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