TIP 'Movie Night' | 'CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE' Banned Discovery Channel Doc + John DeCamp Interview

"Conspiracy of Silence" is a powerful, disturbing documentary revealing a nationwide child abuse and pedophilia ring that leads to the highest levels of government. Featuring intrepid investigator John DeCamp, a highly decorated Vietnam war veteran and 16-year Nebraska state senator, "Conspiracy of Silence" reveals how rogue elements at all levels of government have been involved in systematic child abuse and pedophilia to feed the base desires of key politicians.... 

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http://mysticalmusingsandpolitics.blogspot.com/2011/12/satanic-ritual-abuse.html

Based on DeCamp's riveting book, The Franklin Cover-up, "Conspiracy of Silence" begins with the shut-down of Nebraska's Franklin Community Federal Credit Union after a raid by federal agencies in November 1988 revealed that $40 million was missing. When the Nebraska legislature launched a probe into the affair, what initially looked like a financial swindle soon exploded into a startling tale of drugs, money laundering, and a nationwide child abuse ring. Nineteen months later, the legislative committee's chief investigator died suddenly and violently, like more than a dozen other people linked to the Franklin case. So why have you never heard of the Franklin cover-up? Originally scheduled to air in May (3rd) of 1994 on the Discovery Channel, "Conspiracy of Silence" was yanked at the last minute due to formidable pressure applied by top politicians. Some very powerful people did not want you to watch this documentary. You may find yourself becoming angry or upset while watching "Conspiracy of Silence." Many people do. However, consider that each of us has at times in our life acted out of selfish motives when it comes to sexuality and ended up hurting others in one way or another. Let us take this information not only as a call to stop this kind of abuse at the nationwide level, but also as a call to examine our own sexual relationships and make a commitment to deep honesty and integrity in our own lives around this most sensitive issue. Thanks for caring and may we all work together to build a brighter future for ourselves and for our world. A copy of this videotape was furnished anonymously to former Nebraska state senator and attorney John De Camp who made it available to retired FBI Agent Ted L. Gunderson. While the video quality is not top grade, this tape is a blockbuster in what is revealed by the participants involved.

NOTE: This film had to be reassembled from remaining VHS fragments after an all-out effort was made to block the film's release and destroy all extant copies. Every effort has been made to restore it to the original and complete 'meant to be broadcast' version.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Once one of America's top Republicans, Lawrence King is serving a fifteen-year prison sentence for a multimillion dollar fraud. But financial crime is only half the story. This is the true story of Lawrence King. It is the story of a cancer at the heart of America and of its continuing cover-up at the highest level. One man is attempting to uncover the full story. John DeCamp is among the most highly decorated Vietnam veterans. A former Republican state senator in Lincoln, Nebraska. He is now a lawyer fighting the legacy of Lawrence King's abuse of power.

SPEAKER_11 2:03

It's a web of intrigue that starts at our holy of holies, Boystown, Nebraska, one of the most respected institutions in the United States, and spreads out like a spider web to Washington, D.C., right up to the steps of the nation's capital, the steps of the White House, involves some of the most respected and powerful and richest businessmen in this United States of America, and the centerpiece of the entire web is the use of children for sex and drug dealing and drug couriers, the compromising of politicians, the compromising of businessmen, but worst of all, the corruption of key institutions of government that have the duty and responsibility to make sure these things never happen.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

For John DeCamp, the trial starts in a unique town just outside Omaha. World-famed Boy Town is in the news again. Made famous by an Oscar-winning film, Boystown is America's Favorite Children's Charity. It was founded in 1917 by a Catholic priest, Father Flanagan.

SPEAKER_37 3:13

Father Flanagan.

SPEAKER_34 3:31

And uh since then society has changed and the problems of boys have changed. And so now it's a question of taking care of uh homeless, uh abandoned, neglected, uh abused boys and now girls also.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Boys town has been granted the privileges of an incorporated town, a Catholic diocese, and a school district for 500 children. Voice town has cash reserves of $500 million, but still raises up to $35 million annually, solicited from the public by begging letters and promotional videos.

SPEAKER_12 4:17

Does Boystown really exist? People ask me. You bet it does. Located in the heartland of America, Boys Town youth have come from many backgrounds and localities. As they graduate, they shall seek new adventures and head for different places. But always, they shall carry with them the spirit of Boydown. If you'd like to help Boydown, send your tax-deductible gift to Father Val Peter, Boys Town, Nebraska, 68010.

SPEAKER_11 4:56

Boys Town, for me, was the first thing I ever heard of when you think of institutions that you respect.

SPEAKER_10 5:03

Believe it or not, I was there for a while when I was a young boy.

SPEAKER_11 5:08

When an institution like that gets contaminated, then you better, if you've got any decency at all, do something about it or at least get it cleared up.

SPEAKER_02 5:19

John DeKamp lays the blame for the contamination of Boys Town of the one-time leader of the National Black Republican Council, Larry King.

SPEAKER_36 5:27

Larry King was the fastest rising black star in the entire Republican Party of all of the 1980s.

SPEAKER_11 5:35

And he was also one of the most evil individuals in this country in terms of being a dealer of children, in terms of being a thief, 40 million that they documented he stole, and in terms of using and compromising and corrupting one after another politicians.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Larry King was its general manager.

SPEAKER_05 6:13

Thank you. This is especially an exciting day for me.

SPEAKER_04 6:17

Mr. King was a very charismatic person. When he came to the credit union, he was bothered because the credit union was actually failing. He did everything to build the credit union.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

King taught of the leaders of Omaha's wealthy business district.

SPEAKER_35 6:37

Banks, industry, and charities placed millions of dollars in King's hands.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

From 1979, Larry King developed close commercial ties to Boystown, and Boycetown youngsters were sent to work for his companies.

SPEAKER_04 6:54

Boys Town had quite a few accounts at Franklin Credit Union. Those were considered very valuable accounts. They were handled exclusively by the bookkeeping department. But on the average of once a month or once every two months, we always seemed to incorporate a person from Boystown.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

But King used Boystown not just as a source of young boys for his business. He prostituted them at sex and drug forgies. He was also sent by King to cure Boystown youngsters off campus.

SPEAKER_25 7:52

The kids were ten years old or older.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

In 1986, King's plundering of Boycown was reported by staff to its chief executive, Father Valpita. Subsequent testimony proves that he carried out his own investigation, but that King's victims refused to talk to him. Monsignor Hupp now blames himself for Boystown's association with Larry King.

SPEAKER_34 8:16

Well, in retrospect, I uh regret having any association with uh uh Larry King. Uh had I known it at the time, it would never have happened.

SPEAKER_38 8:29

Could you understand why a very detailed report from a social worker employed at Boys Town identifying children and identifying their alleged abusers never saw by light of day? Nothing happened with that.

SPEAKER_34 8:42

No, I can understand that because then I know that and then I wouldn't put up with that. But uh is that something like that happened? I don't know.

SPEAKER_17 8:53

Nebraska has a very clear statute that child abuse allegations should be reported to authorities. They shouldn't be reported to the principal of a school, director of a facility, they should be reported directly to either child protective services or law enforcement.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

And so Larry King remained free to feed his pedophilic parties with child victims. But in 1988, a routine review brought King's involvement with Boys Town Youth to the attention of Nebraska's State Foster Care Review Board.

SPEAKER_17 9:27

In the information presented to the foster care review board, either via the telephone reports, the personal reports, or the reports we reviewed, uh Larry King's name was consistently present as someone that the youth were making allegations against. I would say we handed over at least a foot-high amount of material to authorities, and nothing happened.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

Omaha police now accept that Larry King may have been abusing children. But its most senior officer claims the evidence was not conclusive.

SPEAKER_09 10:04

It is certainly possible that Mr. King was involved in illegal acts with children. If there was sufficient evidence of those types of allegations, he would have been prosecuted by the town attorney's office.

SPEAKER_17 10:15

For me, it was very clear that the case was not investigated and not pursued because of the alleged perpetrators.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

Those perpetrators named by the children were some of the richest and most influential citizens in positions of power in the state. Men prominent in industry, politics, the media, even the police. We can only name the ringleaders. Besides Larry King, they were department store millionaire Alan Baer. And the celebrity columnist of Omaha's only newspaper, the World Herald, Peter Sitrom. With the judicial system apparently paralyzed, Larry King spent Franklin's money on courting political influence. Ten million dollars went on jewelry, flowers, and private planes. He cultivated contacts in the inner circles of Ronald Reagan's White House. At his palatial homes, three in Omaha and one in Washington, D.C. He held extravagant parties for the influential and powerful. His lavish spending bought him a protected life.

SPEAKER_10 11:26

Larry King was constantly heralded, cheered, applauded in the news media as the great businessman that's helping the poor people, the black community of Omaha.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

But King's extravagance attracted the attention of the Internal Revenue Service. As a result, on April 11th, 1988, the Franklin Credit Union was raided and closed by the FBI. King was arrested, and the federal investigation showed he had stolen $40 million from Franklin. Documents he possessed revealed the FBI interviewed many of the victims of Larry King's sex ring, but no action was taken. In November 1988, Nebraska's state government set up a parallel investigation into Larry King. A legislative committee was formed. Its chairman was the Republican head of Nebraska's banking committee, Corn Farmer and State Senator Lauren Schmidt. Immediately, anonymous threats began.

SPEAKER_14 12:48

But he said, Lauren, you do not want to have an investigation of the Franklin Federal Credit Union. And I asked who I was speaking to, and they said that doesn't matter. Um, but you shouldn't have that investigation. And I said, Well, why not? He said, Devil reached to the highest levels of the Republican Party. And we're both good Republicans.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

Undeterred, the committee began their investigations, and the money trail led quickly to the original allegations of child abuse. Carolyn Stitt was one of the first to testify.

