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TRAFICANT SPEAKS TO AFP
AFP honored by congressman with first print interview since release from federal prison
By Peter Papaheraklis
We’re glad to be able to sit down with you and let you say what you have to say. Our readers have been strong supporters of yours for a long time, going back to the days of the old Spotlight newspaper.
Pete, let me ask you something: Was John Wayne a subscriber to The Spotlight?
Yes, he was.
That’s interesting, because I get a lot of mail that talks to me about John Wayne. They see me on television and they say that I act like John Wayne. Honest to God, they say that. Someone mentioned to me that he was a subscriber to the old Spotlight.
Well, I always used to look at The Spotlight when I was in Congress. I always looked at it, every week. There were things in there that I checked out, and I know that it was very controversial and I know that the newspaper had a bent—let’s be honest—towards Israel, and I really don’t have a problem towards Israel . . . or the Jewish People. My problem is with the Israeli lobby, with the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee.
The Israeli lobby has a stranglehold over government. I’ve already told you that. I’ve said it on national television. So I’ve been labeled an anti-Semite and all that, and I expected it. But that’s where I am, you know, in this interview now, and I want you to also know before starting out that you are the only print media that I’ve interviewed with.
Another of our famous readers was the late Col. L. Fletcher Prouty who was portrayed by Donald Sutherland as “Man X” in Oliver Stone’s famous film, JFK.
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I give Oliver Stone a lot of credit. He took [the criticism] they gave him and he wasn’t afraid to put his feelings out there, and the only thing he could deduce is that, in order for anybody to cover up the Kennedy assassination he had to be so powerful that it could only be one entity and that would be the United States government, so at least he had the courage to do that.
And if there is an attack on Israel? . . .
If Israel is attacked, I’d want to support Israel. But quite frankly, we have been so one sided over there. We’ve imported the violence and we’ve imported the hatred from everybody in opposition to Israel. They see us as the protector [of Israel] without objectivity.
But more than anything, I think the Israeli lobby has a stranglehold on the United States. I mean, they can’t pass gas without asking where to do it. Now they can deny it all, call me a “kook” and everything they want to, but I’ve been through it. I’ve seen the other side of the one-eyed jack and it’s a real problem. If it’s not resolved, America will implode. America will implode. It’s a matter of time.
Just like the old Soviet Union.
And you can see what’s happening now: the machinations around the currency and the economic system and China’s foothold: their economic tentacles on America. So we’ve got some real problems and I expect to be really blackballed further by giving you this exclusive interview, so go ahead and hurt me.
You’ve been on five national television broadcasts since you’ve come home from prison and your appearances have caused quite a stir.
I’ve been out of prison about 35 days and I didn’t realize it, come to think of it, of how astounded I was that I always got so much mail in prison. People wrote me for seven years saying, “We miss you. We miss your one minute speeches. We miss your lively comments. We miss your questioning of things that no one else questions” and I didn’t realize how many people missed me.
And when I came home I was surprised by the massive turnout here. People lined up one hour before the place opened. You see, I wasn’t really going to attend. I didn’t want to. I had just gotten into town and I didn’t want that type of pressure, if you will.
I was very bitter, very upset and I didn’t want to manifest some of that in front of an audience that would say, “My God. Look at this guy. Prison changes a man.”
I’m getting a lot of mail from around the country. I’ve started to wonder why all these national television programs had me on as a guest. They’ve told me that I’m an interesting guest and they are all in it for the ratings. But some of the things that I’ve said on television have been quite a revelation and there are some entities that are quite upset with that and they are trying to counter and reduce the impact of some of the words I’ve used and I’m not so sure it’s worked in their favor. I’m not so sure that’s been in their benefit, since they’ve stirred the pot a bit and when you stir the pot, it stinks.
But what amazed me the most is the national response that I got all over the country. Every state. People are writing to me saying, “You are not just refreshing, you’re telling something, you’re telling the truth.” They are saying, “It’s evident what has happened. We don’t hate Israel either, but we know there’s something wrong that they have a tremendous foothold, a stranglehold on the government. There’s no doubt about it now.”
I guess the statements that I made that “We are involved in wars that we have little or no interest in” and that “our kids are coming home in body bags” and that “Our country is bankrupt over these wars” and that “There’s no end in sight,” are hitting home.
Now you see an expansion in Afghanistan. My God, if the American people knew that there are more contractors than soldiers involved in the Middle East, then they would really panic.
Because we’ve got what—about 280,000 soldiers, in the whole mess, but if you look at the contractors, there’s something like 230,000 contractors and many are making more money than our soldiers.
And they are there to provide security, to cook the food. If the American people knew what the Hell we are involved in here. . . . They’re just talking about the troops. No one is talking about these contractors.
