INTERVIEW WITH SHERMAN SKOLNICK -- MARCH 20, 1995

On March 20, 1995, I interviewed Mr. Sherman Skolnick of the Citizens' Committee to Clean-up the Courts [CCCC] by telephone. The following is my transcription of that interview. Note that in this interview I neither necessarily agree nor disagree with either all or some of the statements of Mr. Skolnick.

-- Brian Francis Redman, Editor-in-chief, Conspiracy Nation

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CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. To get to some questions: first off, are there any late- breaking stories that you're workin' on?

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, we're workin' on a story about the FBI which will probably be, might be our next message on our recorded message. There's a lot to be said about them.

What else is happening. Uh, well... I'm trying to think. What is that late-breaking item?

Well we're trying to check out something. There was some radio, smaller radio stations, carried a story the other day that several very sizeable banks in this country are in terrible condition, which may pull down the banking system. I've been checking with my financial sources to see if there are any further details. But that's something that has to be looked into.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. And just generally, I wanted to start off if there's any pressing message that you wanted to get out, before I get to some of the other questions. Just, you know, if there's anything that you had that you wanted to especially say.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Not that I can think of. I may think of somethin' and call you right back. But... Are you home?

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
After I finish this, I may think of somethin'. I'll call ya right back if you're gonna be there.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, okay. I'll hang around for maybe an hour or so.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
O.K. All right, go ahead with your questions.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. In one of your radio interviews, you talked about how you had interviewed Michael Riconosciuto. And you mentioned...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well it was more than that.

A lawyer that we knew at the time volunteered to be his attorney while Riconosciuto was in the federal jail in Chicago. And that turned out to be a period from September 'til almost the first of the year. From September '92 'til almost the end of December '92, Riconosciuto was in the Metropolitan Correction Center, which is the federal jail, downtown Chicago. (It's one of the only triangular buildings, by the way, in the world.)

And I and an associate of mine volunteered to be the paralegals. And so, the three of us, quite often, were down there in the jail, talking in a conference room with Riconosciuto, who contended, number one, that he had been framed on false dope charges to get him out of circulation. Because he's a super-duper computer hacker and was the chief of research for Wackenhut Corporation, which is a private off-shoot of the Central Intelligence Agency.

And, so that's basically what we did over a period of months. And we found out a great deal of information, while he was waiting to be brought before the Inslaw federal grand jury, which was headed by a former judge, Nicholas J. Bua.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I can fill in a lot of details. But that's briefly what it is.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
All right, and in this interview that I'm thinking of, you said that...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Not interview. It's in the plural; we were there sometimes three times a week!

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. But what I'm referring to is a specific radio interview, I think it was Radio Free America, where you... When I say "the interview", I mean the interview with Tom Valentine...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah, okay.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
...and you, as I recall, you said that when you began probing into the area of the World Trade Center bombing, Riconosciuto...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
No, that was after he had finished his grand jury testimony and was sent back to a federal jail facility, elsewhere in the country. That one of our group -- he used to call some of us, in our group, collect. It was the only way to contact us. And one of our associates began asking him (this would've been in the Spring of '93, after the World Trade Center bombing). And we asked him whether the "EHT", that he invented -- Electrostatic Heat Transfer (that is a type of explosion, just below nuclear. It's not dynamite. It's something else.) -- whether that was used in the bombing of the World Trade Center. Because, unlike usual explosives, whatever was used melted some of the girders. And usually, dynamite and stuff like that simply blows out the weaker elements -- windows, brick walls. It wouldn't get to the point of melting steel. The only thing that can do that, as a type of explosive, is this sub-nuclear thing called "EHT", which was invented by him, and promoted by him and his former business partner, Robert Booth Nichols.

And when we talked to Riconosciuto about it, unlike him, he flew into a terrible rage and says, "You better get off that!!" And from the conversation, we gathered that his position was that if we didn't get off that, we were in terrible, terrible danger in even discussing it.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. And who do you... Do you have any opinion on who was behind that World Trade Center bombing?