SPEAKER_17 13:23

The night before we testified before the legislative committee, I did receive a phone call at home that said if you speak, you won't live to regret it.

SPEAKER_02 13:32

To protect the inquiry, Schmidt's committee hired special legal counsel and full-time professional investigators, Gary Caradori and Karen Ormiston.

SPEAKER_14 13:41

I said, uh, we do not want you to bring to the committee rumors uh in UNO's. Nothing that cannot be backed up the facts. I said, bring to the committee that which we can take to a prosecutor.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

The investigators found new victims of King's Pedophile Network, many on the streets of Omaha. The picture they built up was of a large ring of rich and powerful pedophiles, many named the same men as those involved with the Boys Town cases three years earlier.

SPEAKER_14 14:42

And uh I very frankly was shocked how those names show up on the list.

SPEAKER_35 14:49

To provide the committee with hard evidence, the investigators recorded their new witnesses on videotape. Paul Banassi had been the victim of abuse since he was eight.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

He was present at many of Larry King's sex parties. Caridori traced him to the county jail. He had been convicted of fondling his young cousin. Media personality Peter Citron procured some of his victims from Boys Cow.

SPEAKER_25 15:36

The kids he liked were mainly around the age of uh about eight and thirteen. It was mainly uh finally in oral sex with him. He did have some anal sex, but he usually did that with the older kids.

SPEAKER_02 15:48

The parties involved ever more sadistic abuse.

SPEAKER_37 15:52

Whenever you were tied up were was there anybody else from other than uh you know, step credit for that one bearing.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Millionaire Alan Bear posted parties for a large number of sadistic pedophiles. Paul Banassis suffered at their hands.

SPEAKER_37 16:16

Okay, so no.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

Okay, just take a deep bonner with Troy Bonner was found by the investigators, and his videotape tests were they taken under oath.

SPEAKER_22 17:13

Wow. Seven being sufficient. The police officer was seven beans up and wrong.

SPEAKER_24 17:29

Alan Bear was a sick fuck. Didn't care, you know, wanted sex, nasty, you know, I don't even know if you can call it sex. Everything, I mean, from just, you know, touching to fruit, squash, you know, huge squash, you know, that bigger round, you know, stuck into you, in your ass, you know. Uh heat, heat things, hot things, you know, poked at you and stuck in you.

SPEAKER_35 17:58

But the center of the child's sex ring was Larry King.

SPEAKER_24 18:05

Larry King was the same kind of sick fuck Alan Bear was, except Larry King was more violent, uh, more sure of himself, you know. I got those scars on my arm one night at a party where Larry King, you know, wanted to see how strong a men we were or something, you know, and have us push our arms together and he'd light cigarettes, and as soon as he got burning, he'd just drop them down between your arms and, you know, let it let it burn. You know, and they made us stand there naked and touch each other by holding our arms together and burn cigarettes where, you know, it's on film someplace. And they filmed it. Burning, you know. I mean, I would, you know, see him fuck a 10-year-old boy in the ash, you know, and telly Gled and, you know, just pull out and stop and, you know, push him down, you know, and you know, and then go out and, you know, meet with decent people.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

King would also provide underage girls for abuse. Alicia Owen told the investigators she was 15 when she attended her first party, introduced by a boy's town boy. Caridori discovered her in jail where she was serving a sentence for passing bad checks.

SPEAKER_19 19:13

I met some guys there that were some boys town. Yeah, I think it was at that party network at the time when I'm not going to team a developed young. I would love them, but I'm not here.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

Mary King and Alan Baer frequently hosted the child sex parties in penthouse apartments at the Twin Towers luxury block in Omaha.

SPEAKER_19 19:40

Um, I wanted it with um cut with my young team and my hand. Um, and I think time. Yeah. Um sometimes I think I'm strong when I think most of the people we were appalled.

SPEAKER_33 20:45

Appalled. I don't even know if it comes across on the video the way it came across to us in in person. It was it was incredible. It's incredible what these kids went through. Okay.

SPEAKER_22 20:59

Larry King was also here, he came in and uh we drank and did okay, and I didn't do my change. So he turned me on to what Mary King did.

SPEAKER_25 21:11

Drugs is a a strong part of uh how they got control of some of the kids. Because that's what some of the kids were there to get. They would uh do the sexual uh acts and then be provided with uh cocaine or uh whatever type of drug they wanted.

SPEAKER_24 21:30

Heroin, you know, I don't I don't know, but that's was my my drug of choice.

unknown 21:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_24 21:34

Till there's a day I remained an addict, yeah.

SPEAKER_19 21:39

And those are that didn't like to be involved and didn't want to be involved with threatening uh cool too long.

SPEAKER_33 22:13

Larry King was I would say the center of transporting country. The the airplanes were usually um in his name, placed in his name. They would pay for by Larry King.

SPEAKER_19 22:33

We met blue and company. We made who um three boys and I have food, one catching apple punch control, whatever. Um I was kind of both for um graduate to Boys Town for President.

SPEAKER_30 22:59

I didn't know credit so young. Well, how would they get a winter for one? I have no idea.

SPEAKER_14 23:05

Boys Town uh came up frequently during the investigation, but we found it very difficult to get information about Boys Town. I was not able to find any information from my visit there, and uh Mr. Caradori could not get information either.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

Boysown today remains unwilling to discuss its involvement with Larry King. We were banned from filming at Boys Town, and its public affairs officer refused any interviews.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

I would uh have to give you a flat no. I'm just gonna tell you at this point that uh we will not participate with you. We have no interest in talking to you folks. It's something that we don't even care to delve into the city.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

Its chairman Lawrence Schmidt John DeCamp. On his advice, Schmidt turned over all the sworn evidence to the FBI. But immediately, the videotape testimony was leaked to a hostile local media.

SPEAKER_33 24:43

The media immediately started discrediting the witnesses. They were um the witnesses came across in the media, in the Omaha World Herald, especially as the criminals.

SPEAKER_17 25:00

The last three victim witnesses were demolished by the press, particularly the Omaha World Herald. The paper never looked for information that would support any of the allegations. The whole purpose of the stories were just was to destroy any credibility that these youth may have.

SPEAKER_25 25:18

I heard that people said that Gary Caradori coached me and uh that he told me what to say, but the fact was I didn't meet Garrett Caradori until way after I'd already talked to the Omaha police about the abuse and had named all the same people.

SPEAKER_02 25:34

Paul Banassi maintains that neither the FBI nor the Omaha police took his allegations seriously.

SPEAKER_25 25:42

And they didn't ask me very much about Larry King or out or even uh Alan Bear at all. They treated the allegations they made about the p like a joke.

SPEAKER_09 25:54

The stories were of such uh significance that the investigators first wanted to prove the accuracy of the stories. As they said about the investigation of the three initially three and then a fourth person were telling the stories, as the investigation developed, it became obvious to the investigators that the information was not accurate. That in fact it was an entire conspiracy of the allegations, none of which had any truth to them.

SPEAKER_14 26:20

I was very disappointed with the way uh the FBI and law enforcement treated the victims. They in fact um turned them into the offenders, so to speak. And instead of taking the evidence that was delivered to them by the victims and interrogating the persons whom the victims identified, uh they seemed to bear down and try to get the victims to change their story.

SPEAKER_02 26:54

It seemed to the investigators that the establishment of Omaha was closing ranks. Then Troy Bonner was brought in for questioning by the FBI.

SPEAKER_24 27:02

The FBI's attitude was, you know, just no. These kind of things don't happen. In the first interview when I went, you know, and realized they don't believe a fucking thing I'm saying, you know. I mean, they're I mean they they were just appalled, but I realized what that look in their eye was back then. It was fear. It was fear of it, you know. I mean, I had witnessed, you know, firsthand things that would, you know, destroy this city, you know, people are the position. You know what I mean? It's not gonna be believed believed, they said. It will not be believed. You will be found guilty of perjury, and you I mean, they weren't telling me maybe. You know, they were saying, uh-uh, it's you know it's there's no way. You're going to you go on with the story, you're going to jail. I mean, that was said to me direct.

SPEAKER_02 27:47

Troy Bonner agreed to withdraw his videotape testimony. The FBI used Troy in an attempt to persuade fellow witness Alicia Owen into abandoning her evidence about Larry King's nationwide network of powerful pedophiles. We have obtained the recording of a phone call made by the FBI on March the 9th, 1990. It is significant evidence for John DeCamp.

SPEAKER_03 28:17

Special Agent Michael F. Mott. The following will be a consensually recorded telephone call for between Troy Farner and Elisa Owen.

SPEAKER_11 29:29

You literally have to have works for brains to take on the FBI in this country. And that's exactly what you'd have to do to do this properly. They now, in my opinion, in my investigation, are the architects of the cover-up.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

We asked the FBI in Omaha for an interview about its investigation of the Franklin scandal.

SPEAKER_01 29:57

We feel it would it would be inappropriate for us to comment. We worked this with the Omaha Police Department. We just don't feel it would be appropriate for us to make comments.

SPEAKER_33 30:20

Gary was threatened several times. His his vehicles were tampered with.

SPEAKER_08 30:40

He even said he got one step ahead of him this time. He told us about this book because it was like addresses, telephone numbers, names. He said if if they um if they knew he had it, they'd kill him.

SPEAKER_02 30:57

On July the 11th, 1990, Gary Caradori and his eight-year-old son AJ were flying home from Chicago in his light aircraft. They had watched the all-star baseball game, and Caridori had been pursuing new leads.

SPEAKER_06 31:13

Investigators of the National Transportation Safety Board are in Harold Cameron's courtfield, trying to determine what caused this private plane to crash, killing its two occupants. National Transportation Safety Board investigators say wreckage from the crash is apparently strewn over a three-quarter to one mile-long stretch in this field.