The point I’m making is that they are not considered part of our troop force. They’re our contract force. The American people don’t know what we have half a million plus people over there and we are embroiled in something that may last years and years. We’re embroiled in 2009 Vietnam.
We’ve now been there almost as long as we were in Vietnam . . .
And now there’s a religious bent to it that is fanatical. Let’s tell it like it is. And to quote a president that made much sense—GeorgeWashington: “Beware of foreign entanglements.”
President Washington said that in his Farewell Address to the American people. Most politicians today don’t even know about the Farewell Address.
That was the advice of the first president of the United States, and how right he was. And look at Jefferson: “Beware of the appointment of federal judges for lifetime terms because they can take the Constitution and mold it like clay in their hands.”
God bless juries. Problem today is: The Justice Department controls the juries and they spoil the jury pool and the jury selection process.
Isn’t that what happened with the Justice Department in your own case?
No doubt. No question. But you know what? They are going to pay. There are too many people now coming forward admitting they were pressured to lie. And one of the jurors was excused the day before because they knew he was definitely going to vote “not guilty.”
He said, “They wanted to get me off the jury.” He prepared an affidavit to that effect. The prosecutor told her, “This man is a [pro-Traficant] juror,” and they got rid of him. When the former juror heard the decision, he said, he almost fell out of his car, when he heard that the jury convicted me.
And the other juror “Juror Number Eight” said one of the jury women confided in him that she had problem with the IRS and that it was sort of worked out with the understanding that they would try to place her as a juror in the Traficant trial. She was my most adamant opponent on the jury. It happened to be a Jewish woman.
I had no opportunity to cross-examine any agent who worked on the case against me. There was a six year investigation with over 200 FBI agents involved. They spent $15 million dollars investigating me. All of that time terrorists were aiming at the Twin Towers in New York, but the government’s eyes were on me. The Justice Department was focusing on me.
They couldn’t forget the fact that back in 1983 I was the only American who ever beat the Justice Department, acting as his own attorney, in a
RICO case. They couldn’t live with that.
[A RICO case is a federal trial involving the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt
Organizations act, often applied in organized crime and corporate white collar criminal cases. Falsely accused of having accepted bribery money from organized crime interests, Traficant acted as his own defense attorney in the earlier case and was acquitted by the jury, much to the dismay of the Justice Department, which continued to target Traficant. See AFP correspondent Michael Collins Piper’s book, Target: Traficant, for the details.—Ed.]
They offered one regional director from the IRS as a witness in my earlier trial. He said, in court, that “I know nothing about this case. I just draw up the tax forms.”
The fingerprint “expert” that they offered up was only three weeks on the job, but he had to answer questions about the report.
In the daily press here in Ohio [during the 2002 trial] they said that the FBI and the Justice Department had all this fingerprint evidence against Traficant. But when this so-called expert testified in court, I asked him, “How many, if any, of my fingerprints appeared on any of these documents that are being used against me”” and he said, “None.”
I said, “Not one?”
There was an objection from the prosecutors and it was sustained [approved] by the judge. I said, “How many latent prints of mine were there?” and he said, “None,” and I asked “How many partial prints were there that could possibly have been mine?” and he said, “None,” and I asked how many prints were there that could have been the prints of somebody else but could have been confused with mine and he said “None.”
So this is the government’s Achilles Heel. And I want the readers of American Free Press to know it, since the mainstream media is never going to explain it. I said, “Then certainly you took the audio and video tapes, is that correct, sir?” And then I saw the prosecutor’s head drop. The witness said, “No.” And I asked, “Well, who took those audio and video tapes?” He said, “No one took those tapes. There were none.”
I asked him, “Who told you that there were no audio or video tapes made of me by the FBI during a six-year-long investigation?” He said, “The assistant prosecutor.” He said he couldn’t remember who it was. I asked the witness to point to the person in question and describe what he was wearing, and he did so.
Now I had this retired secret service man acting as an investigator for me in my defense (he went back to the Carter years, having protected Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush) and he said that he knew that I was innocent, that I was railroaded, when the government admitted in court that they had no audio or video tapes to use against me after they had conducted a six-year-long investigation of me.
He said that the Secret Service could never have gotten an indictment against me in a criminal case. It would have been a “must” to get some sort of memorialized statement made by me in an audio or video tape.
[And, of course, the FBI was tapping my phone and recording my conversations and they had people coming up and talking to me who were wired.]
What I—JimTraficant—need right now is some whistle-blower in the Justice Department to come out and admit that, yes, the Justice Department destroyed all of those tapes. Why did they do this? Because those tapes were exculpatory for me. They would prove that the Justice Department had me “bugged” for six years and they couldn’t get any evidence against me: not one incident of wrongdoing. I have a number of affidavits here from people who came to court to testify on my behalf, but the judge excused the jury from hearing their testimony. These were people who testified under penalty of perjury, if they were found to be lying [which they weren’t] and the judge did not allow their testimony to be heard by the jury.
