Data Mining and You: From Promis to Able Danger

Developing...

Here is an article in the Canadian media about a 1980s data mining software program called PROMIS that was reportedly used by law enforcement and allegedly stolen from its owner INSLAW by the DOJ.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/dastych013106.htm

Maybe this story is all a pack of lies. Who knows.

I don’t know what the truth is about this complicated PROMIS/INSLAW controversy, but I notice some things.

For example, I notice that there is a lot of “conspiracy theory” stuff on the Internet about how this early data mining software called PROMIS (made by INSLAW) was allegedly stolen by some people in the Department of Justice and ended up with CIA turncoat Robert Hanssen, the Soviets, the Russian mafia, Osama Bin Laden, Saddam, China, etc.

Here is what David Dastych, a journalist and reportedly a former employee of the communist-era Polish intelligence and the American CIA, alleges in a Canadian paper (see his biography posted at the end of this article):

The history of this world-famous computer software goes back a quarter of a century, and its applications by intelligence, organized crime and terrorist organizations began almost from the start. The software helped the United States win the Cold War against the Soviet Union, but it also served the Russian mafia, Saddam Hussein’s regime, Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda, and an unspecified number of foreign spies and criminals. As far back as 1985, when the late British media tycoon and top [Israeli] Mossad spy, Robert Maxwell, revealed the software’s "trap door" secret to Chinese Military Intelligence (PLA-2), while selling them a copy of PROMIS for $ 9 million, the powerful software was turned against the United States. The Soviet KGB purchased PROMIS from Robert Maxwell, but they also [later] received a copy (together with the Trojan Horse secret) from Robert Hanssen, a spy planted in a most sensitive office of the FBI. The Soviets and their East European allies, including Poland, used PROMIS to spy on the U.S. State Department and 170 American Embassies and Consulates all over the world. This practice may have continued as late as 1997, and the post-communist intelligence agencies of Russia and other countries, including Polish Military Intelligence (WSI), may have been able to retrieve information from U.S. Government agencies, because as many as 64 of them [are believed to have] used modified versions of PROMIS. Using the same PROMIS software, purchased from Russia, Saddam Hussein and members of his regime could shift huge sums of money undetected through the banking system. Some of these funds are still supporting the anti-Coalition insurrection in Iraq and terrorists. In the mid-1990s, Chinese Military Intelligence (PLA-2) organized their own hackers department, which [exploited] PROMIS [database systems] [in the] Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories to steal U.S. nuclear secrets. http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/dastych013106.htm

Some PROMIS/INSLAW Internet conspiracy theories even involve Cabazon Indians.

I happened to notice that the faux Indian Ward Churchill is interested in ABLE DANGER, a now-defunct, secret Pentagon data mining program.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/131zgkea.asp
[See page 2 of this story.]

The link between the faux Indian Ward Churchill and data mining is a little like the the old story about Promis/Inslaw, which seems to have resurfaced in the Canadian news. According to journalists, Canadian Mounties reportedly investigated PROMIS/INSLAW a lot, but I still haven't seen any official comment about this from the Canadians.

According to Congressional testimony and Congressman Curt Weldon, the Pentagon data mining program called ABLE DANGER picked up the 9-11 terrorist M. Atta and some other 9-11 terrorists before the attack.

A computer expert who worked on Able Danger, J.D. Smith, is identified by LTC Anthony Shaffer in his Congressional testimony as a "retired Indian policeman," but the word "Indian" is now said to be a typo. Mr. Smith, it is now claimed, is just a retired Indiana policeman whose work resulted in the establishment of a new form of intelligence collection---and the identification of Mohammed Atta and several other of the 9-11 terrorist as having links to Al Qaeda leadership a full year in advance of the attacks." http://www.house.gov/hasc/schedules/2-15-06ShafferTestimony.pdf [page 15]

I went to a conference and personally asked Shaffer's lawyer Mark Zaid and Congressman Weldon's aid about Shaffer's claim in the official Congressional testimony that J.D. Smith is an Indian. I was interested in this Indian angle because the fake Indian Ward Churchill attended a conference on ABLE DANGER and because the old INSLAW story also supposedly involved Cabazon Indians.

