Smith’s Report, no. 4, April 1991

Friend:

Northwestern University

The Northwestern Project is running like clockwork, just about like I predicted (see: Smith's Report #2 & #3). The CODOH Open Debate announcement has appeared in the Daily Northwestern once each week on Thursday since 11 January. During January after the Daily and the NW Review published a couple letters from me (see S.R. #3) all was quiet. I wasn't worried, certain the CODOH Open Debate announcement would encourage the local Holocaust Lobby to do something a little stupid, and do it publicly.

On 4 February a full-page ad sponsored by S.H.O.A.H. (Students Helping to Organize Awareness of the Holocaust) appeared in the Daily Northwestern. It attacked Holocaust revisionism as worthless anti-Semitism and Professor Butz for having employed “a series of lies and distortions” in his The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Here's the good part. The ad was signed by some 175 NWU professors and students, including about half of the faculty of the Northwestern history department.

I don't know how Professor Butz felt about it, he has to work at Northwestern, but I was very very

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THE DAILY NORTHWESTERN, Monday, February 4, 1991

[to come]

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pleased. I had set up a simple scenario on that campus and the Holocaust Lobby had played its part perfectly. Now CODOH has an opportunity to arrange a forum where these Northwestern idealists will have an opportunity to demonstrate publicly that they know where the “lies” are in Butz's Hoax.

I responded with my usual letter calling for free inquiry and open debate. It wasn't published. Desert Storm was about to blow off on the ground and all letters-to-the-editor were about the war. Then on 26 February two young men wrote to the Daily suggesting that they might support me in my claim that the Holocaust never happened if I would support theirs that the planet is shaped like an enchilada. I'm thinking it over.

On 25 February an ad had appeared in the Daily announcing a “fireside” talk featuring Professor Arthur Betz. So far as I know it is the fist time since 1978 that Professor Betz has been offered an opportunity to speak about Revisionist scholarship. Terrific news! But the campus Lobby wasn't asleep at the wheel. On 27 February the same “fireside” ad appeared in the Daily again with the word CANCELED pasted across it.

The next day, 28 February, an article appeared in the Daily by staff writer Keven F. Sherry describing at least the surface of the event pretty well. Sherry says that the “fireside” was canceled because it of “student outrage and conflicts with the Jewish holiday of Purim.” What he doesn't mention, intentionally or not, is that there was one telephone call to the sponsor of the “fireside” during which unspecified acts of violence were threatened if the fireside were to go forward. The usual. (See: NW Review, 1 March 91.)

I've written a response to the Daily, but together with a couple supporters I have a special=0Dsurprise for Northwestern during the 1991 Holocaust Awareness Month of April. We think it will be very effective and productive. I'll fill you in on the results in S.R. #5. But this is the kind of interest we can generate with focused projects on specific campuses where we follow through. All I have done so far is to place the CODOH Open Debate announcement in the campus newspaper and write three letters. You can feel sure that plenty of people on the Northwestern campus know CODOH is around. Before we're through everybody will know we're

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there and will have had the chance to become aware of the tactics used to suppress Holocaust fraud and falsehood, the Chicago media will be talking openly about censorship at Northwestern and, if I'm not completely wrong, we will be getting feelers to speak on Chicago campuses.

National Association for College Activities (NACA)

I continue to get a trickle of calls from CODOH's ad in NACA'S Programming magazine but no concrete offers to speak. Because no one who has contacted me has yet said no, I still don't feel I should put their names into print. Several of the calls have come from universities I would not have expected to hear from.

I have also changed the text in the advertisement in Programming. The text I have been using had a heading that read: “The Holocaust Story: Let's Hear Both Sides.” The new text is clearer, more direct, and it's more challenging. It's reproduced here. My yearly dues for membership in NACA have to be paid. I hope one of you will help me with it. It's $330.

Boston University

With the help of a supporter I have submitted CODOH's Open Debate announcement to Boston University's student newspaper The Daily Free Press. It should begin to appear in classifieds under “Announcements” on Wednesdays beginning 13 March. I especially like the idea of going into BU because ELIE WIESEL teaches there or used to and his standing on that campus is very high. It is also the administrative fiefdom where the cantankerous and outspoken JOHN SILBER rules the roost as President. Silber recently almost pulled off an upset victory in his outsider's campaign for Massachusetts Governor.

