Read it and weep, then seethe...

http://www.amazon.com/review/R37J2JTSO65Z3R/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0977795357&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=

Read it and weep, then seethe...
April 22, 2010
Thomas J. Breidenbach (Brooklyn)
The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse & Betrayal (Hardcover)
Book Review

"Deep politics" is scholar Peter Dale Scott's term for historical machinations such as drug-running and assassinations which form covert if systemic features of the contemporary state and which are all-too naively dismissed as "conspiracy theories." A number of people who study such matters seriously have long suspected that the scandal centering on Omaha, Nebraska's Franklin Credit Union in the 1970s and `80s forms the conceptual linchpin to a truly critical understanding of the perverse, brutal and predatory nature of power in late-imperial America. Having read former Nebraska State Senator John DeCamp's brave if somewhat desultory 1992 book on the subject, THE FRANKLIN COVER-UP, and watched the unaired British television documentary CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE on the internet, we have also sensed, with a certain despair, that the nature and details of this scandal were so shocking, ugly, confusing and strange as to forever defy broader public credulity and scrutiny. It is with a profound sense of relief, admiration and gratitude, then, that one reads Nick Bryant's THE FRANKLIN SCANDAL, which accomplishes the seemingly impossible: an eminently gripping, thorough and accessible account of perhaps the grimmest aspect of contemporary U. S. history.

It is amusing to see the sole negative reviewer on these pages (as of this writing) suggest that Bryant has gullibly relied only on the apparent victims of the scandal, when in fact the author has taken pains to bolster accusations voiced in his book with the testimony of law-enforcement, governmental, mental health, legal and social-service officials, as well as journalists and others whose professions and/or personal relationships brought them into the orbit of this lurid story.

Anything but the ramblings of a susceptible naïf, Bryant's book appears as a model of journalistic integrity and a triumph of the investigative craft. Relying on official court and law enforcement documents and an extensive array of interviews with those involved in a variety of aspects of the scandal, it conveys a massive amount of carefully corroborated and meticulously researched data while maintaining all the tension and drama of the very best true-crime narratives. Bryant's own natural skepticism allows him to ultimately ground what appear to be Franklin's most far-fetched elements--Satanism, mind control, and the trafficking of children among our nation's elite for the purpose of sex--in an historical context that casts these admittedly outlandish phenomena in an intelligible and empirical light. Bryant's treatment of these subjects is deft, and his light touch and firm command of the overall material combine to a disarming effect that is sure to challenge all but the most recalcitrant of doubters.

While it provides well over a hundred pages of documentation in support of its disturbing thesis that there appears to be validity to the wrenching accusations of gravely scurrilous behavior on the part of an elite element in our society, among the other merits of Bryant's book is that it dispels certain myths that have accrued about Franklin over the years, even as it deepens our understanding of little-appreciated aspects of the story, such as Alicia Owen's protracted legal nightmare. The author's treatment of the scandal is highly comprehensive, but also circumspect; aficionados will want to consult DeCamp's THE FRANKLIN COVER-UP to fill in the names of certain apparent perpetrators, a few of whose identities Bryant--unable to finally track down every source he pursued over the several years he has worked on this story--only alludes to. (As the skeptical reader will no doubt appreciate, Bryant does not overstep his bounds, though given the vast amount of information he has collected, he hardly needs to.) There are certain other details found in DeCamp's book, pertaining for example to the exact nature of the extreme abuse apparently suffered by certain victims, which Bryant does not reiterate; given the acute nature of these violations, Bryant's overall eschewal of the sensational, and his palpable concern and respect for the victims' dignity, this elision appears understandable, especially as these horrific accounts have found a life of their own on the Web. This said, the author's description of the abuse conveys its iniquity, and there is much in this book that will be new to readers of DeCamp, who as an attorney close to the case lacks Bryant's journalistic precision, clarity, sense of narrative structure, and critical distance. This is not said to detract from DeCamp's compelling book, but to point out that Bryant brings a great deal that is new to this important story.

