textfiles-politics/pre-src-xml/sc013.xml

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      <p>Skolnick COMMENTARY #013
========================</p>
      <p>[CfD Editor -- I neither necessarily believe nor disbelieve
either all or portions of the following.]</p>
      <p>[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.]</p>
      <p>Hi! Sherman Skolnick, Citizens' Committee to Clean Up the Courts,
9800 South Oglesby.</p>
      <p>The phone company reserves the right to sabotage your phones if
you are a political activist.</p>
      <p>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.</p>
      <p>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 25000 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.</p>
      <p>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.</p>
      <p>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.</p>
      <p>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:</p>
      <p>1) They monitor and sabotage the phones of political activists.</p>
      <p>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.</p>
      <p>3) The IRS unlawfully spies on first class mail, with the
connivance of postal authorities.</p>
      <p>4) Top IRS officials in the Chicago area are secret partners in
vending machine companies owned by the mafia in the south
suburbs.</p>
      <p>5) According to an unpublicized court suit, the IRS demanded the
wife divorce a husband for publicly criticizing the IRS.</p>
      <p>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*.)</p>
      <p>In Chicago, see us on cable t.v. channel 21, 9 pm most Monday
evenings.</p>
      <p>Play it again: Murdered Reporters. (312) 731-1505.</p>
      <p>New message Thursday; we change it several times a week.</p>
      <p>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.

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