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Probably foreign intelligence agencies that wanted to blame it all on Arabs. Because one of those who, I believe, subsequently confessed to certain things had a phone number where he could be reached. And that phone number was the number, the phone number of a woman who was with Israeli Intelligence. From that, and a number of other details, we gather that it is not the Arabs that really were involved. They were, they were... I don't know how to put it. They were pushed into the position of provocateurs. But they were being manipulated by others that were not Arabs! That were some foreign intelligence agencies: either French, Israel, or others.

Because what they wanted was a very negative thing against the Arabs. And that helps the FBI. Because currently -- and that's the story we're working on, by the way -- more than half of the FBI, in their major offices, like Chicago, more than half of 'em are into counter-terrorism. And basically what they're doing is they're sitting outside the homes all night of Palestinian- Americans (some of whom run grocery stores), as if every one of 'em is a terrorist! In other words, half of the FBI in Chicago are counter-terrorists.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
There's this thing with this Trade Center bombing that, there's a thin line -- O.K.? Because the FBI was probing into it, but it may be that they had crossed a thin line into actually provoking the incident.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, the point is, they work in teams: one side investigates, and the other side purports to represent the would-be defendants. The principle attorney during most of the time (I think he was pushed out, late in the prosecution), the principle defense attorney was William Kunstler.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Who was formerly a top officer of the O.S.S., which later became the CIA.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
I'm surprised to hear that! Because Kunstler, I had always thought of him as...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
...as a "radical revolutionary". Yeah, I understand. I understand that.

For awhile... When I first confronted Kunstler with this, in 1969, he wouldn't answer. But he pushed Jerry Rubin up against my wheelchair, to try to scare me. In later years, into the '70s, a magazine came out called Counterspy. And he [Kunstler] was up on the masthead as a senior officer of the O.S.S.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. And he's defending, if I'm not mistaken, the Shabazz thing with, you know, where Malcolm X's daughter had...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. He gets into all these so-called "radical, revolutionary" situations. Starting as far back as the "Chicago 7", Rennie Davis and all that. And I don't know if you saw the detailed fact sheet that we had about Rennie Davis, but um... Did I send ya one of those?

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, we covered it. You know, that Rennie Davis was...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
...got a blue fact sheet. I think I sent you one of those.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. You may have. I put all your stuff in a file, so...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
It's a very small type. But it's very complete.

Most of those that were in the "Chicago 7", the thing was funded by CIA foundations. And we went into a very detailed research report about it.

And the lawyer that fronted for them, in months and months of criminal trial here, was William Kunstler. And like I say, at the time I confronted him that he had been with CIA, he wouldn't answer. Instead, he pushed Jerry Rubin to, you know, sort of "block" me, or whatever you want to call that.

So when you say that he's with the Shabazz thing and he was with the World Trade Center criminal defendants, that, by itself, is a piece of circumstantial proof that supports our position that there's espionage involvement.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. Regarding that "Chicago 7" trial, one of my sort of "heroes" was Abbie Hoffman, when I was younger. I find it hard to...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I liked Abbie quite a bit. But Abbie got into a treacherous area there of playing games with CIA. And it may have led to his strange death. {1}.

I ran into Abbie over the years. He wouldn't... He liked to tell very obscene jokes, which some of our friends used to laugh at; they were rather funny. However, he wouldn't answer our specific research points as to how he was allowed to travel all over the world, by court permission, while he was, had been convicted or was awaiting -- during the criminal trial and while he was convicted, the judges allowed him to travel all over the world. Which is not done to people facing much lesser criminal charges. For example, he flew into split Yugoslavia about the same time that Nixon did. Which would be, I believe (I think it's on our fact sheet), approximately 1970 or '71.

But on the CIA thing, is when Abbie stopped laughing. During the '72 GOP convention, which later resulted in riots, we... I was down there with friends of mine that had their own van. And we used to drive Abbie around in our van while we talked to him. And he would joke, like I say, about porno and so on, obscene things, which some of my friends laughed at quite a bit.

But then when I showed him some of the documents, that were little-known, about CIA and that, he really got very upset and wouldn't answer.

