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NEAL ST. ANTHONY: Today, we present highlights from the testimony of Dino Butler. Butler refers several times to Anna Mae Aquash, a Native American woman active with the American Indian Movement in South Dakota. Aquash was allegedly threatened by FBI Special Agent David Price and was found dead three months later on a ranch in Wanblee, South Dakota.

Although the initial autopsy pronounced Aquash dead of exposure, a subsequent independent autopsy concluded that Anna Mae had died from a bullet fired into her head at close range. The bullet was still lodged in her head at the time of the autopsy. The FBI denies threatening Aquash, and it denies Butler's charge of harassment. Butler's testimony begins with a description of his activities in Pine Ridge before the shootout.

DINO BUTLER: In February 1975, I was asked to go to Pine Ridge and to live there with these people and to help them. They said the goons were drinking in the streets and throwing their beer cans and beer bottles at cars passing by, that they were beating people up pretty bad out there, really getting out of hand.

They said they wanted people there from the American Indian Movement that would be willing to go there and live there with these people and help them any way they could. So I went up there with my brother Peltier, and we stayed there at Oglala. People brought us food out there and people brought us gas, money, and stuff to go around.

Several times in the middle of the night, people would come to our house where we were staying and asked us to go down to their house, which was shot up, and that they were scared that the people who shot that house up might come back. They wanted somebody from our house to go down there and stay with them the rest of the night. So we would go down there and we would take guns down there.

I'm not denying this, you know? It would be foolish to go down there without guns. Several times that has happened. We were there when a man by the name of Francis Heathrow, he had some good ideas. And he talked to us and wanted us to help him to organize in the community there in White Clay district, where Oglala is located.

He said that he wanted to organize the landowners there in the white clay district to break away from the BIA, to break away from the United States government. And to seek help from other countries and other people-- to start their own business there in White Clay where they would be self-supporting, but they wouldn't have to depend on the BIA handouts.

We sat down and we talked quite a few times with this man, and there were other people who came around. And they supported this idea and wanted to do this. We had meetings at Oglala with some traditional people around and landowners. At first, the people were kind of leery of doing this because it was done at Wounded Knee and it has been done before. And the government had come in and squashed these ideas, these things that they wanted.

And they knew that there wasn't much chance of us pulling this off, I guess. But we kept talking and we kept meeting with these people. And finally, we had about 60% or 70% of the landowners. The traditional landowners, people who live on their own land out there in the country, they said they would be willing to do this. And we were going to have another meeting that summer. Dennis Banks was down there.

We had a sweat lodge in our camp. We went to ceremonies. Anna Mae was there. Joseph Stuntz was there. Jimmy Little was there. A lot of people were there that will never be there no more. They're dead now. I don't say they're dead. They're gone. To Indian person, there's no such thing as death. When we pass over into the spirit world, our body returns to the sacred Mother Earth and becomes a part of her.

We don't believe in our bodies being buried in caskets of steel and stuff like this because our body returns to the Mother Earth and becomes part of her again. That way, our body lives and our spirit goes to the spirit world to be with all of our ancestors. There's no death for Indian people who believe in the pipe and other sacred ways. These people are gone now.

We know that the Federal Bureau of Investigation knew that we were there on the morning of the shootout. We got evidence from the police radio logs that they knew that there was an AIM camp south of Oglala. And they told all their police officers to go there. So we know that they knew we were in the area. And they knew that Dennis Banks was living there and that he had supporters there, and that we were trying to organize these people to break away from the government that was doing them no good.

In South Dakota, on three of the reservations there, there's a bigger oil field located under these lands. There's a bigger oil field there than there is in the Alaskan oil fields today. The United States government knows this. And that's why all this is happening out there. They knew this before Wounded Knee. They knew this before the BIA takeover. But the Indian people didn't know it yet.

The stories that go out from these reservations, it looks like Indian versus Indian, Dick Wilson and his goons versus the American Indian Movement. But we know now that it's different. It's the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the CIA, and the BIA and all these different organizations working for the government. They're the ones causing all this trouble. It's not Indian fighting Indian. It looks that way.

But the federal bureau, they go in there and they give Dick Wilson and his goons money, give them booze. They buy their booze by the truckloads and take it down there. And they give these people all this booze, like when the American Indian Movement goes down there and they're there to honor somebody that died, like at Angel's funeral. They had a wake there.

They busted a truckload of beer. I don't know where it was coming in. It was coming into South Dakota. And one of Dick Wilson's goons was driving this truck. They busted it. It was accidentally busted by a state police who didn't know what was going on. And he busted this truck. The guy was never charged. We don't know what happened to the booze. Nobody seems to know what happened to the truckload of beer.

Things like this happen all the time. When AIM gathers down there, the FBI buys ammunition and booze and stuff for these goons, so that these goons will start drinking. That's how they get their courage, their bravery. They have to have this white man's poison in them before they can act like white people. And then they come down and they start shooting and everything.

They shot people's houses up, old people's houses. I've seen a little girl at the Sun Dance. Half of her arm was shot up, deformed. I see a lot of people walking around with gunshot wounds and burns on their bodies because they were in the houses where these things happened. Couldn't just sit around there and not do nothing. We had to help these people some way because we're all related.

