Yoshie cites Ken Lawrence lbo-talk post,
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/1998/1998-October/009552.html
http://www.coloradoaim.org/why.html
> ...The IITC. Hammered to pieces as a direct result of federal
> repression, AIM was in a state of virtual collapse by the early 80s,
> fraught with incessant internal discord.141 The Bellecourts were the
> only AIM "notables" never tried and imprisoned during the period. It was
> at this point that Vernon announced the reestablishment of the
> formerly-dissolved National Office and proclaimed Clyde executive
> director. Whatever his younger brother was doing at the time, Vernon
> used his new station to assert control over the movement's single
> untarnished operation, the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC).
> Labeling Cherokee activist Jimmie Durham, IITC's highly effective
> founding director, a "white man masquerading as an Indian," Vernon soon
> accomplished his objective.142
IITC was established in 1974 at the behest of the Lakota elders to represent indigenous interests vis-à-vis nation-states before the United Nations. Under Durham's direction it had succeeded in solid fashion. By 1981, however, the Bellecourts turned IITC completely around as they visited native communities on Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast, an area where indigenous resistance to state domination was rapidly building.143 As "cousins and allies from the north," the Bellecourts were introduced to local Indian military leaders at the village of Tasbapauni, shown defensive emplacements, weapons caches and so forth. They left, promising they would soon return. What came instead were detachments of Nicaraguan troops who systematically rounded up or killed key leaders, impounded weapons and destroyed exactly those positions the brothers had been shown. Convinced they had been betrayed to the government, the Atlantic Coast Indians issued death warrants against both Bellecourts should they ever come back. IITC was permanently banned from their territory.144
While IITC's relationship to indigenous peoples was steadily deteriorating, its new cast of "leaders" found plenty of time to hang out with Sandinista officials in Managua and Geneva, as well as leftist or simply antiAmerican governments from the USSR and Cuba to Libya and Iran.145 By 1984, Vernon was taking his slide show on the lucrative college lecture circuit touting the "indigenous rights" posture of Nicaragua's Sandinista government and glamorizing the relocation centers into which the government had forced much of Nicaragua's indigenous population. Rapt audiences listened to him explain how the Sandinista revolution's success was more important to Indian rights than the Indians themselves.146 In his talks and interviews, Vernon habitually described the native resistance, especially MISURASATA, Nicaragua's equivalent of AIM, as a "CIA-funded contra organization."147
While the Sandinistas tried to rebut these reports in the pages of Barricada and other journals, Vernon's deliberately simplistic and decidedly anti-Indian "good guys, bad guys" presentations were especially well-received and well-compensated by numerous left organizations and "progressives" eager to romanticize someone else's revolution rather than make their own.148 Almost overnight Vernon became a countercultural celebrity. He had no demonstrable constituent base of his own, yet his picture was emblazoned on the front page of the Socialist Workers Party publication, The Militant, captioned as the "representative Native American radical" of the 80s.149 For several years, the Bellecourts' perspective on Nicaragua was the only "indigenous" view that saw print in The Guardian, the American left's premier "independent radical news weekly," coverage that translated into more lecture invitations and larger honoraria.150
The only problem was that most radical Indians, in or out of AIM, strongly disagreed with the Bellecourts' message. When Russell Means announced that "the business of the American Indian Movement is supporting Indian self-determination, not the governments that seek to prevent it," Vernon quickly drafted a press release in the name of the "Central Governing Council of the American Indian Movement" claiming that Means "does not represent" AIM.151 A few months later, an expulsion was issued on AIM letterhead and both brothers announced at a press conference that they had "totally expelled [Russell Means] from the American Indian Movement."(emphasis added)152
