	id AA28379; Tue, 28 Mar 95 18:53:34 CST
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 4 Num. 46


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 4  Num. 46
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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
 
 +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +
 
[...continued...]
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. All I'm sayin' is that the claim had been made at the time 
that this [Waco] was the *first* time that U.S. military had been 
used against civilians. And *I* thought, well in the '68 
Democratic riots, the U.S. military...
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. Right. They used military, right. They used national guard 
and others.
 
Well no, they've used military, in -- what was it? 1961? During 
the commotions at a university in Mississippi regarding 
integration? They brought in, I think they brought in uh, 
federalized the national guard or something?
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah and also the "Bonus Army", if you remember back in, say...
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
1931, right?
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. They used federal troops. Somebody -- I think John DiNardo, 
somebody on the Internet -- pointed that out to me also.
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. Yeah. So, it's been done in the past.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, okay. That's basically what I was gettin' at.
 
O.K. In December 4th of 1969, also in Chicago, the police and FBI 
raided the Black Panther Party headquarters, on the west side...
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Uh... That's not... You haven't got it correctly.
 
It was a unit, supposedly, of the state's attorney of Cook county 
that did the raid. It wasn't *exactly* the police, and it was not 
the FBI.
 
*And*, almost all of those that were in the team, that came in 
with machine guns and killed Fred Hampton in his bed, were 
connected to CIA. I know a lot about it.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Okay, then that's kind of what I wanted to get into a little bit 
here, is that.
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Because the same one that led the raid, Sergeant Daniel Groth, 
was involved in an earlier incident, two-and-a-half weeks prior 
to Dallas [i.e., circa November 1963], where they stopped a team 
of assassinations that planned to kill JFK in Chicago at a 
football game if he came here. Same Daniel Groth.
 
Daniel Groth is a... I had a discussion with him one time. And he 
told me that, for the sake of his son, if I would stop talking 
about what I know about him. And I told him, "The news is the 
news." I can't help if family members of his are troubled or 
threatened because I uncover things about his connection to CIA.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Well you know, it's also debatable if, say, his son or any of his 
family are responsible for *his* actions. I mean, what *he* did 
is what *he* did.
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Oh I didn't say that they were responsible. But he told me to lay 
off of it one time I happened to run into him in a restaurant in 
Chicago. And, he sat at my table and talked to me and tried to 
persuade me to stop talkin' about these things. Because it was 
causing him, his family, a great deal of trouble.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Okay, and they had a grand jury investigation of that raid. And 
I, for some reason, actually went to Chicago at the time (I think 
I was about 16 at the time) and got, bought a copy of it. And I 
still have that report. And it seems that they...
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Uh they didn't indict anyone. And they... It was sort of a 
watered-down criticism of what happened.
 
The media here falsely reported the thing. Such as channel 2 in 
Chicago (WBBM-TV, a CBS affiliate) went on the air thereafter 
and, supposedly, re-created what happened there with a, you know, 
with a model, on the air? A model of the apartment. And they 
falsely stated that Fred Hampton's people, who were all asleep 
actually, were shooting at the police and therefore the police 
were justified. It was entirely a fraud by channel 2.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. But as far as the final report of that grand jury, you're 
sayin' it was kind of like a "limited hangout" {1} kind of a 
thing. That they...
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. Their report wasn't too good.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Okay -- although *I* was impressed that they at least, in that 
report, came out with the basic truth: that...
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
But what the, much better evidence was a trial that went on. It 
was one of the longest civil trials, I think, in American 
history. It was *Bill* Hampton and his mother, that is, the 
brother and the mother of Fred Hampton, versus the various people 
involved in the situation -- Daniel Groth and others. They were 
on trial for I don't know how many months.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
It was a civil suit though, right?
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. And it's, it's published in the law books. Hampton 
versus... whatever. It's... And the, I believe the jury verdict 
was upheld on appeal, too.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Well the way I understand it, they were awarded millions of 
dollars on that.
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
So they won their case.
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. In other words, better evidence came out *there* than by 
way of any so-called "grand jury report".
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, okay.
 
