FBI withholds Peltier documents

Peltier Hearing in Minneapolis on March 11On June 8, 2007, Peltier attorneys filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit an appellate brief asking the Court to review and release some 11,000 pages of documents related to the investigation and prosecution of Leonard Peltier. The FBI continues to withhold those documents, claiming that their release would violate promises of confidentiality made to informants and would, incredibly, endanger the national security of the United States. In the brief, it is argued that the FBI's promises to its informants expired long ago, and were waived when those informants testified publicly. It is asserted that the virtually unprecedented public interest in the case of Leonard Peltier warrants careful judicial review of the withheld documents. In addition, it is demonstrated that the FBI's historic misconduct in this case, coupled with its continued misrepresentations about Peltier's case, shows sufficient bad faith to require the most searching inquiry into any claims of privilege.

On October 9, 2007, attorneys Ron Kuby and David Pressman filed a reply brief with the United States Courts of Appeals for the Eight Circuit. According to the Peltier attorneys:

"The government's assertion that it can wave away its sordid history of proven FBI and prosecutorial misconduct toward Peltier with a 'what have we done to you lately' nonchalance rests entirely on the government's own insistence. More significantly, the government conflates Peltier's lengthy, documented, proven history of the most serious governmental misconduct with some fanciful, gauzy grievance made by some hypothetical litigant. The government again demonstrates that it does not now, nor has it ever, taken seriously any of the courts that have admonished it about the treatment of Leonard Peltier. It has been proven that the FBI withheld exculpatory evidence, manufactured inculpatory evidence that it knew to be false, coerced witnesses and engaged in an over reaction to Wounded Knee sufficiently grave to cause a Senior Judge of this Court to opine that the Government shares responsibility for the firefight that led to the death of the two FBI agents. The government has shown no solicitude for the enormous 'burden on the judiciary' that its own malfeasance has caused."