The Death of Anna Mae Aquash

[Jan Klimkowski]

Here is Ward Churchill's 1984 Covert Action article on the spooky world of General Robert K Brown:

[editor's note: The following article was published in CovertAction in 1984, and is Ward Churchill's "exposé" of Soldier of Fortune magazine and its publisher.]



Soldier of Fortune’s Robert K. Brown

By Ward Churchill

There is a law in the United States (Title 18 U.S.C. Sec. 959) popularly known as “The Neutrality Act.” It reads in part: “Whoever, within the United States… retains another …to go beyond the jurisdiction of the United States to be enlisted in the service of any foreign prince, state, colony, district or people as a soldier or a marine…shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than 3 years of both.”

Robert K. Brown, editor and publisher of a publication entitled Soldier of Fortune: The Journal of Professional Adventurers, based Boulder, Colorado, says he is not in violation of this law, nor of others such as 22 U.S.C. Sec. 611, et seq., “The Foreign Agents Registration Act.” It holds that individuals within the United States who directly represent the interests of other governments must clearly and officially acknowledge the fact through a formalized public recording process.

In combination, the body of legislation represented by the two acts was designed to preclude private actions-aw well as the advocacy and organization of such actions - by individuals or organizations in the United States which would tend to undermine or supplant formal foreign policy mechanisms such as the State Department and Congress. In practical effect, one of the things the legislation is intended to prevent is what is commonly referred to as “mercenarism” by U.S. nationals and others falling under U.S. jurisdiction.

Yet, since 1975, Brown has been running classified advertisements in his magazine such as the following:

EX ARMY VET, Viet 65-66, 2/7 Cav., 37 years old, seeks job as merc or security. Combat experience. Good physical condition. Will travel worldwide. You pay expenses.

He has also run full-page display ads (outside rear-cover, prime placement) featuring color reproductions of official Rhodesian National Army recruitment posters on a gratis basis and interviews with individuals like Major Nick Lamprecht, former Rhodesian National Army recruitment Officer. Earlier, he financed the start-up of his magazine through the selling of “overseas employment opportunity packets”- consisting of enlistment materials for the armies of Rhodesia and Oman - through classified ads run in periodicals such as Shotgun News.

Despite the apparent conflict with official U.S. policy inherent in such activities-the United States was supposedly engaged in a formal sanctioning of Rhodesia at the very time Brown was most busily promoting military service there-he has suffered no adverse consequences as a result of his conduct. In part, this may be due to a wide-spread public impression that the man is more buffoon than menace.

Bob Brown in Person

Leaning back in a desk chair beneath a poster captioned “Kill ‘em all: Let God sort ‘em out,” and wearing a tee-shirt stenciled with a death’s head and the legend “Kill a Commie for Mommie, “ an obviously aging Bob Brown struggles valiantly to hide the facts. Spitting out a cud of Skoal, He arranged his sagging features into a best-effort imitation of Clint Eastwood’s celluloid scowl, forces a near-glint into the fading blue eyes peering owlishly from behind coke-bottle lenses and “explains” the situation.

“I do not recruit. I market information. If somebody goes there because they get an information packet...” Allowing the thought to dangle, Brown breaks into a self-congratulatory smile and continues, “…some State Department official stated something to the effect that Mr. Brown was staying within the bounds of the law, but not the spirit of it. Well, that’s tough shit. I didn’t do anything illegal.”

The aura of Soldier of Fortune’s proprietor is, on its face, so absurd as to virtually command dismissal by the serious-minded. The notion of a middle-aged man with a congenital back defect and a hearing impairment scurrying about the streets of Boulder - the veritable buckle of the granola belt - wearing the latest in camouflage fatigues (to blend in with all the brick and tinsel?) and military berets is immediately laughable. Similarly, his propensity to posture at every given opportunity, sporting esoteric looking armaments, has tended to be treated as little more than a sick joke – especially when the weapons have been manufactured by Replica Arms, as has turned out from time to time.

The magazine itself bears the indelible stamp of its owner’s eccentricity. Long on blood-and-guts color photography and short on the real meat-and-potatoes information which would allow anyone to stay alive in irregular combat situation, Solider of Fortune might rightly be viewed as the stuff of armchair rather than active warriors. As one highly decorated veteran of Korea and Vietnam recently put it, “ I don’t read the thing. Who needs a picture of a half-naked woman wearing tiger fatigues to sell an obsolete machine-gun?”

But there is another aspect to Brown and his enterprise which tends to be overlooked when he is dismissed as an objectionable, though thoroughly frivolous, phenomenon. For starters, two of Solider of Fortune’s staff editors have been killed while performing what can only be regarded as outright mercenary activities in the field. George W. Bacon III, the magazine’s underwater combat editor, died in a 1976 ambush, an unabashed combatant fighting for Holden Roberto’s CIA sponsored FNLA in Angola. Michael Echanis, martial arts director, was killed in a bomb blast aboard an aircraft in Nicaragua while serving as military advisor to Anastasio Somoza – and as tactical commander of the dictator’s infamous National Guard in late 1978.

Shortly after Bacon was killed, and while the State Department was still denying that U.S. citizens were serving as mercenaries in that country, another American was captured by the winning MPLA forces. Daniel Gearhart was tried by the new Angolan government under Organization of African Unity anti-mercenary covenants, convicted, and executed. He had secured his employment through an ad placed in Soldier of Fortune during the summer of 1975.

The Sandinista bomb which claimed Echanis also killed his assistant, a U.S. national named Charles Sanders, and a Vietnamese on U.S green card alien status, euphemistically known as “Nguyen Van Nguyen” (approximately the equivalent of “Smith, John Smith”). Nicknamed “Bobby,” he had long worked for the CIA and Special Forces, and had accompanied Echanis and Sanders to Nicaragua to work with the other person killed by the blast, National Guard commander Brigadier General Jose Ivan Allegrett Perez.

Around Solider of Fortune they showed copies of a cable from Secretary of State Cyrus Vance to Echanis asking that he be careful to spare noncombatants in the course of performing his duties. Echanis’s reply, if any, is unknown.

Investigations Thwarted

This combination of circumstance was enough to lead Colorado Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder and others to call for an investigation into the activities of Brown and those associated with his publications, all subsidiaries of another Brown-headed company, Omega Group, Ltd. It is apparently named after the anti-Castro Cuban terrorists’ group, Omega Seven, which shared responsibility for the assassination of Allende-era Chilean diplomat, Orland Letelier, and his colleague Ronnie Moffitt, in Washington, D.C.

Brown and Omega Group, including Robert Himber, onetime Army Intelligence operative attached to the CIA’s Phoenix assassination program in Vietnam, ran feature articles on the deaths of Bacon and Echanis in the magazine.

Schroeder’s investigation’s demands, made in 1976 and again in 1979, have met with a rather curious response from the U.S. Department of Justice. In effect, Justice informed Schroeder that Brown and his cohorts had indeed been placed under investigation, and that the investigation would continue until the activities being investigated stopped. Details of any ongoing criminal investigation could not, of course, be divulged. Hence, the net result of Schroeder’s attempts to bring the doings of the Omega Group into the light of day has been to clamp the mantle of official secrecy tightly about the individuals and organizations involved. This situation has prevailed consistently under both the Carter and the Reagan administrations, despite the supposed ideological “changing of the guard” that the switch in executives entailed.

It goes without saying that such a leak-free, Catch-22 environment at this level of government is not typical. Such a rigid application of the supposed safeguards of citizens’ rights to privacy has historically been reserved only for domestic covert intelligence operations and operatives (e.g. the FBI’s COINTELPRO and its successor, COMTEL) and the more internationally oriented clandestine activities of Military Intelligence, the National Security Agency, the CIA, and so forth.

Links to the CIA

Brown is particularly touchy on this subject, branding it “pure bullshit” and often terminating conversations when questions drift toward possible associations between his organization and the CIA.

When Brown is denying a CIA connection, it helps that he numbers among his longtime personal friends such prominent “liberals” as Paul Danish, a member of the Boulder City Council and former advisor to top administrators at the University of Colorado. Danish was an early (but unlisted) member of the Soldier of Fortune editorial board.

A long-time Boulder anti-mercenary activist says, “There is more than one level to what is going on at Solider of Fortune. These guys go out of their way to come across as clowns to people who might otherwise tend to oppose them. It’s a tactic designed to defuse the potential of effective criticism.

“Meanwhile, there’s a very effective gray propaganda operation being conducted right under our very noses. A whole range of the American public is now being conditioned to accept the notion that mercenaries and small, contained, privately fought ‘brushfire wars’ are not only okay, but somehow glamorous. Solider of Fortune did that. It’s not that they’re managing to get large numbers of people to run off and be mercenaries – although they are attracting some, and that factor shouldn’t be underestimated – but they are managing to convince an ever increasing number of people that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong when others do.

“In the post-Vietnam era, when the commitment of any sort of official U.S. advisory, never mind combat presence is apt to draw so much domestic heat – as it is in El Salvador – that’s it’s simply not viable, having a small but effective ‘private’ army of mercenaries who are accepted by the public is a very important paramilitary counter for any administration to possess.

