Leonard Peltier on Anna Mae Pictou Aquash murder investigation

In a 1999 public letter, Leonard Peltier stated "Anna Mae was murdered because she was a skilled organizer and leader for our people," and that he does not want to be part of a murder investigation carried out in part by Robert Ecoffey.

Ecoffey was a Bureau of Indian Affairs cop on Pine Ridge who worked with the FBI agents who Peltier was framed for killing. Ecoffey also took part in the shoot-out at Oglala on the side of the US governent agencies and testified against Peltier in his trial for the murder of the agents.

In public statements released in 1999 and 2003 and in an affidavit that Peltier submitted to John Graham's defense against extradition, Peltier stated that Robert Branscombe visited him in jail and told him that if he cooperated with the government in their prosecution of the case he would be let out of prison. Of course, Peltier refused.

In Peltier's 2003 statement on the arrest of John Graham in Vancoouver, he said, "It is obvious to anyone who looks at the past few years with an open mind and a remembrance of COINTELPRO, that the FBI's program of misinformation and discrediting of activists is alive and well. I encourage all who come into contact with this finger-pointing behavior to also look at the person pointing."

In 2004 statement, Peltier said, "The Arlo Looking Cloud trial was nothing more than an indirect presentation of another Myrtle Poorbear to discredit AIM and myself, and to extradite John Graham. I am an innocent man. The government knows that, and Kamook knows I am innocent as well."

In Arlo's trial, Kamook Banks testified that Peltier had admitted to her that he killed the FBi agents.

Peltier's said in his 2004 statement on John Graham's extradition hearing that FBI Agent David Price tried to cover up Anna Mae's death, but when this was no longer possible, due to the findings of an independent pathologist, "the FBI issued a false press release implying that some of her own people murdered Annie Mae because they believed she was an informant."


In the book "The Life and Death of Anna Mae Aquash" by Johanna Brand, Anna Mae Pictou Aquash of the Mi'kmaq Nation is quoted as saying, "My efforts to raise the consciousness of Whites who are so against Indians in the States are bound to be stopped by the FBI."

Brand quotes from a letter Anna Mae wrote to her sister Rebecca Julian, after her November 1975 arrest in Oregon by state troopers acting on FBI information.