June 26, 1975: A Tragic Day for All Americans

When Professor Ward Churchill claimed that the two murdered FBI agents died "Custer-like--in their self-made trap," he disparaged these victims of terrorism in exactly the same way that he disparaged the 9-11 victims as "little Eichmanns."

Update: Former FBI Agent Joe Trimbach's important remembrance of 6-26-75 appears in News from Indian Country and follows my commemoration.

On June 26, 1975, two young FBI Special Agents, Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams, were shot to death execution-style at close range on Pine Ridge Indian reservation after they were already injured and on the ground.

These brutal, senseless murders did not bring anything good for the impoverished Pine Ridge Indians. Here is an overview of what happened.

The investigation showed that the two FBI agents didn't fire many shots. They seem to have been surprised and ambushed by the shooters.

The double-murder happened at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the Jumping Bull Compound on the 99th anniversary of the Battle of Little Bighorn, also called "Custer's Last Stand" (June 25-26, 1876).

I think that the murder was probably a kind of sick live theater with the two FBI agents unwittingly playing the role of Custer in a symbolic reinactment of "Custer's Last Stand." This writer makes the same point.

The tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill wrote up his account of this shooting in his disingenuous book Agents of Repression. Churchill characterizes his account as "reality" and claims that the FBI agents were to blame for their own deaths. Churchill suggests that the FBI agents initiated the shooting. In fact, it appears to me that the FBI agents were outgunned before they started shooting.

Churchill claims he was on Pine Ridge when the killings occurred and that he personally witnessed sweeps by the FBI and BIA as he was urinating alongside the road. Churchill also reportedly has claimed that he was a member of AIM security in the early 1970s.

In Agents of Repression, Ward Churchill describes the double murder of these young men, whose job was to make sure that reservation Indians were protected from serious crime, as follows:

"The reality...was that Coler and Williams were vastly outgunned from the moment they commenced firing, although it is doubtful they realized it at the outset. Further, AIM [ie American Indian Movement] and its supporters had sufficient firepower available to turn back the initial attempts at reinforcement, sealing the two agents -- Custer-like -- in their self-made trap" [page 241].

When Professor Ward Churchill claimed that the two murdered FBI agents died "Custer-like--in their self-made trap," he disparaged these victims of terrorism in exactly the same way that he disparaged the 9-11 victims as "little Eichmanns."

Here is an article about the controversy over these murders.

The No Parole Peltier Association (NPPA) has a lot of information about this crime. The site provides documentation from various perspectives. Some of these documents are even written by Ward Churchill, the tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic studies. It turns out that Ward Churchill was one of the people who contributed to the mythology about what happened on Pine Ridge on June 26, 1975.

I have posted earlier articles about the murders of Coler and Williams. This is probably the most extensive article.

I think that the tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill tells lies about the FBI that make Indian people distrust law enforcement. How can the FBI ensure good protection for Indians against crimes if the Indians don't trust the FBI?

Why would Churchill do this? Why would he try to sow distrust between the FBI and Indian people? I don't think it is because he is trying to protect Indians or correct FBI shortcomings; I think that Churchill is a provocateur who tries to incite trouble with his lies.

I saw that Churchill publishes his fabrications in the Covert Action Information Bulletin (CAIB). This publication was run by a man named Philip Agee. According to news accounts, Agee was fired from the CIA, went over to the communist side, and ended up in Cuba. Agee reportedly got assistance for his CAIB from the Soviet KGB and the Cuban intelligence. The purpose of the CAIB was to discredit the CIA and FBI.

Churchill also participated in a film called All Power to the People that Agee was an advisor for.

Churchill has written that people on Pine Ridge were murdered by FBI-backed death-squads during what he has described as a "reign of terror" on Pine Ridge. Churchill has claimed that 342 Indians were murdered and at other times that 342 Indians were assaulted and about 60 killed.

I read Churchill's account, and this "reign of terror" sounded vaguely familiar to me because a teacher and my father told me a similar story when I was a child. I did some research and learned that this story I was told as a child was called the Osage Indian Murders. I think that Churchill got his idea to fabricate a story about FBI-backed death-squads, "uninvestigated" murders and a "reign of terror" from the true story of the Osage Indian Murders, an actual historical event that---as in Churchill's fairy tale about FBI-backed murders on Pine Ridge---featured "uninvestigated," suspicious deaths during what became known as a "reign of terror."

The suspicious murders ended when the Bureau of Investigation (the early name for the FBI) got involved, worked with tribal leaders and Indian informants, and caught the criminal gang responsible for the Osage Indian murders.

It is facinating to read the old FBI documents about the murder investigation and to read the book called The Osage Indian Murders by Lawrence Hogan. This book is sold by the Osage Nation's on-line store.

The Bureau of Investigation interviewed many Osage people whose testimony helped the authorities end the vicious killings and punish a criminal organization led by mastermind William "King of the Osage" Hale. This was the FBI's first big case and the records are important history for the Osage Nation as well as for the FBI.

The University of Colorado Research Misconduct Inquiry and real scholars have determined that Churchill made up a story about the American Army deliberately giving the Mandan Indians smallpox. Churchill probably got the idea for his fabrication from a possible instance of deliberate infection of Indians by the British General Amherst in the colonial era.

I think Ward Churchill's claims about "uninvestigated" deaths on Pine Ridge and his fantastic claims of FBI-backed death-squads murdering Indians during a "reign of terror" were fabricated from whole cloth, just as his claims about the Mandan "genocide" were fabricated, and based on the true story of the Osage Indian Murders.

