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INTERVIEW WITH SHERMAN SKOLNICK -- MARCH 15, 1995

On March 15, 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

 +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +

CONSPIRACY NATION:
I've been readin' through some of this Tsar stuff, *The File on
the Tsar* by Anthony Summers, and, I gotta hand it to ya, it
really, to me it looks conclusive that there's been a cover-up of
some type.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
One of the biggest cover-ups of the 20th century.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
I have a few questions here. There's um... O.K. My question is
regarding the educational system in this country. Because, even
today, you go to a high school and they're gonna be teachin' you
that "Oswald did it." And...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, that's because of the school textbook publishers, like
Scott-Foresman(sp?), which is in a northwest suburb of Chicago.
They're part of the establishment. They're tied in with the
banking interests, and uh, they speak for the establishment.
Would you want them to tell the truth about things? They're not
gonna tell the truth about what happened to the Tsar and his
family, what brought on Pearl Harbor, what the Dallas
assassination of JFK was about, or *any* of that. They've even
lied about what brought on the First World War! They've lied
about the sinking of the Lusitania and so on -- there's a book on
that by a fellow named uh, Simpson I think, that tells what the
Lusitania was really about. [It] was carrying munitions and so
on. And the British navy withdrew all protection and allowed the
Lusitania to be at the mercy of German submarines.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. But my question is more...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
So in other words, the educational system, from top to bottom,
with their textbooks and everything there, lied. And the
teachers... Well some teachers depart from their textbooks, but
generally not. They're criticized if they depart from the
curriculum.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. But my view on this is that it would be more of a top-down
thing; that you've got, at the highest level you've got so-called
"experts" who *do* know a lot about this sort of thing, but that
they're more or less paid to lie about it. And because they're
the authorities, it goes top-down, and...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah, that's true. But it goes through the financial connections
of the textbook publishers and, uh... For example, a person is
hard-put to find, in the United States, books... like *British*
school books on U.S. history telling *their* viewpoint of what
brought on the American Revolutionary War. I've been looking all
these years; you can't find it anywhere. The nearest to it was
some book that came out a few years ago, written about some of
those that fled the colonies to England, and *their* viewpoints.

In other words, I wanted a balanced account of things. And you
don't get it from the run-of-the-mill books -- whether textbooks
or whatever.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. There's a book called *Universities and the Capitalist
State* by Clyde Barrow [University of Wisconsin Press at Madison]
that, along these lines, it kind of traces the encroachment of
the government into the university system; where, say, in the
last century, universities were a lot more autonomous. But then
the government, through, say, the Carnegie...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, the best book on this subject is by James Ridgeway, called
*The Closed Corporation*. It came out of the '60s. It's as
accurate as if it was published yesterday. It tells about all
these universities and their tie-in to corporate interests. So
that supports what you're saying.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
So, in other words, you would say it's just kind of a scam,
basically. I mean, there may be honest researchers in the
educational establishment, but it's basically...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, some of the more prominent professors make twice, and three
times, and four times as much as outside consultants to major
corporations. During the Vietnam War, the University of Chicago
and other places had various professors that were consultants to
the Defense Department on how to make better bombs, how to bomb
Vietnam flat to the ground, and you know, stuff like that. Could
they, in their classes, teach something that caused people to
open their mind as to what was causing the Vietnam War? *I* don't
think so. Not while they're making hundreds of thousands of
dollars [in] consulting fees for the Defense Department.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah it's, this is just somethin' it kinda dawned on me -- O.K.?
-- that the educational establishment was part of the system of
repression, it seemed to me. But it took me awhile to see that,
that these people, a lot of 'em had a vested interest in seein'
things a certain way.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, *The Closed Corporation* has, from time to time, been
available in paperback. It's, it may have been re-printed. I
strongly suggest that you go to some used bookstore and find a
copy. Because the information that's there is still good
information. And it'd be wonderful to have that circulate on
Internet, for people to consider what the heck some of our
universities are into.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. And you know, something I've also noticed is, I'm fortunate
that I live about 2 blocks from a library here. And they're
hooked up by computer to other libraries: so if *that* library
doesn't have the book, I can get it through inter-library loan.
And yet, there are books that just, they don't show up on the
computer. I'm thinkin' of...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
You want a short list of books like that?


