F r i e n d s
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       E n e m i e s


05/24/01

Friends:

Here's some important information from the Institute for Historical Review. It deserves a wide circulation.

Kevin Alfred Strom

===begin essay by Mark Weber===

A Response to Recent Spotlight Attacks

By Mark Weber, Director, Institute for Historical Review [email protected]

April 3, 2001

Since late December, The Spotlight -- the weekly paper of Liberty Lobby -- has been publishing, in nearly every issue, a series of articles attacking me, Greg Raven, Ted O'Keefe, Bill Hulsy and others associated with the Institute for Historical Review (IHR).

Many of these articles appear under the heading "Spotlight on Mark Weber," and several are supposedly based on "inside information" provided by my wife, Priscilla Gray Weber. Not coincidentally, she and I are in the middle of a contentious divorce.

I dislike reading, much less responding, to such vicious and untrue attacks. Normally I ignore such rubbish, believing that to respond is generally a waste of time. But this recent series has been so relentless and strident that it calls for a response.

First of all, there is nothing really novel about these attacks. They are new only in their intensity and virulence, not their essence. Since late 1993, Willis Carto, the man who controls The Spotlight and Liberty Lobby, has been using the paper to attack the IHR, telling readers that I, together with other evil "conspirators," "thugs," "crooks," and "criminals," have subverted and destroyed the IHR by turning it over to control by the CIA, the Israeli Mossad or the Church of Scientology, or combinations of all three. (For much more on all this, see the on-line "Willis A. Carto Information Site," http://homepage.mac.com/lsf/ , or "Willis Carto's Hidden Record," a booklet available from the IHR.)

One recent issue, for example (Jan. 29), cited "explosive" inside information to announce that I am a secret "friend" and a "buddy" of Irv Rubin, head of the "Jewish Defense League," the terrorist outfit that, over the years, had repeatedly harassed the IHR. Another recent issue (Feb. 12) suggests that, even at the age of 19, I was operating as an undercover CIA agent in West Africa, and that my teaching job at a secondary school in Ghana was a "cover story." In the "Spotlight on Mark Weber" series, my name appears weekly in block letters under an illustration. These have included photographs or drawings of, variously, a rat, a weasel, a snake, a toilet bowl, a cockroach, and a devil.

Entirely typical of The Spotlight's technique is an item on the front-page of the January 22 issue, which encouraged readers to telephone Harvey Taylor and Jack Riner, "two sincere patriots [who] have been unwitting pawns in the conspiracy to destroy Liberty Lobby and The Spotlight." Taylor and Riner are long-time IHR supporters and members of the Board of Directors of the IHR's parent corporation. Readers were told that "Taylor and Riner have been manipulated by Mark Weber and his CIA handler, Andrew Allen." The paper gave their private home telephone numbers. More than 30 persons called Taylor, one of them to threaten his wife. (Riner was away from home during this period.)

Taylor spoke with a number of the callers, explaining that it is Carto and The Spotlight who have been lying. He mentioned, for example, that Carto had forged fraudulent corporate documents to enable him to embezzle millions of dollars from the IHR.

The very next week (Jan. 29), an "Important Notice," also on the front page, told readers that Taylor and Riner are not really "sincere patriots" after all. "The Spotlight has learned," it said, that Taylor had been "a willing player in the conspiracy even before it surfaced," and had been acting as a "double agent, reporting back to Mark Weber and his handlers." Moreover, "there is also new evidence" that "Taylor twice committed perjury." Readers were also promised "additional evidence of Taylor's duplicitous double-dealing."

All this is pure Carto: brazenly violating the privacy of a "sincere patriot" by prominently publishing his home telephone number as an open invitation to harassment, and then, when this apparent attempt at intimidation backfires, denouncing the victim as a newly-exposed "double agent."

What's behind Carto's campaign?

In 1993 the IHR and its parent corporation, LSF, terminated its relationship with Willis Carto and his wife, Elisabeth, after information had come to light showing that they had been diverting money from the IHR. Our lawsuit to recover the diverted funds came to trial in November 1996 in California Superior Court in San Diego county. After considering voluminous evidence, including witness-stand testimony by the Cartos and many hundreds of pages of documents, Judge Runston G. Maino concluded that the Cartos, together with Liberty Lobby and several associates, had improperly diverted $6.43 million from IHR/LSF. He ordered the defendants to pay back this amount, plus several years' interest. True to form, The Spotlight has repeatedly vilified Maino, calling him, for example (Dec. 31, 2000), an "obviously biased, confused and vindictive judge" who "contemptuously flouted the clear law and facts." What readers are not told is that it was Willis Carto who decided to entrust his own fate, and that of Liberty Lobby, to this "obviously biased" man. At the outset of the 1996 trial, Carto decided to forego a jury, and instead have Judge Maino decide the case on his own.

