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This pro­gram exam­ines alle­ga­tions pre­sented in a book by a very con­ser­v­a­tive Nebraska state sen­a­tor con­cern­ing orga­nized pedophile rings within the ranks of the Repub­li­can party. These alleged activ­i­ties over­lap not only the admin­is­tra­tion of the elder George Bush but some of the activ­i­ties involved in the Iran-Contra scan­dal as well.

1. The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of the arrest of a GOP mayor for allegedly lur­ing a minor for sex. As we shall see, this sort of thing is not as unusual as one might sup­pose within the ranks of the GOP. The alle­ga­tions con­tained in The Franklin Cover-Up put the con­cept of “fam­ily values”—much bal­ly­hooed by the GOP, in a dra­mat­i­cally dif­fer­ent light.

“Mayor Philip A. Gior­dano of Water­bury, who lost a long-shot bid last year to unseat Sen­a­tor Joseph I. Lieber­man and whose city has been tee­ter­ing on the edge of bank­ruptcy, was arrested in New Haven this morn­ing by fed­eral agents in New Haven and accused of lur­ing a minor for sex. . . . At a news con­fer­ence at the office of the United States attor­ney for Con­necti­cut in New Haven, offi­cials said Mr. Gior­dano had engaged in ‘inap­pro­pri­ate sex’ with ‘chil­dren,’ though they did not state the num­ber, age or sex of the vic­tims. The spe­cial agent in charge of the Fed­eral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion in Con­necti­cut, Michael J. Wolf, said, ‘The pub­lic expects and deserves utmost hon­esty, integrity and strong moral fiber from those who serve on their behalf.’ He called Mr. Giordano’s con­duct ‘disgraceful.’”

(“Con­necti­cut Mayor Is Arrested by U.S. Agents in Child Sex Case” by David M. Her­szen­horn; The New York Times; 7/27/2001; p. A19.)

2. Accord­ing to the con­ser­v­a­tive Nebraska state leg­is­la­tor John W. De Camp (a dec­o­rated Viet­nam vet­eran), the sort of activ­i­ties that Gior­dano was accused of engag­ing in are, to a cer­tain extent, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of how ele­ments of the GOP get their kicks. While prob­ing the col­lapse of a Nebraska finan­cial insti­tu­tion, inves­ti­ga­tors came upon some inter­est­ing oper­a­tions allegedly super­vised by a promi­nent Nebraska GOP big­wig, Larry King (not to be con­fused with the syn­di­cated talk show host.) Mr. Emory notes that the sec­ond edi­tion of the book con­tains some mate­r­ial which is eas­ily discredited—due, appar­ently, to De Camp’s hav­ing been overly trust­ing of some of the infor­ma­tion being dis­sem­i­nated by the less respon­si­ble ele­ments of the mili­tia milieu.

(The Franklin Cover-Up; by John W. De Camp; Copy­right 1992 by AWT, Incor­po­rated; ISBN 0–9632158-0–9.)

3. De Camp describes Larry King’s polit­i­cal and “extracur­ric­u­lar” activities.

“When Larry King trav­eled the polit­i­cal cir­cuit, he evi­dently had two agen­das. To the pub­lic, he was the ris­ing GOP star with the res­o­nant bari­tone voice. Some­thing else went on behind closed doors.”

(Ibid.; p. 166.)

4. What were the alleged clan­des­tine activ­i­ties that De Camp was refer­ring to?

“At the Dal­las [GOP] con­ven­tion in 1984, King threw his splashy party at South­fork Ranch, remem­bered by me and many other del­e­gates as an unpar­al­leled extrav­a­ganza. Accord­ing to sev­eral victim-witnesses, he also arranged some pri­vate events dur­ing the con­ven­tion. They recall being flown to Dal­las, to be sex­u­ally used by convention-goers. Gary Caradori mapped the rec­ol­lec­tions of the Webb fos­ter chil­dren in his notes of Feb­ru­ary 1990: ‘Dur­ing this visit [the children’s aunt] Marcy informed [social worker] Joanie that [the youngest Pat­ter­son Webb sis­ter] Kendra had told her she had been trans­ported around the coun­try sev­eral times, she thought to Texas and Louisiana. Marcy remem­bered Texas in par­tic­u­lar, and a Repub­li­can Con­ven­tion because one of the chil­dren, pos­si­bly Kendra, had a book of matches from Texas and that is how the chil­dren had known where they were at. Joanie stated she remem­bered that the chil­dren had been exploited sex­u­ally in Texas, and she indi­cated that it was [the] feel­ing this activ­ity had been occur­ring for sev­eral years.’”

(Ibid.; p. 167.)

