("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]:
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].
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"