	id AA29140; Mon, 20 Mar 95 22:14:25 CST
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 4 Num. 37


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 4  Num. 37
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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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
 
 +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +
 
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.
 
                   [...to be continued...]
 
-------------------------<< 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.
 
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

 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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