On 17 November 1989 Silber was interviewed by WILLIAM BUCKLEY on Buckely's TV program Firing Line and a couple months later when the interview was aired in Visalia I happened to catch it. Another miracle of modern technology. The discussion was about academic freedom and Buckley asked: “…isn't the search for truth necessarily asymptotic … (or, I suppose, without end)…?”

Silber answered: “Yes, that's right. You don't finally get there, but there are criteria by which you can know that you are going swiftly astray. For example, the intellectual salt miner, the one who creates a false trail of evidence. You take the most glaring example at the present time, our scholars who claim that there was no such thing as the Holocaust. Now, I believe that such people should be terminated from the university….” A nice tool for us once CODOH's Open Debate Project get's going on the BU campus. (If you would like to have the transcript of the entire exchange between Buckley and Silber we'll photocopy it for you.)

ROSS VICKSELL, Director of the Association of New England Revisionists (ANER), has agreed to monitor the Daily Free Press and the Boston press for us. Vicksell has helped organize supporting demonstrations for Fred Leuchter at the nearby Malden courthouse – in conjunction with the very savvy and energetic ERNST ZUENDEL based in Toronto – and ANER is the only Revisionist organization I know of in America that demonstrates publicly.

The NEW HAMPSHIRE KLAN, represented by Tom Hermon, likes to participate with ANER in the pro-Leuchter demonstrations. When I expressed some dismay about Hermon to Vicksell he pointed out that his demonstrations are about intellectual liberty, not politics, that all are welcome to participate with him in

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demonstrations for free speech and that includes the Klan. I can't argue with that, but the Klan doesn't believe in free intellectual expression as an ideal but only as a tool for those it purports to speak for, it stands against equality before the law, and generally speaking the Klan is a pain in the ass. Maybe other people have other opinions.

The campaign in Boston to destroy FRED LEUCHTER, author of THE LEUCHTER REPORT, is led by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith's Civil Rights Director Sally Greenberg, Shelly Shapiro of the Holocaust Survivors & Friends, American Holocaust Survivors of Greater Boston, the North American Jewish Students Network, One Generation After, the Massachusetts Jewish War Veterans, Lesbian/Gay Allies of Jews, Jewish Lesbian Daughters of Holocaust Survivors, The Malden Holocaust Commission, The Jewish Community Relations Council, The German-Jewish Dialogue, and the Malden Clergy Association. Chip Berlet of Political Research Review offers his services to track “extremist groups such as the IHR,” for whom “Leuchter is the pseudo-scientist of the moment….”

A pretty impressive body of self-righteous bigots acting out the old Boston Puritan pattern of suppression and condemnation, but with a new twist for our times. Sexually, everything goes. But the movement of intellect in Boston has to pass before their Chicken-soup Board of Censorship. Not a pretty thought, and not a pretty smell. Now that CODOH is starting operations at Boston University, all this business will begin to be tied together in a new way. Holocaust bigots will not have the media to themselves any longer. CODOH has arrived, and CODOH likes to mix it up.

The easiest way to keep current with The Leuchter Affair in Boston and around the country is to subscribe ($15) to the weekly CHRISTIAN NEWS, PO Box 168, New Haven MO 63068.

University of New Mexico

Ty Landon continues to run the CODOH Open Debate announcement in the University of New Mexico campus paper El Lobo (The Wolf) in Albuquerque. I'm receiving a trickle of calls from this predominantly Hispanic campus. Landon is also directing the very successful Holocaust revisionist video project on Albuquerque public access television. He's using videos from various sources in the U.S. and Canada. The local Jewish press is up in arms over it but the rest of the town and its media have largely remained quiet. If you are interested in looking into a similar project where you live you can contact Ty Landon for information at 1-505-247-9929. Or you can contact me at the numbers on the masthead.

CAN YOU HELP ME PRODUCE A REVISIONIST “WHITE PAPER”?

It's been two years since a Texas supporter suggested that CODOH produce a “White Paper” using maybe ten good photos and a minimum of text for special promotions. As we worked out the idea it would be 8 1/2 by 11 and have a very simple clean look to it. In addition to an introduction there might be short biogs of Mark Weber and myself. But when you open the presentation the heart of this “White Paper” will be one very well reproduced photograph on the left page picturing one of the atrocity photos that are used so often to give credence to the orthodox Holocaust story. Beneath it will be the standard caption “proving” the atrocity occurred. Opposite that photo and caption on the right-hand page there will be two or three quotes, from establishment Jewish sources whenever possible, that demonstrate that the “atrocity” did not occur. That's all. The “White Paper” will exploit the concept that one picture is worth a thousand words. It will give the media person, lecture buyer or potential supporter a very simple, clear, immediate idea that something is wrong with the Holocaust story and that there are obviously questions that have got to be asked about it. The White Paper will be used as a classy tool for introducing Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust to important potential supporters and key media and lecture buyers.