Zaid and Congressman Weldon's aid said that Shaffer must have meant Indiana. My impression is that they were confused by my question. They looked at each other for guidance. I don't think they knew one way or the other. They were surprised and flustered, I thought.

I said that the record should be corrected, but Mr. Zaid and Congressman Weldon's aid said that Congressional testimony can't be corrected. Still, it should be possible to put out an official clarification in writing to clear up a typo.

I am pretty skeptical of "tinfoil" Internet conspiracy theories about my government, but it is possible that putting out all these confusing and apocryphal conspiracy stories about Promis/Inslaw on disreputable conspiracist sites may a kind of diversion from the truth.

The motives and actors that inspire the deluge of conspiracy theories, if they are lies, would be interesting to know, too.

I don’t know the truth, and I am not smart enough to figure it out; but I am noticing the “Indian” angle to the data mining ABLE DANGER story just as there was a Cabazon Indian angle to the PROMIS/INSLAW story.

On the Internet I am being called a moron and a lunatic by some pro-terrorist Ward Churchill shills or sock-puppets at Try-works www.tryworks.blogspot.com They even write:

"We can't stop chuckling at that wacky Snapple. Here's hoping he manages to break his neck sharpening a pencil one of these days."

That’s proof positive I must be crazy, huh? I mean, Ward Churchill wrote in a Soviet-sponsored publication that FBI-backed death squads killed 342 Indians. Then, when this ludicrous lie turned out to be impossible to document, Churchill resurrected the dead Pine Ridge Indians and announced to the world that they were only assaulted.

I guess that when Ward Churchill is not walking on thin ice for being a plagiarist, he is walking on water for resurrecting dead Indians.

Not only that, Ward Churchill or his sockpuppets are issuing unsolicited on-line death threats and psychiatric diagnoses about anti-Churchill dissidents at www.tryworks.blogspot.com

This proves that Ward Churchill is boilerplate normal, right?

Just ask that crazy Canadian Indian Leah Kelly.

Oh, wait! You can't. She slipped on a pencil and got run over by a car. They found her dead in the road with a BAL of .35 The driver says she was lying in the road and he didn't see her in time. [See my previous post about Leah Kelly.]

People with a .35 BAL are very, very drunk.
http://www.habitsmart.com/bal.html

Biography of David M. Dastych:

Dastych is "a veteran international journalist and a former intelligence operative (of the Polish Intelligence and the CIA). In the 1970’s and 1980’s, he had frequent contacts with Palestinian terrorist groups, with the Saddam Hussein regime’s diplomatic, intelligence and commercial personnel, as well as with Soviet officials, diplomats and intelligence operatives(some of them serving in Iraq and other Arab countries). Arrested by the then Polish Communist Security Service (SB) in 1987, condemned by a secret Communist Military Court to 8 years in special prison wards for allegedly working for the CIA, Japanese Prime Minister’s Intelligence Service and for conspiring against the Warsaw Pact, he was released by virtue of general amnesty on February 28, 1990, after the regime change in Poland. Soon after the release, he resumed his journalist and business activity, cooperating with American diplomacy and intelligence and with Israeli diplomats and nuclear experts. Traveling extensively under the cover of businessman and tour-operator, he collected ample evidence of the illegal trade in nuclear materials, weapon parts and technology between Russia and other post-USSR states and Arab and Muslim countries, through a variety of intelligence, military and mafia channels. His activity covered Central and Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Russia, China, Israel and several Middle East countries." http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21448

The Osage Indian Murders and the Legend of Pine Ridge

"Found: In May 1921, the badly decomposed body of Anna Brown—an Osage Native American—in a remote ravine in northern Oklahoma. The undertaker later discovered a bullet hole in the back of her head. Anna had no known enemies, and the case went unsolved ..."--the FBI (1-26-05)

UPDATE: See my 1-4-09 article about the Osage Murders.

During the 1920s, a gang of white criminals led by William Hale, the "King of Osage," began to murder the wealthy Osage Indians of Oklahoma for their oil headrights. Some white people who were married to Indians or who tried to tell the government what was going on were also murdered.