SPEAKER_31 31:40

The fact that the wreckage is scattered over a large area certainly demonstrates that it did break up in flight. The exact mechanism of breakup yet is still unknown.

SPEAKER_02 31:50

The federal investigation was never able to discover what tore the plane apart.

SPEAKER_33 31:57

There are things missing from the plane. His briefcase is missing. I think the plane was sabotaged. There's no doubt in my mind.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

Within 24 hours of the tragedy, all Caradori's records were impounded by the FBI.

SPEAKER_23 32:39

Somebody would want to murder.

SPEAKER_08 32:54

I know that somebody killed my brother. Somebody knows something. And uh may um may God help those who did that to him and his family.

SPEAKER_33 33:11

The effect of Gary's crash on the investigation, I think, in effect put an end to any anybody else coming forward. There were many victims. We knew of more. There are more. They're still out there. They're afraid to come forward.

SPEAKER_17 33:35

That's when I was finished. Because I figured out if they murdered Gary and his son, there was nothing that would stop him. There's no piece of paper, there was nothing we could come up with that was going to get anything done.

SPEAKER_02 33:51

Gary Carradori's death pricked Troy Bonner's conscience. He promised Sadly that he would tell Senator Schmidt's committee about the FBI's pressure which led him to lie.

SPEAKER_24 34:01

I set the record straight. I was, you know, going to do it. And would, you know, the truth would come out, you know, and somebody would be h held accountable for his death. And then at the funeral I had seen, you know, FBI guys, you know, and they they looked at me. You know, I was supposed to meet Senator Obedson Schmidt for lunch after the funeral. And uh, you know, that's when I decided I told my mom, you know, we're not gonna do the noise. We're gonna I tell it I don't think now.

SPEAKER_02 34:31

Troy Bonner claims that pressure from the FBI and with the assistance of a county attorney's office in Omaha led him to swear a new statement claiming that he and Alicia Owen had concocted the entire child abuse story story to a grand jury formed to bring any charges. On July 23rd, 1990, the grand jury issued a bizarre and contradictory report. It indicted Larry King for fraud and embezzlement and ruled that he had paid young men for sex, but dismissed allegations about his sex ring. It indicted Alan Baer for the serious offense of pandering for sex, but rejected evidence linking him to King or to Citron, whom it noted had been convicted of separate child molestation charges. It accepted that Troy, Alicia, and Paul Bernassi had been abused, but not by the people they identified. And for refusing to withdraw her evidence, it charged Alicia Owen with perjury. Lauren Schmidt's legislative committee issued a report denouncing the grand jury. Schmidt acknowledges that the system failed both the victims and him.

SPEAKER_14 35:50

I had I think to distinguish a record as anyone could put together in 24 years. I was told that would be curtailed. And it was. I was told I'd have financial problems. I did. The message was not lost on most politicians in Nebraska. I think the message was delivered was if any legislative committee ever tries to conduct a thorough investigation again, the same thing will happen. That has shaken my faith in institutions of government. I used to be a firm believer that that uh the system would work. And uh that people who did things wrong would be punished. And um we discovered uh victims who claimed to have been abused and who the grand jury acknowledged had been abused. But they did not try to find out who had abused those individuals, instead um they convicted Alicia Owen of perjury. Indefensible from my point of view.

SPEAKER_02 37:14

The trial took place in July 1991. Troy Boner testified that the child abuse story had been an invention.

SPEAKER_35 37:22

As a result, Alicia Owen was sentenced to between nine and twenty-five years in prison. I can't find a case in the history of this country.

SPEAKER_11 37:39

Some kid got sentenced to 25 or 30 years in prison for something like this. If you were gonna pick a what I call a tell sign, something that says something specific about the whole thing, it was in the sentencing itself.

SPEAKER_36 37:52

For some reason, they had to send a signal to every kid who was a potential witness. My opinion again. A signal so loud and clear, if you dare to come forward, if you dare to talk, watch what happens.

SPEAKER_02 38:04

Alan Baer was fined $500 after pleading no contest to a reduced charge of aiding and abetting prostitution. Peter Citron served two years of a three to eight year sentence. Thanks to Troy Bonner's lies, Larry King never faced child sex charges. For the $40 million fraud, he was given a 15-year sentence, ten years less than Alicia Owen.

SPEAKER_24 38:28

I feel really sick. I should be taken out and shot for doing that. And if that was to happen, I would go willingly get a lot of the highlight.

SPEAKER_02 39:16

He is the lawyer trying to overturn Alicia Owen's conviction and to expose the cover-up.

SPEAKER_10 39:23

I live in Nebraska. Hell, I was born here, raised here. I have four kids growing up here. Like it or not, it's my heritage, you know? Well, if it's a dirty cesspool that I gotta live in or look back on that I left, that ain't good.

SPEAKER_11 39:38

The real cost, if I were gonna say to my family, has been the fear and intimidation that's put in some of the kids.

SPEAKER_10 39:44

A couple of the kids are really, really frightened, and uh really had some sleeping problems over, you know, here this or that. So that that's been the real concern I've had.

SPEAKER_02 39:52

John has received anonymous threats and has turned for advice to his friend and one-time boss, former head of the CIA, William Colby.

SPEAKER_36 40:01

Uh well, Bill Colby told me better than anything. The one thing the bad people can't afford is publicity and in knocking you off right now or doing something obvious to one of your kids uh would bring them more trouble than it's worth.

SPEAKER_07 40:14

I said you have to consider the possibility of some danger to not only your reputation, but to your person. I mean, there are people who do react rather violently to some kinds of charges, or particularly if they're true, there's more apt to be a negative reaction than if they're false. If they're false charges, then they can be reacted to in a normal way, a libel suit or whatever. But uh the truth, if there's truth in it, there can be a danger in that situation. We've seen that happen in other cases.

SPEAKER_02 40:54

John arranges to meet Troy Bonner, the young man he seized as the key to the cover up.

SPEAKER_11 41:00

He's in great danger. The reason is he carries the secret, so to speak. He serves his purpose for the FBI and others by committing the lie to put the seal on the cover.

SPEAKER_02 41:16

He knows that Troy's evidence will be crucial to Alicia Owens' case. And Troy wants to tell the truth, despite very real fears.

SPEAKER_24 41:25

My fears are that, you know, I'm not gonna be believed again. It's just, you know, going to be a whole other kind of exploitation like it was by time. You know, and afraid that that's gonna happen, or you know, it might end up dead. Or loved one might end up dead.

SPEAKER_02 41:40

Troy has an overriding reason for putting the record straight.

SPEAKER_11 41:43

Maybe somebody has a better idea.

SPEAKER_24 41:45

I want this to go forward and have something done so that all those other kids who a lot worse things have happened to you can come forward and see that action can be taken.

SPEAKER_11 41:55

If you want to protect yourself and your life and your family's life, both now and particularly in the future, is to use the institutions of government that have been set up to protect you and make them work. That means you go into federal court, you go after the people that have done this cover-up, and you expose it so there's no longer any percentage on their part in eliminating you because the secret's out.

SPEAKER_24 42:19

Yeah, that's why we're here today to let it out.

SPEAKER_02 42:24

John's advice to Troy to tell the truth in court puts him at risk of prosecution by the county attorney's office.

SPEAKER_11 42:34

Potentially, they could decide to charge him with perjury because now he is telling that they forced me to lie. I did lie at Alicia's trial, I did lie before the grand jury, I did it because the authorities were forcing me to do it, and I was scared for my payment.

SPEAKER_10 42:49

Potentially, they could charge him with perjury this time.

SPEAKER_02 42:53

Troy's appearance in court will keep Alicia Owen out of prison. She's on bail while DeCamp appeals against her perjury conviction. As her hearing approaches, vital new evidence emerges. Alicia claims that some of Troy's videotape testimony was withheld from the grand jury which indicted her.

SPEAKER_20 43:15

The tapes that were shown to the grand jury have been edited. Everything that matched Troy's statement. Shown. That matched mine. Because I know it's edited out. And I think maybe one of the things we want to do is show the judge specifically how where these, you know, little five-minute segments of look, this tape says this, and then show him it isn't in this tape. And this is the tape the grand jury saw.

SPEAKER_15 43:40

I'm going to attempt to get these tapes, and we'll see what happens next.

SPEAKER_02 43:45

But to obtain the tapes, DeCamp must approach some of the very officials he has accused in court of being involved in the cover-up. The county attorney's office, which ran the grand jury.

SPEAKER_36 43:56

In the good old Ree Show case, 127-127. We're trying to get the evidence of the tapes and the rant's purpose. Troy and Danny, Troy uh Troy Bonner. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 44:13

Look at the county attorney, they have all the bills up there.

SPEAKER_10 44:18

Robert. I mean, yes, Robert Siegler has them.

SPEAKER_02 44:22

Robert Siegler is the prosecuting attorney trying to send Alicia Owen back to prison. After lengthy negotiations, DeCamp emerges with the tapes the grand jury never saw.

SPEAKER_22 44:39

Okay, and why are I?

SPEAKER_02 44:42

In more than two hours of tape testimony, Troy details trips across America on behalf of Larry King and Alan Baer. Trips for drug deals and sex. It corroborates Alicia's evidence.

SPEAKER_22 45:05

Did anybody go with you? Alicia Huron.

SPEAKER_02 45:09

For John DeCamp, this is the proof of the king's sex ring for which he has been waiting.

SPEAKER_11 45:16

Here it is. So to speak, the smoking gun that they could go out and verify. The corroboration, in other words, the linkage to king that was denied. Cover-up. Organized, planned, deliberate, cover-up.

