Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2 Num. 83

("Quid coniuratio est?")


[CN -- The following does not necessarily reflect the views of Conspiracy Nation. It merely reports what was said elsewhere.]

SHERMAN SKOLNICK INTERVIEW -- THE JOLIET CONNECTION

Sherman Skolnick was interviewed on Radio Free America (Shortwave, 5.065 MHz, mon-fri, 9 pm cst) on October 20, 1994. Mr. Skolnick is a veteran investigative reporter from Chicago and founder of the "Citizens' Committee to Clean Up the Courts" in that city. Following is my transcription of that interview. Host/Interviewer is Tom Valentine.

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[Awesome sounds of John Phillip Souza's "Stars and Stripes Forever"]

ANNOUNCER
It's Radio Free America, the talk show for intelligent Americans, with your host, Tom Valentine.

Radio Free America is brought to you by The Spotlight [CN -- Note: Throw mud here.] Call 1-800-522-6292 for your subscription.

And now, the newspaper that "tells it like it is" presents Tom Valentine.

TOM VALENTINE:
Hello, everybody! Welcome back, to Radio Free America.

In this hour, we are going to reach up to Chicago and bring back an old friend and a fellow who's been a guest on this show several times. He is the founder and director of the Committee to Clean Up the Courts, in Chicago. A non-establishment institution, a citizens' group, if you please, that has a lot of feathers in their war bonnet. They have, they've done some notable things. The most notable probably being the arrest and jailing of the former Governor and a former federal judge of Illinois, who ended up dying in jail, Otto Kerner.

And that fellow, of course, is Sherman Skolnick. And Sherman, welcome back to Radio Free America.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Welcome, Tom, and I'm pleased to be on with your listeners again. And I hope they find this very interesting. I've got... We're going to discuss a very timely subject.

VALENTINE
All right. Go ahead. I'm gonna let you cut loose.
SKOLNICK
On October 18th, Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal finally ran a story about things that some of us have known about, the Mena cover-up. That is, the dope and money that was going through the Mena, Arkansas airport and made Arkansas awash with cash.

What the Wall Street Journal is in a position to know is that the dope transit point, which was in western Arkansas, in a forest -- that is, the Mena, Arkansas airport -- has been transferred to just south of Chicago. And due to a series of situations which I will do my best to outline, as briefly summarize as I can, it is operating now, south of Chicago, in Joliet!

They're using similar apparatuses to "wash" the dope money that's coming in: they're using a local development company; they're using various brokers and banks to "wash" the large sums of money.

Now involved in the situation was a building in Joliet where a lot of federal loan money, loan applications, were kept. And it was part of the apparatus of "washing" the dope money.

But before I get into that, let me just tell briefly how it came in. It came in by barge, up the waterway from New Orleans to the Des Plaines River basin, past a place called Moose Island. And we'll get back to that Moose Island connection in a moment.

Also, airplanes came in with the dope (protected from interference by law enforcement people, by the way). Airplanes came into the Joliet Municipal Airport, among others.

Now what happened was, early in the '80s, a secret unit of the U.S. Treasury Department began an investigation of this and related matters. However, their investigation was ordered stopped by one of the espionage agencies, either the CIA or the NSA, on reasons of (quote) "national security" (unquote). Because what was being brought in, in large quantities, flooding in through Joliet and then being distributed across the country, was a superior narcotic called "China White". It comes from the Laos, Burma, Thailand, "Golden Triangle" connection. And the supposed explanation by the espionage agencies was that high-level members of the Chinese secret police are operating in the United States as scientists and technicians, and that the espionage agencies have got to stop the Treasury from interfering and investigating this because, for reasons of national security, they want to keep track of these people -- even though they're bringing in dope!

Now what happened...

VALENTINE
That sounds pretty hokey. You mean the Treasury bought it?
SKOLNICK
Uh, no. No, they continued to investigate, and what happened was, they got into a terrible crunch with these other federal espionage agencies. What happened was, nobody in the media would aid them. So they turned over their entire office of records, an entire truckload, to an independent investigation group.

I became aware of all this; I made a summary of what is in the records. And I went and found, I went and demanded a meeting.

