	id AA11181; Mon, 27 Mar 95 20:59:55 CST
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 4 Num. 45


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 4  Num. 45
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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INTERVIEW WITH SHERMAN SKOLNICK -- MARCH 27, 1995
 
On March 27, 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:
You were a reporter in the, for some newspaper, in the 1960s, 
right?
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
No.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
No!?
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I never worked for anybody.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. I thought maybe that you had worked for *Chicago Today* or 
somethin' like that?
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
No.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.
 
But you were an independent journalist then?
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I'm a free-lance journalist -- whatever. I never worked for 
anybody.
 
Our group has, the Citizens' Committee to Clean-up the Courts, 
has been going since 1963. And, as part of *our* work, I call 
myself a free-lance journalist. But nobody gets paid, and I'm not 
workin' for anybody.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.
 
All right, did you cover the 1968 Democratic Convention at all?
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Uh... I *investigated* it, because of the riots and the fact that 
I found out that Rennie Davis and others who became what is known 
as the "Chicago 7" received hundreds of thousands of dollars from 
foundations connected to CIA.
 
I later wrote a report about it, and I circulated it around. 
[coughs] I think I sent you a copy, didn't I?
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, you did.
 
It sounds like you got the flu or somethin', right?
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
No. Early morning... [laughs] when I'm up too late, sometimes.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.
 
Let me run this by you, okay? Just as a theory of what possibly 
happened there:
 
They wanted to get Nixon [elected], so basically, they sent in 
people to disrupt that '68 Democratic Convention.
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Right. And very active in the instigating of the commotions was 
Naval Intelligence.
 
And a person that knew a lot about Military Intelligence admitted 
things along these lines 10 years later -- 1978.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
And you've got, say, documents and stuff on that?
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. We, we traced Rennie Davis' offices in Chicago to a 
federally-owned building. And in 1972, I confronted him at a 
television station during a live broadcast with him. And I was in 
the studio audience, and I got up on my crutches and I started 
walking toward him. And I started asking him about this 
foundation money. Of course, he refused to answer. And the 
moderator on the show refused to ask. And they sent in 18 police 
to, to arrest me.
 
And that became a trial, and I brought up... During, during the 
trial for "trespassing" on the television station's property, I 
brought up about the CIA. In fact, I subpoenaed the Chicago 
station chief of the CIA.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
What TV show was that?
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
It was on channel 44, which is a UHF station here.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. Do you recall who the moderator was?
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Uh... Offhand, no. It was a woman. And I had her, I called her as 
a witness, on the witness stand, about all this.
 
It was a mistrial, and as a result, they dropped the charges 
against me. But they had had me in, under arrest for awhile.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.
 
During that '68 convention, I have sort of memories of that, from 
watchin' it on TV. And they had riots and all. And they brought 
in federal troops, and tanks, to the streets of the city of 
Chicago.
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Uh, not tanks. Some uh, heavily motorized vehicles. I don't think 
they had any tanks.
 
But the point is, it was to discredit the Democrats and put in 
Nixon. That was the bottom line. And because there were other 
commotions in '68, during the GOP [Republican] Convention there, 
where people were actually killed, and they were played down. The 
major thing that got worldwide publicity was the thing in Chicago 
during the '68 Democratic Convention.
 
And I was a free-lance journalist for some friends at channel 44 
during the '72 Republican Convention, where Rennie Davis likewise 
led commotions. *There* I'm not sure *what* that was all about, 
but Rennie Davis, at that time (that was 1972), was in with the 
Secret Service! I tried to point that out, and nobody in the 
press would really go into it.
 
And, by the way, in '72 there were more people rioting and 
arrested than in the '68 commotions.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Goin' back to Rennie Davis, he later teamed up with somebody 
called the "Guru Maharaj Ji" or somethin' like that.
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. That was some kind of a publicity game.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
All right, so he wasn't authentic? I mean, he was, like, some 16- 
year-old kid that was sayin' that he was God.
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well he claimed to be a 15-year-old. And I almost got thrown out 
of a big meeting where I pointed out that the "Guru Maharaj Ji" 
was actually more like 31 years old.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
[laughs] O.K.
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Telling the truth costs! You get thrown out of meetings; you get 
arrested; you get put in contempt of court. [laughs] I've been 
through the whole [laughs], the whole gamut, in 37 years that 
I've been active as, you know, a "free-lance commentator", shall 
we say.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. And goin' back to those riots in Chicago: there were, 
federal troops *were* brought in, though.
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well... National Guard. Yeah... I don't know if you want to call 
those "federal troops". National Guard was brought in, you know.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
'Cuz my memory is -- although, this comes from... Abbie Hoffman 
made a record called "Wake Up, America" which, it wasn't sold 
popularly, but you could get it through the mail. And I remember 
I used to listen to that sometimes, when I was younger. And he... 
The way *he* told it, there was also federal troops with bayonets 
and all this...
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah that probably was true.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
By the way, I, in later years, confronted Abbie Hoffman (who was 
*not* unfriendly to me) during the '72 commotions in Miami, at 
the GOP Convention there. We had a van that we were drivin' 
around in. And occasionally we would drive Abbie here and there. 
And I showed him some of the documents that we wrote about: that 
he got mysterious "travel permission", although he was under 
criminal prosecution following the '68 riots.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, you talked about this, I think.
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. And he would never answer, but instead told obscene jokes 
that some of my friends had a good laugh at [laughs].
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Okay, but I want to move on a little, because we had talked about 
that, with Abbie Hoffman, before.
 
But what I'm gettin' at is...
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Let me just put it, a summary to this: all these years after the 
'68 riots, nobody has (other than us), has written an extensive 
report of how the riots were a device to destroy the Democrats 
and put in Nixon in '68.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.
 
What I'm gettin' at, though, with, if there were federal troops 
in the street in Chicago. Because people had said, with this Waco 
thing, that this was the *first* time that U.S. federal troops 
were used against civilians. But, when I heard that I thought, 
"Well, it seems to me, in '68..."
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well I don't know what you mean by "U.S. federal troops". You 
mean like U.S. Marshalls, federal agency agents? There were none 
like that in Chicago in '68. You mean like BATF, FBI and so on, 
in Waco? That *probably* was the first time.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
I'm thinkin' more in terms of the Posse Comitatus Act, that says 
that you can't use the armed forces against the civilians.
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Uh... What are you getting at? In other words, that the Waco 
thing was one of the first times they did it? It probably was.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
No. It was...
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well if there were armed... I don't know if there were... Well, 
the only thing in Waco that might have been armed forces (and I'm 
not, I don't claim any expertise on it) were, possibly, the 
military helicopters that were used, and the tanks. Although the 
tanks were driven by ATF agents. So there weren't... uh, how 
could I put it? There wasn't U.S. military in the tanks. In fact, 
one of the tanks that knocked down the wall and may have caused 
the fire and all that was driven by a Japanese-American agent of 
the BATF. That has come out, in various things.
 
So in other words, those weren't... I don't think, at Waco, they 
had U.S. military, in uniform, doing any of the things that 
occurred there. They may have used military equipment. But the 
military equipment, I believe, was being driven by so-called 
"civilians".
 
                   [...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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