Petition for the Release of Peltier Case Documents Under FOIA

The petition

Leonard Peltier is a prominent Native American activist who is currently imprisoned at the United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Mr. Peltier has been incarcerated for over 30 years as a result of a shoot-out at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (South Dakota) on June 26, 1975, that resulted in the deaths of two agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and a young Native American man.

Currently, Mr. Peltier's attorneys are attempting to secure his files from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). FOIA requests have been made on Mr. Pelter's behalf to FBI Headquarters and its field offices around the country.

There have been numerous unnecessary delays in the handling of the FOIA requests submitted on Mr. Peltier’s behalf. For example, some FBI field offices have said that the scope of the inquiries outstrips their capacity to process the documents and referred the requests to FBI headquarters; the FBI Legal Attaché in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, has not responded to Mr. Peltier's request of January 9, 2002; and FBI Field Offices in Albany, Pittsburgh, Portland, and San Francisco claim that their files relating to Mr. Peltier have all been destroyed, some as early as September 1976.

We, the undersigned—along with Amnesty International and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights—urge that congressional hearings be held on the handling of Mr. Peltier’s FOIA requests. The FBI must be required to divulge the exact number of documents it maintains on Mr. Peltier and the Field Offices that maintain these records; the total number of documents regarding this case that have been destroyed, as well as the date and authority under which records were destroyed; and whether or not any records dealing with Mr. Peltier have been transferred to any other agencies, as well as pertinent details of those transfers.

More importantly, these documents—that are over 25 years old and historically significant—must be released. In 2002, Congressman Barney Frank arranged for the release of 30,000 documents for this very reason. However, tens of thousands more documents remain to be released. Previously released documents showed repeated instances of FBI misconduct and forced the government prosecutor to admit that the government does not know who shot their agents. The remaining documents may contain new evidence that may exonerate Mr. Peltier. These remaining documents must be released to the public without delay.

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