INTERVIEW WITH SHERMAN SKOLNICK -- MARCH 15, 1995

On March 15, 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:
I've been readin' through some of this Tsar stuff, The File on the Tsar by Anthony Summers, and, I gotta hand it to ya, it really, to me it looks conclusive that there's been a cover-up of some type.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
One of the biggest cover-ups of the 20th century.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
I have a few questions here. There's um... O.K. My question is regarding the educational system in this country. Because, even today, you go to a high school and they're gonna be teachin' you that "Oswald did it." And...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, that's because of the school textbook publishers, like Scott-Foresman(sp?), which is in a northwest suburb of Chicago. They're part of the establishment. They're tied in with the banking interests, and uh, they speak for the establishment. Would you want them to tell the truth about things? They're not gonna tell the truth about what happened to the Tsar and his family, what brought on Pearl Harbor, what the Dallas assassination of JFK was about, or any of that. They've even lied about what brought on the First World War! They've lied about the sinking of the Lusitania and so on -- there's a book on that by a fellow named uh, Simpson I think, that tells what the Lusitania was really about. [It] was carrying munitions and so on. And the British navy withdrew all protection and allowed the Lusitania to be at the mercy of German submarines.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. But my question is more...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
So in other words, the educational system, from top to bottom, with their textbooks and everything there, lied. And the teachers... Well some teachers depart from their textbooks, but generally not. They're criticized if they depart from the curriculum.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. But my view on this is that it would be more of a top-down thing; that you've got, at the highest level you've got so-called "experts" who do know a lot about this sort of thing, but that they're more or less paid to lie about it. And because they're the authorities, it goes top-down, and...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah, that's true. But it goes through the financial connections of the textbook publishers and, uh... For example, a person is hard-put to find, in the United States, books... like British school books on U.S. history telling their viewpoint of what brought on the American Revolutionary War. I've been looking all these years; you can't find it anywhere. The nearest to it was some book that came out a few years ago, written about some of those that fled the colonies to England, and their viewpoints.

In other words, I wanted a balanced account of things. And you don't get it from the run-of-the-mill books -- whether textbooks or whatever.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. There's a book called Universities and the Capitalist State by Clyde Barrow [University of Wisconsin Press at Madison] that, along these lines, it kind of traces the encroachment of the government into the university system; where, say, in the last century, universities were a lot more autonomous. But then the government, through, say, the Carnegie...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, the best book on this subject is by James Ridgeway, called The Closed Corporation. It came out of the '60s. It's as accurate as if it was published yesterday. It tells about all these universities and their tie-in to corporate interests. So that supports what you're saying.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
So, in other words, you would say it's just kind of a scam, basically. I mean, there may be honest researchers in the educational establishment, but it's basically...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, some of the more prominent professors make twice, and three times, and four times as much as outside consultants to major corporations. During the Vietnam War, the University of Chicago and other places had various professors that were consultants to the Defense Department on how to make better bombs, how to bomb Vietnam flat to the ground, and you know, stuff like that. Could they, in their classes, teach something that caused people to open their mind as to what was causing the Vietnam War? I don't think so. Not while they're making hundreds of thousands of dollars [in] consulting fees for the Defense Department.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah it's, this is just somethin' it kinda dawned on me -- O.K.? -- that the educational establishment was part of the system of repression, it seemed to me. But it took me awhile to see that, that these people, a lot of 'em had a vested interest in seein' things a certain way.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, The Closed Corporation has, from time to time, been available in paperback. It's, it may have been re-printed. I strongly suggest that you go to some used bookstore and find a copy. Because the information that's there is still good information. And it'd be wonderful to have that circulate on Internet, for people to consider what the heck some of our universities are into.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. And you know, something I've also noticed is, I'm fortunate that I live about 2 blocks from a library here. And they're hooked up by computer to other libraries: so if that library doesn't have the book, I can get it through inter-library loan. And yet, there are books that just, they don't show up on the computer. I'm thinkin' of...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
You want a short list of books like that?

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah!

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Those that don't show up, that you have some trouble finding?

Gustavus Myers...

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
The Great American Fortunes. You oughtta read that.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Almost every great American fortune is based on criminal enterprises.