They testified to the effect that a number of key witnesses against me had admitted that they lied on behalf of the government to incriminate me in order to avoid being indicted and sent to prison themselves. Juror Number Eight himself said that if he had just known about the pressure the government put on Richard Detore alone that he would have fought to the end to avoid convicting me.
However, they have a new rule in Ohio. If you have a Cleveland judge you have a Cleveland jury. I ended up with a Cleveland judge, Lesley Wells, who had personal animosity toward me since I didn’t support her when she ran for the Supreme Court before she was appointed to a federal judgeship. Personally, I had heard she some funny dealings up there. And I didn’t support too many judges, frankly.
They had news reports that JimTraficant—a sitting congressman—had conspired to have one of the potential witnesses in the case murdered. The FBI told this woman that the only way she could protect herself was to go public. This is how they tainted the potential jury pool in the Cleveland area: that is, putting out these stories such as this one that I was plotting to murder this woman. They wouldn’t try me before a jury pool taken from my own congressional district. No, they transferred the case to Cleveland.
So the people in Cleveland didn’t know me. They only knew me from what they read about me in these negative newspaper reports. When you’re the number one target of AIPAC, you’re not going to have any newspaper writing anything good about you.
However, American Free Press has been very strong in telling what they feel is the truth, with a strong bent going after Israel for many things that they believe are wrong. And quite frankly, many of the things that American Free Press has done have been very truthful and I know that you have suffered for it.
So you had this woman brought before the grand jury to testify against me, and they tried to pressure her to say things that weren’t true, and she realized what they did and she apologized to me and my wife. But it was all over by then. However, the jury pool was already poisoned by the stories in the media: they said I was a Mafioso and that I was going to have this woman murdered. Well, they never made any charges there, since it was all a lie.
There was another fellow that I ran into in a restaurant and he said, “I apologize, Jim. I was going through a divorce and I lost everything. So I lied [against you]. My attorney told me to tell the government what they wanted to hear and get it over with and I did it and I can’t live with it. It bothers me. I’m sorry. You’ve been a good man, a friend.”
He has put together an affidavit on my behalf. He also came to court on my behalf, but the judge didn’t allow his testimony to go before the court.
There was another instance where there were all these new stories about some crime I had supposedly committed but since the supposed witness refused to tell lies against me, there were no charges brought.
Then there was this instance with this Nigerian man, Nnamdi J. Okolo, who was an owner of a car-leasing agency in Northern Virginia, and he said his life was ruined because he wouldn’t perjure himself against me for the U.S. government. They wanted him to say that he kicked back money to me and to Richard Detore. They wanted him to tell lies about Detore in order to pressure Detore to tell lies to be used to prosecute me.
The Nigerian man, Mr. Okolo, told me, when I ran into him at Allenwood prison [where I was first incarcerated and where Mr. Okolo was later sent] that he didn’t know me from Adam, and that he would have been willing to lie against me, but he knew that Detore had two children just like him and that he couldn’t lie. He’s over in Nigeria today and he filed an affidavit with the Nigerian government explaining how the U.S. government tried to get him to lie.
Later an attorney contacted Mr. Okolo and told him that if he did not recant his charges against the U.S. government that his 79 year old parents would be deported from the United States. I feel sorry for that family. The last I heard was that the Catholic charities in Baltimore were looking into his parents’ case. Here’s a man—a Black immigrant from Africa—who showed courage and honor and his life was ruined by our government.
Then there’s the case of Richard Detore. Richard was pressured by the government to say that he saw me accept a cash bribe in my office in Washington from businessman John Cafaro. But he said, “I just won’t do it. Jim Traficant hasn’t done anything illegal with me. If he’s done something wrong, go ahead and get him, but I’m not going to lie about it.”
Richard Detore was a brilliant engineer and they needed a man of his quality to serve as a witness against me to get a conviction. So when he refused they said to him, “Okay, just say you were outside the office door and you heard the transaction.” He said, “I’m not going to do it.”
His attorney, who was a former assistant U.S. attorney [and still close to the government] told him: “Just tell the government what they want. They’re going to get Traficant.”
So finally Richard got a call from his attorney who told him, “Time’s up. You’re going to get indicted if you don’t go along with them.”
But Richard said, “I’m not going to lie.”
His attorney told him, “Richard, there’s no reward for honesty. You’re going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars defending yourself and you’re still going to end up in prison. They’re going to get Traficant. They want this guy.” But Richard said, “I’m not going to tell lies.”
And his attorney said, “I’m advising you to tell them what they want to hear. Look at it as a business decision.”
