ANNA MAE AQUASH 8

All excerpts are in italics and are from THE UNQUIET GRAVE by Steve Hendricks.

Anna Mae Aquash’s hands had been sent to Washington….the FBI described amputation as a standard practice for identification in many jurisdictions, but it could point to no such jurisdiction in North America. The FBI said “it was impossible to obtain fingerprints” on Pine Ridge.

“All fingers, “ Garry Peterson wrote in his autopsy report, “show distinct fingerprints ridges although the finger pads appear somewhat wrinkled,” Dr.Peterson said…anyone trained in taking prints-that is, any FBI agent or BIA officer-should have been able to print the fingers..

….the agents could have asked Dr.Brown to inject fluid beneath the dehydrated fingertips(as the FBI lab eventually did), putting each tip in the corresponding finger of a latex glove and sending those to Washington. There was no justification for taking the entire hands.

“One question,” Ken Tilson later said, “that the FBI could never answer about cutting off her hands was, why not wait?…Even if the FBI thought they had to cut off her hands, basic decency requires that you wait more than a day to see if other people might recognize her, particularly since Pine Ridge was and is a small place where everybody knows everybody.

When I asked experts about the motivation for this, what they told me was that the primary result of removing her hands and sending them to the lab-rather than taking the fingerprints at the hospital- was to increase the length of time it took to identify her.

Hendricks goes on to say that the FBI was worried what they would find and that maybe some of the people connected to the FBI were involved in the murder but Hendricks states,

“I have never believed even David Price was capable of pulling the trigger, but their allies, their friends-were involved, and the3y didn’t want to find out. They wanted the trail to go cold.  Any of the agents who saw Anna Mae should have been able to identify her…..She was a fugitive-not just any fugitive. They believed she had information about the killing of the two FBI agents on Pine Ridge in 1975

Makes me wonder if he ever read LORD OF THE FLIES….about children but grown ups are no different… men in groups and in power over another… apparently women now too (Abu Ghraib) behave very badly. Read about the Stanford Prison experiment. Now don’t get all in an uproar I am not saying that the FBI or agent Price is guilty of anything. For all I know Price is the best thing that ever happened to Indians where law enforcement is concerned. What I am saying is that you get a group of angry paranoid men together and there is going to be trouble. FBI (paranoid of Indians about the death of two of their agents) or AIM (paranoid of FBI informants) it is human nature….and unfortunately there are very few that can rise above the mob mentality. The point is that for people in power this is not the extreme exception it is the norm.

Here’s a video of a policeman assaulting a teenage girl….the part that disturbs me is not so much the policeman who loses it but his partner who doesn’t lose it, goes along with it….helps his partner hold her down…

I  guarantee that if you met these men at a barbecue or church they would be the greatest guys. And I am sure if you were as stranded motorist these officers would be most helpful.

I’m tired tonight and have gotten off the subject or then again maybe I haven’t….tomorrow….