When Taikeff concluded his interrogation in redirect examination, Myrtle Poor Bear was clear and emphatic:

Q: Do you remember Mr. Crooks, that's the man with the dark glasses, asked you a couple of times this afternoon about whether you were ever threatened by Agent Price or Agent Wood. . . .
A: Yes, I remember.
Q: Do you remember when he asked you that question you remained silent for a very long time every time he asked you that question?
A: Yes.
Q: Why did you remain silent and not answer his question?
A: Because they did threaten me.
Q: Miss Poor Bear, will you please tell us whether Agent Price Price ever threatened you.
A: Yes, he did.
Q: What did he say to you?
A: He told me that they were going to plan everything out and if I didn't do it I was going to get hurt.
Q: Did anybody else ever say that to you from the FBI?
A: Bill Wood.

        Still out of the hearing hearing of the jury, the prosecution and defense teams gave arguments before Judge Benson:

THE COURT: I am concerned that much of her mental imbalance may arise from fear.  I think the record is not at all clear as to where that fear arises from. . . .
MR. TAIKEFF: Where did Myrtle come from?  Can you imagine with what your Honor has heard so far about the practices and procedures of the FBI that a witness such as Myrtle Poor Bear, who was not only an eyewitness to the killings according to these documents, but was privy to to the planning, the advance planning, would suddenly walk in or appear in the life of the FBI and give an affidavit directly and immediately to be sent to Canada, and there would not be a 302 as thick as I am tall detailing everything she could remember about anything since the day she was three years old? . . .
        It is not possible. . . . There must be a 302.  There must be some explanation of where she came from.  There must be an explanation of why they say there is no 302. . . .
        No wonder there is no 302 any longer in existence, your Honor, because that 302 was prepared like any other document in connection with Myrtle Poor Bear and had to be gotten rid of because it was something they couldn't live with.

But Judge Benson, ignoring the cynical manipulation of an incompetent witness in two separate cases, determined that Myrtle Poor Bear's false affidavits, like all the rest of the coerced and fabricated evidence in the ResMurs trials, were "irrelevant."

THE COURT: The Court noticed that this witness was under obvious great mental stress.  Her testimony was interrupted at least three times by an emotional reaction of some kind.  The Court is also aware of the extreme difficulty that was encountered in attempting to bring her back into this court at the request of the defendant.
        The Court observed that she had a complete lapse of memory on cross-examination to recent events.
        The Court also is taking into consideration the fact that this witness was not used in the presentation of the Government's case . . . . The three FBI agents who interviewed her were not used in the the presentation of the Government's case: Mr. Wood, Mr. Skelley and Mr. Price.
        And the Court concludes that credibility of this witness for any purpose is so suspect that to permit her testimony to go to the jury would be confusing the issues, may mislead the jury,and could be highly prejudicial. . . .
        The offer of proof is denied. . . .

Judge Benson later refused a defense request that the jury be given Jury Instruction #19, which reads as follows:
"Testimony has been given in this case which if believed by you show that the Government induced witnesses to testify falsely.  If you believe that the Government, or any of its agents, induced any witness to testify falsely in this case . . . this is affirmative evidence of the weakness of the Government's case."

Another controversial person who testified out of the jury's hearing was Jimmy Eagle.  He refuted Mike Anderson's statement that he had frequented the AIM camp at Oglala.  He denied being present there on June 26 and denied boasting of participating in the killings to the four felons whose testimony had been prepared by Agents Hughes and Coward, Price and Wood.  On the contrary, he said, his attorney had warned him to keep his mouth shut, since snitches were likely to turn up in his cell.  Furthermore, he told of Agent Gary Adams visiting him in jail, threatening him with being indicted on murder charges if he refused to cooperate.  But despite Stoldt's (a goon, present on June 26th) sighting and Mike Anderson's account, despite Harper and Stewart, Clifford and High Bull - at Fargo, Adams himself would say that he had never seen any good evidence that Jimmy Eagle was present on June 26, 1975.  For whatever reason, the government had decided that - his own alleged boasts notwithstanding - he hadn't really been there at all.  Eagle's strange history might well have have undermined the jurors' opinion of FBI dependability.  However, as in the case of Myrtle Poor Bear, Judge Benson determined that this youth's account of FBI misconduct would only confuse them.  [The defense privately thought it entirely fitting that Judge Benson mistakenly referred to himself as "the Government" during Eagle's testimony, when he should have described himself as "the Court."]

Another unexpected but dodgy issue popped back up:  FBI stenographer Linda Price, Agent David Price's wife, had filed a 302 report in which she documented the existence and relevance of the elusive red International Scout, jeep, pickup and/or "vehicle" initially associated with Jimmy Eagle, then with unidentified Indians being pursued by Williams and Colter, and then with the person or persons unknown who departed the Jumping Bull land immediately after the agents' deaths.  Recording Ron Williams's radio transmissions in the Rapid City office, she heard Williams say "We're following a red vehicle, you want to keep an eye out for it."  At 12:18, three or four people in in that office , taking down transmissions from Oglala, heard Adams report a red pickup leaving the Jumping Bull area.  [Note: Not too bad a find for a "phantom" vehicle conjured up by the defense, who were subsequently forbidden to enter the FBI's radio transmissions into the court record.]

Yet in the first weeks after the shoot-out, first the description of this vehicle, then its very existence, became shrouded in mystery.  As William Kunstler had pointed out at Cedar Rapids, "The FBI waited almost two weeks before announcing that there was such a pickup truck and that there had been a chase by the agents of the pickup truck."  After Butler and Robideau were acquitted and the government dismissed charges against Jimmy Eagle, the confusion - if that's what it was - increased.  You know; after the high-level strategy meeting decided to focus all efforts on convicting Peltier; when the read pickup, closely followed by Jimmy Eagle's "red International Scout," disappeared into the sunset and Leonard Peltier's red-and-white Chevy van came into view.  When the smoke cleared, however, the prosecution was still stuck with Linda Price's 302, which was supported by FBI stenographer Ann Johnson's recollection elicited at Cedar Rapids, not by the defense but by U.S. Attorney Robert Sikma:
Q: What was the general nature of the radio transmissions, what was being said between 11:55 and 12:10 p.m.?
A: There was a general background of what had been happening, of the agents being fired at, and what was being done.
Q: O.K. What happened at 12:06?
A: Adams was receiving fire.
Q: And what happened at 12:10, approximately 12:10 p.m.?
A: An ambulance was called to go down there.
Q: O.K., and what happened at about 12:18 p.m.?
A: Adams was om the scene and he had been receiving fire.
Q: And what else happened?
A: He said that he saw a red pickup truck leaving the Jumping Bull Hall area, and that the Pine Ridge Police were instructed to stop this pickup.

For the prosecutors, it was important that these unwelcome recollections be blurred or otherwise discredited in the jury's mind.  Therefore it was now revealed that these ladies had been "assisted" in their stenography by Resident Senior Agent George O'Clock, the suggestion being that these nice girls back at the office had confused things and should not be taken too seriously by the jury.  At Fargo, Johnson dutifully declared that she did not really recall that stuff about the red pickup anymore.  Nor could she refer to her own notes on the actual transmissions, since she had destroyed them several months earlier - after the Cedar Rapids acquittal and before this trial.  (SA George O'Clock had also suffered a similar lapse of memory:  "There were times I was away from the radio," he says today.  "I don't recall hearing about that red pickup.")  As with the testimony of Agents Coward and Waring, Judge Benson forbade the defense to place in evidence the stenographers' 302s, which make no mention of any "assistance" from Mr. O'Clock.