Indigenous Activist Leonard Peltier Has Been a Political Prisoner for 47 Years. His Attorney Explains Why He Should Be Freed

In 1977, Leonard Peltier received two consecutive life sentences for aiding and abetting resulting in the deaths of two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

At the time of the shooting, Peltier was an active member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), a grassroots Indigenous rights advocacy group focused on addressing systemic poverty, discrimination, and police brutality against Native Americans as well as Indigenous tribal conflicts as a result of settler colonialism. In 1975, he and a small group of young AIM members set up camp on the Jumping Bull compound on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation at Oglala, South Dakota. Two agents, Jack Cohler and Ron Williams, arrived in pursuit of Jimmy Eagle, who was wanted in connection with the theft of a pair of cowboy boots. The agents, driving two separate unmarked cars, spotted, reported, and followed a red pick-up truck matching the description of Eagle’s and later radioed that they’d come under fire by the vehicle’s occupants. The resulting shootout left both agents and an AIM activist (whose death has never been formally investigated) dead.

The American government has long conceded that it does not know who shot the agents but that has not stopped the FBI from consistently objecting to calls for clemency in the case of Peltier, who has for decades asserted that he did not commit the murders and does not have any knowledge that would implicate whoever actually committed them. Peltier’s case has attracted the attention of numerous human rights groups. Amnesty International, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, National Congress of American Indians, and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights are among the list of organizations who consider Peltier a political prisoner and have called for his release.

Last month, Peltier, now 77, tested positive for COVID-19; his case has now galvanized activists who’ve expressed considerable outrage about the failure of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to address the spread of COVID-19. Cases among prisoners have spiked due to the spread of the virus’s highly contagious Omicron variant and BOP has faced harsh criticism for not releasing eligible inmates. Calls to release Peltier have intensified in recent days.

A few years ago, Peltier’s case landed in the lap of former Federal Chief Judge Kevin H. Sharp, who served on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee from May 2011 to April 2017 and is currently Co-Vice Chair of Sanford Heisler Sharp, LLP, a firm that litigates and resolves public interest, social justice, and civil rights matters. In this interview with foreignpress.org, Sharp speaks just as candidly about his life and career as he does Peltier’s case, and explains in no uncertain times why Peltier, the country’s longest-held Indigenous prisoner, should be freed. Sharp also offers significant insights into the roles journalists have played in scrutinizing a highly controversial case.

The interview that follows was conducted earlier this month and has been edited for clarity.

Can you tell me a bit about your career and how you got to this point?

So it sounds like an easy question. It's messy. 

I was appointed to the federal bench by President Obama. And I was confirmed by a majority Republican Senate in May of 2011. And so I took the bench in May of 2011. I had been a civil rights lawyer, and did not have much interaction with the criminal justice system. I had worked  a case here and there, but not really. And so when I ended up on the bench, having done mostly civil practice, the criminal justice system, I got to look at it from a fresh perspective. And it bothered me, it bothered me that most of the defendants I saw fell into the category of either having drug addictions, or mental health issues, or both. And a lot of times those would feed on each other. It's a mental health issue that results in a drug problem or drug problem that then spirals into mental health issues. And so what I saw was nobody was dealing with that. We're expecting the criminal justice system to solve social problems, not criminal problems, social justice problems.

And then I also ran into something I had been unfamiliar with. And that was mandatory minimums, where Congress steps in to tell you what the sentence will be in a particular situation. And so I'm looking at this going “Well, wait a minute, these punishments aren't fitting the crimes,” because the legislature has decided on particular sentences and the “three-strike” sentence enhancement is one of the worst. Three-strike laws require a more harsh term of imprisonment when the crime is a third felony and it doesn’t matter the seriousness of the first two convictions.