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah!


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Those that don't show up, that you have some trouble finding?

Gustavus Myers...


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
*The Great American Fortunes*. You oughtta read that.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Almost every great American fortune is based on criminal
enterprises.

Then there's the book, by the same author, *The History of the
Supreme Court*. Which, in some ways the title is a little, sounds
limited. The book, *The History of the Supreme Court*, is
actually a history of the legal system of the United States. And
it shows that the Supreme Court has been run by liars and fakers
all the years, who had vested interests in what they were doing.
Including Chief Judge John Marshall, whose picture hangs with a
gold frame in most law schools. He was one of the biggest fakers
of all, and he made decisions favoring his own family regarding
Fairfax County and their connection to the British!

So I mean that's, those are two books right there.

A third book, that is *suppressed* altogether in the United
States is *Farewell, America* by James Hepburn.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
That book -- a bestseller in Europe, in 14 languages -- was not
allowed, over the years, to be sold when it came out, in
bookstores, in the United States.

So if someone says, "Oh, well, there's a free press in America."
-- *False*. There are hard-hitting books that are not allowed to
be circulated here. And that is one of 'em.

The book, *Farewell, America*, tells about the high-level plot,
involving the oil companies and others, to assassinate John F.
Kennedy. And the oil companies saw to it that the book was not
allowed to be brought into the United States. There were only two
people that circulated the books -- that were *not* bookstores!
You're talking to one of 'em. In the '70s, I used to carry
suitcases of those books, that we smuggled in from Canada. And I
used to give 'em away at college speeches that I gave, in return
for small donations. I was one of the only ones that was able to
get the books into the United States. In *fact*, the Post Office
so knew about it that all you had to do, in the '70s, was put on
an envelope "Farewell, America -- Chicago, Illinois" and that
envelope would arrive right in my mailbox. You didn't even have
to spell "Farewell" correct...


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Um-hmm [understands].


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
....and it would arrive, right here.

But it just is an example of the fact that, there is no free
press; the universities are not free and open markets of ideas;
and the textbook publishers are fakers; and teachers, to keep
their jobs and not to get into trouble, follow a curriculum that
is often riddled with textbooks that are frauds! I know that's a
broad, general statement...


CONSPIRACY NATION:
No. You know, in... Well *I'm* the one that brought it up...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
In other words, I could help prove that -- that's a broad,
general statement -- but I could fill it in with nitty-gritty --
you know what I mean? -- with nuts and bolts, to prove that
that's so.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. Because I had asked recently, regarding the Kennedy
assassination, just out of curiosity, if they're still, in the
high schools, they're still teaching that "Oswald did it." And my
information is that, yeah, indeed, that's what they're sayin'.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Twenty-five years ago I taught, during the Vietnam War, at a
radio broadcast school in Chicago, O.K.? And my course was
popular. It was called "Civic Investigation". And I taught, "How
You Uncover Information" -- showing who the war-mongerers are,
even those that live in Chicago that are in the bomb and bullet
business -- You know what I'm sayin'?


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
-- that *profit* from the bloodshed in Vietnam.

After two semesters, my course was "X'd out". Even though it was
very popular with the students.

So I mean that's, that's just a small example of what uh, the
things are at. In other words, teachers that try to open the
minds of students are rare. We had a rare one, a rare professor,
on our TV program recently: Professor John Goldsmith...


CONSPIRACY NATION:
I saw that! He was from the University of Chicago. I've got...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Wasn't that a wonderful program?


