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THE FRANKLIN COVER-UP -- CHILD ABUSE, SATANISM, AND MURDER IN NEBRASKA |
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CHAPTER 18: THE FRANKLIN INVESTIGATION, AND COVER-UP, CONTINUE When the first printing of what you have just read appeared in May 1992, I was threatened with countless lawsuits by individuals named in the book. I was told by their attorneys, from some of the most prominent law firms in the state and in the country, that "We will destroy you in court." As it turned out, although there have been numerous attempts to disbar me, only one lawsuit for libel and slander was ever launched as a direct result of the book -- and that was a suit I launched and won, as I will relate. My victory in that case was but one of a series of what I call the "mini-miracles" -- perhaps a hundred or more unforeseen events since the book first hit the streets, which prove the truth of The Franklin Cover-Up. I have chosen a small sampling of these "mini-miracles" to recount here. *** After this book appeared, attorneys for Franklin-related individuals repeatedly appeared in the printed media (particularly in the Omaha World Herald) and on TV to make statements such as: "This book is the most libelous and slanderous book I have ever read. The individuals who have been slandered in this book will definitely be filing legal actions to stop distribution of this book and against Mr. John DeCamp personally. That is certain. This book will be stopped and Mr. DeCamp will be proved to be a liar and made to pay damages." When reporters who interviewed the lawyers or principals named in the book contacted me for my response to their threats, I had one standard answer: "I agree with certain things these people and their attorneys attacking me are saying. I agree that the things described in this book are horrible. If anyone had said these things about me, I agree that I would sue them. I believe if there is anything false in this book or if they believe I have not told the truth in this book, that they should sue me. In fact, I welcome their lawsuits, because that will help develop the truth. I personally believe I have been most careful and cautious in the way I have handled matters, and only written about those things I can absolutely document." So, what happened with those threats? Who sued whom? Who proved what? The only major lawsuit for libel and slander arising from this book was my suit against Atlantic Telecast, owner of a television station in Wilmington, North Carolina, WECT (Channel 6). I charged that statements made on a WECT news broadcast on November 12, 1992, attacking me and the book, were false. I demanded a retraction and public apology. The first response I received was from WECT's station manager, who informed me that WECT had consulted its attorneys, that the station had thoroughly investigated the matters described in my book, and that WECT was not only not going to apologize, but planned to repeat the attacks. WECT's attorney further advised me that the station had investigated, in part, by talking to U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey from Nebraska, who was running for president of the United States at the time, and who had visited Wilmington, and met with representatives of the TV station. Further investigation, he claimed, was conducted by talking to the new Wilmington police chief, a man named Robert Wadman -- the former police chief of Omaha, Nebraska, who had come to Wilmington in the early 1990s! After hearing this, I gave a simple demand to WECT: "Rest assured I am ready to prove everything I wrote in my book. I hope you are ready and able to prove your claims made on TV. I give you three weeks for further investigation, and then I will move forward aggressively on my lawsuit against you. At that time, I will seek not only an apology, but substantial monetary damages." Just under three weeks from the date of my ultimatum, attorneys from Atlantic Telecast contacted me and stated that they had done further investigation and acknowledged that now they, not I, were in trouble. Shortly thereafter, a settlement agreement was reached which stipulated: (1) WECT TV would broadcast a retraction and public apology to me on its news broadcasts, and would issue a press release to the same effect; (2) WECT would pay me money damages and other financial benefits; (3) All other details of the settlement, other than those stated above, would be kept confidential for the benefit of the TV station. I accepted the settlement offer, and dismissed my lawsuit. WECT lived up to its part of the settlement, and I have lived up to mine. My lawsuit intersected a fierce political battle between Chief Wadman, upon whom WECT had relied for its information, and his own police department, particularly with an officer named Sgt. Robert Clatty. Sgt. Clatty