“Of course, it’s all highly illegal under U.S. law, but what else is new? When you get to the level of the reality of foreign policy things cannot really be considered in terms of their legality, but rather in terms of their packaging (as with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of the Grenada invasion) or their deniability (as with the Cambodia/Laos bombing or current operations in Honduras).

“The mercenary activities revolving around Solider of Fortune and the Omega Group are being handled both ways, packaged and hidden. It’s a very sophisticated operation in its way, and you just don’t get this sort of finesse from a bunch of apparent rum-dums in the private sector. The whole thing smacks of a CIA operation, although admittedly a very weird one.”

To be sure, both the intelligence community and Brown vehemently deny that any linkage between them exists, or has existed in the past. The record, however, shows something rather different. For example, a 1962 letter written by Brown and recently obtained from the archives of an archconservative California-based institution reveals that he spent the period from 1954 to 1957 as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army’s highly selective and very secretive Counterintelligence Corps. Not to be confused with the larger and more diversified Military Intelligence units, Counterintelligence has always had extremely close linkages (indeed, major overlaps) with the CIA.

Much of Brown’s life was spent drifting from job to job – Brink’s truck guard, timber cutter, and ranch hand – mostly in and around Boulder. He has boasted of setting up connections in the international arms traffic, and occasionally he dabbles in South African diamonds and precious metals.

After this first stint in the Army, Brown undertook a master’s degree program in political science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His studies led him – naturally, if you accept his version of events – to a deep and abiding sympathy for the cause of Fidel Castro’s July 26 Movement. In any event, he trekked to Cuba to do research on a thesis which eventually was c9ompleted under the title “Communist Penetration and Takeover of the Cuban Labor Movement,” attempting to hook up with the guerrilla commanders Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos in the Sierra Maestra once there.

Evidently, the guerrilla leadership held certain doubts as to the student’s bona fides, avoiding infiltration by denying him access to their ranks. (A number of U.S. journalists were allowed into the mountains at the same time Brown was being shut out.) Their precautions turned out to be rather well founded, as Brown surfaced again shortly after the revolution, engaged in training Batistaite groups in the Florida Everglades to conduct raids against their former homeland.

Although he did not participate in any of the exile actions against Cuba underwritten by the CIA during the early 1960s – he always managed to be sick or otherwise disposed when the missions departed – he was already engaged in investigating possibilities for the application of other sorts of covert U.S. force to sensitive areas of the world, both at home and abroad.

Brown’s 1962 letter was written to Marvin Leibman, then head of the New York based “American Committee for Aid to Katanga Freedom Fighters,” a CIA front group engaged in drumming up sympathy and organizing material support for the so-called “5 Commando” of Eropean mercenaries active during the Congo Civil War. In credentialing himself to Leibman, Brown revealed that he had been a domestic undercover operative, infiltrating “Fair Play for Cuba” committees for the notorious Chicago Police Subversive Squad. He then inquired as to whether Leibman had information concerning how American nationals might circumvent the provisions of the Neutrality Act in order to become mercenary combatants in places like the Congo.

Brown re-entered the Army during the second half of the 1960s as a Special Forces captain. Posted to the Pleiku region of Vietnam’s Central Highlands, he headed a detachment supporting a Special Forces CIA joint venture code-named “Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, Studies and Observations Group.” Actually, MACVSOG – or “the sog,” as it was called – stood for “Special Operations Group.” The unit was responsible for direct intelligence gathering, and ran highly secret missions into Cambodia, Laos, North Vietnam, and – some say – southern China, during the Vietnam War.

Brown’s detachment was also involved in NLF/NVA political cadre identification for liquidation by the assassins of the CIA’s “ Operation Phoenix.” The captain himself, of course, was responsible for liaison with CIA personnel, given his unit’s operational capacity.

Brown’s Publications

In the early 1970s, having mustered out of the Army for the second time – he was “retired” due to physical infirmities including scoliosis (a congenital spinal disease) and deafness in one ear for which he claims to have been awarded the Purple Heart – Brown set out to establish his mercenary clearing house operation and accompanying trade journal. One of the steps he took along the way was to resume a career as publisher he had undertaken in partnership with a Coloradan named Peder Lund before his last military enlistment.

Together, Brown and Lund had founded a company called “Panther Press.” The purpose of this venture was to reprint army weapons and field manuals (obtainable free of charge from appropriate government agencies at the time) for sale to the public. Involvement in Panther Press resulted in one of the few times Bob Brown was brought to court by the government, but not for the act of “borrowing” government publication in this fashion. Rather, the government was concerned that – because of its name – the enterprise was an undertaking of the Black Panther Party. Once it was firmly established that the press was a rightwing rather than leftwing activity, the case was quietly dismissed.

In any event, according to various versions of events he has told, either publicly or privately, Brown then proceeded to sell his share of Panther Press (renamed Paladin Press); market his Oman/Rhodesia “employment packets,” and/or obtain a loan from his mother in order to actualize Solider of Fortune. By his account, Brown founded the credibility of his new endeavor upon the active involvement of a number of former “super soldiers.” Again, the facts belied his claim.

For example, editor George Bacon, before his death consistently portrayed as a former Green Beret, turned out actually to have been a member of the CIA field station is Laos and winner of the country’s highest clandestine decoration, the Intelligence Star.

Similarly, Mike Echanis was never a member of Special Forces, albeit as a civilian be provided martial arts instruction to elite units such as the Ranger Groups, SEAL Teams and Green Berets. Rather, during his period as an editor of the magazine, he was a CIA contract employee. According to the CBS television program 60 Minutes and other sources, he was involved in Edwin Wilson’s ill-fated CIA mission in Libya before going to Nicaragua.

David Bufkin, a self-proclaimed mercenary recruiter who, although no an official member of the Solider of Fortune/Omega Group circle, is a close friend of Brown, and who “handled” the Americans killed Angola, claims to have been a CIA employee for long time now.

Another, more circumstantial link between brown and the most secretive elements of U.S. officialdom has been his treatment by the Army since he went on reserve status. It is axiomatic that a criminal investigation, or an investigation centering upon tangible conflict with U.S. foreign policy, spells the effective end of an Army officer’s career. The case of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur is perhaps the most famous of this principle in practice.

Yet Brown, who left the Army a mere captain, has been promoted not once, but twice – first to major, then to lieutenant colonel – since coming under investigation for violation of the Neutrality Act. Further, rather than being shunned by the military establishment, as have officers such Lt. Colonel Anthony Herbert (whose “crime” was blowing the whistle on atrocities committed by the military in Vietnam), Brown has been selected repeatedly to receive the honor of addressing the Army’s prestigious War College. His subject has been mercenaries and their implication for U.S. irregular warfare doctrine.

Expanded Activities

Since the rebuff of Schroeder’s inquiries by the Justice Department effectively proved that domestic criticism can be contained, and that the potential for prosecution under U.S. statues (a la Edwin Wilson) can be forestalled, Brown and Omega Group have become increasingly brazen. For instance, the magazine has featured an article by former managing editor Bob Poos recounting how a team of Solider of Fortune “journalists” ran a full combat patrol – “to kill a last few terrs” – in Zimbabwe the very night before the election marking transition from white minority to black majority rule in that country.

There have also been a spate of “I was there” stories by U.S. nationals who served in the Rhodesian National Army, despite ongoing and “official” State Department denials that evidence has been obtained that American citizens were involved in the fighting in Zimbabwe. Several of these individuals – Major Mike Williams and Captain John Early, among others – have now been added to the Soldier of Fortune roster.

In 1980, the magazine began to sponsor a series of annual conventions, bringing together the faithful a thousand at a time. Staged in Columbia, Missouri, the first convention presented a “Bull Simons Freedom Award” to Vang Pao, former head of the CIA’s clandestine Hmong guerrilla army in Laos during the late 1960s. The late Arthur D. “Bull” Simons headed the first CIA-sponsored Special Forces mission into that country, later worked as a SOG commander and led the unsuccessful Special Forces raid on North Vietnam’s Son Tay POW camp in 1970. (Promoting the quest for the return of mythical “live POWs” by the Vietnamese is another activity Soldier of Fortune excels at.)

Says Illinois left activist, Bob Sipe, who attended the first conference, “It was what I always thought sitting in on an SS reunion would be like, except the people were younger at this one. It was amazing. Some of these guys were even wearing the totenkopf (SS death’s head insignia) on their berets.”

Another indication of the magazine’s new freedom of action has been a virtual rash of Soldier of Fortune clones across the face of American periodical literature. Omega Group has launched a new glossy monthly entitled Survive. And then there is Gung Ho!, edited and published (and, reputedly, almost entirely written) by former Soldier of Fortune editor Jim Shultz. Other recently added magazine titles in this genre include New Breed, Eagle, Combat Illustrated, Special Weapons and Tactics and Combat Ready.

Omega Group retains an active interest and presence in southern Africa. For example, editor Jim Graves was in contact with the two American participants - Charles William Dukes (formerly of the Rhodesian National Army’s elite Special Air Service) and Barry Francis Briggon (formerly of the Rhodesian Light Infantry) – in the abortive 1981 attempt by a mercenary force to stage a coup in the Seychelles Islands. (See CAIB Number 16.) The strike force, led by Colonel Mike Hoare (commander of 5 Commando in the Congo twenty years earlier), was launched from South Africa, where Graves just happened to be visiting at the time. He later acknowledged that he had been aware of the planned coup attempt a month before it materialized.