And I suspect that he thought it was cute to play these games, use CIA foundation money to do what he was doing, and sort of "play both sides". He was a very clever man.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, okay.

Regarding Waco, Texas: you had, in one of your commentaries, you'd mentioned as far as the Branch Davidian church being a possible CIA brainwashing facility.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. Because they had, CIA has got a similar facility right nearby there.

However, I don't claim to be that knowledgeable about the Waco thing. And I... It wasn't something that we worked on directly.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. Are you of the opinion that... There's a video that shows a tank with a flame-thrower...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I'm concerned about that. That came from Linda Thompson. And some of us are very concerned. (She distributed the thing from Indianapolis.) And we are concerned whether that particular thing was added to or changed or enhanced, or even so far as being falsified. We don't know.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
She's a controversial figure, that...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah, she is.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
...that, even myself: I'm just not certain on which way to call...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well she tried, she tried to organize 100,000 people to march on the nation's capital, armed. And there are laws against that. In other words, you can't come down the highway, armed, and march like a huge army on Washington, DC. It's... There's various federal, criminal laws that would be involved.

She later sent out a bulletin (and I think we have it in the file) trying to explain away why she called it off.

But some of us are very concerned, that she showed up from nowhere, and had all the trappings of an agent provocateur.

And I haven't decided one way or the other. It's just uh, I'm very leery of her. Let's put it that way.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Because, as I understand it, she is saying that this thing about the March on Washington was a ruse by her, in order to get the militia movement going.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well some of... The facts she sent, about the federal reserve being illegal and things like that, are things that more knowledgeable people may accept. But she used that, we fear, as a smokescreen to put through a provocation. And this comes at a time when a lot of ordinary people, especially those that do not live in large cities, are forming what they call "militias", arming themselves, and are prepared to take the law into their own hands, so to speak, because of the failure of the courts and the government to satisfy what appear to be their grievances.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
You know, I've got, personally I've got mixed feelings about these militias: on the one hand, I can see it as a positive thing. But on the other hand, I can see it as a dangerous thing in that it could be infiltrated...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Absolutely. And we are very concerned about that, because the Posse Comitatus has been widely infiltrated by government agents.

All you have to do is look back thirty, forty, fifty years and be knowledgeable about dissident movements, starting in the '30s and then post-World War II. There was a time in the late '40s and early '50s when it was reasonable to say that half of the Communist Party USA were actually FBI members. And they manipulated things until the Communist Party more or less broke apart, about 1956.

And even today, I occasionally, as a journalist, have gone several times over the last 20 years since the Communist Party came out of the underground, following 1968, and held public meetings. I went to their meetings but (as a journalist), but I was given a very hard time. I... Generally, they grabbed the microphone out of my hand when I tried to interview any of 'em in the hallway. And I didn't ask belligerent right-wing questions. I asked reasonable, you know, journalist-type questions. And most of the times I was greatly hassled.

And there are some that I greatly suspect are paid... I wouldn't call 'em provocateurs. I don't know what to call 'em. Well...

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Informants maybe.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. They generally will not criticize the large banks. And they generally spend a lot of their time on supporting strikes and all that -- which is commendable. I mean... And, but they generally do not go after the very big companies. Once in a while they do. But they will not, in their newspaper (which is now called, I think, the "People's Weekly World" or something), they generally will not condemn the large companies by name. Although they condemn 'em in general. In other words, they don't go into the "nuts and bolts" that the rest of us are prepared to talk about.

And therefore I am wondering just what the Hell... That seems to be an example of a paid situation. I give that as an example, so that now that we have the militias and the Posse Comitatus and that, it may be more of the same, manipulated by the FBI. That's what I'm getting at.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. And this, you know, your dealings with these so-called "progressive"-type people, would lead into this question I have that, there seems to be a split in the so-called "progressive" movement. And I would exemplify that as "Chomsky versus Parenti". Chomsky does not see any problem, from what I can tell, with conspiracies -- the JFK assassination, et cetera -- versus Dr. Michael Parenti, who has a Ph.D. from Yale...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah, I know. The other thing is, that other so-called "lefties", like Alexander Cockburn -- you know who I'm talkin' about?