CONSPIRACY NATION:
I tell ya, one of my readers -- O.K.? -- has been very nice and
has been making copies of your shows and sending 'em to me. And
your program is just astounding. It... I'm gonna try and get it
aired down here on the public access.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
O.K. Did you happen to know or see the program we did -- we were
the only ones in the United States, so far as I know, that put
portions of the suppressed documentary, on the television, called
"ZR Rifle".


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Haven't seen it, no.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
That one, it was made in Havana and showed on Cuban television --
was not allowed to be even *considered* in the United States! --
and told about how Chicago gangsters were part, were directly
among the shooters that shot at Kennedy in Dealey Plaza at the
auspices of the CIA. O.K.? And we were the only ones, so far as I
know, that got that ["ZR Rifle"] on the air in the United States.
We did. On our program.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
I, you know, maybe if you re-run it I'll get a chance to see it.
Like I say, I've been fortunate enough to have seen... I like the
one on the Helen Brach story, where you had that lady on [who]
was talkin' about the...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah, right. They talk about the horse rackets as if it's minor
matters, when it's a very broad, what we call in our thing,
"horse mafia".


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
We try to tell the truth. But you know somethin'? That doesn't
make us out to be popular with the popular press. Here in
Chicago, it's almost forbidden for anybody on other television
stations, or in the print media, to utter a single word about the
existence of our program, even though we have over a half a
million viewers on Monday night. We're invisible as far as the
press is concerned. They're forbidden to say a single word, even
*for* us or *against* us. How do ya like that?


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Well, you know, having read *The Media Monopoly* by Ben Bagdikian
and *Manufacturing Consent* by Noam Chomsky, I'm not that
surprised. They seem to do this routinely.

Regarding, say, the other panelists on the show: all of 'em seem
very knowledgeable people -- Marc Sato, Jim Reis...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well Jim Reis is an unusual stockbroker who risks his career, on
our program as well as his own program called "Wall Street Lies".
He tells about the frauds of Wall Street. And, he's on twice a
week, on his program.

And our moderator, Cliff Kelley, was formerly a Chicago alderman,
who was framed and sent to jail in order to undermine the power
of the first black Mayor in Chicago, Harold Washington -- who,
because of our investigations, we believe that Harold Washington
was murdered in 1987.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
That was gonna be one of my questions. Because in your
commentaries you've said that Harold Washington was murdered with
a poisoned cup of coffee.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Oh yeah! Well I interviewed everybody that pertains to the thing.
I've got, even the doctors from the hospital on tape. But I
promised them that during my lifetime -- or *their* lifetime --
that the tape will not be released, even if those in the media
call me a liar.

But the doctors... Northwestern Memorial Hospital is a half a
block away from channel 2 television [CBS affiliate] in Chicago,
WBBM-TV. And the doctors that worked on -- well, they worked on
Harold's dead body, just to appease the public. He was already
dead when he hit the floor in his office, O.K.?


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
They [the doctors] walked over to the television station and
talked to the higher-ups, that the Mayor's been poisoned! What
shall we do? And they invoked "national security". Having worked
at a radio broadcast school, I know certain things about
"national security" and broadcasters that are generally not
discussed. They have an unwritten rule that *if* a well-known
black dies, under odd circumstances, they are to, that evening,
quietly go on the air and say, "Such and such person died of a
heart attack."

So if Dr. King was "blown away" on a balcony *today*, tonight,
they would quietly say, "He died of a heart attack in the
hospital." Why? Because of the riots in 103 cities in April of
1968 when King was assassinated. That is when the broadcast
policy was quietly invoked.

And so they invoked that policy against going on the air. I got
the story, about Harold [Washington] being poisoned, on the air,
on a, on *two*, black radio stations in Chicago. And the news
director of one called me up after three days running the story
and says, "We can't go any further, Mr. Skolnick."

I said, "Have you shown that the story is false?"

She says, "No. No."

But the major broadcasters, like WGN radio, which is tied in with
the *Tribune* company, have got a very great influence here and
they called the stations and said, "If you run Skolnick's story,
*you* are gonna lose your license." Why? Because they've got the
power with the FCC, that's why.

