John deCamp

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John deCamp

Postby chiggerbit » Sat Oct 03, 2009 12:46 am

I've been throwing a lot about deCamp in all the threads that have been going on this week with regards to LaRouche and gunderson, and felt it was time for a deCamp thread. I see that wiki tells says:
Born in Neligh, Nebraska, DeCamp joined the United States Army during the Vietnam War. He was later assigned to serve as an aide to former CIA director William Colby, who was Deputy Ambassador to Vietnam at the time. Beginning his campaign for election while still stationed in Vietnam, DeCamp was elected and served four terms as a Nebraska state senator, from 1971 to 1987. In the May 2006 election, he was rebuffed in his attempt to return to the Legislature. He is currently a practicing attorney in Lincoln, Nebraska.


Wiki doesn't give much detail.

In a link I posted elsewhere, I found that pages later, deCamp talks about some of his history as a Nebraska Senator. Aside from his huge ego that's on display, what caught my attention was that as state Senator, deCamp talks about his role in changing Nebraska banking regulations, which is interesting:

http://www.naderlibrary.com/franklincoverup.ApB.htm

...Over the next several years, we had little contact. Bobby entered the restaurant business and -- with a little help from a law I helped amend, that let an individual obtain more liquor licenses than were allowed until then -- began to do quite well. He became a significant personality in Lincoln, the state capital. Meanwhile, I was having more legislative success than I had dreamed possible.

It is quite something, to look back at the headlines from that era, in the same World-Herald that today is trying to destroy me for defending the Franklin victims: "'Gladiator' DeCamp is Tall in Capitol Arena: Fast-Moving Senator Wields Vast Influence" -- from March 26, 1978. "Kingpin or Carpenter-like, John DeCamp Wields Power in Legislature" -- from April 1978; here, C. David Kotok chronicled what he called my "rise to legislative kingpin." My influence on events was such, said Kotok, that "The 1978 Legislature even has been dubbed 'the DeCamp session' by some." The authors of those two articles, Kotok and Frank Partsch, today write most of the World- Herald's editorials, many of which have viciously attacked me.

Bobby and I next had quite a bit to do with each other in 1982, during the Nebraska gubernatorial race. I was there when the state's leading powerbrokers anointed Bobby as the next governor, in fact it was I who suggested they anoint him. That is a fascinating story, but let me first give a little necessary back ground.

Starting in the mid-1970s, a debate over the structure of Nebraska's banking industry emerged as the issue which would dominate state politics for a decade. Officially dubbed "Multi-Bank," the issue was a turf battle of monumental proportions, over who was going to own the banks in Nebraska, and what competition was going to be allowed in the purchase of existing banks.

On one side were the "Independents," who advocated owner- ship of banks by individuals. The Independents were very strong in Nebraska, as in many rural states. On a per capita basis, as I recall, we probably had more banks than almost any other state in the United States.

On the opposing side were the "Big Banks," particularly those based in Omaha, the state's largest city. Nebraska law forbade holding companies, which could own many banks. If holding companies were allowed, the big banks would naturally start buying up a lot of small banks -- "Multi-Bank." That was the issue.

In 1976, I won the chairmanship of the Senate Banking Committee, which controlled banking, finance and insurance in Nebraska. That is, I thought I won it. I know today that I was merely the bright young legislator selected by powerful men in business and politics, to aid their efforts to change the banking structure in Nebraska.

I believed at the time, that the banking structure changes I was proposing, which would allow the big banks to get bigger, were good for Nebraska. I thought they were necessary, as well as probably inevitable.

It was this battle over bank structure, that next brought Bobby and me together.

In 1978, the banking forces I supported determined that we had likely assembled enough senators in the recent election, to pass the Multi-Bank structural changes. But we had to be sure that if we passed the legislation, we could get it signed by the governor. A veto would be fatal. It was possible to get a majority of votes to pass the legislation, but electing enough senators to override a governor's veto might take two or three elections, or forever.

It would be much faster and cheaper, the big boys concluded, to control the governor.

Accordingly, at a very private meeting between a Nebraska congressman named Charles Thone; the state's then-premiere lobbyist, Jim Ryan; Omaha National Bank President and CEO John Woods; Omaha National Vice President Don Adams; and myself, certain agreements were reached. The meeting was held at John Woods' personal residence in Fair Acres, Omaha, in a quiet "servants' quarters" outside the main house. The understanding was clear, that we would work to make Charles Thone governor. And Charles Thone, who said he strongly believed in our Multi-Bank bill, gave his iron-clad pledge that he would sign it, just as soon as we could "put it on my desk."

But the best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry, and that is what happened with the new governor, Charles Thone.

Charlie liked being governor. Charlie was cautious. Charlie did not want to do anything that made anybody unhappy. The last thing Charlie needed after being in office for a couple of years, was to have a controversial issue on which he had to play King Solomon, which would make one or another powerful group hate him, no matter what he did.