SPEAKER_02 45:32

The courthouse, Oahu, Nebraska. The hearing begins. Alicia Owen is ready to testify. So is Paul Bonassi. But there is no sign of Troy Bonner. DeCamp discovers that Robert Seedler has sent the young man a subpoena. Fearing arrest for perjury, Troy has gone into hiding. De Camp is without his most vital witness. In court, Alicia's case is adjourned. The county attorney's office begins to search for Troy Bonner, but County Attorney Siegler won't say why.

SPEAKER_11 46:36

Every victim witness who stepped forward in any way, or even was a potential witness that somebody heard about has either been killed, put in jail under some theory or other, terrified or run out of the state, discredited, every perpetrator, every perpetrator, even the convicted ones, have been treated as conquering heroes.

SPEAKER_02 47:03

Peter Citron lives in the same house where he abused many of his young victims. Alan Baer lives in the most exclusive part of Omaha. He recently bought a downtown shopping mall. Many of the other abusers named by the children have risen within Nebraska's state government and legal system and within the Republican Party.

SPEAKER_10 47:27

Obviously, the FBI was protecting something a lot more significant than a bunch of old pedophiles having improper relations with little boys. They were protecting something a lot more significant than a bunch of drug peddlers. They were protecting, in my opinion. They were protecting some very prominent politicians, some very powerful and wealthy individuals associated with those politicians and the political system, up to and including the highest political people in this entire country.

SPEAKER_02 48:09

In search of the men who protected Larry King, John de Camp goes to Washington to investigate King's connections in the Republican Party and on Capitol Hill. Paul Banassi provides him with the evidence that Larry King threw child sex parties here at his rented $5,000 a month Washington House.

SPEAKER_25 48:38

At first year was about three or four times the first year. After that was about once a month. Some of the parties when they started off were straight political type parties with no sex. And then when some of the men had left, some of the politicians had left, the ones that had planned on engaging in some type of sexual activity, uh, that would come after the party. Some of the kids would be held downstairs in some of the rooms where if they acted up or if they started freaking out because of the drugs that they were on, they put them in a room that they couldn't get out of and they'd lock them in. What kind of drugs? Anything you wanted, cocaine, uh heroin, seagulls. You're telling me those things were at these parties where you had Larry King and prominent politicians. Yes. Were they readily available to anybody at the party? At the after parties, they were ready to label for anybody. Beforehand, they did it more uh upstairs than they did anywhere else. It was kind of in the back room.

SPEAKER_11 49:31

Or any attempts ever made that you know of to uh to expose the situation.

SPEAKER_25 49:37

As far as I know, nothing's ever been done, and most of the people that were in there had already been, I guess you say, compromised.

SPEAKER_02 49:46

King's partner was Washington lobbyist Craig Spence. Spence took youngsters, including Bernasse, on private midnight tours of the White House.

SPEAKER_11 49:54

So you were in the White House then? Yes. And how how did you gain access?

SPEAKER_25 50:00

Well, I came down with uh Larry King, but Craig Spence was the one that ran into the trip for us. And it was kind of a a gift for our service that we were doing.

SPEAKER_13 50:08

How many times were you on this kind of a trip?

SPEAKER_25 50:11

I came to it on two times.

SPEAKER_13 50:13

Two times. And were you used for sex on those occasions? None until after we left. After you left the White House?

SPEAKER_25 50:21

That time of night? It was usually around uh midnight. We see I see rooms in there that uh I'd never even heard about. Larry King had a couple of groups. One was called Bodies by God, and they had the Cowboys, and there was another group that was started by Larry King, which is called the Golden Boys, which was kids that were usually under the age of approximately ten.

SPEAKER_02 51:06

Spencer's Cowboy Network was investigated in 1989 by reporter Paul Rodriguez of the Washington Times.

SPEAKER_16 51:17

We have uncovered a series of allegations from some minors, and that led me to a cowboy operation.

SPEAKER_11 51:24

Well, sure, Fitz was you know his boy Paul Bonazi, and he tells a tale of being brought to the White House on occasion kind of as a reward for the kid.

SPEAKER_16 51:35

Craig Spence's dad committed suicide. He had advanced digits of aid. He was an aid carry and he killed himself. This was the thing that always bothered me. They claimed it was the largest uh male prosecution ring in the city that they've ever ever had on cover. It was a million dollars a year minimum. Yeah. And yet they only prosecuted the operator, uh, Henry Venson and three of his lieutenants, as it were. They never went after any of the Don or the clients. This operation claimed to have clients that ran from the White House to the Capitol Hill to the State House to the churches, and it was in the media. Exactly what Paul describes as the people who were. And a lot of the stuff led there, but we couldn't quite nail it at all cases because, again, to accuse someone of high factor, you've got to be very careful. I understand. We were able to do it through the motherlot, was divided of uh credit card receipts and canceled checks, and then um lists of the clients. The prosecutors knew all this stuff. There was approximately 3,000 documents they had. They sealed the entire record by court order. And we have tried to, we've attempted on several occasions to unseal that, and we've been told it'll be a cold day in hell before those records ever get unsealed.

SPEAKER_35 52:50

And it makes you wonder what's in those records. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:57

John DeCamp believes that the legal system is still being subverted, and that the people protected are still at the heart of the American establishment. He hopes that this program will expose a serious miscarriage of justice, but the opposition is formidable.

SPEAKER_09 53:22

It's beyond belief that arguably the most powerful person in the world, the President of the United States, in the former Richard Nixon, could not prevent the investigation of Watergate, or the President Reagan could not prevent the investigation of Iran Conter. And yet somehow, this group of unnamed, unknown, anonymous individuals in Omaha, Nebraska have such power they can control and protect all of these people from being investigated. Those allegations are ridiculous. Nixon did cover up Watergate.

SPEAKER_10 54:01

Number one.

SPEAKER_11 54:05

At least officially. And Omaha has successfully covered up this situation. In each case, it was the press that exposed the problem. It wasn't institutions of government. They had been corrupted.

SPEAKER_02 54:20

They had been compromised. They were the ones doing the cover-up. The Attorney General is now involved. De Camp's evidence has been passed by William Colby to a senior lawyer in the Justice Department.

SPEAKER_07 54:31

He did say that the Attorney General's office would be very sensitive to any charges of abuse of children, that this was a matter of considerable priority to the department that this sort of thing not take place, and that they would assign an officer to look into the case.

SPEAKER_02 54:48

For John DeCamp, the story of Larry King's corrupt empire holds a dire warning for all America.

SPEAKER_35 54:55

If you can control about three or four key elements, you can totally own a state, you can make right wrong, you can make truth, falsehood, falsehood, truth. If you control the media, if you control the Justice Department, if you control the police, you own the system.

SPEAKER_26 56:30

Does anybody have any questions about this video?

SPEAKER_18 56:33

That video was at uh it said at the end, it was sent to John DeCamp to the thing ended.

SPEAKER_32 56:40

In other words, these were all pictures taken by people opposed to John DeCamp.

SPEAKER_26 56:45

No, this footage was of a company from York uh named Yorkshire, out of Northern England.

SPEAKER_29 56:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_26 56:56

Read the book, believed it, and came over to investigate and interview all these people. They've investigated people and interviewed people who were uh covering it up, they interviewed people that didn't believe what happened, they interviewed people who were victims of it, they interviewed people who were investigating it, they investigate they interviewed hundreds of people for this what you see, one hour. Like I said, they spent between almost a quarter of a million and a half million dollars, just spent ten months because they had unlimited budget almost, and they were they slightly traveled all over the nation interviewing people. So now does that answer your question?

SPEAKER_05 57:35

Yeah, yeah, I uh I lost track of uh that Yorkshire thing about it.

SPEAKER_26 57:40

Okay, right. Any other questions?

SPEAKER_18 57:43

Yeah, about uh the the thing about the school, the first stuff we saw this evening. Uh I've heard of that.

SPEAKER_26 57:49

Well, let's take with this first. Uh obviously keep it in context, then we'll go back to the school, okay? Anybody have any more questions about the the uh video or the book? Yes, Joe?

SPEAKER_05 58:00

Still wanted to point out uh the thing on Colby, uh they didn't get into that part. Colby actually told John Camp, and this is on his video, the Franklin cover up what we've got on. I think you've got a copy into that.

SPEAKER_26 58:14

Yes, we do.

SPEAKER_05 58:15

And uh maybe uh four or five. But anyway, the uh Franklin cover up, uh John Campbell told Bike Colby to get this information out, just like he was telling uh what's his name, you know, you got to get it out into the system and all that, otherwise you'll get worse. Well, what happened to Kobe? Do you guys know who Kobe is? Okay, and what happened? Do you guys know what happened to him? Yeah, and he was uh this is uh John Camp, if I recall this correctly. Uh from a standpoint he was after breakfast, so to speak, but actually after a meal, after a meal, but actually uh everything was just dropped, which normally would not have happened, and he suddenly decides to get a nurse about his rowboat or his uh canoe and go down the river, and uh he gets with his computer on and lights out in the house, lights out in the house, whatever.

SPEAKER_32 59:13

And he was supposedly an extremely fastidious uh person. Right, right. I did read that, I forgot.

SPEAKER_26 59:19

Yeah, right. And DeCamp also told us that uh this man did not just uh go for a boat ride in his canoe. Uh he said that I've been with him many times at the cabin as we discussed uh different sections of the segments of the friend, and uh he would get uh John de Kim would bounce things off of him and they would go out and and uh and investigate. The reason the uh on the uh well I'll tell you about the uh what happened to him, then I'll tell you the little background, okay, why it happened. Uh Colby uh was not only a perfectionist, as De Camp said, he was really fanatical about it. All right, to the point that he wouldn't leave the house if one hair was out of place. And yet we're supposed to believe that the door was left unlocked, lights on, half meal of it on the table, computer on, and two more important things. Think about it. And man that meticulous and fastidious always wore a life jacket, but he didn't have one on. And also he always put his flag up on his canoe. No flag up. And then the camp says on the video that we've got, we will show it here uh in a in the next few uh weeks. He said that his they they had one of the biggest search parties in the history of the nation and the world looking for this man. You know, uh is in the Potomac and he he disappears.