You jump through a lot of hoops in order to become a federal judge. I’m vetted by the White House, I'm investigated by the Department of Justice, I'm investigated by the FBI. I go back to the White House with all of these investigations in place. And they vet me again, then, with that nomination, it goes over to the Senate, and the Senate Judiciary Committee has its own investigators, and they investigate me again. The American Bar Association does its own investigation,  a peer-review evaluation. And I guess you could call it an investigation where they look into what fellow members of the bar think about you, and it’s all done for the purpose of deciding whether you have the intellect, the temperament, and the judgment to get this lifetime appointment and signing these really important issues. And it's those three things that make you qualified to be a federal judge. And then the most important thing that federal judges are going to do is have the control and the power over someone's liberty. The rest of it is money. The civil side is mostly money. But on the criminal side, it's liberty. And so now that importance of picking the right person for this job is all the more important. 

And then the most important cases come up and they go, “No, I don't think so. You're not going to do that. We're going to do that from thousands of miles away, years before this person ever gets in front of you.” And the normal way that criminal sentencing or to sentence a criminal defendant would happen as you look at these factors. You're looking at the seriousness of the crime, but that's not the only thing you're looking at. You're looking at their background, and their history, their education. You can look at their family situation, all of these things go into the fashioning of a sentence, and the way the statute says it is you want a sentence that is sufficient, but not more harsh than necessary.

As I understand it, what served as the catalyst that would later lead you to Leonard Peltier’s case was Chris Young’s case. Can you tell us a bit more about that case?

Well, all of a sudden, I'm looking at sentences that are, from the beginning, more harsh than necessary, but they're required, and I don't get to decide. And that's what they hired me to do. And so that really disturbed me. There were a couple of instances that I always reflect on, that I thought were much more harsh than necessary. But the one that was the catalyst for me to ultimately resign from the bench from a lifetime appointment was a young man who was 23 years old, his name was Chris Young. And Chris was caught up in a drug conspiracy. The drug conspiracy existed, there was a crime that had been committed. And there were about 30 to 33 or so criminal defendants in this case, and Chris and a couple of others were really minor players in all of this. They were part of the conspiracy in the legal sense, but they weren't part of the organization. They just happened to do things that would legally further the conspiracy. But they were minor players. They went to trial, rather than plead out to the average. But everyone else pleaded and worked out a plea deal, plea bargain. And the average sentence was about 14 years. 

There were three of these guys, one of whom was Chris, who had an offer of 14 years, which he rejected. Then he got a new lawyer, and the new lawyer said, “You know, maybe that 14 years is not so bad, because if you take this to trial, you could end up with life, because of the way they've stacked these charges.” And so they go back to the prosecutor and the prosecutor said in a sense, “Oh, that was yesterday's deal. Today's deal is 20 years.”

You have to kind of remember back to when you were 20 years old, and someone telling you something's going to happen in 20 years. That's a lifetime, right? And that's what he thinks 20 years is: “Well, that's a life sentence, I'm going to take my chances at trial without a life sentence because a life sentence is a life sentence. That's 20 years.” So he goes to trial, and he loses. And so he's got a mandatory life sentence at 23 years old as a third striker. And his first two strikes were drug charges, but the quantity of drugs involved combined weighed less than a quarter. These are strikes one and two. Okay, that's a crime, but good grief. Those are going to be one and two. And then you're found guilty, and this is strike three, and you got a mandatory life sentence. It was heartbreaking. 

Chris comes in. Before every defendant is sentenced, they give the allocution [statement]. Right, they get to speak. “Do you have anything you'd like to say before I sentence you?” In a case like that, normally, they would not. Because the sentence is mandatory, there's really nothing they can say that will help. And so a lot of times, they wouldn't say anything, or they might say, “I'd like to, you know, apologize to my family, I'm sorry.” And then that's kind of it. 

But Chris, who had been in a county lockup for years, spoke for about an hour. And he talked about all the things that he would do if he wasn't going to life, prison for life. And he talked about all the contributions that he could have made to society. And he talked about world banking, and economic policy. And he talked about philosophy and history. 