Well, when Richard was indicted (after he refused to lie about me) and then went to trial, he was acquitted in one hour. But they were successful in keeping his testimony out of my trial. So you had Detore and Okolo pressured to lie against me and both refused. And there were three other people who testified before the judge (out of the hearing of the jury) in my case who said that they were pressured to lie by the government.
And there were the false charges cast about by television news broadcasts that were never actually filed against me that involved people being pressured to lie. So that’s seven instances right here.
And there was no physical evidence against me [audio or video tapes, documents, fingerprints, etc]. If I were guilty of a crime, why did they have to force anybody to lie?
They later made the prosecutor, Craig Morford, the second highest post in the Justice Department. And they made Michael Chertoff, who headed the criminal division in the Justice Department in Washington (who supervised my prosecution), the head of Homeland Security. Attorney General John Ashcroft even came to Cleveland and gave awards to the team that convicted me. That’s how glad they were to get rid of Jim Traficant.
There was even talk that Morford was going to be appointed as U.S.Attorney General. But people from Virginia let it be known that they wanted to testify about Morford’s role in the Traficant case. This prosecutor suborned perjury, withheld evidence, and obstructed justice to get a conviction.
But he really didn’t convict me. The judge convicted me. She influenced that jury and withheld evidence. She did what she had to do.
Our country has to get at this powerful central government. We’ve got a massive government that the American people don’t even have an association with. They are subject to this government.
They thought they gave me a life sentence at my age. They didn’t think I would live through it. They put me in some rough prisons. I didn’t go to any camp, buddy. I ended up in a “medium-high” called “Gladiator School.” They wanted to medicate me, but I wouldn’t take it. They said I had a corkscrewed aorta, but I wouldn’t take it. So they sent me to the federal medical facility at Rochester, Minnesota.
I didn’t trust them giving me any medication. I didn’t trust the government at all. I was their number one target and the number one target of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). So when you put the Justice Department and AIPAC together, you have the most awesome, most powerful enemies in world history. I’m here. I’m still breathing, so far.
But if one whistle-blower comes forward to expose what they did, I’ll be worth millions and millions of dollars. And they are worried now, because they never thought I would come back. They figured people would have forgotten me.
Quite frankly, you can’t tell, unless you go to the ballot box, but the truth of the matter is that I’m probably more powerful now nationally than 90% of the United States Congress. And I now make this statement: I don’t see a member of Congress who is probably as well known philosophically as I am. There may be those who names are well known because they have big important jobs in Congress, but few know what they stand for.
Most politicians wake up in the morning, brush their teeth, shave, comb their hair, put on their clothes and then go to the window to watch which way the mob is moving. Then they go pick up their trenchcoat and go out and lead the mob, no matter what direction it is going.
And that’s the problem with this country. This country is on automatic pilot and being controlled by interests that are not even American.
We have the best Congress that Japan ever had, the best Congress China ever had, the best Congress Israel ever had, the best Congress Mexico ever had, the best Congress illegal immigrants ever had.
You’ve always been in the forefront of fighting injustice. You made a lot of enemies—including both the Justice Department and AIPAC, among others—when you came to the defense of Ukraine-born Cleveland autoworker John Demjanjuk, a naturalized citizen, who was falsely accused by the so-called “Nazi-hunting” unit of the Justice Department of being a concentration camp guard at Treblinka during World War II. Although the U.S. government stripped Demjanjuk of his citizenship and deported him to Israel where he was tried and convicted as a war criminal and sentenced to death, it was your work that got him released. And now he’s facing new charges, many years later, in Germany. Could you reflect on your experiences in the Demjanjuk case?
It’s a travesty and I’m surprised no one has even lifted their voice. Be advised that the original evidence that resulted in the Israeli Supreme Court overturning Demjanjuk’s conviction came from me. It came through a Freedom of Information Act request regarding a man named Feodor Fedorenko, the only man ever tried for war crimes at the Treblinka camp in Poland. He was acquitted.
He had been a naturalized American and when he went to Ukraine to visit his family, he was picked up by the Soviet KGB and tried in the old Soviet Union and was executed. There’s no doubt our government arranged that, perpetrated that.
When the Demjanjuk case came up, I couldn’t get anywhere. So I tricked the government. I did a Freedom of Information Act on Fedorenko, and bingo. I was told that there were a hundred pages or so on him and in those pages was the information that led to Demjanjuk being cleared of the charges and the dropping of the death sentence against him.
And remember that 17 people testified in the Demjanjuk case and identified him as the concentration camp guard known as “Ivan theTerrible”—IvanMarchenko—a man who was taller than Demjanjuk, had black hair, not blonde hair, was nine years older and had a scar on his
neck.
Then when I went on the House floor and revealed that I had a photo of the real Ivan, the Justice Department turned around and claimed that there were two Ivans.
