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Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 8 Num. 01
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
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Sherman Skolnick discusses
"The Einsteins of Conspiracy Theory"
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(Interview from July 18, 1995)
(Preliminary note: Mr. Skolnick's phone, due to bureaucratic
bungling, had recently been disconnected. When we spoke on the
evening of July 18th, his phone service had just been restored.)
CONSPIRACY NATION: Let me run this by you: this is my theory.
You've got this Einstein connection that, where you had been
taught by this protege of Einstein, at Spaulding High School.
And Einstein was a brilliant theorist...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK: Yeah. But he was hounded all his life, until
his death in 1956, by the FBI who thought he was some kind of
spy. It didn't come out, until years later, that they thought he
was subversive. He was... He invented things that... The
atomic bomb was used to, supposedly, terminate the war and save a
lot of American lives. Not everybody agrees 50 years later, but
the people at the time agreed. And he did a lot for this
country.
CONSPIRACY NATION: Yeah. But see, what I'm sayin' is, the way
that Einstein -- because he had to theorize, because there was
just so much in the area of physics that was not accessible, that
he couldn't access...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK: I'm glad you brought up his name. Because
(not everybody's gonna agree with the next thing I say)... But
Michael Riconosciuto -- because I spent 4-and-a-half months
interviewing him in the federal jail in Chicago in the fall of
'92 -- I call him "Albert Einstein in jail". He is absolutely
brilliant. In finance, in computers: he's a wiz! A wizard.
CONSPIRACY NATION: Okay, but Ted Koppel, for example, he's
knocking "conspiracy theorists", this is my analogy: that you've
got, again you've got information that is unknown. Like with
Einstein, there was information unknown, so he had to theorize.
All right? And with these, what they call "conspiracy
theorists", they've got information that's unknown; the
government is not letting them access the information; so they've
got to be theorists! That's the only way... It's the same
thing, just like Einstein.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK: Yeah, we could be documentors if the
government will release the stuff! I mean, the government knows.
Doesn't... Isn't there an agency, a unit in the government, that
really knows, the bottom line, who killed John F. Kennedy, which
way the bullets really went in Dealey Plaza; who exactly was the
second gunman with Bobby Kennedy; and how exactly did this guy,
Raoul, frame James Earl Ray.
Somebody in the government would know. But what they do is,
they protect. So that, when the rest of us come along with
theories, they says, "You lie! You're a 'conspiracy crackpot'."
CONSPIRACY NATION: Yeah! And if they would release the
information, then we wouldn't need to theorize!
SHERMAN SKOLNICK: Yes. We're not allowed to see the real stuff.
CONSPIRACY NATION: Yeah. And I was just thinking in terms of,
you had been taught by Einstein's protege at Spaulding High
School, and I just kind of thought that there's an "Einstein
connection".
SHERMAN SKOLNICK: Yeah, but now that you've mentioned: what
happened is, his politics were "wrong". He taught for a
"crippled" childrens' high school, he taught for the jail. He
was a brilliant math teacher, but he had the "wrong" politics.
CONSPIRACY NATION: It's just an idea that occurred to me: that
you could be viewed as, like "The Einstein of Conspiracy
Theorists".
SHERMAN SKOLNICK: Yeah but the ultimate thing is, you want me to
create the "atomic bomb of conspiracies"?! [laughs]
There is an "atomic bomb of conspiracies": the mother of
all conspiracies, the one that's gonna "blow up" the White House!
[laughs]
Well.... I tell ya somethin': an early "Einstein of
conspiracies" was the late Danny Casolaro with his theory about
"The Octopus". Someday they're gonna prove it, just like
Einstein's theory of relativity, there's gonna be Casolaro's
theory of the mother of all conspiracies. He's gonna have a
formula how to work it, too!
The man was put in his grave by a vast conspiracy, made to
look like a suicide. And apparently [Vince] Foster, too!
And so now, Ted Koppel, who's apparently getting a CIA
subsidy instead of CBS, he wants to put us all down: we're all
"conspiracy peddlers". The thing is, us "conspiracy peddlers" I
don't think are getting well-off with it. Whereas these other
guys are trying to sell newspapers and TV ads putting the
conspiracy theorists down. And we could be conspiracy
documentors if the government will just let loose of the real
stuff! And turn off all the shredding machines.
CONSPIRACY NATION: Speaking of the "Einsteins of conspiracy
theory", you mentioned once Mae Brussell. Had you known her
before?
SHERMAN SKOLNICK: Oh I knew her for a good 15 years. She was a
brilliant woman. And her great dream as she was dying (I was
among the last to interview her, while she was still coherent;
she was dying of uterus cancer.) And her dream was to use some
money that she inherited to set up a library for assassination
researchers. But her family (she's part of the Magnin department
store fortune), they wanted the money. And they weren't
interested in setting up any libraries in her honor. So all of
her records that she gathered, from the time of the death of
President Kennedy until she died in October of '88, are
languishing, I believe, in a garage someplace in Vancouver,
Canada.
CONSPIRACY NATION: Yeah. That's sad.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK: Well... It's, you know what it is? It's not
as popular as the latest "gangsta rap" or whatever they call it.
Digging out the truth to the world is not always popular. It
became popular just briefly when the JFK movie came out. And
then some of these counter-conspiracies, that is, the put-down of
those that dig into things -- Chip Berlet and others -- came
along to harass and hound the rest of us as, what [Ted] Koppel I
understand is gonna call "a cottage industry". In other words,
we're busy in the secret basements of the world, investigating
plots.
The idea that there are no plots is itself a plot.
CONSPIRACY NATION: Yeah. That's what I was gonna say, that it
sounds like Koppel is getting paranoid.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK: Well anyone that makes $2.5 million a year and
drives in a limousine is not gonna believe that there are any
plots -- except those that are plotted by the ones that he works
for.
The idea that a clever person can force a massive group of
liars to tell the truth is a wrong view of the world. You cannot
force big-time liars like the New York Times, the Washington
Post, and Time magazine and others to tell the truth. The top
brass of those magazines go to these secret society meetings and
don't report what went on there. And so why should anybody say,
"Well, we're clever. We're gonna force them to tell the truth."
You cannot force a massive liar to tell the truth. It is *not*