Management Act. There is an alternative Utah wilderness bill, America's Redrock Wilderness Act, which is supported by conservation groups across the country and would protect 5.7 million acres of Utah wilderness, including the areas next to Capitol Reef National Park.

Erica Soon Olsen
San Francisco, California