INTERVIEW WITH SHERMAN SKOLNICK -- MAY 1, 1995
On May 1, 1995, I interviewed, by telephone, Mr. Sherman Skolnick of the Citizens' Committee to Clean-up the Courts [CCCC]. The following is my summary of that interview. (Note that in the following, I neither necessarily agree nor disagree with either all or some of Mr. Skolnick's statements.)
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SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
There's... Z Magazine, which I've long suspected of being CIA-
sponsored, through foundations, came out with a thing on PeaceNet
claiming that I'm part of a group of researchers and commentators
that instigate others to try to overthrow the government -- which
is [laughs]. {1}.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
This past week, there's been a lot of hysteria going around. And
I trace it to Bill Clinton's appearance on 60 Minutes, which
from one of your commentaries I gather that you saw that also.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I mean, the guy was "bombed out". I mean, he was so close to
being "flipped out": his eye was twitching; he blamed all his
problems on a broad conspiracy. Hey! It's okay for the rest of us
to talk about a conspiracy. But the people are not accustomed to
having their President... He would have been better off if he
just said, "Lee Harvey Oswald still lives, and he bombed the
building." He'd be much better off.
When the President starts talking about a broad conspiracy to overthrow the government, he's causing a strange backlash, because some people says, "Oh... So you're talking about broad conspiracies. How come you're not talking about the Trilateral Commission meeting a few days after the Oklahoma bombing?" (You know: April 22nd, 23rd, and 24th.) "How come you're not dealing with these questions about whether the government bombed the building?"
You know, once you talk about broad conspiracies, you open the gates to a lot of questions. And I think the FBI and Clinton talking about broad conspiracies have opened the floodgates for discussion.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, and I think they're trying to close them now, too. I think
they realize that, and they're trying to "put the cat back in the
bag".
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
But they may have to let that Timothy McVeigh go. Because he
appears to be an "Oswald" type: in other words, somebody may have
steered him to be there. Understand: he was, at one time,
apparently, a security guard for this strange character from
Michigan who wanted to be the spokesman for the militias there,
but isn't. And that's this Mark Koernke. There's a lot of
questions about him. He's very charming and all that, but some of
the militia leaders over there that have called me says that they
have renounced him over a year ago. They think he's a government
plant; he's got a very high-level military intelligence
background, according to some of the stories in the press.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
He got pulled from shortwave. He had a show on WWCR...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Right.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
...which is a shortwave station. {2}. And, for whatever reason,
they pulled him.
And, you know, I listened to his last show. And he had some guy named Ted Gunderson on there, that was talking about -- you know, Ted Gunderson is a former FBI agent...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah, I've interviewed him. I know. He headed up the FBI office
in Los Angeles years ago, and he's been -- for about 14 years now
-- he has been investigating satanic cults. {3}. He may also know
about explosives, I think. Did he talk about explosives?
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah! Yeah. And he was bringing up a lot of questions about this
bombing that kind of cast doubt on the official version of
events.
And what happened is, there's this guy named John DiNardo that decided he was gonna transcribe the remarks by Gunderson and post them on the Internet. And some hidden force told him he couldn't do it -- I mean, it was kind of an odd situation, where somebody complained about it and so the administration said, "You must cease and desist." And when DiNardo said, "Well, I'd like to know who is denouncing me," they said, "Well this is a private enterprise here." I mean, that their particular node of the Internet was a private enterprise, and they claimed that they weren't required to say who had denounced DiNardo.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
For what? For circulating explosives information?
CONSPIRACY NATION:
No! For circulating... Ted Gunderson was on Koernke's show, and
he had given an alternative viewpoint on who, or what the bomb
was -- you know, as far as what the actual source of the bomb
was, who the bombers might have been.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
And somebody connected with Internet stopped him??
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah! Well, you know, the thing is there's a lot of providers for
Internet, okay? There's a lot of "on ramps", you know? Like
Prodigy is an "on ramp" [Prodigy is not the one that pulled the
plug on DiNardo]. And supposedly, because, say, whatever provider
DiNardo was using is a private enterprise, that somebody
complained to their administration about this. And they told
DiNardo he's gotta "cease and desist" on this.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Is that about the first time that has happened?
CONSPIRACY NATION:
It's scarey!
Yeah... I mean, especially... This was not bomb making information. This was just an alternative point of view about, you know, what possibly caused that bomb blast.