Then there's the book, by the same author, The History of the Supreme Court. Which, in some ways the title is a little, sounds limited. The book, The History of the Supreme Court, is actually a history of the legal system of the United States. And it shows that the Supreme Court has been run by liars and fakers all the years, who had vested interests in what they were doing. Including Chief Judge John Marshall, whose picture hangs with a gold frame in most law schools. He was one of the biggest fakers of all, and he made decisions favoring his own family regarding Fairfax County and their connection to the British!

So I mean that's, those are two books right there.

A third book, that is suppressed altogether in the United States is Farewell, America by James Hepburn.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
That book -- a bestseller in Europe, in 14 languages -- was not allowed, over the years, to be sold when it came out, in bookstores, in the United States.

So if someone says, "Oh, well, there's a free press in America." -- False. There are hard-hitting books that are not allowed to be circulated here. And that is one of 'em.

The book, Farewell, America, tells about the high-level plot, involving the oil companies and others, to assassinate John F. Kennedy. And the oil companies saw to it that the book was not allowed to be brought into the United States. There were only two people that circulated the books -- that were not bookstores! You're talking to one of 'em. In the '70s, I used to carry suitcases of those books, that we smuggled in from Canada. And I used to give 'em away at college speeches that I gave, in return for small donations. I was one of the only ones that was able to get the books into the United States. In fact, the Post Office so knew about it that all you had to do, in the '70s, was put on an envelope "Farewell, America -- Chicago, Illinois" and that envelope would arrive right in my mailbox. You didn't even have to spell "Farewell" correct...

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Um-hmm [understands].

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
...and it would arrive, right here.

But it just is an example of the fact that, there is no free press; the universities are not free and open markets of ideas; and the textbook publishers are fakers; and teachers, to keep their jobs and not to get into trouble, follow a curriculum that is often riddled with textbooks that are frauds! I know that's a broad, general statement...

CONSPIRACY NATION:
No. You know, in... Well I'm the one that brought it up...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
In other words, I could help prove that -- that's a broad, general statement -- but I could fill it in with nitty-gritty -- you know what I mean? -- with nuts and bolts, to prove that that's so.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. Because I had asked recently, regarding the Kennedy assassination, just out of curiosity, if they're still, in the high schools, they're still teaching that "Oswald did it." And my information is that, yeah, indeed, that's what they're sayin'.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Twenty-five years ago I taught, during the Vietnam War, at a radio broadcast school in Chicago, O.K.? And my course was popular. It was called "Civic Investigation". And I taught, "How You Uncover Information" -- showing who the war-mongerers are, even those that live in Chicago that are in the bomb and bullet business -- You know what I'm sayin'?

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
-- that profit from the bloodshed in Vietnam.

After two semesters, my course was "X'd out". Even though it was very popular with the students.

So I mean that's, that's just a small example of what uh, the things are at. In other words, teachers that try to open the minds of students are rare. We had a rare one, a rare professor, on our TV program recently: Professor John Goldsmith...

CONSPIRACY NATION:
I saw that! He was from the University of Chicago. I've got...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Wasn't that a wonderful program?

CONSPIRACY NATION:
I tell ya, one of my readers -- O.K.? -- has been very nice and has been making copies of your shows and sending 'em to me. And your program is just astounding. It... I'm gonna try and get it aired down here on the public access.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
O.K. Did you happen to know or see the program we did -- we were the only ones in the United States, so far as I know, that put portions of the suppressed documentary, on the television, called "ZR Rifle".

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Haven't seen it, no.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
That one, it was made in Havana and showed on Cuban television -- was not allowed to be even considered in the United States! -- and told about how Chicago gangsters were part, were directly among the shooters that shot at Kennedy in Dealey Plaza at the auspices of the CIA. O.K.? And we were the only ones, so far as I know, that got that ["ZR Rifle"] on the air in the United States. We did. On our program.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
I, you know, maybe if you re-run it I'll get a chance to see it. Like I say, I've been fortunate enough to have seen... I like the one on the Helen Brach story, where you had that lady on [who] was talkin' about the...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah, right. They talk about the horse rackets as if it's minor matters, when it's a very broad, what we call in our thing, "horse mafia".

