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Neuro-enhancement in the military: far-fetched or an inevitable future?
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About five years ago, not long after I started up my research group at Cardiff University, something rather strange happened. One morning I came down to my lab to find the door wide open and a suited man standing in the middle of the room, peering around and scribbling on a clipboard. He told me he worked for a private defence firm who were interested in applications of my research on human brain stimulation. He also said there was funding available for joint research projects. We spoke for a couple of minutes before I made it clear I wasn't interested in that sort of collaboration.
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Thinking about it afterward, something about the encounter chilled me. It wasn't the fact that this person had gained access to the lab seemingly unannounced, and it wasn't even the sense of entitlement that seemed to exude from the guy, as though he was standing in his lab not mine. What bothered me was the realisation that the work I do operates anywhere near the line where a military firm might find it useful. My opinion at the time – still unchanged – was that I would sooner quit science than get into bed with the profiteering wing of those whose raison d'être is foreign intervention and invasion.
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Five years later, brain stimulation research has moved far and fast. A fascinating new issue of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience includes a timely review on the various ways brain stimulation can enhance thought and behaviour – with special consideration of applications in the security services and military.
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Different forms of neurostimulation in humans have now been shown to boost our ability to learn and perform motor actions, to pay attention to events in the environment, to recall information in memory, and to exercise self-control. At the same time, evidence is mounting for more complex effects on cognition. For instance, stimulation of the human prefrontal cortex can enhance or inhibit our tendency to lie, improve our ability to lie successfully, and can encourage us to comply with social norms that carry a punishment for disobedience.
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Most of these findings stem from two basic forms of brain stimulation. The first, called transcranial magnetic stimulation (or TMS), uses the physics of electromagnetism to activate brain cells. How this activity influences behaviour depends on what the brain cells are important for in the first place. So, were I to apply TMS to a particular part of your motor cortex then it would make your finger twitch, but if I instead stimulated Broca's area then it would disrupt your ability to speak.
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The second major approach, called transcranial direct current stimulation (or TDCS), works quite differently. TDCS is generally too weak to make brain cells fire – instead it alters the sensitivity of the cells, making them more or less active in response to something that stimulates them later. Both TMS and TDCS can have aftereffects lasting from minutes to hours, sometimes even days, causing changes in neurophysiology and neurochemistry.
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As the scientific questions being asked by brain stimulation expand, so too are the methods becoming more sophisticated. One exciting new technique, called transcranial pulsed ultrasound, theoretically allows precise stimulation of any neural region. So far it hasn't been tested in the human brain but such studies seem only a matter of time. Together, these techniques and their applications hold great promise for understanding the machinery of human mental processes, with hope for treating patients suffering from brain injury and disease.
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Well, at least that's the line that we use in our grant applications and press releases. And it's true, except that it doesn't tell the whole story because anything that can boost or rehabilitate human abilities could also be exploited for military or security purposes, as well as by questionable private enterprises. Predictably, some of the major innovations in brain stimulation research are being funded by the US military.
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So far the applications of brain stimulation proposed by the military are far-fetched, but what happens when the science catches up with their ambitions? What army wouldn't take advantage of a method that could make soldiers more alert, faster to react, faster to learn, less likely to binge-drink off duty, and more compliant with authority? What intelligence agency wouldn't embrace a technology that could help their operatives become better liars, or which limits the ability of prisoners to lie under interrogation?
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Applications like these, in turn, raise ethical questions. Would a soldier be able to refuse brain stimulation, and if not, wouldn't that violate the principle of consent underlying 'medical' interventions? Would soldiers under the influence of brain stimulation still be accountable for their actions in conflict? Would a prisoner subjected to brain stimulation lose their right to silence?
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Going deeper we might ask whether it is ethical for neuroscientists and psychologists to collaborate with organisations whose ultimate research objective is to develop more efficient ways of killing people. How, we might wonder, do such activities fit with the benign aims of the Society for Neuroscience or the British Psychological Society?
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Fortunately we're still some distance from a future of routine neuro-enhancement and, as always, we should be wary of hype that suggests otherwise. Among the cognitive neuroscience community there is much valid scepticism about the potential of brain stimulation to genuinely improve neural function. It could be that, like a zero-sum game, improving any one function necessarily impairs another.