Like I say: it's a crazy week! I've been... After Clinton's appearance on 60 Minutes, I began to get tons of e-mail messages, demanding that I provide proof. You know, like "You must provide proof!" And so, I would just write back, "Well, for what?!" You know? It's like, suppose somebody called you up and said, "You must provide proof!" You'd say, "Well, for what, specifically?"
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well what I tell those people, politely, is, "Do you call up the
editor of the New York Times and says, 'Uh, this story here,
where you say <<the New York Times tonight has learned>>, uh,
from whom have they learned it?' You know, they do that all the
time. So what's wrong with lesser journalists doing the same?"
I mean, in other words, a lesser journalist might be more inclined to tell the truth than the New York Times! I mean, proof of what? I mean, in our case, we've been at this since 1963. We've got a long track record of exposing corruption and political murders -- and telling the truth! That, alone, should be in our favor: that we're not inclined to make idle statements. We don't make idle statements.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. I said pretty much the same thing. I had a prepared
statement, saying that you had been an investigative reporter,
doing this kind of work for 30 years, looking into government
corruption.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I mean, look what's happened here: our story about the sealed
indictments [against Hillary Clinton et al.] has gotten --
because of your using it on Internet and so on -- has gotten the
White House into a froth! As a result, a spokesperson for the
White House counsel, Abner Mikva, denied it. But others in the
White House have talked, off-the-record, not for attribution,
saying, "Well... If there are some indictments, maybe they're
defective. And maybe they won't be released until June. And if
so, at that time Clinton will resign."
So I mean, they're talking out of both sides of their mouth at the same time -- which tends to show that my story about the sealed indictments was correct! It's correct, but they're trying to hush it up, or cover it up, or pooh-pooh it, or whatever! To get rid of the story, somehow.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, and there was some other source, that people were trying to
track down, that had also said the same thing. And they were
trying to confirm if they're independent of...
You see, it's kind of hard. If I send out, you know, that you're saying that Hillary Clinton is under indictment, and I turn on Koernke's show and he's saying that Hillary Clinton's under indictment, right away I think, "Well, where's he gettin' that from? Did he get that from me?"
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Okay. Here's something else. We did a story... I think we were
about the first in the country to do a story about Systematics (a
unit of ALLTEL), and that Systematics was involved in spying on
central banks of other countries, using a low-orbit satellite and
INSLAW software, with the "trap door". Do you know what has
happened to that story? Reporters have confronted the foreign
affairs spokesperson for the National Security Council [NSC]
(which is connected with the White House). And the reporters were
told, in respect to Systematics, that it is not unlawful for an
American company to spy overseas.
When the reporters went one step further, and says, "Well, what if they try to bring that information, that they obtained by spying, back into the United States," the spokesperson for the NSC said, "Well... That's a legal question. But it is not unlawful to spy overseas."
So you see: our story about Systematics is "100 percent". In other words, the National Security Council's spokesperson does not deny it, that there has been this spying going on. Because central banks of other countries are very angry at the United States. And it might be one of several reasons why there's an attack on the dollar in respect to the yen, the deutschmark, and the Swiss franc; that might be one of the reasons.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
A lot of people are interested in finding out about this Oklahoma
City bombing. What's your information now? Do you suspect the ATF
now?
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well I suspect the ATF of complicity. And, I saw the story,
faxed around by the head of the Michigan Militia [Olson], about
that they believe that there's a connection between the poison
gas attacks in the Japanese subway and this bombing. Now some
people would reject it and say, "Now wait a minute. That's 'way
out'." It is true that others in the militia there told him
[Olson] to resign. However: the story has a certain ring of truth
to it. I'm not going with it as a story, I'm only commenting on a
story that was circulated around. I think it has a certain amount
of validity to it. And I am gonna see just what pieces of other
information tend to support this, well, call it a "theory".
Because you see, there's a number of strange events that, in later times, may end up in some history book as being related events: McNamara's book comes out (which has been in the works for a year). It comes out a few weeks before the Oklahoma bombing, in so many words saying that Americans were lied to about the Vietnam War and that McNamara could have played a role in bringing the truth out, which might have saved... At the time, he knew that the Vietnam War was a fraud. There had already been 16,000 casualties, dead. Which means, from that point forward they could've saved 40,000 Americans! I mean, if total casualties were about 56,000 dead. So he could've saved over 40,000! So a lot of ex-GIs are really "up the wall" about the whole situation. And I've heard that there's a lot of ex-GIs are now joining the militia as a result of the bombing! Never mind that the President says that there's a vast conspiracy against the White House. I think that there's been a backlash and a lot of people say that they're...