Of course, because he is an enemy of the FBI and of our democracy, Churchill changes one important fact: the FBI captured the men who murdered these wealthy Oklahoma Indians and worked hard to put these killers behind bars. Churchill would not tell how the FBI tried to ensure justice for the murdered Osage because it would not fit into his CAIB propaganda theme that the FBI is a political police that terrorizes Indians.

Update: Former FBI agent Joe Trimbach also wrote an article about the 6-26-75 anniversary in News from Indian Country to commemorate the deaths of these agents and of a Canadian Indian subsequently murdered by AIM, Anna Mae Aquash. I am posting the whole article because I want this for the historical record.

Former FBI agents say: Anna Mae Awaits Justice 6-27-07
by Joe Trimbach
.....June 26, 1975: A date not easily forgotten by FBI Agents. On that horrible day, Special Agents Ron Williams and Jack Coler were gunned down in an open meadow on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Following the initial hail of fire from the assailants, three gunmen approached the injured Agents and finished them off at close range. Ron Williams and Jack Coler are known as Service Martyrs, a special designation reserved for Federal Agents who gave their lives while engaged in direct adversarial action.

Their sacrifice is also remembered as the only two Agents in Bureau history to have been executed in the line of duty. Leonard Peltier, a member of a militant group of Native Americans, later bragged about being the one who shot Ron Williams in the face, as he sat pleading for his life. With the exception of a few days on the lam following a prison break, Peltier has spent the last 30 years behind bars.

Many of his brothers-in-arms, members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), have tried to construct plausible alibis to support his claimed innocence. None of it has stuck, and many of the cover stories have only served to implicate AIM members in other killings, such as the execution-style murder of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash.

Anna Mae was a member suspected of cooperating with law enforcement. There’s an old Lakota saying when roughly translated means that medicine comes to those who need it. Put another way, what goes around, comes around. Well, here it comes.

June 26, 2007: The Supreme Court of British Columbia orders the extradition of John Graham to the United States. He is the alleged trigger man who carried out the executioner’s mandate against Anna Mae.

According to Arlo Looking Cloud (Graham’s convicted helper), Graham put a gun to Anna Mae’s head, pulled the trigger, and pushed her off a cliff. For the last several years, he has been under house arrest in Canada.

Like Peltier before him, Graham has surrounded himself with supporters, some of them pitifully uninformed. But unlike Peltier’s murderous rampage, Graham’s pre-meditation was evidently known to several others. In fact, dozens were said to be involved as co-conspirators, among them AIM legends, their lawyers, and the group’s lesser lieutenants. The commonality of dates underscores other parallels (the medicine at work). Jack Coler left two young boys. Anna Mae left two young girls. Ron, Jack, and Anna Mae were in the prime of their lives, all about the same age, 28, 29, and 30. In both cases, the killers acted on false information. Peltier thought the Agents were after him because he was a wanted fugitive.

The Agents were actually looking for someone else and didn’t even know Peltier was on the reservation. AIM leaders thought Anna Mae was an FBI informant. She was not. As it turned out, oblivious to the leadership, Anna Mae was loyal to the end. Ron pleaded for his life, hoping to prevail upon the humanity of his killer. In her final moments, Anna Mae did the same and when she realized the end was near, she asked to pray on her knees. (The request was denied.) Months before he placed a gun to Ron Williams’s head, Peltier had placed a gun in Anna Mae’s mouth, in one of her early interrogations. She died six months after the Agents, partly because it was feared that she would repeat Peltier’s boast which she heard “straight from the horse’s mouth.”

People familiar with the case believe that once Graham is on American soil, AIM’s legacy is up for grabs. As the embattled Professor Ward Churchill likes to say, the chickens have come home to roost.

The professor, however, would presumably not want the description applied to his old warhorse buddy, AIM leader Russell Means. On a cold morning in 1976, Means and his brothers boycotted Anna Mae’s funeral, evidently believing her guilty as charged.

AIM war chiefs and Anna Mae’s erstwhile friends must now reposition themselves for the coming storm. An old rusty prosecutorial engine is finally turning over, powered by an unlimited statute of limitations for murder in the first degree.

Former members know that aiding and abetting carries the same penalty that awaits Graham: life in prison. And so they are naturally concerned that Graham may cut a deal and sing like a canary. Stay tuned. This could get very interesting.

Joseph H. Trimbach is the former Special Agent in Charge of the Minneapolis Division of the FBI. He is author of a forthcoming book, American Indian Mafia , An FBI Agent’s True Story About Wounded Knee, Leonard Peltier, and the American Indian Movement (AIM).

ACTA President Anne D. Neal Defends Free Speech

The President of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) Anne D. Neal has published an excellent defense of academic freedom called "Academic Freedom Needs Defending — From Ward Churchill" [Inside Higher Education, 6-19-07]. President Neal makes the important point that the University of Colorado's investigation of Ward Churchill is, in fact, a defense of academic freedom:

The arguments of Churchill and his misguided defenders do — regrettably — arise from a basic conviction that academics should be free from accountability. They involve manipulating the term “academic freedom” in ways that undermine a concept of foundational importance to the academic enterprise. They amount to an attempt to turn the concept inside out — morphing what was originally a cluster of interlocking privileges and responsibilities centered on the public good into a justification for the false idea that academics have no obligation to the public at all. Finally, they stem from the profoundly mistaken premise – which Brown rebuts in his letter to the Board of Regents – that input from the public, from constituencies such as alumni and trustees, violates academic freedom as well. Why else would Churchill and his defenders absurdly claim that Brown’s advisory role with the American Council of Trustees and Alumni — which ended a decade ago — invalidates his opinion?