Well, let me tell you about the power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). No one in Congress would accept the evidence I had clearing Demjanjuk nor would they agree to hold a hearing regarding the activities of the Justice Department in this case. Demjanjuk had been stripped of his citizenship and he was scheduled to be executed in Israel. No one in the government of the United States would listen to the evidence.
I tried to put it before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinatti and they would not accept the evidence. So Demjanjuk’s attorney placed my evidence before the Israeli Supreme Court and they asked me to go over.
I went over. I payed my own way. While I was there, Bryant Gumbel of the Today show on NBC interviewed me and I said, “If they put this man to death, Israel is going to lose $20-25 billion a year from the American taxpayers.”
He said, “What do you mean, Congressman? Israel only gets $3 billion a year from the U.S.”
And I reminded him that $3 billion is $5,000 a year for every man, woman and child who lives in Israel (although, of course, that money goes to the Israeli government).
That’s from the foreign aid appropriations bill. However, when you look at the loans to Israel that are converted to grants, economic assistance, military assistance, trade pacts, Israel gets the equivalent of $30-35,000 a year for every man, woman and child in Israel. And my people in my district who are working 40 hours a week aren’t making that much money in Youngstown, Ohio.”
Gumbel’s response was “Thank you, congressman. Thank you.”
That night I got a phone call. Demjanjuk was being released and was going to be delivered to me to take him home from the Tel Aviv airport. I have to give Israel credit. They accepted the evidence and our government wouldn’t. Our congress wouldn’t and our courts wouldn’t, but Israel did. They knew that our government perpetrated one of the greatest crimes in history and as soon as I got Demjanjuk back to the United States, the Sixth Circuit Court issued a statement saying that this case was a tragic but
honest mistake by the government.
No one in the Justice Department ever faced charges for this. They knew that Demjanjuk wasn’t “Ivan the Terrible.” The documents I used to convince the Israelis to free Demjanjuk came from the Justice Department.
Now the Justice Department went after Demjajunk again but this time Israel wouldn’t try him. Israel didn’t want someone like Jim Traficant—if such a person existed—to start questioning the case. Well, now Traficant is out of jail and he is questioning the new case.
So now Germany is trying Demjanjuk for being a guard at another concentration camp, Sobibor. The truth of the matter is that if the government was proven to be so reckless and criminal in a previous action, how can they warrant any serious consideration in the current case. They were embarrassed the first time so now they are determined to hurt Demjanjuk and show the world that he was some kind of Nazi.
The truth is that Demjanjuk was taken prisoner by the Nazis and while the Germans did put guns in the hands of some of their prisoners and made to act as perimeter guards (under the threat of death) even if that was the case, those men shouldn’t be charged.
Well, now that I am out of prison, they are concerned. [People who have heard me on television speaking out] are starting to say, “Hey, wait a minute. This guy Traficant is right. We are bankrupt. We are involved in areas that are very questionable. Do they have this kind of control?”
Look at China. Look at Japan. China is taking $350 billion a year plus out of our economy. They are buying tanks, attack aircraft, nuclear submarines—building them with our money.
Look at our foreign aid. Forget about Israel. We gave $98 million last year to North Korea to convince them to slow down their nuclear development. What do you think they are using that $98 million for?
We gave $58 million to Russia so they would strive toward the word of law. I’ve got to say, “Beam me up” here. Here in Youngstown we have the Delphi workers, formerly Packard and General Motors. The salaried workers lost all their pensions and the hourly workers have to pay for their health insurance now. It’s a $160 million impact on our community. And look at the ripple effect and the other losses of jobs that will subsequently come, it will be a $250 million loss every year. But we can’t get a bit of help for our own people.
You’ve also been focused on the tax issue for a long time. You’ve been a major critic of the IRS and few politicians dare to do that.
The tax code is at the root of the problems we have in America today. We have a communist Marxist-Leninist tax policy in America. People don’t want to believe that, but it’s the truth. The predicate of the Marxist economic platform was a progressive income tax aimed at the so-called wealthy. But the truth of the matter is that the wealthy can avoid payment of taxes and they do, legally. So they are also taking jobs offshore since this tax code has destroyed America’s commerce.
You can’t fix the system. It’s got to be replaced. We should repeal the Sixteenth Amendment and abolish the Internal Revenue Service and institute a fair tax which would be a 25 percent retail sales tax, new retail sales only.
The chairman of the economic department at Harvard did a study that said this would be revenue-neutral, that it would raise the same amount of money our tax system now does and there would probably be no appreciable increase in prices, because if you take the burden of the current tax code off the backs of the companies that have all of these headaches dealing with it, they would be able to reduce prices for consumers. It would be the first border adjusted tax in our history. It’s not protectionism. If you buy an American car, it’s a 25 percent tax. If you buy a foreign car, it’s a 25 percent tax.