5. De Camp con­tin­ues with his alle­ga­tions con­cern­ing King.

“I was later to learn from Paul Bonacci, that he was also at the famed South­fork party. He described it for me in exact detail, some seven years after the party took place. He had been here for the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing sex­ual favors for peo­ple Larry King wanted to accom­mo­date, sat­isfy, or com­pro­mise. Paul said he was one of a troop of teenaged boys and girls, whom King had shipped to Dal­las for his purposes.”

(Ibid.; p. 167.)

6.

“I have talked to Paul repeat­edly about this party. I have lis­tened to his descrip­tion. Only by hav­ing been there, could some­one describe the set­ting the way Paul did to me. Because I was there myself for the party, I am cer­tain that Paul Bonacci was there and did not invent his story or his descrip­tion of the party. This was, it hap­pens, just one of Paul’s leads into mat­ters sur­round­ing Larry King and Franklin that I could per­son­ally check out and know the boy was telling the truth. Not because some­body told me he was telling the truth. Not because some­body said he passed a lie detec­tor test on the sub­ject. But because I was there and saw a part of it, and saw the exact same things this boy did.”

(Idem.)

7. More about King’s social activ­i­ties and a Repub­li­can con­ven­tion, this one in New Orleans in 1988.

“Again in 1988, atten­dance at Larry King’s party was vir­tu­ally manda­tory for any true Nebraska Repub­li­can attend­ing the Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion, held this time in New Orleans. Most of the Nebraska del­e­ga­tion was trans­ported to the party by bus. The theme of the fes­tiv­i­ties was Mardi Gras.”

(Idem.)

8. De Camp alleges that the “fun and games” that King was arrang­ing at the New Orleans con­ven­tion were sim­i­lar to the activ­i­ties at the 1984 Dal­las convention.

“King’s par­ties were designed to bring in every­body, from the inno­cent to the top-ranking busi­ness­men and politi­cians. I per­son­ally attended the two largest par­ties he ever threw, as did many Repub­li­can offi­cials. As a guest at the party, you would not know from the outer glit­ter, what sor­did activ­ity was going on behind the scenes. I am sure that was the char­ac­ter of many of Larry King’s par­ties, par­tic­u­larly the polit­i­cal events. Out­wardly, they had the appear­ance of legit­i­macy, with promi­nent peo­ple in atten­dance, from may­ors to pres­i­dents, from busi­ness­men to con­gress­men. So, when peo­ple say to me, Well, I was at one of Larry King’s par­ties and I did not see any of this sex or drug or pedophilia stuff,’ I under­stand that they may be speak­ing with hon­esty and accu­racy. As to what really went on, I believe they are wrong.”

(Ibid.; p. 168.)

9. De Camp dis­cusses some other inter­est­ing man­i­fes­ta­tions of King/GOP “fam­ily values.”

“King acquired con­tacts in Washington’s homo­sex­ual pros­ti­tu­tion scene, one of whom was the late Craig Spence. A lob­by­ist and polit­i­cal oper­a­tive, Spence main­tained a call boy ring that catered to the polit­i­cal elite and, unlike most D.C. call boy rings, offered chil­dren to its clients.”

(Ibid.; p. 169.)

10. More about the afore­men­tioned Craig Spence.

“Spence’s activ­i­ties made ban­ner head­lines in the Wash­ing­ton Times on June 29, 1989: ‘Homo­sex­ual pros­ti­tu­tion inquiry ensnares VIP’s with Rea­gan, Bush.’ Spence’s access was so good, that he could arrange night­time tours of the White House for his clients. The Times added on August 9, 1989, that Spence ‘hinted the tours were arranged by ‘top level’ per­sons, includ­ing Don­ald Gregg, national secu­rity advi­sor to Vice Pres­i­dent Bush. . . .” Spence, accord­ing to friends, was also car­ry­ing out homo­sex­ual black­mail oper­a­tions for the CIA.”

(Idem.)

11. De Camp alleges that Larry King’s activ­i­ties were dis­cov­ered through an inves­ti­ga­tion into Spence’s operations.

“Accord­ing to a Wash­ing­ton, D.C. inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist who researched the Spence ring, ‘The way we dis­cov­ered Larry King and this Nebraska-based call boy ring, was by look­ing through the credit card chits of Spence’s ring, where we found King’s name.’ Another inves­ti­ga­tor, with per­sonal knowl­edge of the call-boy rings oper­at­ing in Wash­ing­ton, put it this way: ‘Larry King and Craig Spence were busi­ness part­ners. Look at two com­pa­nies, ‘Dream Boys’ and ‘Man to Man’, both of which oper­ated under another ser­vice, ‘Bod­ies by God.’”