During the 1920s, the Osage were the richest people in the world. Each Osage owned a percentage of the tribe's oil wealth called a "headright." Because many of the Osage were not well-educated, they often had "guardians" who managed their fortunes. Sometimes these people were crooks who stole their wards' fortunes.

Lawrence Hogan's excellent book, The Osage Indian Murders, tells the story of the murders. Hogan worked for the FBI and based his book on the FBI files on these crimes and other published sources. [UPDATE 1-11-09] This book used to be sold by the Osage on their official site because it is a famous time in their history, which they call the "Reign of Terror," but now the book is out of print. Some copies may be available at the Osage County Historical Museum Bookstore and from booksellers that work with Amazon.

Mr. Hogan was also a Republican Congressman from Maryland from 1969-1975. According to the Ponca City News (7-21-98), Mr. Hogan spoke about his book in in 1998 at the Ponca City Library [Scroll down to "Former FBI Man Will Discuss ‘The Osage Indian Murders’']:

The FBI was brought onto the case at the formal request of the Osage tribal council. FBI Agents were assigned to follow the leads, but many leads were planted to throw them off the scent. Several agents assumed undercover roles, and these agents in particular were constantly in danger. After several years, arrests were made and a number of people were brought to justice. [Ponca City News 7-21-98]

The declassified FBI files on the Osage Indian Murders are on-line. Here is how the FBI introduces this file:

Between 1921 and 1923, several members of the Osage Indian Reservation died under suspicious circumstances. The FBI became involved after the Department of Interior wrote to Director William J. Burns requesting assistance in investigating these deaths. William "King of Osage" Hale was suspected of being involved in the deaths. Posing as medicine men, cattlemen, and salesmen, FBI agents infiltrated the reservation and solved the murders. Hale and other members of the Osage Indian Tribe were convicted and sentenced to life in prison, It was determined that the murders were committed in an attempt to collect insurance money and gain control of valuable oil properties owned by the deceased persons.

[CORRECTION to FBI summary: This summary gives the incorrect impression that Hale was a member of the Osage Nation when it says that "Hale and other members of the Osage Indian Tribe were convicted" of killing Osage Indians.This is probably a clerical error. As the documents show, the people who were convicted of killing the Osage were white criminals, not Indians.]

As the FBI summary notes, "the Osage were dying under suspicious curcumstances. The murders often were staged to look like alcohol or automobile accidents." Still, too many people were dying, and some people were shot in the back of the head or blown up in their homes. According to Hogan:

Nearly two dozen Osage Indians died under suspicious circumstances. The entire Osage Tribe, as well as their white neighbors, was horror-stricken and in desperate fear for their lives (Hogan xiii).

The criminals, who were evidently accepted as members of the community, even married innocent, young, Indian women and killed their relatives or husbands in order to get control of the Indian families' fortunes. Young Indian wives were even poisoned so that their their deaths would appear to be illness-related.

For example, a young Indian wife, Mollie Burkhart, "was the innocent conduit in the murderers' quest for their victims' headrights. Her debilitating sickness, apparently from slow poisoning, was cured when FBI agents removed her from Osage County" (Hogan 122).

A reputed criminal, Henry Grammer, died in a suspicious car accident when the steering mechanism became unmanageable. In spite of the fact that he had a gunshot wound under his arm, no investigation was conducted. The rumor was that Grammer "knew too much" (Hogan 72-73).

The Osage leaders noticed that too many people were dying and had their lawyers contact the Bureau of Investigation, the predecessor organization of today's FBI.

The FBI went into the community openly and undercover to gather information from the Indians. Eventually, the FBI arrested the "mastermind" of the Osage murders, William K. Hale. One of the agents, who posed as an Indian medicine man, was part Indian himself. Other FBI agents posed as cattlemen, cowboys, oil prospectors, and insurance salesmen.

These underover agents gathered information from people who were afraid to be seen by criminals talking to known FBI agents.

Once the criminals were arrested, more people came forward to tell what they knew (Hogan 86). Fear had kept them silent.

Hale had used his nephews and an outlaw named John Ramsey to actually commit the murders. The criminals planted false rumors and lies to mislead the FBI and make them rundown false leads; but in the end, the FBI prevailed.