In all, this is an enraging book, and toward its conclusion the reader reels in disgust at its main point: the subsequent abuse suffered by victims when they were subjected to the federal and state legal systems during the cover-up phase of the scandal. What this suggests about the state of our public institutions is one of the most disturbing aspects of this book. Still, aside from a cast of shameless villains there are heroes and heroines who emerge in the story, whose efforts in the face of obdurate corruption, selfishness and cruelty are--though it might seem a trite word in this context--inspiring. That these examples of human fortitude and decency finally have the chronicler in Mr. Bryant that they deserve is enough to reaffirm the faith in our species that this book otherwise shakes to its core.

Bryant's account of the Franklin scandal joins David Ray Griffin's extensive analyses of 9/11 and James Bamford's exposures of military-industrial and intelligence agency malfeasance as one of the most important historical documents of our time. In its own way, given the extremities of the depravity it confronts THE FRANKLIN SCANDAL is, if possible, even bolder than those valiant efforts. It is most highly recommended to anyone willing to face vicious realities that too many others remain too complacent, timorous or arrogant to acknowledge. It is must-reading for those seeking to comprehend the madness of our cultural moment, and who yearn for an example of a meaningful and courageous response to it.

The Franklin Scandal

http://ileneproctor.net/
Media Contact, Ilene Proctor 310-858-6643
Cell: +1 310-721-2336

TrineDay Publishes a Political Bombshell – Nick Bryant’s

The Franklin Scandal –

A Powerful New Book That Unveils The Secrets Of Sex and Pedophilia Amongst Washington D.C.’s Privileged, Making this the Most Suppressed Crime Story in American History

If you can handle the truth, read this book.

It is almost axiomatic to say that historians may lie but history cannot. Nick Bryant’s formidable and meticulously researched expose about the most shocking crime of the last century will disturb and challenge the skeptical, thrill true believers, and astound and anger everyone in-between. Within these pages, official lies are witheringly demolished and the stark truth, however unseemly, begins to take shape. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is a conspiracy. And most explosively, the highest levels of the government are involved and shown to be in league with the worst culprits in the White House, DoJ, FBI, CIA and the Secret Service.

The FRANKLIN SCANDAL is the explosive story of a nationwide pedophile ring that pandered children to a cabal of the rich and powerful. Bryant spent seven years and traveled 40,000 miles excavating the story. In this extensively researched book, Bryant implicates politicians, major media corporations, the CIA. And more.

The ring’s pimps were a pair of Republican powerbrokers who used Boys Town as a pedophiliac reservoir, had access to the highest levels of our government, and connections to the CIA. Lawrence E. King, director of the Franklin Community Federal Credit Union and a rising black star in the GOP, was in business in the 80s with Craig Spence, the "pimp" of the operation. Spence and his boy-toys took midnight tours of the White House, thanks to military, intelligence, and Bush White House ties. Spence died a mysterious death in a hotel room just 10 weeks after the first story broke in front page headlines. Soon, a number of mysterious (and convenient) deaths along with an immediate cover-up by highly placed government officials followed an attempt to expose the ring in the 1990s.

Bryant squirreled out reams of sealed documentation of one of the grand juries that covered up the "Franklin" child-trafficking network. The documents included nearly two hundred flight logs, with the majority of the flights destined for Washington, DC. There, Craig Spence's house was wired for audio-visual blackmail. Top politicians would be compromised, and then controlled. Nick describes Craig Spence as a "self-confessed CIA asset" and has other sources to back up Spence's claims. "The Justice Department, FBI, and Secret Service went into a full court press to vaporize this scandal, so the American people wouldn't get wind that such malevolent corruption existed in their government," says Bryant.