I need someone to organize the materials for me. To find out whre the photos are that we want and how to get our hands on good reproducible samples. We need only ten or tweleve photos, so it's not a huge job. Whatever expenses there will be born by CODOH. The work will consist largely of the research and correspondence needed to track down the materials and get them to hand. If you are interested please call me at 1 209 627 8757. We'll talk it over. If more than one of you are interested maybe I will be able to put you together so that you can work together. I think you'll find it to be a very interesting project to work on.

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Business

My thanks for your help with the costs of publishing updated versions of MARK WEBER'S two leaflets – “The Holocaust: Let's Hear Both Sides” and “Auschwitz: Myths and Facts,” and two of my own: “The Case For Teaching Holocaust Revisionism in Our Colleges and High Schools” and “Interview With A Holocaust Revisionist,” which was first published in Loompanics. I received the necessary funds and offers as well from two printers to print the leaflets at reduced charges. We have also received a tentative offer of a rent-free house in Oregon, which I am going to look into.

Your help is very much appreciated. I earn no income whatever from the College Speaking Project and only a few hundred bucks a month from the media work for the Institute for Historical Review, so everything you send along helps with this work and with keeping the heads of my family above water. I feel a little bit stupid having to write like this about money, at my age, but that's my situation so I might as well be up front about it. With my step-daughter Magaly's help, and the Epson Equity 1+ computer that a supporter fronted for me, the MAILING LIST is in better shape than it has ever been. Nevertheless, I think I lost track of a bunch of names a couple years ago. If you have the names of ANYONE you believe would be interested in receiving SMITH'S REPORT please send them along. The more the merrier.

I mentioned above that we have got a simple but wonderful surprise in store for the folks at NORTHWESTERN. We are going to make a little “news” there. The fall-out may be considerable and I expect there to be media interest. But these affairs move fast and it's important to be able to respond quickly to events, particularly with electronic media. Not only in the Chicago area but wherever an opportunity with media arises. So once again the issue of a FAX MACHINE has come up. Any number of people around the country have been urging me to get a Fax. I have been advised by a Washington D.C. consultant who specializes in media that faxing my response to the source of a breaking news story on TV, radio or the print press will very much increase the likelihood that I will be used as a source for information from a Revisionist perspective. Next month when the story blows up at Northwestern, for example, if I have a Fax I will be able to receive breaking news stories from the Chicago area and respond to them within the hour. It will be as if I am there!

My research tells me I should plan to spend about $2,000 for a Fax. I need one that is a “Group 3” machine and that scans well enough to send good photo reproductions. It should have a 30-page document feeder, automatic re-dialing, and be able to “tell” on standby the difference between an incoming telephone call and a fax. If you have information you think I should have about buying a fax please contact me quickly. There is no likelihood whatever that I can purchase a Fax machine myself at this time. If you can help me get one, either by credit card or cash, or contribute to it's cost I will do all I can to use it productively.

CASSETTES: I've been interviewed by a dozen or so radio stations recently about “war crimes” trials in relation to our friend Saddam Hussein. A couple of the cassettes are listenable and are listed in the enclosed catalog. [that is outdated; ed.]

JUST RECEIVED! MORE NEWS ABOUT THE DEVELOPING OPEN DEBATE PROJECT AT NORTHWESTERN! Today's mail brings an editorial published 5 May in The Daily Northwestern headlined “Let Butz Debate His Hateful Message.” The editorial, representing the Daily, says in part: “Butz is a sort of NU legend. All students hear of the strange Tech professor who wrote a book denying Holocaust…. His ideas are repugnant and outrageous, but students still deserve a chance to hear them.” CODOH agrees.

On 6 May the Daily published two letters to the editor: one from a Rabbi Michael Balinski, Director of the NU Hillel, writing that “Sponsoring Butz Gives Undeserved Legitimacy.” The second from Geza Von Molnar, Professor of German and “Director, European Thought and Culture,” who writes: “Butz Denies History; Deny Him an Audience.”

Rabbis? Directors of Thought and Culture? Committing themselves to the fray? Openly? Just right. Just what we want. Oh, yes! Purrrrrrrr…….