

Skolnick COMMENTARY #013
========================

[CfD Editor -- I neither necessarily believe nor disbelieve 
either all or portions of the following.]

[The following is a transcript of a recorded phone message put 
out by a group in Chicago called "Citizens' Committee to Clean Up 
the Courts." (312) 731-1100 and (312) 731-1505.]

Hi! Sherman Skolnick, Citizens' Committee to Clean Up the Courts, 
9800 South Oglesby.

The phone company reserves the right to sabotage your phones if 
you are a political activist.

The background: In the 1960s and 1970s, like other phone 
companies nationwide, Illinois Bell Telephone Company assisted 
the espionage agencies in monitoring and sabotaging the phones of 
civil rights advocates, anti-war activists, trade unionists and 
such. Some local police units had or have units called "red 
squads" on the presumption that political activists are 
subversive. "Red squad" agents had free access to phone company 
facilities to monitor phones, to obtain records of phone calls, 
and to screw up phone lines so calls couldn't go through -- such 
as right before or during civil rights protest events.

In 1969 there was a boycott in Chicago by blacks, directed 
against banks who refused them mortgages and took discriminatory 
and highly inflated contract payments instead. The protest was by 
the Southside Contract Buyers League, some 25,000 black 
homeowners. At a key point in the boycott, all the phones were 
blanked out in the areas where the Southside Contract Buyers 
League members lived. Blacks who weren't even members, but lived 
*near* members, also had *their* phones cut off.

Thereafter, a class action lawsuit was being planned against 
Illinois Bell Telephone for sabotage and racial discrimination in 
services. The president and the vice-president of the black 
homeowners group met with phone company officials in the home of 
our [Citizen's Committee to Clean Up the Courts] chairman. The 
phone company offered a "gift" of a half-million dollars in 
"hush" money. The meeting blew up, however, when our chairman 
said he was going public with the phone company's attempted 
bribery.

Chicago alderman Ed Vyrdolak headed a committee supposedly 
investigating phone company complicity in wire-tapping. City 
Council hearings were scrapped, however, after Illinois Bell 
Telephone Company reportedly gave "Fast Eddy's" [i.e. Vyrdolak] 
law firm a bribe of almost $1 million.

By 1982, the FBI and the Chicago police entered into a federal 
court consent decree that they would cease doing dirty tricks 
against political activists and others in this federal district. 
Thereafter, the IRS [Internal Revenue Service] intelligence, 
acting similar to CIA, took over wire-tapping and spying in this 
district, the result of a loophole in the consent decree. The IRS 
gestapo does a number of acts having nothing to do with tax 
collecting:

1) They monitor and sabotage the phones of political activists.

2) As admitted offhand during a federal court hearing, the IRS 
keeps dossiers on federal judges here for blackmail and 
extortion. A federal judge who does not rule in favor of the IRS 
can expect himself and his family to be wrecked.

3) The IRS unlawfully spies on first class mail, with the 
connivance of postal authorities.

4) Top IRS officials in the Chicago area are secret partners in 
vending machine companies owned by the mafia in the south 
suburbs.

5) According to an unpublicized court suit, the IRS demanded the 
wife divorce a husband for publicly criticizing the IRS.


Does the phone company sabotage these [Citizen's Committee's 
phone] lines? You're darn right. In November of '93, Illinois 
Bell -- now called Ameritech -- resumed a 20-year-long sabotage 
campaign against these recorded commentaries. (By the way, the 
phone company security department is a *rotten joke*.)

In Chicago, see us on cable t.v. channel 21, 9 pm most Monday 
evenings.

Play it again: Murdered Reporters. (312) 731-1505.

New message Thursday; we change it several times a week.

Donations appreciated. Citizen's Committee to Clean Up the 
Courts, 9800 South Oglesby, Chicago, [Illinois] 60617. For the 
latest on courts, banks, espionage agencies, political 
assassinations, and the news media.