Central America and Grenada

The organization has also demonstrated a lively interest and involvement in Afghanistan, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, but it’s real nuts-and-bolts focus has clearly shifted to Central America over the past two years. In 1983 for example. Omega Group sent a team to El Salvador on two separate occasions. Ostensibly led by Brown, the composition of the group was as follows:

· Colonel Alexander McGoll: former SOG member and CIA liaison officer.

· Captain John Early: former Special Forces A Team commander and self-described mercenary in Rhodesia and Eritrea.

· Ben Jones: former mercenary in the Rhodesian African Rifles.

· Captain Cliff Albright: former Republic Airlines DC-9 pilot and also a former DC-3 and C-47 pilot of for the CIA’s Air America Company, according to Soldier of Fortune’s Jim Graves. Albright was also part of the Civilian Military Assistance mission to Hondruas when two of its members were killed in Nicaragua on September 1 (see below).

· John Donovan: former SOG member, SWAT Team trainer (by contract) and owner of Donovan’s Demolitions, a company in southern Illinois specializing in blowing buildings and clearing logjams.

· “John Doe”: believed to be John Crawford of Nederland, Colorado. If true, he is another former mercenary in Rhodesia and claims to have been one in the old Transjordanian Camel Corps.

· Peter G. Kokalis: former member of U.S. Army Intelligence, now believed to be employed by the CIA.

· Ralph G. Edens: an old friend of Brown’s from the Everglades days; Eden’s main claim to fame seems to lie in having not been prosecuted for having undertaken a private bombing raid in Haiti, using a Constellation passenger aircraft and homemade napalm in 55 gallon drums, in 1964. A number of Port au Prince’s slum dwellers were burned to death in Eden’s “boyish” escapade.

· John Padgett: former SOG medic.

· Philip Gonzalez: former Special Forces medic.

· Thomas D. Reisinger: no real background, reputed to be Brown’s CIA control officer.

The purpose of the visits was to assess the potential for an American “private sector” deployment of troops in El Salvador, and to provide training for the rabble of that country’s exceptionally brutal Atlacatl Regiment. Instruction included the tactics of ambush and patrol, proper utilization of the U.S. light weapons issued to Salvadoran troops as standard gear, and principles of airmobile operations.

Considering these pilot efforts a success, Brown has now publicly offered to replace the hotly contested advisory presence of U.S. Army personnel in El Salvador with professional cadres of his own choosing. Salvadoran fascist leader Roberto d’ Aubuisson has accepted the offer in an equally public fashion. Both parties agree that the financial underwriting of such a venture presents no particular problems. Money will be put up, no doubt, by the Salvadoran right, and also in all probability by the same sorts of U.S. rightwing financiers exposed by Ken Lawrence in his 1981 articles, “Behind the Klan’s Karibbean Koup Attempt.” (See CAIB Numbers 13 and 16.) However, the overall scope of the envisioned intervention clearly implies support on a grand scale, the sort historically provided by the CIA.

There is another bit of evidence of the extraordinary coziness which exists between Omega Group and the U.S. intelligence community. It is well known that the American press was barred – ostensibly for its own safety – from the October 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada until the fifth day of military operation on the island.

By then, most resistance had been crushed by Rangers and Marines, the nature of combat unobserved by independent journalists. Perhaps of more importance, the key members of Grenada’s government had been arrested, whisked away to an interview-free environment of close confinement, when they were not being paraded, blindfolded and in shackles, through the streets of their capital city. Similarly, intelligence units had gained ample time in which to conduct a thorough survey of the situation, declaring certain buildings and their contents – for reasons of “sensitivity” and “security” – off limits to all but certified “spooks.”

While constitutional controversy understandably swirls around this latest abridgement of the First Amendment by the executive branch of government, Soldier of Fortune editor Jim Graves announced that his publication was the sole exception to the press ban. In a rather drunken but very well witnessed exchange in a Boulder, Colorado, restaurant/bar (“The Hungry Farmer”) Graves shot from the lip, contending his magazine’s “people” were allowed in on the first day, “with the assault troops.”

This, of course, could be chalked up merely to sodden stupidity (we all tend to exaggerate from time to time) were it not for the fact that Graves also mentioned that this head start had allowed Soldier of Fortune to stake out and examine the New jewel Movement’s Central Committee Headquarters.

This, he said, had resulted in the magazine obtaining governmental and party documents marked “secret,” not available to the rest of the press.

Certain of the documents have now been published, authenticating at least a portion of Grave’s inebriated contentions.” Further, it turns out the U.S. intelligence had the military bar not only the press, but also a Congressional Investigating Committee, from the very same New Jewel Movement headquarters facility to which Soldier of Fortune was obviously allowed access. Congressman Ron Dellums (D-Cal.), a member of the committee, was reportedly “stunned” by the implications of the situation. For its part, Soldier of Fortune has stated that its cache of documents show that Dellums and several members of Congress are essentially in league with “the communists” (Joe McCarthy’s ears must certainly have perked up on that note), although the magazine has yet to print anything illustrating its claims.

Finally, there is the connection of Soldier of Fortune to “Civilian Military Assistance,” two mercenaries from which recently died in Nicaragua. (See sidebar.)

Conclusion

All in all, given the whole context of circumstances surrounding them, it seems evident that the supposedly “private sector” activities of Robert K. Brown and Omega Group are something else altogether. To the contrary, it is a near certainty that the whole operation is an integral, if little considered, aspect of the covert means through which the United States government and its transnational corporate allies plan to continue to assert their hegemony over much of the globe.

Treating Bob Brown as merely a pathetically aging adolescent who never quite outgrew is flirtation with toy soldiers is, in the end, not quite fair. He is that, to be sure, but he is not all posture and pretension. At the very least, he has fashioned a lucrative career out of sending other people off to kill. And to die. The fundamental reality of Omega Group is perhaps best summed up by a poster hanging on the wall of Boulder’s Soldier of Fortune office complex: featuring a picture of vulture awaiting its chance to descend upon its prey, the poster reads, “Killing is our business, and business is good.”

There is nothing abstract in that honest statement. And the number of corpses strewn like litter across the landscapes of Asia, Africa, and Latin America can attest to the accuracy of its meaning.

http://www.pirateballerina.com/files/sol...ortune.htm

[Keith Millea]

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/history/mncu...lmeans.htm
Russell Means

I am not a leader. I am an Oglala Lakota patriot.
That is all I want and all I need to be.
And I am very comfortable with who I am.

-Russell Means, "For America to Live, Europe Must Die"
Russell Means is a prominent and controversial Indian Rights Activist. He was born on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1939 to an Oglala father and a Yankton mother. In 1942 the Means family moved to California to find work. Means grew up and attended school there, where he was often faced with racism. As he grew older he learned to use intimidation to escape bullying and began to drink heavily and use and sell drugs. After dropping out of high school for a while and being suspended many times, he graduated in 1958 and moved to Los Angeles where he worked various odd jobs.
Means got involved with activism when his father invited him to join the first American Indian occupation of the abandoned federal prison on Alcatraz Island. According to a stipulation in the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, Indians have the right to reclaim abandoned federal land. The activists sought to claim Alcatraz as an oasis for Indians of every nation. Though the occupation was unsuccessful, it stirred up a new feeling of Indian pride in Means and other activists.
After Means relocated to Cleveland, Ohio he established the American Indian Center, a nonprofit organization that created community-building and cultural programs for American Indians who had relocated to the Cleveland area. Programs included a legal aid service, scholarship program, tutoring, job training, and an alternative schools for kindergarteners. Means also created a reverse relocation program to help people move back to the reservation, which he considered his most successful program.
Over the next few years Means became familiar with the American Indian Movement (AIM), an organization founded in the late 1960s to protect Indians from police harassment. He eventually established a chapter in Cleveland called CLAIM. He rose quickly as a leader because of his outspoken nature and his ability to speak in a straightforward, yet eloquent, manner. Means engaged in many protests with AIM including the occupation of the Black Hills in 1970 and 1971 to protest the seizure of sacred land.
Activism on the Reservation

In 1972 Raymond Yellowtail, a Lakota man from Pine Ridge, was murdered in a small town outside of the reservation. His white killers were convicted of manslaughter, but got off on bail. Pine Ridge residents were enraged at the incident, which wasn’t the first of its kind. Yellowtail’s parents called on AIM, who demonstrated so fervently that the incident made national coverage. Officials finally responded to the complaints and agreed to review the case.
This victory in Gordon, NE put Means and AIM on the map, but the issue was far from resolved. Means convened a “Red Ribbon Grand Jury” on Pine Ridge to allow reservation Indians to vent their frustration about life on the res. They took their complaints to the road with the Trail of Broken Treaties, a caravan of Indians from across the United States that arrived at Washington, D.C. on November 1, days before the presidential election. The protesters occupied the BIA, reclaiming it as the Native American Embassy, and compiled a list of 20 demands to the U.S. government. After seven days of occupation and discussion between AIM leaders and the Nixon administration, Nixon agreed to respond to the 20 points and the protesters left the BIA building, albeit with records that they vowed to make copies of before returning.
Back at Pine Ridge, Dick Wilson, the tribal chairman, banned all AIM activity. In 1974 BIA police arrested Means while he was giving a speech and removed him to Rosebud reservation. Means challenged Wilson for the chairmanship in the 1974 election, but lost. Meanwhile, conditions were deteriorating on the reservation as residents sank deeper into poverty. Tribal members tried to impeach Wilson four times, but the tribal council refused to complete the process.
The Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization, AIM, and tribal elders were fed up with matters and decided to seize the hamlet of Wounded Knee to draw attention to their plight and force federal officials to reply to their demands. On February 27, 1972 they began the occupation that lasted for 71 days. Though the occupation of Wounded Knee attracted a lot of media coverage and increased awareness of Indian issues among the general public, the government refused to consider the activist's demands. Finally, they struck a deal: If some of the activists, including Means and Leonard Crow Dog, allowed themselves to be arrested the federal government would fly them to Washington for negotiations. Unfortunately, negotiations quickly broke down because both sides refused to budge. Barred from returning to Wounded Knee, Means went on a speaking tour around the United States to garner support for the activists. Still, the occupation ended with no demands met.
Post-Wounded Knee