And so, that is what happened.

A network newswoman that I know *told* me that she verified that
Harold *was*, Harold Washington *was* poisoned. And she verified
it from her own medical sources and took it up with her editor in
Washington. And the story never ran.

I'm the only one that went with the story. It ran with the major
Japanese newswire service, JIJI Press Agency. It ran in the
second largest newspaper in Australia, and elsewhere. *But*, in
Chicago and elsewhere, if they mention me at all, they call me a
liar -- and I don't care! I mean, I know I told the truth. I
interviewed everybody; I did everything what a good journalist.

In April of '91 we did a show on our television about it, and a
week later, the FBI planted a story at the *Sun-Times* that there
had been plots to assassinate Harold Washington, but that the FBI
was too busy to go into it and turned it over to the Secret
Service, that didn't pursue it.

So they knew that there were plots against Harold Washington.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Who would ya think would be behind that?


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, three or four forces, generally:

The New York bankers, the Rockefellers and others. Harold did an
odd thing for a Mayor: he said, as a black man, that he was gonna
give an equal chance to yellow-skinned bankers that wanted the
city's business. Like Mitsubishi Bank. And the Rockefeller
bankers, the Anglo-Saxon types, took great offense to that.

Further, he was going to take over the steam-generating plants of
Commonwealth Edison, one of the largest nuclear energy electric
companies in the United States. And he says their steam-
generating plant within the city limits had been paid for, or
fully amortized, and that he could bring electricity to Chicago
as a municipal electric company -- instead of Edison, because
their franchise was about to expire in 1989, two years after
Harold was elected.

But he was gonna bring electricity to Chicago for as little as
$10 a month for a household. It so happens that Commonwealth
Edison -- among the largest stockholders (according to government
documents) is the Pope, O.K.? An "absentee owner". He doesn't
care *how* high the electric rates are in Chicago.

So those are two, uh...


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Motives.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
....two motives for "knocking him off". And they used the
traditional dark ages, medieval method of the Catholic hierarchy:
the poisoned cup of coffee. The Borgias and the Medicis, the
poisoned cup of... You know what I mean.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
That's different than blowing out his brains in an open car like
they did with Kennedy. You see what I'm saying? And I know a lot
about it; I can go on for hours relating all the details that we
compiled from 1987 until now, *proving* without a shadow of a
doubt that our first black Mayor was assassinated.

Who was involved? One of those that came often to Chicago was
Major General Secord, whose name came up in the Iran-Contra
thing.

The press did not mention that when his body hit the floor there
was a national alert in 14 states, centered on Chicago, with the
national guard. Not a word in the press. When his body hit the
floor, a military helicopter appeared over the City Hall. And
things of that sort. None of that ever got into the press.

His body was removed from the city that night. I interviewed the
morticians that were involved; they wanted his body *out* of the
legal jurisdiction here, until the funeral. *That*, and thousands
of other details, would, would convince...

Also! I interviewed, on tape, the top honchos of ABC's local
station, WLS-TV, channel 7 in Chicago. And they admitted, and I
have... that they admitted that four doctors from the hospital
called them and said that Skolnick's story is *correct*! O.K.?
And, but they never put it on the air. I played that tape on
*two* of the black radio stations in Chicago, O.K.? So at least
the black community has heard that tape. It's one of the top
honchos of channel 7 admitting that my story is correct, O.K.?

I've done everything as a good journalist. I, the popular press,
they've gone along with all these things about "Oswald did it
alone," "Harold Washington died of a heart attack" -- all those
frauds upon the people. It's uh... And then they carry it over
into their textbooks, also. You know.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. There was this guy by the name of Nelson Algren, O.K.? He
wrote, he was a Chicago...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
*The Man With The Golden Arm*. [CN -- also, *A Walk On The Wild
Side*]


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, yeah.