And it just hit me as I'm listening to him: “We're taking someone who's a real asset, who could be an asset, and we're going to kill him, he's going to die in prison on a three-strike B.S. conviction. This system is wrong. Why did you hire me? You know you hired me for my judgment, and my intellect, and my temperament to make these kinds of decisions. And now you're forcing me to send you know, apologies to everyone who's 23 years old and younger, you're forcing me to send a kid to his death because he had so few options in his town, that in order to make some money, he sold some drugs for a kingpin. This makes no sense. “

Did this experience ultimately make you reconsider your direction?

Yes, that started this process of me thinking about my own life and career. Do I serve society more by being on the bench and grumbling about what I have to do, or stepping off the bench, and really speaking out about this and see if there's not something that we can do to change this? It could have gone either way. There was a firm in New York, Sanford Heisler, which I knew. I knew a lot of the lawyers there who said, “You know, if you are ready to come off, we want you to join this firm, and we're going to give you that platform and that opportunity.” I think if they’re not there to do that, I probably won’t leave.

But because they were willing to give me that platform, I left the bench and then started working on the appeal of Chris Young's case. The kid gets sentenced to life. Now I start working on his case. He has a lawyer from Texas, we go through the file to see if I've made mistakes that are worthy of overturning this judgment, or the sentence, and we cannot find them. And ultimately, we start working on clemency for Chris. And there comes a point where Kim Kardashian sees this case, gets involved in this case, and I end up at the White House with Kim and Van Jones is there and we're talking about clemency reform issues. But ultimately the three of us end up in the Oval Office with Ivanka [Trump], Jared [Kushner], the President, a Kardashian, Van Jones... Man, do you people know, I was working at a carwash? And now here I am sitting in the Oval Office talking to the President about Chris Young and about another guy who had been a defendant in my courtroom, named Matthew Charles. 

Matthew had been sentenced to 35 years on crack charges and the crack rules had changed. And so he deserved a re-sentencing that would reduce his sentence. There were some kind of squirrely things about it, he really wasn't entitled to that reduction, because he was also what was called a career criminal. And career criminals weren't, didn't get the benefit of the new law to get their sentence reduced. But he had done 21 years and been a model prisoner. And I thought, you know, it's not crystal clear to me that he's a career criminal. And the judge who sentenced him didn't make it clear. And Matthew has done everything we asked him to do. What good does it do anybody, to keep him in prison for another year, or 10 years? 

And so I said, “I'm going to reduce this sentence to time served. Matthew, you're free to go.” And he said, “Alright, well, this is great. I'm out.” Yeah, it was great. And he went there and on the outside, he did all of the things that we wanted him to do. He got a job. He was working on relationships. He was talking about over-incarceration. And he was just this model citizen who now goes from a model prisoner to a model citizen. But the U.S. Attorney over-appealed me. And they did not ask for a stay. And so Matthew Charles is out for two years. And the Court of Appeals says I didn't have the authority to do that. And they order him back to prison to serve another decade. So that day in the Oval Office, I'm talking to the President about Matthew Charles, and Chris Young, and whether or not we can get clemency granted for those two men.

And did you?

That happened in September of ‘18. By December of ’18, Trump signed The First-step Act. By January of ’19, Matthew Charles becomes the first person to be released from prison under The First Step act. So Matthew’s out and I still talk to Matthew and he's living here in town, great guy. Chris, on the other hand, we don't get out and he does get clemency but it's not until Trump's last day in office. But that story of being in the Oval Office with Kardashian and Van Jones is out before we get out of the White House. The world knows what we were doing. I get my phone back, because you have to give your phone up in the White House. I get it back from them, and my phone has blown up with people texting and calling, you know, wanting to know about what happened in there. I'm barely down the steps of the White House. “How do you all know what happened in there already?”