AIM members faced numerous charges, many of them frivolous, that kept them fighting legal battles and drained their financial resources. Means eventually served a prison term. AIM soon disintegrated due to these difficulties and disagreements among the leadership. Means had resigned several times over the years because of differences with other AIM members.
Despite the end of AIM, Means continues to be an activist through the present day. In 1978 he organized a demonstration in Washington known as The Longest Walk to protest pending legislation that would weaken treaty rights. The bills did not pass. He traveled to Nicaragua and Colombia in the 1980s as part of his work with the International Indian Treaty Council. In December, 2007 he led a group of Lakota activists to Washington DC to withdraw from all treaties with the United States and establish the Republic of the Lakotah as an independent country. Lakota people have a variety of reactions to Means' Lakota Freedom Movement, from gratitude to mistrust. So far it has not had an impact on life on the reservations. However, the Republic is in the process of developing a cultural immersion school on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Means has also become active in Hollywood. He played lead roles in "The Last of the Mohicans" and "Natural Born Killers" and as the voice of Pocahontas' father in the Disney film. He has written protest music, created websites, and founded various initiatives for economic development and cultural education on reservations.
Russell Means remains a controversial figure among the Lakota. Some have criticized his militant methods and radical tactics. He proudly states that his mission through all of these efforts has been eliminating racism against Native people.

[Keith Millea]

http://www.aimovement.org/moipr/onrussellmeans.html


AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT GRAND GOVERNING COUNCIL
PRESS CONTACT: MINISTRY FOR INFORMATION
P.O. Box 13521
Minneapolis MN 55414
612/ 721-3914 . fax 612/ 721-7826
Email: aimggc@worldnet.att.net
Web Address: www.aimovement.org

PRESS STATEMENT
February 20, 1999
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TO ALL NEWS ORGANIZATIONS WORLDWIDE

On Sunday February 7, 1999 the Minneapolis Tribune and other news organizations nationwide carried a story filed by the Association Press Boston, MA Bureau entitled "Case Tests Legitimacy of Indian Courts"

In this article the Associated Press, again, erroneously identifies Russell Means as a "Long time leader of the Minneapolis-based American Indian Movement." This is not the first time that this has happened (see attachments, AP story filed on January 8, 1988 by their Fresno, California Bureau, and response from the American Indian Movement's Ministry for Information). This former personality who was previously associated with AIM resigned from the American Indian Movement at least six (6) times, the latest on January 8, 1988.
The American Indian Movement's Grand Governing Council repudiates Russell Mean's challenge to the jurisdiction and authority of the Dine (Navaho) Nation's Criminal Courts. His recent reckless mis-representation of the American Indian Movement's well established position supporting the sovereign authority and powers of Indian nation's governments plays into the hands of all the anti-Indian forces that want to erode the sovereignty of Indian nations.

In 1972 during the historic "Trail of Broken Treaties Campaign" (see AIM Archives in AIM's official website at aimovement.org) to Washington DC, the Denver Chapter of the American Indian Movement under the leadership of Alice Black Horse, Hunkpapa Dakota; Rod Skenandore, Blackfeet/Oneida; and Vernon Bellecourt, Ojibwe/Anishinabe, designed a bumper sticker entitled, "AIM for Sovereignty." This was long before any of our Indian or non-Indian writers, educators, academics, intellectuals, or tribal leaders understood the concept of sovereignty as it relates to the powers and authority of tribal governments and true self-determination.

Sovereignty, of course, has become the basis of all forms of development, be it the strengthening of Indian governments, court systems, law enforcement, educational institutions, and, yes, casinos and bingo halls which brought about an infusion of much needed capital and all forms of economic development. Today many of our tribal leaders and Russell Means have either forgotten or never understood this reality. They think that everything fell from the sky like mana. Perhaps one day someone, somewhere will say Megwitch (thank you) to the many sacrifices of the American Indian Movement.

The American Indian Movement has always supported all sovereign Indian nation's absolute authority and jurisdiction over all Indians and non-Indians alike who violate the laws of any sovereign native nation, be it the Dine (Navaho) Nation, or the Oglala Lakota Nation of which Russells Means is a member.

What is especially egregious, and outrageous about Russell Mean's violations of the laws of the Dine Nation is that he is charged with assault and battery against his father-in-law, Mr. Leon Grant who is a revered elder of both the Omaha and Dine Nation and is 80 years of age and has an artificial arm. We, of the American Indian Movement Grand Governing Council are no longer surprised by Russell's clownish antics. He continues to deceitfully mis-represent the American Indian Movement in order to deceive those peoples and organizations worldwide, who due to their goodwill, and support of the Indian cause may have already, or will contribute to his appeal through his personal web page where he solicits money for the Russell Means Philanthropy and AIM Club Membership in name of the American Indian Movement, and an "Immersion Indian School" that never existed, nor does it exist at this time.
Additionally, this is the same Russell Means who as Director of the Cleveland American Indian Movement filed a legitimate nine (9) million dollar lawsuit naming as defendant, Richard Jacobs, and the Cleveland Baseball Franchise due to their chief wahoo logo that promotes racism against Indian people.

Upon his first resignation from the Cleveland American Indian Movement, he directed his predecessor, Jerome Weitzel, a caucasion American, a wannabee now known as Jerome War Cloud whom on April 19, 1983 settled the suit out of court for $35,000, or 35,000 pieces of silver. When asked where the money went, Jerome Weitzel was very evasive as to where his $15,000 went, but divulged that Russell Means also received $15,000 which Russell now says went to a survival school which neither he, nor we, can substantiate. If it were not for the fact that this settlement agreement is so ridiculous that it would not be upheld in any court, it would undermine the work of the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media, and all others working on this issue.

From Attachment 1

Bellecourt also critized Means' 1995 autobiography, "Where White Mean Fear to Tread," in regard to its history of AIM. "Not one of the people in the movement was asked by Means' co-author, Marvin J. Wolf to confirm Means' version of events," Bellecourt said.
"It's a very reckless book. It puts out a lot of inaccuracies and petty attacks on people that are seen as very divisive." Bellecourt also sought to distance AIM from what he described as Means' recent forays into conservative politics. In the 1980's means traveled to Nicaragua to help rebel bands of Miskito Indians who were allied with the anti-revolutionary Contras. Means was being manipulated by reactionary elements under the guise of patriotism," Bellecourt said. He believes Means has allied himself with reactionary elements who seek to discredit AIM, a campaign which goes back, in one form or other, to the Nixon administration.
"We don't take any joy in seeing this happen to a man who at one time was very active in the movement, but obviously whose vision has taken him on another direction," Bellecourt said. "We have to disassociate ourselves from this kind of behavior...A lot of people feel, at this point, that Russell Means really needs some help." (See Council on Security and Intelligencepage).
AIM Grand Governing Council

From Attachment II

In 1985, he again resigned from Yellow Thunder Camp in the Black Hills stating, quote, "I'm tired babysitting Yellow Thunder Camp," and that he was going to go on to other interests. Those interests was to align himself with Ward Churchill, Glen Morris, and Brooklyn Rivera of the CIA-sponsored Miskito Indian faction of the contras, as well, Elliot Abrams, and the Reagan Administration's war against the Nicaraguan people of which the Miskito Indian people, and all Nicaraguans are the principal victims. During this time he went on a nationwide speaking tour sponsored by the Unification Church of the Reverend SunYung Moon, speaking to right wing audiences. The same groups who are totally opposed to Indian treaty, political, jurisdiction, water, natural resources, and territorial rights.

[Keith Millea]

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/10/ve...ht-to.html
Saturday, October 13, 2007

Vernon Bellecourt takes flight to the Spirit World



Vernon Bellecourt (WaBun-Inini) Anishinabe/Ojibwe Nation 1931 - 2007


From: Chris Spotted Eagle
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 18:51:34 -0400

Vernon Bellecourt (WaBun-Inini) passed over into the spirit world earlier today, October 13, 2007. Minneapolis, Minnesota surrounded by his friends and family.