(Idem.)

12. Appar­ently, the inves­ti­ga­tion of Spence’s activ­i­ties was fol­lowed by a seri­ous down­turn in Spence’s health. De Camp alleges that both Spence and King were involved with the Iran-Contra imbroglio.

“When Craig Spence turned up dead—a sui­cide, police were quick to say—in a Boston hotel room, in Novem­ber 1989, it was the lat­est in the long string of deaths of per­sons linked to Iran-Contra covert oper­a­tions and fund­ing. There is evi­dence that Larry King had Wash­ing­ton busi­ness in that area as well. ‘In the 6 ½ months since fed­eral author­i­ties closed Franklin, rumors have per­sisted that money from the credit union some­how found its way to the Nicaraguan con­tra rebels,’ said a World-Herald arti­cle on May 21, 1989.”

(Idem.)

13.

“The first World-Herald reporter on the Franklin case, James Allen Flan­ery, appar­ently found more than rumors about the money-laundering. In late 1988, Flan­ery called Carol Stitt to dis­cuss what he had learned. Their con­ver­sa­tion is related in a Feb­ru­ary 21, 1989 report by Jerry Lowe: ‘Carol’s notes also have a ref­er­ence to Larry King run­ning guns and money into Nicaragua . . . . Carol’s notes on Dec. 21, 1988 reflect that she talked with Flan­ery and in addi­tion to the Nicaraguan info, he was also now talk­ing about CIA involve­ment and pro­vided info that yes­ter­day (Dec. 20) the FBI quit coop­er­at­ing with him . . . . Carol’s notes next jump to Feb.6, 1989, where she talked on the phone with Flan­ery and Flan­ery told her that the appro­pri­ate peo­ple didn’t want to believe any of this and who was ever going to pros­e­cute it. Appar­ently Flan­ery told Carol he was close to resign­ing and the rea­sons he didn’t think any­one wanted to do any­thing was because of the pos­si­bil­ity of a White House con­nec­tion, the con­nec­tions to a num­ber of big peo­ple, and he fact that the inves­ti­ga­tors wanted badly to con­fine this all to the money. Also many white peo­ple made Larry King [who was African-American], he did not hap­pen on his own.’”

(Ibid.; p. 170.)

“Appar­ently Flan­ery told Carol he was uncom­fort­able on the phone, his edi­tor was dis­tressed and things he had writ­ten were con­tin­u­ally edited, he wanted to his byline off the arti­cle printed the 9th among other things . . . Flan­ery also expressed con­cern to Carol that if he didn’t get off this story he wor­ried about being com­pro­mised.” Soon Flan­ery was off the Franklin case, which con­tin­ued for months to be the major news lead in Nebraska, and went to the Uni­ver­sity of Kansas on Sab­bat­i­cal. When he returned a year later, Flan­ery no longer wrote. about Franklin.”

(Idem.)

14. The sub­ject of the Iran-Contra scan­dal will be revis­ited later in the dis­cus­sion. One should note that the views expressed in what fol­lows are those of the speak­ers and are not to be mis­con­strued as homo­pho­bia. Rather, the self-righteous chest-beating on the part of the GOP, their embrace of the Chris­t­ian Right and their exco­ri­a­tion of gays and cyn­i­cal manip­u­la­tion of homo­pho­bia in order to advance the Repub­li­can elec­toral agenda are quite note­wor­thy in this con­text. (Writer David Brock noted the gay skele­tons in the Repub­li­can Party when he was attacked for his own gay­ness fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of his book The Seduc­tion of Hillary Clin­ton.) De Camp notes the reac­tion of an offi­cial of the Franklin National Credit Union to his inves­ti­ga­tion. Again, the views expressed here are De Camp’s.

“Squelch­ing inter­est in an Iran-Contra con­nec­tion to Fanklin was also a topic of the hour, in that phone call I received from National Credit Union admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial Fen­ner, back in the early months of the leg­isla­tive Franklin probe. ‘Why would the head of the NCUA be want­ing to talk to me?’ I won­dered out loud, when my sec­re­tary said that Fen­ner was on the line. The man on the other end of the phone said he knew I was a close friend of for­mer CIA head Bill Colby, and that I also was Sen­a­tor Loran Schmit’s per­sonal attor­ney. He quickly came to his point.”

(Ibid.; pp. 170–171.)

15. De Camp dis­cusses his rela­tion­ship with for­mer CIA chief William Colby and dis­cus­sion of the loot­ing of Franklin in order to finance the Contras.