According to Hogan:

One salient result of the trials convicting the murderers was to strengthen the confidence in federal law enforcement authorities and to indicate to the lawless element, when the federal government takes up a matter, it follows it to a successful conclusion (Hogan 86).

The University of Colorado professor, Ward Churchill, has written an apocrypal account of events that occured on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. As noted in my first post, first Churchill claimed that FBI-backed death squads murdered 342 Indians on Pine Ridge. He published this in a 1985 issue of The Covert Action Information Bulletin, a publication which was started by a CIA defector and influenced by the Soviet Union [See my first post called "342 Indians"].

Later, in Chapter 7 of The Cointelpro Papers [Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States by Churchill & Jim Vander Wall South End Press ISBN 0-89608-359-4], Churchill claimed that more that 60 people "died violently" and that 342 were assaulted:

"[M]ore than sixty AIM members and supporters died violently on or in locations immediately adjacent to the Pine Ridge Reservation. A minimum of 342 others suffered violent physical assaults." [Ch. 7 Cointelpro Papers]

On this Free Peltier Internet site, Churchill claims that the FBI are terrorists:

[T]he murders occurred amidst a concerted campaign of repression conducted by the FBI against the American Indian Movement on Pine Ridge during the mid-70s, that the 57 victims consist almost entirely of AIM members and supporters (or their children), and that the perpetrators, where they've been identified, consist primarily of known members of the so-called GOON Squad (or GOONs; the self-proclaimed "Guardians of the Oglala Nation," an FBI-alligned paramilitary organization active on the reservation during the period). A major contention of those involved in preparing and disseminating the list to which the FBI report supposedly responds is that the killings often amounted not simply to murders, but to a pattern of officially sponsored terrorism.

Churchill's Free Peltier Internet article echoes the Osage murders story when he claims that a "reign of terror" [was] "fostered by the Bureau on Pine Ridge."

Churchill's articles and books about Pine Ridge make allegations that reminded me of the story of the Osage murders that I had vaguely remembered from a childhood teacher and from my father, whose family roots were in Arkansas and Oklahoma. My memory was refreshed when I found the FBI account of the Osage Indian Murders.

Churchill makes allegations that these deaths were murders that went uninvestigated. He claims that, as in the Osage story, this era is called a "reign of terror."

Ward Churchill is being investigated by the University of Colorado at Boulder for plagiarism, but my research on the "Legend of Pine Ridge" and its similarities to the Osage Indian Murders predates the CU investigation. I wasn't really investigating Ward Churchill at all. I was researching the JonBenet Ramsey murder. JonBenet was the little girl who was murdered on December 25-26, 1996, in the basement of her Boulder home. Until I began investigating this child-murder, I had never heard of Ward Churchill. But more about JonBenet, later.

Churchill's account of the deaths on Pine Ridge is very reminiscent of the Osage Indian Murders: it recounts a story of suspicious uninvestigated murders during a "reign of terror."

There is one big difference, of course. Churchill depicts the FBI as criminal masterminds and terrorists who back death squads.Churchill's depiction of the FBI is consistent with the mission of the Covert Action Information Bulletin: to discredit the CIA and FBI.

I think that Ward Churchill's account of the events on Pine Ridge is not scholarship, but communist propaganda that is designed to make Indians and all Americans distrust the FBI.
Churchill doesn't care anything about the Indians that he exploits with his ideological poison.

In my opinion, Churchill couldn't stand the historical fact that the FBI struggled to get justice for these murdered Osage and their families, so he cannibalized the true Osage history and reworked it into a communist myth, a "Frankenstein's monster" that I call his "Legend of Pine Ridge."

My article is a work in progress and will be developed/corrected...

Note:
A pro-Churchill, pro-terrorist blog at tryworks.blogspot.com is writing that I should somehow manage to die. Tryworks makes fun of me. They try to make readers laugh at me. They call me a moron and a lunatic. They try to intimidate me. The one thing they can't do, is debate me. They miscalculated and invited me to post so that they could show how stupid I was, but when I posted my evidence, they got afraid and banned me.