When I was arrested, the FBI, they told me I was a scumbag and that I didn't deserve to live with white folks. And I got to thinking about that. And I got to agree with that FBI agent and all of them because I got to look and see what are white folks. And I see. Are they FBI agents? Are they CIA or what? Are they the police that we see out here in the streets or are these white folks?

And I say, yeah, they're white folks. These are the white folks that I don't deserve to live with. And I don't want to live with them. People act like this. I don't want to live with them. When June 26 came around, me and my wife was living in a tepee. We weren't bothering nobody. We were there helping the people. And the people wanted us there. We went there to force ourselves on these people.

These people supported us and helped us in many ways. They helped us spiritually. We were invited to their ceremonies. We went to their ceremonies and start learning their ways. I danced in the Sun Dance with them. Anna Mae was there. Joe Stuntz was learning the spiritual ways. He wanted to be a spiritual man someday.

Joe Stuntz was a very quiet man. He never had much to say. I had a lot of respect for him. I still have a lot of respect for him. I know a lot of people down there that know Little Joe. They call him Little Joe. He was a big man, though. But they called him Little Joe because he never seemed to want to be out in front. His ways were quiet. And he was always there when trouble started. He was never afraid to face up to trouble when it happened.

I used to go for walks with Anna Mae. We used to walk out in the hills and we used to talk about the Mother Earth. She used to talk about her children up in Canada. We used to talk a lot about a lot of things. And when I was in jail, she came to me a couple of times in my dreams. And I know she's still watching. She's still taking care of us. She's still around. Joe Stuntz is still around the people in Oglala.

Every once in a while, a spirit comes by and he's hungry. And he makes a little noise and stuff. People put food out for him, tobacco offerings. And it's quiet now. There's no more noise. And this happens a lot of times. A lot of the spirits of our ancestors come back and let us know that they're there helping us. We know we are right.

We're just as right as all of our ancestors who stood up against the United States government, against these white folks, and fought for what they believed in, what they knew was right. We know we're just as right as our ancestors are. I don't mourn the death of those two FBI agents. I don't say they had it coming to them, but they've been running over people down there for too long. They've been killing too many people.

They're part of a system that has killed a lot of our people. And maybe that's the way it was supposed to be. Maybe if you believe in a god, if you believe in a creator, then you know that these people aren't supposed to act that way. They're not supposed to come into homes and tear these homes apart and threaten little babies, search little babies and make little kids get on the ground with M16s pointed at their heads and shotguns and stuff.

All of these things ain't right. And if you believe in a god, if you believe in a creator, you know in your heart that this ain't right, too. And you know that this stuff is going to be stopped, and that these people got to be punished. They will be punished not by us or not by anybody on this earth, man. They'll be punished by the creator. And that's why I'm here today. That's why I'm walking here. And that's why I'm talking here because we were right that day. We were under attack.

Like I say, I was in a tepee with my wife just getting up when I heard the firing starting up there. Norman Brown came down. He says, shooting up there. We got to get up there. There's women and children up there. So I grabbed my gun. And I told my wife, I said, take Jennie and the other girls and try to get out of here. I went running up there with my brothers. We got up there. We received fire. Real heavy fire coming.

There was two cars out in the field and there were two cars down in the gully. And there was cars all around us already by the time I got up there. It only took me five minutes or so to get up there. And yet, we were already surrounded by the time I got up there. I've seen Ivis and Angie and their three children run out of their house, running toward in the direction of our camp.

I knew grandma. Grandma and grandpa were up there, I thought, because most of the firing was being concentrated up there. I told my brother Peltier, I'm going to go up there and see if grandma and grandpa are up there. And if they are, I'll try and get him out of there. He told me to go ahead. And I went up to the house there, and there was nobody in the house.

There was nobody in the other house where Wanda-- a sister named Wanda. And she's got two or three kids, too. There was nobody there. So I went back down and I told my brother Peltier Leonard. I said, hey. I said, there's nobody up there at them houses. Why don't we go back to our camp now, try to get out of here ourselves? So we withdrew from there and we went back down to our camp.

We got ready to leave. And another brother came back. He said that Joe Stuntz was dead. So we all knelt down and we prayed there. And we prayed for our brother. I prayed that he would have a safe and good journey up to the spirit world, and that someday we would be there with him. And then we left. On the way out, we met my wife, Nilak, and Jennie and a girl named Lynn. They couldn't get out. They said they went all over.

We were surrounded. They said there was no way to get out. Everywhere they went, they said, there was a roadblock and there were policemen all around. They said they couldn't get out. And that's why they came back. So we all figured, there's no way to get out. If they couldn't get out, we didn't know how we were going to get out. We prayed again for the women. We were thankful that Angie and her children were out of there and Ivis with them.

I did not see it. But Norman Brown told me that there was an eagle. He saw an eagle come down while we were praying. And for some reason, when we left there, there was a creek. It's really like a snake, really winds around like that. We know how the creek goes like that. But when we got done praying that day and we left, we went in a straight line. We walked through that creek several times and we didn't know where we were going or anything. We were just going that way.

My wife lost her moccasins in the mud. She was barefooted. We finally come to this one spot. There's a culvert there. And we crawled underneath that culvert and went through there. And we went up the hill. And we got up there safely. People said when we were going up that hill that there was an eagle flying over us. To the Indian people, the eagle is sacred.

