("Quid coniuratio est?")
INTERVIEW WITH SHERMAN SKOLNICK -- MARCH 27, 1995
On March 27, 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]:
...levels of foundations used to finance it. They have technical
terms. One of the terms has got a common understanding. Uh...
conduits, pass-throughs, and fronts. The "front" is the one that
is actually in front, that is, the ultimate.
But what we did is develop methods, by getting all these foundation tax returns and tracing 'em back to the ones that are known to be in with CIA. And I could prove that the foundations that financed Rennie Davis were CIA... I have those foundations' tax returns.
And likewise, the Roger Baldwin Foundation. What they did is, they used different names. For example, it's "The Roger Baldwin Foundation of ACLU", or "The ACLU Foundation of Roger Baldwin". The American Civil Liberties [Union], as such, does not technically exist after 1967.
And top officials of CIA sit on the board of overseers of the Roger Baldwin Foundation in New York.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
And the Baldwin Foundation also gives money to The Nation, as
you had said before?
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah, liberal publications. Right.
Now they do publish some interesting things about CIA in South America. But it's very doubtful that the, The Nation magazine, would ever publish anything really that bothers the CIA on a domestic basis, in the United States.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
All right, I wanted to read a paragraph sort of "into the record"
here that supports what you've been sayin' about that. It's from
a book you had recommended, called Wall Street and the Bolshevik
Revolution by Antony C. Sutton [New Rochelle, NY: Arlington
House Publishers, 1974].
One hypothesis that fits other evidence concerning Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution is that John Reed was in effect an agent of the Morgan interests -- perhaps only half aware of his double role -- that his anticapitalist writing maintained the valuable myth that all capitalists are in perpetual warfare with all socialist revolutionaries. Carroll Quigley, as we have already noted, reported that the Morgan interests financially supported domestic revolutionary organizations and anticapitalist writings. [pp. 143-144, my copy]
I just wanted to read that in...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well Carroll Quigley's the one that wrote that...
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Tragedy and Hope.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. A book that is more or less suppressed. And he was
Clinton's mentor and teacher.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. Because Clinton had taken a class from him, or something,
at Georgetown. And had also...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well Georgetown University is the academic home of the CIA.
Anyone that disputes that is just, you know, kidding around.
That and the Foreign Service School, that's CIA. That's where
they train 'em.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. I wanted to get to somethin' too, here. In one of your
recent recorded messages, you mentioned "case C 1992 7358". How
would somebody track that down?
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
What was that again?
CONSPIRACY NATION:
"Case C 1992 7358". If somebody wanted to...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well no, you got it backwards. It's usually the year first, then
there's an initial, "C", in the middle, and then the number
[i.e., "1992 C 7358"].
That would be a U.S. Court of Appeals... pardon me -- a file in the U.S. District Court in Chicago. The "C" stands for "Civil".
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Okay, and so they'd have to go to the U.S. District Court in
Chicago and...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
If it's a case that is still open, or just recently closed within
the last year or two, the files would be in the Dirksen Federal
Building, 219 South Dearborn, Chicago. If it's a case that's been
closed for several years, it's in the Federal Court Archives on
75th and Pulaski.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Okay, but say if somebody wanted to check that out: they'd
have to basically come to Chicago? Or could they do that through
some other outlet nationwide?
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I... no. Oh yeah... Yeah, I see what you're getting at. Some
cases, in the last few years (not every one), are reported in
the computer system LEXUS/NEXUS. Or Westlaw. And occasionally,
outsiders can check that through a law school computer -- or, if
you've got a law student friend of yours. And on a limited basis,
you can also get use of it through the Cook County Law Library --
you know, not as much as a law school or law office, but... 'Cuz
the service is quite expensive.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
And so basically they would just have to... Let's say, for me, my
best bet would probably [be] just say, go to the Dirksen Building
and just make inquiries, that you...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, the 20th floor is the Clerk of the District Court.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. And they're not gonna say somethin' like, "Only members of
the Bar are allowed to look at this," or...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well those are public records. They're court records; they're
public records.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
O.K. We had talked before about this thing of the 50-year pact
between the Vatican and the West that started...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah, it expired, more or less, in '93. Right. And a lot of the
things that have happened just before and just after '93, you
could make out a good argument that they're in some way the,
the...