“‘I know there are a lot rumors, that Franklin was being used as a front for laun­der­ing money for the Con­tras and that a lot of the money that is miss­ing from Franklin actu­ally went to finance the Con­tras.’ I acknowl­edged that I had heard such talk, and told, him, ‘I myself am one of those who won­der, if that is not a real pos­si­bil­ity, in light of the way things have been shak­ing out on the Con­tra scan­dal.’ Fen­ner then gave me a flood of details on the secret Franklin accounts, and where the miss­ing money sup­pos­edly went. No des­ti­na­tions linked with Iran-Contra were mentioned.”

(Idem.)

16. Note that the views that fol­low are those of the speakers.

“‘So tell me,’ I said, ‘just what is at the bot­tom of it? If it is not laun­dered money involved in the Iran-Contra scan­dal, what the blazes is it? And how could Larry King get away with this, with­out you or some­body else know­ing what was going on? Looks to me as if he had to have one heck of a lot pow­er­ful polit­i­cal pro­tec­tion at the high­est lev­els.’ ‘Homo­sex­u­als,’ Fen­ner said, ‘Franklin financed the biggest group of homo­sex­u­als any state has ever seen. A lot of awfully pow­er­ful and promi­nent per­son­al­i­ties involved. But prob­a­bly not any­thing you can do any­thing about.’”

(Idem.)

17. Other sources have noted the role of sex­ual black­mail oper­a­tions in the con­text of power pol­i­tics and the world of covert oper­a­tions. One of the most pow­er­ful alleged play­ers on this stage is Robert Keith Gray.

“The career of another Nebraskan, Robert Keith Gray, illu­mi­nates this milieu and why it would be so con­ge­nial to a per­son like Larry King. Gray is the chair­man and CEO of Hill and Knowl­ton, one of the two biggest pub­lic rela­tions firms in the world, with such blue-chip clients as AT&T, IBM, Xerox, and DuPont. CBS-TV’s 60 Min­utes has called Hill and Knowl­ton ‘by far, the biggest, most influ­en­tial PR firm in Wash­ing­ton,’ adding that ‘crit­ics accuse them of being an unelected shadow gov­ern­ment.’ Gray first came to Wash­ing­ton D.C. dur­ing the Eisen­hower Admin­is­tra­tion, as Ike’s appoint­ments sec­re­tary and then sec­re­tary of the cab­i­net. He went to Hill and Knowl­ton in 1961. Gray played a role in Ronald Reagan’s 1976 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign and, in 1980, he was deputy direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Report­ing directly to Bill Casey.”

(Ibid.; p. 178.)

18.

“On the strength of his con­nec­tions in the new admin­is­tra­tion, he left Hill and Knowl­ton to set up his own PR firm. Within a year, Gray and Com­pany secured over $9 mil­lion in billings from a clien­tele includ­ing Warner Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, NBC, GTE, Mutual of Omaha, the Amer­i­can Truck­ing Asso­ci­a­tion, the Amer­i­can Iron and Steel Insti­tute, and the gov­ern­ments of Canada and Turkey. In 1986, Hill and Knowl­ton bought out Gray and Co.; Gray became chair­man and CEO of Hill and Knowl­ton. Said to be Harold Andersen’s ‘clos­est friend in Wash­ing­ton,’ Gray is also report­edly a spe­cial­ist in homo­sex­ual black­mail oper­a­tions for the CIA.”

(Idem.)

19. The rela­tion­ship between Gray and the Wil­son, Ter­pil oper­a­tions detailed in RFA#4.

“Dur­ing the Water­gate era, Robert Keith Gray served on the board of Con­sul­tants Inter­na­tional, founded by CIA agent Edwin Wil­son. When Wil­son and fel­low agent Frank Ter­pil got caught run­ning guns abroad, Gray tried to deny his con­nec­tion with Wil­son. ‘Yet ten years before,’ accord­ing to Peter Maas’ book Man­hunt, ‘in a top secret Navy review of Wilson’s intel­li­gence career, Gray described Wil­son as a per­son of ‘unqual­i­fied trust,’ with whom he’d been in con­tact ‘pro­fes­sion­ally two or three times a month’ since 1963.’”

(Ibid.; p. 179.)

20. De Camp relates Jim Hougan’s account of another aspect of Gray’s alleged activ­i­ties. (Note that Tong­sun Park—a key fig­ure in the Kore­a­gate scandal—was closely asso­ci­ated with the Moon orga­ni­za­tion, which also has strong con­nec­tions to the Bush administration.