You kind of bring me to mind of that. Because, the way I
understand it, Nelson Algren's books were very popular
internationally. And yet, from what I've heard, you would go into
a Chicago library and you couldn't find it.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
That's true.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. So I mean, it...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
He was a *persona non grata* in Chicago.

And until I got on the television show in '91, the only way I
could come before the public was my 5-minute recorded message,
which we have been running since 1971.

I started the recorded message because they blanked me out. In
the late '60s and early '70s, I was a news media hero as long as
I was involved *only* in attacking Democrat judges and voting
cases, O.K.? The minute I went after other, you know, on a non-
partisan basis, both corrupt Democrat *and* Republican judges in
the court, I got into trouble. Then I started, with my
associates, an investigation of the CIA and FBI "assets" in the
media -- former CIA people sitting as anchor people in Chicago --
I named them. I got "on the outs" with the media and they blanked
me out. By 1971, it's as if I disappeared from the world.

And I used to be on... I had my own radio show. I was on
practically every week for 40 seconds or so on the evening news
on something that I was involved in. It was common to hold press
conferences on the lawn in front of my house at the drop of a
hat. I was popular with the media.

But when I started to investigate who the *media* is, I got
blanked out.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
And so I started Hotline News as a recorded commentary [(312)
731-1100]. And now it's one of the biggest of its kind. It's not
a 900 number; it's a regular phone number.

And *then*, in February '91, I got to know a guy that was doing
access, public access TV shows. And our Monday night show
apparently is so popular that we blank out three commercial
stations: channel 2 [CBS], 9 [WGN], and 32 [Fox], who lose
advertising dollars because of us! Their ratings are down, ours
are up. We got an estimated half a million people watching our
show, yet the radio and TV editor of the newspapers *never*,
never, never says a single word that we exist at all. We're
invisible.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. Along the lines of the media, one of your commentaries talks
about murdered reporters.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Such as Jim Hogan, and...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Not *Jim* Hogan, Paul Hogan.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Paul Hogan. O.K.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Paul Hogan. And a friend of mine was murdered on, right before
the 4th of July in 1970 -- Ted Smart. I spent a *lot* of time
investigating that. He was murdered. Made to look like a
drowning, but they killed him.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. Could you, do you have any additional information on that?


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, those that I've mentioned -- Louie Lomax, Larry Buckman --
I've mentioned some of those. We've also done a story, which
we'll re-run one of these days, on our recorded message, of the
*judges* that were murdered. Oh, there's been a number of judges
that... There was a judge in uh, Judge William E. Miller, I
believe his name was, in the federal appeals court in Cincinnati,
that was, that gave an indication during an oral presentation of
an appeal, that he was gonna re-open the James Earl Ray case, to
show conspiracy of the government. He never lived to it. He died
while writing the decision. And the other two judges that were
part of the panel made the gratuitous statement that Judge
Miller, although dead, went along with *their* view that the case
should be kept closed.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. I know that this is...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
There's a number of... The original trial judge in the James Earl
Ray case was found laying dead at his desk. And under his body
was laying James Earl Ray's petition to re-open the case -- Judge
Preston Battle(sp?), the Memphis judge that had sentenced Ray.
And so on.

There's been... In other words, a judge that goes *against* the
grain and tries to be honest, in a political murder case and so
on, is generally himself murdered.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. You know, a lot of people that read this are...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Skeptical.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, O.K.?

And I know that I'm really just asking you these things out of
the blue, so that, as far as say, with Jim Hogan, anything...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Paul Hogan.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, I'm sorry. I've got it written down here "Jim" -- Paul
Hogan.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well his relatives agree with me. But you don't hear their
viewpoints in the popular press.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Harold Washington's relatives agree with me, but cannot go public
with it because of insurance policy money.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
So, I mean, you mean whether I mind being called a liar? Every
judge that our group was instrumental in sending to jail started
out by getting a press conference and calling Skolnick a liar.
And I don't mind. I could give you a long list of those that
called me a liar that end up ex-convicts. And one of 'em, the
chief judge of the traffic court, I interviewed him on tape in
his office. He said that what I said about his corruption -- I
brought 28 witnesses to accuse him -- he says, "Skolnick, I heard
you imagine things," -- he just got out of jail, an ex-convict,
convicted of bribery. So what else should I have to say?


