Letters

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CIA Admits Knowledge of Contra Drug Trafficking Thank you so much for the info that should have sent President Reagan reeling. (I remember he did reel for a while.) I can't imagine why a press corps that allowed such a big fish to get away is now feeding at the Lewinski trough. I guess it's just easier to sell papers with cheap shots. Georgia Neubrecht Have just come across Mr. Solomon's article in which he too asserts that the CIA got itself involved in shipping drugs into our country in order to fund our military or paramilitary operations south of the border. I note that more recently the CIA, invesitigating itself -- now is able to say with a certainty that they did no such thing. Wow. Investigate oneself? I could easily have guessed the outcome of this investigation. Question: why would they have to import drugs for money when they seem to have unlimited taxpayer's funds to do what they want, when they want, however they want? Or, to cite paranoid blacks (as implied) they were out to destroy or cripple the black communities in the Southern part of California? Shakerly Marmion Bear Lincoln An open letter to Susan Massini, Mendocino County District Attorney: The Partisan Defense Committee protests the vindictive retrial of Eugene "Bear" Lincoln on frame-up charges of manslaughter and demands that all charges against him be dropped. In April 1995, Bear Lincoln and his friend Leonard "Acorn" Peters were ambushed by Mendocino County sheriff deputies. The deputies killed Mr. Peters in cold blood. Mr. Lincoln, fearing for his life, defended himself and managed to escape. According to a criminal investigator for the tribal police, a Mendocino deputy shot in the police attack on Lincoln and Peters was probably killed by "friendly fire" from the M-16 fired by his partner. Nevertheless, the Mendocino County Sheriff's Department initiated a massive racist manhunt for Lincoln on the Round Valley reservation, unleashing terror on Indian residents. Their actions are of a piece with the sordid history of slaughter aiming to drive Indians off their lands in Mendocino County, where 90% of the Indians were massacred when Round Valley reservation was set up and which as late as 1910 offered a bounty on Native American scalps. After the sheriff's department issued "shoot to kill" orders to police looking for Lincoln, with a $100,000 state bounty on his head and fearing for his life if caught in Mendocino County, Bear Lincoln surrendered to authorities at the San Francisco offices of his lead counsel, attorney Tony Serra, in August 1995. After Lincoln spent over two years in jail, last September an all-white jury found Lincoln not guilty of all first and second degree murder charges in the deaths of the sheriff's deputy and Lincoln's friend Peters. The jury hung, ten to two, in favor of acquittal on the remaining manslaughter charges. Eight of these same jurors recently issued a public letter denouncing the new trial of Bear Lincoln. We are reminded of the frame-up and railroading of Patrick Hooty Croy, a Shasta Karuk Indian, who spent 12 years in California prisons including six on death row, before being acquitted in 1990 in the shooting death of a Yreka, California cop. Hooty Croy and his sister Norma Jean (finally released from prison only last year) were framed up for surviving a vicious assault in which 27 cops fired over 200 rounds. One drunken officer was found dead after putting two slugs in Croy's back at pointblank range; Norma Jean was also shot in the back. A multi-racial jury in San Francisco recognized the truth of Croy's "cultural defense" that centuries of racist terror against the Indian population of Northern California gave him a reasonable belief that the cop mob was out to kill him. But in 1991, less than a year after his release, Croy was ordered back to prison for life after two urine samples turned up positive for marijuana while he was on probation! We repeat today on behalf of Bear Lincoln what we wrote in 1991 in defense of Croy: It is apparent to many observers that you wrongfully condemned this man to prison because he had the audacity to defend against and to survive a police assault and then persuade a jury that he was innocent of wrongdoing. Your outrageous retrial of Lincoln -- like the resentencing of Croy -- stands as a graphic symbol of the racism, class bias and cruelty of "law and order" in the U.S. and is reminiscent of the FBI's notorious Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) which targeted militants in radical organizations like the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the Black Panther Party for "neutralization." The Partisan Defense Committee joins with jurors and hundreds of others to demand: No retrial -- Drop all charges against Bear Lincoln! Barbara M. Franck (Partisan Defense Committee) Canada Police Stonewall Probe of Deadly Cop Riot No civil rights lawyers that will go near the Indians here to defend them when they are shot or accused of crimes for defending their sovereign rights. The police investigate themselves in Canada, with no independent observers. And Kenneth Deane was found guilty of criminal negligence causing death -- which carries a 25-year penalty for anyone but a police officer. Just to contrast: William Jones Ignace (aka Wolverine) was sentenced to 8 years for shoooting out the tires of an APC tank that tried to run him over during the Gustafsen Lake standoff of the summer of 1995. The prosecution was seeking a 25-year sentence. A pregnant Indian woman and her 10-year-old son were just killed by police in Alberta last week. First media reports were that the two were left to bleed to death for four hours, but because Canadians don't like to hear such things, the official story the next day was changed so that they had died instantly upon being shot with a shotgun. And there's a hell of a lot more to this story if anyone outside Canada even bothered to look. Chris Morabito Healthcare Reform If you are one of the millions of Americans who are dissatisfied with America's health care "nonsystem," then I urge you to consider supporting Rep. (Dr) Jim McDermott's universal not-for-profit (Single Payer) proposal, "The American Health Security Act," that is already in legislative form ready to be introduced and debated in Congress this year if the Republican-controlled Congress will permit this. Following are this Act's most important features: (l) A patient has complete choice of doctors; (2) His doctor bills the State for services rendered; (3) The standard benefit package covers all inpatient and outpatient medical services without limits on duration or intensity; and it also provides coverage of longterm care, dental services, mental health services and prescription drugs; (4) It is financed 86% by the federal government and l4% by the States which administer it; (5) Everyone will contribute to it except the very poor. At the federal level employers will pay a payroll tax of 8.7% and individuals will pay 2.2% of their taxable incomes; and a tobacco tax of $0.45 per pack of cigarettes is also imposed; and (6) The Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that this Act will lead to annual deficit reductions of $l00 billion by the year 2004. In summary, this Act will provide all of the citizens of America with the health care they need and should be entitled to at a price they and their country can afford. So if you like Rep. McDermott's Act, then you should let your feelings be known NOW to President Clinton, your Senators and your Representatives; and when you do, be sure to remind them that they already have excellent 72% taxpayer-subsidized health insurance. Milton A. Braun (Dallas) Travel Tips Is it safe for a tourist to travel alone? "Joy" No. It's not even safe to look at web pages from there. -- Editor