Because the militia people have been allowed to say on the television things that were known, but never on the major television: that there are secret societies meeting (like the Trilateral Commission); that perhaps the government has bombed their own building, in order to have an excuse for martial law; that there are large numbers of foreign troops in the United States, and so on -- things that the mass media has avoided ever mentioning. But because the militia's been attacked, this is the way that they retaliate. And I think that many of the things that the militia says -- their spokespeople -- are correct!! Which is, some of the rest of us know about. And how is the media gonna deal with this?
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Like you said: it seems like they're back-tracking; that they're
trying to go back to the O.J. Simpson routine, again, where
"What's the latest on the O.J. Simpson trial."
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, 'cuz the O.J. Simpson thing is, has more or less been
"blanked out".
Because from the details that are coming out about the, having Timothy McVeigh, as a defendant, charged with some role in the bombing -- that seems to be in error. McVeigh's latest lawyer has said that the FBI's got the wrong man. And that may well be true!
CONSPIRACY NATION:
I noticed that too. And I wanted to make a short note of that, is
that, strictly speaking, McVeigh has not been found guilty in a
court of law. But he's being talked about on numerous TV and
radio shows as if he's guilty! But you know, strictly speaking,
he has not been found guilty.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well here's the way that it appears: according to published
reports, McVeigh was a security guard of sorts for Mark Koernke.
Koernke is suspected by others in the Michigan Militia of being a
government plant. Because Koernke has high-level intelligence
connections; he went to one of the top secret military
intelligence schools -- I believe in Arizona. And yes, he is
charming and he says a few things that are interesting. But he...
There's something about him that indicates that he may be a
provocateur! So the fact that Timothy McVeigh worked in some
capacity for him, and is now accused of some role in the
bombing -- I find the whole chain of circumstances very
suspect. In other words, did someone like Koernke tell McVeigh,
"Go and spy out the building," (you know), "'Case' the building"
-- and not tell him why? And then other people [that] are now
becoming witnesses for the FBI says, "Oh yes! We saw McVeigh,
three days before the bombing, looking at the building!"
Well McVeigh -- if that is true -- McVeigh may not have even known what he was doing there, any more than maybe Oswald didn't know what he was doing in Dealey Plaza. I mean, in other words, a "patsy".
CONSPIRACY NATION:
And the other thing is that McVeigh has got, really, a tenuous
connection to the Michigan Militia, in that he had tried to join
-- but they expelled him! Okay? And the thing is, that you get
this bombing. And right with the bombing, juxtaposed with the
bombing, you get story after story about the militias! {4}. And
to me, you know it's like you had said about how the television
kind of gets beyond your thought, and it goes underneath your
thought...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Subconscious. Right. And what is never discussed, except -- I
think we're about the only ones in the country that discuss it.
(Because I've been on the periphery of broadcasting for over 30
years.) And that is, the broadcast industry -- radio and TV --
are subject to emergency proclamations -- unpublicized -- by the
White House. And that started during the anti-Vietnam and anti...
the civil rights marches and commotions that occurred in the
'60s, the murder of Dr. King. Because after the murder of Dr.
King, 103 cities were burning. So if Dr. King was assassinated
today, they would quietly announce tonight that he died in the
hospital of "natural causes". You see?
In other words, the radio and TV stations are under the thumb of the White House! And that is happening now. People that I know in broadcasting confirm it, but they'll be darned if they'll go on the air and ever say it, because they fear their license will be in jeopardy.
So the media, now, is so slanted! In other words, Clinton gave an emergency order that the media is to support the White House policy that may be necessary to round up the militia as part of a "broad conspiracy to overthrow the government". And they need the help of the media to soften up the public that "It's okay to round up these people."
So I'm about the only one, that understands broadcasting, that talks about it. None of the others in broadcasting would dare say a single word about the White House emergency pronouncement that's in effect right now, since the bombing. They just won't discuss it!
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. Another thing about the so-called "reporting" by the mass
media is that, two years ago during the Waco situation, the
media, every morning at 10 in the morning they'd go to the FBI
spokesman. And whatever the FBI spokesman told them, they would
report that; that was their idea of "reporting" what was going
on. {5}.