The names of the compromised politicians had to be protected at all costs or else the American public would have been outraged by the taint and corruption in their political system. State and federal grand juries in Nebraska and a grand jury in Washington, DC played an integral role in the cover-up. Moreover, Bryant shows that officers of the court who participated in the cover-up later climbed the ladder of success in both the state and federal judiciaries.

Like so much flotsam and jetsam, victims were used, abused, and discarded, and they knew what would happen to them if they ever came clean. Carefully crafted campaigns of calumny were created to demonize the victims. Six victims summoned the courage to come forward, but FBI agents, who were protecting the identities of the compromised politicians, subjected them to torrents of threats, and most collapsed like a house of cards.

In one case, a delicately beautiful young girl named Alisha Owen, whose only crime was being born poor, was seduced at the age of 13 into the pedophilic network. At the age of 21, she refused to recant her abuse to the FBI, and she was publicly crucified by crooked state and federal grand juries that disavowed the pedophile network, and both indicted her on perjury.

The state of Nebraska pulled out all stops, spared no expense, and deployed dirty tricks to rig Alisha’s perjury trial, because her trial represented much more than a simple case of perjury—her jurors would also be deliberating the findings of the grand juries, which disavowed the pedophile network. In essence, Alisha’s guilt would protect the rich and powerful men who had been provided with children. As a kangaroo court found Alisha guilty of perjury, she had to endure the mysterious deaths of her 17-year-old brother and others affiliated with the investigation. Undaunted, she refused to recant her abuse, and a kangaroo court sentenced her to prison for 9-15 years on trumped up perjury charges. She spent nearly two of those years in solitary confinement.

Since her release from prison in 2001, Alisha has since become a model citizen: she’s now happily married and gainfully employed as a travel agent, and currently lives in Omaha. She has never recanted her abuse.

Very few cinematic profiles of courage come close to Alisha’s—Erin Brockovich’s story in comparison is like a walk in the park on a sunny, spring day.

Yet, conversely, one of the ring’s pedophilic pimps currently lives in the DC area, and has since enmeshed himself with a new supply of lower socioeconomic children to prey upon.

Nick Bryant has drawn open the curtain on so much government perfidy, and what is revealed is pedophilia, cosmetic piety, and a cesspool of profits.

After reading this important book, no reader can fail to ponder this terrible unprosecuted crime.

Nick Bryant’s writing on the plight of disadvantaged children in the United States has been featured in numerous national journals, including the Journal of Professional Ethics, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, Journal of Social Distress and Homelessness, Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, and Journal of School Health. He has also published a book, America’s Children: Triumph of Tragedy, addressing the medical and developmental problems of lower socioeconomic children in America. His mainstream and investigative journalism has appeared in The Reader, Salon.com, Gear, and Playboy.

The FRANKLIN SCANDAL is available at bookstores everywhere or through the publisher’s website, http://www.trineday.com/

The FRANKLIN SCANDAL

http://franklinscandal.com

The FRANKLIN SCANDAL is the story of a nationwide pedophile ring that pandered children to a cabal of the rich and powerful. The ring’s pimps were a pair of political powerbrokers who had access to the highest levels of our government. Nebraska legislators nearly exposed the ring in 1990, but its unveiling had the potential to produce seismic political aftershocks.The legislators' efforts resulted in rash of mysterious deaths and the overpowering corruption of federal and local law enforcement, including the FBI, Secret Service, and Justice Department, effecting an immaculate cover-up of the trafficking network.

The publisher is donating 50% of the book’s proceeds to organizations that assist abused children.

The FRANKLIN SCANDAL will be the first book to tell the complete tale of a power elite pedophile ring in the US and also of the cover-up of its heinous crimes.

About The Author

Nick Bryant's writing has recurrently focused on the plight of disadvantaged children in the United States, and he’s been published in numerous national journals, including the Journal of Professional Ethics, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, Journal of Social Distress and Homelessness, Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, and Journal of School Health. He is the co-author of America’s Children: Triumph of Tragedy, addressing the medical and developmental problems of lower socioeconomic children in America.