CONSPIRACY NATION:
No. What I'm just sayin' is...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
In other words, I'm very careful... Our group is very careful.
We're not in politics. We don't accuse anybody for small reason;
we have no... we aren't gonna get anything out of it.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. What's goin' on with Whitewater? Do ya have any...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I've just finished a story that I faxed to one of the smaller
magazines that asked me to write what is known about Whitewater
-- the entire picture. And they're supposed to go to press with
it within a week. I just faxed it to them this morning,
coincidentally.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. You had said before that they're going after Clinton, Gore,
and Gingrich -- all three of 'em, the press is goin' after 'em.
And it doesn't seem to me that they're goin' after Gore that
much.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, I told ya the story of how I was 6 months ahead of the
parade...


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
....on the Spiro Agnew thing. We're ahead of the parade on the
Gore thing. Only the *St. Louis Post-Dispatch*, last April, used
a watered-down version of our details of the corruption in the
milk bovine situation involving Monsanto Chemical, that huge
company.

And Gore has had a great influence on the FDA. It was his wife
Tipper's relative, Michael R. Taylor, that was a top deputy of
the FDA. He was formerly the outside chief counsel of Monsanto,
the makers of this controversial chemical that makes cows give
more milk, but causes infection to get into the milk, O.K.?

And you're saying, "When will that come out?" -- It's not *up* to
me.

The *Washington Post*, however, 6 weeks after I went on a radio
show talking about it, ran a story that the, Monsanto, actually
had *five* other people working inside the FDA as officials of
the FDA! So... And that a congressman from Vermont was --
Sanders, I believe his name was -- was investigating that. He's
one of the few independents in Congress.

In other words, you're wondering *when*? Hey. I'm not calling the
shots on the secret agenda of who gets knocked down. I mean, I
predicted it accurately in '73 that Agnew was "going to the wall"
first, and *then* Nixon, and then they're gonna bring in the new
team without an election. Which was Gerald Ford, and then-Vice-
President Nelson Rockefeller.

They're pushing for Jay Rockefeller to be the new President,
without an election.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. You answered my question... It was just... As soon as you
answered, somethin' "clicked" in my mind. I said, "Oh yeah! O.K."

So fine. That's satisfactory as far as I'm concerned.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Gingrich is the third-in-line. And notice that, even though he's
a Republican, they're lambasting him about book contracts, about
foundations he was connected with. They want to get rid of all
three of 'em: Clinton, Gore, and Gingrich.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
And the next in order of accession, is that Rockefeller then?


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
No, if the first three of 'em get knocked down, under the 25th
amendment then, I think it's up to Congress to select somebody.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
And Congress can be bought, and so they would put in Jay
Rockefeller. Read the 25th amendment and reach your own
conclusion.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. And so, when you say Congress can be bought, that relates to
a commentary where you had mentioned the bribery of one-hundred
eight...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Right. Right. I... Only a right-wing newspaper would run a story
that I did...


CONSPIRACY NATION:
You mean *The Spotlight*.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Right. I don't agree with their politics, but they ran my story
without butchering it up -- verbatim, O.K.? Friends of mine
criticize me because they say, "Well, but their politics are no
good."

I says, "Well, publish it in *Time* magazine then!!"


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. You know, I get the *same* *thing*. Because I read *The
Spotlight* -- O.K.? -- and I don't always agree with their
politics but, and yet they have information that I can't get!


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I vigorously disagree with their policy that there was no
Holocaust. My family got lost in the Warsaw ghetto -- I mean,
come on!

But the point is, they print my stories verbatim. Give me a
choice! Put it on Internet. *You're* an alternative.