And the same thing's goin' on now, it seems to me. That the media is just going to the official sources, goin' to the FBI and all these people, being spoon-fed their version of things, and then "reporting" that.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Right. Why don't they go to the head of the ATF, in Washington --
the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms -- and ask him: "Can
you explain why it is that none of your people were in the
building at the time of the bombing? Can you explain why you had
exotic weapons parked in your office? Missile launchers and
things like that? Why was it necessary to have that in your
office? And did any of those devices explode when the building
blew up?"
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. And the thing is... Okay, I was gonna ask you about that:
you're saying that there was no ATF present when the building
blew up?
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Right. That's been widely reported, and I think it is quite
correct.
We also know, from federal sources, that there were original documents, not replicated elsewhere, in that office in Oklahoma City, that related to the role of Janet Reno and Clinton in the massacre in Waco.
Beyond that, we have known a great deal about the violent background of the ATF. Because some years ago, through a series of circumstances, we obtained -- well, it fell into our possession (put it that way) -- all of the spiral notebooks of the chief investigator of the ATF in Chicago, who arranged for violence directed against the peace movement, violence against the Black Panthers, violence against civil rights activists, through his office, through people that they trained and put out on the streets -- paid provocateurs -- which he, again and again in his own handwriting, in his notebooks, refers to as "militant activists" -- "M.A.'s". And with that background -- the whole thing about the ATF not being in the office in Oklahoma City, and the building being bombed -- the ATF has got a strange, violent past of promoting government policy with violence and bombings when, in fact, the ATF is supposed to regulate explosives! But on occasion, to carry out government policy, they supply explosives to their own bombers to bomb, for example, a church in a Chicago suburb which was the site of anti-war meetings. And I was the first speaker at the church after they re-built it, so I know a great deal about it.
And since we have thousands and thousands of pages from the top official's notebooks -- I also interviewed him on the phone and he was flabbergasted to find out that I somehow had all of his notebooks. I got that on tape, and I can play that tape, for anybody that's skeptical.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
All right. But gettin' back to this thing about how there was no
ATF in the building when it blew up: number one, the explosion
was at about 9:02 a.m., so by then there should have been
some ATF. Ordinarily there should have been some ATF personnel
in the building.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Right.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
And you say that that's been widely reported. I think the Los
Angeles Times was gonna be lookin' into that.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Why didn't any of the media people pick up the phone and say,
"Look. This is NBC, this is CBS -- ATF chief, how come none of
your people were in the office? Explain." None of the media
people have picked up the phone and asked for an explanation from
the BATF! Why? What's stopping them? I mean, maybe lesser
journalists like myself -- free-lance journalists -- maybe we
don't have the clout to demand an answer from the head of the
BATF. But hey: if Ted Koppell or somebody from ABC News calls up,
the ATF is gonna have to answer. But the point is, none of those
high muckity-muck media people are bothering to ask routine
questions!
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah.
Okay, I wanted to... I'm tryin' to cover some ground here, 'cuz I figured the best way to do this is, do it in half-hour installments, and keep gettin' back to you so -- partly because of the phone bill, and partly because of, it's just more manageable.
Okay. Going back to this 60 Minutes appearance by Clinton where, it seemed to me he was trying to ignite a mass hysteria -- and to an extent, he succeeded. There seems to be an attempt to -- you know, whether or not you like the G. Gordon Liddy Show -- there seems to be an ongoing attempt to create a "bandwagon effect" of, for example: almost immediately after the bombing, they said that some station out in California had "decided that they were gonna pull the G. Gordon Liddy Show". But then, it comes out later that this same station had previously decided that they were gonna be changing their format. You know, that it had nothing to do with controversial comments by Liddy.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well I think the attack on Liddy is because he came up with an
apparent witness that was the first one to see [Vince] Foster's
body laying there in the park. And the witness claimed that there
was no gun in his [Foster's] hand. And since Liddy talked about
it on his show, I think that they're using the bombing criticism
as an excuse to try to squelch Liddy because he has caused the
White House so much trouble with his stories about the strange
death of White House aide Vincent Foster, jr.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
It's not only that. He's been really hammering on the Waco
incident and Ruby Ridge.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Right.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
I mean, I listen to a lot of shows, you know, and I don't
necessarily endorse everything that Liddy says. But if you listen
to his show, he, it seems like every show, he goes into the ATF,
the Waco Massacre, and all this stuff.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
He put on one very controversial show. He put on a probe -- he
had a gun dealer on. And the ATF broke into [the gun dealer's
house] and wrecked his house, killed his domestic pets, stole
his medicine that he needed for a serious illness -- did all kind
of horrors to him. And they now have some kind of civil action
against the ATF.