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Even so, the dazzling pace of brain stimulation research warns us not to downplay the interests of the military and private industry. Whether such concerns should hinder the progress of basic science is a vexed issue. Few of my colleagues would accept that advances in neuroscience should be limited beyond consideration of whether the research itself is ethical. After all, they would say, who can possibly foresee all the unethical applications of basic science? I agree, but the argument has one problem: when it comes to brain stimulation, there is a foreseeable future in which the neuroscience becomes enmeshed with the politics of security and war.
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As Western governments cut basic science funding and push academics toward working with industry, it is easy to see why those in my position may be tempted to align with wealthy defence contractors. Yet in the race to achieve REF impact, society may well ask who is assessing the risk of that impact being harmful.
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To the art historians, it is a masterpiece. The sleek, three-story building, designed down to the doorknobs by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, has been described not only as this country's "greatest piece of 20th Century architecture" but "possibly the most profound work of art that America has ever produced."
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Then again, the historians never worked in it.
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But for the 160 employees at S.C. Johnson & Son Inc.'s headquarters, each day is, in the words of Judy McCrickard, "truly a special experience."
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There is the ever-shifting play of light and shadows. There also are the mice that get trapped in some of the glass tubes that replace conventional windows.
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There is the half-acre "Great Workroom," with its three-story skylighted ceiling and 60 mushroom-shaped support columns. And there are the five-gallon buckets brought out during thunderstorms to catch the leaks.
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There is the overall sense of spaciousness and grandeur in a building where, McCrickard says, "my spirit starts to soar." And then there are the thousands of curious architecture aficionados who traipse through every year.
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It all underscores the joys and challenges of working in the bustling center of a $4 billion-a-year consumer-products company that also happens to be an aging national treasure.
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The building, commissioned during the Depression by then-Chairman H.F. Johnson Jr., helped revive the floundering career of Wright, a brilliant but arrogant architect.
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But the headquarters, with its glass and brick, and its flat roof, wasn't designed with maintenance in mind.
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"It's a balancing act every day to protect the integrity of such an architectural masterpiece and yet have it be a functional office building," says T. Michael Parker, the company's senior director of corporate services and facilities. It costs about 25 percent more to maintain this masterpiece than a conventional office building of similar size, he figures.
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The building is on the National Register of Historic Places, which regulates changes, but even before that designation, it was company policy to maintain the spirit of Wright's intentions. As a result, Parker's staff is expected to adhere closely to the original design and not alter the building's appearance.
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So, when noise levels got out of hand three years ago in the Great Workroom (some employees could hear colleagues' conversations from 100 feet away), installing sound-deadening panels on the walls or ceiling wasn't an option.
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Instead, sound-absorbing carpet tiles were installed, and acoustical material was placed under desk tops and atop filing cabinets. Meanwhile, telephone ringers were dulled, and employees were urged to avoid speaker phones.
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Noise problems still crop up, though. Senior Counsel Steven Mekeel dreads when melting snow and ice slide from the roof and crash onto the glass tubing that juts out from the building.
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"I've never yet not jumped right out of my skin," he says.
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A heavy rainstorm can make it nearly impossible to conduct a meeting in a corner office. When community relations manager Gregory L. Anderegg wants privacy, he often retreats from his mezzanine-level office to a basement conference room.
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Employees have found it difficult to outfit yesterday's workspaces for today's computer and telecommunications equipment. Floors are cement, making it prohibitive to install sub-flooring for cables and wires. Visible piles of wires and cables also aren't an option.
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One solution emerged when a veteran on Parker's staff remembered there were drain lines through the center of the lily-pad-like support columns. Workmen channeled out the drain lines and used them for wiring. But it is still impossible to run television cable to the mezzanine level because of the concrete floor.
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The modular office furniture Wright designed also has its limitations. Gone are the three-legged chairs. While the architect argued that the chairs would correct workers' posture, they just didn't prove practical.
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McCrickard recalls a former boss who often would return from lunch and perch himself on the end of the chair.
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"He'd fall in the wastebasket," she remembers. Many employees now bring in notes from their doctors recommending that the company replace some four-legged chairs also designed by Wright. And while his round desks are still used, some employees find the file drawers too small.
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Another distraction, especially in the Great Workroom, can be the 10,000 visitors who tour the building each year. About half of them are architects or architectural students, and they tend "to look in every nook and cranny," Anderegg says.