is the Wilmington police Department's expert on satanic ritual abuse of children, and is one of North Carolina's recognized experts as well, with published works on the subject. Chief Wadman, on the other hand, claimed that there was no such thing as satanic ritual abuse; he attempted to make it impossible for Sgt. Clatty to carry out his work, and, at one point, suspended him. The publicly waged war between Chief Wadman and his wide array of defenders in Wilmington and across North Carolina, and Wadman's adversaries, led primarily by Officer Clatty, went as high as the State Legislature. From 1992 until roughly mid-1994, it divided the city of Wilmington, and even the state of North Carolina. The outcome of the war between Chief Wadman and his own force was that in early July 1994, a secret meeting was held with city officials and Wadman's attorney. On July 11, 1994, Wadman resigned as police chief. Although city officials refused to comment on what had transpired in the meeting, Wadman himself admitted in a television interview later that month, that he had been ordered to resign from the Wilmington police Department. *** In May 1992, shortly after the first edition of this book was published, Monsignor Robert Hupp, who had been the head of Boys Town from the late 1970s through the decade of the 1980s -- the critical time in question for the Franklin case, contacted me and asked to have a meeting, at which he specified that witnesses must be present. I anticipated that his purpose was to attack me, and to deny what I had written about Boys Town. I was completely wrong. With two witnesses present, Monsignor Hupp opened our discussion with the simple statement: "John DeCamp, your book stated the game; I hope I can help with some of the names." Monsignor Hupp and I then entered into an in-depth discussion on the entire situation involving Boys Town, Larry King, Peter Citron, the pedophile problem in general, and the entire story of the Franklin cover-up. He verified piece after piece of evidence of the Franklin story for me, and provided guidance on other directions in which to look, to develop further proof of the children's stories of abuse by this country's wealthy and powerful. When I asked Monsignor Hupp how this ever could have happened at Boys Town, he looked at me and told me, so apologetically, "I am like the wife who did not know, and was the last to find out. And when I finally did suspect something and tried to act, the Archbishop [Daniel Sheehan] elected to do nothing about it, when I asked him to help. And then, when I came upon something horribly evil, I found public officials and the Church would do nothing -- apparently terrified at the damage it would do to the Church and to the entire city of Omaha," Monsignor Hupp said. "What are you talking about?" I asked him. "Is there some particular story or incident you are talking about in the book that you have more information about? Please explain what you mean," I asked the Monsignor. He then described an incident in 1985, in which a young boy named Shattuck, who lived in Elkhorn, Nebraska, had been sexually abused and then killed. The Monsignor told me that he was certain who had killed the boy, a man he identified as a member of the Catholic clergy in the Omaha Archdiocese. Monsignor Hupp provided precise detail which he said proved beyond any doubt, that the particular individual he named was, in fact, the child's murderer. "The Church is plagued by these sexual abuse problems across the country and by the devastating publicity the clergy abuse incidents have caused," Monsignor Hupp explained. "The Church's reaction to these sexual abuse problems is, in most cases, to immediately get the clergy member involved out of the state and, if possible, out of the country, and hopefully into treatment. I know that may not be right, but it is a difficult situation to deal with, and simply moving the priest or the brother out of the state or country has been the traditional approach by the Church in America to addressing the problems. In this case, where an innocent child was murdered and where I know that a member of our clergy has done this, I felt I had a moral obligation overriding all other things, to bring the situation to the attention of the appropriate authorities. And I did," Hupp concluded. The Monsignor then shocked me for the second time that day -- and in a way that brought back to me the horrible memories of the Franklin cover-up. He explained that after he determined that the Catholic Archbishop of Omaha was not going to take action on the case, he then went to the FBI and to the Omaha law enforcement authorities to provide complete details on the child's murder. So, what happened as a result of Monsignor Hupp's actions? Apparently, nothing. Each year on the anniversary of the child's murder -- now almost ten years -- the media