("Quid coniuratio est?")
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?"
[...to be continued...]
---------------------------<< 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.
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"