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DECEMBER 7, 2000

Excerpts of letter from FBI Director Louis J. Freeh to President Bill Clinton. December 5, 2000.

Dear Mr. President:

I would like to share with you a letter I sent to Attorney General Janet Reno regarding Leonard Peltier and respectfully request that the consecutive life sentences Peltier is serving for the brutal murder of two FBI Agents not be commuted. I make this request on behalf of the Agents and employees of the FBI who have asked me to do so on their behalf. It is they and the families of the two slain Agents who will most suffer the hurt and shaken confidence in policing under the rule of law that Peltier's release is certain to cause.

. . .

Mr. President, there is no issue more deeply felt than within the FBI or more widely shared within the law enforcement community than the belief that this attack by Peltier was nothing less than a complete affront to our cherished system of government under the rule of law. The inevitable haziness brought on by the passage of time does not diminish the brutality of the crimes or the torment of the surviving families. But we in the law enforcement family respectfully ask that you look beyond the actual crimes to what these remorseless acts represent. To both the servants of the public charged with protecting their safety and to the protected, the premeditated execution of two young FBI Agents is the most vile disrespect for all that we cherish under our law and our God and for which moderation can only signal disrespect.

Finally, the families of Agents Coler and Williams have asked that I extend their plea to you as well. Theirs is the lifelong agony few can understand. For that reason and many others, some that we share, they respectfully plead to you that the vicious murderer of a son and father not be heroically elevated above the cold and hardened criminal he chose to be and that brought him to this point.

Sincerely,

Louis J. Freeh
Director

Get the Story:
FBI: No clemency for Peltier (The Talking Circle 12/7)