talks about the case as still being "under investigation," and street rumors persist about the Catholic clergyman -- the one Monsignor Hupp believes killed the child -- who was shipped out of state for alcohol treatment right after the murder. In the aftermath of our meeting, Monsignor Hupp ran into his own problems. In September 1992, the Monsignor advised me that he was receiving all kinds of pressure and criticism and was, he feared, being forced to leave Boys Town. Shortly after that discussion, in a controversy that received national press attention on how resources should be used at Boys Town, Monsignor Hupp was removed from his post. He now lives quietly in a home in West Omaha, Nebraska. Monsignor Hupp has shown incredible courage, as he has continued to provide me direction and assistance in the Franklin investigation and related matters. Monsignor Hupp is not some 13-year-old kid whom the cops say they cannot trust or believe. On the contrary, he is one of America's most famous and nationally honored clergymen; the author of two best sellers; a former Presidential Appointee as Special Ambassador to the United Nations; and the former head of America's most famous child care institution (Boys Town). Monsignor Hupp showed his courage yet again, when he repeated his charges a year later to a British TV team making a documentary on the Franklin cover-up, entitled Conspiracy of Silence. *** In mid-1993, after The Franklin Cover Up had been circulating for almost a year, the British-based TV station, Yorkshire Television, sent a top-notch team to Nebraska to launch its own investigation of the Franklin case. Yorkshire had a contract with the Discovery Channel to produce a documentary on the case for American television. They spent many months in Nebraska, and also traveled this country from one end to the other, interviewing, filming, and documenting piece-by-piece the Franklin story as I had told it in the book. They spent somewhere between a quarter-million and one-half million dollars investigating the story, deploying probably a thousand times the resources and abilities that I personally had. Over the year that I worked with them, I was amazed at the team's ability to gather new documents and witnesses which kept opening up new and frightening facts about Franklin. They were a crack team. In the final weeks that they were in Nebraska, they expressed their certainty that they would win awards for this documented horror story of government-sanctioned drug-running involving children; government-sanctioned abuse of children; and government protection of some of this country's most powerful businessmen and politicians, who had been the chief actors in the Franklin story. Finally, the big day came. Their documentary was to air nationwide on the Discovery Channel on May 3, 1994. It was advertised in the TV Guide and in newspapers for that day. But no one ever saw that program. At the last minute, and without explanation, it was pulled from the air. It was not shown then, and has never been broadcast anywhere since. I have a copy of that program, which arrived anonymously in my mail in late 1995. When I watched this pirated copy, I could see clearly why the program had been suppressed. Conspiracy of Silence proved, beyond doubt, that the essential points I had stressed in the book (and more) were all true. For instance, the team had interviewed Troy Boner. Sometime after that grand jury was over, Troy, guilt-stricken because of his lying over Gary Caradori's death, contacted me and told the truth about what had happened. This is recorded in a remarkable affidavit (see Chapter 20). The Yorkshire TV team spent a small fortune to confirm Troy's charges. They flew Troy to Chicago and paid for a lengthy polygraph (lie detector) test at the Keeler Polygraph Institute. With the results of that test, the Yorkshire team was so convinced that Troy was telling the truth, that they featured him in their documentary. It was only in mid-1996, that I finally pieced together, through sources I am not at liberty to disclose, what happened to stop the broadcast of this documentary. 1. At the time the Yorkshire TV team and the Discovery Channel were doing the documentary, they had no idea how high up the case would go into Government, and what major institutions and personalities in this country, would be found to be linked to the Franklin story. Ultimately, the documentary focused on several limited aspects documented in this book, and developed them much more extensively than I ever had the resources or abilities to accomplish. 