Dino Butler Interview excerpts:
“Leonard is taking direction from other people now. He’s a desperate man. When you keep a man locked up like that for years, they become desperate and they will do anything to get out because they want to end that suffering. So he’s willing to listen to anybody who comes to him and says they can get him out. Then he will turn his back on other people. That’s part of that corrupt values system. Because he’s insecure and isolated, separated from the people, it’s easy for him to give in to it. That comes from loneliness and isolation. In his learning process at this time, he doesn’t trust the people who were with him when this all happened. He listens to other people. People who are telling lies about him and about what really happened at Oglala.”
“Like this book of Peter Matthieson’s, In The Spirit of Crazy Horse, it talks about that me and Bob Robideau knew about this guy who was coming to the camp that day and that he was bringing dynamite to us and that guy now claims that he is Mr. X. Well, there is no Mr. X. There was no man coming to our camp that day bringing dynamite. Those are all lies created to keep Leonard in jail longer.”
“When this Mr. X thing first started happening we had a meeting in California. There were people there who were at Oglala that day. It was brought up about creating this lie about Mr. X being there and killing those men to raise support for Leonard’s liberation. To create this lie to show that someone else pulled the trigger. The final agreement in that meeting was that the Mr. X idea wouldn’t be used because it was a lie. We decided that because everything that we had done so far was always based on the truth, and that it was the truth that had liberated us in our trial, that when the truth finally came out that it would liberate Leonard and set him free. So it was decided that nobody would use this Mr. X theory – that it would be shelved.”
“I came back from South Dakota that year from the Sun Dance and was told that the writer from the movie Oliver Stone was considering making about what happened at Oglala had come to Portland. He was picked up by a member who was there at the shootout that day and was taken to a phone. He talked to the guy who was supposed to be Mr. X who had shot and killed those agents. He supposedly drove down there in that red pickup after the shooting was going on. His shooting was supposedly a reactionary thing that happened when this agent looked up. Like it was more or less an “accident” or something. That is all totally false. Totally untrue. That never happened.”
“I’m not going to go out of my way to cause a scene over this because I can’t divert my attention away from what is the real truth here. Peter Matthieson was victimized by that too. Whatever made him do that separated him from seeking out the truth. That’s the important thing to me, not who’s telling the biggest lie. What I represent is what I have to be concerned with and I have to be focused on the direction I am going in all the time. I cannot allow myself to become distracted by other things that do not represent the truth.”
Dino goes on to say the driver of the red truck was a man who heard shooting and went down to check on his family-maybe he was taking dynamite to his family and just on a whim decided to kill Williams and Coler?
LEONARD PELTIER AND “MR. X” – JUNE 12, 2000
(Interviewer) “Through the years there’s been discussion of someone named Mr.X who has come forward and admitted to some that he killed the two FBI agents. Leonard Peltier, can you explain who Mr. X. is?
Peltier: “Mr. X is, could be anybody. I mean there’s no doubt that somebody killed these agents, but we don’t know who he is.”
Robert Robideau “Incident at Oglala” (1991)
“It was only a couple of years ago that I had an opportunity to talk with the individual, that was the individual that killed these two agents. He told me that he was coming to the Jumping Bull home to deliver explosives that WE had asked him to bring here.” Robideau points to the field in the distance, and in great detail describes last seeing Mr. X shoot the agents and drive off in the red pickup.” That day I noticed a red pickup coming down from that white house up there, and when it got on the other side of these cars, it stopped, an individual got out, of course I knew who he was. Robideau continues with the details of what he saw and what Mr. X told him. “…and fired and killed both of them. Shortly after that the individual got back into the driver’s side of the pickup, and the pickup left, and made its way up along this tree line up here and past the green house, and I never saw the red pickup again.”
According to LPDOC Robideaux has also identified himself as Mr.X-how does that work?
Peltier “Incident at Oglala” (1991)
“This story is true. But I can’t and will not say anything about it. For me to testify against anybody or even mention, try to get somebody else in trouble is wrong. And I won’t do it.” (To identify Mr. X.)
Peltier (July, 19, 1991, Leavenworth, Darrin Wood interview)
“I can’t say anything about that Darrin, I haven’t said anything about it for almost sixteen years.”
“No, because I know his intentions are to give credibility to my claims of innocence…”
“For me it’s something very heroic that he’s done. He’s putting himself at risk, seriously at risk. I will say this: that this brother is a very strong brother. He is not a cold-blooded murderer. He is not a bad person, he’s very kind, generous and sincere.”
“…Because all the media have asked me about this, and it’s the same answer, I can’t say anything about it. I appreciate what he’s done.”
Dino Butler (1995, E.K. Caldwell, News from Indian Country interview)
“It was brought up about creating this lie about Mr. X. being there and killing those men…To create this lie to show that someone else pulled the trigger…So it was decided that nobody would use this Mr. X theory-that it would be shelved.” “That is all totally false. Totally untrue. That never happened.”
“It is totally false that I had knowledge of who that person was and knew that person was going to come into our camp that day to deliver dynamite.” “He (Matthiessen) never made an effort to contact me and ask me if this was true.”
Peltier (May 30, 1999, Peter Worthington, Toronto Sun interview)
“I don’t know for a fact who did the shooting, but I think I know,” “But I can’t say anything. Who’d believe me? Besides, we have a tradition that you don’t turn against your own. This wasn’t a domestic dispute in 1975, it was a war. A soldier who’s captured and turns against his own is ostracized. I want out of prison bad…but I can’t point a finger at some else.”
Peltier (September 10, 1999, CNN interview)
“I didn’t kill those agents. I didn’t see who killed those agents. And if I did know, I’m not telling. But I don’t know. That’s the point.”
Do you know who killed those agents? “No.”
Peltier (June 12, 2000, Pacifica Radio, Democracy Now interview)
“Mr. X is, could be anybody. I mean there’s no doubt that somebody killed these agents, but WE don’t know who he is.”
Peltier (June 25, 2000, Lee Williams, Argus Leader News interview)
“I know I’ve said in the past who he is. I said it out of ANGER. I don’t know who it is, either Mr. X, Y or Z.”
Peltier, Feb. 7, 1976 to Corporal R.C. Tweedy
Peltier told Tweedy… that the two agents had been killed because they had come to arrest him on the Wisconsin attempted murder charges. Asked if he himself shot the agents, Peltier told Tweedy, “No, but I know who did.”
Peltier, 1999 interview with CNN
Mark Potter: So with those cars down there, at the center of all that, you, as a leader, never, never went down to see what was going on?
Peltier: Right.
Mark Potter: You never saw the bodies?
Peltier: No.
Later Peltier changes his account when told that another AIM member said publicly [that] he and Peltier approached the agents’ cars.
Mark Potter: Did you see the agents dead?
Peltier: Yeah, Well, shoot. I mean I, I. Yeah, I gue[ss], you know. I knew they were de[ad], they got killed; I heard they got killed. I knew they got killed.
Peltier (Prison Writings, St. Martin’s Press, 1999)
At no point in Peltier’s autobiography does he mention either Mr. X or the red pickup.
A&E, American Justice; Murder On A Reservation, October 17, 2000
“I don’t know who killed them. I mean, I can’t say anything about that. I just, I just don’t know who did it. I don’t wanna know.”
And these represent just a few of Peltier’s stories involving Mr.X. Does anyone, or LPDOC have an explanation for them, a spin?