FBI Arrests Reporter in Stolen Data
FBI Arrests Reporter in Stolen Data
FBI agents arrested Leslie H. Whitten, investigative reporter for columnist Jack Anderson, on a Washington street yesterday and charged him, along with two other persons, with illegally receiving documents stolen from the Bureau of Indian Affairs last November.
Whitten, 44, denied any illegal involvement and said he was arrested while "covering the story" of the documents' return to the government.
Charged with Whitten in a one-page criminal complaint were Henry L. (Hank) Adams, 29, of 1464 Rhode Island Ave. NW, and Anita Collins, 28, of 1747 Lanier Pl. NW.
The charge carries a maximum penalty of a $10,000 fine and a year in jail.
Adams, an Assiniboine Sioux from Frank's Landing, Wash., was chief negotiator for the Trail of Broken Treaties, a coalition of Indian groups that organized a caravan to Washington that resulted in the takeover of the BIA building Nov. 2 through Nov. 8.
Mrs. Collins, a Paiute Shoshone, previously lived in Alexandria. She also was a planner of the caravan.
All three were arrested at 10:15 a.m., and were held in a lockup at the U.S. Courthouse for five hours. They were released on their own recognizance after brief appearances before U.S. magistrate Jean Dwyer.
A preliminary hearing was scheduled for Feb. 15 to determine whether there is probable cause to hold them for grand jury action.
Last week two Indians were arrested in Kansas City, Mo., on similar charges of possession of material stolen from the BIA. Several other indictments were returned earlier in Oklahoma, but they have since been dismissed.
The BIA building, at 19th Street and Constitution Ave. NW, was sacked during the occupation, and much of its contents was destroyed or stolen.
Anderson, whose column has carried extensive quotations from stolen BIA documents, charged the federal government with "harassment" of a newsman who had been reponsible for stories that were "embarrassing" to federal officials.
Whitten emerged smiling from his confinement and told reporters, "I was just out covering the story and I got arrested by the FBI. I hope it doesn't happen to anyone else."
Anderson acknowledged that at the time of the arrests, Whitten was helping Adams in the physical transportation of three cartons of BIA documents. That was because Adams, who had made arrangements to return the material to the BIA, lacked his own transportation, Anderson said.
FBI agents made the arrests in front of the apartment house where Adams lives and maintains a headquarters for his campaign of protest against alleged official violantions of the rights of American Indians.
After the arrest, a reporter visited Adams' fifth-floor apartment. He talked to two FBI agents there who said they were waiting for Michael Hunt, who works as a bodyguard for Adams. The apartment was in disarray.
At 1747 Lanier Pl. NW, FBI agents waited inside the house throughout the afternoon for a search warrant that was not delivered.
An FBI spokesman said that after the street arrest, agents then went to Adams' apartment and arrested Daniel Pigeon, 22, of Wittenberg, Wis., and Alison Grace Cerri, 20, of 9316 Piney Branch Parkway, Silver Spring. Pigeon and Miss Cerri also were held throughout the day but were released at 6 p.m. when the U.S. Attorney's office announced that no charges would be placed against them.
According to the complaint, an unidentified undercover District policeman informed the FBI that he had learned on Tuesday that Whitten would pick up the documents at the Rhode Island Avenue address.
Whitten's account was significantly different. He said the arrangement to accompany Adams and to observe the return of the documents was made over the telephone at 8:45 a.m. yesterday.
The complaint charged Whitten, Adams, and Mrs. Collins with receiving, concealing and retaining the three cartons with intent to convert them to their own use, knowing that they were stolen, a violation of Section 641 of the federal criminal code.
According to Whitten, he and Adams marked the cartons with the name of Dennis Hyten, the special FBI agent they knew was working on the investigation of the November lootings of the BIA offices.
The idea was to drop off the cartons at the BIA, with the expectation that they would be forwarded to agent Hyten, Whitten said. Anderson told newsmen that during a fingerprinting and photographing session at the FBI Washington field office, Whitten made a special request that agents take pictures of the cartons marked with Hyten's name, apparently to corroborate Whitten's contention that the documents were being restored to government control.
Anderson said no such photographs were taken in Whitten's presence. An FBI spokesman refused to comment on any events occuring during the identification procedures.
Whitten said he asked to go to FBI headquarters and the courthouse without the assistance of agents, but he was handcuffed and escorted along with Adams and Mrs. Collins.
Whitten, a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Washington bureau of the Hearst newspapers, has been an associate of Jack Anderson since 1969.
Anderson told reporters that Whitten "is incapable of telling a falsehood. He was at all times acting as a newsman. He had nothing to do with the theft of the documents, and he was simply trying to get another exclusive story about the return of the documents and the government's reaction."
Anderson said that neither he nor Whitten had ever been in possession of original BIA papers. He said his office dealt only with Xerox copies.
The unusual procedure, Anderson said, was for Whitten to sift through hundreds of pages of BIA papers and designate the pages which his Indian sources would duplicate and turn over.
The papers document years of BIA abuse of Indian rights, Anderson said. He added that he intends to run further columns based on information from the documents.
The columnist said he was not condoming theft but neither was he approving of federal treatment of American Indians.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which has taken part in several legal cases involving reporters, issued a statement charging that the arrest of Whitten "is based on the outrageous proposition that information about government activities is property, like an auto, which can be owned by the government . . .
"Government information belongs to the public. It is not owned by the Defense Department or the President or the Bureau of Indian Affairs."