2. These areas which the documentary focused on, were: (a) the use and involvement of Boys Town children and personalities in the Franklin Scandal, particularly Peter Citron and Larry King's relationships to Boys Town; (b) the linkage of Franklin to some of this country's top politicians in Washington, and in the U.S. Congress, with particular attention on those who attended parties held by Larry King at his Washington mansion on Embassy Row; (c) the impropriety of these politicians and businessmen and compromising of these people by Larry King, through drugs and using children for pedophilia. 3. When the broadcast tape was sent to the United States, Customs officials seized the documentary and held it up as being "pornographic material." Attorneys for Discovery Channel and Yorkshire TV were able to get the documentary released. Then, the lawyers went through the film for months, making this or that change or deletion, so that the documentary ultimately advertised to be shown on the Discovery Channel on May 3, 1994, would survive any claims of libel or slander that any of the individuals identified in the documentary might attempt to bring. The lawyers had cleared the documentary for broadcast. 4. During the several months that the documentary was being prepared and advertised for showing, major legislation impacting the entire future of the Cable TV industry was being debated on Capitol Hill. Legislation, which the industry opposed, was under debate for placing controls on the industry and the contents of what could be shown. Messages were delivered in no uncertain terms from key politicians involved in the Cable TV battle, that if the Conspiracy of Silence were shown on the Discovery Channel as planned, then the industry would probably lose the debate. An agreement was reached: Conspiracy of Silence was pulled, and with no rights for sale or broadcast by any other program; Yorkshire TV would be reimbursed for the costs of production; the Discovery Channel itself would never be linked to the documentary; and copies of Conspiracy in Silence would be destroyed. Not all copies were destroyed, however, as I and some others received anonymously in the mail a copy of the nearly-finished product. *** I said in Chapter 12, "The Omaha Business Community": "As essential to Franklin as [Harold] Andersen's fundraising and publicity were, the credit union could not have functioned for a single day without the complicity of Nebraska's largest bank, FirsTier ... Every dollar that went into Franklin Credit Union -- the missing $40 million was no exception -- went into its account #153-7-353 at FirsTier." In October 1994, evidence released through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) proved exactly how right I was. These FOIA documents showed that some of the same attorneys who had threatened so loudly to sue me, together with the FirsTier Bank with which they were associated, had reached a financial settlement with the National Credit Union Association (NCUA), in which they agreed to pay the NCUA $10 million in damages for their role in improprieties involving Franklin. The attorneys had to come up with over $6 million, and First Tier itself, over $3 million. Despite the fact that the FirsTier case was the biggest malpractice settlement in the history of Nebraska, and despite the fact that the settlement involved very prominent individuals -- including former Republican Governor Charlie Thone and attorney Jay Derr -- the story received almost no coverage in the press, that is, before the FOIA material became public. Then, the World Herald jumped in with a huge editorial in October 1994, entitled "Franklin Credit Union Crimes Unfairly Claim New Victims." The World Herald wrote: "Some defendants, including banks and a law firm, have agreed to pay more than $10 million to the NCUA to settle the claims. They admitted no wrongdoing. They said they acted to avoid prolonged litigation. Their position is understandable. Litigation is expensive. Moreover, this particular litigation ran the risk of creating a false impression. ...The impression could have taken hold that a wide circle of legal and financial advisers sat on the knowledge that King was looting the credit union. ...Such an impression would have been false." There was, indeed, "a wide circle of legal and financial advisers" in on the looting of Franklin, just as I had charged, and whom I name in Chapter 12, "The Omaha Business Community." Finally, some of them, at least, had to pay for it. Nor was this the only multi-million dollar scam to be exposed in the wake of the first edition of this book. *** In Chapter 6, I described another big money scheme that intersected the Franklin case -- the looting of the Commonwealth Savings Bank, in which I filed a claim on behalf of the Commonwealth victims. To my surprise and joy, I succeeded beyond all my expectations in this case -- until a strained interpretation of our state Constitution was put forward by Nebraska's Supreme Court. First, I presented to the Claims Board the Commonwealth story exactly as described in this book, but with even more extensive documentation. The Claims Board agreed and