SPEAKER_32 1:00:52

No, they can't find his body, but it's the man.

SPEAKER_26 1:00:54

Right, can't find his body. He said they they must have gone by then about ten days later, they found his body on the shore. Washed up on the shore, they said. He said they must have gone by that site a thousand times and wasn't there. Ted Gunderson told me that he has on good authority and good because these guys have got good people inside the CIA, lots of good people, lots of good people in the FBI, and yeah, and Ted Gunderson, good point, is former head of the FBI in Memphis, in Dallas, and Los Angeles, second largest office in the country, 27 plus years he served his country. I just talked to him today for about a half an hour. I just talked to Gamp two days ago for a part of time. The point is Gunderson said he has on good authority that they tortured Colby for four days before they killed him. Can you imagine that? Why? Because why? Well, you have to draw your own conclusion. Okay. Here, here's one of the reasons, all right. A month after Polyclass's body was found, all right, this story came out front page of the US News and World Report exposing what? CIA torture labs in America. Okay, and it said on the next in the there's a five-page story, and it says that they used thousands of American citizens as their victims. It describes the the kind of torture in many cases, the the military bases, the hospitals where they did the experiments, all this, and it talks about what they were doing. Uh mind control, all we heard about was radiation. Remember hearing about the radiation? And couldn't inform the commission to investigate the radiation. We never heard about the mind control. Why not? Why didn't we hear about the fact that they used chemicals and drugs on these people? And these children right here are victims of the same thing. See, it never mentions CIA in this video. It never mentions who was in the White House at the time these children were taking the White House for the sex parties, it never mentions who was the vice president, it doesn't mention the lots of things that we're going to talk about next week. Next Friday we're going to be back.

SPEAKER_10 1:03:26

My name is John DuCamp. I guess you describe me as a worn-out politician and a sometime lawyer, and uh father of uh mess of children, uh, husband of a little Vietnamese boatperson refugee named Na, and uh kind of peripherally at least uh involved in the so-called patriot movement as a result of some of the cases I've worked on over the years. So let's see, worn-out politician. For about 16 years, I was a Nebraska state senator. In fact, if you go back and check the records or even the internet, I guess you'll you'll see that I was probably one of the most, if not the most, controversial senator uh for a number of years, and one of the most effective, even according to some of my uh uh worst enemies, the Omaha World Herald newspaper, for example. And uh I think I have probably the record for uh one of the most unusual races. Let's see. My entire campaign was run from a place called Vietnam during a war called the Vietnam War, and I won the election without ever setting foot in the United States. I was a combat infantry captain in Vietnam at the time, and uh working on my assignments over there, some kind of strange things. Came back here, uh, became a state senator, and of course kept my law practice going and a number of other businesses from banks to insurance to land development to agriculture to uh construction company, to you name it. And here about 10 years ago, I think it is, almost 10 years exactly, I left the legislature and uh became pretty active then running a law firm. I have half a dozen lawyers here in my my little firm in Nebraska that that work for me, under me, with me, against me, whatever. And uh I live in a little town 30 miles south of Lincoln, Nebraska, a little town called Claytonia, Nebraska. And uh that pretty much sums up my life. I've been a candidate for governor uh where I managed to snatch uh defeat from the jaws of victory at the critical moment when the poll showed me ahead, and I guess I'll still try to figure that one out on some of these electronic voting machines, but that's a story for another day. Um that's about it. That's me, John DeCamp. Do you want to know uh how I got involved in Okay. Well, let's see. How did I ever become involved in this so called patriot movement and representing militia and free men and people involved? In the Oklahoma bombing and uh just you name it. It goes back a ways. Not ten years ago. Yeah, it'd be almost ten years ago. Um after I was out of the legislature, I was attorney for a senator called Senator Lauren Schmidt, and uh some events occurred here in Nebraska that had nationwide repercussions. A black man by the name of Larry King, officially identified as the fastest rising star in the black star in the Republican Party at the time. In fact, some of you folk, if you remember, if you went to the or watched on television the Republican National Before, and then the Republican National Convention 1988, Larry King, this big big uh man, big black man you saw, opening both of those national conventions, the Republican National Conventions by singing the national anthem, the Star Spangled Band of Well, on election day, 1988, Larry King, who in his private life uh supposedly had a small minority credit union over in North Omaha, which he was supposedly helping the community with loans. Larry King's little credit union was raided by federal officials, and they discovered that there was uh apparently a problem there. One of the problems was this little two million dollar credit union had a secret set of books that showed another 40 million had come in from a variety of sources from Boys Town to Union Pacific Railroad to Conag or some of the biggest corporations in America that had funneled into there and had disappeared. And Larry, it seems, uh didn't have any good explanations and didn't uh acknowledge that he had even gotten this money. Well, as things developed on this little credit union called the Franklin Credit Union that Larry ran, as things uh evolved, the legislature thought it should do an investigation into whether something went wrong with the laws or whether laws needed to be changed or this or that. And as uh their investigation got going, and I was the attorney for one of the senators, the chairman of that committee, Senator Schmidt, as things got going, strange, strange stories started floating out from children on the streets to other places, uh particularly some of these young kids, that that, yeah, they knew Larry King, and uh yeah, he was a big man on campus. Uh they had ridden with him in his private jets and to his mansion uh in Washington, D.C., where they had participated in sex orgies and with some of the most famous politicians and business men whose names you'd immediately recognize. Well, more and more of these stories started coming out, and more strange things about Larry's credit union. As I say, uh Larry, of course, denied this, but the stories kept getting stronger, and I was one of the first ones, I'll be honest, I was one of the first ones to say, you know, this is nonsense. Uh these tales are so unbelievable that that some of these people are coming forward with that uh that they they they should be rejected out of hand. They just aren't aren't aren't credible. And then I said something else. I said, and and if I really believed, if I really believed any of this, uh I'd be the first one to stand up and say, hey, let's let's do some prosecuting, let's lock some people up, let's correct the situation, let's let's get the story out. And uh this thing shaped up. Make a long story short, I became convinced after a while that there really was uh a lot of truth to these stories, and I ended up representing some of these children involved, and uh just uh ever-escalating thing on a national level. The story became basically a story of a very, very horrible and very large uh uh ring of people that that used uh children for drug couriers, uh, some of the most prominent names and businessmen in this country, uh that it was being covered up and protected because some of the people involved involved high law enforcement, uh uh FBI people uh wouldn't do their part uh because some of them were involved, uh just one horrible thing after another. And and when when the dust had finally settled, I went and sat down with uh with my very, very good friend, uh mentor, advisor, uh uh guide, a man named Bill Colby, who you folk may remember. Bill Colby used to be the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, and and he was the man I worked directly for in Vietnam. Officially, he was ambassador over there at the time, but in fact he really was head of the CIA then, at least in Vietnam for the Vietnam operations during the war. But anyway, uh I sat down with Bill and make a long story short, Bill basically told me to get away from all this, that that it was so much bigger and so much more deadly and dangerous and where it led and what it involved than anything I ever imagined, and uh that if I stuck around uh trying to do something about it, I'd get myself and my family probably uh killed or or worse. And I said, Well, what can I do? I can't just walk away. He said, I'll tell you what, the only way, really, on these kind of things, because of where it goes and what it involves, the only way you can probably both protect yourself and try to do something about it, may not be in the manner you want, but it's the manner it's gonna have to be done eventually. You're gonna have to get the national press involved in exposing these things. Get it so so reported and and so looked into that it can't be covered up because the forces you're against are just too big and too powerful for you to do them in the time you want or the way you want, and you keep it up, you're gonna end up dead. So I went home, wrote the book, The Franklin Cover Up, which pretty well details the story from A to Z. And uh that was my beginning of involvement in let's say criticizing some elements of government and asking for some reform and trying to point out through very clear documentation some of these problems and why why how dangerous it is if we get institutions of government corrupted. As a result of that book, and this is taking a long time to get to a simple answer to a simple question, as a result of that book, uh received some calls and and some attention from some groups around the country that read the book. I did not spend a penny, by the way, advertising the book, but but it sold over 50,000 copies. As a result of that book, uh I got contacted, for example, by some group called uh the Militia of Montana here a few years ago. And uh when I heard what was going on with them, uh I agreed to look into it uh a bunch of nuts here that rabble rousing, but yeah?

SPEAKER_37 1:12:40

She's looking for Sister Hammond.