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
We try to tell the truth. But you know somethin'? That doesn't make us out to be popular with the popular press. Here in Chicago, it's almost forbidden for anybody on other television stations, or in the print media, to utter a single word about the existence of our program, even though we have over a half a million viewers on Monday night. We're invisible as far as the press is concerned. They're forbidden to say a single word, even for us or against us. How do ya like that?

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Well, you know, having read The Media Monopoly by Ben Bagdikian and Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky, I'm not that surprised. They seem to do this routinely.

Regarding, say, the other panelists on the show: all of 'em seem very knowledgeable people -- Marc Sato, Jim Reis...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well Jim Reis is an unusual stockbroker who risks his career, on our program as well as his own program called "Wall Street Lies". He tells about the frauds of Wall Street. And, he's on twice a week, on his program.

And our moderator, Cliff Kelley, was formerly a Chicago alderman, who was framed and sent to jail in order to undermine the power of the first black Mayor in Chicago, Harold Washington -- who, because of our investigations, we believe that Harold Washington was murdered in 1987.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
That was gonna be one of my questions. Because in your commentaries you've said that Harold Washington was murdered with a poisoned cup of coffee.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Oh yeah! Well I interviewed everybody that pertains to the thing. I've got, even the doctors from the hospital on tape. But I promised them that during my lifetime -- or their lifetime -- that the tape will not be released, even if those in the media call me a liar.

But the doctors... Northwestern Memorial Hospital is a half a block away from channel 2 television [CBS affiliate] in Chicago, WBBM-TV. And the doctors that worked on -- well, they worked on Harold's dead body, just to appease the public. He was already dead when he hit the floor in his office, O.K.?

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
They [the doctors] walked over to the television station and talked to the higher-ups, that the Mayor's been poisoned! What shall we do? And they invoked "national security". Having worked at a radio broadcast school, I know certain things about "national security" and broadcasters that are generally not discussed. They have an unwritten rule that if a well-known black dies, under odd circumstances, they are to, that evening, quietly go on the air and say, "Such and such person died of a heart attack."

So if Dr. King was "blown away" on a balcony today, tonight, they would quietly say, "He died of a heart attack in the hospital." Why? Because of the riots in 103 cities in April of 1968 when King was assassinated. That is when the broadcast policy was quietly invoked.

And so they invoked that policy against going on the air. I got the story, about Harold [Washington] being poisoned, on the air, on a, on two, black radio stations in Chicago. And the news director of one called me up after three days running the story and says, "We can't go any further, Mr. Skolnick."

I said, "Have you shown that the story is false?"

She says, "No. No."

But the major broadcasters, like WGN radio, which is tied in with the Tribune company, have got a very great influence here and they called the stations and said, "If you run Skolnick's story, you are gonna lose your license." Why? Because they've got the power with the FCC, that's why.

And so, that is what happened.

A network newswoman that I know told me that she verified that Harold was, Harold Washington was poisoned. And she verified it from her own medical sources and took it up with her editor in Washington. And the story never ran.

I'm the only one that went with the story. It ran with the major Japanese newswire service, JIJI Press Agency. It ran in the second largest newspaper in Australia, and elsewhere. But, in Chicago and elsewhere, if they mention me at all, they call me a liar -- and I don't care! I mean, I know I told the truth. I interviewed everybody; I did everything what a good journalist.

In April of '91 we did a show on our television about it, and a week later, the FBI planted a story at the Sun-Times that there had been plots to assassinate Harold Washington, but that the FBI was too busy to go into it and turned it over to the Secret Service, that didn't pursue it.

So they knew that there were plots against Harold Washington.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Who would ya think would be behind that?

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, three or four forces, generally:

The New York bankers, the Rockefellers and others. Harold did an odd thing for a Mayor: he said, as a black man, that he was gonna give an equal chance to yellow-skinned bankers that wanted the city's business. Like Mitsubishi Bank. And the Rockefeller bankers, the Anglo-Saxon types, took great offense to that.

Further, he was going to take over the steam-generating plants of Commonwealth Edison, one of the largest nuclear energy electric companies in the United States. And he says their steam- generating plant within the city limits had been paid for, or fully amortized, and that he could bring electricity to Chicago as a municipal electric company -- instead of Edison, because their franchise was about to expire in 1989, two years after Harold was elected.