VALENTINE
O.K. Hold on right there, Sherman. We'll be back. You got the... You found out about this and demanded a meeting. My guest is Sherman Skolnick. The dope point of America. I'll be right back. I'm Tom Valentine, Radio Free America.

[...commercial break...]

We are back, live. It's Radio Free America. And I'm talking with Sherman Skolnick. We're talking now about a major investigation in our so-called "war on drugs". Evidently, the "war on drugs" takes time out for official drug dealing and drug money laundering. But if it's unofficial, well then they'll make war on it.

Go ahead, Sherman. You were tellin' us how a group in Chicago came about this truckload of documents.

SKOLNICK
O.K. On October 6th of this year, I demanded a meeting with the highest federal official in this part of the country that I could find. I ended up meeting with Mark Prosperi(sp?), chief of the organized crime/drug enforcement task force, together with the secretary of the U.S. attorney in this district -- that is, the secretary to the chief federal prosecutor here.

I met with them for 35 minutes and I told them that this drug racketeering operation involved 4 federal judges, 2 congressmen, the former Governor, Jim Thompson, and people connected with the Clinton White House. After 35 minutes of summarizing this, he unceremoniously stood up, told me he's not interested, and in so many words told me to mind my own business. And he left me there in the office and walked out the door.

Now what we know from these records is, namely, that one of those that facilitated it was a fellow named Robert Teezak(sp?), who was a crony of George Herbert Walker Bush, the federal judges, Jim Thompson, and others.

And the records that relate to this, of the "washing" of the money, were kept in a building in Joliet called the Private Industry Council. And in 1987, because local citizens from Joliet were complaining to the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency, about what they were observing happening, the U.S. attorney here at the time, Anton R. Valukis(sp?) began a supposed grand jury investigation. And issued a subpoena returnable on a certain Monday.

On the Friday preceding that, the building housing all these federal records was burned down! O.K.? It was burned down by Robert Teezak. And I will point out what happened, in a moment, with that.

Now Teezak is a crony of Bush, the former Governor, Anton Valukis, and others. In Chicago, in the early '80s, the U.S. attorney here, the chief federal prosecutor, was Dan K. Webb. He was succeeded by Anton R. Valukis. Both of 'em close cronies of George Bush. In fact Dan Webb (some may remember) was an assistant special prosecutor in the Iran-Contra thing, and took the deposition of Ronald Reagan, and was involved very much in the Admiral Poindexter case.

VALENTINE
Isn't he also now a defense team for Rostenkowski?
SKOLNICK
Yes...
VALENTINE
All right.
SKOLNICK
...the same Dan Webb.

Now he was the private attorney for Robert Teezak. And in the '80s, when Webb was the U.S. attorney, he violated the law by being, reportedly, the private attorney for Teezak at the same time that Webb was the U.S. attorney and should have prosecuted somebody!

Now one of the apparatuses that they used -- to facilitate the arrangement of the dope shipments -- was a company owned by Teezak, headquartered in Joliet and in the Grand Caymans, called International Games, Incorporated. They distributed games, purportedly manufactured in Hong Kong and other places in the Orient. And Teezak, who lived on Moose Island -- uh, keep that name in mind. By the way, the building where the records were kept was called the Moose Building. The Private Industry Council building was the Moose Building, in Joliet.

VALENTINE
Is Moose Island right there in the Illinois River, in downtown Joliet?
SKOLNICK
I don't know about downtown. It's near a suburb called Chanahan(sp?).
VALENTINE
All right.
SKOLNICK
The one that owns Moose Island is Teezak and his business partner, an auto dealer, John Bays(sp?).

Now what happened was, the Treasury unit, by continuing to investigate, caused this grand jury subpoena to be issued by the U.S. attorney. However when the building with the records that they sought... And they were, what was in the building were records that related to federally supported loans -- loans of the SBA [Small Business Administration], HUD, Comprehensive Employment Training Act, and so on -- those records were in that building, and that building was burned down by Teezak.

[...to be continued...]


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

"Justice" = "Just us" = "History is written by the assassins."