reached a Settlement for some $16,000,000.00 to be paid to the Commonwealth victims. But, the Legislature had to approve this, as did the Governor. So, we took the matter of the settlement -- with me as attorney for the Claimants and victims -- to the State Legislature. Surprise -- in a close but bitter battle, enough Senators stood up to acknowledge the horrible acts that had occurred, and the intense suffering of the Commonwealth victims that resulted. The settlement was approved. Next, we went to the Governor, who signed the legislation for the settlement. Then, the matter was taken to court by certain unnamed individuals (concerned citizens), who claimed that they did not want their tax money used to pay these Commonwealth victims. Nebraska has a unique section in its State Constitution which forbids the state from using any tax dollars for purposes of extending the credit of the state or granting a gift. The result: that which the Claims Board, and the Legislature and the Governor all agreed the Commonwealth Savings Bank victims were entitled to because of the failures of the Government in Commonwealth, was taken away by the Supreme Court of the State of Nebraska. The Court claimed that Nebraska's Constitution forbids paying the money to the victims, because they were only victims of moral wrongdoing, rather than legal wrongdoing. And John DeCamp, who would have become a multi-millionaire out of the case because I had done it on a contingent fee basis, ended up with nothing but the certain knowledge that I had established the truth as I have written in this book with respect to Commonwealth Savings Bank and certain of the personalities who are today so prominent on the national scene -- Senator Bobby Kerrey, for example. *** Besides Yorkshire TV, the most notable among the electronic media which became interested in the Franklin story was the TV program, America's Most Wanted (AMW). In several episodes, AMW opened up a whole new dimension on just how high up politically the story went and how wide it reached across the country. For a while, I had great hopes. For example, AMW interviewed Paul Bonacci in prison and broadcast his account of a host of specific details about individuals, places, activities, kidnappings, etc., in which he said he had participated. To the shock of AMW (and sometimes, of myself), the incidents Paul Bonacci described, when investigated by AMW, turned out to be exactly as Paul had recounted. For instance, a young boy named "Jimmy" who had been branded by pedophile perpetrators -- like you would brand a steer with a hot iron -- cautiously came forward to a nationally broadcast request by AMW, and verified many of the events Paul had described, including a secret hiding place for concealing children located in Colorado, precisely as Paul had said. Investigation by AMW in preparing subsequent episodes of the program, began turning over more and more rocks, providing still more proof of the story told by Alisha Owen and by the other victim-witnesses. AMW even featured a one-hour special on one of the most important kidnappings on which Bonacci had given details, that of Johnny Gosch, the Des Moines, Iowa, newspaper boy who had disappeared a dozen years ago. Gosch's parents, John and Noreen, had repeatedly met with Bonacci and become convinced of the truth of Paul's description of the kidnapping and of Paul's own participation in it. At a press conference reported in the World Herald April 7, 1992, John and Noreen Gosch had declared: "Paul (Bonacci) told my wife and I things that we've never told anybody." The investigation was moving rapidly in the Franklin case, as proof poured in by the bucketful. Then, I received a call from AMW producer for the show, Paul Sparrow. "We are going to slow it down a bit on the Franklin story," Sparrow told me, "until you can get a break in the courts or get some responsible law enforcement to follow up some of the leads we have provided them. I don't know how to exactly say this, but I am beginning to understand what you are up against when it comes to certain law enforcement not wanting to pursue this story," Sparrow continued. "What, exactly, do you mean?" I asked him. "Well," Sparrow continued, "you must be aware of the fact that America's Most Wanted works extremely close with the FBI. In fact, without them we would not really be able to have a program. We really have never had any major disagreements in all our programming because we can't afford to. Our success requires their cooperation and we are a tremendous benefit to them, which they could get nowhere else. But we are running into some severe problems on this Franklin thing. It is the first time that the FBI is refusing to cooperate. And, they are making it very clear that they want us off of this story particularly anything to do with the FBI." Paul Sparrow told me much more, but I