Vernon was a principal spokesman for the American Indian Movement and a leader in actions ranging from the 1972 occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington to the 1992 Redskin Superbowl demonstrations. He Co-founded and was the first Executive Director of the Denver AIM Chapter. His involvement at Wounded Knee in 1973 led to a Federal indictment. He was a special representative of the International Indian Treaty Council and helped organize the first Treaty Conference in 1974. He was jailed for throwing his blood on the Guatemalan Embassy to protest the killing of 100,000 Indians. He was elected to a 4-year term in his White Earth tribal government and developed a model program for the spiritual education of Indian prisoners. Vernon was President of the National Coalition on Racism in Sports & Media and recipient of the City of Phoenix, Martin Luther King Human Rights Award 1993

Last journey was to Venezuela in north and south solidarity


Vernon Bellecourt, in poor health and in a wheelchair, joined an American Indian delegation to Venezuela in August, 2007, to unite Indigenous from the North and South in solidarity:
http://censored-news.blogspot.com/2007/09/american-indians-in-venezuela-build_26.html


Bellecourt fell ill after last great journey: Trip to Venezuela
http://www.startribune.com/466/story/1483509.html/

[Keith Millea]

Here is a very interesting short documentary 6:46 run time about the Anna Mae Aquash murder.Worth a look....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc2pz1C5b...re=related

[Keith Millea]

Here is the first half of an interview with Antoinette Nora Claypoole.She is the author of the first book to be published about Anna Mae Aquash,"Who Would Unbraid Her Hair".I found it interesting that Antoinette was first turned on to American Indian Culture through Al Smith.I was involved in the local Indian community here through my ex wife who is Native American.Al Smith and his family were part of this local Native circle.

PS:I hit the maximize tab to get the full screen view.

http://www.heyokamagazine.com/HEYOKA.9.A...ypoole.htm



antoinette nora claypoole

John LeKay: How and why did you become interested in Indian country and when
did this interest first take place?

antoinette nora claypoole: Interesting question yet one which eludes me. Why? Because I never really "became interested" in Indian County. The phrase ecoming interested reminds me of something like "oh she became interested in pottery, so she took classes and bought a kiln". You see? So....Hmm....Maybe Indians just became interested in me, maybe that's what happened, hard to tell. . All I know is that a college friend was hanging out with an old Indian guy out west here, in Oregon. We all met, hung out in the same big old house together in Coos Bay, Oregon and Al Smith. He is a Klamath Modoc man, Smith his mission name who ended up taking the lawsuit against the U.S. gov't protecting Native American Church, peyote ceremony, as a religious right of all Indians. At the time he was a simple, random Indian guy my friend was living with, and.... well...... he talked alot about how Indian ceremonies were just made legal in 1978, Freedom of Religion Act, signed by Jimmy Carter, about a "pimpmobile" Al bought back in the late 1950's when feds showed up on his land in South eastern Oregon and were "buying Indians".

antoinette claypoole photo © Jaap Vanderplas

Offering 10 grand to each tribal person if they would sign away the rights to the reservation land. That was part of the big "last assimilation plan" of the 1950's. It happened all over the States at the time. But I didn't know ANY of this Indian history, and Al kept telling it like some kind of keeper of the legends, or something. FOr some reason he told us all this history and then one day said hey you want to go into lodge?
Hmm....what is a lodge anyway? So there we had many more sit out back in the pacific sun and wind and Al telling us what lodge is. Clean and sober for 3 days before going in. That was the part I remembered the most. It took me six months to go into ceremony with Al out on Seven Devils Road in Bandon, Oregon. My life flashed over me like a home movie, 8mm on white sheet hanging in gramma's front room. I saw things I didn't want to be doing, I saw things I wanted to become and heard things I would never repeat. When I came out of ceremony I asked Al what I could to thank him for sharing these ways, this ceremony with me. His answer? "Help my people. You have an education, you can write. WHen my people need help be there for us." Sounded simple enough. I said yes of course. A few years years later I was helping fight forced relocation of Dine (Navajo) grammas in Big Mountain, Az., camping in resistance with members of the American Indian Movement.

Another way to answer your question might be by quoting a once old Lakota friend and his endorsement to my book, historical fiction, about Big Mountain:"antoinette came from back East before the Freedom of Religion Act, before the changes for Indian Children in the Child Welfare System. Back in the 1970's. When she came to Oregon they were still arresting Indians in small towns. She started working on Indian rights when it was not popular to be Indian."
JL: At what point did you start writing about American Indians?


antoinette nora claypoole: Writing about Indians was never really my thing, my intention or passion. What WAS my drive, however, was writing about injustice in this world out of balance. My first small piece was written while I was a member of the SDS back in Indiana, Pa., in college. Then when I moved out west my first published piece--in a small bioregional paper--- was regarding the abuse of migrant farmworkers in the Rogue Valley, S. Oregon back in 1982.

About Indians? I have never written "about" Indians, but "for" their struggles,
reality and lives. In keeping my promise to Al Smith, to help when I could,
I wrote for various tribes and organized events regarding illegal and
genocidal tactics still being practiced by the U.S. gov't. Those writings
began in the 1980's. One of the first events i organized--wrote up various PR
pieces--was an event called "Apartheid in America". We radical and driven to
inform Southern Oregon and our bio region about various issues happening in
Indian Country which "mainstream" folks knew nothing about. This was of course before computers, when information about injustice and genocide in Indian Country was VERY difficult to disseminate. So. I Designed posters, wrote press, brought together Indian artists, poets, members of International Indian Treaty Council from San Francisco, had representatives of people helping David So Happy up north where fishing rights were being denied the tribes. So Happy he had been arrested for catching salmon. And we showed an old 8mm film about the murder of Anna Mae Aquash, "Bravehearted Woman" (now long out of circulation).

Anna Mae

This event was pulled together to try and bring focus and support to various Indian issues AND to support the struggle at Big Mountain, Az. Actually, my first published piece for Indians was one I wrote while in resistance at Big Mountain. The piece was my inside resistance camp article covering the first deadline for forced relocation, July 8, 1986, the event at which Ronald Reagan
had threatened to bring in the Nat'l Guard to destroy the lives and people of Big Mountain. The article was to bring attention to their struggle, the need for resistors, food, old CB radios an overall call for the cessation of military occupation of Indian land. That article ran in the "The Alliance"
out of Portland, Oregon.

JL: Was this around the time you wrote your book on Anna Mae and what inspired you to write that book? What triggered it exactly?

antoinette. nora claypoole: During the 1980's, Louise Benally, a young Dine' resistor to forced relocation at Big Mountain, decided to name the camp where we had all often lived in resistance--the land there near her family hogan--she decided to call the place "Camp Anna Mae". To this day that is the name for the land there. At the time I had only seen the old film I mentioned earlier, Brave Hearted Woman, and didn't know much at all about Annie Mae. So I asked Louise. And others there at camp, members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) who had known Anna Mae. I asked about what happened, who she was exactly and how they thought she was murdered.

My naiveté still astounds me. When I tell the story.

Actually believing her old friends would tell me things about her, her life and her execution. Of course no one said a thing to me about her. Just, "oh antoinette, she was a brave sister who helped with the movement. And the feds killed her". Well. Okay. That worked for me for a few years. But somewhere in the early 90's, after producing many of John Trudell's Northwest events, hanging out with him on tours and during poetry readings, something just got inside of me about Annie Mae. I started asking Trudell questions about her. I did an interview with him for one of our events in the Northwest here and I had asked him about being chairperson of AIM when Anna Mae was murdered. How that felt to him. How it sure looked like he was someone who might have been responsible for her death. Even though he was, back then, someone I called family and a friend, as a writer and journalist I had to ask the hard questions. His answers were about how Indians didn't have a hierarchy, that being an AIM leader didn't mean he had any real say as to what went down. In that interview he explained the intricacies of the movement at lengths. Reluctantly, but at length. Still. Triggered is a good word.
You asked what triggered this book. Even after and during talking with Trudell about all this. Something was pressing against me like heat before the desert winds of late summer. I asked more questions of more people and got less answers. It was becoming apparent, everywhere I went, that many people still believed--this was the early 90's-- she was a Federal Agent. An Indian turncoat. A woman who had betrayed her people. And even though Camp Anna Mae had her name, many of her old "friends" were still wondering about whether she was working for the government when she was murdered.

John Trudell

Anna Mae and her husband Nogeeshik Aquash

That kind of injustice is something that had always pressed me to write, create, and research. So. In looking to honor to Anna Mae's memory, to get the "story straight" I began the book project. It took 6 years of research, writing and random, scary expeditions. To bring to page an honoring for Anna Mae that could give the reader a sense of what was happening during the 1970's in Indian Country AND offer her a legacy other than silence or turncoat. For it was clear to me that she was not an agent and was set-up to look like one by the U.S. gov't.

What inspired me, then, to do that book you ask? A need, as a woman, to be certain Anna Mae's story was not lost. Was not buried with her somewhere east of dreams. That as a woman still alive I had a responsibility to present some history, sentiments, poetry and news articles that would help people seek their own truth about her commitment to the People. I wrote it for all the people everywhere who fight for "justice" and pay a price in this world out of balance. And for the next generation.

JL : How would you say this book was received by Indian country?


antoinette nora claypoole: There are many ways to tell a story. Even a story about how people tasted a story no one wanted to tell.

In the mid 1990's silence was the mantra of Indian Country about Annie Mae. How was my effort, my labor of poetic persistence, my ability to survive death threats which emerged as a result of the project, how was all that received? Hmm...this is probably best explained by those who reviewed it, those who read it then, read it now, and those who mark time as a cycle spiraling into infinity.