When I was in jail, I heard a voice tell me that the eagle is my helper. He will help you whenever you need help. He represents me. Always respect this eagle because you are respecting me. I heard this voice tell me that when I was in jail. To me, that is the voice of the grandfather, the great spirit talking to me, telling me about the eagle.

When Joe Stuntz was buried, there was an eagle flying above him, above the ceremony. And it came down, circled like that over, then it took off. A lot of times, when Indian people have gathered together to worship in some way, the eagles have appeared. When we went to Pierre in November of 1974 for Sarah Bad Heart Bull, who was in prison then, there was an eagle appeared over the capital at Pierre.

It was a good sign. And not too long after that, Sarah Bad Heart Bull got out of jail. All the time, the eagle is sacred. We know that the eagle let us out that day. If we were in the wrong, if we'd done something wrong that day, these sacred things wouldn't have helped us. We would not have been taken care of. I know Joe Stuntz died there. But in the Indian way, there has to be sacrifices.

That is a part of our religion. We always sacrifice, then we are stronger afterwards if we survive. When we go out into the hills, we pray for four days. We sacrificed. We don't eat or drink water for four days. This makes us stronger. We have to suffer before we can become stronger. We have to know what it is to suffer. This is the Indian way. And I believe that this is why, Joe, it was time for him to go. It could have been any one of us.

When it's time, I hope that I can go like Joe. I hope that my death, my passing, will give life to others. If we were wrong, we would all die there today. They had us completely surrounded. Yet somehow, we got through all those people. Going up that hill, there were bullets flying all around us. I could feel the bullets going through me, like going by me. I could feel the air and I could hear the whistling noise. Yet none of these bullets touched me. And I was praying.

Going up that hill, I just knew that somebody was going to get shot because there was too many bullets flying all around us. And I thought about the women. And I prayed for them while I was going up that hill. When I got up there and we all met up there, I knew then that whatever happens, we were right, that we would be taken care of. There would be no harm to us.

NEAL ST. ANTHONY: Butler went on to accuse the FBI of harassing Native Americans by destroying objects of religious significance.

DINO BUTLER: Sacred things like eagle feathers, whistle bones, pipes, and stuff like this. They violated these things. They made fun of them. They call our tobacco cow shit. Things like this that are sacred to the Indian people, they make fun of. They've done this for 200 years longer. That is why those agents died. Wasn't because we killed them or nothing. It's because all those FBI agents were being punished. They walk around and they cry about me and Bob being acquitted.

They say that we shouldn't be acquitted, that we're evil, that we're cold-blooded killers. And they cry, too. Let's say that there was an agent walking down the courthouse after our acquittal, walking in the halls of this federal courthouse in Cedar Rapids. Had tears in his eyes. Now, they are known a little bit about what it is to suffer.

And if they learn from their suffering, if they learn that what they're doing is wrong, if they learn how to respect people and everything, then there need to be no more suffering amongst them like that. They don't need to be no more agents die or no more Indians people die. They arrested me on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, September 1975. I gave them a false name. And I was sitting in the back end of this car. I was out running home.

There were about 20 or 30 agents there, and there were more up at Crow Dog's place. They raided the two places at the same time. I heard a bunch of cars pulling into the yard. And I jumped up and I looked out the window. And I told my wife to get up. And I picked up this pistol and I walked out. These three men were coming toward me and they had guns.

And I asked them, what the hell is going on? They said, we're FBI agents. Get on the ground. So I got on the ground. They came up to me and asked me if anybody else was in the house. I told them, yes, my wife is in there. So they told me to call her out. So I called her out. She came down and they made her get on the ground. And I showed them this driver's license I had that said Robert Nobel on it.

So they arrested me there for having a firearm with an altered serial number on it. They put me in the back of this FBI car. Later, all the other agents, they were from the South Dakota area. They'd been working on this case ever since it happened, I suppose. They came down there. This one walked by the car and he looked in the back of the car like that, looked at me.

He walked over to these other agents and he says, hey. He says, you know who you got there? That one agent told him, yeah, that's Robert Nobel. He said, no. He says, that's that fucking Dino Butler. He says, why did you take him alive? The other agent came over and he looked in the car. And he walked back over and said, yeah, that's that fucking Dino Butler.

Does he have a gun on him? He said, yeah, he had a 0.45 loaded. You should have shot the son of a bitch right there, they said. And they all came over there and started looking at me and all. Pretty soon, this one came over there by himself and he stuck his head in the car. And he says, you son of a bitch. He says, one of those agents you killed was a good friend of mine. If I ever get you alone, he says, I'm going to blow your head off. Turn around. He walked off.

We started to leave. There was three agents. Got in the car. And they started up the car. And a couple of agents came over and they said, you're leaving now? And he said, yeah, we're going up to Pierre. We're going to take him up to Pierre. He said, don't be surprised if only three of us show up. Another one came over and he says, you guys are leaving. And he said, yeah. He said, well, don't leave no bruises on the body.

I accept the fact that I was going to die. And it didn't matter no more. But I wasn't going to sniffle and I wasn't going to cry to these people. I made that up to in my mind. We started out with one agent. He said, we know pretty much what happened, June 26. But there's a few blind spots. We're in a position to be able to help you if you'll help us fill in those blind spots.