promised confidentiality on those matters and will live up to that promise. As I told Paul several weeks later, "You have done a tremendous service for this country in the work you did on the Franklin case, on its nationwide links and on its drug dealing and political implications, and particularly, by proving so many of the things in question, including even arranging to have Paul Bonacci polygraphed by some of the nation's best experts to prove his truthfulness. I full well understand your sensitive situation and your relationship with the FBI and the problems this entire case causes for you, because the essence of Paul Bonacci and the children's claims is that the FBI, for whatever reasons, is refusing to do anything about this case and is itself part of the cover-up." I told Paul Sparrow that I accepted his definition of his duty: to provide an entertainment program to the American public; that requires the complete cooperation of the FBI, rather than an adversarial relationship. I have continued to maintain contact with Paul Sparrow and America's Most Wanted, and maintain the highest admiration for Paul and his work. But he has done his job. Now, it is up to myself and other Americans, and particularly law enforcement, who had the opportunity to see the America's Most Wanted programs, to do something about it. AMW had turned up boatloads of new evidence on the Franklin case, and on the kidnapping of Johnny Gosch. The FBI, in response to this new evidence, officially stated that Alisha Owen was a convicted liar, and that Paul Bonacci was a convicted child molester. Their response to the October 1993 requests of Troy Boner and his mother to join the Federal Witness Protection Program, so they could safely provide further evidence on Troy's affidavit statement, was to not only deny the request but to threaten Troy with prosecution on charges of perjury, if he attempted to change the fabricated story that had helped convict Alisha Owen. *** Still another revelation confirming the Franklin story surfaced with the apparent forced retirement of FBI head William Sessions in 1994. In Chapter 14, "Cover-up Phase III: The FBI," I discussed the case of the African-American FBI agent Donald Rochon in Omaha. Rochon had alleged, in his lawsuit against the FBI, that, in addition to harassing him, FBI agents in the Omaha office were involved in all sorts of sexual perversions, and these same agents were also "investigating" homosexual prostitution rings involving Boys Town. As I had reported, it was only a matter of time until Rochon discovered -- if he had not done so already -- that his FBI tormentors were deeply involved in the Franklin affair itself. The FBI agreed to settle Rochon's suit by paying him $1 million, and to reimburse his legal expenses of $500,000. Later, in 1994, when the press was hounding Sessions as to what, if anything, he had done during his term as FBI Director, Judge Sessions defended himself by recalling his "successful" handling of the lawsuit of the former FBI agent Donald Rochon, which, he said, he had been able to settle, without it damaging the FBI. Sessions said that the horrible allegations Rochon had made in his lawsuit were in fact true, and that a public trial would have damaged the Bureau. He, Sessions, had prevented this disaster by settling out of court. *** In Chapter 14, "Cover-up Phase III: The FBI," I reported how, in October 1989, John Stevens Berry, counsel for the State Senate Franklin Committee grilled Omaha Police Chief Robert Wadman as to why the Omaha Police Department was dismissing the reports by child victim-witnesses of horrific abuse, and of other crimes. Wadman replied: "The FBI ... conducts an investigation and basically says the same things that we have said. If the FBI, are they now linked to this cover-up in some way? Should the Justice Department be investigated as somehow or another assisting in this 'cover-up'?" I noted, apropos of this exchange, that, "Wadman said it, but in this case it's true. The Justice Department, acting through the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Omaha, emerges from the record of the Franklin investigations not so much as a party to the cover-up, but as its coordinator." Now, four years later, I am even more certain of these charges. Not only has information continued to pour in on the Franklin case which strengthens me in that conviction, and not only has the Justice Department turned its back on a high-level request to re-examine the whole Franklin case (see Chapter 25), but, in case after notorious case entirely unrelated to Franklin, Justice Department personnel appear as liars, perverts, frame-up artists, and even assassins. An increasing number of citizens view the United States government with suspicion, even hatred. Though there are no doubt other branches of the government where corruption flourishes, there