Activists' House Raided Again; BIA Documents Sought
Activists' House Raided Again; BIA Documents Sought
The three-story brick row house at 1747 Lanier Pl. NW has been occupied by a variety of newsworthy persons in the last few years: Lesie Bacon, once a suspect in the 1971 bombing of the Capitol, and a series of May Day, Cantonsville 9 and other antiwar activists and rebel American Indians.
Yesterday, the FBI moved in.
From shortly before noon until 5, four agents, in shifts of two, took turns sitting at the dining room table, listening to tape recorded Indian music and chatting with the regular tenants, two Indian women and their three young children.
They said they were waiting for a search warrant needed to search the rambling house for documents stolen from the Bureau of Indian Affairs building last November.
A Paiute-Shoshone Indian woman, Anita Collins, 28, had been led away from the house in handcuffs shortly before noon.
Mrs. Collins, Henry L. (Hank) Adams, 29, of 1464 Rhode Island Ave. NW, chief negotiator for the Trail of Broken Treaties, and Les Whitten, a reporter for newspaper columnist Jack Anderson, were charged with receiving stolen government property.
There were no warrants for the other residents: LaNada Boyer, 26, a Bannock-Shoshone from Idaho who is a student at Antioch Law School; her sons, Deynon, 5, and Gerad, 4 months; her niece Leana Angel, 19, and Mrs. Angel's daughter, Anee, 22 months.
So the agents sat and drank instant coffee, getting up only to follow the women through the house, or to trade places with agents sitting outside in a car.
The agents were impassive in the presence of tape recorded music which blared and sage and cedar "medicine," which burned, and children who fussed and squealed.
Mrs. Boyer said the agents came to the house in the company of a man named Johnny, who had posed as an Indian, gaining their confidence, only to reveal himself yesterday as an undercover agent.
"You're a traitor, Johnny," Mrs. Boyer said she told him when he knocked at the door with a warrant for Mrs. Collins' arrest.
"I'm not an Indian," she said he responded. "I'm an officer," he said, flashing his credentials.
"You're an American, aren't you?" the woman replied.
Mrs. Boyer said Johnny had helped Mrs. Collins move her belongings to the house on Monday, and had offered his red station wagon for their use in picking up some "documents" at the bus depot on Tuesday.
Documents reportedly stolen during the Indian takeover of the BIA building, were returned to Adams, who in turn planned to return them to the BIA yesterday, Mrs. Boyer said. She said Adams had an appointment with a BIA official.
As the wait became prolonged, Mrs. Boyer chided the agents about their lack of knowledge of Indian history.
She said she and her son, Deynon Means, were among the first 14 Indians who occupied Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, beginning Nov. 20, 1969.
They stayed on the rock one year. Mrs. Boyer hitched boat rides to the mainland often enough to continue her studies at the University of California at Berkeley. At that time, she was married to Ted Means, a leader of the occupation and brother of Russell Means, an organizer of the American Indian Movement (AIM) one of the sponsors of last November's caravan to Washington.
Mrs. Boyer said she graduated from Berkeley in December, 1972, with a degree in Indian law and politics. Her son became known as "the Alcatraz kid," she said.
At 4:15 p.m., Sen. James Abourezk (D-S.D.) called for information. Mrs. Boyer told him the agents were "pacing around, following us to the bathroom and things like that."
Fellow students from Antioch Law School called and advised the women that they should walk out, and demand that the agents leave, too.
So at 4:55 p.m., four agents, two women and three children--one of them wrapped snugly in an Indian cradle board--vacated 1747 Lanier Pl. NW. The agents remained outside explaining that the house was still "secured."
The landlady, Mrs. Dean Thompson, who lives in the other half of the building, at 1749, had come about 4 p.m. Her reaction was: "I hope they (FBI) don't break down the door again, as they did when they came after Leslie Bacon."
Mrs. Thompson said Mrs. Boyer had been a good tenant, and is up-to-date on the rent.
Mrs. Boyer explained that she is able to pay the rent because of a law school scholarship she was awarded for being the only member of her tribe ever to graduate from college.
The scholarship is provided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, she said.