SPEAKER_10 1:12:43

Oh, Militia of Montana. So I agreed to look into it. I I checked on it and I found that there were seven of these individuals up in Montana were arrested and charged with something called criminal syndicalism. And uh the more I checked, the more I found out that that there was absolutely no basis for their arrest. That what they were being arrested for was who they associated with and the beliefs they held or expressed. Not any violence, not any threats of violence or anything else, but simply their speech, free speech. And I got into a big battle with the Attorney General and the officials in Montana. But when all the dust had settled, we won the case and got every one of the charges dismissed of this nonsensical criminal syndicalism laws against these individuals. And that got me a bit of a reputation in the entire uh, I guess you call it the uh patriot community at that time, which which uh was beginning uh fairly rapidly, this is a few years ago, to develop a pretty good network of communication via the facts and via the shortwave radio and so on. The next major event that occurred that kind of impacted everything was immediately immediately after the uh victory in the militia of Montana case and the Freemen, and I guess they had some group called the Freemen who were also involved in that group that I represented. The next event was something called the Oklahoma City bombing, almost immediately after I won dismissal. And uh as a result of that, uh I was asked to represent some of the individuals that were injured, and eventually I ended up representing the grand juror, Hoppe Heidelberg. Hoppe Heidelberg was the grand juror who uh indicted and voted to indict McVeigh and Nichols, but who also stepped forward and said, wait a minute, you know, it we got to indict McVeigh and Nichols, but but that's only half the story. Uh uh my duty as a grand juror, Hoppe's position was my duty as a grand juror is to find out the whole truth of what happened, and and I'm I'm being prevented from doing that. Uh and in fact I'm being threatened. And then of course they eventually the judge removed Hoppe from that grand jury, and uh I represented him. Uh I mean purely that they didn't attempt anything else. So that case and a number of others have have led me, so to speak, to represent some of these groups and become pretty deeply involved, at least, in uh trying to learn uh just how big and large and wide and fat and noisy and whatever the entire animal is. Subsequent to that, I took all the militia leaders from across the United States before the United States sentence, and we had one demand. We all agreed in advance, we would have one demand in return for them fulfilling that demand, in return for the Senate. Senator Spector was the one that reached the agreement with us. We would bring, I would bring all militia leaders they wanted from across the United States, Michigan, Montana, you name it. We would answer any and every question that they could put to us. Remember, this is shortly after Oklahoma when they're saying the militia did this and militia this, and they had the whole world making it believe that uh uh the militia were ready to blow up the universe or something, when uh the truth was uh, as I explained, and as I'll repeat again, the truth was one gang on a Saturday night in Los Angeles does more damage than all the militias across the country have from the beginning of uh the militia movement. But anyway, we made our one demand in return for answering everything, doing anything they wanted, agreeing even to take lie detector tests and any answer that that any of these militia leaders gave. What was our demand? Our demand was that the Senate reopen hearings into Waco and Ruby Ridge. That was our agreement. We'll come forward and testify, give you any answers. I'll represent them and bring them here. You, the Senate, agree to hold hearings on Waco and Ruby Ridge and look into those things because we don't think the America, the American people are getting the total truth. Well, I don't need to go into that much more. The rest is history. The hearings did occur. Uh a lot of bad things were found out, and uh they go on today. So that's kind of how I got involved in this whole thing of representing some of these groups and maybe seeing both sides and and uh and uh kind of acting as an intermediary, if you would, between uh uh the judicial system on occasion and the patriot movement, between the government on occasion and the patriot movement, uh trying to force some integrity and justice into some of the systems. I've got some cases still in in Montana and some of the other places where they're using abusive laws to try to lock people up and are locking them up for what they say, what they believe, and what they think. The very the very opposite of what the First Amendment's all about. Anyway, as as I understand your question, you're wondering, well, uh, as a result of this whole Franklin thing I got involved in, uh, was it anything more than just uh I raised the question myself, anything more than a bunch of vocally uh uh playing with each other and trying to cover up some of their sins and being involved with some kids? And the answer is absolutely yes. In fact, that's how, as I say, uh I ended up writing the book because it went so far beyond anything here. It involved a true who's there? It involved a true uh national network of of uh very bad behavior by some of the most powerful politicians and businessmen in this country. And I name in the book and I document very clearly from A to Z. And the second book I wrote that just came out here about four or five years after that first book takes the story from the original book and finishes it up. What's happened to these people? What's happened to the girl, for example, Alicia Owen that dared to stand up and tell what had happened to her as a young as a young child? What's happened to some of the boys uh that testified? For example, a young man named Paul Bonassi, who identified all kinds of horrible uh things from his his earliest age. Oh, and he he he got involved in uh from uh uh some of this mind control stuff that the government was experimenting with at the time, which people don't want to believe existed, just like we don't want to believe a lot of things that the government unfortunately has done and then had to fess up to later. But that uh something called the Monarch Project, which wasn't even the real name. That was the name the kids came to know by uh a government program that played around with their minds and was going to use kids as anti-terrorist devices and would-be saboteurs to uh penetrate other countries and this type of thing. But the story itself, as I say, went so far beyond quote Nebraska or Omaha. For example, Larry King, the black man I've identified in the book, and who's now in prison on other things, by the way. He uh he maintained a $5,000 a month mansion on Embassy Row in Washington, where he brought the children, uh, flew them in and like the kids were saying, and they're his private lyri jets and would have these incredible parties. And there's nothing more effective or more powerful to control a politician or a prominent businessman than to have them provided uh uh sexual trist or some drugs or a combination thereof, particularly with some underage child or or young girl or boy or or uh manifest uh homosexual proclivities uh that are recorded secretly on film that are then used to compromise this or that politician or businessman. And uh that's where the Franklin Franklin cover-up story started, and as I say, it's led me into all these other things, and there's always the tendency or concern on my part or or anybody's part. Well, are are you one of those uh nut network people that start talking this conspiracy theory and that conspiracy theory and that one? I have tried to be extremely cautious on that, and so anything I say in the book, anything and everything, I have a document for. For example, when the first book came out, the first reaction, the absolute first reaction of a number of people that were named in the book and their lawyers was to issue public statements saying I was going to be sued uh in the biggest libel and defamation suits ever, and I would be broke and disbarred and everything else. And there have been more than a few attempts to divert and punish me. However, there's only been one lawsuit out of that book. That was when I sued uh what was it, uh, Atlantic Telecast Company over in Wilmington, North Carolina, an East Coast uh television company, for them daring to go on television and saying that that the book was not true. And uh I found out later that uh the police chief from Omaha, who's clearly identified by me in the book, a man named Wadman is involved in all this with the Alicia Owen girl and so on. Uh uh I found out he had gone to the Wilmington people and said, Oh, this is all all so I sued them. I sued them, and and at first they, of course, said, No, no, no, we aren't gonna do anything. Um you're wrong, we're right. Well, within three weeks they had done some of their own investigation, they backed down and paid me as financial settlement, as well as had then a public apology, three nights running as the lead story on their news, apology to the senator from Nebraska, and acknowledged uh the book was accurate. So uh the Franklin cover-up itself goes way, way, way beyond quote Omaha, Nebraska. It does describe this national network, it does identify a lot of the politicians, some frightening things you don't want to hear from. From Iran Contra. That book was, by the way, the first place, the first place to identify the Iran-Conter connection, the George Bush uh uh potential involvement in some of these things, at least uh uh if not his involvement, his tacit approval in some of his key positions from a former head of the CIA. By the way, he's the one that replaced my friend Bill Colby when Colby was fired. George Bush replaced him and became the head of the CIA. But anyway, from uh Bush to you name it in the White House uh or or Congress, uh the book spills it all out and spells it out and documents it. And then the second book, of course, deals with some of the other things I mentioned from the Oklahoma bombing where I represent the folk there to uh these militia cases. And I guess if there be an essence or a general theme throughout, it is we all as Americans want to love our government, we want to believe in our government, we want to we want those things we grew up with knowing were true to actually be true, and we're finding contradictory evidence one after another, where instead of quote government being the the servant of the people, it's become the master, and where instead of uh our revered institutions of government being pure as the driven snow, uh we find that the snow has been pretty heavily laden with some black soot. And uh you wonder what can be done about it and how you're gonna go about doing something about it, and just how deep it goes, and and is it just an isolated instance, or is it or is it endemic to the system? Has corruption in government become endemic to the system to the point where you got real problems? And you've got to remember people love to dabble and chatter about oh, democracy and this and American system that and so on and so forth, but you've got to remember one thing. Our system of government, our system of government doesn't guarantee freedom necessarily. Our system of government doesn't guarantee that you're gonna be rich or poor. You know, the only thing that really is unique about our system as compared with all other systems that have ever been invented in history, the only really single characteristics that's different than all the rest is it's the only self-correcting system ever invented, ever created. It's the only self-correcting. When the pendulum swings too far one way, without the bullet, without the bombs, without the revolution, it quote self-corrects and starts swinging back the other way. And that's the beauty of our system, that it is self-correcting, and it's worked a dozen times over the 225 years or so of our history. Well, I think we're at one of those critical times now where uh the correction has to occur, and unfortunately, the correction may be inhibited quite a bit because the thing that it's supposed to correct, that the system is supposed to correct, the government itself, has become so all-powerful, so all-controlling, and unfortunately, in some cases, so abusive and repressive of some of the very things that need to occur to correct, which is First Amendment rights, this type of thing. And so when you have people speak out, whether they be freemen or or militias or people here on the far right or far left, when they speak out and criticize the government, they're immediately in any of the media these days. The first thing you see is anti-government. Anti-government, uh, and and and the labels. They'll have these individuals who who might just be saying they think uh uh President Clinton is wrong or corrupt on something or done something wrong, they'll immediately have a litany of anti-government, uh blah, blah, blah, tax protest. However, if it's a Republican, let's say Newt Gimmick saying the identical things. They don't say he's anti-government. They don't say he's this, he's that. All they say is uh Republican uh House