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, sure.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
He "pooh-poohed" the whole JFK conspiracy thing.

I read his stories in The Nation, and I find 'em interesting. However. The two so-called "left wing" progressive magazines, that is, Progressive magazine from, I think, Madison, Wisconsin, and The Nation, take heavy funding from foundations that we greatly suspect. The Nation, in particular, gets money from the Roger Baldwin Foundation. They couldn't function without it. And I began an investigation of them in 1969. And I could make out a convincing case that the Baldwin Foundation is a CIA conduit.

So I have misgivings about The Nation.

However, they do some interesting work, I must say.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, I also read The Nation, and it's kind of uneven; sometimes there'll be really excellent articles, and sometimes I just throw it away.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well they put down, they put down political murder conspiracies as being far-fetched. And a few other things along those lines. And they will never cover... O.K. One subject that they did cover, reluctantly, but eventually they did, was how the ACLU was closely aligned with the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover for about 25 years. They did a lengthy piece on that a few years ago. What they will not do is show how the Roger Baldwin Foundation, which is a successor to the ACLU, is closely tied for about -- well, since 1967 -- with the CIA through another group of foundations. And the reason they can't go into it is, the Baldwin Foundation principally finances The Nation magazine.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. It's just something that I, it confused me for awhile there that, we've got a local radio station down here that's excellent. It's a community-based radio station, WEFT. And they've got a very good show on, on Saturday morning, called "News From Neptune". But my problem with them is, they're very heavily Chomsky-based. And I've even, I've sent them a tape of a talk by Dr. Parenti dealin' with... The name of the tape was, "Conspiracy and Class Power," where he goes into, "Yes! There's conspiracies!", you know, with all these political assassinations.

And they seem, they're very close-minded about it, O.K.? It's like...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well who publishes his [Chomsky's] books? He's quite a prolific writer. I think he's in with the Z Magazine crowd in Cambridge.

And the one's... They came from nowhere, they put out a very slick magazine. And one of their principals is Chip Berlet, who I strongly suspect is funded by CIA. He has no other visible income. And he has written articles, that those of us who are in the political assassination research movement are actually Nazis. And he's gone quite a bit, and written about me -- and others like that. As to me, it's completely false. Because I conducted some of the first seminars, in the United States, on Nazi war criminals that were living amongst us. And this was in 1976, when it was not popular to even discuss anything of the sort. Now, with a lot of 'em [Nazis] old and dead, or so old that they're (you know), it's not important 20 years later. But in 1976 it was. And I conducted one of the largest seminars that I could.

And here is Chip Berlet, says that Skolnick and some of his associates are actually Nazis! I mean it's, it's terrible.

His real name is John Foster Dulles Berlet. His parents were very much in with the one that ran the State Department years ago. And they've had very close CIA links. That whole Z Magazine crowd in Cambridge appears to be financed and promoted by entities of the CIA.

The CIA... I used to teach a course in this at a radio-tv broadcast school, 25 years ago. On how you investigate foundations through their tax-exempt status, which requires them to have their income tax form as a public record. And I developed methods of showing which foundations are actually conduits for the Central Intelligence.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
You know, Chip Berlet for awhile was active in one of these newsgroups that I kind of "hang out" in, in cyberspace. He was puttin' out somethin' called, he called "The Baloney Busters Bugle", O.K.? And to make a long story short, he just basically got laughed out of the place. Because...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
He purports to be a "lefty". However, there's substantial... You could make substantial arguments against it.

And his magazine... When the JFK movie by Oliver Stone was coming out, or about to come out, they did a, they did an establishment- type put-down. Let's put it that way.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. And this would be the reason why, perhaps, you find it difficult to get published. You know, say, I would think that The Nation magazine would be doing some stories on you or by you.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well they've always rejected my stories.