But there should be no taxes on savings or investment, no death tax, no capital gains tax. There would be no more withholding on salaries. This tax encourages you to work. The more you work, the more you make. The more you spend the more you pay in taxes.
When people come from Germany and Japan to visit Las Vegas, they will be contributing to our tax system. Illegal aliens who exist outside the income tax system would also now be paying and contributing. And look at the massive underground economy involving narcotics here in this country. They don’t pay income taxes, but they do spend money and a 25% retail sales tax would impact them and they would contribute to the system.
No more April 15. No more tax forms. Get the government the Hell out of our lives.Thirty-five states already collect a sales tax. Ninety-five percent of retail sales are conducted by big retailers. Only five percent are conducted by small business in America. People don’t realize that. Our troops are over in Germany and Japan and spending their money over there. If we had our troops here at home on our wide-open borders they would be spending their money here at home.
That brings up the issue of immigration. You’ve been up front and outspoken on that issue for a long time, saying things that a lot of politicians—both Democrats and Republicans—are afraid to say.
I’ve been called “racist” and “anti-Semitic”— everything—but I’m not. Here’s what I think: If you are in this country illegally, you shouldn’t get health care. You should be thrown the Hell out. My family were all immigrants—legal immigrants. If you come here illegally, we don’t want you in our schools and our emergency rooms.
We need an agreement with Mexico that they understand. We want the troops on the border to keep narcotics out of this country. And I’m not just talking about the southern border. I’m also taking about our northern border. Terrorists could smuggle the components of a nuclear weapon across the border and fire it off at New York. If that’s not a national security issue, I want to know what it is.
Now that there’s a growing Hispanic vote in this country and Congress is conscious of this. They try to make it look at though I am against Hispanic people. But I’m not. Hispanic Americans are being hurt with these policies
themselves. And the Black community is being pushed further to the back of the bus because the Hispanic vote is growing and politicians are catering to them.
So now they are saying that we should at least allow them to buy health insurance. Imagine this: if the policy and framework of a legislative initiative is “They are here and they should be allowed to buy,” it’s obvious they don’t want to throw the illegal aliens out. How much more bankrupt can America be?
Here’s where I want to just cut the line. It may sound strict and severe, but if a woman is pregnant and comes to America illegally and has a child, that child is an American citizen. This sounds harsh but I don’t think that child should be considered a citizen. And the mother and the child should be sent back to where they came from.
There’s only way to enforce our border and immigration security. If you build walls, they’ll build tunnels. We have a massive Army that we are paying all of this money and our soldiers are all over the globe and involved in wars that aren’t in our interests.
Put those troops on our borders. Rotate those troops every six months.America would be protected: our citizens, our resources, our assets would be protected. And we will utilize our resources for American citizens. We’re bankrupt and we can’t keep taking care of everybody all over the world. We have this foreign aid, but we’ve got Americans sleeping on steel grates.
Critics say this is a shallow, simplistic way of looking at things, but it is the truth. We’re too involved all over the world. I remember reading that some senator once said that if we don’t start taking care of the home front, we are going to end up destroying ourselves. And that was a debate on the floor of the Roman senate.
There was also a famous person in world history who said, “Let China sleep, for if China ever awakens, the earth shall tremble.” That was Napoleon—way back then. Well, the earth is shaking. The dragon has got hold of our assets— real strong.
I once said in Congress that Russia is a fly in our face. China is a dragon eating our assets. Russia didn’t have much of an economy ever and anytime we ever had any major international problem, Russia basically—with a lot of caveats—stood by the United States. I predict that if anything happens again, Russia will probably side with the United States. But people better take a look at that dragon.
Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) is sponsoring legislation to audit the Federal Reserve System, the privately- controlled banking monopoly that dominates the U.S. money system. Now a lot of members of Congress are jumping on the bandwagon, but long ago, when it wasn’t fashionable, you were out front in criticizing the Federal Reserve.
To most of those members who are supporting Ron Paul’s measure, it is a matter of political expedience. I don’t attribute that to Ron Paul. I believe he’s sincere and his heart is in the right place. I was a little disappointed, by the way, that he voted with the others to expel me from the House of Representatives. I thought he would have looked at that a lot differently and I know that if he had all this information about what really happened in my case he probably would have. I like Ron and he’s a good man.
Quite frankly, they’ll audit the Fed and come out with their revelations and they’ll get their political victory, but the Fed will go on just like it is, with international banking controlling the money of the United States of America. I’m not for auditing the Fed. I’m for abolishing the Fed. The Constitution says that Congress shall coin money. Now the argument is: “You can’t have politicians handling the money of the United States.” But who do we have handling it? International politicians. I would abolish the Fed and put the money back under the control of Congress and putting the money back as it was originally mandated by the Constitution. The Constitution is quite clear.