Vernon smeared Means and dozens of others - from Akwesasne Notes editors John Mohawk and Mike Meyers to Clem Chartier, a leader of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples; from Jim Anaya of the National Indian Youth Council to Tim Coulter, director of the Indian Law Resource Center; from Morris and Churchill to Hank Adams, head of American Indian Survival, Inc. - as "either a CIA puppet or an outright operative."153 He used phone calls, faxes and "information packets" in a concerted nationwide campaign similar to that now being run against Churchill to prevent Means from being invited to speak at college campuses and political events.154 Similarly, San Francisco-based "indigenous diplomat" and former IITC director Antonio Gonzales has nearly made a career of insinuating that Churchill - and dozens of others - are "CIA operatives" because of their support of Nicaragua's native peoples against Sandinista assimilation policies in the 1980s.155
AIM's internal fragmentation and external isolation increasing radically in 1986, Colorado AIM agreed to host a meeting in Denver to allow Dennis Banks to bring the principles together in a verbal "cease fire." The Bellecourts boycotted the event.156 A few months later, Dennis Banks tried again, this time asking those concerned to meet at Oglala on Pine Ridge. While Clyde and an IITC representative showed, Vernon again refused. Instead, he used the absence of Morris, Churchill and Locust from Denver as an opportunity to deliver a speech sponsored by the local CISPES, Socialist Workers Party and New Alliance Party chapters. There, and in other radio interviews, he denounced Colorado AIM's support of Means and MISURASATA as being "counterrevolutionary," "CIA-inspired" and "possibly controlled by the U.S. government."157
The elders who had created IITC had had enough. Not only was the organization functioning politically very differently than originally intended, but rumors abounded that it was used for cocaine importation.158 When Vernon tried to stage a symbolic coup at the organization's annual meeting, removing Russell Means from the position of permanent trustee the traditionals had appointed him to in 1974, the old people refused.159 Just like the "expulsions" of Churchill and Morris, this move by Vernon was a moot point since all three had long since left the IITC. Within months, the IITC had dispensed with grassroots oversight by incorporating itself in California, replacing the elders with a handpicked "advisory board."160 Since then, it has lost whatever standing it once possessed to represent indigenous peoples, and has become a funding conduit and employment haven for those aligned with the Bellecourts.
While rumors of IITC involvement in narcotic trafficking were never investigated, a possible source for the fire behind the smoke came with Clyde Bellecourt's 1987 arrest for nine counts of peddling drugs to the children living in Minneapolis AIM's Red Earth Housing Project. Outside the courtroom, Clyde cried entrapment, while behind closed doors his attorneys quietly negotiated a plea bargain situating him in a federal prison from which he was released less than two years later, amazingly short time for a dealer sentenced during Ronald Reagan's war on drugs.161 Several tribunal witnesses and the Ojibwe News attested that after his release, he not only resumed the activities which caused his arrest, but branched out into other criminal enterprises, all while billing himself as "Executive Director of the American Indian Movement."162
Other Fronts. While Clyde was in prison, and the Sandinistas were collapsing, Vernon was pursuing other income possibilities. The first was to trade on his "famous AIM leader" image by endorsing the 1987-88 presidential campaign of the purported "left alternative" candidate Dr. Lenora Fulani, an African-American.163 However, disturbing information soon surfaced in a series of articles by investigative journalist Ken Lawrence in the Jackson Advocate, Mississippi's oldest black-owned newspaper and a mainstay of progressive organizing in the state. Not only was Fulani's "Rainbow Alliance," a subsidiary of her "New Alliance Party" (NAP), purposely named to make voters confuse it with Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition (a deception designed to enhance fundraising prospects), but it was controlled by a white man, Dr. Fred Newman, an outspoken admirer of neofascist Lyndon LaRouche.164
To stem the flow of such information, the NAP filed a libel suit claiming punitive damages steep enough to personally bankrupt Lawrence and publisher Charles Tisdale, as well as put the Advocate out of business165 At trial, Vernon appeared as the star witness for the NAP, not only swearing that Lawrence's allegations were false, but suggesting that the reporter himself was a "federal provocateur" trying to derail a "legitimate African-American candidate who happens to hold left-of-center views."166 Vernon was making headway with the jury until he admitted under cross examination that he was paid $24,000 a year for various "service" to Fulani's organization, including his court appearance, thereby lending AIM's endorsement to her right-wing fraud as a left-wing alternative, without authorization from AIM membership.167