We are sometimes left with the remnants of what perception does to time. Still....there were many, many people in the movement who, back in the day, thanked me for having the courage to say what others wouldn't. And Anna Mae's family, most notably via her second cousin Bob Pictou-Branscombe, gave me a nod and thank you, without which the project would never have gone to print. At the time I actually never heard any complaints except that "all that poetry got in the way" and it was, according to one of her family members (a guy) " a girl's book". Hmm.....true that.

Who Would Unbraid Her Hair : the Legend of Annie Mae[URL="http://www.amazon.com/Who-Would-Unbraid-Her-Hair/dp/096738530X"]

[/URL]

JL: How would you say your book differs from Steve Hendricks book about Anna Mae? That is, just from reading excerpts of your first book, about Anna Mae Aquash, I see that your vision, your art, like most art, is a form of healing. Through your truth and poetry. Do not see it as just laying out a legal argument in a deposition, or a summary proceeding as in some parts of the Steve Hendricks book. His book seems much more detached, removed. Colder. My sense is you have a much deeper connection here. A bond of another sort to these people. Like you really care about these people.

antoinette nora claypoole: hmm.... as I admittedly never read Hendricks book. I have no idea how he came at the topic, but you must remember mine was written earlier on, 1999, and it was one of the first efforts to speak her name in print and ask the hard questions. Perhaps Mr. Hendricks carried forward with that impulse in his presentation of facts, perhaps?

And yes John, there was an organic intention of healing which I imagined my art, this book, to be. I cared about all these people when I wrote the book. Cared very deeply. As the book was written before ANY indictments were handed down, any of my friends could be named as her murderer, any of HER friends. This is a very important piece to remember when reading the book. So yes. I DID care about what happened to all. John Trudell was family and friend in my life. HE was being fingered as her murderer. Others I knew and cared about were possible targets. And in the meantime there was still moccasin telegraph that she had worked for the Feds, which I never believed true.

In many ways, my desire to write Annie Mae's story was NOT so much that she was murdered but HOW she was being forgotten. as I said to you yesterday, as a woman living in a patriarchy I couldn't let that happen. We were all having a time of it, poetry, music, resistance gatherings, ceremonies, but she was dead. At the time I was writing the book I was deep inside Indian country, traveled w/Trudell, the kids, did ceremonies, it was a kind of charmed life. And I was aware that we were all ABLE to have these beautiful and intense experiences BECAUSE she was an activist and died trying to implement freedom of religion, for instance. Very important. The book was and still is a celebration of her LIFE, not her murder. and I was writing about it while celebrating my life. With some of the very same people she had known and loved.

JL: Didn't you get attacked for writing this book?
antoinette nora claypoole: No NOT AT ALL.... I did NOT get attacked for writing the book, though I was often warned by friends in the Movement to be careful, that the same thing that happened to Annie Mae could happen to me. That was while I was working on the project. Once it came into print, I / the book was honored. Attacks at me and my writing came about 4 years later when I covered the murder trial of Arlo Looking Cloud for Pacifica Radio. That is when the slander/libel against me began. After that, the book was not often mentioned much one way or the other.

Assimilation by antoinette nora claypoole

JL: How important were Anna Mae's efforts with gaining this freedom of Religion?

antoinette nora claypoole: As with so much of Indian History, many things changes during the 70's, many humane freedoms were finally reclaimed. All due to the actions and impulse of the American Indian Movement. Annie Mae was key figure in the movement, albeit near her end a controversial one. Still, she was involved in early AIM actions, was at the takeover of the BIA building in Washington, D.C. Was in resistance at the Siege of Wounded, was married there by the same man who I would later meet and have given to me healing ceremonies. Hers was a synergy which infused the movement, and it was her intent that her children, the next generation, could be proud to be Indian, be allowed to pray in the old ways, all ol it. So...in this way she was very much the matrix of change that would happen later for Indian People.

JL: Why did you get attacked for covering this Looking Cloud trial for Pacifica Radio?

Did you express a strong opinion of some sort? Listen to radio coverage here

antoinette nora claypoole: Hmm....I often wondered what happened, truly. Was totally blind sighted by the events, the death threats and random slander rants against me at that time.

It seems to me that the attacks came because I wasn't mantra chanting the party line.

That is, most everyone in Indian Country was glad to have the indictments against Looking Cloud and John Graham happening. They looked at it as some kind of "hurray, we get resolve". Many people looked at the arrests and trial, understandable, as a way to complete a painful chapter in Indian History--the murder of Annie Mae. But in my mind they had already tried, sentenced and executed (figuratively) these two men and I wasn't so convinced that a lynch mob was where I wanted to hang out. Mainly because I hadn't seen any evidence that convinced me they were her killers.

The entire case against them seemed to rely only on hearsay---he said she said he wanted
to say she was dead by what he said about....etc etc.

Vernon Bellecourt

So. When I covered the trial in Rapid City-- as a freelancer for KPFK, Los Angeles-- it was already known in Indian Country that I was NOT applauding the dog and pony show which was about to take front and center in our lives. My daily coverage of the trial DID include interviews with Russell Means, Vernon Bellecourt amongst others, an attempt to get varied perspectives out there. Have "opposing camps" represented. At the time Bellecourt was trying to help Graham and Looking Cloud, believed in their innocence.

Means was in another camp. My coverage attempted to give listeners a whole canvas of info. That in itself made it clear to those in Indian Country who once celebrated my work and efforts that I wasn't going into an unequivocal place of believing the murderers had "been found". It was and still is my role to keep people awake to asking themselves what they believe truth is and not be lead by any one dictate.

Did I express a strong opinion of some kind, you ask?
Perhaps it was simply that I made it clear that I did not necessarily believe the men indicted had actually killed Annie Mae.
" They might have, they may not have" was the matrix of my coverage and commentary.
Further, I explained I thought the government was simply putting AIM on trial, saying "this is what can happen to you if you join a radical movement" to the next generation of activists. Overall, at the time I made it clear that I wanted to see evidence, of which there was only hearsay. Not enough for me to jump into the mob mentality which was emerging.

This is really the only way I have ever been able to explain to myself why, out of the midday winter sky, this flare of toxic rants landed on my literary map.

JL : What are your thoughts on the upcoming John Graham trial and thoughts on Robert Robideau's views for example on Anna Mae?

antoinette nora claypoole: This case, these trials and hearings are all complex and stem from the denial by the Federal Gov't to own their role in sending in agents to AIM and making Annie Mae looking like a snitch, a turncoat. Everything else is what it is.

Complex. Creepy. Destructive. Divisive. Sad and despicable.

Still, overall, it is not my place to really say how this will play out and why. Anna Mae was murdered and will we ever know the truth about what went down? Perhaps not. There are people of course who differ with Robideau's perspective, but then there are people who differ with another and at different times they stop differing and agree. To differ again. As I say, It is complex and best left to those who were inside those last days of her life

John Graham

Robert Robideau

There are many stories are out there regarding the circumstances of her last few months in the Movement. For instance, I have always that it important for people to know that early on in my research (mid 1990's) I did speak with more than person who claimed to have seen and talked with Annie Mae over Christmas, 1975. That directly contradicts all the things said by the U. S. Attorney, Robideau and ALL who claim she was murdered on Dec. 12, 1975 by Graham and Looking Cloud, with Theda Clark also present. Simply stated, there were, before the indictments, people who put Annie Mae alive AFTER the supposed murder date. Even John Trudell in an interview around 2003 or 04 says she was murdered in January 1976. What does this mean? I can't tell you. I only know that a lot of people, including Bob Robideau, have done their best to try to bring resolve to this case. That also includes some of Graham's supporters who continue to try to find folks who can talk about their visits with Annie Mae at Christmastime, 12 days after she was supposedly executed.

So, you can see, there are varied stories about how true any of these indictments and testimonies are against Graham.

Simply, over the years I write and present info so people can make up their own minds about what they think truth is in all this. That has been my goal all along. And of course, to remember a woman who people had nearly forgotten.

JL: Who do you think killed her?

antoinette nora claypoole: Who killed Annie Mae is something known by the people who did it. Maybe this is the place where we get to listen to Annie Mae about what was happening right before she went underground, disappeared, and wouldn't be seen by many again. Here, from a letter Annie Mae wrote in jail, Vancouver, Wa. Nov. 1975...... an excerpt......

" ...I am writing to you from the Vancouver, Washington jail but will be transferred to South Dakota within the next day or so to face trial there. Monday, the 24th of November is the big day. Contact Rapid City and you can find out how I made out and where I will be sent (Ha, Ha) then write to me. Matheline--I gave my silver ring to our attorney "Beverly Axelrod" to give to you. You are to deliver it to John. She

^(here an arrow pointing to the name Beverly) went back to San Francisco where she lives but I gave her your number. My health is perfect, my moral and spirit are even more than perfect. I've become stronger than ever. Kamook and I are in the same cell and that's makes it worthwhile.

