("Quid coniuratio est?")
INTERVIEW WITH SHERMAN SKOLNICK -- JULY 4, 1995 I spoke by phone with Sherman Skolnick on the morning of July 4, 1995. The following is what he said. Note that I neither necessarily agree nor disagree with either all or parts of the following. Persons mentioned in the interview are invited to send their rebuttals, of reasonable length, to bigxc@prairienet.org for probable distribution.
-- Brian Francis Redman, Editor-in-Chief
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[...continued...]
CONSPIRACY NATION:
And that's, in other words, a bribe, do you think?
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well. An officer, out of uniform who describes himself, and comes
in with this suitcase and lays down the suitcase and starts
counting off $100 bills and says he wants to buy, that this is
the opening shot and he wants to buy a lot more preferred
stock, and if this company has been losing money for a year
(they've only been publishing for a year, but they're losing
money)... If somebody offers 100,000 or a million dollars -- hey.
I understand that the principles of Treetop Communications may
reject it. But you don't... Well.
Then they started after me. I'm being offered a syndicated TV show, commercial. My show, now, in Chicago, is a free show, public access. It actually costs us money. We don't make anything, and we never ask for anything. Public access doesn't pay. It's not commercial.
Then, I'm offered a nightly radio show, with 8 million listeners, which may, in some way, compete with Gordon Liddy. So that's a big deal. Some of my friends might lean on me if I [don't] reject it, because it might be an effort to buy me.
I let 'em know that I'm not for sale. I haven't been, in the 37 years I've been active, from 1958 to date. (I'm just telling you what's happening!)
Now, what is this all about? I started to tell Spotlight's people that a further segment that I'm abstracting from the secret report deals with the fact that [Vince] Foster did not release the documents to Pollard on his own. He did it upon the authority of Vice-President George Bush and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.
Those that may recall the Pollard case know that Caspar Weinberger so much as said that, if there was a law authorizing the rope and the gallow, that he wanted Pollard put to the gallows.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
All right, you say that Bush authorized these documents. You mean
documents as far as missile data? Is that it?
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah! Right.
Now the problem all the way around, as I told Israeli Radio, is that my story can be interpreted either for or against Israel, in that there's a question whether Israel set up three or more coded and secret accounts in Switzerland and elsewhere in the name of Foster, to buy him or blackmail him. Or, on the other hand, whether Weinberger and Bush are blackmailing Israel. Because Israel was the broker on the October Surprise -- Barcelona, Madrid, Paris: October, 1980. You know what I'm talkin' about?
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. I understand. Yeah.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
In other words, Israel wanted to fight Iraq by pumping up Iran.
And so Israel, reportedly, helped vice-presidential candidate
Bush, and Reagan campaign chief William Casey, and others, to
work what some call a treasonous deal to offer weapons to Iran if
they will delay the release of the hostages so as to screw Jimmy
Carter in the 1980 election. And the hostages, in fact, were
released a few minutes after Reagan raised his hand and became
inaugurated on January 19th, '81.
And Israel brokered the deal. Ari Ben-Menashe in his book, Profits of War, contends so; others contend so.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, I know.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
But Israel got involved in the October Surprise, okay? So there's
this relationship: Bush-Caspar Weinberger-Israel-Foster.
Foster was not an independent force. Nor was Pollard. Pollard was at the bottom of the thing.
Now there's all kinds of blackmail complications. There is a "Pollard Committee" that concerns me. They raise money, worldwide. And because of my contacts with some of them, I am concerned that they want Pollard to stay in jail while they raise money, possibly (I can't prove this, but possibly) to feather their own nest and keep Pollard in jail for the rest of his life.
'Cuz if the Pollard case was to be re-opened, as a result of this secret report and my story (which I'm writing in segments -- Spotlight got the first segment of it)... may tend to re-open the Pollard case and, insofar as the Pollard Committee is raising sums of money, they wouldn't need to raise sums of money anymore if Pollard gets released.
Do you see what I'm saying?
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. Yeah. But goin' back to...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Now wait a minute! That is a severe criticism of the Pollard
Committee, but that is my opinion, based on what I found out
the last couple of days.
Now, another reason that they don't want... You see, in my opinion, another reason that Spotlight did not want my story published is more than the possibility of a $1 million transfusion to them, to make up their deficit or whatever their problem may be, with them, or Radio Free America, their subsidiary. The problem is that they take a philosophical position, heavily anti-Israel. In fact, some people go one step further and say that the newspaper is anti-Jew. Well, I don't believe the last part. But I do recognize, they're heavily anti-Israel. And evidently, in reading my detailed story about a portion of the secret, government report, they evidently recognized that the report is fair and my abstracting of the report is fair. In other words, I will not slant the story to be anti-Israel, merely because the newspaper that told me to write the story is a plainly anti-Israel vehicle.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, I would say that they're anti-Israel also, just from
readin'...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
I don't think they're anti-Jewish. They are heavily anti-
Israel, though.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
I kind of agree with what you're sayin'.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
They do oppose the Holocaust Museum. I fault them on that. But
there is no free press in America. I would prefer that my stories
run in the liberal press, but you know what the problem is: too
many in the smaller, liberal press -- so-called "left wing" press
-- get their money from foundations that, I have documented, have
links to CIA. So I'm between a rock and a hard place.
But the problem here is, they evidently noticed that my story is fair on the Israeli question and I will not slant it to slam Israel! You see what I mean? And that may be an additional reason why they are stopping my story.
The other reason is, they did not want to know. I started to tell Spotlight's people that other segments of my story, based on the secret report (which is upwards of 50 pages), deals with Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defense, and Vice-President Bush, in the '80s, more or less supervising Foster and more or less letting Foster know that it was "O.K." to release these secret documents to Pollard. And Pollard, apparently, made them available to Israel.
But in other words, the whole chain of situations.
And apparently, Foster was the "Mr. X" mentioned in hearings on the Pollard case. However, other people believe that it was an American, Jewish businessman. I don't believe it. I believe that "Mr. X" or "Mr. Y" or "Mr. Z" -- mystery people in the Pollard case, not previously identified -- included Foster, Caspar Weinberger the Secretary of Defense, and George Bush the Vice- President.
So if anyone committed treason, it was Weinberger, who was born a Jew but converted to another religion, and George Bush, who was fighting around with Israel.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
All right, goin' back to... You mentioned that the Washington
Post, today, has got a front-page story. Have you seen that
story?
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
No. It was just read to me by Israeli Radio. (I guess that's
their national radio.) I was interviewed by a Mr. Aryeh Golan. It
was part of a story by a woman named, I believe, Susan Smith --
who was not the one that interviewed me. A Mr. Serge Kovalesky,
who apparently is of Russian extraction, interviewed me a couple
of weeks ago. And I told him, "Look. There's more to this." And
he said he'd call me back. And I never got such a call, whether
directly or on my answering machine.
And this woman who's got this as a series, high up in her story about different conspiracy theories on the death of Foster -- I never talked to her, that I know of.
And, the story is incomplete and unfair, and I don't think they want to know about the Caspar Weinberger, George Bush connection to Foster to Pollard. Because it would mean that the other ones, higher up, are moreso guilty of treason than Pollard was.
[...to be continued...]
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"