The Constitution also says Congress “shall regulate” commerce with foreign nations. “Regulate.” What does that mean? Does it mean opening up the doors to cheap foreign imports? It means to weigh the different variables and cost of production, labor and manpower and regulate some mechanism to assure at least our mutual advantage and satisfaction with our trading partners. How can we with all of regulatory burdens in this country compete with a factory in Mexico that pays its employees 35 cents an hour?
What is more important to the commercial venue of a nation than the control of its money? Beam me up. Abolish the Fed. Let the Congress earn their money. Let them do something responsible. We hear that Congress has questioned the Fed or that Congress is worried about what the Fed is doing with interest rates.
Just abolish the Fed and put America in order. The Constitution ain’t bad, although it allowed slavery, treated women like cattle, treated American Indians like non-entities. But over the years the adjustments were made. There’s no doubt in my mind that our Founding Fathers are rolling over in their graves.
Congress may go on and do what is politically expedient but this expedience may not be in the best interests of the United States of America. And we are in a Hell of a mess for it.
And if you are not in that pantheon of political machination, you are set aside, you are ostracized, you are even expelled and put in prison. I think my particular case is starting to show that this is only the tip of the iceburg.
Remember what happened to Bill Casey, who was CIA director in the Reagan years. All of a sudden he died. What about Vince Foster [who was Bill Clinton’s White House counsel who is said to have committed suicide]? They tried to make Rep. Dan Burton look like a buffoon for questioning the circumstances of Foster’s death. They found all these fibers all over his body and that implied to me, as a former sheriff, that maybe his body had been wrapped in a rug and transported. And I don’t trust the 9-11 commission either. I think they were just like the Warren Commission. They all seem like honorable men, but you can call me a conspiracy nut.
A lot of people don’t believe the criminal charges against you were valid, that you—yourself—were the victim of a frame-up, a conspiracy. People believe that your prosecution was politically-motivated.
What the mainstream media is saying now is that since I did a lot for this area—I brought $1.7 billion into my congressional district over and above normal formula money to rebuild and help this area that was hurting so bad—people don’t care if I did the things that I was accused of doing by the Justice Department. They still love me anyway. That’s the argument they use to downplay the serious legal issues at hand in my case, where perjury was suborned, evidence was withheld and justice was obstructed, every machination used to get an American citizen whose politics were not liked. And I’m beginning now to believe that my politics were feared. You see one man could light a fire and people might start thinking. They’ll try to destroy that one man so he doesn’t look credible.
But there are too many people who know me and respect me and they are saying, “We believe what you say is true. What the Hell are we doing? We’re bankrupt. Enough is enough. We can support Israel but we don’t have to go bankrupt. We can be objective and support our friends but we don’t have to go overboard. What are we doing? We’re embroiled in wars that are bankrupting us and our kids are coming home in bodybags. Our borders are being over-run. Our dollar is in danger. We’re losing currency reserve status in the world. They’ll start trading in the euro or some other currency. What will that do to us?”
I predict that if there is not a direct and intended change in the policies of the United States of America, America will implode. That’s the word that I’ve used before. I see Alaska, with its own revenue sources as a possibility [of breaking away from the United States]. Americans don’t understand that Alaska’s landmass is bigger than almost every European country, save for Russia.
Then look at Texas and the same thing, with Texas and a compact of states down there. What’s happening is that there is a strong dilution of citizenship and demographics, with a tremendous infusion of Hispanic people down there. But you never know. People are starting to get fed up,
paying a massive amount of taxes and don’t know where the money is going. It’s going all around the world, but our borders are still wide open. Their kids are subject to foreign wars. They can’t make a loan but Congress has bailed out the banks. If you want to make a loan, you have to have three dollars in the bank to borrow one.
What the Hell is going on here?
But nobody is articulating it that way. So everybody’s being put to sleep: they’re talking about the environment, health care, etc and no one is looking at the cancer here. You’ve got a $2 trillion dollar plus budget deficit in one year. And now everybody is mad at Jimmy Carter because he’s criticized our policies in the Middle East.
That’s right. They are starting to call Jimmy Carter an “anti-Semite.”
They are starting to defame Jimmy Carter whose heart is probably the best heart of any president ever elected. His fairness could never be questioned. Now we might question some of those policies he had on economics, with those massive interest rates, but in all fairness to Carter, in his last year he had the budget deficit down to $90 billion and there was no trade deficit. He had a balanced trade scenario. So you can knock Jimmy Carter all you want.
There was pain and pressure in the economy from the high interest rates and the bankers were certainly making a fortune. But the truth is that you had massive foreclosures, you had American turmoil, but America was bankrupting through the bankrupt mechanism of law and reconstructing and reconfiguring, but now what you have is you are just giving away money.