is no question in my mind that the stench of evil which emanates from Washington, originates in the so-called Department of Justice, particularly in its permanent bureaucracy. I have documented that case with respect to the Franklin cover-up, and the average citizen may have become aware of it in the massacre at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in August 1992, where it is now generally acknowledged that the Justice Department, through its FBI marksmen, murdered the 14-year-old son and wife of Randy Weaver. The same thing happened in Waco, Texas in 1993, when the Justice Department directed the slaughter of 86 people, based on false reports from "informants" out of Melbourne, Australia, associated with the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. I will note here, several other cases in which that same hideous corruption is apparent, and then describe at length, in Chapter 24 how the U.S. Justice Department on June 3, 1983, killed in cold blood midwestern farm activist Gordon Kahl, whose son is now my client. THE LAROUCHE CASE I think by now, although the major news media alternately blacks him out, or slanders him, most people in the country know something about the economist and several-time Democratic Party presidential candidate, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. After all, he did get a very respectable 600,000 votes in the Democratic presidential primaries in 1996, averaging 10% or more of the vote in each state in which he ran. And, while people may have heard that he is a "convicted felon," they probably have no idea of what actually happened. On December 16, 1988, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. and six co-defendants were convicted on one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, eleven counts of mail fraud, in the alleged amount of $294,000 in unrepaid loans; LaRouche was convicted on one additional charge, of attempting to defraud the Internal Revenue Service. LaRouche was then 66 years old; it was obvious that the very harsh sentence of 15 years he was given, meant that the Justice Department intended for him to die in jail. In 1991, I first had a chance to examine a small portion of the six volumes of evidence his attorneys filed with the court, proving his innocence. I must say, notwithstanding all that I had already been through on the Franklin case, I was shocked -- no, "stunned" is a better word -- by what I read. I remember saying to colleagues at the time, "Oh, my God, if they can do this to LaRouche, who is a well-known, if controversial, political figure, in this blatant way, there is no one in the country that they won't simply frame up." The U.S. Justice Department had not a shadow of "evidence" to convict LaRouche, nor any of his associates, one of whom, Michael Billington, was sent to jail in Virginia for 77 years! In fact, the evidence showed -- in the government's own documents released under the Freedom of Information Act -- as LaRouche's attorneys contended, that "The U.S. government knew at all relevant times, from 1979 to the present day, that Lyndon LaRouche and his co-defendants were innocent of the false charges for which they were convicted." The only crimes committed in the "LaRouche case" were the massive illegalities of the U.S. Department of Justice in their zeal to remove LaRouche from the political life of this country. It later turned out, as LaRouche's associates found out from FOIA appeals, that LaRouche's latest troubles started when his longtime political enemy, Henry Kissinger, wrote a letter in 1982 to then-FBI director William Webster, asking Webster to go after LaRouche. But, already back in 1973, as other FOIA documents from the FBI's own files showed, the FBI had authorized the Communist Party of the United States (which it basically ran, through its "informants") to "eliminate" LaRouche -- that is, to kill him outright. I was not the only one to get a whiff of a big-time frame-up. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, with whom I had had some contact during the Franklin case, and who was LaRouche's appeals lawyer, wrote a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno, in which he said, "I believe it [the LaRouche case] involves a broader range of deliberate and systematic misconduct and abuse of power over a longer period of time in an effort to destroy a political movement and leader, than any other federal prosecution in my time or to my knowledge." And, as of August 1996, 721 U.S. state legislators (and thousands more federal parliamentarians and other dignitaries around the world) had signed an open letter calling for the exoneration of LaRouche which denounced, in no uncertain terms, his frame-up. LaRouche is out of jail, and going strong, but he has still not been exonerated from the stain of a phony conviction, nor compensated for the five