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"There are 200 different sizes and shapes of bricks in the building, and some visitors want to go find every one of them."
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The company has shortened building tours to 30 minutes from 45, and the third-floor executive offices no longer are included.
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Then, there are the building's celebrated water problems. Condensation that forms on the glass tubing has caused seepage in many offices.
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Sometimes it creates a fog-like effect in the tube-covered tunnels that connect buildings in the Johnson Wax complex.
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Though much of the original caulking has been replaced to stop the leaks, the administration building's flat roof and skylights contribute to the dripping. The day after Christmas, water from melting snow "was pouring in" right outside the chief executive's office, Parker says.
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Whatever its faults, the administration building has fared better than another Wright-designed facility nearby: the 15-story cantilever Research Tower, built a decade later and resembling a giant test tube.
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Its glass-tube walls also leaked, and the tower became difficult to heat and cool. More troublesome, the company's insurer balked at covering a building without a sprinkler system. Ultimately, the company outgrew the building, and today, it stands mostly vacant.
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As a child, Christina Agapakis would visit science museums with her parents and participate in science competitions.
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Eventually, she incorporated these interests and her passion for the intersection of science with other fields, into her career.
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Agapakis, a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA, was recognized on the Forbes “30 under 30” list for 2012 in science and health care for her work in synthetic biology, which she describes as modifying living things to do something they don’t normally do.
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Agapakis – who is also a 2012 L’Oréal USA Women in Science Fellow – works in the lab of Professor Ann Hirsch in the molecular, cell and developmental biology department.
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Her research at UCLA focuses on how the relationship between bacteria and other organisms, including humans, can be an interesting source for engineering – specifically the mutually beneficial relationship between bacteria and plant roots.
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Agapakis said she became interested in biology and biochemistry while pursuing an undergraduate degree in molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale University. She said she loved her organic chemistry class and ended up working in her organic chemistry professor’s lab.
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After completing her doctorate at Harvard University in 2011, Agapakis came to UCLA, where she said she has been working on many different projects.
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She said she was attracted to UCLA because of its strong technology, science, art and social science departments. When she came to campus, she started out looking for opportunities to continue in synthetic biology and branch out into art, social science and the politics of science.
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For example, at Harvard Agapakis applied to a “Synthetic Aesthetics” program, which was sponsored by the University of Edinburgh and Stanford University, and was paired with an artist who studied odors, she said.
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Through the program, Agapakis said she was able to find answers to questions like why people think body odor caused by bacteria in toes and armpits is disgusting, but the same bacteria in cheese is delicious and wonderful.
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The program spurred her interest in the combination of design and science – topics she is now working to bring together at UCLA.
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Agapakis’ research in the field has also led her to blogging.
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“I find it a great opportunity to meet people and communicate with researchers who are interested in different topics, and for me to learn about new things,” she said.
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She said writing has been an important part of her career in order to explore different topics outside of her research focus.
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“(Agapakis) is so enthusiastic that it made me interested in synthetic biology,” said Chelsea Hu, a fifth-year chemical engineering student. Hu was one of the students Agapakis helped teach in fall 2011 in a course called “Molecular Biotechnology for Engineers.” Hu later went on to work under Agapakis in Hirsch’s lab.
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Hu said Agapakis inspires her to be a scientist and she hopes to be like her someday.
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“(Agapakis) is unique because she always asks me to work smart instead of just working hard,” Hu said.
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Rita Blaik, a graduate student in the UCLA Department of Material Sciences and Engineering, said she met Agapakis through the Art|Sci Center. Blaik said she is glad Agapakis is starting to gain recognition for the work she does.
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“(Agapakis) is so good at communicating science to people in a way that is really fun and interesting,” she added.
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Agapakis said her next project will be to teach arts and design to science students, and biology to design students. By teaching design students biology, she said she hopes to see how they utilize this scientific aspect in their designing.
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“(I want to) bridge both communities to create something new,” she said.
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Correction: Rita Blaik met Christina Agapakis through the Art|Sci Center. Also, the “Synthetic Aesthetics” program was sponsored by the University of Edinburgh and Stanford University.
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Great Article. She’s my new idol!
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Free Leonard Peltier: Obama Urged to Grant Clemency to Native American Activist Jailed for 40 Years | Democracy Now!