Well, I don't care about the threats and name-calling. I have free speech, too, and I intend to keep it that way. I am going to show how Churchill kidnapped and deformed American Indian history....and more!

All of the above is Snapple's opinion.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

UPDATES AT END

Professor Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado at Boulder opposed the U.N. sanctions on Iraq that were intended to curb Saddam's weapons programs. Churchill also celebrated the 9-11 terrorists in his infamous article "Some People Push Back."

The goulish Churchill even told a reporter that he read the NYT obituary of every person who died in the World Trade Center on 9-11
http://www.legacy.com/NYTimes/sept11.asp
and satisfied himself that they were overwelmingly "Little Eichmanns":

"The New York Times shortly began publishing photos and biographical sketches of everyone who died in the Trade Center; I read every one of them, and the demography was about what I'd expected." http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Oct05/Frank1010.htm

Because of Churchill's assumption of Indian identity, some people may think American Indians are supporting Middle Eastern terrorists. In fact, Mohawk Indians have historically been employed building New York's skyscrapers, not blowing them up! I read in an Indian publication that on 9-11, an Indian construction team was working on one of the towers and even rescued people:

"Mohawk ironworkers helped build the World Trade Center and other monuments of the New York City skyline, and one crew was actually at work in the flight path of the plane that struck the second tower. St. Regis Mohawk Chief James Ransom noted that they joined rescue teams at great personal risk." http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096410295

Congress is holding hearings about a Pentagon program called Able Danger. This program used something called data mining to track Al Qaeda.

According to Congressional testimony on Wednesday, February 15, 2006, one of the Able Danger heroes may be an Indian policeman named J.D. Smith. I will try to find out more details about this and post updates on this thread.

The testimony just said that Mr. Smith was a retired Indian police officer who used traditional law enforcement investigative techniques plus data mining.

According to Congressional testimony, Smith developed a new form of intelligence collection that identified M. Atta and other terrorists a year or more before the 9-11 attacks.
http://www.house.gov/hasc/schedules/2-15-06ShafferTestimony.pdf
Page 15

The faux Indian Ward Churchill will only be remembered for talking through his hat, but real American Indians will always be remembered for their contributions to signals intelligence during both world wars. They were famous as code talkers who spoke languages that the enemy could not understand.

"At Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, declared, "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima." Connor had six Navajo code talkers working around the clock during the first two days of the battle. Those six sent and received over 800 messages, all without error.

The Japanese, who were skilled code breakers, remained baffled by the Navajo language. The Japanese chief of intelligence, Lieutenant General Seizo Arisue, said that while they were able to decipher the codes used by the US Army and Army Air Corps, they never cracked the code used by the Marines. The Navajo code talkers even stymied a Navajo soldier taken prisoner at Bataan. (About 20 Navajos served in the US Army in the Philippines.) The Navajo soldier, forced to listen to the jumbled words of talker transmissions, said to a code talker after the war, "I never figured out what you guys who got me into all that trouble were saying."
In 1942, there were about 50,000 Navajo tribe members. As of 1945, about 540 Navajos served as Marines. From 375 to 420 of those trained as code talkers; the rest served in other capacities."
http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/nativeamerican01/code.html

One of the Navajo code talkers, Albert Smith, was only 15 years old. "Late in his life, Albert Smith explained, the code word for America was, "Our Mother." Our Mother stood for freedom, our religion, our ways of life, and that's why we went in. " http://usgovinfo.about.com/blwhrelease15.htm

Here is a recent interview with Albert Smith:

"I was enlisted in 1943, in April. I had to fib about my age, 'cause my brother and I, we wanted to go into the war together... we wanted to stay together… He was seventeen, so he move his age up two years and I move mine from 15 to 17. http://www.thenavajocodetalkers.com/bios_albertsmith.htm

Another code-talker was Samuel Jesse Smith:

"My purpose for joining the Marine Corps was to get even with the Japanese for December 7, Pearl Harbor attack." http://www.thenavajocodetalkers.com/bios_smith.htm

Ward Churchill attended a September 23, 2005 conference about Able Danger even though he celebrated 9-11 as a victory for America's historical "victims." The organizers of the September "conspiracy theory" conference even suggested that President Bush had warnings about 9-11 because of Able Danger but allowed the attack to happen so that Bush cronies could make war profits.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/131zgkea.asp