“Author Jim Hougan in Secret Agenda, reported another aspect of Wilson’s work for the CIA: ‘Accord­ing to fugi­tive ex-CIA offi­cer Frank Ter­pil, CIA-directed sex­ual black­mail­ing oper­a­tions were inten­sive in Wash­ing­ton at about the time of the Water­gate scan­dal. One of those oper­a­tions, Ter­pil claims, was run by his for­mer part­ner, Ed Wil­son. Wilson’s base of oper­a­tions for arrang­ing trysts for the polit­i­cally pow­er­ful was, Ter­pil says, Korean agent Ton Sun Park’s George Town Club. In a let­ter to the author, Ter­pil explained that ‘His­tor­i­cally, one of Wilson’s Agency jobs was to sub­vert mem­bers of both houses [of Con­gress] by any means nec­es­sary. . . .Cer­tain peo­ple could be eas­ily coerced by liv­ing out their sex­ual fan­tasies in the flesh. . . .A remem­brance of these occa­sions [was] per­ma­nently recorded via selected cam­eras. . . . The tech­ni­cians in charge of film­ing. . .[were] TSD [Tech­ni­cal Ser­vices Divi­sion of the CIA] The unwit­ting porno stars advanced in their polit­i­cal careers, some of [whom] may still be in office.’”

(Idem.)

21. De Camp alleges that the oper­a­tions in which Wil­son, Ter­pil and Gray allegedly engaged in were an exten­sion of the activ­i­ties of for­mer Joseph McCarthy aide Roy Cohn.

“Gray’s asso­ciate Wil­son was appar­ently con­tin­u­ing the work of a reported col­lab­o­ra­tor of Gray from the 1950’s—McCarthy com­mit­tee coun­sel Roy Cohn, now dead of AIDS. Accord­ing to the for­mer head of the vice squad for one of America’s biggest cities, ‘Cohn’s job was to run the lit­tle boys. Say you had an admi­ral, a gen­eral, a con­gress­man, who did not want to go along with the pro­gram. Cohn’s job was to set them up, then they would go along. Cohn told me that him­self.’ The first pres­i­dent of Tong Sun Park’s George Town Club, where Wilson’s sex­ual black­mail oper­a­tions were report­edly run, was Robert Keith Gray.”

(Ibid.; pp. 179–180.)

22. Gray’s activ­i­ties over­lap those activ­i­ties of the Iran-Contra scan­dal and also the milieu of the Bush fam­ily. The Catholic youth home Covenant House was impli­cated in orga­nized child molesta­tion and also had ties to the Bushes.

“Gray employee Rob Owen set up a pri­vate group to solicit funds for the Con­tras. Owen was called before Con­gress, to tes­tify on how he deliv­ered bags of cash to the Con­tras. In Feb­ru­ary of 1989, Hill and Knowlton’s Charles Perkins rushed to New York for a frac­tion of the firm’s usual fee, to help with pub­lic rela­tions for Covenant House. The youth organization’s direc­tor, Father Bruce Rit­ter, was alleged to have molested youth who took refuge with him.”

(Ibid.; p. 180.)

23.

“Lauded by the Rea­gan and Bush Admin­is­tra­tions as a show­case for the pri­va­ti­za­tion of social ser­vice, Covenant House had expanded into Guatemala as a gate­way to South Amer­ica. Accord­ing to intel­li­gence com­mu­nity sources, the pur­pose was pro­cure­ment of chil­dren from South Amer­ica for exploita­tion in a pedophile ring. The flag­ship Guatemalan mis­sion of Covenant House was launched by a for­mer busi­ness part­ner of Nicaraguan dic­ta­tor Anas­ta­sio Somoza–Roberto Ale­jos Arzu–who had ties to the CIA, accord­ing to the Vil­lage Voice of Feb. 20, 1990. The Voice quoted Jean-Marie Simon, author of Guatemala: Eter­nal Spring, Eter­nal Tyranny: ‘It’s like hav­ing Idi Amin on the board of Amnesty International.’”

(Idem.)

24.

“A top source of money for Covenant House has been Robert Macauley, founder of Ameri­cares, a ser­vice orga­ni­za­tion impli­cated in chan­nel­ing funds to the Con­tras. A close friend of the Bush fam­ily since Con­necti­cut, Andover and Yale days, Macauley has George Bush’s brother Prescott on the Ameri­cares’ board. Father Rit­ter was a vice pres­i­dent of Ameri­cares, at least until he had to resign from Covenant House in Feb­ru­ary 1989, and spent week­ends at Macauley’s estate in Con­necti­cut, accord­ing to a for­mer Covenant House employee. As in New York, also in Nebraska an insti­tu­tion that shel­tered child abuse could count on pro­tec­tion from Wash­ing­ton. The atti­tude of fed­eral agen­cies towards Larry King’s Franklin Credit Union fits the mold.”

(Ibid.; pp. 180–181.)

25. More of De Camp’s alle­ga­tions con­cern­ing Larry King imply con­nec­tions between King, the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity and George Bush (the Elder.)