Yeah. So that becomes a big story. That Kardashian in the White House and oh, yeah, there's this judge that was with her. Willie Nelson's ex-wife, Connie [Koepke], who's a Peltier supporter, sees those stories, and says, “Maybe that's the guy who can help get Leonard out. We've been working on this for four decades. Maybe this guy can do it.” And so she has a friend of hers send me a packet of material. And I get this package in my office. And I don't know Connie, who sent this up to me. I just get this package. And I sit down with it and start reading it. 

And it's the court opinions from Leonard's case. It's the trial transcript from Leonard’s case, it's newspaper articles about the Pine Ridge shooting and the investigation and prosecution of Peltier. It's paintings, it's pictures of paintings, not the actual paintings, but pictures of paintings by Leonard, it's all of this stuff, and it takes me forever, but I get sucked into it. And I'm looking at it from the perspective of a federal judge. And that's what hooks me into this thing. I see all of the misconduct. It’s blatant and not much of it's not even challenged anymore. 

You know, I see witness intimidation, where witnesses were forced to lie. I see the hidden exculpatory evidence. So exculpatory evidence is, there's inculpatory evidence. Evidence that tends to show someone did commit the crime. And there's exculpatory, which shows evidence that tends to show they did not. The government is required to turn over all exculpatory evidence they have. And in this case, they had a ballistics test that showed it wasn't Pelter’s weapon. And they hid it. And then, on the stand, said they did not know it existed, and that it didn't exist. Well, the hell it did. It did exist. 

What they ended up having to do, and I'll backtrack on this… from the perspective of a federal judge, I'm shocked. I'm outraged at what happened. I'm sad, because I have worked within that system. This was the system that I believed in. Now, I had concerns about mandatory minimums. And some of the other criminal justice issues, but I still believed in the system. And I have worked with FBI agents. And I did then and still do today, think of them as good people who were trying to do the right thing. 

But in 1975, and really the entire 1970s, as you look back on that kind of history, it was a different world. It was the remnants of a Hoover FBI. We were only one director removed from J. Edgar Hoover. There was a lot of violence in this country and really around the world. I remember, kind of, you know, as kids, you sit at the table, and everybody turns on the TV, this is kind of a nightly dinner. And you get body counts. You know, you hear about the body counts from Vietnam. You hear where Patty Hearst is these days. She's been seen robbing a bank. What's the latest hijacking? What have the Black Panthers done? 

There’s what you know and what you have not realized for certain… One: Realizing that it's a very violent world. Two: Not realizing that some of those things, like what if the Black Panthers did what the American Indian Movement did, you realize was all part of COINTELPRO [series of covert and illegal projects conducted by the FBI  aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations] and maybe the answer was nothing. They haven't done a thing. 

But what happens is I'm sitting in my office reading this and it ends up where I think I'm just going to flip through some pages. It ends up you know, sucking up that day, and you know, several days after. As I'm plowing through the Peltier story, I ended up calling Connie Koepke, and saying, “What can I do? I want to help. This is nuts. This is outrageous.”

And I realized there's no money but I'm not taking money. We're doing this pro-bono because this is the right thing to do. And, you know, I kept harkening back to the David Bowie song, “This is not America, this is not America.” 

You know, I spent really the better part of my professional career, my adult life, working for the federal government. I'm in the United States Navy. I'm not some gung-ho guy. And it, you know, is not just a job, but an adventure, as they used to say, in their commercials, but, but also, I'm an American doing my duty. And after law school, I ended up going to work for Congress, and I'm a lawyer for Congress. It's a job, but I'm also doing my duty, because I'm an American, and I believe in this system. So now I've worked for two branches of government, and then I get appointed to the judiciary. And each time I went to work for one of those branches of government, I took an oath, and I took it seriously to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And I'm reading the Peltier story going, “What the hell? We've got, we've got domestic enemies here that are doing things to our own citizens.” 

This needs to stop, at least with respect to this case, we need to get Leonard out. This needs to end. So that's how this whole thing begins.

