("Quid coniuratio est?")
INTERVIEW WITH SHERMAN SKOLNICK -- MARCH 20, 1995
On March 20, 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:
O.K. And this would be the reason why, perhaps, you find it
difficult to get published. You know, say, I would think that
The Nation magazine would be doing some stories on you or by
you.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well they've always rejected my stories.
The only ones that would run it verbatim were the ultra right wing, whose politics I don't approve of. But I'm left with very few choices because the only one that takes a more balanced view and is more progressive is Steamshovel magazine. Until I ran into Kenn Thomas, there was no one, really, that wanted to publish my stuff without butchering it up.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah I also... I subscribe to the Steamshovel magazine. And as
a matter of fact, Kenn Thomas is on the mailing list. So I'm sure
he'll be glad to hear that you appreciate his work, as do I.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
He's aware of it. But other than him (he's a rarity), most of the
so-called "left wing" press are, are whores. They work for some
devious financial source that they do not openly or publicly
divulge. And as a result, they have almost as many hang-ups as
the mass media.
And that includes the Communist Party paper, The People's Weekly World, The Nation, Progressive magazine... They can't... Let's put it this way: people that are independent, like myself, that speak out on a variety of subjects, are not welcome in that direction at all.
National Public Radio, although some of their very small stations are more open-minded, they generally will not let on the air (and I've tried) discussions that I and people associated with me talk about. We are not permitted.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Let me tell ya somethin' that happened with me, okay?
I heard, over the Internet, there was a (this past summer), a DEA agent who quit the DEA, named Celerino Castillo, who's written a book called Powderburns [Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras, and the Drug War] where he goes into all this stuff. I heard, on the Internet, that he was gonna be available for downloading or whatever [downlinking] on the Virtual Radio Network. And I called up the local PBS radio station here, WILL-AM. And I said, "Look, this might be a good interview, you know?" I mean, if you've got a guy sayin' that the U.S. government is complicit in bringin' drugs into the country, I would say that if you're really serious about winning a "War on Drugs" that you might want to bring that out a little bit.
So, to his credit, the guy listened to it, okay? But he decided he wasn't gonna play it. One guy! All right?
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
And the same thing, I think, goes for (I may be mistaken, but I
think I'm right) Michael Levine, The Big White Lie, where he
tells what happened to him in the DEA and how they promote dope
rather than regulate it.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
He spoke at my alma mater, Northern Illinois University, back
around 1990, 1991. I was very impressed by him. I've read both of
his books [Deep Cover and The Big White Lie by Michael
Levine].
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
But I don't think they're reviewed or discussed on National
Public Radio or on PBS.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah! It's not allowed in the, the equation, to solve the so-
called "War on Drugs". There's two things allowed: either you're
really gonna get tough on these people and lock 'em up, or else
you're gonna treat it as a health problem. And somethin' that's
never let in is, you know, the government -- Terry Reed in
Compromised, in that book? -- the government, they're bringin'
in the drugs, they're part of it. That's not allowed in!
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
All right, the one that has done more about it is, the mass
media, the 60 Minutes program -- when was it? Last year or
somethin', they did about... Or was it more than a year?
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Naw. It's been about within the past year.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
They did a thing about the CIA brought in tons of cocaine at a
time from Venezuela.
But 60 Minutes doesn't put it in a proper overall context, the way Levine or Terry Reed or others would. And I think they have not adequately allowed a discussion of Professor Alfred McCoy's more recent book. He first came out with it, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, in '72. But in the last couple years he came with an updated book [McCoy, Alfred. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade (Chicago Review Press, 1991)]. And I don't think that there was adequate discussion of him and his book.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah that's somethin', I just figured I'd touch on that, that I
have run into. In trying to...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
The reason for that is the number of foundations, that we can
show are conduits for CIA, that are interlocked with the
management of PBS and National Public Radio.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
You know, my theory on this is that, it's like Chomsky is like a
line of defense, okay? That it's like a "limited hangout" {2}.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Absolutely the correct term. That's the correct espionage
parlance that you're using. "Limited hangout".