Far from being an “attack” on academic freedom, Colorado’s handling of the Churchill affair is, in fact, in defense of academic freedom. [Full text]

I have posted some of my opinions about Ward Churchill following this IHE 6-19-07 article and following the earlier 5-30-07 article, too. Why should free speech be the exclusive perogative of Ward Churchill and his crew?

I am really grateful to President Neal and the ACTA for their leadership in articulating the real meaning of academic freedom. I am also grateful that Inside Higher Education has given me the opportunity to post my views in their comments section.

I am grateful to the brave Interim Chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder, Phil DiStefano, who recommended on June 26, 2006, that Ward Churchill be fired for research misconduct.

I am grateful for C.U. President Hank Brown's courage and for the hard work of C.U. committees that defended academic freedom, even if they were a little late to wake up to Ward Churchill's devious appropriation of honest scholars' voices. A lot of people have been tricked by Ward Churchill over the years.

Let Churchill have his free speech, but deny him the prestige of a tenured professorship because this makes people assume he is an honest scholar, not a propagandist. Give us back the voices of the honest scholars that this incredibly dishonest Churchill has mischaracterized, plagiarized, and hijacked for his own agenda!

A lot of scholars have stood up to Ward Churchill and have defended academic freedom from his dishonest "research" practices.

The American Council of University Professors (AAUP) boasts loudly that its core mission is "telling the truth in difficult times" and "protecting academic freedom." These are fine-sounding goals, but as I have noted in earlier posts, there is a big difference between protecting academic freedom and protecting a liar and a thug like Ward Churchill.

It seems to me that Ward Churchill is hypocritically mouthing the AAUP slogans for his own personal agenda. I hope AAUP President Cary Nelson will wake up and smell the coffee, but I don't think he will.

If the AAUP doesn't defend the American public from liars like Ward Churchill, then the public is not going to support protections for professors like tenure. Tenure doesn't mean that a professor is always right, but it does require that he or she be honest. We all make honest mistakes, and we learn from our mistakes; but we don't learn anything from lies except to distrust the people we have put in positions of trust and leadership. Ward Churchill has abused that trust.

At this late date, professors who believe that they are protecting themselves by protecting Ward Churchill are either incredibly gullible or know that they are guilty of fraudulant research too.

"American Indian Mafia" by Joseph H. Trimbach

"For the first time, Joe's book exposes myths and falsehoods, as well as never-before-published secrets of AIM."

As I noted last year, former FBI agent Joseph H. Trimbach is writing a book about the American Indian Movement (AIM). This book is going to be called American Indian Mafia. [Update: now available here as an e-book or in paperback.]

Mr. Trimbach also mentioned his forthcoming book at the end of a 12-25-2006 article he published about the myths of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in News From Indian Country [cache ; or scroll down to "Graves Mistakes"]

"Grave's Mistakes" [cache] exposes AIM's sordid history and describes the collateral damage AIM did to its human shields, Indian people, in its war on its real target---the FBI.

Another good article about the damage AIM did to Indian people and law enforcement was written by John Burrows in the NY Times (9-29-83).

I share the perspective of these two authors, and that is why my blog is called The Legend of Pine Ridge. Americans died because of AIM's actions, and AIM's leaders cynically hid their destructive actions behind a myth of Indian advocacy.

It seems to me that just as Ward Churchill masquerades as an Indian, AIM originated as an anti-FBI organization that also cleverly masqueraded as an Indian organization. Of course, many ordinary members of AIM were idealistic human shields and probably unaware of the real agenda behind AIM's hypocritical mask of Indian advocacy.

A poster who identified himself as J. Trimbach recently made this interesting comment following a 5-9-07 article describing the investigation of the tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill in the Sterling, Colorado Journal Advocate:

J. Trimbach wrote on May 10, 2007 10:55 AM:

"A new book entitled, American Indian Mafia, will expose Churchill's fraudulent research and conspiracy theories embodied in two of his more interesting books, Agents of Repression, and The COINTELPRO Papers. These books deal with supposed conspiracies concocted by the FBI against the American Indian Movement. The investigating committee apparently has not looked under this rock."

No doubt the book's title, American Indian Mafia, is a play on the name of the American Indian Movement (AIM). It is high time that someone from the FBI defended his organization, Indians, and the American public from AIM's ridiculous conspiracy theories.

Mr. Trimbach also gave a speech about his forthcoming book to an audience of retired FBI agents on 10-17-06:

Oct. 17, 2006 – Ed Fleck advises the speaker is Joe Trimbach, a retired Agent, who served for 23 years. He retired in 1979, and lives in Venice, FL. Joe was SAC in Minneapolis during RESMURS, one of the Bureau's biggest and saddest cases in which two Agents, Jack Coler and Ron Williams, both 27, were executed at close range by Leonard Peltier at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Two years earlier, AIM activists violently took over the village of Wounded Knee and for 71 days, engaged in shooting at the FBI and the U. S. Marshals. Joe will talk about this case as well as the occupation of Wounded Knee and subsequent events.

Joe has written a book entitled American Indian Mafia, which is currently in the process of being edited and therefore is not yet published. Joe describes his book as being an FBI Agent's true story about Wounded Knee, Leonard Peltier, and the leaders of the American Indian Movement (AIM). For the first time, Joe's book exposes myths and falsehoods, as well as never-before-published secrets of AIM.