And I told him, what do you mean? I start seeing a little hope there. I think I might get to Pierre alive if I play it right. I said, what do you mean? Well, you know. You know what happened that day. If you help us and tell us what happened, we're in a position where we can give you a new identification. We can send you to another location, give you a good job and a car, you and your wife, if you'll just tell us what happened and fill in the blind spots for us.

So if you don't do it, you're going to spend the rest of your life behind bars. We'll do everything in our power to see that you spend the rest of your life behind bars, rotting away. Or else we're going to kill you. So I said, well, how do I know I'm going to be safe? How do I know that you guys can protect me? He says, we've done it before. We've got people living like this in other places now that have helped us.

We gave them a new identity. We set them up in another spot. All you have to do when we do this is mind your own business, and don't go out and raise a bunch of heck and stuff and get yourself picked up. Don't bring no attention to you and you'll be all right. So well, how do I know? Where are you going to send me? He said, well, we could send you anywhere. We could send you Florida or anywhere back east.

So I said, well, I don't know. And I kept that up all the way to Pierre. When I got to Pierre, they took me up to the fourth floor in the federal building. Took me into this room. I knew then that I was pretty safe, that they wouldn't be shooting me there in the federal building. So that's when I told them that I didn't want to talk to them no more. I wanted to call my lawyer. They really got nasty with me and started pushing me around, cussing me out.

They said that Leonard Crow Dog was a scumbag. They said that Peltier was a scumbag. They said that all Indians were scumbags and all that. My people weren't going to help me. Why am I protecting them? They started telling me about Wounded Knee, how a few chicken shit Indians went to Wounded Knee and laid in the grass and shot from a long ways at the federal forces. So they weren't brave. They said they were chicken shit. They wouldn't come out and fight in the open. They laid behind bunkers and stuff like this, fighting.

They told me how I was chicken shit because I laid behind a bunker at Oglala and shot these agents. I said, I wasn't brave. I wasn't tough or nothing. I was just a little bitty nobody, scumbag. Didn't deserve to live. I said that nobody else that was there that day deserved to live, that they were going to do everything in their power to see that these people were dead. They promised me that they would kill me if I didn't spend the rest of my life rotting behind bars.

I wouldn't say anything to them. I told them I wanted to call my lawyer. They kept this up for six hours. Finally, they got mad. Mad or something. I don't know. The last thing they told me when they walked out, Dino Butler, you're nothing but a worthless scumbag. And I promise you that someday, I'm going to shoot you. And I'll blow your fucking head off. They turned around and they walked out of the room.

They took me out. I see Anna Mae. She was sitting out there. She smiled at me and I smiled back at her. And they threw me in the holding tank. Crow Dog was there. The other people that they arrested down were there. I thought that I would never be free again. I knew that they were going to railroad me. They said that there was talk that it was an ambush. There was talk that we drew those agents in there and that we executed them.

You heard on the news there that we drugged them out of their cars and shot them repeatedly. I knew that if they wanted to, they could railroad me on these charges like that because they've done it to other people before. And I didn't have much hope of ever being out again free. So I was feeling pretty low down when I went in there and Crow Dog was there. He told me not to worry, nephew. Everything's going to be all right. He said, just remain strong.

And he rolled up a cigarette and he says, I want you to pray with me. He said, I want all my brothers in here to pray with us. So we all sat down and we smoked that cigarette together and we prayed. Afterwards, they took us all over to the jail there and they threw us all in the same tank.

NEAL ST. ANTHONY: Butler went on to describe several incidents of harassment that took place while he was in jail, including not being able to mail more than two letters a week, not being able to receive presents of food, having religious objects confiscated, and being repeatedly threatened with solitary confinement. Later, he said, the harassment took a more dangerous turn when he was not allowed to see his lawyer.

DINO BUTLER: [? Mulder ?] says, if I come here-- I've just come from the courthouse. And the judge told me I could talk to Mr. Butler when you want to come down here. And the sheriff says he don't believe who I am. So Ellison told him, well, I know this man. She says, what's the problem? He says, there ain't no problem. He says if he wants to visit Butler, he can come back here on visiting day and visit him.

I don't want him in his jail because I don't know who he is. I don't believe none of that identification he's got. So Bruce says, well, what would it take to get him in there? [? Mulder ?] said, well, how about if I got a court order from the judge to come in here? He said, well, if you got a court order, it says I'd have to honor that. So he left and come back 15 minutes later, had a court order to visit me.

And the sheriff was all mad and he left. And [? Mulder ?] sat down and he says, Jesus, if this is a sign of what you're going through in this jail, he says, I sure wouldn't want to be in here with you. So we talked. One time, they called us all out of our cells like that. And they took us all downstairs and they put us in this one holding tank like that, everybody in the cell block.

There were a lot of FBI agents around there. We see them when they took us downstairs, and we had to walk by them. There was a whole bunch of them down there. I noticed all these people down there, all these FBI agents. I knew something was going on. So pretty soon, they come back and they call one guy out like that. And he went out like that. About 15/20 minutes later, come back and call another one out.

I was the only one left in there and I was in there about half hour. And he came and called me. And they took me out and told me to go on back up to my cell. So I walked upstairs and they locked me back up. And everybody was in there. They moved two guys out of there, put two more guys in there. And these brothers that were left there, they told me that the FBI had called them out of there and called them into this room.