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survivor of the 1975 Pine Ridge shootout.
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As President Obama’s last month in office begins, Amnesty International and other groups are calling on the president to grant clemency to Native American activist Leonard Peltier, who has been imprisoned for 40 years. The former member of the American Indian Movement was convicted of killing two FBI agents during a shootout on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. Leonard Peltier has long maintained his innocence. The shootout occurred two years after the American Indian Movement occupied the village of Wounded Knee for 71 days. The occupation of Wounded Knee is considered the beginning of what Oglala people refer to as the “Reign of Terror.” We speak to Peltier’s attorney, Martin Garbus, and Norman Patrick Brown, a longtime friend of Leonard Peltier’s. He survived the 1975 Pine Ridge shootout.
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AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, President Obama granted clemency to 231 prisoners—the most individual acts of clemency granted in a single day by any president in U.S. history. Obama pardoned 78 people and shortened the sentences of 153 others convicted of federal crimes. He has now pardoned a total of 148 people during his presidency and has shortened the sentences of 1,176 people, including 395 serving life sentences. Most of the cases have involved people serving long sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. According to the White House, Obama has commuted more sentences than the last 11 presidents combined.
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But Obama has taken no action on several of the most high-profile prisoners seeking pardons or clemency. Hundreds of thousands of people have signed petitions asking President Obama to release Puerto Rican independence activist Oscar López Rivera, Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning and Native American activist Leonard Peltier. We’ll look at Manning’s case later in the show and Oscar López Rivera’s later in the week, but first we turn to the case of Leonard Peltier. This is a video from Amnesty International, which has been pushing for President Obama to grant Leonard Peltier clemency. This video is narrated by actor Peter Coyote.
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LEONARD PELTIER: I am everyone who ever died without a voice or a prayer or a hope or a chance.
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PETER COYOTE: Leonard Peltier is a Native American activist who has been in prison for 40 years, serving two consecutive life terms for a crime he maintains he did not commit. In 1977, he was convicted of killing two FBI agents, Ronald Williams and Jack Coler, during a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Peltier was a member of the American Indian Movement, AIM, founded in 1968 during the civil rights movement to advocate for the rights of Native Americans. The murders occurred at a time when AIM supporters and residents of Pine Ridge were being intimidated and killed, allegedly by paramilitaries connected to the government. A climate of fear and terror prevailed. After two AIM members were acquitted of the killings, witnesses were coerced by the FBI into saying they saw Peltier shoot the agents. Ballistics evidence that could have aided Leonard’s defense was hidden from his lawyers.
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LEONARD PELTIER: The only thing I’m guilty of is struggling for my people. I didn’t kill those agents.
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PETER COYOTE: It was not a fair trial—the conclusion reached by Federal Appeals Judge Gerald Heaney, who stated, “[T]he prosecution withheld evidence” favorable to the defendant, and “[T]he FBI used improper tactics” in extraditing Peltier and otherwise in investigating and trying Peltier’s case.
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LEONARD PELTIER: I’ll be an old man when I get out—if I get out.
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PETER COYOTE: Leonard Peltier has spent 40 years in federal penitentiaries, often in solitary confinement. He is now 71 years old and in rapidly declining health. There are concerns that he’s not receiving adequate medical treatment and his condition could be fatal.
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BRUCE SMITH: They’re giving him the death penalty by leaving him in that type of an environment. The man needs medical treatment. He needs to have access to medical treatment. If they’re not going to give medical treatment to him, they need to release him as soon as possible.
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AMY GOODMAN: That’s a video from Amnesty International, which is calling for President Obama to grant Leonard Peltier clemency. That last voice was Bruce Smith, a former prison guard who worked at Leavenworth federal prison, where he met Leonard Peltier. Peltier is now imprisoned in Florida.
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To talk more about the case of Leonard Peltier, we’re joined by two guests. Martin Garbus is one of the country’s leading trial lawyers and lead counsel for Leonard Peltier. Norman Patrick Brown is a longtime friend of Leonard Peltier’s. He survived the 1975 Pine Ridge shootout. He’s joining us from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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Martin Garbus, lay out the case. You have asked President Obama, or the White House, for a pardon for Leonard Peltier, or clemency.