The only ones that would run it verbatim were the ultra right wing, whose politics I don't approve of. But I'm left with very few choices because the only one that takes a more balanced view and is more progressive is Steamshovel magazine. Until I ran into Kenn Thomas, there was no one, really, that wanted to publish my stuff without butchering it up.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah I also... I subscribe to the Steamshovel magazine. And as a matter of fact, Kenn Thomas is on the mailing list. So I'm sure he'll be glad to hear that you appreciate his work, as do I.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
He's aware of it. But other than him (he's a rarity), most of the so-called "left wing" press are, are whores. They work for some devious financial source that they do not openly or publicly divulge. And as a result, they have almost as many hang-ups as the mass media.

And that includes the Communist Party paper, The People's Weekly World, The Nation, Progressive magazine... They can't... Let's put it this way: people that are independent, like myself, that speak out on a variety of subjects, are not welcome in that direction at all.

National Public Radio, although some of their very small stations are more open-minded, they generally will not let on the air (and I've tried) discussions that I and people associated with me talk about. We are not permitted.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Let me tell ya somethin' that happened with me, okay?

I heard, over the Internet, there was a (this past summer), a DEA agent who quit the DEA, named Celerino Castillo, who's written a book called Powderburns [Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras, and the Drug War] where he goes into all this stuff. I heard, on the Internet, that he was gonna be available for downloading or whatever [downlinking] on the Virtual Radio Network. And I called up the local PBS radio station here, WILL-AM. And I said, "Look, this might be a good interview, you know?" I mean, if you've got a guy sayin' that the U.S. government is complicit in bringin' drugs into the country, I would say that if you're really serious about winning a "War on Drugs" that you might want to bring that out a little bit.

So, to his credit, the guy listened to it, okay? But he decided he wasn't gonna play it. One guy! All right?

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
And the same thing, I think, goes for (I may be mistaken, but I think I'm right) Michael Levine, The Big White Lie, where he tells what happened to him in the DEA and how they promote dope rather than regulate it.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
He spoke at my alma mater, Northern Illinois University, back around 1990, 1991. I was very impressed by him. I've read both of his books [Deep Cover and The Big White Lie by Michael Levine].

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
But I don't think they're reviewed or discussed on National Public Radio or on PBS.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah! It's not allowed in the, the equation, to solve the so- called "War on Drugs". There's two things allowed: either you're really gonna get tough on these people and lock 'em up, or else you're gonna treat it as a health problem. And somethin' that's never let in is, you know, the government -- Terry Reed in Compromised, in that book? -- the government, they're bringin' in the drugs, they're part of it. That's not allowed in!

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
All right, the one that has done more about it is, the mass media, the 60 Minutes program -- when was it? Last year or somethin', they did about... Or was it more than a year?

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Naw. It's been about within the past year.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
They did a thing about the CIA brought in tons of cocaine at a time from Venezuela.

But 60 Minutes doesn't put it in a proper overall context, the way Levine or Terry Reed or others would. And I think they have not adequately allowed a discussion of Professor Alfred McCoy's more recent book. He first came out with it, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, in '72. But in the last couple years he came with an updated book [McCoy, Alfred. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade (Chicago Review Press, 1991)]. And I don't think that there was adequate discussion of him and his book.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah that's somethin', I just figured I'd touch on that, that I have run into. In trying to...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
The reason for that is the number of foundations, that we can show are conduits for CIA, that are interlocked with the management of PBS and National Public Radio.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
You know, my theory on this is that, it's like Chomsky is like a line of defense, okay? That it's like a "limited hangout" {2}.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Absolutely the correct term. That's the correct espionage parlance that you're using. "Limited hangout".

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. I mean, for people who get past the first perimeter of thought control, they'll come up against Chomsky. And it'll be like, "Ah! Here is the truth!" But, you know, with me I began to say, you know, "Well what about this Kennedy assassination? And what about conspiracies, and things like that?" And it's like, they give you this thing like, that... It's like a pose, you know? Like that "they're so sophisticated," and "what do you know," and...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Absolutely. And not only that, but they will not allow any discussion about these different secret societies that -- for whatever reason -- the ultra right wing likes to expose: the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg group, the Council on Foreign Relations, and so on. Or the federal reserve and things like that. Those are all forbidden subjects.