But he was gonna bring electricity to Chicago for as little as $10 a month for a household. It so happens that Commonwealth Edison -- among the largest stockholders (according to government documents) is the Pope, O.K.? An "absentee owner". He doesn't care how high the electric rates are in Chicago.

So those are two, uh...

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Motives.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
...two motives for "knocking him off". And they used the traditional dark ages, medieval method of the Catholic hierarchy: the poisoned cup of coffee. The Borgias and the Medicis, the poisoned cup of... You know what I mean.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
That's different than blowing out his brains in an open car like they did with Kennedy. You see what I'm saying? And I know a lot about it; I can go on for hours relating all the details that we compiled from 1987 until now, proving without a shadow of a doubt that our first black Mayor was assassinated.

Who was involved? One of those that came often to Chicago was Major General Secord, whose name came up in the Iran-Contra thing.

The press did not mention that when his body hit the floor there was a national alert in 14 states, centered on Chicago, with the national guard. Not a word in the press. When his body hit the floor, a military helicopter appeared over the City Hall. And things of that sort. None of that ever got into the press.

His body was removed from the city that night. I interviewed the morticians that were involved; they wanted his body out of the legal jurisdiction here, until the funeral. That, and thousands of other details, would, would convince...

Also! I interviewed, on tape, the top honchos of ABC's local station, WLS-TV, channel 7 in Chicago. And they admitted, and I have... that they admitted that four doctors from the hospital called them and said that Skolnick's story is correct! O.K.? And, but they never put it on the air. I played that tape on two of the black radio stations in Chicago, O.K.? So at least the black community has heard that tape. It's one of the top honchos of channel 7 admitting that my story is correct, O.K.?

I've done everything as a good journalist. I, the popular press, they've gone along with all these things about "Oswald did it alone," "Harold Washington died of a heart attack" -- all those frauds upon the people. It's uh... And then they carry it over into their textbooks, also. You know.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. There was this guy by the name of Nelson Algren, O.K.? He wrote, he was a Chicago...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
The Man With The Golden Arm. [CN -- also, A Walk On The Wild Side]

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, yeah.

You kind of bring me to mind of that. Because, the way I understand it, Nelson Algren's books were very popular internationally. And yet, from what I've heard, you would go into a Chicago library and you couldn't find it.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
That's true.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. So I mean, it...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
He was a persona non grata in Chicago.

And until I got on the television show in '91, the only way I could come before the public was my 5-minute recorded message, which we have been running since 1971.

I started the recorded message because they blanked me out. In the late '60s and early '70s, I was a news media hero as long as I was involved only in attacking Democrat judges and voting cases, O.K.? The minute I went after other, you know, on a non- partisan basis, both corrupt Democrat and Republican judges in the court, I got into trouble. Then I started, with my associates, an investigation of the CIA and FBI "assets" in the media -- former CIA people sitting as anchor people in Chicago -- I named them. I got "on the outs" with the media and they blanked me out. By 1971, it's as if I disappeared from the world.

And I used to be on... I had my own radio show. I was on practically every week for 40 seconds or so on the evening news on something that I was involved in. It was common to hold press conferences on the lawn in front of my house at the drop of a hat. I was popular with the media.

But when I started to investigate who the media is, I got blanked out.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
And so I started Hotline News as a recorded commentary [(312) 731-1100]. And now it's one of the biggest of its kind. It's not a 900 number; it's a regular phone number.

And then, in February '91, I got to know a guy that was doing access, public access TV shows. And our Monday night show apparently is so popular that we blank out three commercial stations: channel 2 [CBS], 9 [WGN], and 32 [Fox], who lose advertising dollars because of us! Their ratings are down, ours are up. We got an estimated half a million people watching our show, yet the radio and TV editor of the newspapers never, never, never says a single word that we exist at all. We're invisible.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. Along the lines of the media, one of your commentaries talks about murdered reporters.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Such as Jim Hogan, and...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Not Jim Hogan, Paul Hogan.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Paul Hogan. O.K.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Paul Hogan. And a friend of mine was murdered on, right before the 4th of July in 1970 -- Ted Smart. I spent a lot of time investigating that. He was murdered. Made to look like a drowning, but they killed him.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. Could you, do you have any additional information on that?