As far as the Black Panthers go, is it your opinion that they're 
really a grass-root organization? Or did, were they gettin', say, 
hidden funds from anyone?
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Uh... not in Chicago. But some of the original people later got 
into things that appear to be CIA -- including Eldridge Cleaver. 
In fact, Cleaver's wife once made a speech, in Denver, in so many 
words admitting that her husband had become friendly to CIA 
because of Cleaver's wife's father, who was a very important 
person in an agency connected to CIA, the AID [Agency for 
International Development], I believe it is. Which is a similar 
group.
 
In other words, in third-world countries, the CIA operated as the 
Agency for International Development, or whatever they call it. 
And Cleaver's wife's father was big with that. In fact, that came 
out when his father-in-law died, in his obituary.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
And what about claims of, say, the Communist Party funding some 
of... say, not the Panthers, but there's been some claims that 
Dr. Martin Luther King was receivin' money from the Communist 
Party?
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Naw... That was an ultra-right wing thing. He once, as a 
spectator or observer, went to a seminar of the, uh... a 
communist group. But he was not a communist.
 
I mean, it's just like some of us free-lance journalists 
occasionally go to a convention of the "CP-USA" [i.e., Communist 
Party - USA]. No other journalists are there. I mean, so somebody 
could point at me and call me a communist (which I'm not) simply 
because I went as a journalist to observe what's goin' on!?
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Okay, but I'm thinking more in terms of, say, that Dr. King, 
originally, was grass-roots, began to have some effect on waking 
people up, and at *that* point, the Communist Party...
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well... No, he wasn't grass-roots. He was heavily arranged and 
funded by groups connected to the Kennedy family, who, after his 
death, helped set up one or more foundations that finance his 
widow and children.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Okay, and are you familiar with the recent dispute they're havin' 
down there, about the museum?
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. Yeah, I read about it. But those are all issues that I 
don't claim any special knowledge about.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, okay.
 
You, in a prior interview, you mentioned that you had taught a 
class on, kind of, "tricks of the trade" for unearthing 
information.
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah, I taught a class at Columbia College, which is a broadcast 
school, in Chicago. It's sort of a technical school; they teach 
photography, video... stuff like that. And I used to teach a 
course called "Civic Investigation". And I would teach... Part of 
that course was how to research and investigate foundation tax 
returns, which are a little-known public record. They're the only 
income tax that you have a right to look at. And that's, IRS form 
990-AR -- foundation tax returns.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Okay, so that would be one of the "tricks of the trade": that you 
go to the IRS and you...
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Uh, no, you have to... No. Well you can write the district 
director of the IRS. Or, in most big cities, they have a group 
called "Donor's Forum". And they have the foundation tax returns 
for foundations operating in that district.
 
And what *we* did, is compared various levels of the tax returns 
and then traced them back to other foundations that had already 
been identified as being part of CIA.
 
And through that means, we caused a controversy with what people 
used to call the "American Civil Liberties Union" [ACLU]. But the 
ACLU does not, as an entity, exist anymore. They were taken over 
completely, in 1967, by another group called the Roger Baldwin 
Foundation, which is connected to CIA and continues to operate 
what people *used* to call the ACLU. That's operated that way, 
right up to this date! And every time I've brought it up... I've 
brought it up at meetings of the Roger Baldwin Foundation and uh, 
one meeting in particular, they suspended the meeting and never 
resumed it! Because they wouldn't answer my questions.
 
 
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Okay, I'm kind of wantin' to pin down some of the "tricks of the 
trade" for unearthing information. You know, you talk about the 
Donor's Forum, and uh...
 
 
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, what came out during the CIA foundation scandal of 1967, 
published in the *Washington Post* and the *New York Times*, was 
that the CIA funded certain groups through three levels of 
financing. The three levels are, conduits, fronts [phone rings], 
and uh...
 
Hold on [answers other phone].
 
                   [...to be continued...]
 
-------------------------<< Notes >>-----------------------------
{1} "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 the *Report of the January 1970 Grand Jury*, they apparently 
just offered a limited account of the whole truth of what 
happened at about 4:45 a.m. on December 4, 1969.
 
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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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