But what was the story about: of the four largest news agencies
in the world -- O.K.? -- all four had a record that was an open
record with the Bank of England for 30 days only: the bribery
list of BCCI. They had bribed various public officials in various
countries, *including*... They had *bought* 25 percent of both
Houses of Congress. They wanted congressmen to allow them to
proliferate their bank in various branches throughout the United
States. And they needed various committees of Congress to "O.K."
them. O.K.? So what they did is, through a group of six LaSalle
street brokers, they bought 28 U.S. Senators and 108 U.S.
Congressmen.

*This* bribery list was in the hands of four news agencies; *one*
had corroborated that the bribery list is correct. And when the
editor of that news agency, with international scope, killed the
story, a very brave reporter contacted me -- like in the Spiro
Agnew thing years ago -- and says, "Hey, Skolnick. I heard you're
a loudmouth there, and you don't mind going with the truth even
if it bothers somebody."

And so they gave me the list, together with all the
corroboration, and I substantiated it further, from my own
sources, and I wrote a story about it.

And one of those that was involved is the wife of Senator Phil
Gramm of Texas. His wife, at the time, was Wendy -- uh, she *is*,
Wendy Gramm -- was the head of the commodity futures trading
corporation that was involved in these corrupt commodity deals
where 25 percent of both Houses of Congress got hundreds of
thousands of dollars by way of bribery! She went along with it.
There were six commodity brokers on LaSalle street that were a
part of it.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. We can explore this further, you know? There's...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I know a lot about it! I'm just trying to tell you briefly.

I'm very careful. I don't, despite the judges that have accused
me of being liars (and then went to jail later), I don't, you
know... I'm very careful about this. I check things out.

Yes. We get stories that are "killed" by other news operations.
Yes.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
In the context of this current interview, there's this thing
called "concision" -- O.K.? -- that Noam Chomsky has talked
about, that...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
What is that?


CONSPIRACY NATION:
That means that, they'll, sometimes they'll have somebody, say
like, Noam Chomsky will be on MacNeil-Lehrer about once every ten
years or so. But they'll have him on, and they'll ask him a
question -- but the concision is that he's got 5 minutes to
answer it, O.K.? It's like...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well that's a lot. They used to give me only 40 seconds when I
was a hero with the media in the '60s.

So I used to, I used to get around it, see? They say, "Skolnick.
Nixon, who is the President, he gets two minutes. *You* get 40
seconds."

So I used to write out my statement to the press before the press
conference. And I *timed* it to the second. You want 40 seconds
on film? (Which is what they use.) I used to give 'em 40 seconds.
*That* *way*, they couldn't edit it, see? 'Cuz they'd say, "No!
Keep talkin', Skolnick! We'll edit what *we* want!"


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah [laughs].


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I would give 'em 40 seconds. And so they had to use it verbatim!
And the minute the 40 seconds were up on my watch, I shut my
mouth. You know what I mean?


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. That's a good way of doin' it. Because I would think
that...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
That they would, they would want me to talk for 4 or 5 minutes
and then they would cut out, they would only put on the air the
"B.S." part, the part that wasn't specific.

So I would time my thing, for the film -- 40 seconds. And the
minute the 40 seconds are up, I shut my mouth.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. But in another sense, though, this idea of "concision"...
You know, if somebody asks somebody for an explanation -- say, of
the Kennedy assassination -- and they only give you 5 minutes to
try and explain all...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
All right. Let me, let me answer that very briefly.

In 1973, a Canadian writer who is now very famous (supposedly),
Mordecai Richler, called me up and says he wants to interview me
-- O.K.? -- about the Chicago plot against Kennedy. That I knew a
lot about because I had a court case on it, you know?

So he shows up at my house, comes into my kitchen, and I started
to present him the documents from the court record. He says, "I
haven't got time for that!" He says, "Tell me, in a short
sentence..."


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah! [laughs]


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Anyway. I says, "Well wait a minute. You came all the way from
the other end of the country interviewing another assassination
researcher. You came here. And uh, give me a few minutes."