In a 4-17-06 article titled "Truth, too, Buried at Wounded Knee" [or scroll down here], Mr. Trimbach told the Rocky Mountain News:

In the world of academia, truth is...rendered homeless where AIM is concerned. For example, University of Colorado's embattled professor, Ward Churchill, exemplifies a career built on fraudulent research. Take his book, The COINTELPRO Papers (South End Press, 2001), a collection of outrageous assertions based on guesswork. University administrators who granted Churchill tenure may be surprised to learn that each mention of my name is in reference to complete fabrications.

In one of the more zany episodes, I assume the identity of an infiltrating postal inspector during the Wounded Knee crisis. In another, I am given responsibility for the death of a village occupier, at a time when I was hundreds of miles away. What I did do, as the chief FBI official on the scene, was to order the erection of manned roadblocks to cordon off the violence. Would-be historians have since contended that armed militants who opened fire on these roadblocks were not trying to harm anyone. The assertion is both inaccurate and absurd.

I suspect that it will be really embarrassing to be a C.U. professor, a C.U. administrator, or a C.U. regent running for election if this book comes out before C.U. manages to fire that con-man Wardo for his research misconduct.

House Drops out of the Blogosphere and Lands on Natsu Saito (Ward Churchill's Fourth Wife)!

"I've received...unqualified support from hard-line Maoists.....[T]he Maoist International Movement (MIM) have used their weekly papers to advance some of the best analysis of my case and its implications yet published"--Ward Churchill

And not only the MIM defends Wardo!

Ward Churchill's wife, Natsu Saito [video], is on the Board of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT).

The Board of SALT is circulating an e-mail petition to its members and asking that the membership write to the regents of the University of Colorado and demand that the regents reject President Hank Brown's recommendation that the tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill be fired.

Natsu Saito also has an article about Ward Churchill's so-called "free speech" case in Counterpunch. Her arguments are struck down point-by-point by blogger Noj at PirateBallerina.

Saito's defense of Ward Churchill is all over the Internet, but readers are not told that she is Churchill's wife.

PirateBallerina carries the continuing saga of the ever-imploding "Ward's World" and counters the arguments of Churchill's SALT defenders beginning on June 20, 2007.

On 6-22-07, PB also excerpted the charges, findings, and conclusions that the C.U. Privilege and Tenure (P&T) Committee drew about Ward Churchill's research misconduct.

The Drunkablog picks up the SALT story on June 21, 2007.

After the bloggers demolished the flimsy legal arguments of Churchill's "Dune Buggy Attack Battalion," there wasn't much left of the DBAB but a smoking hole.

Ward Churchill is not the first genocide conspiracy theorist whom Natsu Saito has married. She used to be married to an Atlanta man named Chimurenga Jenga, a vigilantee who patrolled Atlanta's streets during the infamous serial child-murders with a gun and a bat. Jenga's group became known as "the Bat Patrol."

According to a report by Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News (3-20-81), Chimurenga Jenga said that the Atlanta "police function as oppressors of the downtrodden."

"Jenga's pet theory was that the white devils were conspiring to commit genocide against Atlanta's black population by murdering black children. And the arrest and conviction of Wayne Williams -- a black man -- for the serial child murders in Atlanta was part of the greater conspiracy." [See quote by "NOJ" and supporting information here].

Communists argued that the real killers of the children were the KKK and that the government knew this and protected the Klan.

The Mayor of Atlanta and the Chief of Police during the Atlanta child murders were black men. I doubt they would protect white killers if they were kidnapping murdering Atlanta's black children.

Ringing Down the Curtain on the Great White Wardo!

The Daily Camera (6-22-07) reports on the final act in The
Madcap Misadventures of the Tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill [video]:

After being notified that the CU president is recommending to the regents that he be fired because of research misconduct, Churchill has formally requested a private hearing with the Board of Regents. At the hearing, the regents will listen to arguments from attorneys representing the tenured professor and the university.

"The next step is to schedule the hearing," said CU spokeswoman Michele McKinney.

McKinney said she expects that the hearing will take place in late July and will be finished in one day. The regents will then vote in public — but without a public hearing — whether Churchill should be dismissed.

The vote will be the final step in a lengthy academic-misconduct case that has involved extensive investigations into Churchill's written works, hearings with faculty committees and counter-claims from the professor's supporters. [full text]

Bird Friday Honors Sergei Prokofiev!

The Russian musician Sergei Prokifiev composed the ballet Romeo and Juliet during Stalin's terror. When I listen to the piece called "The Montagues and Capulets," also known as "Dance of the Knights," I hear the hatred and tension as the captive nations suffer in agony while the communists turn them brother against brother.

Wikipedia's entry on "The Montagues and Capulets" observes:

"A dark and atmospheric piece, it has become a de facto signature tune for the Soviet era, and is used as the soundtrack for numerous dramas, documentaries and adverts that have Soviet subject matter."

Watch and listen! Here some young Japanese musicians perform their rendition. Here is the entire piece on GoEar. Prokofiev's ballet was not performed when it was written for political reasons; his life became very difficult because of arrests of his friends and foreign-born wife as well as the vacillating Communist Party policies and controls on cultural life. He died on the same day as Stalin, but many of his artist friends had gone before him.

Prokofiev also composed the children's symphony Peter and the Wolf. I also see this story as an allegory about what was happening in Russia under Stalin's terror.

My favorite character is the duck who gets eaten by the wolf.
Here are some YouTube snips of Peter and his duck.

Grandfather tells Peter to stay at home and not go into the meadow because hunters have discovered the tracks of a wolf...but boys like Peter are not afraid of wolves! The full story with music is here!

Ward Churchill Should Try to Get a Teaching Job at Liberty University!