But the press [a.k.a. Pravda], generally, has not mentioned this terrible incident. And Liddy spent a good portion of a program one day having the one that this happened to talk about it on the radio show. And so I think Liddy has greatly antagonized the ATF. And since the ATF might be part of this bombing, in some way -- Liddy is bothering 'em, so they're trying to squelch him.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. That's what it kind of seems to me, too.
You know, I was thinking also that, in Germany, in the '30s, a citizen could see what was going on, possibly, and at some point could decide, "Well. I'm gonna flee the country. I can see where it's goin', and I'm gonna get out of here. I'm gonna go to England; I'm gonna go to the United States."
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I want you to know that that is quietly happening, by very
wealthy people. I know people who have wealthy friends, and they
are telling me that that is what's happening. But they're doing
it very quietly. They're trying to get passports from another
country, as if they're a resident of Germany or France or
England. In other words, they, in effect, want to give up their
U.S. citizenship in order to get their assets out of the United
States.
And of course there's a movement in Congress to tax those that do that, that give up their U.S. citizenship, in order that their wealth not be subject to taxes.
But I think that move has escalated since the bombing. In other words, they sense that there's something -- a sinister trend in the United States. Some people that are experts on history immediately think about the event in 1933 when Hitler had his own people burn down the German Parliament, the Reichstag, and blame it onto left-wing and communists. And that seems to be... In other words, the Oklahoma bombing seems to be the "Reichstag" of the present White House. In other words, they may have bombed it themselves, or somebody for the White House, and they're blaming it on others.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
But gettin' back to this thing about fleein' the country: I
even think like this. You know, I think like, at some point in
time, I'm just gonna get myself out of this country because it
just seems like... You know, I'm willin' to do what I can. But
I'm not gonna hang around for the bitter end, you know. But I
think: well where, what country do you go to? I'm tryin' to think
-- like Finland? Or...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well one of the things that you gotta consider is that America,
as a major industrial power, is the only country that,
historically, has not had a genuine revolution. They do call it
"The American Revolutionary War", but it was mostly the
mercantile class here against the King of England. But there's
been no genuine revolution in the history of the United States.
And the way things are shaping up, the way they're mis-treating
middle-income people, the way they're causing a great anguish by
ordinary people -- somewhere down the road, America is gonna face
an armed revolution.
In other words, the militia is an indication of anguish, by ordinary people, many of 'em ex-soldiers, against the central government. And that anguish is gonna increase, because they now have a documented study, by McNamara, that we were led into a fraudulent war, causing the death of 56,000 ordinary Americans, for un-Constitutional purposes.
---------------------------<< Notes >>--------------------------- {1} If anyone can steer me to the relevant PeaceNet article, i.e., the one mentioned by Skolnick which puts him down, please let me know.
{2} For now, anyway, Koernke's Intelligence Report seems to be gone. The show that has replaced him seems good, however. I don't know the name of the new show, but it seems to be scheduled for most/all weekday evenings, 7-8 pm cst, 5.065 MHz, WWCR.
{3} >>Theory<<: maybe that is why the government is so gung-ho about attacking what it calls "religious cults"; i.e., the government, partially infiltrated by Satanists, naturally begins to storm fringe religious groups.
{4} "...juxtaposed with the bombing, you get story after story about the militias..." Going back to what we all learned in Psychology 101, i.e., Pavlovian response conditioning, we can see how the unthinking public has been conditioned to associate the militia movement with the Oklahoma bombing. Just as Pavlov conditioned dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell by forming an immediate association between the bell and food, so too the unthinking public has been conditioned to associate the militia movement with the Oklahoma bombing, again through repetitive association between the bombing and the militias. In point of fact, as noted, any actual connection is tenuous.
But why has the media conditioned the unthinking public to associate the militia movement with the Oklahoma City bombing? Has the unthinking public been psychologically softened up so as to be willing to accept future government actions against these militias? Stay tuned.
{5} This observation, as I recall, was originally made by Linda Thompson.
Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"