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, those that I've mentioned -- Louie Lomax, Larry Buckman -- I've mentioned some of those. We've also done a story, which we'll re-run one of these days, on our recorded message, of the judges that were murdered. Oh, there's been a number of judges that... There was a judge in uh, Judge William E. Miller, I believe his name was, in the federal appeals court in Cincinnati, that was, that gave an indication during an oral presentation of an appeal, that he was gonna re-open the James Earl Ray case, to show conspiracy of the government. He never lived to it. He died while writing the decision. And the other two judges that were part of the panel made the gratuitous statement that Judge Miller, although dead, went along with their view that the case should be kept closed.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. I know that this is...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
There's a number of... The original trial judge in the James Earl Ray case was found laying dead at his desk. And under his body was laying James Earl Ray's petition to re-open the case -- Judge Preston Battle(sp?), the Memphis judge that had sentenced Ray. And so on.

There's been... In other words, a judge that goes against the grain and tries to be honest, in a political murder case and so on, is generally himself murdered.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. You know, a lot of people that read this are...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Skeptical.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, O.K.?

And I know that I'm really just asking you these things out of the blue, so that, as far as say, with Jim Hogan, anything...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Paul Hogan.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, I'm sorry. I've got it written down here "Jim" -- Paul Hogan.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well his relatives agree with me. But you don't hear their viewpoints in the popular press.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Harold Washington's relatives agree with me, but cannot go public with it because of insurance policy money.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
So, I mean, you mean whether I mind being called a liar? Every judge that our group was instrumental in sending to jail started out by getting a press conference and calling Skolnick a liar. And I don't mind. I could give you a long list of those that called me a liar that end up ex-convicts. And one of 'em, the chief judge of the traffic court, I interviewed him on tape in his office. He said that what I said about his corruption -- I brought 28 witnesses to accuse him -- he says, "Skolnick, I heard you imagine things," -- he just got out of jail, an ex-convict, convicted of bribery. So what else should I have to say?

CONSPIRACY NATION:
No. What I'm just sayin' is...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
In other words, I'm very careful... Our group is very careful. We're not in politics. We don't accuse anybody for small reason; we have no... we aren't gonna get anything out of it.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. What's goin' on with Whitewater? Do ya have any...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I've just finished a story that I faxed to one of the smaller magazines that asked me to write what is known about Whitewater -- the entire picture. And they're supposed to go to press with it within a week. I just faxed it to them this morning, coincidentally.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. You had said before that they're going after Clinton, Gore, and Gingrich -- all three of 'em, the press is goin' after 'em. And it doesn't seem to me that they're goin' after Gore that much.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, I told ya the story of how I was 6 months ahead of the parade...

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
...on the Spiro Agnew thing. We're ahead of the parade on the Gore thing. Only the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, last April, used a watered-down version of our details of the corruption in the milk bovine situation involving Monsanto Chemical, that huge company.

And Gore has had a great influence on the FDA. It was his wife Tipper's relative, Michael R. Taylor, that was a top deputy of the FDA. He was formerly the outside chief counsel of Monsanto, the makers of this controversial chemical that makes cows give more milk, but causes infection to get into the milk, O.K.?

And you're saying, "When will that come out?" -- It's not up to me.

The Washington Post, however, 6 weeks after I went on a radio show talking about it, ran a story that the, Monsanto, actually had five other people working inside the FDA as officials of the FDA! So... And that a congressman from Vermont was -- Sanders, I believe his name was -- was investigating that. He's one of the few independents in Congress.

In other words, you're wondering when? Hey. I'm not calling the shots on the secret agenda of who gets knocked down. I mean, I predicted it accurately in '73 that Agnew was "going to the wall" first, and then Nixon, and then they're gonna bring in the new team without an election. Which was Gerald Ford, and then-Vice- President Nelson Rockefeller.

They're pushing for Jay Rockefeller to be the new President, without an election.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. You answered my question... It was just... As soon as you answered, somethin' "clicked" in my mind. I said, "Oh yeah! O.K."

So fine. That's satisfactory as far as I'm concerned.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Gingrich is the third-in-line. And notice that, even though he's a Republican, they're lambasting him about book contracts, about foundations he was connected with. They want to get rid of all three of 'em: Clinton, Gore, and Gingrich.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
And the next in order of accession, is that Rockefeller then?