“If King was involved with CIA money laun­der­ing, that jibes with a report from a mem­ber of Con­cerned Par­ents: ‘I heard from two dif­fer­ent black peo­ple in North Omaha that King used to send lim­ou­sines down to Offutt Air Base [home of the Strate­gic Air Com­mand] to pick up CIA per­son­nel for par­ties.’ The some­times expan­sive Larry King used to talk fondly about his friends. In a Sept. 7, 1988 inter­view with the Met­ro­pol­i­tan, King said, ‘I know some of the peo­ple I admire aren’t very pop­u­lar. Ed Meese. The late Bill Casey of the CIA. And I love for­mer Chief Jus­tice Burger. Those are the peo­ple I really like to talk to. Bill Casey. . . . I just thought so very highly of him.’”

(Ibid.; p. 175.)

26.

“Larry King adored Bill Casey, but what about one of Casey’s pre­de­ces­sors at Cen­tral Intelligence—George Bush? Ever since July 23, 1989, when the lead edi­to­r­ial in the World-Herald said that ‘one child . . . is said to believe that she saw George Bush at one of King’s Par­ties,’ King’s con­nec­tion with Bush has been a fre­quently asked ques­tion about the Franklin case. Anx­i­ety on this account has run espe­cially high in Omaha’s black com­mu­nity, where in Decem­ber 1990, one young lady stood up at a pub­lic meet­ing and pro­claimed, ‘I think George Bush is involved in this child abuse case, and that is why all these peo­ple have been dying.’”

(Idem.)

27. Accord­ing to De Camp, Bush’s name sur­faced in the begin­ning of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the Franklin/pedophilia connection.

“Inside inves­ti­ga­tors of Franklin, and the Webb case before it, know that Bush’s name came up at the very begin­ning, and it came up more than once. The July 1989 World-Herald col­umn, in an attempt to dis­credit this and other victim-witness tes­ti­mony, attrib­uted the men­tion of Bush to a per­son ‘under psy­chi­atric care,’ mean­ing Loretta Smith. In real­ity, the report was from Nelly Pat­ter­son Webb.”

(Idem.)

28.

“Nelly first brought up Bush in 1986, when she told Julie Wal­ters about the sex par­ties she was flown to in Wash­ing­ton and Chicago. She saw Bush at two of these par­ties, she said, one in each city. Nelly also told Wal­ters that one fre­quent party-goer with King was a boy named ‘Brent,” the one who was ‘flown to another city some­where’ after a falling out with King. Wal­ters did not have the resources to cross-check this infor­ma­tion with the life of Brandt Thomas, the Boys Town res­i­dent who had moved in with Larry King. Franklin credit union files con­tained a let­ter signed by King, in his capac­ity as Youth Affairs Com­mit­tee advi­sor for the National Black Repub­li­can Coun­cil, list­ing Thomas as one of two national con­tact peo­ple for NBRC cam­pus chapters.”

(Ibid.; p. 176.)

29.

“Three years later, with an inves­ti­ga­tion of abuse by King and the Webbs finally under way, Nelly was inter­viewed again. Speak­ing to Franklin com­mit­tee Jerry Lowe, she repeated her account of the Chicago party, and said that Bush and two men he arrived with appeared to have left the affair with a young black man she called ‘Brandt.’ Of course, as I have made clear, mere atten­dance by a politi­cian, be he the Pres­i­dent or any other office-holder, at a Larry King party does not mean that per­son knew of or was involved in Larry King’s sor­did activ­i­ties. Almost every top Nebraska Repub­li­can, includ­ing myself, attended the two largest par­ties King ever hosted, the ones at the Repub­li­can national con­ven­tions in 1984 and 1988.”

(Idem.)

30. De Camp relates another alleged con­nec­tion between Bush and the Larry King/pedophilia connections.

“Bush’s name sur­faced again in Lowe’s May 1989 review of reports by Thomas Vla­houlis from the state attor­ney general’s office: ‘Soren­son told Vla­houlis that both Kim­berly and Nelly brought up the name of George Bush and indi­cated that they had both met him. . . .’ On June 10, 1989, Lowe received a let­ter from a cit­i­zen: ‘There is a psy­chol­o­gist in Omaha who used to work for the CIA. In response to a direct ques­tion by an Omaha psy­chi­a­trist regard­ing George Bush’s pri­vate life, this psy­chol­o­gist reported hear­ing rumors when Bush was head of the CIA, that cor­re­spond directly with one of the infer­ences made by Nelly Webb, and com­mented to the psy­chi­a­trist, ‘But how do you inves­ti­gate your boss?’”

