Re Leonard Peltier. Official Submission for the Cluster Report on “U.S. Political Prisoners and Domestic Repression” http://tiny.cc/ce0f9

Some four years after the 1977 conviction of Leonard Peltier by the United States, his attorneys determined under U.S. law (“Freedom of Information Act”) that some 18,000 pages of FBI files existed on the investigation of the firefight and prosecution of Leonard Peltier and his codefendants, rather than the 3,500 pages the government reported to the trial court. It is now known that the United States still suppresses over 140,000 pages (in their entirety or in part), largely claiming “national security” concerns as a reason therefore.

Documents released, to date, have revealed that (contrary to published government accounts that the deceased agents were engaged in regular criminal investigations on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975) the FBI had planned a few weeks before the firefight to engage in a paramilitary operation against the men, women and children of AIM who lived in the very area where the firefight took place. One of the two agents killed in the firefight, trained in counterintelligence, was a Special Weapons and Tactics team member on special assignment to the reservation expressly for this purpose.

The investigation of the deaths of the agents also was immediately transferred from the General Crimes Division of the FBI to the Intelligence Division—specifically under the direction of Richard Held, the then head of the Domestic Security Section of the FBI.