Willis Carto The story on page one about the Carto-IHR stand-off in the Vista courtroom is hard news. There’s another side to the story that I suppose we can call soft news.

The first week in November I had some business to take care of in Southern California and the next day, Tuesday the 5th, I drove on south for another hour to Vista where I parked at the court house and began looking for the room where Willis Carto and IHR were at last having their great stand-off over the Farrel millions. Mark Weber et al. claim the money was meant to further the work of IHR, while Carto has argued it was meant for him to do with what he thinks best.

Due to the vigorous criminality of our citizenry, the courts in San Diego County are overflowing, and court room number 11 is outside the main building in two joined house trailers. When I arrived, the court was in recess for lunch so I decided to stroll around the grounds. There on the narrow asphalt walkway I passed Willis, his wife Elisabeth and Liberty Lobby attorney Mark Lane. We’ve known each other for years. None of them recognized me. I was wearing blue jeans, tennis shoes and a quilted jacket. I suppose I looked like your typical day laborer, but I was wearing the same mug and beard and glasses. They all had their thoughts on higher matters.

In the court room Mark Lane’s wife and I were the only spectators. Mark Weber and his attorney's were there, Willis, Elisabeth with their two lawyers, and the judge and two marshals to keep the peace. Willis looked just as he did the last time I saw him four or five years ago, which suggests good health. Elisabeth looked terrific. Elisabeth always looks terrific. Mark Lane has put on a little weight (maybe I can sell this story to the Enquirer). Judge Runston Maino reminded me of Andrew Allen, the fellow who Carto used to blame for turning the IHR into a front for the ADL, a charge he did not bother mentioning to the judge.

Maino is in his forties, energetic, a little shorter than average maybe, a jokester, and straightforward and sensible. He had no interest in all the in-fighting that has gone on between the two parties. Twice in the afternoon he pointed out that he saw the proceedings as a simple business trial. Only one matter was to be judged. Did Willis Carto illegally convert the Farrel millions or didn’t he?

When the afternoon session was over I spoke briefly with Mark Weber. I had no way to know from that one afternoon how the trial was going. Mark was confident Judge Maino would decide for IHR. Mark has been confident for two years that IHR would win this one. I’ve more or less suspected, or been half afraid, that Mark was kidding himself. But now it’s over and I was wrong and Mark was right. Willis will almost certainly appeal, but it looks to me that he’s about to lose his pants and that he could end up in the jug.

Five years ago, when the struggle between Willis and the IHR staff heated up over editorial control of the Journal of Historical Review, I sided with the staff. I didn’t want to see the Journal transformed from a scholarly journal to a political one. As the struggle really heated up, I simply wanted Willis to get out of the way.

The Farrel bequest had now become part of the picture. I didn’t understand the ins and outs of the Farrel money, but if it was to have gone to IHR, I wanted IHR to get it so it could continue to pursue its mandate, which was, and still is, to advance revisionist theory.

In the end I wanted Willis out of IHR, but I have to say I hope he doesn’t go to jail. Maybe he won’t. He’s crooked (see our story on page one), but in a kind of independent, loner, American sort of way. I don’t think he set out to commit criminal acts, he just didn’t take seriously the law of the land as it applied to him, or the limitations of his character and sensibilities, or the extent of his paranoia.

For years it didn’t matter. Then things changed and it began to matter but Willis remained the same.

One night about five years ago I arrived in Washington D.C. on a warm autumn night and took a cab over to Independence Avenue near Liberty Lobby where I was familiar with a small strip of restaurants and bars and could half-expect to run into someone I knew. That night, as luck would have it, I ran into Trish Katson, a spokesperson for Liberty Lobby. We caught up with each other for a while and she mentioned that Willis was working late at the office and that she would walk me over and see if I couldn’t stay there.

We strolled over to a side entrance to the Lobby building and Trish knocked on the door and shouted and after a moment Willis framed himself in the yellow light of the opened door. He was smiling and in his undershirt and his hair was rumpled and he looked small and, I thought for the first time, kind of vulnerable. I was struck by the simplicity of his manner and the lack of ostentation in his daily round. As it turns out, he appears to be as vulnerable legally as that night he appeared to be physically.

The Campus Project Last month I reported here that I had submitted a four-column-inch advertisement to the Harvard Crimson to protest the Harvard Law Library’s inclusion of CODOH and me in its “Guide to Hate on the Net.” The headline read: “Must We All Believe Alike?” I printed the ad here in SR. Whereupon a number of you took the trouble to point out that in the ad I had misspelled “dispise.” I was surprised to see that many of you who corrected me have as your first language some tongue other than English. Can’t you foreigners take a joke? It was a test!