(Ibid.; pp. 176–177.)

31. De Camp notes the elder Bush’s pro­cliv­i­ties for appoint­ing Nebraska Republicans.

“In August 1990, Bush appointed Ronald Roskens of Nebraska, to head the Agency for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment (AID). Roskens had been fired the pre­vi­ous year as chan­cel­lor of the Uni­ver­sity of Nebraska, where Larry King was a mem­ber of his ‘chancellor’s advi­sory com­mit­tee.’ Gary Caradori’s daily notes for Feb. 19, 1989 record: ‘I was informed that Roskins [sic] was ter­mi­nated by the state because of sex­ual activ­i­ties reported to the Regents and ver­i­fied by them. Mr. Roskins was reported to have had young men at his res­i­dence for sex­ual encoun­ters. As part of the sep­a­ra­tion from the state, he had to move out of the state-owned house because of the lia­bil­ity to the state if some of this sex­ual behav­ior was ‘ille­gal.’ Upon Roskins vacat­ing the house, he was pro­vided a house by Joe Seacrist [sic] of the Lin­coln Journal-Star.’ The lead­er­ship of AID is the kind of sen­si­tive job—AID assign­ments have been used as a ‘cover’ by CIA agents, for instance—for which appointees undergo a back­ground check that would have to turn up what Caradori also heard. Nev­er­the­less, George Bush appointed Roskens.”

(Idem.)

32. Inves­ti­ga­tor Gary Caradori was among the many casu­al­ties of the Franklin inves­ti­ga­tion. De Camp has an appen­dix of a list of “sus­pi­cious deaths tied to the Franklin case.”

“(1.) BILL BAKER. He was a restau­rant owner in Omaha, and a part­ner of Larry King in homo­sex­ual pornog­ra­phy oper­a­tions. He was found shot in the back of the head.

(2.) SHAWN BONER. Brother of victim-witness Troy Boner, he died of a gun­shot wound from ‘Russ­ian Roulette.’

(3.) GARY CARADORI. Chief inves­ti­ga­tor for he leg­isla­tive Franklin Com­mit­tee, Caradori told asso­ciates days before his death that he had infor­ma­tion that would ‘blow this case wide open.’ He died when his plane crashed on July 11, 1990.

(4.) ANDREW ‘A.J.’ CARADORI. Died at the age of 8, in the plane crash with his father.

(5.) NEWT COPPLE. A con­fi­den­tial infor­mant for Caradori and his inves­tiga­tive firm, Cop­ple was a key behind-the-scenes activist fight­ing the cover-up of the Franklin case. Son of Com­mon­wealth Sav­ings owner S.E. Cop­ple, busi­ness­man in his own right, an ex-champion wrestler with no prior health prob­lems and par­ents who lived into their late eight­ies and nineties, Cop­ple sud­denly ‘died in his sleep’ in March 1991, at the age of 70.”

(Ibid.; p. 250.)

33. More of De Camp’s Franklin death list follows.

“(6.) CLARE HOWARD. The for­mer sec­re­tary of Alan Baer, who arranged Baer’s pedophile trysts, Howard ‘died in her sleep’ in 1991.

(7.) MIKE LEWIS. A for­mer care­giver for victim-witness Loretta Smith. He died of a ‘severe dia­betic reac­tion’ at the age of 32.

(8.) JOE MALEK, asso­ciate of Larry King and owner of Peony Park, where homo­sex­ual galas were held. His death from gun­shot was ruled a suicide.

(9.) AARON OWEN, the brother of victim-witness Alisha Owen. He was found hanged in his cell in Lin­coln, Nebraska, hours before one of his sister’s court appearances.

(10.) CHARLIE ROGERS. A reputed homo­sex­ual part­ner of Larry King, Rogers said that he feared for his life, in the days before his death. His head was blown off with a shot­gun, in what was ruled a suicide.

(11.) DAN RYAN, an asso­ciate of Larry King. He was found stran­gled or suf­fo­cated in a car.

(12.) BILL SKOLESKI. An offi­cer in the Omaha Police Depart­ment who was believed to be keep­ing a file on Larry King, he died of a heart attack.

(13.) KATHLEEN SORENSON. The fos­ter par­ent for Nelly and Kim­berly Webb after they fled the home of Larry King’s rel­a­tives, Jar­rett and Bar­bara Webb, she was an out­spo­ken activist against Satanism. Her death in a sus­pi­cious car crash is related in Chap­ter 15.

(14.) CURTIS TUCKER. An asso­ciate of Larry King, he fell or jumped out of the win­dow of the Hol­i­day Inn in Omaha.