He says, "I can't!" He says, "In 8 minutes I gotta go back out
the door. My cab is waiting on your driveway."


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. That's a perfect example.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
He wrote a story for *Playboy* that "Skolnick is a liar and has
no proof whatever of his contention that there was a plot in
Chicago against Kennedy."

Hey! *The* *man* *didn't* *give* *me* *time*!

*Now*, Mordecai Richler -- check his name through a database. Oh!
He publishes books, he's famous. The man is a liar.

Another guy that did the same trick to me was one of the feature
writers of the *Washington Post*! Ronald Kessler. He did the same
trick to me: he flew in on a plane, and he wanted to give me
*five* *minutes* to explain why, uh about the documents, where
Dorothy Hunt was murdered through a sabotaged plane crash. Hey! I
can't *do* it in 5 minutes!


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. That's what I meant when I said, "concision". That sums it
up.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
In other words, uh... Sometimes I try! Sometimes I talk fast and
I try to fill it up with as many "nuts and bolts". But hey! I'm
not a magician! In order to do this takes time to set it forth,
step by step, in a technical manner, with the "nuts and bolts".

But these guys don't allow time. And then he says, "This fella
Skolnick's a liar! He's got no proof!"

Hey! I couldn't set *forth* everything in 8 minutes, or 5
minutes.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. And I brought that up in terms of this interview, say with
this thing of the murdered reporters, that, I'm just asking you
this question "out of the blue", O.K.? And...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
What have I done in that? I have talked to the families, off the
record. I have checked with associates of theirs [i.e.,
associates of the murdered reporters]. I know hospital people.
Hey! I'm the head of a... well, call it an "army" of volunteer
"gumshoes" [laughs]. People that volunteer to investigate things,
snatch records. We've been doin' this since 1963, man [laughs]. I
mean, we find out most anything. I mean we're, my favorite story
is that people whisper into my ear things that they wouldn't dare
tell their grandmother! I mean, we find out... *Boxes* show up
from other places with documents that are supposed to be secret!
[laughs] One of 'em left me a box of documents -- I'll never
forget it -- a year ago, in a snowstorm! A big blizzard! A truck
pulled up, right up onto my lawn! You could see the tire tracks
in the snow? And he delivered me this box of records. No return
address! [laughs]


CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. Because I'm kind of limited as far as how much time here --
you know, the idea of "concision", O.K.? -- I...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I don't even know how you spell it.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
C-o-n-c-i-s-i-o-n.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Really.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
And you gave a good example of that, where ya, this person said,
"I've only got 8 minutes," ya know? And you wanted to go into
some detail to try and explain this.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well tell Noam Chomsky to call me; I'll tell him about the 40-
second *schtick*.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. O.K.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Good trick.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
And one final question: do you have any opinion on this thing in
Mexico, where they admit where Salinas' brother may have been
involved in this assassination?


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
No. But we're working on a story about how they siphoned off tens
of millions of dollars from Mexican government agencies through a
major stock brokerage with an office in Chicago. I know a lot
about it. We're workin' on a story about it.

The other thing about Salinas, I don't have any direct knowledge.

I commend... However. I commend Mexico and the Mexican people for
allowing the word "conspiracy" and "plot" to be discussed. In
other words, if Lee Harvey Oswald did it in Mexico City, they
would say, "Plot!" "Conspiracy!"

United States is backward. *Here*, the press is so afraid of the
people that whenever a prominent person gets "knocked off" --
[e.g.] President -- they says, "Uh, a 'lone assassin' did it."

In Mexico, if the second-in-command of their government or
somethin' gets "knocked off"... Hey! [laughs] Even the *press*
starts talkin' about "Plot!" "Conspiracy!"

I commend Mexico for that. They're more candid [laughs].

 Brian Francis Redman    [e-mail]    "The Big C"
--------------------------------------------------------------
    Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"
--------------------------------------------------------------

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