Well but you can see why. For a long while, the head of, PBS, I believe it was, was Sharon Percy Rockefeller, the wife of Jay Rockefeller. So I mean, how would you expect, since they are in with the, that they are the ones that conduct the Bilderberg meetings, naturally, that is a subject that they wouldn't allow discussed!

They purport to be liberal, but really not.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
And another problem that I've noticed with PBS is that they didn't used to accept corporate funding. Or at least, say, back in the mid-70s, there was no "Archer Daniels Midland" or anything, where you turn on MacNeil-Lehrer and you get a mini- commercial about "the good people at Archer Daniels Midland". The corporations didn't have their foot in the door. But they got their foot in the door. And Studs Terkel, a Chicago writer, has said this also. When this first happened, that PBS began accepting corporate funding, as I recall he said something like, "Watch out! They've got their foot in the door now."

That's my take on it, that that's another reason that they're kind of limited in who they'll go after.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. And they generally will not allow independents -- not just me, but others like me -- to be heard on any of their facilities at any time. In other words, we're completely forbidden.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah that kind of happened... I made minor efforts in that direction, you know, like I say, with the local WILL-AM here.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Somebody could write a lengthy piece on how the right wing and left wing are carefully controlled. The left wing, as I said, is financed principally by foundations, acting for CIA. So that somebody at CIA headquarters is having a big laugh on a lot of other people, in that they're like a giant Wurlitzer organ {3}. They're directing what, if anything, can be discussed.

And the right wing, because they get into things that are obnoxious to a lot of sensible people, in some ways discredit themselves. In other words, they promote ideas that "the Holocaust didn't occur", that "this didn't happen", that "there's a Jewish banking conspiracy", and things like that, that affront more sensible people.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
For a simple reason. Martin Meyer, in his book The Bankers, showed that there was only one Jewish-named bank official in a bank house in the United States. There are people with Jewish names running investment banking on Wall Street, but they have not been actual Jews for three or four generations. But the right wing keeps going like there's a Jewish banking conspiracy. So they, in some ways, discredit themselves. The left wing is, too much of their press is owned by the CIA through foundations. So you can see there's no [laughs], there's no free press, even for the so-called "extremists" [laughs].

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. I want to move on to one final thing here, and then I'll hang around here for awhile, if you want to call back with anything else.

This is kind of switching gears here, but it seems to me you've got a pretty good familiarity with the history of Chicago. And I took a course at Northern Illinois University on the history of Chicago. And they talked about some of these turn-of-the-century characters in Chicago politics. These names may ring a bell with you, or they may not:

People like "Bathhouse John" Coughlin, "Hinky Dink", "Pushcart Tony" -- "Pushcart Tony" supposedly was a politician from around the turn-of-the-century that, when he would walk by, the Italian immigrant women would bless themselves, you know, like as if, "This is the anti-Christ" or somethin'.

And you've also, like another colorful character that you've kind of mentioned a lot is uh, I heard your story about Nicholas J. Bua, where you had, you know, he had tried to talk to you and you're callin' him "Judge". And he's over there, "Call me 'Nick'!"

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I was about the only journalist that has succeeded to get lengthy interviews with him. I've known him for more than 30 years. And he does try to be friendly with me, figuring that he can persuade me to his view. Although I continue to believe that he's the head of P-2 in North America -- Propaganda Due.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. That was your most recent commentary. I put that out; that went out last night.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
And Propaganda Due is tied in with the Gladio thing that came out, in a tremendous scandal in Switzerland.

In other words, they're a secret group that is promoting fascism and wants to do away with representative government. There's been things published about P-2 and Gladio.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. But, you know, you've lived in Chicago all your life, as I understand it. And looking back on the history of Chicago, have there been any "colorful scoundrels" that you can think of?

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Uh, yeah. The ones in the courthouse! [laughs]

CONSPIRACY NATION:
[laughs]

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Some of 'em are still there! Some of 'em are very colorful. The scoundrels are not all gone.

