Former cop says FBI/RCMP faked Peltier's arrest

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A former Alberta police officer claims the FBI staged a show arrest to make Leonard Peltier look bad so Canadian authorities would agree to extradite him to the United States for trial.

In a letter to the president of the United States, (with copies sent to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, Peltier, Amnesty International and the Assembly of First Nations) Bob Newbrook, 50, claims he arrested Peltier a day before the date when FBI records say he was arrested.

During a Feb. 21 phone interview from Vancouver, he suggested the FBI and RCMP already had Peltier in custody when they re-arrested him the next day.

The claim, although it checks out on many levels, is disputed by the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, based in Lawrence, Kansas. Gina Chiala, a LPDC staffer, said Peltier only remembers being arrested once. Contacted on Feb. 22, Chiala said the LPDC was looking into the allegations by Newbrook and had not had a chance to speak personally to Peltier who is incarcerated nearby in Leavenworth federal prison.

During a phone conversation with the imprisoned American Indian Movement activist, Chiala said Peltier said the version of his arrest as detailed in the book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse is the version he stands by. Chiala also said that phone conversations with Peltier are always conducted in a very careful fashion because it's believed his calls are monitored by prison officials. A face-to-face prison visit was scheduled for Feb. 25, two days after publication deadline.

Newbrook said he saw the movie Incident at Oglala in October and it has changed his life. The former Hinton, Alta. town police department officer told Windspeaker he has always had an interest in the Leonard Peltier case because he believed he was the man who captured Peltier at Chief Smallboy's Camp on Feb. 5, 1976. As the years have passed and Peltier's notoriety has grown, Newbrook said he always felt good that he played a role in the arrest and conviction of a man accused of murdering two FBI agents. It was only when he saw actor/director Robert Redford's documentary that dealt with the inconsistencies during the prosecution of Peltier that he realized there might be a problem.

"I used to watch the occasional news show and see Peltier again and think, 'Why is it everybody in jail these days is innocent? The guy's guilty, for God's sake. Somebody saw him murder these guys in cold blood.' I would have loved to have killed him myself when I grabbed him. I was looking for an excuse. He killed a policeman. A cop doesn't like it when another cop is killed," he said.

When Langley, B.C. martial arts instructor D. J. Mickael Maillet and his wife Jackie heard Newbrook - his former student - claim to have been the man who arrested Peltier, he didn't believe him.

"I had to confirm this with his wife on the side and she said, 'Oh, yeah.'

"I'd seen Incident at Oglala two or three times. I'd taught several Native people and we'd talked about Leonard Peltier a lot. So, I think he bought the tape and we watched it that night," Maillet said. "That was it. He was in tears after that."

"Yeah, I watched it and I cried after," Newbrook admitted.

Maillet saw the reaction as very significant.

"I said, 'What do you want to do about this, Bob?' I was serious," he said. "As I noticed what he was willing to do, that's it. I left it with him. If you're committed to this, help free this man because he shouldn't be in jail."

Newbrook said that evening in October was a defining moment in his life. He is now committed to finding a way to force the authorities to take a look at the evidence and what it appears to reveal about the FBI investigation. The key point in the documentary for the former police officer was the official date of the arrest - Feb. 6, 1976. That date is one day after Newbrook remembers taking Peltier into custody and transporting him to the Hinton lock-up.

Frank and Anne Dreaver head up a Toronto-based social activist group that has been obbying for Peltier's release for 20 years. Anne Dreaver said her group is looking into the former police officer's claims. She admits it would be a good thing for the movement if his story is verified but said it must be carefully investigated.

The investigation will continue at several levels. It will be a tough exercise in sifting facts and separating them from supposition, determining which are false or erroneous memories and which are accurate recollections, all the while keeping in mind the various conflicting political pressures at work, she said.

Newbrook is willing to believe he made a mistake about his recollection of the arrest, but he doesn't think he did.

"Even if I'm wrong, I still want to see this man freed," he said.