Churchill's views about 9-11 are not characteristic of American Indians. Here is how the Navajo Code Talkers Association responded to the 9-11 attack:

NCTA Proclamation In Response to Sept 11, 2001 Attack ---
In response to the terrorist attack on America, September 11, 2001, the Navajo Code Talker Association, at their NCTA meeting Thursday, Sept. 27, 2001, a proclamation was read and approved:

"PROCLAMATION OF THE NAVAJO CODE TALKERS ASSOCIATION DECLARING THE READINESS AND DESIRE OF THE NAVAJO CODE TALKERS TO SUPPORT THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN HIS ANTI-TERRORISM STANCE AND TO PROVIDE ASSISTANCE TO OUR GREAT AND BELOVED COUNTRY IN THIS TIME OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY."

http://www.lapahie.com/NCTA.cfm

HELPFUL LINKS: Here is the testimony of Mr. Smith
http://www.house.gov/hasc/schedules/2-15-06SmithTestimony.pdf

Here is a general article about the contributions of American Indians to the American military
http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/nativeamerican01/inner.html
Here is the link to the famous Navajo Code Talker's Dictionary, which was once classified:

http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/nativeamerican01/dictionary.html
UPDATE #1

The lawyer for JD Smith, Mark Zaid, says that a typo was made in Shaffer's Congressional testimony.

According to a blogger:

One thing I need to correct. On the program, I referred to JD Smith as a "retired Indian police officer" which I read on Page 15 of Tony Shaffer's written testimony, but it turns out that was a typo Tony made. It should read "Indiana" not "Indian". http://abledangerblog.com/

[See post on Wednesday, February 22, 2006 titled "Stay tuned"]

As it happens, Mark Zaid and an aid for Congresman Weldon told me the same thing when I asked about the "retired Indian policeman" a few minutes before they spoke in public at a conference on Sunday, February 19, 2006. They said that unfortunately typos can't be fixed once entered in the Congressional testimony and posted on the Internet.

Still, it ought to be possible to correct an error in the official record in future testimony. Instead of taking the lawyer's word for it, I am going to see if JD Smith, Tony Shaffer, or Congressman Weldon set the record strait about this "typo" in subsequent hearings. I have seen the lawyer and heard what he said, but I have never seen JD Smith.

I'd like to hear more about how a retired Indiana policeman used traditional law enforcement and data mining to uncover M. Atta.

And I am still curious about why the likes of Ward Churchill, a fake Indian, attended an Able Danger conference hosted by Cynthia McKinney.

The Assault on Leah Kelly!

Picture Credit

"I broke and slammed [my wife] back against our bedroom wall, telling her that if she kept it up, she’d be apt to land in a hospital."---Ward Churchill

Ward Churchill has written that Indians at Pine Ridge "suffered violent physical assaults" and were even murdered, but he ironically admits that in 1996 his young Canadian Indian wife Leah Kelly suffered a violent physical assault when Churchill slammed her into their bedroom wall. He says that Leah was often assaulting him due to her alcoholism and mental illness.

Churchill wrote:
"I broke and slammed her back against our bedroom wall, telling her that if she kept it up, she’d be apt to land in a hospital." [See the text at Amazon on page 38.]

But shouldn't Churchill have gotten his wife to the hospital that night? Shouldn't Churchill have called the police, Leah's doctor, and an ambulance immediately if his mentally ill wife was violent and out of control, instead of threatening to injure her?

Churchill writes that his wife was a drunk and crazy Indian who seemingly committed suicide by running into the road because her Canadian Indian family was dysfunctional.

Churchill blames his wife's death on the collective guilt of white opression:

"I cannot avoid the meaning of it all. Leah’s is the quintessential story of contemporary North America. It is thus ours, each of us, to the extent that we live on this continent. From this, squirm as one might, there is, can be no escape."

Ward Churchill claims that he is an Indian, but he has not demonstrated Indian ancestry and does not hold citizenship in any Indian nation.