leader, whatever. My point is they they've they they've uh tried to kind of suppress the very things that make the system self-correct, and it really concerns me because we do know the self-correction needs to occur, but uh we're seeing too much now uh the handicapping or the suppressing of the key tools or elements that that have made it self-correct in the past. You have to understand the character of uh of a Bill Colby. Now, Bill Colby was raised as a Catholic, super strict, uh his entire life was rigidly following rules. Um he was truly this country's greatest spy master, but he also had some pretty strict rules. He saw the war he had conducted, the Cold War, as just as significant as World War II or World War I, maybe even more significant, because the things were beneath the surface most of the time as to what was occurring. It wasn't war conducted by the CIA and the intelligence community, and during that process, a lot of things developed and were allowed to develop necessarily, at least they thought they were necessary, that are kind of incompatible or don't work good with a free and open society. You know, covert operations and doing this and Bill was smart enough to realize Bill was smart enough to realize that that itself was a very danger. Creating this system where you had almost a secret government, which he acknowledged had had effectively occurred, I think I think would be a fair statement. And therefore, I think he felt a certain duty to be one of those. Who, since he was so intimately involved in that creation, also the correcting of it and making sure there were, quote, constitutional safeguards and political safeguards and popular safeguards against the existence and creation and controlled by a secret system or set of governments there. And uh one of the things, the primary thing Bill was doing the last years of his life. In fact, I was with him literally two weeks before his his alleged uh falling out of a canoe and dying. I was with him two weeks, and we had a very good chat. It was like it was just after his 75th birthday, and he was in the best health. He had completed a physical and was in the best health ever. And I asked him, I said, Bill, what what would you say would be the happiest five years of your life if you were going to pick a period in history? Five years, maybe back during World War II when you were leading the secret attempts to to uh get into Germany and or ahead of the CIA or what he said, I'll tell you what, John. He said, the last five years and the next five years. And I said, Wait a minute, why? Because I'm really doing what I enjoy now, and even more than that, what I think can really make a difference in the world. You remember, this is the man that was over there with Yeltsin when they were having the collapse of the Russian Empire and the coup or push or pooch or whatever you call them. Uh he was with Yeltsin, believe it or not, right when this was occurring, you know, uh in Russia here a few years ago. Well, anyway, Bill's what he was doing now, traveling all over the world, meeting with world leaders and and top business leaders from around the world, and giving his analysis of where we were in the world and where they were and how the pieces were fitting together. He was the best individual there was when it came to looking out and seeing the road of the future, what's happening, how the pieces are going to fit into place. And that's what he enjoyed, traveling all over the world, meeting with these people, giving them uh some direction and input based on a lifetime of uh knowing what's going on both behind the scenes and under the covers and on top of the covers and how the two sometimes fit and how they don't fit. So he was he was in absolutely uh the best shape he'd ever been, uh the best mood he'd ever been, and uh that's what he was planning to do and and and had been doing. And so he said, the last five years and the next five years. So here I'm listening to the radio and television a couple weeks later, and supposedly uh he's violated every single rule that he followed all his life. In other words, walking out at night, canoeing, which he didn't particularly enjoy, uh leaving his uh uh food on the table, television and computers on, uh come on. The man the man never had a hair out of place if uh if anybody uh followed his character. I mean, he so when they tell me that he he goes out under these conditions, falls out of his canoe, then drowns and can't be found for ten days, and then ten days or whatever it is later, they find him in exactly the spot they searched a thousand times, but he he wasn't found there. I say, uh huh, right. And then I say exactly what Bill always used to say if it's done right, you'll never know who did it or why. And in this case, I, in my own mind, absolutely do not believe the man went out and fell out of his canoe and and drowned. Uh and I believe that for whatever reason, uh he was a thorn in somebody's side and uh had to be shut up, and that's what occurred. Well, I you the question has been raised as to uh whether there was any incentive or or or desire on the part of our U.S. Justice Department, in other words, recently and currently headed by Janet Reno, uh to look into matters of the Franklin thing. Colby himself, and I have the letter, Colby himself personally went to Janet Reno, gave her some background on the subject, personally asked and was promised that the Justice Department would uh look into it, investigate, and and and work and cooperate with me on that. Uh, Bill got a letter back from them assuring him of that. To the best of my knowledge, not one thing was ever done. Now, why that was, I don't know. Uh I'm sure there uh could be a dozen explanations, but I do know they uh at the highest levels, Janet Rito herself, uh Colby went and asked personally, based on his background, that something be done, and uh was promised in writing it would be, and to the best of my knowledge, it never has been. Now, um, which raises the question of the Justice Department itself, is it functioning like it should? And I guess that's one of the key elements in my new book. And by the way, my new book, the Franklin Cover Up, is the revised edition, which is the entire first book, an entirely new book dealing with Oklahoma and the Freemen and the militias, the patriot movement, the follow-up to the original Franklin thing, uh, a lot of these things. But but in the new book, I try to select half a dozen, for example, key cases of very national prominence handled by our Justice Department, wherein it is clear, it is clear, not by my stating it, not by my even saying uh I think this, but by the judgments of the system itself, with the courts themselves involved, that our Justice Department has done the precise opposite of what it was created to do. Instead of uh protecting and following the rule of law, they have in fact become the users and abusers of the rule of law. And I, as I say, I list a variety of cases from the far right to the far left, where you would have to say and all agree or disagree with the individuals involved. For example, the LaRouche case I cite, because it is so well documented that here was a guy that was a thorn in the butt of a lot of high government officials to the point where he was beginning to be able to impact the political system, which is what it's all about. That's how the pendulum starts swinging back when somebody on the noisy right or the noisy left or whatever starts raising issues and it makes people think and look, and they start slowly swinging. Their solution to this man was simply to lock him up, set him up. Okay, then you pick the case of uh the Dumanjuk case, I think it was, where the courts, the court system at the highest levels finally said this is a fraud perpetrated on the American people, you know, just because uh they wanted to accommodate the Israeli lobby, you know. And uh I cite case after case where our Justice Department has been the abuser uh uh uh of the rule of law rather than the enforcer of it. And uh, whenever a system where its key piece, the justice, your justice system is the thing that makes all the rest of the clock tick and the parts go in asynchronous, when your key driving force gets corrupted, you've got problems. And that's what I think I I see occurring too often now in this country. And so when we take the Franklin case, which really covers the entire spectrum of all these cases on a grand level, where it leads, and you get a promise and a commitment from the Justice Department to look into it, and they do the precise opposite. I think it is one more reflection of how serious it's become. And again, because you quote, see a rotten spot in your government and you say, well, let's correct it, that doesn't mean you're anti-government. It doesn't mean you're you're uh evil or a radical or a crazy or a nut or far right or far left. What it means is you love your system, you love, you know, a clean government, and you want to make sure it doesn't get any more contaminated. But the way it's shaped up and evolving now, anybody that dares speak out is either suppressed, labeled as a nut, or anti-government, and uh the thing that they're trying to expose or correct is in fact uh sanctified, ratified, and approved, and uh leads on to even more grievous problems for the future, and that's what's occurring too frequently now. The argument is always given. Um if you can just disarm the people, and of course, there's a thousand historical comparisons and and uh scenarios, and and the one they like to present or paint the most is uh the famous one in Germany. Uh one of the first things was disarm the populace. Therefore, if you need to shut them up or shut somebody down, you don't have that that that serious problem with somebody being able to resist at least forcefully with any arms. Well, it's it's it's a boiling problem. I can I can sure see the opposite side of the equation, too. The typical the typical American in the 1990s and the year 2000. Uh their only contact with a gun uh is what they see on television of people shooting, and uh we have a urban population as opposed to an agrarian population. Their only contact with anybody with guns is is when they see the Saturday night news and and uh the gang shooting each other up or somebody robbing a bank or whatever. And it's real difficult to reconcile uh your Second Amendment rights, and remember it isn't right. Your your Second Amendment rights with uh and uh most of the people seeing the the so-called gun grabbers as they would view the uh government, most of the people on the other side of that equation, uh the ones that hold guns, whether for defense or or recreation or hunting or sporting activities, most of those people, when they see the government or legislation, uh they believe, I think most of them believe very sincerely that there's a quote, hidden agenda of government. If you can just disarm the population or control the gun supply close enough so that you know who's got a gun, where they have, everything about them, uh then anytime you want to implement something as a government, you don't have to worry about that faction being able to resist it. I guess my personal personal opinion is the real battle over this issue has not come yet by a long way. I do believe there is a segment of the government, I'm I'm completely satisfied there's a segment of the government that wants to disarm the population for the reasons that I don't think are warranted. That is to make sure nobody can resist government. I think there's another very, very sincere and honest segment of government that is trying to grapple with this problem of the Saturday night specials and the guns and the murders and the criminals, and they simply don't know how to best do it. Um it's uh a battle that hasn't yet occurred. It's only beginning to take shape and it's gonna get a lot more acute and severe. I would point out, I would point out, as I have in political speeches, that if you take all the murders and killings and everything else that are going on and have gone on with guns, you're gonna be hard-pressed. You're gonna be awfully hard-pressed to find. Because I pointed out to Ted Coppel on his nightline one time. I said, in fact, I'll sit here and you tell me, Ted, give me a list. Give me a list of all the terrorist acts and murders committed by all the militia people you can identify in the last 10 or 15 years. And I said, I'll guarantee you one thing. All of them totaled up, all of them totaled up won't amount to as many killings as occur in Los Angeles on a typical Saturday night from just the gang wars. And I guess that that really is my point in this whole thing, that this dichotomy and difficulty of resolving the right to bear arms issues. The people wanting to bear arms aren't the ones wanting them for improper purposes, yet they're the ones that they're trying to take all all the arms away from. The ones that really are the problem, somehow uh the efforts aren't directed at them or don't seem to be very effective. So I don't know where this battle is headed, but it's not over. But it's merely a symptom. That's what we we don't see. It's merely a symptom of the overall problem of of uh what has reached almost a warlike condition between at least a certain segment of the population and the government in their attitude and philosophy. We know, we know now, not from