years stolen from his life, nor for the untold damage done to his political movement. DEMJANJUK CASE A case which almost rivals that of LaRouche, in terms of the length to which the Justice Department will go to crush one individual, is that of former Cleveland autoworker John Demjanjuk. In 1979, the Justice Department accused Demjanjuk of being the notorious "Ivan the Terrible," the Nazi mass-murderer who killed countless Jews at the Treblinka concentration camp in Poland. Demjanjuk's lawyers later proved -- again, from the Justice Department's own documents -- that the department knew, almost from the very beginning, that Ivan the Terrible had already been proven to be someone other than Demjanjuk. Still other documents showed that the Justice Department knowingly accepted a forged I.D. card from the Soviet intelligence agency, the KGB, to frame Demjanjuk. Finally, with the full knowledge that he was innocent, the Department of Justice had Demjanjuk extradited to Israel to be executed. It was only due to the extraordinary courage and tenacity of his Israeli lawyer, Yoram Sheftel, that the Cleveland auto worker was finally acquitted. Then, on November 17, 1993, the U.S. Sixth Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, issued a stinging rebuke to the Department of Justice, in an 83-page decision overturning Demjanjuk's denaturalization. The Court charged that the Department had committed "prosecutorial misconduct" and "fraud upon the court," in obtaining the conviction. Notwithstanding all that, the Justice Department is still trying to have Demjanjuk extradited from the United States! THE FRUEHMENSCHEN CASE On January 27, 1988, then-Congressman Mervyn Dymally placed before the House of Representatives a shocking document. It was an affidavit sworn by an FBI agent, Hirsch Friedman, concerning an FBI policy named Operation Fruehmenschen (German for "primitive man"). According to Friedman's testimony, "The purpose of this policy was the routine investigation without probable cause of prominent, elected and appointed officials in major metropolitan areas throughout the United States. It was explained to me that the basis for this Fruehmenschen policy was the assumption by the FBI that black officials were intellectually and socially incapable of governing major governmental organizations and institutions." Other evidence backed up Friedman's charges, including a 1987 book by Dr. Mary Sawyer, Harassment of Black Elected Officials: Ten Years Later, a follow-up to a 1977 report she had issued on the same subject. The figures backed up Dymally and Sawyer's charges. Between 1983 and 1988, 14% of all political corruption cases targeted black officials, though they comprised only 3% of U.S. officeholders. From 1981-1983, roughly half of the 26 members of the Congressional Black Caucus were targets of federal investigation for indictments. In magnitude, this is as if 204 members of the (largely white) 435-member House of Representatives were under investigation at any one time! On this overall Justice Department corruption, I was very heartened to see a resolution from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators (NBCSL), which they had passed at their 19th Annual Legislative Conference, held in Birmingham, Alabama, from November 28 to December 2, 1995. The resolution referred to the two-day hearings which the Schiller Institute had sponsored in Virginia on August 31 and September 1, where a distinguished panel of legislators and international legal experts (including prominent members of the NBCSL) came together to examine Department of Justice corruption regarding the above cases and others. The NBCSL said, in its "Resolution 20: A Call For Congressional Hearings To Investigate Misconduct by the U.S. Department of Justice": "WHEREAS, the hearings focused on cases where there was evidence of political targeting of groups and individuals by corrupt officials inside federal governmental law enforcement agencies, working in tandem with a concert of private organizations ... "WHEREAS, the evidence was presented, not by the good word of the witnesses alone, but documented by the government's own documents, records, and memoranda, first suppressed and later obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and other legal actions, "BE IT RESOLVED ... That this body, the 19th Annual Legislative Conference of the National Black Caucus of state Legislators, join this independent and distinguished panel of individuals, in demanding that both Houses of the United States Congress exercise their oversight responsibility and conduct investigative hearings to examine these allegations of gross misconduct by the Department of Justice ... and urge our colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus to do the same." I can only say, "Amen."
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