If you’ve got a problem, here’s some money. If Wall Street has a problem, then here’s money. The news media [says]: “If you don’t do it, things will collapse.”
Donald Trump made a Hell of a statement. I like old Donald. Donald says we have bankruptcy laws. Let the bad bankrupt and let the good survive and worry about the American citizen. Donald Trump was right. He gave a sense of wisdom that everybody should listen to.
But we didn’t do that. We didn’t let our own laws, our own structure, our own government, our own predicate of operations and commercial venue take hold. We are officially subsidized once again. What did we do with the automobile industry? We now have Government Motors. The great General Motors’ CEO is Barack Obama. That’s the way it is. That’s the situation.
We had the cash-for-clunkers program. We subsidized Americans buying cars and it looked good for people who had cars they wanted to get rid of. Are we going to have another cash-for-clunkers program? Are we going to subsidize more sales?
So when we have to subsidize the free enterprise capitalistic system, it no longer exists. It’s a socialistic communist system. What frightens me is that the government has gotten so big and now it’s about to get bigger. I’m not so sure that we shouldn’t have the private sector maintaining industry and the government taking care of those who fall through the safety net, as we always have—and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I can’t see us running all these industries. Government can’t do it. It shouldn’t be done.
We are the [most] socialistic nation in history, for the truth of the matter is that socialism is the redistribution of the wealth and no one redistributes wealth more than the United States of America. So we are a socialist system, augmented by a communist dollar program, a Marxist progressive income tax. Jim Traficant is saying that the income tax system in the United States is a Marxist program, the foundation of the Marxist economic platform.
In addition, I’m saying, the Federal Reserve System should be abolished, not audited, abolished. And Congress should coin money and should put our borders in order and regulate commerce with foreign nations and move to a fair tax which empowers everyone and has everybody pay their fair share; and nobody [would be exempt], including drug dealers, people on the street, the underground economy, illegal immigrants. Everybody pays [with the retail sales tax]. For those people who fall through the safety net, Congress has enough intelligence to promulgate plans and programs within that scheme to take care of them.
What would our Founding Fathers think about big government in
America today?
I think they had a Second Amendment to make sure there would be no strong central government. I don’t believe the Second Amendment was placed in the U.S. Constitution to protect duck hunters. It was to, in fact, make sure that a powerful central government would not be the only entity holding the fire power, that the citizens were empowered, because it was their government.
Is it possible that a government could be totally and completely out of control and beginning to manifest great power and that this power was so awesome that no one could even check it, and that this power was so great that no one could even question it? Could that happen? Not only could it happen, it is evidence in the United States of America
right now. We are in a fix here.
Are either of the major parties doing anything to combat this situation?
I see that both major parties tinkering with and trying to repair a mechanism that needs to be replaced. They are afraid. There is no ingenuity. There is no innovative thought.
Are you going to seek public office again?
I don’t know. Right now I don’t have a job and I’m being supported by my wife. There’s a lot of people here who want me to run. My old district was divided up after I left office, so if I were going to run again, I’d have to decide where to run.
Another factor is that I’m not going to get any [campaign contributions] if I do run. People are afraid to give me money, because if you give me money, you have the IRS come and audit you if your name appeared on any of my campaign finance reports.
I mean, I was targeted big time. If I did run, I’d have trouble raising money and I’ve the institutional press against me. You would have the Democratic Party which would join forces against me and try to knock me out. I’ve always been a Democrat, even though I’ve always been independent and voted for what’s best. So I really don’t know.
And while I have been speaking before some of the “tea party” groups and they are just opposing what the government has screwed up, but I don’t think that they have come with what I consider to be an advocacy for a program of what they sponsor, but I think they are starting to promulgate plans around those lines. I’ve even been invited by a group of Republicans to speak.
Among the people, I’m more or less seen as an American [rather than being identified with a particular political party or program]. I’m seen differently by a lot of people in this country. Although I ran as a Democrat, I didn’t always vote as a Democrat in Congress. If I thought their program was weak and it wasn’t good for the country, I didn’t vote for it. The same thing for the Republicans: I thought if the Republicans had a good idea, I’d support it. I think that’s the way it should be. I’ve never been endeared with the Democratic leadership. The Democratic leadership right now— well, I don’t know where they are going.
So I don’t know. I have a lot of groups that are saying I should throw my hat in on a national level and that if more people heard me that it would really start focusing on the circumstances of our government.
Thank you, Jim.You have the support of AMERICAN FREE PRESS readers.
PETER PAPAHERAKLIS is a correspondent for American Free
Press newspaper. He is also a talented artist who studied fine and
graphic arts on the collegiate level.
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(Issue # 44, November 2, 2009)
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