Isn't it just possible that Professor Churchill was "the white man" who mistreated his much younger Indian wife? Why is this white man's behavior the collective fault of all white people?

Leah Kelly was reportedly struck by a motorist who said she was lying in the road late at night and that he didn't see her. She reportedly had a blood-alcohol level of .35.

According to the Denver Post:

Churchill's third wife, 25-year-old Leah Kelly, was killed May 31, 2000, when hit by a car outside Boulder, and Churchill's biography of her continues to stir bad feelings with her family. Kelly had a blood-alcohol content of 0.35 percent when a motorist came upon her outside of town. He said she was lying in the road and he had no time to stop. Churchill later wrote that her death "left a crater in my soul," but he blamed her alcoholism, and her demise, on the colonial treatment Indians received from white people.

Her family today feels Churchill used Kelly's death to make philosophical points with which they don't agree. He portrayed her family as dysfunctional - a dysfunction he said was caused by her Indian parents' confinement to Indian schools. The family and her Ojibwe tribe dispute those details and Churchill's overall assessment that Leah Kelly was ground down by a white man's system until she became a doomed alcoholic.

"This was a really bright, outgoing (person), and she was absolutely beautiful," her sister Rhonda Kelly said. "I have yet to come across anybody who disliked her."

According to the Rocky Mountain News, Leah Kelly's sister, Rhonda Kelly "said [Leah]...told her that she suffered "psychological abuse" during her marriage to Churchill. She described him as exhibiting "very controlling behaviors" ....Churchill, in the wake of Leah Kelly's death, established a fund at CU for Rhonda Kelly's two children and contributed $200. Rhonda Kelly last summer wrote a letter to CU's financial aid office asking that the money be earmarked for a "promising native woman who was or is involved in an abusive relationship. I wish that such an award can assist a woman to leave an abusive relationship before her spirit is broken, as was the case of my sister Leah."

"My sister Leah Renae Kelly had so much promise, but she was involved in an emotionally and mentally abusive marriage, and as a result of feeling that she could not seek real help for fear of having others know of her predicament, she instead turned to alcohol to escape the torment and humiliation in her marital home."

Ward Churchill claims to be an advocate for Indians, but even by his own account he mistreated his Indian wife. I don't believe him when he points the finger at other people and accuses them of abusing Indians.

So it's not "Home Sweet Home."
Adjust! This is Snapple's opinion.

342 Indians

"Falsification and fabrication are habitual with Churchill"

---Professor Thomas Brown

The purpose of this blog is to show how Professor Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado at Boulder has falsified the history of American Indians to serve his own agenda. His falsifications have injured both Indian and non-Indian Americans.

My view is that Ward Churchill has a long history as a scholar who has knowingly collaborated with America's enemies.
He was an activist in the American Indian Movement [AIM], an organization that Churchill's own schismatic Colorado AIM [CO-AIM] claims accepted money from the Baath Socialist Party of Iraq.
Churchill has also written propaganda for the Covert Action Information Bulletin [C.A.I.B.], a mouthpiece of the Cuban and Soviet dictatorships.
He has spread mendacious falsehoods about the "crimes" of our government; he has exploited guilt to disarm our people; and he and his minions have furnished the United Nations and our enemies with a ready-made laundry list of supposed American "crimes."

But who is the real criminal? Look at Ward Churchill's own words!

Ward Churchill is a self-confessed wife-beater who celebrates the mass-murders of 9-11, who glorifies the criminal Black Panther terrorist movement, who has made false allegations about the American Army committing genocide, who daydreams about hanging American politicians, who "jokes" (in Boulder, Colorado) about "snuffing" American children, who boasts that he is a terrorist who taught the Weathermen how to make bombs, whose Colorado AIM website admits that the American Indian Movement took money from Iraq, and who claims that he was on Pine Ridge Indian reservation when two FBI agents were ambushed and murdered "Custer-like -- in their self-made trap."

Ward Churchill is an enemy of America who supports international terrorist murderers and who has said that he wants "America off the planet."