The whole incident happened because of informer A & B as the FBI refer to them in their report--which we saw yesterday--from the Seattle area--Informer A has informed on at least 100 incidents already and Informer B on 20 occasions. I hope the fuckers wake up some morning missing their jewels (depending on whether they're male or female) I'll have the lawyer send you the detailed report. I am going to drop my court appointed lawyer in Pierre and have my trial consolidated with Dino's and Nilak's. How did you like my new name? (Naguset Eask).It means Sun Woman. They asked my birthdate and I said In the Spring moon in the year 1945-They kinna thought I was obnoxious. What a redneck town we were arrested at--They thought Indians were reincarnated that nite (savage style of course)....... "

Anna Mae and Nogeeshik Aquash

This is from a handwritten letter which came to me from what I believe to reliable source. It circulates somewhat widely in Indian Country these days, and is something none of Annie Mae's family members has denied is her handwriting. It brings the idea of informants front and center and still makes me wonder if they still walk around us, threaded through the whole brutal story.

We can remember the story of her second husband, Nogeeshik Aquash. (1945-1989?) who died mysteriously after phoning his nephew with news "I figured out who killed Annie Mae". Nogeeshik was in a wheelchair, paraplegic. Spent everyday after her death searching for the answer. He was run off the road on one of his research missions. Terrible car accident, the wheelchair came after. Nogeeshik finally felt he had found his wife's killers he was found dead the next morning. A horrible fire in his home. Being parapglegic, he couldn't get out of the fire. So the story goes.

Who killed her? Maybe better asked, who gets killed trying to find out who wanted to kill her...."

Overall, there is the reality that those who really want the truth pay harshly, a sacrifice on the altar of seeking occurs. Was it Graham and Looking Cloud? I just can't say. For certain. One way or the other. The idea of informants still haunts me. And I only imagine resolve for those she loved and those who lost her love.

[Keith Millea]

I've tried to put up some information on this thread about all the main players involved in AIM during the time period of Anna Mae Aquashs' murder.John Graham is still awaiting trial at this point in time,and I will try to keep informed about his trial.My last person of interest is John Trudell.John just passed through here last week(4-20)with his band Bad Dog,on their "Hemp Is Earth Medicine Tour".

http://www.counterpunch.org/donnelly01172006.html

January 17, 2006

Getting Away with Murder

Killing Anna Mae Aquash, Smearing John Trudell

By MICHAEL DONNELLY

"Vernon Bellecourt made the phone call. Clyde took the call and issued the order for her murder."
-- Russell Means
"I personally will be overjoyed when the Canadian courts rule to return John Graham back to the US to answer for this brutal murder."
-- Robert Robideau

On February 24, 1976, the frozen body of American Indian Movement (AIM) activist Anna Mae Pictou Aquash was found wrapped in a blanket in a ravine on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Aquash was with the militants who occupied the town of Wounded Knee, SD for 71 days in 1973, the culmination of a reservation Reign of Terror that saw over sixty "traditional" Indians murdered. Anna Mae, the highest ranking woman in the male-dominated AIM, had disappeared from Denver in December 1975.


Another FBI cover-up?
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) pathologist, Dr. W. O. Brown certified that she had "died from exposure." In a very unusual move, her hands were severed and sent to the FBI for fingerprinting and, even more unusual, she was quickly buried in a pauper's grave March 3rd, before any identification was made or any burial permit issued.

That same day, the FBI announced that the body was that of Aquash, a 30-year-old Mi'kmaq from Nova Scotia. Her Canadian family was informed by the FBI that she had "died from natural causes."

At her family's request, an exhumation order and a new autopsy was gained. On March 11, a second autopsy revealed the true cause of death, an execution shot to the back of the head and the .32 caliber bullet was recovered.

Of course, this led to charges of an FBI cover-up. To this day, many believe that the FBI had her killed. And, there is, of course, ample reason to believe this: Agent David Price, a maverick cowboy even within that lawless agency, had arrested Aquash June 25, 1975 and pressured her to cooperate with the authorities on a series of incidents; most specifically the famous shootout that left two agents and one Native dead and for which AIM leader Leonard Peltier is now serving time after being the sole person convicted. Price famously told Aquash that she'd "be dead within a year" should she not cooperate.


Who Done It?
Price's prediction obviously came true. But, the FBI claims that it was AIM itself who murdered Aquash as a suspected informer. There exists a video confession from Arlo Looking Cloud, who alleges that he was present when another AIM foot soldier, John Boy Graham, shot her. Looking Cloud was convicted of aiding a first-degree murder.

Graham admits in a 2001 interview that he helped abduct Aquash from Troy Lynn Yellow Wood's Denver home. While still in the hands of her abductors, Aquash was taken to various locales for interrogation by AIM leaders just prior to her execution. Graham admits he was with her in the various places in South Dakota where she was reportedly seen during the time before her execution. Also in on the Denver kidnap was Graham's adopted aunt, Theda Clark, the very woman who first accused Aquash of being an informer at the 1975 AIM convention in New Mexico. At Looking Cloud's trial, FBI agent Price admitted that his job was to recruit informants, but that Anna Mae was not among them!

Of course, this has split AIM. Various AIM members have chosen sides. Some AIM leaders have acknowledged that John Graham was the triggerman. Noted AIM spokesman, actor and visionary spoken word artist John Trudell testified to an exchange he had with Looking Cloud. Trudell was chairman of AIM at the time:

"He told me that he, and Theda, and John Boy did, in fact, take Annie Mae from Troy Lynn's house to Rapid City. And when they were in Rapid City, that Annie Mae was kept in an empty apartment that belonged to Thelma Rios; or nobody was living in it. Anyway, she was kept in an apartment of some sort that belonged to Thelma. But it seems to me from my conversation with Arlo that Annie Mae was never in Rapid City for more than a couple of days at the very most; but it seems to me that she wasn't there a real long time. She was taken from Rapid City by him, and John Boy, and Theda, to a house in Rosebud that was by the Indian hospital, and they went to this house, and they parked at this house. And according to Arlo, Theda and John Boy went inside this house, and they were in there for a period of time, and they came back out, and they got in the car. And then they went and drove to the spot where Annie Mae was killed. And John Boy and Arlo walked her out to a spot and made her kneel down; he said she was on her knees; and she was praying and talking about her children, and she didn't want to die. And then John Boy shot her in the back of the head."

Trudell's also testified in the trial of Robert Robideau and Dino Butler in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, June 22, 1976. Both men were acquitted of charges on grounds of self defense in the same shootout that brought about Peltier's conviction. Trudell testified: "Dennis (Banks) told me she (Anna Mae) had been shot in the back of the head. He told me this in February, about the 25th or 26th of February. He told me this in California. I was sitting in the car with Dennis and he said, 'You know they found Annie Mae.' No, he said it this way. He said, 'You know that body they found? That is Annie Mae.' I didn't know about a body. Then he said that."

As Aquash's body was not identified until March 3rd at the earliest and the true cause of death not known until the second autopsy, how did Banks know? AIM leaders Vernon and Clyde Bellecourt were there when Graham, Clark and Looking Cloud took Aquash to those sites in South Dakota where she was interrogated and raped just before her murder. Both Bellecourts were also with Banks when he told his tale to Trudell. Vernon Bellecourt was seen mysteriously visiting the FBI during Looking Cloud's trial.
A cover-up apparently exists after all.

We now know who did it. The remaining question is "Why was she killed?" AIM was plagued with Price's informants during those years. On March 12, 1975, AIM head of security Douglas Durham was exposed as an FBI operative. In yet another recorded interview, AIM leader Herb Powless detailed an AIM plan to kill Durham. However Durham, Vernon Bellecourt's one-time protégé, escaped. It's not that big a stretch to conclude that given that some members of AIM were fully prepared to kill a known FBI snitch, why would they not kill anyone else they suspected? It was just months earlier at the New Mexico convention that Theda Clark had laid the "snitch jacket" on Aquash. (A Snitch Jacket is when an agent makes claims or plants information that suggests an activist is a police informer.)


The Wannabes Get It Wrong
Now into this mix, we have the spectacle of various progressive groups also lining up ­ unfortunately upon the wrong side of justice. John Trudell, Dino Butler, Russell Means and other Aquash friends recently were vilified in a long, inaccurate article published in the Earth First! Journal. The EF!J should know better given the history of Earth First! and other allied radical groups like the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front. Recent activist arrests have shown that both ALF and ELF have been penetrated by informers, if not flat-out agent provocateurs like Durham.

The FBI admits that the ALF/ELF arrests were made as a result of "confidential informants." With all this on their plate, the EF!J somehow found the time to support the false innocence claims of Graham and his supporters and snitch jacket Trudell, who I'll add was there shoulder to shoulder with us on anti-nuke, anti-war, pro-Indigenous rights, anti-FBI efforts... before the editors of the EF!J were even born.

Leonard Peltier has distanced himself with Graham, after first vehemently supporting him. Peltier even once filed libel lawsuits against an Indian publication over it. Upon Graham's arrest, Peltier wrote: "I fear that John Boy will not receive a fair trial in the US anymore than I did. I must remind you, it is court record that the FBI lied to extradite me back to the US. I know that their behavior hasn't changed just as I know that Anna Mae was not an informant. As much as I want justice for Anna Mae, I likewise do not want an injustice to be enacted against one of our own in the name of crime-solving--so that some finger-pointing government lackey can get a feather in his cap."