They asked them if they knew Butler. And they said, yeah, we know him. We're locked up with him. So they say, well, you know that Butler killed two of our agents, don't you? They said, no, I don't know that. What he did. We want information on him. If you can give us information, we don't know what your charges are or anything.

But if you help us, give us information, if you know anything, if you heard Butler say anything or if you're willing to testify or something like that, we can help you out and get your charges dropped and give you a new ID or whatever you need, if you'll help us out. So, no, I don't know nothing. And they all got out. And they said they got up and walked out.

I didn't know nothing. They told me that. And I got affidavits from those guys saying that. They did the same thing to Bob. He said that they jerked everybody out of the cell and locked them all up and called them out one by one like that. And pretty soon, Bob is the only one left. And they told him to go back to his cell. So he went back there. And they all told him they'd done the same thing down there. Called everybody out, questioned them about Bob and me, wanted information. Any kind of information, they said, that would help them.

A couple of days later, they called me and Bob out. They put us in this little bitty cell by ourselves. And they start moving everybody out of the jails, move them to different jails around there. And they kept me and Bob in this one cell. They didn't tell us nothing. They didn't tell us why we were in there or anything. And they just kept us there. Then one morning, they come in there and woke us up real early and they said, come on, you guys are leaving. So we didn't know what was going on.

They took us from there and they drove us clear over to Sioux Falls, and took us to the South Dakota State Penitentiary there and put us in isolation there. So I asked the lieutenant there. I said, how come we're here? What's going on? And he says, I don't know. I said, well, can we have our legal material? Can we have our reading stuff and our writing stuff? He said no. He said, we got orders that you guys are not to have none of your personal property.

I don't know what's going on. There is no sense asking me because I don't know. So I said, well, who would I ask? Who knows that I can ask? He said, well, the warden might know. So would you tell the warden that I'd like to talk to him? The warden? He said, yeah, I'll tell the warden. So the warden didn't come down there that day. So the next morning, I wrote a letter to the warden, and I told him that I'd like to know what is going on. I don't know why I'm here. I don't know why we can't have our legal papers.

According to the law, we can have our legal papers and our legal books at any time we are in jail. And I just want to know why I can't have this stuff on us. He says, there's nothing I can do about it. I say, I'm here in the hole. He says, there ain't nothing I can do about it, but just refuse to eat any food or drink any water until I get some information. And that's what I'm going to do. I just won't eat or drink no more, until you come down here and tell me what's going on.

So the next day, he come down there and he brought this piece of paper. And he told me that Judge Bogue had ordered us transferred to the State Penitentiary for our own protection, that we were being tried. Our trial had been postponed for two weeks and our trial was being transferred to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And that's the reason why we were held there. So I asked the warden. I said, well, how come we can't have our legal papers, and how come we can't call our lawyers?

Because of our trials coming up real soon, we got to keep in touch with our lawyers. It's important that we do. And he says, well, I'll talk to head marshal down here, who was Tennison at the time. Tennison sent word back that we weren't to make no phone calls and we weren't to have our legal papers and stuff, that we were being moved right away. And there's no sense bringing in our property and then have to load it all up and everything again.

So I said, OK, well, if we're being moved right away, it sounds reasonable. So two weeks later, they moved us out, moved us to Cedar Rapids. Got to see the Rapids there. The next morning, they call Bob out to fingerprint him. This happened before. All our lawyers were out of town one time. Judge Bogue signed a paper saying that we had to be fingerprinted and bugged. Pitchers were supposed to be taken.

And somehow, our lawyer in St. Louis heard about it, Bruce Ellison. He called up and he said, well, they can't do that. That's illegal. You guys don't have to do that. And they got a hold of the judge and everything. They got that motion. I mean, that court order. They got it annulled. It was illegal. So it was thrown out and we didn't have to take our fingerprints and stuff.

So when we got to Cedar Rapids, the first thing they did was call Bob out. And they said, well, we're going to fingerprint you and we're going to take your picture for our own records here at the jail. Bob says, I'm a federal prisoner. That don't matter. He says it's for our own records here at the jail. He says, you have no right to fingerprint me and take my picture. And he says, if you do, I want to have my lawyer present because I have a right to have my lawyer here.

No, you don't need a lawyer. I like to call my lawyers. No. You call your lawyer after we get done printing you and taking your picture. No, I want my lawyer. I want to call now. So the sheriff got all mad and everything. And he left Bob's head and he come back a little later. He says, you can take your fingerprint. We're going to take your fingerprints one way or another right now. And he says, either you're going to do it willingly or I'm going to force you to.

Bob says, I want to call my lawyer. And he grabbed Bob like that and threw Bob up against the wall and kneed him in the crotch like that. Threw him down on the floor like that and grabbed him by the hair and start banging his head against the floor like that. And Bob-- not one time did Bob do anything to resist because he knew that if he resisted, then the jury could justify that it was kind of self-defense or something because it's happened a lot of times before.

So anyway, Bob submitted to the fingerprints and the pictures. And we got a hold of our lawyers. And an investigation was ordered by the judge down there. So the judge down there was a hell of a lot different than Judge Bogue in South Dakota. Judge Bogue was really, I guess, what we would call a pig. He really wallowed in filth and dirt, and he had no respect. I mean, this kind of judge-- this guy is down there in South Dakota. And he handled a lot of cases down there, the American Indian Movement.