(15.) HARMON TUCKER. A school super­in­ten­dent in Nebraska and Iowa, a reputed homo­sex­ual, his death had signs of satanic rit­ual mur­der. He was found dead in Geor­gia, near the plan­ta­tion which Harold Ander­sen and Nebraska-Iowa FBI chief Nicholas O’Hara used for hunting.”

(Ibid.; pp. 250–251.)

34. Among the casu­al­ties that De Camp believes to be con­nected to the Franklin inves­ti­ga­tion was the late William Colby, for­mer direc­tor of the CIA. De Camp worked with Colby dur­ing the Viet­nam War. Colby had worked with De Camp on the book, and served as an inves­tiga­tive source.

“It is a lit­tle over four years since I, John De Camp, wrote the words you have just read. My closes friend and men­tor, Bill Colby, like so many oth­ers in the Franklin case, is dead; he was fished out of a river in front of his home, under the most ques­tion­able of cir­cum­stances, in April of 1996. Was he killed because of his involve­ment in Franklin? I don’t know. What I do know, is that Bill Colby was the heart and soul of the Franklin inves­ti­ga­tion. Although at a cer­tain point he warned me against inves­ti­gat­ing the case fur­ther, it was he who relent­lessly pushed to pub­licly expose what had already been dis­cov­ered, when every­one else, includ­ing, at times, myself, wanted to call it quits. With­out him, this book would never have been written.”

(Ibid.; p. 1.)

35. It is inter­est­ing that the late Colby had been a sup­porter of Pres­i­dent Clin­ton and that his wife worked for Clinton.

“Not only was Bill’s wife, Sally Shel­ton Colby, in a senior posi­tion in the Clin­ton Admin­is­tra­tion, but Colby him­self had empha­sized to me, repeat­edly, that Clin­ton was a great Pres­i­dent, and that it was urgent that he be re-elected.”

(Ibid.; p. 388.)

36. De Camp describes the death of his friend and colleague.

“A week after out get-together, in which Bill spoke so enthu­si­as­ti­cally about his work and his trav­els, he was dead—under the most unusual cir­cum­stances, his death offi­cially labeled an ‘acci­dent.’ I did not believe it then, and I do not believe it now. But I do believe what Bill said: ‘If it’s done right, you will never know how it was done, or who did it.’”

(Ibid.; p. 389.)

37. De Camp expounds on his skep­ti­cism con­cern­ing Colby’s death, based on exten­sive knowl­edge of the late director’s behavior.

“Colby had a sail­boat and his lit­tle get-away cot­tage, where he went as often as he could. I vis­ited him there on sev­eral occa­sions, as Bill invited me sail­ing when­ever I was in town. Inevitably, how­ever, the weather fore­cast would warn of a pos­si­bil­ity of rain, or a drop of rain would fall, or he’d notice that the moon was not in the right posi­tion, or the sun too hot, or what­ever. And Bill would decide not to take the risk and go out sailing.”

(Ibid.; pp. 384–385.)

38.

“My point is sim­ple. Bill Colby was the sin­gle most metic­u­lously care­ful, pro­grammed, orga­nized indi­vid­ual I have ever encoun­tered, espe­cially when it came to mat­ters of safety, secu­rity, and per­sonal activ­i­ties. There­fore, the descrip­tion given in the media, sur­round­ing his death, does not cohere with Bill Colby’s per­son­al­ity, his char­ac­ter, his modus operandi, and my per­sonal expe­ri­ences with him over many years. Bill Colby was not the kind of per­son who would take off on an evening boat­ing expe­di­tion, leav­ing his com­puter still turned on at his desk, his half-finished din­ner still sit­ting on the table, and most of the lights on in the cot­tage. That was not Bill.”

(Ibid.; p. 385.)

39. Recount­ing an inci­dent that escaped most people’s notice (includ­ing Mr. Emory’s), De Camp relates an inci­dent that fore­shad­owed Colby’s death.

“Fur­ther­more, Bill had been the vic­tim of a ‘rob­bery’ in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., not too long before his death, in which he had been badly beaten, and eas­ily could have died. This ‘rob­bery’ and his actual death were both mys­te­ri­ous inci­dents, in a rel­a­tively short span of time. I have a hard time believ­ing in coin­ci­dences, when it comes to peo­ple like Bill Colby. His mys­te­ri­ous death has also brought, to my mind, his own expla­na­tions of how peo­ple end up dead, in the course of our dis­cussing the death of Franklin case inves­ti­ga­tor Gary Caradori—a death Colby him­self had inves­ti­gated. His exact state­ment on this was: ‘If it’s done right, you’ll never know how it was done, or who did it for sure. That’s what pro­fes­sion­al­ism is all about.’”

(Idem.)