The ad I in fact submitted to the Crimson had a slightly different text and did not, fortunately, include the word “dispise.” Before I had the chance to submit the ad to other student newspapers, however, we began hearing that the “Guide” was disassociating itself from Harvard Law (see our story in this issue). That meant I might have to change the text. I didn’t know how long it might take to find out what was actually going on, so I worked out another ad, this one only two column inches, and began submitting it.

It reads: “Holocaust Revisionism. Why are the Thought Police Panicked? Read the evidence. Judge for yourself.” Simple. And I give my addresses.

My theory, which I’ve noted here a number of times, is that we no longer need to invest hundreds of dollars, sometimes $1,000 and even $1,500 and more, to run one full-page ad in one student newspaper one time.

Those were the days, only three, four and five years ago, when we had no way to get a substantial amount of text before a student audience other than spending that kind of money for a one-shot run at kicking up a fuss.

Now we have CODOHWeb. Every college student and every newspaper editor in America can reach CODOHWeb and find there (literally) one hundred times the amount of information that can be gotten into one full page ad. The information doesn’t appear for one day only, as it does for an advertisement. It’s there permanently! It’s not going to disappear. If you want it, you’re going to get it. The challenge for me is to find a way to reach the student body at every college in the nation with a notice telling them where they can find this information. They will know what to do with it. Not all of them, but many of them. Many is plenty good enough.

The outcome for the moment, and I regret to say I wasted some time diddling over the “Harvard Law” ad when I should have scuttled it immediately and moved on to something else, is that the above advertisement is running in The Signal at Georgia State, The Daily Vanguard at Portland State, Tech Talk at Louisiana Tech, The Tartan at Carnegie-Mellon, and The Daily O'Collegian at Oklahoma State. It’s running one time a week for four or five weeks at each campus. If the winter break interrupts the schedule, the ad will run again in January. By then I hope to have received enough contributions to run the ad in a hundred papers around the country. Seventy-five dollars on average will pay to insert the ad one time each week for four weeks, which is my modest goal, and to cover my costs in time, telephone, fax and so on.

In addition to the above papers, the ad was accepted by the Colorado Daily at Colorado U. at Boulder, and by the Broadside at George Mason University at Fairfax Virginia. Each took payment by credit card, and each reneged on its agreement. At the Colorado Daily the advertising department discovered a “policy” it had instituted which prohibits publication of any ad mentioning revisionism in a light that is not negative. Content of the ad itself does not matter, nor does the value of the material being advertised. If it’s revisionist, it’s prohibited.

At the Broadcast Millisa Meisner informed me that it will not run the ad because it is “objectionable.” The Broadcast recently printed a “racist” opinion column that made a lot of trouble for the paper. If the Broadcast were to run my objectionable ad, many would assume the Broadcast was promoting revisionism, as many had assumed it had promoted racism.

Unpublished Letters A reader suggests that I open a department on CODOHWeb where I would publish some of the uncounted letters-to-the-editor written by revisionists over the years but not printed for political reasons. He doesn’t mean every little scribble dashed off in a moment of anger, but those that have a point of view carefully worked out. I know for a fact that there are a great number of such letters. We would note which papers were being addressed and could develop something of a perspective on what these newspapers find not fit to print. I wonder what some of you letter writers think of the idea. I would need a volunteer editor to help me with the project.

Speaking of Volunteers Yesterday when I finished sorting out the stories for this issue of SR I realized I was going to have to say something about the Radio Project. I’ve not had time this month to lift a finger with regard to radio. Again. I didn’t like having to say that last month, and I didn’t look forward to having to say it again this month. It occurred to me for the first time in ten years that I need help booking radio interviews. I have always taken care of it myself. That was then. I can either go on telling myself I can still take care of it by myself or I can recognize the pattern I have set over the last few months. I’m going to recognize the pattern. I can’t do it alone any longer. I need help.

Radio is that part of the traditional media that is most open to allowing an open discussion of the holocaust controversy. We can reach very big audiences with it, and we can guide them all to the information available free on CODOHWeb; the most important revisionist scholars and the most important revisionist texts. If you are willing to consider getting involved in booking interviews for Tom Reveille, Robert Countess and myself on talk radio, please contact me by fax or letter. We’ll talk it over. I know how to book the shows. I’ve booked hundreds for myself and others. I’ll show you how to do it. I will take care of all the relevant expenses. You will need to invest a considerable amount of time and bother.