But, here's what Robert Robideau, the international spokesman for his first cousin Peltier's defense, wrote on February 2, 2005;
"There is compelling evidence that has recently come to our attention regarding John Graham that compels Leonard Peltier to disassociate himself and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee from John Graham and the John Graham Defense Committee.

We have notified the Graham Committee of our decision; and we have also communicated, three times our demands that the John Graham Defense Committee remove all of Leonard's support Letters, expressions, web site and support web sites from their official web site.

Thus far they have yet to comply with our requests. Leonard wants to make it very clear he wants justice to run its course and that he wants to also make it clear that he had no involvement in this matter and hence cannot associate himself with those alleged to have committed this crime against Indian people.

One would think the EF!J and others who support Peltier would have noticed.

Anna Mae Pictou Aquash was a genuine heroine. Her contributions to the cause of Indigenous peoples are irrefutable. She was instrumental in gaining support for AIM from various Hollywood celebrities, such as Marlon Brando. She also spoke out endlessly about on-going injustices towards Native peoples everywhere at various public and private meetings, even after she became very aware of the threats to her life.

It's time for progressives to drop the romantic "our Indians, right or wrong" nonsense and get behind the bringing to justice of ALL who were involved, not just the triggerman and his accomplices. Someone(s) much higher up in the organization clearly passed Anna Mae's death sentence.

Justice Delayed. Where Are They Now?
Arlo Looking Cloud is in prison. John Boy Graham is free on the ridiculously low for a first degree murder case bail of $25,000, awaiting extradition in British Columbia. Anna Mae's family requests your support bringing him to trial. Theda Clark is in her 80s, feeble and in a nursing home. Vernon and Clyde Bellecourt continue to deny the charges against them as laid out by yet another AIM leader, Russell Means. Means held a press conference in Denver in 2000 where he stated unequivocally; "Vernon Bellecourt made the phone call. Clyde took the call and issued the order for her murder."

John Trudell has a 17,000 page FBI dossier. His entire family -- his heroic activist-in-her-own-right wife Tina, their four children and Tina's mother died in a suspicious fire on their reservation in Nevada just twelve hours after John burned a US flag at FBI headquarters in DC. It's preposterous to claim that Trudell would falsely accuse anyone. Given the facts, attacks like those on heroes like John Trudell, Dino Butler and Russell Means and, by extension Leonard Peltier, by the EF!J and other Graham supporters are beyond unworthy.

Mitakuye Oyasin.

MICHAEL DONNELLY has known, respected and supported John Trudell and numerous others involved in this saga for over 20 years. Please see the exceptional documentary "Trudell."

[Keith Millea]

http://antoinetteclaypoole.blogspot.com/

URGENT....
Serle Chapman, UK author, "paid informant" for FBI, testifes April 20th, 2010.

Please note: a man posing as friend to "Indian Country", a UK author named Serle Chapman, is now known to be a federal paid informant/undercover operant. He was affiliated with a group called the "IWJ", interviewed many key "players" in Indian Country and wrote MANY books "about Indians".


And. On Tuesday, April 20, 2010, Serle Chapman testified at the trial of Richard Marshall (accused of handing off the gun that killed Anna Mae Aquash) in Rapid City, S.D. Chapman was witness for the Prosecution and confirmed that he did in fact "secretly" record various members/friends of AIM and gave that information to FBI/federal investigators. (click here for Rapid City Journal, news article re: April 20th testimony).


For more info about Chapman as paid operant see court documents (click here) from summer 2008. Serle Chapman has written many books, conducted many interviews with key AIM folks, including Dennis Banks and John Trudell. Chapman's FBI status was NOT known at the time he befriended old AIM.

MORE DETAILS: In notes by a Rapid City Journal reporter Chapman's testimony is discussed. The reporter says Chapman's interviews, conducted as a "FED" were "not published." This is not entirely fact. Although Chapman did not publish his "final" Indian Country project, he DID publish SEVERAL books while infiltrating old AIM. He has an extensive book list as an agent. They include:
1. Promise: Bozeman's Trail To Destiny. by Serle L. Chapman (Hardcover - Nov. 30, 2004)PUBLISHED AFTER HE "interviewed" JOHN GRAHAM IN CANADA.
2. We, the People: Of Earth and Elders, Vol. II by Serle Chapman and President Bill Clinton (Paperback - Sept. 2001)
3. Of Earth and Elders: Visions and Voices from Native America by Serle L. Chapman (Paperback - Aug. 2002)
4. Of Earth and Elders, Visions and Voices from Native America by Serle Chapman; introduction by Dennis J. Banks; postscript by Bruce Ellison Chapman and illustrated; photos by author. (2000).

[Keith Millea]

http://www.embersreplies.blogspot.com/
Saturday, April 17, 2010



from antoinette nora claypoole
editor, Wild Embers Press

SO. Why I am writing about this today?
Because for some very obvious reason, SOMEONE--who knows who--has decided to drag out old IWJ/Karen Testerman (a member of IWJ) attacks at me. They have been able to push the bad talk to the top of internet access when my name is googled, binged or yahooed....so. Hmm...you have to wonder why a group with a known affliation to a paid informant/federal operant--Serle Chapman- (see details below...or visit court documents on sidebar) - is dragging up old attacks against me.
Hmm...Well, there is a trial going on now about Annie Mae's murder, it's raining in Seattle, o, who knows. There could be a zillion off the wall reasons. And it doesn't matter why.
What does matter is that people who wonder about the attacks get to read "my side" of the story. Here, then, is a link to the reply I wrote per the SAME accusations, from six years ago: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2005/04/20/17340991.php

SOME HISTORY

Six years ago a group calling themselves the "IWJ" was formed with the backing and support, amongst others, of Paul Demain (editor of an "American Indian" newspaper). This group was organized around the idea that a man named John Graham, S. Tutchone from the Yukon Territory, was guilty of killing a woman and leader of the early American Indian Movement (AIM). The woman's name is Anna Mae Pictou Aquash (1945-1975/6) and she was the topic of my first book Who Would Unbraid her Hair: the legend of annie mae.
The IWJ was convinced that they knew--thanks to Demain's years of "working" the murder case--who killed Annie Mae and decided it was John Graham. IWJ based their campaign against John Graham on an "audio tape" upon which they claimed John Graham "admitted" murdering Anna Mae. They wouldn't let Graham's Defense Committee "review" the tape, they refused my suggestion to "authenticate" it and so.
Their claims were suspect.

John Graham was fighting extradition from Canada at the time and I had arranged an interview with him believing "both" sides of the story must be told. The IWJ revealled the "tape" right around the time I interviewed Graham and subsequently IWJ decided to attack me for NOT joining their campaign against Graham. Their attacks against me were/are LIES (they are recirculating the stuff--which is why I am writing this today) based on my challenging the authenticity of their Graham"evidence", the tape and their "sources" (IWJ all along, refused to "reveal" their sources.) It wasn't until the summer of 2008 that the key player in the "tape caper"was revealled.

Still. I felt bad, at the time, for the "innocent" women who had joined the campaign, not knowing that there might be "Feds" among them...yes I felt federal agents were among people organizing/giving information to the IWJ. Just by their tactics, etc. So I wrote a rather generous and gentle reply to lies they were/are spinning.

Now. Finally. The man who "contacted" IWJ and worked with them to expose the supposed Graham"confession" is finally known. His name-- Serle Chapman, UK author. His role as a paid operant is now clear. And his connection with IWJ is apparent. Well. Here we are. Truth be told. Their source was/IS a paid FBI informant. Hmm...big surprise.

Well, as I say, six years have passed since those attacks AND my original reply. And guess what???? I was right, sadly. THERE was at least ONE federal agent working within the IWJ....and why these folks are dragging up old, erroneous accusations at me is...well. Just downright old news.

Serle Chapman was named as a "federal operant and paid informant" in documents generated by the Federal Court in Rapid City, S.D. this past 18 months. In preparation for the trial of John Graham, Chapman---who wrote MANY MANY books about Indian Country---was named as an operantand was, as I say, in direct connection with the IWJ.

O my.
The beat goes on.

PS.
And. On Tuesday, April 20, 2010, Serle Chapman testified at the trial of Richard Marshall (accused of handing off the gun that killed Anna Mae Aquash) that he, Chapman in fact did "secretly" record various members/friends of AIM and gave that information to FBI/federal investigators. (click here for news clip re: April 20th testimony). Chapman received, by the way, at LEAST $70,000 from the FBI for his work...gotta love tax dollars going to all the groovy places *~*.

[Phil Dragoo]

This case is reminiscent of OKCBomb's track-back to Elohim City and FBI informant Dennis Mahon outed by Carol Howe.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects...imony.html

It has been said Mahon taught McVeigh and Nichols how to do ANFO right.

It is reminiscent, too, of the police informants placed in proximity to Malcolm X to kill him.

The FBI retaliated against Agent Colleen Rowley, and Federal agents framed former Customs officer John Carman.

Memphis Police-Fire Commissioner Frank Holloman was an FBI veteran of Hoover's unit.

FBI sniper Len Horiuchi.

And when Davidian FLIR analyst Carlos Ghigliotti on the verge of proving 200 shots into the building on the day of the attack, arson and massacre died "of natural causes" who appeared to trumpet that finding but Gerald Posner.

A deep and pervasive malignancy.