The FBI, they do anything on that reservation and get away with it. Because whenever complaints are made to the Justice Department or something, they go through Bogue down there. And Bogue just never does nothing about it. So that's why the FBI, they get away with a lot of that stuff, illegal subpoenas, illegal grand juries, and stuff like this in South Dakota because it's all taken care of through Bogue.

And I don't know what the law is down there. He has his own meaning of law, what law and order is down there. And he had ministers in his courtroom down there to the Indian people. So this judge in Cedar Rapids was a little bit more understanding, a little bit more sympathetic. And he ordered an investigation into what happened to Bob Robideau while he was in jail down there, why Bob was beat up.

They found out that the sheriff was totally in the wrong for doing that. That kind of force was not needed to be used against Bob to fingerprint him and stuff. And criminal charges have been filed against the sheriff and they're still pending down there. I guess the investigation come up with facts that this deputy had used excessive force and that he denied Bob's basic rights to call his lawyer and stuff like this. And he had no right to fingerprint Bob in the first place and to force him this way to do it. And that was all brought out in this investigation down there.

We found out, too, that this same sheriff has beaten up a lot of people down there in that jail. While I was in jail there, I've had people come in there, and they heard about Bob being beat up the second day we were there. And they come in there and they would tell me that they know that the guy had done that because he's done that to them. He's done that before. And they said if the guy hadn't stopped, he's going to kill somebody pretty soon because he's beating up some people pretty bad.

So anyway, charges were brought against him. The jail down there is being sued and everything. After our trial was over with, they took me and Bob out the next morning real early. They called us out and they took us down to a jail in Kansas City, Missouri. The two of us was in there Friday evening. Told us that we would have to spend the weekend in there.

They took away our clothes and give us our own clothes. And they gave us brand new sheets and brand new pillowcases and towel. Took us up to this big cell block. It's really a big one. Threw us in there and said, well, lock the door like that. And they left. We walked to all these-- that's about five or six cells in there. It was about six man cells. We walked in, looked in all these cells. And there was no mattresses in there, no pillows or nothing like that.

So we pounded on the wall and we got the deputy back there with them. Hey, he says, we got these mats. I mean, we got these sheets and pillowcases. We got no mattress, no pillows. Either something in there somewhere. He says, look around. And he walked off. We called him back. We told him there ain't nothing in here. Well, we'll get you some. He says, don't worry about it. And they left.

Monday morning, they called us out to take us to Leavenworth federal prison. The cell block that they threw us in-- they must they must have fed some fish to these people that were in there before. I don't know. It must have been about a week or so before because the way it smells and everything. Fish bones were laying there. Garbage pile that was about two feet high. There were all kinds of garbage laying all over the floor and everything. The toilets in the cell blocks didn't work or nothing really stunk. And they're really bad and everything.

We asked for a mop and a broom. We wanted to clean up a little bit in there. And they wouldn't bring us no mop or broom. We told them we wanted some stationery. We wanted to make a phone call. And they wouldn't let us make no phone calls or nothing. We told them, why? So while you're in transit, we have orders that you can't do none of this stuff. So we didn't do anything. We cleaned up the best we could and got rid of all that stuff. They took us to Leavenworth and they threw us in isolation there.

When you first go in there, they take you down to this receiving and discharge room. They dress you in there. They give us these clothes and told us to take a shower and put these clothes on. So I was undressing, getting ready to take a shower. And this one guard comes over to me and he says, you know why you're here. He says, and I do, too. He says, this is a reservation, too. And he said, we run the reservation here. And if you don't follow the orders here, he says, we're going to bury you here.

So I just smiled at him and I took my shower and come back out. And he kept trying to provoke me and get me mad, saying things like that. And I would do nothing. I just smiled at him and walk away. So they took us up to the cell block and we're going to lock us up. The lieutenant and a couple of these guards, and this one guard in particular, they took us into this one room and they told us-- again, they said that we know why you're here, and you know why you're here.

If you guys don't follow the rules here, we're going to bury you right here. You ain't leaving. So we said, OK. I said, well, look, we're only here to do our time. I said, we never come here to cause no trouble. I said, we want to be left alone. And I said, we're going to follow your rules and we're going to do what you say.

Me and Bob were both in jail before. And there's no way you can beat them people in there because they got total control over you. And to try and fight with these people, try to change the rules in there, it's just not going to be done. We both know this. We told them that we know. We've been in jail before. We know what goes on in these jails. We don't want no trouble. So I said, OK, if you got that attitude, just keep that attitude. So they took us up to our cells like that.

They let everybody else up there in isolation, let them go out to the yard and stuff like that. But they wouldn't let me and Bob out. Our cells were locked remotely from up front of the tier like that. They were controlled by locking system up there, open and close the doors up there. They come down to my cell and they put a great big chain around my door like that and put a big padlock on it, laughed at me and turned around, walked off.

I thought that was kind of funny. Every time they wanted me out of my cell, they'd have to come down there and they'd have to open up that big lock, and take that big chain out of there. Didn't bother me. It didn't hurt me none. So two weeks later, they call me out and told me I was leaving. And they put me on this bus. It was quite an experience, this bus they put me on. I found out that they keep about 5,000 people in what they call in transit.

Most of these people are in there for political reasons. And they're appealing their case or they're fighting something, or they have to keep in touch with lawyers and stuff like this. So what they do is they put these people on a bus. And they put them in transit and they ship them all over the country. And for security reasons, and also they don't plan an escape or anything like that, they refuse to let these people make any contact with the lawyers or anybody.