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
No, if the first three of 'em get knocked down, under the 25th amendment then, I think it's up to Congress to select somebody.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
And Congress can be bought, and so they would put in Jay Rockefeller. Read the 25th amendment and reach your own conclusion.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. And so, when you say Congress can be bought, that relates to a commentary where you had mentioned the bribery of one-hundred eight...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Right. Right. I... Only a right-wing newspaper would run a story that I did...

CONSPIRACY NATION:
You mean The Spotlight.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Right. I don't agree with their politics, but they ran my story without butchering it up -- verbatim, O.K.? Friends of mine criticize me because they say, "Well, but their politics are no good."

I says, "Well, publish it in Time magazine then!!"

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. You know, I get the same thing. Because I read The Spotlight -- O.K.? -- and I don't always agree with their politics but, and yet they have information that I can't get!

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I vigorously disagree with their policy that there was no Holocaust. My family got lost in the Warsaw ghetto -- I mean, come on!

But the point is, they print my stories verbatim. Give me a choice! Put it on Internet. You're an alternative.

But what was the story about: of the four largest news agencies in the world -- O.K.? -- all four had a record that was an open record with the Bank of England for 30 days only: the bribery list of BCCI. They had bribed various public officials in various countries, including... They had bought 25 percent of both Houses of Congress. They wanted congressmen to allow them to proliferate their bank in various branches throughout the United States. And they needed various committees of Congress to "O.K." them. O.K.? So what they did is, through a group of six LaSalle street brokers, they bought 28 U.S. Senators and 108 U.S. Congressmen.

This bribery list was in the hands of four news agencies; one had corroborated that the bribery list is correct. And when the editor of that news agency, with international scope, killed the story, a very brave reporter contacted me -- like in the Spiro Agnew thing years ago -- and says, "Hey, Skolnick. I heard you're a loudmouth there, and you don't mind going with the truth even if it bothers somebody."

And so they gave me the list, together with all the corroboration, and I substantiated it further, from my own sources, and I wrote a story about it.

And one of those that was involved is the wife of Senator Phil Gramm of Texas. His wife, at the time, was Wendy -- uh, she is, Wendy Gramm -- was the head of the commodity futures trading corporation that was involved in these corrupt commodity deals where 25 percent of both Houses of Congress got hundreds of thousands of dollars by way of bribery! She went along with it. There were six commodity brokers on LaSalle street that were a part of it.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. We can explore this further, you know? There's...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I know a lot about it! I'm just trying to tell you briefly.

I'm very careful. I don't, despite the judges that have accused me of being liars (and then went to jail later), I don't, you know... I'm very careful about this. I check things out.

Yes. We get stories that are "killed" by other news operations. Yes.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
In the context of this current interview, there's this thing called "concision" -- O.K.? -- that Noam Chomsky has talked about, that...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
What is that?

CONSPIRACY NATION:
That means that, they'll, sometimes they'll have somebody, say like, Noam Chomsky will be on MacNeil-Lehrer about once every ten years or so. But they'll have him on, and they'll ask him a question -- but the concision is that he's got 5 minutes to answer it, O.K.? It's like...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well that's a lot. They used to give me only 40 seconds when I was a hero with the media in the '60s.

So I used to, I used to get around it, see? They say, "Skolnick. Nixon, who is the President, he gets two minutes. You get 40 seconds."

So I used to write out my statement to the press before the press conference. And I timed it to the second. You want 40 seconds on film? (Which is what they use.) I used to give 'em 40 seconds. That way, they couldn't edit it, see? 'Cuz they'd say, "No! Keep talkin', Skolnick! We'll edit what we want!"

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah [laughs].

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I would give 'em 40 seconds. And so they had to use it verbatim! And the minute the 40 seconds were up on my watch, I shut my mouth. You know what I mean?

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. That's a good way of doin' it. Because I would think that...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
That they would, they would want me to talk for 4 or 5 minutes and then they would cut out, they would only put on the air the "B.S." part, the part that wasn't specific.

So I would time my thing, for the film -- 40 seconds. And the minute the 40 seconds are up, I shut my mouth.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. But in another sense, though, this idea of "concision"... You know, if somebody asks somebody for an explanation -- say, of the Kennedy assassination -- and they only give you 5 minutes to try and explain all...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
All right. Let me, let me answer that very briefly.