me saying it or you or anybody else, we know from CNN, USA Today, the Republican Party official polls, the Democratic Party official polls, we know officially that 76% of the American people, the John Doe's and the Mary Rose, we know that 76%, that's more than three out of every four Americans, no longer, quote, trust or believe that their government is telling the truth to them when the government gives them their official story or report or the official government version on something, whether it be plane crashes or or uh uh wartime events or one thing or another, three out of four Americans no longer believe their own government when they when they get their official report. Now, that's dangerous for this reason. And by the way, officially that's the highest percentage since they've ever been keeping these pools, the highest percentage in American history of Americans who no longer believe or trust the government as to as to the government's being straight with them. It's dangerous because the very essence of our system, this wonderful self-correcting system, when it's allowed to function, the very essence of it is confidence, support, trust of the people in it, in the system. And that's where we've got a frightening problem coming. And and the politicians, unfortunately, are really so distant from the populace these days, so distant that they don't even see this, they don't realize the implications. And uh they don't view themselves as quote servants of the people, they view them as masters. I I use just little examples of how that system has just evolved and changed so dramatically in the last 25 or 30 years. It used to be, you did your business and and whatever, and then you ran for office and you had some background experience. You check, you how dare you go to any state, go to the federal congress, find out how many people have never done anything except from the moment they got out of school or whatever. Government staffer, then their government job here. They just moving up with the goal to be, quote, in that Congress or whatever politician. It's never been anything other than the intent to be 100% a government, uh government employee. And you know, there was another system that had virtually a similar system. We don't like to admit this. It was called the nomenklatura. You ever hear that phrase? Nomenklatura? The nomenklatura was simply the bureaucracy that ran Russia, the Soviet Union. And they they had it so tight and such great benefits and so much convinced that that they were special, that they just could never see the force for the trees when she finally all sank. We didn't. What they what what beat them? Was it a bomb? Was it troops marching in? They just sank of their own weight. They self-destructed. And that's what could happen here. Self-destruction by by a lack of confidence of the people, by too tight-knit a bureaucracy that absolutely believes it's it is a Brahmin caste, you know, of uh of uh people that are entitled to their own special schools and special this and special rights and special pensions and special high salaries. It used to be, I can remember when I first got into politics, crazy as this sounds, it used to be that if you were in government, you kept looking for that opening to get that better job on the outside. I'll guarantee you, you go to any state. The game now is to figure how to get from the outside to that inside of government. No longer are you fighting to get out into better jobs on the outside. Now you try to get in because that's where the good jobs are, the good pensions, all the guaranteed this and that. It's just a completely different system uh from what it functioned as for the first couple hundred years of our history, and it's a dangerous system unless we get it self-correcting. And it can't self-correct right now very well because anybody that raises the flag and says this is wrong, or I want to say this, they lock them up if they happen to be in Montana, or they drag them uh from another state if they speak out in a newspaper. They've demonstrated they have the ability to do this as government. And I represent a lot of these people in pure First Amendment cases. I may I may think they're nuts. I may think they're crazier than a kook. I may think those freemen are living in la la land, but they do have the right to speak out, raise hell, criticize, and when you suppress that and lock them up for that, you've destroyed effectively the one tool that makes, as I say, the heart, the engine that makes our system work that that self-correcting technique technique, you've destroyed it because no longer do the other eyes get it ideas get to come in and compete and match, and people say, well, I uh he may be right. You you just fit Pablum, and that's what our national media has become too often now. Just the Pablum feeders. You don't get you don't get the balanced picture, you don't get the other side, and those that dare to try to give the other side so frequently now are viewed simply as nuts or tabloid type or whatever. You're you're you're you're almost it's almost as if you you have this circle where unless you go along with a certain line, you know, you're not gonna get your story on the press, you're not gonna get your story told, you're not gonna get uh uh the balance treatment. You've got to be inside the circle, so to speak, of thought, idea, whatever. And that's scarier than Blaze's too, because uh, as I say, the the fundamental mechanism for change is instead of battling with fists and bullets and with our mouths, our ideas, our competing philosophies, our uh conflicting concepts. And it's it's now not only are we wanting to uh not allow any open conflict uh of any kind, but we want to uh eliminate the ability to have conflicting concepts, conflicting philosophies, conflicting ideas, uh things that would criticize or or condemn or disagree with with the Justice Department or with this party or or that. It it's a dangerous situation, and uh uh you know we we watched the nomenclatura sink of its own wait over in the there in Russia could happen here. I got a funny feeling that if it happens here, you might see a lot of the same pain that they're going through over there, which is uh trying to recreate a system, and uh some of the people on the top end up being on the bottom and pretty chaotic. Well, I I concluded my my latest book. After uh after a particularly depressing, distressing occurrence in a court on a matter involved in the Franklin thing, where one of the witnesses, one of the key witnesses, a young man who had been involved in this all of his life, wanted to tell the truth, but was told, if you talk, you know, you're going to prison for 20 years, just like we did to Alicia Owen. And things got to Alicia Owen now, she's in prison, been there for a long time. And they told the boy, if you you go ahead, you dare to speak out against the county attorney or whatever. You're going to prison. We'll charge with perjury and you've seen we can do it. So afterwards, he took the Fifth Amendment and just hung his head and said, if I say anything, they'll they'll lock me up for 20 years. So anyway, afterwards I went to the judge. I said, Judge, you know, I am so depressed. I love our system so much. I I just The Judge says, Well, he just kept saying over and over, I'm I'm just uh a man, I'm not a god. I'm just a man, I'm not a god, I'm just a man, I'm not a god. I can only I can only do with with with the things I'm given, the evidence, and he's right, I suppose. And I said, I said, everybody knows the truth. Everybody knows, every every official, every general. Judge, including you. He said, Yeah. And then he said something else. And he said, I can't change it, but I can help you understand. I said, what? He said, if you want to understand Franklin, if you want to understand Franklin cover up, if you want to understand what really happened, go read Billy Bud. He said, what? He said, if you want to understand, but you won't agree. You won't like, but at least you'll be able to understand. He said, go read Billy Bud. I said, who are the blazes of Billy Bud? He said, just go read it. You'll understand. Well, I walked out of there. I was mad, and that was the last I ever heard or thought of Billy Bud for months. And then I was sitting one night on a Saturday night, might have even had a Jack Daniels or two, and watching TV, going through the channels, and all at once I hit a movie. And I see my screen has one of those things where prints it out, you know, you can read whatever it is, and it has Billy Bud. Halted my TV and started looking. It was a great movie. And when it was finished, I understood why this little girl Alice Owen had to go to prison. Why uh uh twenty people that I identified in the book from from kids, uh children had to be killed, uh, why uh things are going on in Washington. I understood why the cover-up had to be. It all made sense. I didn't like it, just like the judge said, but I understood it. Billy Bud was written by a guy named Herman Melville, same guy that wrote Moby Dick. And Billy Budd is a simple story. Uh during the uh great days of the English or British Navy when they were riding high and mighty and having squabbles with different countries, and and uh Billy Bud is a young, beautiful uh eighteen or nineteen-year-old boy that's been impressed, you know, forced into the the service, and and despite that, he's he's a good sailor. And uh on this ship of all these tough guys, this this uh British uh military ship, Billy gets uh into a squabble with with uh a guy who is absolutely the most vile creature on earth at the time he had to be, who was uh the second in command of the ship or whatever. And through a kind of an accident or incident, he tries to do something to Billy and something happens, and Billy swings, and that guy falls, hits his head, and dies. Okay, so Billy now, this this innocent young kid basically, has uh uh allegedly killed the guy, so they have to have a court martial to check it out. They go through the court-martial one after the other, and every one of the officers is all in agreement, including the captain. That Billy is truly, just like some of my kids in Franklin, as innocent as the driven snow, telling the absolute truth, a victim of circumstance is probably the only good person, and this other guy is this the second in command is the most vile creature on earth. So Billy should be declared innocent. And then is they're ready to solve the problem, declare him innocent, in other words, enforce justice. The issue is what the movie's all about. Slowly but surely, slowly but surely, the officers go through this cycle and they understand that, yeah, but you see, if we say he's innocent, then that's gonna break down the system, our system of control, our system of of uh absolute total management that we have to have on a ship for a captain to know that there won't be a mutiny, that the sailors, no matter what, whether they agree or disagree, will always do what we say. And so when all this is done and said, each one of them, knowing it's wrong, knowing that it's absolutely evil, they decide they have to find him guilty and take him out and hang him on the deck to save the system, to protect themselves and their positions for the future, their captains and their officers' positions, and so that never, never will the system falter when it becomes really important, let's say a war with another ship or or another country or whatever. Anyway, the essence of Billy Bud is that evil has to sometimes triumph in overall, other words, to maintain the overall system, and we hope, we hope the system itself is good. We hope the system is good, and yeah, it has to be some sacrifices along the way. And my question in the book what happens? What happens when the system itself becomes so corrupt that all it's existing for is its own continued existence and the ability and right to keep going on corruptly? And I guess that's where I think we are now. Has our system become too tainted where to where it cares more about preserving itself and is willing to violate the Constitution, violate the rules, violate his plain fundamental moral principles, has it become so tainted in its various key institutions, that uh that uh I don't know what.

SPEAKER_15 1:55:36

Those are berries.

SPEAKER_10 1:55:39

Some of the remnants of cartoons that used to run the berries, well, particularly on Wall World Herald on me during my heyday his work, and I I don't know how valid it is. I do know I have my own personal experience that makes me think sympathetically for his work because every place where I supposedly, as Mr. Mays here knows, was running ahead big time and ended up losing big was in the places where they had the uh machines. You know, I'm talking about the electronic voting. The other places stayed like they were supposed to. Follow. Right there. So and then later when we tried to get information, we found out even the officials have no idea what's going on because it's all done by private contract. And so they couldn't give us any information. And uh when we tried to go to check on going to court, you had to prove, you had to have something to prove first before you get in the courtroom, you follow. So it's a catch 22, but I see problems coming there.

SPEAKER_15 1:56:44

As to uh whether I yeah, that to me I'll never know. Anybody want to make you know?