Given the notoriety of this case, why have previous calls for clemency thus far failed?

I think part of it is that it's difficult. Two FBI agents are dead. And there's still this misconception that Leonard Peltier shot them. People don't understand that. That's not the government's position anymore. Once their misconduct was revealed, once the exculpatory evidence was revealed, they had to admit, “We don't know who killed the agents.” But the misperception is that you have this guy who assassinated two agents. And that's just not true. It's not consistent with the facts. And it's not consistent with the position of the federal government. 

And that makes it really tough. This is part of why he's a political prisoner. He is a prisoner of politics. Because any objective look at this would say that there are so many constitutional violations, you have to end this, enough is enough. But what you get is, you know, am I going to be the one that steps up and says the Constitution is more important than my political career? Am I going to be the one who's going to be, you know, hit by the opposition for being soft on crime? When in fact, what you would be, you know, is a champion of the Constitution. Rules have to mean something. The Constitution has to mean something and I got some grief. 

When I signed on to an amicus brief and in support of [former National Security Advisor] General Mike Flynn's position. You know, he had pleaded guilty, he worked with part of the Trump crew, he pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents, but they withheld exculpatory evidence. Now, I don't think much of Mike Flynn and don't care one way or the other way, as a person, you know, except that he's another human being, but the Constitution has to matter and it has to apply equally to everyone, whether you like their position or not. Whether you like what they have to say, you know, whether you want to talk about treaty violations or not. The Constitution means something, and that's why Leonard needs to be released. It’s 47 years on aiding and abetting. Time is up, let’s end this. But it’s tough, the politics of this are tough.

President Biden is likely Peltier’s last chance at freedom before he dies in prison. Why and how have previous administrations failed to respond to Peltier’s case? Are there problems facing the president should he grant Leonard Peltier clemency?

So it is his [Peltier’s] last chance, that quote was accurate. I believe it's his last chance, because although he is eligible for parole, the Federal Parole Commission is notorious for not granting parole. And of the five seats on the commission, only two are filled. And he's been denied parole over and over again, mostly because he won't admit that he did it. And it's always been his position that he did not. And so he cannot admit that he did something he did not do. He has a parole hearing in 2024. He'll be 79 years old. If history is any indication, he will be denied. 

Nothing has changed about the omission or this case that would lead me to believe he's going to be granted parole. His next one would come well, after his life expectancy, he'll be dead. So his last real chance is President Biden. And the politics are tough because you have to explain the story. In reality, it shouldn't be. Because there are so many problems stacked on top of each other with this trial. And the international community. The national community. It's not just celebrities recognizing him and calling for his release. So you know, it shouldn't be hard. But if what you're worried about is something that some political opponent can grab onto… Yeah, political opponents are going to grab on to this, no matter how right you are. And no matter how much the Constitution is on your side, and not just to support your decision, but really command your decision. If you care about the Constitution.

Can you describe Peltier's condition now? I recently heard, for example, that he had contracted COVID 19. So I'm curious about why conditions in the prison have deteriorated.

Put on top of that, the deteriorating conditions in the federal prison really scream out for something to be done quickly. The conditions were already bad, and it is well documented that the BOP [Federal Bureau of Prisons] has had difficulty keeping the virus under control. Part of that is they don't have mandatory vaccines for staff. It's difficult to keep people socially distanced. They don't have or don't enforce mass policies or regularly clean the way they should. And so when you put that many people into this confined space, the COVID virus is going to run through quickly. Omicron has really ratcheted that up. 

You know, it's funny, the first two years of this pandemic, I rarely knew someone, although I was one of them who was sick. You heard about it, and you saw the numbers. People were obviously sick, but I just didn't know them. I know more people in the last two months than I've known in the last two years. This virus is so much more transmittable. And you know, it was just a matter of time before Leonard contracted COVID. The problem, and I don't know how he's doing today, but the problem is you've got a man with hypertension, with diabetes, with an aneurysm, with heart issues. His health is terrible. He fits into all of the categories where the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] would say, “This is deadly, you are the most vulnerable, you're 77 years old and in poor health. Statistics say you don't make it.” 