You can't call no phone, make no phone calls. You can't have no letters and you can't write no letters while you're in transit. Just the day before I left there, my lawyer called me. John Lowell from Virginia called me and he told me, I'm going to call you back tomorrow. And he says, we're waiting word from the judge that sentence you, and we should have a word by tomorrow about your case. We think we're going to get out real soon. And he says, I'll keep in touch with you as much as I can. So he said that.

So the next morning, they called me out and they ship me off like that and put me in transit, put me on this bus with about 20 or 30 other guys. And away we went. For two weeks, man, they transferred me all over this country. I went from Leavenworth. I went down to Oklahoma. From Oklahoma, I went to Texas. I went to Arizona, New Mexico, California. I went to Oregon. And I went up into Washington.

While all this was happening, my mother back in Oregon was really concerned about my safety because-- testimony brought out in our trial, about the threats made against my life and everything, that I wasn't going to live very long. And threats were made against Anna Mae that she would not live over a year. And she died five months later, with a bullet in her head. And the FBI tried to cover it up. Mom learned a lot of things at this trial, so she was concerned about my safety.

She would write registered letters to me, and they would come back to her and say he's no longer here. She done this two or three times. And pretty soon, she really got worried. She start getting sick. And she contacted the governor in Oregon and told the governor about my case, and how I just was acquitted in Cedar Rapids and told about the threats that were made against my life by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and that she was concerned, and asked the governor to try to find out where I was at and if I was all right.

So the governor said OK. So he checked that Leavenworth. And they said that I was in transit and that I was on a bus. And so he asked that my mother be able to contact me so it would make her feel better. So when the governor starts showing a little tension in my case, they settled me down in McNeil Island. And they let me have my letter. They give me all my letters. They give me a whole stack full of letters like that. And I got to call my lawyer and everything.

I don't know. I probably would still be in transit if it wasn't for my mom or something. Because my lawyers, they didn't know where I was at. Bruce Ellison tried to call me. And they said, well, he left La Tuna, Texas this morning. He's heading for California or somewhere. And he tried to call over. You know he's not here yet, somewhere between here and Texas. That kind of crap, they kept telling my lawyers. My lawyers couldn't track me down. Nobody could track me down.

So finally landed in McNeil Island. It wasn't too long after I was there, they called me down like that. Caseworker called me down. And he said, well, the appeals court overturned your conviction. You've been acquitted. So I told him, well, when am I getting out? And he says, well, right away. He says, we're just waiting for the papers now. So you should be out of here pretty soon. So I said, OK. So I went back to my cell and I waited and waited. For two weeks, I waited there. And they wouldn't tell me nothing.

And my wife kept calling up and asking when I was getting out and everything. And they said, well, we can't release them yet. We ain't got the papers yet. So my wife called back to the lawyers and asked them, how come Dino's not out yet? And they said, well, he's supposed to be out. We thought he was out. And the lawyers, I guess they were kind of wondering why I never called and why I never contacted them because they had a right to, I guess, because they had done a lot of work for me and Bob.

And I wasn't showing much respect to them if I was out and didn't call them or anything. So they were kind of upset about that, too. So they were surprised when my wife called and said that I was still in McNeil Island. They couldn't figure out why I was in McNeil island when the judge had issued a court order to release me already two weeks before. So they start finding out why I was still in McNeil.

And they found out that court order was sent from the judge's office, sent to South Dakota, to the marshals office back there-- that the marshals had the papers there and they were just sitting on them. They never mailed them out or nothing. They were just keeping them there. So the judge got mad, and ordered that I be released right away. They called me down a couple of weeks later.

And they said, we got priority on you, Butler. You're to get out on the next boat. Get your stuff together and get back down there as soon as you can. You leave at 2:45. So I said, OK. So I went up there. And I was kind of mad, too, when they told me that I was supposed to have been out a couple of weeks before that. So this receiving and discharge officer, he seemed pretty excited about getting me out of there as soon as possible.

So I just took my time. I went up there to my cell. And I sat there with my cellmate and I drank some coffee there and talking to him and all. They kept calling my name over the intercom, over this penitentiary. They kept calling my name, Butler. Butler. Called my number. Report to R&D immediately. And the last thing that R&D officer told me is just go down to the clothing shop and get you a pair of shoes to get out in. So I said, OK.

So I wait around for about an hour in my cell and I walked down there and I pounded on that door real hard. And I knew it was going to get that man down there mad. So he come out there and said, what the hell do you want? So I told him I'm supposed to get some shoes. And he said, come back later. And I said, well, I got orders here to get shoes. And I showed him a slip of paper from the R&D room. He said, well, come on in.

So he says, when you getting out? I said, I don't know. He said, well, you probably getting out Monday. That's my guess. He says, just a minute. And he walked in the back like that, and they were back there for about an hour, I guess. Finally, he come out there and said, well, we ain't got no shoes. Opened up the door. I said, OK. So I walked out. It was getting about 2 o'clock.

Quarter after then, this R&D officer was really getting upset because I wasn't there. So I come walking down there. And he start cussing me out. Where the hell have you been? God damn, I told you to be down here 1 o'clock. So I didn't say nothing. And he gave me my clothes and took me out there to the front desk like that. When you get out of prison like that, they're supposed to give you some money to be discharged, to help you get started again.