In 1985, Ward Churchill published an article titled "The Covert War Against Native Americans" [The Covert Action Information Bulletin, (Summer 1985 issue.), Number 24 pp. 16-21. C.A.I.B., P.O. Box 34583, Washington, D.C. 20043].
See also here.
The article alleged that FBI-backed death squads had murdered 342 Indians on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Churchill claimed that these murdered Indians were members of the American Indian Movement, or AIM.
Churchill wrote:
"[I]n the post-Wounded Knee context of South Dakota's Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation, independent researcher Candy Hamilton established that at least 342 AIM members and supporters were killed by roving death squads aligned with and supported by the FBI."

Churchill did not really document his allegations. He did not give the names of the people who were supposedly murdered or any details about their deaths in this 1985 article. He distanced himself slightly from his claim of 342 murdered people by writing that this figure had been established by another person, an "independent researcher" named Candy Hamilton, but Candy Hamilton was not an "independent researcher." She was an AIM activist and a good friend of another AIM activist, Anna Mae Aquash, who was murdered by some people in AIM. Hamilton was reportedly one of the last people to see Aquash alive and testified at the trial to see who murdered Aquash.

I have never seen what Candy Hamilton actually determined. I only know what Churchill claims she established.
I was very skeptical of this claim that FBI-backed death squads killed 342 Indians because the Covert Action Information Bulletin has been identified as a publication begun by a CIA defector named Philip Agee who now lives in Cuba.

A book by a British scholar, Christopher Andrew, and a Soviet defector, Vasili Mitrokhin, states that the Soviet KGB supplied the C.A.I.B. with propaganda designed to compromise the American government. [The Sword and Shield pages 232-234; See also my post about the Mitrokhin Archive].

In a 1990 book, Churchill told a different story about the 342 Indians.

In Chapter 7 of his 1990 book, Cointelpro Papers [Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States by Churchill & Jim Vander Wall South End Press ISBN 0-89608-359-4], Churchill claimed that more that 60 people were murdered.

The 342 figure has somehow changed from murdered people to people who were subjected into "violent physical assaults":

Churchill wrote:
"During the 36 months roughly beginning with the end of Wounded Knee and continuing through the first of May 1976, more than sixty AIM members and supporters died violently on or in locations immediately adjacent to the Pine Ridge Reservation. A minimum of 342 others suffered violent physical assaults."

Churchill has never explained this "mistake." How he could write in one place that FBI-backed death squads murdered 342 people and later that 342 Indians were assaulted and over 60 killed?

UPDATE: Because the 1973 Chilean coup that deposed President Salvadore Allende occurred on 9-11, just like the Al Qaeda attack on America, some writers on the left have called the Chile coup "The Other 9-11."

In 1990, years before America's 9-11, Churchill cited sources [Roberto Maestas and Bruce Johansen] who compared the murder rate after the 1973 coup in Chile to the murder rate during the alleged FBI-backed killings on Pine Ridge:

"The political murder rate at Pine Ridge between March 1, 1973, and March 1, 1976, was almost equivalent to that in Chile during the three years after the military coup supported by the United States deposed and killed President Salvador Allende ... Based on Chiles population of 10 million, the estimated fifty thousand persons killed in three years of political repression in Chile at the same time (1973/1976) roughly paralleled the murder rate at Pine Ridge. 79"

It is strange that Churchill felt the need to quote Maestas and Johansen in 1990 about the comparison of death rates in Chile and on Pine Ridge. Why didn't Churchill simply quote his own earlier research? As early as 1985, Churchill himself had written:

"The statistics [death rate on Pine Ridge] are entirely comparable to what happened in Chile in the immediate aftermath of Pinochet's coup."

Perhaps Churchill did not want readers to notice that he had made the preposterous claim in the Soviet/Cuban Covert Action Information Bulletin that FBI-backed death squads had murdered 342 Indians.

For more details about "The Other 9-11" see this post:

It is completely false to compare the death rate after the coup in Chile to the alleged death rate on Pine Ridge. For one thing, Churchill is inventing that FBI-backed death squads killed 342 Indians. The political killings in Chile actually happened.

Some leftists reacted to America's 9-11 by making an analogy to Chile's 9-11. Their point was basically that America "had it coming" because of their support for the Chile coup and other dictators. There is actually not much evidence that the U.S. caused the coup in Chile.