And BOP, when you're not in a medical facility, a medical prison is not equipped to handle these kinds of problems. And if his health really turns south quickly, they're going to have to get him to a hospital. And the closest ones are going to be Tampa or Orlando, you, you're kind of in between those, you're looking at, you know, a 45-minute drive at an ambulance speed. It’s gonna take you 45 minutes to get there. Do you make it?

Where would he go? What’s next for Leonard Peltier should he be released?

He really needs to be released back into his community, his tribe, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, have asked for him to be returned to them, where they can take care of him, right? It's the culture where we take care of our elders, and they want to do that. It's not like you're going to, you know, turn somebody out on the streets and some kind of Shawshank Redemption, where the character goes and stays in a hotel room by himself. And that is a problem with releasing people when there's no support out there. But that's not the way that community works. They want him home. They recognize him as an elder in this tribe, and want to treat him that way. 

So, you know, when the President's looking at this and says, “Well, he's dangerous.” There's no factual basis to say he's dangerous. Two: I think what the community says,  the council uses that. No, he is not. He doesn't deserve this maximum-security designation; his unit team has requested on six different occasions that his security level be reduced to medium, which opens up a whole new set of opportunities for him. But the headquarters in Grand Prairie, Texas keeps denying that. The people close to him say he should not be here. So why is he? Why is he in a maximum-security prison? 

Politics? Politics, that's why he's there. 

If you look at the structure of the Department of Justice, there's a civil side and the criminal side. The criminal side is made up of the U.S. Attorney's Office, the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons. That's who's on the criminal side. They have an interest in making his life miserable. But it doesn't have to be that way. We can stop talking about this. We can end this hold-over from the Hoover FBI. We can end it. Let him go. And let's move on.

It would not be untoward to say that the FBI has a long, even sordid history of investigating and targeting political opponents. Is Leonard Peltier, from your vantage point, being made an example of?

Yeah. Yeah, right. Right. And I hate to say it like that. But, you know, it was told to me that members of the FBI family are dead, and we’re not letting go of that. I get their pain. But you have to say, there's no evidence this is the guy that did it. And you have to accept responsibility for your role in this. You weren't the only ones who died that day. Joe Stumps and his family? You know, Joe is dead. And his family has to live with that. And I recognize this as a hold-over from an FBI that you tell me doesn't exist anymore. And I believe you, and want to believe you. Show me, then. Let's act like it. Let's move on and let this old man go home. You got your pound of flesh. Let’s end this.

What would you say are the most common misconceptions about Leonard Peltier’s case?

I think that one of the most repeated misconceptions is that he shot these agents. That there was evidence, and he was convicted of killing someone. And what's missed is that once the exculpatory evidence was revealed, and once you lose your witnesses because of the threats and intimidation, then there's no evidence of that. And so I see that on social media, I see it a lot where people go, you know, “Who cares if he's released, he killed two people.”

And I don't get into it with him, but you just want to shake them and go, “No, he didn't.” And even the federal government says we don't know who killed them. And so much so that James Reynolds, who was the U.S. attorney who took over the case, on appeal, post-trial, motion sentencing, and appeals, has come out in favor of clemency. And I don't know if you have a Reynolds letter. It's in that Huffington Post article, it's embedded in there, take a look at that letter. It's really compelling, that James Reynolds, he's the US attorney who had the case, who says, you know, “We cut corners. We never could prove that Leonard Peltier personally committed any offense on the Pine Ridge Reservation.” And he says some other things about, you know, healing, the relationship between the government and Native-Americans, that that conviction was a relic of the old judicial system. I didn't get that exactly right. But something like that.

