	id AA10570; Tue, 21 Mar 95 19:29:21 CST
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 4 Num. 38


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 4  Num. 38
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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
 
 +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +
 
[...continued...]
 
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.
 
                   [...to be continued...]
 
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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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