("Quid coniuratio est?")
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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[...continued...]
SHERMAN SKOLNICK [continues]:
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.?
[...to be continued...]
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Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"