They didn't give me no money. They only give me one set of clothes. They're supposed to give you work clothes and four sets of clothing anyway. They give me none of that stuff. Kicked me out. I had to bum a quarter to make a phone call after I got over on Maine Island. Six days after I was out, I was up at my uncle's place. You got to understand, my uncle now, he's an old man. He's about 60 years old. He's been in prison two or three times himself.

And the sheriff department around the Lincoln County sheriff's department, they all know my uncle. They know where he lives. His son has been in trouble a couple of times. They've been down there looking for people several occasions. So OK. So I'm staying up there at my uncle's place this one morning. My little brother, he's 14 years old. He comes sneaking in there and he asks my uncle where I'm at. And he says, he's upstairs asleep.

So he comes up there and he says that FBI agents were just down to mom and dad. I said, what they want? He said, they were looking for you. They said that they're looking for you for escape. So you escaped out of McNeil Island. They told my Uncle Elton that I escaped out of McNeil Island. My uncle asked me, why in the hell you escaped out of McNeil Island? They didn't tell him. They couldn't tell him how I escaped. They just got orders from South Dakota.

The FBI agents in South Dakota sent an order to pick me up over there, that I was on escape. So they showed this piece of paper to my mom. It was a teletype kind of thing. Mom said that she read it. And it said that I was wanted for attempted escape or something like that, and that I was armed and dangerous. So these 20 FBI agents come down and they surround my mom and dad's place early in the morning.

Mom said she was sitting up in bed. She heard someone knock on the door real loud like that. Open up, she said. This is the FBI. So mom thought I never come home. She thought maybe I'd come back. I was raising hell. So she walked in there like that and she never checked. She just opened the door like that. As soon as she opened the door, she said they just kicked the door open like that and they pushed her aside. And they come running in there and they had these guns and everything.

Mom was hollering. Who are you? Who are you? Finally, this one agent came in there like that and told her, we're the FBI, and showed his ID like that. Where's your son at? I don't know where he's at. He never come home last night. So they searched all the house like that. And my little brother said he was sleeping like that. And he said someone slapped him awake like that. And he looked up like that. And he said this agent had a pistol like that pointed at his head like that. And he asked him, where's your fucking brother at?

My little brother looked at him and says, I don't know. So they searched the house like that and everything. Before they left, they told my mom, tell your son that we're going to hound him. We're going to keep after him. We're going to get him some day. I'm pretty sure they knew where I was at that day. They were looking for me. I know they knew where I was at.

Why did they search my mama's house and do that. Pull that little terrorist act on them and put a gun to my little brother's head. And then tell my mom that they were going to hound me and they were going to keep after me until they got me some day, that I could hide and anything I wanted to do. But they would end up getting me. Why did they do all of this. They said they were looking for me. They said that I attempted to escape while I was in jail in Rapid City. And I turned myself in.

I look at that now. I thought at first that they were down there to kill me. They'd come down there. And that if I was there, they were going to kill me that morning. But they knew that I wasn't there. They knew where I was. They never come up to my uncle's place where I was at. They didn't bother that place. That's the only place in that whole town that they didn't bother. And that was the most logical place to look if they didn't find me at my mom's place because my uncle, he's kind of an outlaw himself, and they arrested people there at his house before.

So now I can see why they didn't come up there, because they were just trying to get a message across to me, trying to tell me that I better butt out and leave things as they are, or else I was going to get killed. So at the time, it really made me mad. And I'm glad now that I got back because mom and them was really trying leaning on me heavy to stay home and behave myself and not get involved. Why should I go out there and put my life on the line? Because they were going to kill me if I got involved.

And that's what the FBI agents were doing that morning. That's why they came down there and put that message across to my mom and dad, that they were going to get me. And I can see now that that was a message that if they wanted me, they could have got me. They could have got me that morning, but they didn't. They just came down there and scared all my family and everything.

So I think about that now. And I'm glad now because it really pissed me off when they put that gun to my little brother's head. And that's why mom, they still want me home, and all my family wants me at home, or they want me up in Canada or some safe place. But I ain't going to do that now. I told mom and them I can't do that. I said, there's too many people being killed and there's going to be more people killed. And I'm not going to live over here and hide from those people.

Because if they want to kill me, they're going to kill me anyway, no matter where I go or what I do. So I might as well do what's right, what I know is right in my heart. And if I have to die for it, then that's good, too, because I'll go to a better place anyway. So I'm back over here and I'm helping out the best way I can. I ran into John Trudell down in Pine Ridge. Me and my wife were staying down at Oglala. He come down there. We talked it over.

So me and him, we entered into a conspiracy. I admit it right now. We entered to a conspiracy against the United States government. The United States government is corrupt. And it's bad. The FBI agents kill people. They ransack people's houses, take property illegally, and hold it for evidence and never give it back. Stuff like this happens all the time.

NEAL ST. ANTHONY: Dino Butler, AIM leader charged with the death of two FBI agents in the Pine Ridge shootout and acquitted on appeal this fall. Tomorrow on Midday, we present the testimony of Native Americans who say they were harassed by FBI agents who wanted to pressure them into appearing for the prosecution at Butler's Cedar Rapids trial. I'm Neal St. Anthony.