...if the promising opportunity at Casa Bonita doesn't pan-out!

Commenters are posting their opinions about Ward Churchill following ACTA President Anne Neal's 6-19-07 article in Inside Higher Education. [I already wrote about Neal's article here.]

A poster named "Ken" complained that ACTA has a double standard because they supposedly attacked the free speech of the tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill for his 9-11 article "Some People Push Back" but didn't go after Jerry Falwell of Liberty University when Falwell blamed America for 9-11.

According to Ken, Falwell said:

The abortionists have got to bear some burden for [9-11] because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'

Ken is not arguing logically at all.

Ken demands one set of rules for Jerry Falwell and another set of rules for Ward Churchill. ACTA has to have one standard for both.

Ward Churchill is not being investigated by C. U. for his idiotic 9-11 article "Some People Push Back" where he characterized the victims of 9-11 as "little Eichmanns."

[People should note, however, that Churchill is such a foolish person that he made the amazing comment in "Some People Push Back" that Madeleine Albright "responded" (in 1996) to the 1998 remarks of a U.N. official.]

Ken asks why ACTA didn't target Jerry Falwell for his stupid analysis of 9-11. The answer is because ACTA believes in free speech.

ACTA can't have a double standard--one for Ward Churchill and another for Jerry Falwell.

ACTA defended Ward Churchill's right to free speech when he made his stupid 9-11 remarks; hence, ACTA can't go after Jerry Falwell for his free speech if they don't go after Ward Churchill for his free speech.

Here is the text of ACTA's defense of Churchill's right to his opinions about 9-11.

Look, Ken! Look! ACTA said Churchill's remarks are NOT grounds for firing him:

GROUP DEFENDS COLORADO PROFESSOR:
Calling 9-11 Victims “Eichmanns” Is Not Grounds for Firing

WASHINGTON, DC (February 11, 2005) – The American Council of Trustees and Alumni today came to the defense of University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill who is under investigation after publishing a commentary claiming America got what it deserved on September 11.

According to Churchill, “on the morning of September 11, 2001, a few more chickens—along with some half-million dead Iraqi children—came home to roost in a very big way at the twin towers of New York’s world trade center. Well, actually a few of them seem to have nestled in at the Pentagon as well.” Claiming that destruction of the twin towers resulted from America’s own actions, Churchill called victims of the attack “little Eichmanns.”

A number of legislators and political leaders have called for Churchill’s firing in the wake of his controversial comments. The Colorado Board of Regents has demanded that university administrators undertake a study to determine whether Churchill should be fired for “professional incompetence.”

“Professor Churchill’s claims that the victims of 9-11 were ‘little Eichmanns,’ is simply outrageous, totally absurd, mean, hateful and perverse. Even so, he should not be fired in the absence of academic due process,” said ACTA President Anne D. Neal [full text].

I think commenter Ken is really trying to make a false analogy here to confuse people.

The ACTA defended Churchill's free speech. Churchill's dishonest research is a separate issue.

I think Falwell's remarks were ignorant, cruel, opportunistic, and un-Christian; and he was harshly criticized for them in 2001. Still, they were his opinion and protected by free speech.

Liberty University never accused Jerry Falwell of what Ward Churchill's employer accused him of---research misconduct. Had Falwell been accused by Liberty University of research misconduct, this clergyman ran a private religious institution that may have operated under different rules for research misconduct.

Ward Churchill doesn't work for Liberty College. He works for the University of Colorado, a public university. He has to follow the rules about research conduct of his own institution, just like other professors at C.U. and despite the fact that he is a celebrity revolutionary. I believe that these rules are basically the same rules for research that the Federal Government requires scholars to follow when it gives grant money.

Perhaps Ward Churchill would be more comfortable preaching at Liberty University where they share his tinfoil perspective about who is at fault for 9-11.

Professor Moriarty: "The Napoleon of Crime"

“He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized. Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be removed–the word is passed to the professor, the matter is organized and carried out."---Sherlock Holmes describing his nemesis, Professor Moriarty

Here is an audio adaptation of "The Final Problem," Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1893 short story of the final confrontation between Sherlock Holmes and London's "Napoleon of Crime" Professor Moriarty.

Sir John Gielgud plays Sherlock Holmes, Sir Ralph Richardson plays Doctor Watson, and Orson Welles plays the legendary criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty.

I have provided some background about this story and a link to the text in an earlier post.

"The Final Problem" is told by Dr. Watson, who begins:

IT IS with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was distinguished. In an incoherent and, as I deeply feel, an entirely inadequate fashion, I have endeavoured to give some account of my strange experiences in his company...[full text]

ACTA President Anne Neal Says "Academic Freedom Needs Defending — From Ward Churchill"

Anne Neal, the President of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), has written a 6-19-07 article for Inside Higher Education called "Academic Freedom Needs Defending — From Ward Churchill."

This is exactly what President Carry Nelson of the American Association of University Professors ("Protecting your rights") should be doing if he were really protecting academic freedom and tenure instead of cynically exploiting professors' fears in order to protect Ward Churchill.

The AAUP website boasts loudly that its core mission is "telling the truth in difficult times" and "protecting academic freedom"; but as I have noted in earlier posts, the AAUP really just seems to be protecting Ward Churchill.

ACTA President Neal writes:

...Churchill is in the headlines today for something other than his opinions — this time, because of Colorado’s attention to his scholarly record.