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. I mean, for people who get past the first perimeter of
thought control, they'll come up against Chomsky. And it'll be
like, "Ah! Here is the truth!" But, you know, with me I began to
say, you know, "Well what about this Kennedy assassination? And
what about conspiracies, and things like that?" And it's like,
they give you this thing like, that... It's like a pose, you
know? Like that "they're so sophisticated," and "what do you
know," and...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Absolutely. And not only that, but they will not allow any
discussion about these different secret societies that -- for
whatever reason -- the ultra right wing likes to expose: the
Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg group, the Council on
Foreign Relations, and so on. Or the federal reserve and things
like that. Those are all forbidden subjects.
Well but you can see why. For a long while, the head of, PBS, I believe it was, was Sharon Percy Rockefeller, the wife of Jay Rockefeller. So I mean, how would you expect, since they are in with the, that they are the ones that conduct the Bilderberg meetings, naturally, that is a subject that they wouldn't allow discussed!
They purport to be liberal, but really not.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
And another problem that I've noticed with PBS is that they
didn't used to accept corporate funding. Or at least, say, back
in the mid-70s, there was no "Archer Daniels Midland" or
anything, where you turn on MacNeil-Lehrer and you get a mini-
commercial about "the good people at Archer Daniels Midland". The
corporations didn't have their foot in the door. But they got
their foot in the door. And Studs Terkel, a Chicago writer, has
said this also. When this first happened, that PBS began
accepting corporate funding, as I recall he said something like,
"Watch out! They've got their foot in the door now."
That's my take on it, that that's another reason that they're kind of limited in who they'll go after.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. And they generally will not allow independents -- not just
me, but others like me -- to be heard on any of their facilities
at any time. In other words, we're completely forbidden.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah that kind of happened... I made minor efforts in that
direction, you know, like I say, with the local WILL-AM here.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Somebody could write a lengthy piece on how the right wing and
left wing are carefully controlled. The left wing, as I said, is
financed principally by foundations, acting for CIA. So that
somebody at CIA headquarters is having a big laugh on a lot of
other people, in that they're like a giant Wurlitzer organ {3}.
They're directing what, if anything, can be discussed.
And the right wing, because they get into things that are obnoxious to a lot of sensible people, in some ways discredit themselves. In other words, they promote ideas that "the Holocaust didn't occur", that "this didn't happen", that "there's a Jewish banking conspiracy", and things like that, that affront more sensible people.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
For a simple reason. Martin Meyer, in his book The Bankers,
showed that there was only one Jewish-named bank official in a
bank house in the United States. There are people with Jewish
names running investment banking on Wall Street, but they have
not been actual Jews for three or four generations. But the right
wing keeps going like there's a Jewish banking conspiracy. So
they, in some ways, discredit themselves. The left wing is, too
much of their press is owned by the CIA through foundations. So
you can see there's no [laughs], there's no free press, even for
the so-called "extremists" [laughs].
CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. I want to move on to one final thing here, and then I'll
hang around here for awhile, if you want to call back with
anything else.
This is kind of switching gears here, but it seems to me you've got a pretty good familiarity with the history of Chicago. And I took a course at Northern Illinois University on the history of Chicago. And they talked about some of these turn-of-the-century characters in Chicago politics. These names may ring a bell with you, or they may not:
People like "Bathhouse John" Coughlin, "Hinky Dink", "Pushcart Tony" -- "Pushcart Tony" supposedly was a politician from around the turn-of-the-century that, when he would walk by, the Italian immigrant women would bless themselves, you know, like as if, "This is the anti-Christ" or somethin'.
And you've also, like another colorful character that you've kind of mentioned a lot is uh, I heard your story about Nicholas J. Bua, where you had, you know, he had tried to talk to you and you're callin' him "Judge". And he's over there, "Call me 'Nick'!"
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I was about the only journalist that has succeeded to get lengthy
interviews with him. I've known him for more than 30 years. And
he does try to be friendly with me, figuring that he can persuade
me to his view. Although I continue to believe that he's the head
of P-2 in North America -- Propaganda Due.
[...to be continued...]
-------------------------<< Notes >>----------------------------- {2} "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 Chomsky one again finds a limited hangout: Chomsky tells some of the truth and many seekers are deflected from the whole truth of conspiracies, assassinations, etc.
{3} For a good introduction to this concept of the CIA's control of the media being like someone playing a Wurlitzer organ, see The CIA's Greatest Hits by Mark Zepezauer (Tucson: Odonian Press, 1994).
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"