The U.S. Civil Rights Commission called the ResMurs investigation "an over-reaction which takes on aspects of a vendetta," and the Commission's chairman, Arthur Flemming in a letter to the U.S. Attorney General on July 22 protesting "the full-scale military-style invasion . . . . Their presence has created deep resentment on the part of many reservation residents who feel that such a procedure would not be tolerated in any non-Indian community in the United States. They point out that little has been done to solve the numerous murders on the reservation, but when two white men were killed, 'troops' are brought in from all over the country at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars." For example, a woman named Rose Weasel Bear, interviewed in July by NBC News, said that when her brother and nephew were found dead, earlier that year, the authorities informed her that the deaths had been accidental, although one man had been hanged and the other chopped up with an ax. "Couldn't there be just a little justice in there with the law?" Mrs. Weasel Bear asked. She feared for Pine Ridge children in the future: "We are living in a prison camp, the way we are now." Flemming's letter received no response.
Maybe this was because the Attorney General was so busy defending his government's heavy presence on Pine Ridge. It was being questioned all over the country. Americans wanted to know just why, for the second time in two and a half years, the U.S. government was spending millions of dollars in paramilitary operations on a remote Indian reservation in South Dakota. Others asked why the doomed agents had been trespassing on Jumping Bull land, since the Indians claimed they were ordered off the place on June 25 when they could not produce a warrant for Eagle's arrest. When early reports that the agents had been carrying a warrant on the twenty sixth proved false, the Bureau proceeded to explain that its agents didn't need to produce warrants to make an arrest, provided they knew one had been issued. What was much harder to explain was how trivial the alleged offense for which a federal warrant had been issued was - in the first place. On June 23, Jimmy Eagle and three other youths being sought had been drinking at one of their houses when a friendly party with white friends they grew up with turned into a free-for-all, during which Hobart Horse got into a wrestling match with one of the whites while Eagle removed a pair of cowboy boots from the feet of the other.
Though he carried a clasp knife, Eagle denied taking it out, or committing the robbery and assault with a deadly weapon with which he was charged. Had the victim been an Indian, it's unlikely that any charges would have been filed at all. The white youths registered a complaint - probably a justified one. What perplexed the Indians was why warrants were immediately issued without any investigation, and why no BIA patrolman had been sent out on this matter, which was one for tribal court, and why a petty misdemeanor had grown overnight into two felonies. For lack of any better reason, we can only guess whether a felony was needed to give the agents jurisdiction on the reservation. Certainly, the press (and the FBI agents also) were led to believe that a capital crime had occurred - when in fact this allegation had no substance whatsoever and was also quickly dropped without explanation. In fact the whole thing was so inconsequential that all but Eagle were eventually released on non secured bonds or in the custody of others, and Eagle himself was tried only on the robbery charge - and then acquitted. Understandably, many Indians concluded that the felony charges and the "search" were just a cover to allow FBI snooping in the area of the AIM camp. (Matthiessen, ibid, pp. 209-210.)