Despite having only a master’s in communications, Churchill’s Colorado career was put on the fast track — landing him both a tenured professorship and chairmanship in ethnic studies. In subsequent years, charges of research misconduct began to surface. And in 2005, his university chose to ignore those allegations no longer. Having first made clear that Churchill was not being punished for his public utterances, the university launched a meticulous investigation centered on specific charges of scholarly misconduct. That is, it did what any institution claiming to care about academic standards must do. For this Hank Brown, who became president at Colorado after the scandal broke, deserves great credit.

When the Boulder campus’s Standing Committee on Research Misconduct issued its report on Churchill last summer, it unanimously found Churchill guilty of severe, sustained, and deliberate breaches of professional integrity. It further noted that the evaluative system that nurtured and rewarded Churchill needed an overhaul. Now, as Brown advises what sanction should apply, the investigation has also galvanized an important discussion about what academic freedom is — and what it is not.

To Brown, accountability is a crucial component of academic freedom. In recommending that Churchill be dismissed, Brown noted that the university’s policies define academic freedom as a set of privileges and correlative responsibilities — the latter often ignored in academic discourse on the topic. Academic freedom, he wrote, is “the freedom to inquire, discover, publish and teach truth as the faculty member sees it. … Within the bounds of the definition, however, ‘faculty members have the responsibility to maintain competence, exert themselves to the limit of their intellectual capacities in scholarship, research, writing, and speaking; and to act on and off the campus with integrity and in accordance with the highest standards of their profession.’”

Noting that academic freedom entails both individual and institutional accountability, Brown observed that taxpayer-supported institutions have particularly binding obligations to the people. “The public must be able to trust that the university’s resources will be dedicated to academic endeavors carried out according to the highest possible standards,” he wrote. “Professor Churchill’s conduct, if allowed to stand, would erode the university’s integrity and public trust.” Churchill’s conduct, said Brown, “clearly violated the University’s policies on academic freedom.” [See the full text of this fantastic article]

President Neal is really serious about protecting academic freedom and tenure. Ward Churchill is cynically exploiting professors' fears by making it appear that if he is fired then academic freedom and tenure are at risk. Really, just the opposite is true.

Attention MIM!

"I've received...unqualified support from hard-line Maoists.....[T]he Maoist International Movement (MIM) have used their weekly papers to advance some of the best analysis of my case and its implications yet published"--Ward Churchill

In a 6-6-07 post titled "Attention Spies!" The Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) threatens Ward Churchill's critics:

"Your value to us grows less by the day, because once the regents vote for punishing Ward Churchill, your possible public opinion value to us will be much less. The wrong vote by the regents increases the likelihood that you will be deposed in court."

Actually, MIM, people are not "deposed in court." A deposition is testimony outside of court. Do'h!

The narcissistic MIM [video] is as ignorant about the law as Ward Churchill [video], who imagines that he can use the 9th amendment to take away other people's 1st Amendment rights.

Ward Churchill and David Lane on T.V.

The tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill and his lawyer David Lane appeared on a Denver NBC program called "Your Show" on 6-17-07. The whole interview is on Channel 9/KUSA.

Boulder's Dynamic Duo made the same old tired argument about Wardo's free speech.

Yawn......I don't think Wardo will look like much of a tough guy when he swaggers into court and has to confront the University of Colorado defense team [video] with a loser lawyer like David Lane.

This is really a contract dispute. Churchill, like all C.U. professors, is not allowed to engage in research misconduct.

The real mysteries are how Churchill, who has no Ph.D., quickly "earned" tenure in the first place and why C.U. overlooked his blatantly dishonest research for so long. There is something a little fishy about the process that gave Churchill tenure when one considers that many young professsors with Ph.D.s don't get tenure at all.

Maybe the AAUP should examine the process that gave Churchill tenure. The AAUP website boasts sanctimoniously that its core mission is "telling the truth in difficult times" and "protecting academic freedom"; but it looks to me like the AAUP is really just protecting the unexplained privileges of Ward Churchill, not tenure, the truth or academic freedom.

With unintentional irony, AAUP President Cary Nelson claims in the opening of this podcast that academic freedom is "massively imperiled" and that "none of the stakeholders in higher education understand what academic freedom is---none."

The stakeholders might understand the perils of professors better if the AAUP ("Protecting your rights") examined how a charlatan like Ward Churchill---instead of a qualified scholar---got tenure in the first place.

Final note:
PirateBallerina and Drunkablog point out the Dynamic Duo's retreaded falsehoods on the TV news program "Your Show."

Old Time Radio!

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Here are some old-time radio programs. I will add to the list and perhaps include descriptions.

Winston Churchill speeches

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of Hitchcock's Notorious (Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotton). See also Wikipedia entry about the film:

"Critics have noted a 'beverage motif' that runs throughout the picture:...at the beginning of the film, Alicia is portrayed as a dipsomaniac and bottles and glasses are prominent in many scenes; later, Alicia and Devlin discover uranium in wine bottles in Sebastian's cellar; finally, Sebastian and his mother attempt to kill Alicia by poisoning her coffee."

Bloggers gush over this romantic thriller.

The Lives of Harry Lime

Internet Archive: Old Time Radio

Prelinger Archives

Archive for "I Was a Communist for the FBI."
[FBI file on the program]

Radio Lovers: The FBI in Peace and War (series)

Archive for WWII News

Old Time Radio programs at Radio Lovers

"This Is War"

Lord Haw-Haw's Last Broadcast (4-30-45)

Where's Jim Vander Wall?

I recently asked some questions on my blog about Jim Vander Wall [video], the co-author of two books with The University of Colorado's embattled Professor Ward Churchill [video]:

Jim Vander Wall is a man of mystery. Where does he live? Does he have a job? A Social Security number? A driver's license? An American passport? Dandruff? I'd like to meet this Vander Wall so I can ask him why he never stepped up to the plate in defense of his co-author, the tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill. That wasn't very sporting of Jim.