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MARTIN GARBUS: He was convicted in 1975. He was involved in the Wounded—shortly after the Wounded Knee shootout. The evidence in the case, acknowledged by the government and acknowledged by the federal judges, is that the FBI does not know who shot the two people, that the ballistics do not support the argument that Leonard Peltier did it.
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AMY GOODMAN: And explain what that conduct was.
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MARTIN GARBUS: The wrongful conduct was not producing at the trial the ballistics, which show that it could not have been Peltier’s gun that did the shooting. The wrongful conduct was—and the government acknowledges at this point—using false affidavits, both in the case and to extradite him from Canada, where he had been led. In this particular case, two other people were charged for the case, convicted—murder. Both of those people were found innocent.
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AMY GOODMAN: And he would have been tried alongside them, but he had fled to Canada.
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AMY GOODMAN: So he was extradited and tried separately.
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AMY GOODMAN: And what was that wrongful conduct?
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MARTIN GARBUS: The withholding of ballistics, the refusal—they didn’t turn the ballistics over to the U.S. attorney. The other wrongful conduct was it was they who got the false affidavits, acknowledged to be false and found by the court to be false. So, the only reason he was convicted was, A, the political atmosphere of the time, and, two, they succeeded, the government, in having the case tried before a judge, a very anti-Indian judge, rather than the judge who was involved in the acquittal of the other two defendants.
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AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to Leonard Peltier in his own words, describing what happened at Pine Ridge on June 26, 1975, the day when the two FBI agents were shot dead.
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LEONARD PELTIER: That next day, when it came down, I was down into the camp, and I heard some shooting going on up over by the ranch house. At first I didn’t pay no attention to it, because there was some—there’s a dam, of course, by there, about a mile away. I used to hear shooting there. We used to hear shooting there every day. Somebody used to be practicing there with automatic weapons. We think it was some of the GOON squads. You know, we don’t know for sure. But at first, that’s what we thought it was. And then, all of a sudden, we heard people screaming and hollering, and so we ran up there. And I—we see what was happening: There’s a shootout going on. So, I ran into the houses, because there was little babies there and women and children and stuff like this here. And I got them out of there and told them to get out of there. By this time, we were surrounded, and the shootout lasted for about—well, from about 11:00 that morning ’til about 7:00 that night.
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AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Leonard Peltier in his own words. Norman Patrick Brown, you were there that day in Pine Ridge. You survived the 1975 Pine Ridge shootout. Can you describe what happened?
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NORMAN PATRICK BROWN: Yeah, Amy. It was a—it was a horrific day. It was a tragic day, for we lost three good men that day. And my role there was as the youngest fighter there of a group of people who were encamped there. We were a spiritual encampment, there to protect the Oglala people, the traditional people, and AIM members from their brutality, of the BIA police GOON squad, which were armed and trained by the FBI.
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To this day, it’s been a tough life for many of us. I just want to state that, from that day that the agents lost their lives, we’ve prayed for them continuously, and we feel for their families. And we’re not happy about that day. I’m not happy of that day.
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So, you know, I guess what I did that day is, the shooting happened, and I ran up there, and immediately we were surrounded. And we exchanged gunfire. And I was not there at the time that the agents lost their life and Joe lost their life. To this day, I don’t want to know, and I do not know.
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AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask Martin Garbus about the presence of the FBI on the Pine Ridge Reservation that day.
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MARTIN GARBUS: Well, the United States Civil Rights Commission afterwards concluded that the FBI was an occupying force on the reservation, that they had free rein and were arresting people and beating people. And that was the situation when Wounded Knee started.
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There’s one other thing I’d like to mention. This was the time of Nixon. This was the time of Alexander Haig. And they called out the military. It’s called a posse comitatus. They called out the military to shoot at the Wounded Knee Indians, who were encircled, so that you had—by the way, President Clinton, we understand, was about to grant clemency. And when that happened, the FBI staged a demonstration outside of the White House, 500 men with guns—first time that has ever been done. Clinton withdrew back.
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AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to that interview that I did with President Clinton and asked him about clemency. It was back in 2000. Many of Leonard Peltier’s supporters had high hopes that outgoing President Bill Clinton would pardon him before the end of his second term. On Election Day, which was November 7, 2000, I got a chance to question President Clinton and asked him if he had any intention of issuing a pardon for Leonard Peltier.
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AMY GOODMAN: What is your position on granting Leonard Peltier, the Native American activist, executive clemency?
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