It’s a little bit like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee last month received 30,000 pages of FBI documents relating to the imprisoned American Indian’s case. Now, activists with the Lawrence-based committee are digging through those pages hoping to find even a sliver of evidence that will help to set Peltier free.

“There will be very specific items we’ll be looking for,” said Denis Moynihan, acting coordinator of the committee. “We’ll be looking for evidence of the sort that would grant a retrial.”

Peltier is serving two life sentences for the 1975 execution-style murders of two FBI agents during a siege at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

Advocates for Peltier’s release from the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth claim the U.S. government falsified evidence leading to Peltier’s arrest and coerced false testimony or hid exonerating evidence to obtain his conviction.

The committee used the Freedom of Information Act, and assistance from U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., to obtain 11 boxes of documents relating to the case last month.

Moynihan said his organization had been told there still were thousands of pages that haven’t been released, but is pleased with what’s been received so far.

“It’s a very historic release of documents,” Moynihan said. “We’re beginning to plow through them and look for further evidence of the FBI misconduct that was pervasive throughout the investigation.”

Scott Berry, a spokesman for the FBI in Washington D.C., disputed that assertion.

“Obviously, we’re not hiding anything if we released all of this,” he said.

But Moynihan said many of the documents contained “redacted” sections, or sections that have been blacked out. National security is the usual justification for such censorship, he said.

“It’s hard to imagine, how could this ancient history challenge national security?” Moynihan said.

Berry referred other questions to the Minneapolis office of the FBI; a spokesman there did not return calls to the Journal-World last week.

At 7:30 p.m. July 20, the committee will sponsor a forum at Plymouth Congregational Church, 925 Vt., with some of the attorneys and others who are digging through the documents.

The forum will include Jennifer Harbury, a human rights attorney; Bruce Ellison, founding member of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee; Bernard Kleinman, lead attorney in a civil suit against the FBI in Peltier’s case; and Michael Kuzma, who has directed the Freedom of Information Act efforts on Peltier’s behalf.

And at 9 a.m. Tuesday, Peltier will have an interim parole hearing at the penitentiary in Leavenworth. Peltier has been denied parole before, however; his defenders will keep digging through the FBI documents.

Moynihan is hopeful.

“People have been released from prison after decades,” he said, “based on a single sheet of paper.”