I found a criminology journal called The Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

A Ph.D. criminologist from Carleton University named Matthew G. Yeager cites Jim Vander Wall in a journal article [SEE: THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT AS A METHODOLOGICAL TOOL: SUING THE GOVERNMENT FOR DATA].

I wrote and asked The Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice about Vander Wall, and a Ph.D. criminologist actually responded:

"If you will kindly look up the monograph references in the article...Mr. Vander Wall is a co-author with Ward Churchill (an aboriginal activist and professor) of two books on the subject of state surveillance in the U.S. A search of any major library will undoubtedly turn up his name as well. I don't know the gentleman, personally."

Stay tuned as we continue our hunt for the Great White Waldo...er...Wardo....er....Wall, Do'h! [video]

AAUP Exceptionalism

"I've received...unqualified support from hard-line Maoists.....[T]he Maoist International Movement (MIM) have used their weekly papers to advance some of the best analysis of my case and its implications yet published"--Ward Churchill

The Maoist MIM has a What's New Page and also a page devoted to the "witch hunt" against Ward Churchill. I thought the paranoid MIM was some kind of satire site, but then I saw that it was actually endorsed by the tenured Plagiarist of ethnic studies Ward Churchill.

MIM is a lot like the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Both organizations say they want to protect free speech, but really they only want to protect Ward Churchill by arguing that because he is a disgusting, loudmouthed celebrity that he doesn't have to follow C.U.'s rules for academic research.

Did the MIM or the AAUP defend the free speech of a student cartoonist named Grant Crowell when Ward Churchill threatened him?

Mr. Crowell explains in four self-interviews [one, two, three, four] that he decided to take on CU Boulder Professor Ward Churchill after Churchill told a crowd of people that it would be a "good thing" if Grant were executed, dismembered, and cremated like some NAZI cartoonist [Crowell self-interview #2].

Churchill frequently characterizes people who oppose his views as Nazis.

Grant says that Churchill is only interested in free speech for himself, but wants to intimidate others from having free speech.

Churchill argues that the 9th Amendment should prevent Americans from celebrating Columbus Day. In two videos [here and here], Mr. Crowell interviews four law professors who dispute Churchill's argument that his 9th Amendment trumps the 1st Amendment.

I think that the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) is an organization that has actually does protect free speech. When Ward Churchill was criticized for his stupid 9-11 article "Some People Push Back," the ACTA said that he should not be fired for his views.

However, Churchill tries to argue that even his notorious academic fraud is protected by the 1st Amendment, although the University of Colorado has rules about research misconduct that even self-promoting, grandiose narcissists have to follow.

Churchill does not just give his opinions in his writings. He mischaracterizes what reputable scholars have said to give his crackpot conspiracy theories credibility. He ghostwrites articles for other people and then quotes his own ghostwriting to give his ideas credibility.

The AAUP sanctimoniously claims that it promotes "telling the truth in difficult times" and "protecting academic freedom," but really the AAUP is just protecting its monopoly on speech from challenges.

When people try to stand up and tell the truth about that thug and liar Ward Churchill, bad things start to happen to them and the AAUP does not help them.

It is the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) who has protected everyone's free speech, not the AAUP.

Inside Higher Education Covers AAUP "Free Speech" Posterboy Ward Churchill!

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I have been posting my opinions about the tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and AAUP President Cary Nelson over at a publication called Inside Higher Education.

President Cary Nelson claims in the opening of this podcast that academic freedom is "massively imperiled" and that "none of the stakeholders in higher education understand what academic freedom is---none."

Of course, being a brainy fellow, President Nelson appears to think that he is the exception that proves the rule. But really, Professor Nelson is the one who doesn't get it.

The AAUP website boasts loudly that its core mission is "telling the truth in difficult times" and "protecting academic freedom," but it looks to me like the AAUP is really just protecting Ward Churchill, a totalitarian thug who spits on the professed AAUP values...Towanda!

Cary Nelson, President AAUP

Cary Nelson is the President of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). He says in this podcast that he has been in close contact with Ward Churchill about his so-called "free speech" case.

The podcast was made by Inside Higher Education, which carries articles about Ward Churchill.

I notice that Professor Nelson doesn't mention in the podcast Churchill's history of threats and violence against other people who try to exercise their free speech. I guess he only is in close contact with Ward Churchill, not with the people whom Churchill has intimidated or hurt.

It is very scary that so many of our professors are giving ideological aid and comfort to violent totalitarians like Ward Churchill who hypocritically deny others their freedom of speech.

Did Professor Nelson notice that Ward Churchill put his lies about genocide into the mouths of reputable scholars?

Did Professor Nelson notice that Ward Churchill assaulted a Native American CU student, his own wife, the late Leah Kelly?

Did Professor Nelson notice that Ward Churchill's stupid 9-11 essay "Some People Push back" claims that Madeleine Albright responded to a UN official's alleged 1998 remarks in the NYT? Albright could not have done this, because her comments were made in 1996.

Did Professor Nelson notice that the "scholar" Ward Churchill wrote that American mothers should snuff themselves and their children to "do the planet a favor"?

Did Professor Nelson notice that Ward Churchill claimed in a Soviet-Cuban propaganda mouthpiece that FBI-backed death squads murdered 342 Indians?

Did Professor Nelson notice that Ward Churchill collaborated in the production of a mendacious film with the intelligence services of the USSR and Cuba, who deny their people free speech?