Winning the judgment against the Cartos and Liberty Lobby was one thing; enforcing it has proven quite another.

Over the years we made numerous efforts to resolve the destructive Carto-IHR dispute. In 1999 we concluded an agreement with Carto and Liberty Lobby that should have ended the seemingly interminable name-calling and legal wrangling. Unfortunately, but not entirely unexpectedly, Carto and Liberty Lobby soon broke the agreement. They're now liable for the entire amount of the 1996 judgment, plus years of accumulated interest -- altogether now more than $12 million. And that's why we're back in court.

Meanwhile, my strife-ridden six-year marriage was coming to an end. After I filed for divorce in September 2000, my soon-to-be ex-wife, Priscilla, repeatedly vowed to hurt me, my colleagues and my friends. To make good on this pledge, she turned for help to both Willis Carto and the Anti-Defamation League, the powerful Jewish organization that over the years has fiercely attacked me and the IHR (for example, on the ADL web site). In December she met for lunch with two ADL officials: Joyce Greenspan, the head of the ADL's local, Orange County office, and a woman from the ADL office in Los Angeles.

But while the ADL did not offer any money, Carto proved more forthcoming.

Working together with him, she provided "inside information" that Carto used to produce a series of false and malicious Spotlight articles. In return (as Priscilla has acknowledged to me and others), Carto paid, or arranged to have paid, $3,000 to her divorce attorney. The Cartos also gave her a few gifts, including a computer printer. As Priscilla has also told me and others, Carto embellished and twisted even what she "revealed," so that the Spotlight articles supposedly based on her "candid interview" are doubly unreliable.

For more than seven years, Willis Carto and Liberty Lobby have tried to destroy the IHR through the courts, initiating a dozen lawsuits, including three against me personally. Fighting off these attacks forced us for years to divert precious money and time from productive work. But now, having failed in the courts, Carto is limited to hurling abuse in the pages of his weekly tabloid.

While we fully expect the Spotlight smears to continue with undiminished ferocity, their actual impact is ever more negligible. We are pleased, for example, that not a single prominent or reputable person, and no one who has independently looked into the matter, endorses The Spotlight claims. Personally I have been gratified by the many calls and letters from friends and supporters around the country who contacted me to express their sympathy and solidarity, and to voice their indignation at Carto's sordid campaign.

With the Carto threat now largely behind us, we can devote ever more time and resources to productive work. Building on last year's highly successful 13th IHR Conference, and with a steadily growing staff, we are publishing more books and putting out more tapes. Our flagship Journal of Historical Review is getting back on schedule, with Ted O'Keefe as the new (and returned) editor. We are working ever more closely and productively with scholars, journalists, writers and activists around the globe. Our enemies are understandably enraged that the IHR is generating unparalleled and increasingly respectful media attention, both in the US and abroad, most recently in connection with our role in organizing the banned "Revisionism and Zionism" conference in Beirut.

In all this, the Spotlight campaign, however personally aggravating it might be, is now merely a vexatious irritant. It cannot deter us from making the IHR an ever more effective voice for historical awareness.

========end Weber essay, begin article from the Spotlight==========

"Gun for Hire," The Spotlight (Liberty Lobby) -- May 18, 2001

Folks familiar with the downfall of the once-respected Institute for Historical Review (IHR), taken over in 1994 by a profit-mad gang of lawyers and parasites, may think of Greg Raven as merely a common gunsel and thug. But this would be wrong. He's more-or less-as the case may be.

It now turns out that Raven's denials that he is a paid agent of the Church of Scientology may be true. In fact, it may be true that no real Church of Scientology exists.

It has come to light that this organization is actually owned by a group of lawyers, most of whom are not even Scientologists!

The record shows that Scientology, its names, trademarks, copyrights, logos - even including "LRH," the initials of its founder- L. Ron Hubbard- are the property of a separate corporation, Religious Technology Center, Inc. (RTC). And RTC is completely separate from Scientology. It receives fees, commissions and payments every time that the sect's names appear in any of the printed material it puts out.