In 1973, a Canadian writer who is now very famous (supposedly), Mordecai Richler, called me up and says he wants to interview me -- O.K.? -- about the Chicago plot against Kennedy. That I knew a lot about because I had a court case on it, you know?

So he shows up at my house, comes into my kitchen, and I started to present him the documents from the court record. He says, "I haven't got time for that!" He says, "Tell me, in a short sentence..."

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah! [laughs]

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Anyway. I says, "Well wait a minute. You came all the way from the other end of the country interviewing another assassination researcher. You came here. And uh, give me a few minutes."

He says, "I can't!" He says, "In 8 minutes I gotta go back out the door. My cab is waiting on your driveway."

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. That's a perfect example.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
He wrote a story for Playboy that "Skolnick is a liar and has no proof whatever of his contention that there was a plot in Chicago against Kennedy."

Hey! The man didn't give me time!

Now, Mordecai Richler -- check his name through a database. Oh! He publishes books, he's famous. The man is a liar.

Another guy that did the same trick to me was one of the feature writers of the Washington Post! Ronald Kessler. He did the same trick to me: he flew in on a plane, and he wanted to give me five minutes to explain why, uh about the documents, where Dorothy Hunt was murdered through a sabotaged plane crash. Hey! I can't do it in 5 minutes!

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. That's what I meant when I said, "concision". That sums it up.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
In other words, uh... Sometimes I try! Sometimes I talk fast and I try to fill it up with as many "nuts and bolts". But hey! I'm not a magician! In order to do this takes time to set it forth, step by step, in a technical manner, with the "nuts and bolts".

But these guys don't allow time. And then he says, "This fella Skolnick's a liar! He's got no proof!"

Hey! I couldn't set forth everything in 8 minutes, or 5 minutes.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. And I brought that up in terms of this interview, say with this thing of the murdered reporters, that, I'm just asking you this question "out of the blue", O.K.? And...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
What have I done in that? I have talked to the families, off the record. I have checked with associates of theirs [i.e., associates of the murdered reporters]. I know hospital people. Hey! I'm the head of a... well, call it an "army" of volunteer "gumshoes" [laughs]. People that volunteer to investigate things, snatch records. We've been doin' this since 1963, man [laughs]. I mean, we find out most anything. I mean we're, my favorite story is that people whisper into my ear things that they wouldn't dare tell their grandmother! I mean, we find out... Boxes show up from other places with documents that are supposed to be secret! [laughs] One of 'em left me a box of documents -- I'll never forget it -- a year ago, in a snowstorm! A big blizzard! A truck pulled up, right up onto my lawn! You could see the tire tracks in the snow? And he delivered me this box of records. No return address! [laughs]

CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. Because I'm kind of limited as far as how much time here -- you know, the idea of "concision", O.K.? -- I...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I don't even know how you spell it.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
C-o-n-c-i-s-i-o-n.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Really.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
And you gave a good example of that, where ya, this person said, "I've only got 8 minutes," ya know? And you wanted to go into some detail to try and explain this.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well tell Noam Chomsky to call me; I'll tell him about the 40- second schtick.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. O.K.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Good trick.

CONSPIRACY NATION:
And one final question: do you have any opinion on this thing in Mexico, where they admit where Salinas' brother may have been involved in this assassination?

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
No. But we're working on a story about how they siphoned off tens of millions of dollars from Mexican government agencies through a major stock brokerage with an office in Chicago. I know a lot about it. We're workin' on a story about it.

The other thing about Salinas, I don't have any direct knowledge.

I commend... However. I commend Mexico and the Mexican people for allowing the word "conspiracy" and "plot" to be discussed. In other words, if Lee Harvey Oswald did it in Mexico City, they would say, "Plot!" "Conspiracy!"

United States is backward. Here, the press is so afraid of the people that whenever a prominent person gets "knocked off" -- [e.g.] President -- they says, "Uh, a 'lone assassin' did it."

In Mexico, if the second-in-command of their government or somethin' gets "knocked off"... Hey! [laughs] Even the press starts talkin' about "Plot!" "Conspiracy!"

I commend Mexico for that. They're more candid [laughs].

Brian Francis Redman bigxc@prairienet.org "The Big C"

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