Did Professor Nelson notice that the Native American law professor John Lavelle complained in 1996 about Churchill's dishonest scholarship? Professor LaVelle is a lawyer Indians actually hire to represent them.

Professor Nelson claims that the academic misconduct investigation of Ward Churchill started after the 2005 outcry over Churchill's article "Some People Push Back." Actually, people were writing about Churchill's dishonest research and posting it on the Internet before that, but for some reason C.U. protected Churchill.

I don't trust this Professor Nelson at all. Having heard his podcast, I am pretty sure that Professor Nelson won't protect free speech, just Ward Churchill. Professor Nelson says that we should listen even to people we loathe, but I don't think he mentioned that he listened to Churchill's victims.

The AAUP talks about "telling the truth in difficult times" and "protecting academic freedom," but really this is nothing but hypocritical cant; when people try to stand up and tell the truth about that thug and liar Ward Churchill, bad things start to happen to them and the AAUP does not help them.

It is the Amerian Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) who has protected everyone's free speech, not the AAUP.

Calling George Kaplan...Calling George Kaplan...

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Updates at end

Some posters over at PirateBallerina are asking troubling questions about an author named Jim Vander Wall. A poster named Mighty Mouse asked, "Is Jim Vander Wall a real person??"

According to Amazon, the tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill co-wrote two books with an author named Jim Vander Wall:

1. Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement

2. The Cointelpro Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States.

Jim Vander Wall is a man of mystery. Where does he live? Does he have a job? A Social Security number? A driver's license? An American passport? Dandruff? I'd like to meet this Vander Wall so I can ask him why he never stepped up to the plate in defense of his co-author, the embattled Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill. That wasn't very sporting of Jim.

Jim Vander Wall reminds me a little bit of that nonexistent government agent George Kaplan [video] whom the Russian spies mistook for Carry Grant in Hitchcock's spy thriller North by Northwest.

Jim Vander Wall was reportedly involved in making two movies. He was "thanked" for Incident at Oglala and reportedly appeared as "himself" in the 1996 film All Power to the People. Perhaps Jim Vander Wall is an actor.

Jim Vander Wall would seem to be a real person because he has been interviewed by the media. Vander Wall argued in a Guerrilla News Network (GNN) article---reposted here---that the FBI is a political police, not a crime-fighting organization:

Jim Vander Wall:...FBI [serves] as a mechanism for maintaining political conformity… as a mechanism for suppressing dissident political groups. Most people, when they think of the FBI, have an image from movies like Mississippi Burning and characters like Clarice Sterling from Silence of the Lambs. The media image of the CIA and NSA is much more sinister, but most people think of the FBI purely as a crime fighting organization. The FBI has been very successful at disrupting and destroying perfectly legitimate organizations involved in dissent - They would like to project the image of crime fighters, but it is not really their principal role. Crime fighting is one of their roles but it certainly is not their primary role. If you look at what they have not been very successful at, they have not been successful at dealing with organized crime. Organized crime is probably as strong today or stronger than it ever was. And they have not been very successful at dealing with actual spies - Aldrich Ames and other people like that. And in terms of actual crime fighting and counter intelligence, legitimate counter intelligence operations, they have been dismally unsuccessful. What they have been very successful at is disrupting and destroying perfectly legitimate organizations involved in dissent: civil right organizations, women's organizations, generally organizations on the left. So while they would like to project the image of crime fighters, it is not really the principal role of the FBI.[Full Text]

What a performance! With blockbuster allegations like that, I'm a bit surprised that Jim Vander Wall isn't speaking "truth to power" and dazzling the college kids with his magic [video] just like Wardo does! Yes, I sure wonder where that man of mystery Jim Vander Wall is keeping himself these days.

This whole business reminds me of that children's book Where's Waldo? [video].

Maybe President Hank Brown of the University of Colorado knows where Jim Vander Wall is from all the investigations they have been doing of Ward Churchill's dishonest scholarship. Or maybe the C.U. professors would be able to find out.

Better yet, the Maoist MIM might be prevailed upon to write President Bush yet again and demand that the elusive Vander Wall be produced, or else! [video]

Or perhaps that smart anthropologist Dean Saitta could track down the elusive Vander Wall. Professor Saitta has a Ph.D. and critical thinking skills [video].

As everyone knows, Dr. Saitta has objected to bloggers writing without disclosing their identities so that readers can evaluate their credentials. That being the case, perhaps Professor Saitta might want to turn over a few stones on his next summer vacation and see exactly who Jim Vander Wall is...[video].

Update: I just noticed that this site about the film "All Power to the People" has a picture of a man identified as Jim Vander Wall. Now, where's Wardo? [video]

Doh! Oh, there you are! Hi, Wardo! I see you're in the movie too, as yourself! [video]

Interestingly, one of the advisors on the film is Philip Agee. Wardo's friend "Phil" used to be a CIA officer but was forced out and ended up in Castro's Cuba. The former spook went on to a career facilitating Soviet/Cuban disinformation activities against the United States [video].

Wikipedia Reports:

"In 1978, Agee and a small group of his supporters began publishing the Covert Action Information Bulletin, which promoted "a worldwide campaign to destabilize the CIA through exposure of its operations and personnel." Mitrokhin states that the bulletin had help from both the KGB and the Cuban DGI."

Ward Churchill published an article in the Covert Action Information Bulletin (CAIB) in 1985 alleging that FBI-backed death squads murdered 342 Indians. The CAIB is now called the Covert Action Quarterly, although the publication appears to be moribund since spring 2005.