The Vatican is one of the great "silent giants" of the world. They don't usually... Uh, it's only rarely that they demonstrate their power. But the Vatican is the largest intelligence organization in the history of the world. Because your local Catholic priest is obligated to funnel information up to the hierarchy, and from there, back to the Pope.
And, the super-secret organization called Opus Dei now has their headquarters in Chicago. It's odd, but the Tribune, in '91, had a story about this super-secret Catholic group. It called them "highly secret". And it says they opened up their headquarters for, like, North America, in an abandoned Catholic church in Chicago.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
And the way that I understand Opus Dei is, one of their things
is they want to go back to a Latin Mass, and just basically go
back to a more conservative kind of point of view.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, they're a little bit like the Jesuits. They sort of,
historically, "hem in" the Pope. They're like, um (Geez. I don't
know exactly how to put it, 'cuz I'm not a Catholic church
expert.) But it's like, the Jesuits and Opus Dei sort of (How
could I put it?), they sort of restrain the Vatican. Or to keep
the Pope on a certain line.
If that sounds conspiratorial, it probably is! [laughs]
CONSPIRACY NATION:
You know, I've got a book from, that was popular in the last
century -- and I forget the name of it -- by somebody named Maria
Monk. And it's like kind of an expose, that she had... Somethin'
like Awful Secrets of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery in Montreal. It's
really shocking stuff! You know? Like...[Awful Disclosures of
the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal by Maria Monk. Originally
published in 1850. Reprints available from Arno Press Inc. and/or
Ayer Company, Salem, New Hampshire. Also try A-albionic, which
carries many hard to find books: write to James Daugherty at
jhdaugh@a-albionic.com]
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well one of the great secrets of the Church is the secret hand
signals, where fellow priests can tell whether the other priest
is real. I did a story about that. I interviewed somebody from
the Catholic church hierarchy some years ago regarding some fake
priests that were floating around -- they were actually spies for
the FBI! And they admitted that there are some fake ones around,
but they weren't prepared to do anything about it.
But the way the other priests know if another priest is real is certain secret hand signals, in their prayers and so on, that they become privy to when they're ordained. And of course, they're never divulged to anyone else.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Okay. My thing though, with this book from the last century, is
that there used to be more of an awareness of how much power the
Catholic church has actually got.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
The one that identified 'em as a vast conspiracy is the same one
that um, for which the Morse Code is named for: Samuel...
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah! Yeah. And he wrote a book that I got, on conspiracies.
[Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States
by Samuel Finley Breese Morse. Originally published in 1835.
Reprint edition 1977 by Arno Press Inc. May be available from A-
albionic: contact James Daugherty, jhdaugh@a-albionic.com]
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I think his full name is Samuel F. B. Morse or something.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
I've got his book. And I forget the name of it.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. But it tells about world conspiracies. And it says one of
the greatest ones is the, the Vatican chain. In other words,
that they are all like, in an army, obligated to their "super
General" in the Vatican.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, it rings a bell. Because I remember I have that book, and I
had been readin'...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Notice how little information there is about the former head of
the Vatican Bank...
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Marcinkus.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
...Yeah... Paul Marcinkus, and the banks that he's connected with
here, that we've been investigating.
The woman that has been the press agent for Marcinkus' Chicago- area bank, that is, the First National Bank of Cicero? That woman, Judy Barr-Topinka, is now the elected State Treasurer of Illinois!
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, I saw the show where you had her on. And you had...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Did you notice the way I confronted her?
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah!! And the thing is, I remember how she came up with, she
immediately began defending the Bank of Cicero...
[...to be continued...]
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