Word: peltier
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...there was more: the bodies of two FBI agents, apparently executed at close range. Leonard Peltier, a leader of AIM, was convicted of the murders on circumstantial evidence. Employing trial transcripts and FBI documents secured under the Freedom of Information Act, Matthiessen argues that the authorities were out to get Peltier long before the crime and that the FBI infiltrated the movement and provoked anti-AIM sentiment among the majority of law-abiding Indians...
Matthiessen makes Peltier's trial something very like a 1960s-style conspiracy drama. He rehashes an "ambush theory" advanced by the defense and makes too much of the negligent autopsy of a former AIM member. Finally, the author drops all pretense of impartiality: "From the Indian's viewpoint-and increasingly from my own-any talk of innocence or guilt was beside the point...