RTC is hidden in a corporate maze. It lists its official address in care of a little professional mail drop at 419 Larchmont Avenue in Los Angeles called Village Mail Call.

And yet this obscure corporation owns the multi-million dollar Scientology empire! How many veteran followers of L. Ron Hubbard know this? The board of directors of RTC is composed of lawyers for the most part, few if any of whom are Scientologists. One of these is Lawrence E. Heller, a longtime Scientology lawyer.

Significantly, Heller was also the lawyer for Mel Mermelstein, the "holocaust survivor" who sued the IHR and Liberty Lobby for millions of dollars in 1991. In the courtroom, Mermelstein's performance was so poor that the judge dismissed his suit before the trial. At this, Heller lost his mind and physically attacked Liberty Lobby's attorney, Mark Lane, who had (easily) made Mermelstein look like a fool.

The entire entertaining and revealing story is covered in Michael Collins Piper's book, Best Witness.*

Here is the legal notice and Heller & Co. requires be printed in every publication issued by Scientology: It is reprinted from International Scientology News magazine issue No. 16, released in May, 2001 by Church of Scientology International, 6331 Hollywood Blvd., Suite 801, Los Angeles, CA 90028-6300. It is printed on page 47 at the bottom in extremely light 4-point type. This message appears on all official "Scientology" publications. It proves that Scientology is owned by Religious Technology Center, Inc.

All Rights Reserved. Grateful acknowledgment is made to Ron Hubbard Library for permission to reproduce selections from the copyrighted works of L. Ron Hubbard. SCIENTOLOGY, the new FLAG logo, Flag Service Organization, corporate symbol, SCIENTOLOGY symbol, GOLDEN AGE OF TECH symbol, OT, FLAG, FREEWINDS, HUBBARD, LRH, LRH DEVICE, SMI corporate symbol, I HELP logo, CLEARSOUND logo, CLEARSOUND, E-METER, STANDARD TECH, STUDENT HAT, MARK SUPER VI/VII E-METER configuration, MARK SUPER VII QUANTIUM, NED, SAINT HILL, SHSBC, FREEWINDS logo, MARK SUPER VII QUANTIUM logo, Religious Technology Center symbol, DIANETICS, THE BRIDGE, Lion symbol, SUPER POWER, FSSO symbol, "RON" signature, CSI corporate symbol, OT symbol, Solo Auditor symbol, FSO corporate symbol, Sea Organization symbol and Sea Organization coat of arms are trademarks and service marks owned by Religious Technology Center and are used with its permission. SCIENTOLOGIST is a collective membership mark designating members of the affiliated churches and missions of Scientology. Services relating to Scientology religious philosophy are delivered throughout the world exclusively by licensees of the Church of Scientology International with the permission of Religious Technology Center, holder of the SCIENTOLOGY and DIANETICS trademarks.

Heller and the others who sit on the board of directors of RTC are all known to be closed to the notorious Anti-Defamation League (ADL) which is, in turn, a division of the Mossad, Israel's powerful and ruthless intelligence agency. No one has ever doubted that the ADL is an illegal organization which operates inside the U.S. in open and flagrant violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

But no American politician or newspaper will question the bona fides of the ADL because all are terrified of its power. The ADL-with some 2000 offices around the country-can rub out any political ambition very easily because it can control every "mainstream" newspaper through its control over the advertising that makes a newspaper profitable.

Raven has never been questioned as to his relationship to Heller and the other lawyers who control the RTC and through it, Scientology. Is Raven paid for his intelligence work as was Roy Bullock, the famed ADL spy who narrowly escaped jail? (Bullock was first unmasked as an ADL spy by this newspaper in 1986.)

To pay Bullock, the ADL sent funds to a Los Angeles lawyer, Bruce Hochman, who in turn paid Bullock out of his office account. This eliminated a paper trail and invoked the doctrine held sacred by lawyers, the "attorney-client privilege." This covert means of financing Bullock made it possible for Bullock to deny that he was paid by the ADL.**

Is this how Raven is paid by Heller or one of his associates? Does the ADL send "fees" to Heller from which Heller pays Raven? And what connection exists between Heller and fellow Los Angeles lawyer Bruce Hochman? In any event, it is unmistakable that Heller and crew control Scientology through their RTC. The evidence indicates that they also control and manipulate Greg Raven and the IHR.