I mean, when the prosecutor says that, and when the judge who had the case says the government has to take responsibility for their role in all of this, it seems to me that you got to listen to that. And nobody else was closer to it.

It reminds me of Vietnam, in the sense that you have these kids with guns who go in and they look at the Indigenous people as less than themselves. And so it kind of gives them this moral license to do whatever they want to do. And you saw it in Vietnam as some kid goes into a village and you know, who gives a shit? You also saw it with these young agents in and around Pine Ridge. These are the Indigenous people, they're not white. They are less than we are. And so you have this moral license to treat them differently. In their heads, maybe morals, not the way you or I would think, gives them a license, immoral license really, to do what they want to do, and it's justified in their heads, because who gives a shit, in their thinking. 

We've come a long way since then, but it's how these abuses can take place. But if the Constitution is ignored, and all it means is whoever is in power gets to do whatever they want to do? That's great if you're the ones who are in power. But eventually, you're not the ones in power. And so there's got to be this higher authority. And it’s the Constitution. And it's not like I'm a guy who lets people do whatever they want to do, that there should be no criminal prosecutions. Of course there should. But it also means they have to be done within the confines of the Constitution, they have to be done within the confines of fairness. 

Because if they aren't, then we lose the authority to say, either to ourselves, or to other countries, you know, “Straighten up on your human rights abuses.” Well, who are you? What gives you the authority to do that you're doing the same thing. You did the same things. Let's move on. Let's talk about what happened. And then let's wrap that up. And then let's move on. It's the only way we can progress.

It must take a toll on you to know this case backward and forward.

It drives me crazy. I think about it constantly. I wanted there to be one. I want to get Leonard out. But I also want to stop thinking about this, because it drives me crazy. I look at this, it's almost, you know, like I’m in some kind of surreal, alternate universe where I'm looking around at going, “Doesn't everybody see what I'm looking at here? Look at this. We're not even pretending anymore, that we had fair trials. You know, how can everyone not be outraged?” Part of it is you have to sit down, like we have for an hour and a half. And, you know, let it wash over you. To fully understand it. It's messy.

Thank you for your time. My final question to you is this: Foreign journalists are regularly at a disadvantage and often work with fewer resources at their disposal than their American counterparts. This can make it very difficult for them to do their jobs. What do you think is the most important thing that foreign correspondents can take away from this case?

You know, I think the most important thing for journalists to take out of this is to hang on to the importance of their role in society. Because without someone digging into a case, like Leonard’s, not sticking with the sound bite, you know, “Here's a guy who did this, this terrible thing.” Which now takes digging. I didn't do all of this digging. A lot of this was done by reporters and Peter Matthiessen’s book was one of the great jumping off platforms for me and the research that's done by other people for me to pull this together. That's why journalists, not only aren't, are not enemies of the people, they are the foundation of society in the sense that this is how we know what's happening. This is how we know what happened to Leonard Peltier. 

And what really happened that day is about people who grabbed on to it, not wanting to let go. I didn't do anything. There's not one thing that I told you that I independently learned. This thing was 45 years ago, I learned what I know. Now I package it, and I've taken the story and go, “Okay, the story is not complicated. It's messy, but it's not complicated.” 

But there's so much information that's out there, I've been able to package it a little better. But the only reason I know what happened up there are those people who have stuck with it. And so if foreign journalists take nothing else from this, it ought to be the comfort that they are such a foundational element to this society. It's how we know whether it was Watergate, or, you know, whatever it is that kind of journalism that says don't take what they are telling you at face value. Let us do this research. And let us package this for you. Thank God, they're here. 

And the foreign press right, which has this different take, they haven't been indoctrinated into American culture. So it allows them to come at this with a different eye. And an eye that will come from whatever their own history and background is. Thank God, they're here. You know, that's what they ought to take away. And hell if they don't learn anything else, let them know that I appreciate that they're here and the job you guys are doing.