Vernon's exposure as a paid witness had no effect on the trial's outcome because after only one day of defense presentations, the case was dismissed with prejudice. Proceeding on the basis that "the truth is the best defense" against a defamation action, Lawrence quickly established the Fulani/Newman/LaRouche relationship.168 NAP's credibility slipped away. But damage was done: Vernon's maneuverings left strong memories of an "AIM linkage" to the cryptofacist NAP within the African-American community. By this time, however, Vernon found a far greener pasture in Colonel Muammar al Qadaffi's Libya.169
In 1988, after having already enjoyed a number of trips to Tripoli as a "guest of the state," Vernon announced that Qadaffi was preparing to award him a grant of $1 million with which to "pursue the struggle for indigenous liberation in the United States."170 None of these trips had anything to do with AIM, but all of them lent credence to government claims that the movement was "associated with international terrorism." A federal grand jury was convened to determine whether Vernon's defiance of a U.S. travel prohibition to Libya was a legal violation or a breach of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, among other things. Vernon was jailed briefly for refusing to testify, but suddenly released just as eight members of an Arab students association who had helped arrange his trips went to prison, and the Palestinian manager of the travel agency booking Vernon's tickets fled American jurisdiction.171
Even more striking is that Bellecourt was able to accept Qadaffi's million dollars. Awarded in 1991, Vernon only admits that $250,000 of it was actually handed over.172 Vernon had stated on several occasions that the cash would be dispersed by a board over which he would preside. Native organizations could submit proposals and, if approved, their projects would be funded.173 His grip on the moneybag temporarily accorded Bellecourt his long-sought status as principle arbiter of political correctness in Indian Country. However, so far as is known, nobody else ever actually received any of this money. This includes the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, whom Qadaffi was supposed to have personally designated to receive at least $50,000.174
Amidst the murk of the Bellecourt finances, either Vernon got the money and kept it, or he never had the money at all.175 In either scenario, he deliberately misrepresented a situation to command the kind of subservience and political fealty he's always craved, a cynical manipulation and subterfuge typical of his conduct from start to finish, and typical of the dominant culture. It is almost a cliché that the most respected members of Native American communities are the poorest because they give anything that comes to them to those in need, but it has a basis in truth. Vernon's game with the Libyan money graphically exemplifies the deformation of the indigenous liberation movement's and opposition politics's values he has induced for years.
Are the Bellecourts agents provocateurs? The fact that the Bellecourts have long practiced the same disruptive activities for which they've so often branded others as government agents and provocateurs does not mean that they themselves are agents provocateurs. It seems simpler and perhaps more frightening than that. They talk the talk sporadically, but they consistently walk the dominant culture walk. Unless and until we have hard evidence to the contrary, we must, as Churchill comments, place a premium "on establishing the sort of knowledge base and analytical skills among activists that would allow the wheat to be sifted from the chaff..."176
Neither are the Bellecourt brothers interchangeable. Churchill says, comparing Clyde with the late Huey P. Newton, Black Panther Party founder and early influence on AIM:
Clyde, like Huey, is a guy who started out really strong. He was sincere, he believed, he galvanized people. As a result, both organizations made a lot of headway in their initial stages. It follows that a whole lot of new talent comes flooding in. It also follows that there was incredibly heavy repression in both cases: disinformation in the media, infiltration and internal disruption, bogus charges against everybody in sight, people railroaded into prison, assassinations, the whole bit. So, initially as a legitimate self-defense measure, both men started trying to weed out infiltrators. But that pretty quickly became a cover for getting rid of political competitors as well. One wonders who ultimately bad-jacketed the greater number of people, the feds or Huey. Clyde wasn't as heavyhanded, but then he was always covering for Vernon, who certainly made up for Clyde's restraint. <SNIP> -- Michael Pugliese