

              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 5  Num. 78
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")


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SAY IT AIN'T SO
===============

When I interviewed Sherman Skolnick on March 15, 1995 and he 
confirmed to me the following, I just sort of filed it away in 
the back of my mind for future reference:

  SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
  But what was the story about: of the four largest news 
  agencies in the world -- O.K.? -- all four had a record that 
  was an open record with the Bank of England for 30 days only: 
  the bribery list of BCCI. They had bribed various public 
  officials in various countries, *including*... They had 
  *bought* 25 percent of both Houses of Congress. They wanted 
  congressmen to allow them to proliferate their bank in 
  various branches throughout the United States. And they 
  needed various committees of Congress to "O.K." them. O.K.? 
  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.


As I say, when Mr. Skolnick confirmed this to me on March 15th of 
this year, I just sort of put it in the back of my mind and 
forgot about it.

Then, on July 14, 1995, Mr. James Norman, a senior editor at 
*Forbes* magazine appeared on Tom Valentine's *Radio Free 
America* (5.065 MHz, 9 pm cst, mon-fri) and said the following:

  JAMES NORMAN:
  This other matter is very troubling to me. It's another 
  bombshell. Foster's was not the only Swiss bank of a high- 
  level U.S. political figure that's been raided and deleted 
  this way in the past year and a half. The Fifth Column has 
  gone into and cleaned out probably a couple of hundred coded 
  Swiss bank accounts belonging to high-level U.S. political 
  figures -- the biggest names going -- in both parties. The 
  take, we've been told -- is over $2 billion, going on $3 
  billion.


I can't fully express how disturbing this information is to me. 
When Mr. Skolnick had first told me this, somehow it did not 
totally register. Having this charge confirmed by Mr. Norman hit 
me "right between the eyes". I felt as if, "What's the use of 
Conspiracy Nation, when these powerful figures are no longer 
'owned' by the American people?" But I then saw that, no matter 
what, public opinion counts -- even if the opinion polls, the 
mass media, and high-level officials are all "bought and paid 
for". If the people are still thinking for themselves then all 
the loudspeakers in the world can't drown them out.

The reference to "Say it ain't so," in the above title, relates 
to the Black Sox scandal of 1919, when baseball players on the 
Chicago Black Sox had been found to have accepted bribes in 
return for throwing some baseball games. The story is told that a 
young fan, upon hearing about this awful news, came up to one of 
the baseball players involved and asked, with tears in his eyes, 
"Say it ain't so." The man said nothing to the boy, but just 
turned away.

What are we hearing from Congress regarding these horrible 
charges? *The* *silence* *is* *deafening*. Congress people 
periodically get their hackles all raised, and get all puffed up 
about, any time that what they call "their honor" has been 
impugned. You can see them on C-Span, for example during the 
recent House Banking Committee hearings, getting all huffy about 
that "their honor" has been impugned.

So where are they now? "Their honor" has been impugned. So where 
are they? Why aren't they getting all puffed up about credible 
charges that they are traitors? *The* *silence* *is* *deafening*.

Now, recently, a Mr. Orlin Grabbe, formerly of the Wharton School 
of the University of Pennsylvania and author of a textbook 
entitled *International Financial Markets* as well as several 
learned papers, has again corroborated, in an ongoing essay 
("Allegations Regarding Vince Foster, the NSA, and Banking 
Transactions Spying") that high-level government figures have 
indeed been taking bribes:

  But life did not stay this simple.  For example, the BCCI- 
  Bush-Noriega-Mena connection to drug smuggling was matched by 
  a similar Israeli connection to arms and drug dealing and 
  money laundering. Anything went in the holy crusade to build 
  the bomb and the associated missile delivery systems.  Just 
  as the pension funds controlled by Robert Maxwell were looted 
  to pay for Mossad operations in Europe (Victor Ostrovsky, 
  *The Other Side of Deception*, HarperCollins, 1994, p. 203), 
  so were American S&Ls in effect looted (or burdened with 
  debt) by the financial machinations of the "Committee of 
  Thirty" to help generate the vast funds needed to maintain 
  and expand Israel's defense industry.  Some of these funds 
  found their way into offshore accounts held by U.S. 
  politicians and defense personnel as bribes, kickbacks, 
  "campaign" contributions, and payment for stolen secrets.


Where the hell has this country gone? Dr. Helen Caldicott asked 
that in her talk (available from Pacifica archives) on "The New 
World Order":

  But where the *hell* has this country gone? Of the people who 
  were killed who were civilians in Iraq, 60 percent were 
  children. With their legs blown off. And the men who flew the 
  planes came back and said, "It was a wonderful mission!" And 
  they didn't see the blood. And the whole country cheered and 
  flew flags and tied yellow ribbons on everything they could 
  find.


Where the hell has this country gone? We are worse than our 
parents; they would never have stood for this massive bribery of 
government officials. Sure, we used to knock them and their 
"keeping up with the Joneses", but we're worse. We were the 1960s 
idealists who looked down on our parents' materialism, but we're 
ten times worse than they ever were. Why is this story being 
ignored? What is the price of examining it? Will our corporate 
masters discipline us, give us reprimands, or even fire us from 
our jobs if we dare to demand that these charges *must* be 
answered? Oh and then how could we keep up on our payments and 
then the others, the "Joneses", would disassociate from us as not 
being quite "up to snuff" and then -- major horror and terror -- 
we would be ALONE.

What is the price of being open with this story? Will the 
smiling, unruffled corporate overseers quietly and sincerely and 
sympathetically sit us down and regret to tell us that we have 
been "downsized"? So is it best then to say nothing?

We are worse than our parents. We used to look down on them for 
their materialism, but we are ten times worse.

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