Amnesty Denied to Indians
Amnesty Denied to Indians
Damage Put At $700,000; Charges Eyed
An agreement signed by representatives of President Nixon recommending against prosecutions for the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building "in no way" granted amnesty, a White House spokesman said last night.
The spokesman alluded to the "extraordinary damage and theft of government property" that occurred during a seven-day seige of the building that ended Wednesday night.
The Justice Department reportedly is studying what charges should be brought, and against whom, after both the Interior Department and a group of tribal Indian officials asked that the offenders be prosecuted.
Preliminary estimates of damage to the BIA building total nearly $700,000, with no price tag yet set on many art objects and personal property of the building's 412 employees.
About a dozen members of the National Tribal Chairmen's Association, saying they represent three-fourths of the nation's Indians and nearly all of those who live on federal reservations, toured the building yesterday and then met with three White House advisers and called for prosecution of the rebels.
Attending the session at the Interior Department were Leonard Garment, special assistant to the President and one of the two men who signed the amnesty agreement on Wednesday; Brad Patterson, who is Garment's executive assistant, and Oliver Taylor, representing the other signer of the agreement, Frank Carlucci, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.
An Indian who attended the closed meeting said the White House representatives said the agreement was signed "to prevent bloodshed."
The White House representatives would not comment on the meeting, but one spokesman said that a decision to prosecute does not violate the agreement worked out with representatives of the American Indian Movement (AIM), which brought its Trail of Broken Treaties caravan to Washington last week.
"We're not going to welsh" on a promise to set up a task force to listen to Indian problems, and the prosecution for damages and theft "is not another broken treaty," the spokesman said.
Hank Adams, chief negotiator for the demonstrators, said yesterday that "a haphazard attempt by the federal government to take reprisal against anyone could lead to the destruction of the (stolen) documents."
A Justice Department spokesman said yesterday that "no decision" has been made concerning prosecution.
Harrison Loesch, assistant secretary of Interior for Public Land Management and the man in charge of the BIA, said the amnesty agreement was "only a recommendation, and I recommend otherwise."
Loesch, one of the chief targets of complaints by AIM, toured the building at 8 a.m. yesterday with Interior Secretary Rogers C. B. Morton and said afterwards that "we agreed to seek with the Attorney General "on what can be done."
Shown a copy of the agreement signed by Carlucci and Garment, Loesch said, "The Secretary indicated that he trusted any such recommendations by Carlucci and Garment would not be followed."
Webster Two Hawk, president of the tribal council, led about a dozen chieftains through the building.
Two Hawk blamed "a small handful of self-appointed revolutionaries" for wrecking the building and the federal government for letting them get away with it.
"They have destroyed records so vital to our people–real estate, enrollments, leases–that it will take years to recover," said Two Hawk.
Preliminary damage estimates were made after tours of the building at 19th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. The General Services Administration, the government's landlord, estimated structural damage at $250,000. That figure covers repairing and repainting walls, and paneling, and replacing roof tiles, and glass windows and doors. Additionally, the Interior Department estimated damage to rugs and typewriters and office furniture and equipment at $280,000.
No estimate was made on damage to files and records, or to art and artifacts, all of which were scattered throughout the three-story building before it was vacated Wednesday night.
Another cost factor is the time the 412 employees who work in the building cannot work. An Interior Department spokesman said their daily salaries amount to $27,000, so the cost of their 5 1/2 days of administrative leave, through yesterday, was about $148,500.
GSA police did not allow smoking during the tour of the building. They cited the finding of several molotov cocktains, some fashioned with soft drink bottles filled with gasoline and capped with rags, and the discovery that gasoline had been poured into some fire extinguishers.
Before anyone was allowed in the building yesterday, bomb squad members conducted a thorough search of the structure.
About 25 or 30 BIA employees worked yesterday, mostly executives and information officials, out of temporary quarters at Interior, or at a BIA office at 1821 K Street NW.
The GSA hopes to have the building ready for reoccupancy a week from today. Arrangements were being made for BIA employees to work in other buildings in the city.
There was no insurance on the building or its contents, according to the Interior Department.
Chief Two Hawk, who is the elected head of the Rosebud Sioux tribe in South Dakota, also is president of the National Tribal Chairmen's Association, which represents the 147 tribes that occupy federally regulated reservations.
Two Hawk said the chiefs came to Washington after learning of the takeover of the BIA. After surveying the damage, they called for a congressional investigation of the incident, in addition to prosecution of the offenders.
Another of the chiefs, Roger A. Jourdain of the Red Lake (Minn.) band of Chippewa Indians, said he was "dumbfounded" at the damage. "If you and I did the same thing, we'd be in the Bastille," he said.
Two Hawk and other chiefs also were upset that federal officials "allowed this to happen. When we've been confronted with this (rebellion) on our reservations, we've kicked them out," Two Hawk said.
Told of the complaint against inaction by the government, Secretary Loesch said, "It's true. They got let down by their government. But we didn't do it. The White House made the decision."
He complained that "the Indian business has more bosses in government than any other. They come around like flies," Loesch said.
"It was not my decision, nor Secretary Morton's," Loesch said. "The decision was out of our hands at 10:25 p.m. Thursday. I was compelled to stand those troops down."
Loesch said (metropolitan police) "Chief Jerry Wilson had riot troops standing by," as did the GSA, ready to evict the hundreds of Indians who had occupied the building.
(About 500 Indians had entered the building on Thursday morning and stayed on during negotiations for housing and other demands. The decision not to evict them Thursday night marked the start of the siege.)
Loesch said that "there was not one single tribal leader in the building during the occupation." He said the only exception to that was "a man named Early Rider, or something like that, who is a minority side representative of a split council in Oklahoma."
He described several of the AIM leaders–Russell Means, Bob Burnett, Vernon Bellecourt, Hank Adams and Carter Camp among them–as "bloody revolutionaries who came here for a physical confrontation who gave up rather reluctantly when they won everything else" in concessions from White House representatives.
One of the demands posted by the protesters was the firing of Loesch. He said he "felt set up by their assessment that I was the greatest road block to that demonstration."
Like other Presidential appointees, Loesch offered his resignation yesterday, an action that is pro forma with a re-elected administration. "I've had no indication either way" on whether the resignation will be accepted, he said.
Reacting to a report that the Indians were given $66,000 for transportation to their homes, Loesch said, "I refuse to pay one dime of BIA money to get those people out of town or for any other purpose.
"Paying them to leave is like paying off an airlines hijacker," he said.
The comparison apparently was just what other federal officials had in mind, according to one source.
"We were walking the line between irreparable and reparable damage," the source said. "You can buy new urinals, new windows. That's reparable damage. But if we had another Kent State at the BIA, or holocaust by arson, that would be irreparable damage. We knew the dividing line."
As Two Hawk and the other tribal officials picked their way through the debris, they came upon a delegation of congressional aides who also were surveying the damage.
Robert B. Jim, chairman of the Yakima (Wash.) Indian Nation, asked for a congressional investigation, saying the destruction and theft of records "will set us back 50 to 100 years."
"Congress made these programs for people on the reservations," Jim said. "Now they have been destroyed by a few urban Indians. What about that federal law forbidding crossing state lines to incite riots?
"Our records of water rights, hunting and fishing treaties, 50 years worth, are gone," Jim said. "This hits at the lowest economic level people."
Chief Jourdain added, "these Indians must have been under the influence of drugs. No Indian in his right mind will do this. They have been funded by do-gooders and subversive elements. We want them prosecuted."