Benefit Assailed for AIM Leader Who Killed FBI Agents

Southern California’s top FBI official said Friday that he is “utterly revolted” over an Orange County concert aimed at raising money for an American Indian activist convicted of “cold-bloodedly” murdering two FBI agents.

Outraged by publicity surrounding a scheduled benefit concert Tuesday for convicted slayer Leonard Peltier, Special Agent Richard T. Bretzing, who is in charge of the Los Angeles FBI office, sent a letter Friday to Steve Redfearn, general manager of the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa.

“I would like to believe the sponsors and participants of this program are not aware of the facts surrounding the murder of agents (Ronald) Williams and (Jack) Coler,” Bretzing wrote.

“Los Angeles FBI personnel attended the funerals of Ron Williams and Jack Coler, who were originally from the Los Angeles area, and saw the grief and despair on the faces of their families and friends. I wonder where Willie Nelson, Joni Mitchell, Kris Kristofferson and Robin Williams were on that day?”

Singers Nelson, Mitchell, Kristofferson and comedian Williams are all scheduled to appear at the concert dubbed “Cowboys For Indians and Justice For Leonard Peltier.” Peltier’s supporters appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court for a new trial, but it was refused.

Peltier, a founder of the American Indian Movement, has been a cause celebre for his 1977, first-degree murder conviction. He was convicted of ambushing the agents who arrived at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota to serve an arrest warrant on a robbery suspect.

Peltier is serving two life terms at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary for murdering the agents in a bloody, 1975 shoot-out in which one Indian was also slain.

Redfearn said he had not yet received the letter late Friday afternoon and could not comment on it.

Bretzing declined to be interviewed or elaborate on why he sent the letter. However, FBI spokesman Fred Regan said Bretzing “doesn’t do these things lightly.” Regan said Bretzing has no plans to take any other action in relationship to the concert.

Peltier’s defense committee has continued to pursue his case based on information in 15,000 pages of FBI documents released in 1982 as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request.

The appeal had been supported by dozens of U.S. congressmen and the National Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers, among other groups, but earlier this month, the Supreme Court refused to hear Peltier’s plea for a new trial.

That followed a 1986 denial in St. Louis, Mo., by a federal appeals court--which also acknowledged “the newly discovered evidence indicating (that the FBI’s key ballistics expert) may not have been telling the truth.”

The appeals court denied the request for a new trial, saying that despite the “possibility” that the jury might have reached a different verdict based on the additional evidence, legal precedent “requires us to find that it is not reasonably probable (that) the jury would have acquitted Peltier had it been aware of this evidence. . . . Recognizing the difficulty of putting ourselves in the position of the jury, we hold that it probably would not have acquitted him.”

One of Peltier’s defense attorneys, Lewis Gurwitz, still bristles at the appeals court decision.

“What the hell kind of legal standard is that to be measured against in the future? How can you tell someone what probability is versus what possibility is? . . . We’re now in the process of figuring out what further legal actions we can take in the courts and continuing to explore every area we can for Leonard’s eventual release.”

Gurwitz also said that several thousand pages of additional information on Peltier’s case were withheld by the FBI on a national security exemption.

“We’re all amazed at what national security has to do with a gunfight between Indians and the FBI in the middle of South Dakota,” Gurwitz said.

“He (Bretzing) is just one voice, one individual,” said Karen Kossechomy, office manager for Peltier’s defense group, based in Kansas City, Mo. “It’s a free country and people can support whoever they want to. He (Bretzing) doesn’t have to go to this concert if he doesn’t want to.”

She said the defense committee plans to “push for a full-scale congressional investigation of the FBI’s handling of Leonard’s case.”

None of the entertainers scheduled to appear at the concert could be reached for comment on Bretzing’s letter late Friday.

Actor Peter Coyote, one of the concert’s organizers, said: “Since we are not attacking the FBI, but the judicial procedures that convicted Mr. Peltier, I am curious as to why the FBI has taken the unusual steps of condemning this concert and the artists participating in it.”

Coyote said he and other supporters believe that Peltier did not get a fair trial. He said the artists “all asked for background information so they could study the case.”

“The concert (advertising) says ‘Justice for Leonard Peltier’--we’re not saying he’s innocent and that he should be released, we’re just saying he should get a new trial,” said Coyote, adding:

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s a dead middle-of-the-road issue: Either an American has a right to a fair trial or he doesn’t.”