* Best Witness is available at $10 from Liberty Library, 300 Independence Ave., SE, Washington, DC 20003.

* The bizarre story of Roy Bullock, the ADL's longtime top undercover informant, is told in The Garbage Man, available at $10 from Liberty Library, 300 Independence Ave., SE, Washington, DC 20003.

Copyright 2001 Liberty Lobby Inc. All rights reserved. To subscribe to The SPOTLIGHT Newspaper, call 1-800-522-6292. www.spotlight.com

--------end Spotlight article, begin essay by Ted O'Keefe-------

Comment by Ted O'Keefe:

The Spotlight has claimed for years that the Institute for Historical Review has been controlled by the CIA, the Mossad, the Church of Scientology, etc., without ever supplying the least evidence for its assertions. Now, as usual at the instance of its splenetic publisher, Willis Carto, the paper wants to show that the Church of Scientology is controlled by the Mossad.

If reliance on a Jewish lawyer constitutes Mossad control, Spotlight readers may do well to tremble for the Spotlight, and the Liberty "Lobby" which issues it, since the mighty influence of Mark Lane in LL (read: Willis Carto's) counsels is undisputed.

The precise relationship between the Church of Scientology and the Religious Technology Center is not made clear by the (admittedly!) public announcement quoted in the Spotlight story [above]. As one who worked under Carto for nearly eight years, I question whether the lines of responsibility and control there could be any murkier than in any of Carto's numerous operations over the years.

In any case, once again Carto, who is beginning to sound more and like his attorney's former client, the late Jim Jones, provides zero evidence for his contention that the IHR is under some hostile outside control. Nor do any of the major revisionist figures associated with the IHR -- Arthur Butz, Robert Faurisson, Ernst Zuendel, Germar Rudolf, et al. -- buy that argument.

I'm pained to see that the Spotlight continues to undermine Americans' right to keep and to bear arms by whining about its publisher, Willis Carto's, comeuppance on October 16, 1993, on IHR's premises, at the hands of loyal IHR employees. I will merely remind you that, earlier, Carto had removed from the IHR assets now put at over $12 million. To regain control of the IHR (after its board had dismissed him) and to safeguard the millions he had siphoned off from it, Carto hired three goons -- one of them black -- off the streets of San Diego; assembled an arsenal of tree branches, clubs, and the like; lured the male employees of IHR out of its offices on a ruse; and attempted to hold two women employees against their will. After we returned, and fought it out with Carto and his thugs for five minutes or so -- Greg Raven put a stop to the melee by drawing a 9 mm pistol, preventing any further injury (Mark Weber was on his back being pummeled in the face by Carto's 250 pound [populist?] Negro hireling). (Not to say that Willis Carto had gone soft on the race question: after he and his wife were led away in handcuffs by the police, we discovered a projected article for the revamped Journal of Historical Review entitled, succinctly, "Eisenhower -- 1/4 Nigger!") This incident, by the way, Carto calls a "coup" -- by IHR's employees.

The immediate moral, perhaps: Don't bring a tree branch to a gun fight.

The larger issue: the intellectual and moral integrity, and viability, of historical revisionism (on the very cutting edge of world efforts to counter and expose the Jewish propaganda), on the one hand, versus the rule or ruin tactics of a "populist" legacy hunter, autodidact, and curmudgeon who has achieved nothing of substance (compared to the resources he has tied up) throughout his career, and who now, nearly 76 years old, seems to have room for little else to manufacture smears of his revisionist and racialist rivals for the edification of the credulous.

The amount Carto owes IHR -- over $12 million from a bequest to the Institute which he collected and diverted while acting as IHR's agent -- is not in dispute between him and IHR. He continues to claim (against all court rulings) that he has retained to right to do with the missing millions as he sees fit, presumably (as he told then IHR director Tom Marcellus) to advance unspecified "good causes."

Who of Carto's friends, or of activists and theorists and supporters neutral in our dispute, has ever asked him what use he's made out of that windfall? Where has the money gone? Where is the accountability?

Nothing Marc Rich ever did has cost our people, in this time, what the loss of these assets -- and the frittering away, if not defalcation, of unknown other millions over the past several decades -- has meant and will mean to our struggling efforts to supply a responsible and effective voice for research and publicity on the questions that matter.

Ted O'Keefe

[email protected]

================end O'Keefe essay==================
--

Kevin Alfred Strom.

News, links, and pictures: http://www.kevin-strom.com

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