And the other thing you gotta understand about Chicago is, whatever criminality there is they want to blame on two groups that may not be that much involved: street gangs (mostly blacks and Hispanics), and the traditional Italian and Sicilian mafia. But the best way to understand that is, they front for the "blue-stocking" trade, the ones that are in the social directory. They don't want to do their dirty business directly, so they do it through these other people.

And I'm hoping, someday, that a former mafioso (if there is such a thing) will enlighten us as to the dirty work that they do for the very wealthy, that do not wish to dirty their hands with various things: with the dope trade... with various things.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
You did a commentary once that I wish I had recorded. For some reason, I figured "Aw, no. I'm not gonna..." And maybe you'll run it again. That, it dealt with, along the lines of "The dope shipment had arrived, so Mayor Daley ordered a special police escort to bring the dope to..."

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Oh yeah! We did a show on that. We did a one-hour show on that. We had interviewed some very well-placed people in law- enforcement. And they told us how the dope business really operates in Chicago. It operates through... Well, they had a protected warehouse on the north side [of Chicago] and they had one on the south side. And the truckloads of dope would come, escorted by a police car! [laughs]

CONSPIRACY NATION:
[laughs]

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
And the dope is piled up, like so many bags of coffee!

And we also know of a very fancy restaurant, that's on North Milwaukee Avenue here, where the dopers and the police brass meet, jointly.

So about six weeks after our television show, the law enforcement people busted a south side warehouse posing as a "truck repair" place. And trucks would come in, with dope in the panels of the truck.

They did not, however, bust the major dope warehouse on the north side. And our moderator suggested that we not give the exact address, for fear that it'll be bombed and that innocent people, driving by or walking by, will be hurt, not knowing what's in that warehouse.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. And this brings to mind, I had asked you about the other panelists on your show. And you told me about Jim Reis and Cliff Kelley. But... (I like all your group there; I think you got a good chemistry.) But what about Marc Sato? Any background on him?

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
He had worked some years ago for IBM. And I think he's in the process of writing a book. He has gone into seclusion; he hasn't been on our show for several months now.

But he was on our show from the beginning, from '91 up until about the end of '94. He's a computer expert and he's a third- generation Japanese-American.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. And he wrote... Did he write a book, The Law That Never Was, or somethin' like that?

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. He did the principal work for two volumes, which a few of the larger libraries have it. But it was privately printed. It's generally not available outside of the Anti-Tax movement.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
So is he the author, then, of that? Or...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
He's not listed as the author, but he actually wrote the thing. 'Cuz the guy they list as an author, I know. And he's not a writer! [laughs] So somebody other than the listed author obviously wrote the thing.

It's an interesting documentary study of the 16th amendment being fraudulently obtained, and that the necessary number of states never ratified the 16th amendment. And therefore the underpinning of the IRS is fraudulent.

-------------------------<< Notes >>----------------------------- {1} "In 1988, Playboy magazine published an in-depth article on the October Surprise scheme. In what would become a pattern of killings that coincidentally protected high U.S. officials, one of the authors, Abbie Hoffman, was killed shortly after bringing the article to Playboy." -- Page 198, Defrauding America by Rodney Stich. Expanded second edition. ISBN: 0-932438-08-3. Diablo Western Press, Inc., 1994.

{2} "Limited hangout". I can't find a precise definition for this term at the moment, so here is how I explain it. "Limited hangout" means telling some of the truth so that seekers will be deflected from the whole truth. For example, when Clinton was asked if he had ever smoked marijuana he replied that he had puffed but had never inhaled. Clinton was offering a limited hangout, in which he told only some of the truth. In relation to Chomsky one again finds a limited hangout: Chomsky tells some of the truth and many seekers are deflected from the whole truth of conspiracies, assassinations, etc.

{3} For a good introduction to this concept of the CIA's control of the media being like someone playing a Wurlitzer organ, see The CIA's Greatest Hits by Mark Zepezauer (Tucson: Odonian Press, 1994).

Brian Francis Redman bigxc@prairienet.org "The Big C"

Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"