Multi-Bank was exactly that. The two contending groups of banks financed almost all major political races in Nebraska- on both sides -- for almost a decade. Politicians would pledge their support to either the Independents or to the Big Banks, led by Omaha National (later to merge with First National of Lincoln to become FirsTier), as the first step toward running for public office, particularly for the Legislature.

Some politicians came to believe that they would never really have to cast a vote on the issue, because there would never be enough votes to get the bill passed. Therefore, they could promise to support Multi-Bank, without having to worry about a final vote or signature on the bill. Charles Thone was apparently one of those. As long as the bill never reached his desk, he could promise till the cows came home that he would sign the bill, but he would never be held accountable.

But on a fateful day in 1980, something happened in the Legislature that nobody dreamed possible. It had never happened in the first one hundred years of Nebraska history. There was a tie vote, 24 to 24. Nebraska's unicameral Legislature has 49 Senators, but on this day, Senator Ernie Chambers decided to sit on his hands, rather than vote for what he regarded as one bunch of evil-doers against another. Then, in an act of dubious legality, Lieutenant Governor Roland Luedtke cast the deciding ballot in favor of the Big Banks. Never before had a lieutenant governor voted on anything,,,.
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Postby chiggerbit » Sat Oct 03, 2009 12:51 am

Maybe it has no significance, but i find this history with regards to deCamp's role in changing Nebraska banking regulations interesting as it was Lawrence King's role in the Franklin credit union that brought the entire pedo-ring to national attention. Here's deCamp, being interviewed by Alex Jones:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/ju ... decamp.htm

....JD: I was. I had just gotten out of the [state] Senate a year or so before when this started breaking. Let me give the story real quick. In North Omaha, Nebraska there was a credit union, an old credit union and that was run by a man named Larry King. Larry King, some of you may remember and I'm sure you'll hear about him again. Not the Larry King on TV but another one. He was officially listed in the New York Times, since you mentioned them, and a number of other state and national, mostly national publications. He was officially listed as the, quote, "Fastest-rising black star in the Republican Party.” Some of you who may be listening may have attended the 1984 or 1988 Republican National Conventions. One in Texas, I remember I was there and I was there for the one in New Orleans, then…

AJ: You're a Republican. Now let's get that out there.

JD: Yeah, I guess.

AJ: I'm the same way.

JD: It's kinda like - but anyway Larry opened both those national conventions as some of you may remember. In fact, when they refer back in old footage they always show the convention being opened. Larry opened both of them by singing the National Anthem. He's a great singer. A great whatever you call it - baritone or alto or whatever those strange things are, but anyway…

AJ: Vocalist.

JD: I knew it was one of those, but anyway Larry is the man that’s singing there and opening the convention and on a election day 1988, when George [HW] Bush, that would have been when George Bush was elected in November. The Fed's raided his little credit union there in North Omaha. It was suppose to be serving the minority community, particularly the black community and they shut her down. They said there was a lot of missing money.

Stories started floating out as always happens when some incident like that occurs and some of the stories involved missing money that was used for this and that but some of those stories were even strange. They were coming from kids all over. Young kids - 16, 14, 13 - kids telling about how they had been on Larry's private jet to this party or that party. Or that they had been at the Republican National Convention here or they had been at this political event in Washington and the stories had to do with they were there and were used as drug couriers. You know 13, 14-year old kids back then going through the airport could get through without anyone asking twice about anything. They pack them full of cocaine or whatever on little packs they'd carry on their bodies, between their legs, etc, etc. - young boys, young girls. And the kids also were telling these stranger tales that seemed bizarre at the time: that they had had sex or were involved in sex with this or that famous politician or businessman or whatever.

And I was one of the first ones who stood up and said this has got to be the most hilarious, ridiculous story I've ever heard. First of all, I knew Larry King. What the heck! I was head of banking at the time he was when he was doing his banking stuff, the head of the senate banking committee here in Nebraska. So I said, “It's absurd.” Well the stories started cropping up more and more and I said something else and I said look if I believe even one of these crazy stories I'd be the first one to stand up and demand that something be done. Then I got a letter from a kid named Paul Bonacci who was in a jail in Omaha. And he said, “Look, if you come and talk to me, I can show you that these aren’t just fake tales.”
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Postby chiggerbit » Sat Oct 03, 2009 12:05 pm

From sw's Boys Town article on another thread (at http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewtopic.php?t=25331) :

Pg. 181- All the way back in 1984, a Franklin teller named Edward Hobbs tried to blow the whistle about the embezzlement of funds from the credit union. He addressed a memorandum to his employers, and travelled to Lincoln, the state capital, to brief state banking officials on its contents. National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) examiners saw Hobbs? memorandum later that year. The memo converd evidence of embezzlement, and information Hobbs had, that promotions at Franklin were based on doing homosexual favors for its manager, Larry King.

The only visible result of his initiative was that Edward Hobbs lost his job.

Between 1985 and 1988, Franklin skipped the annual audit, required by federal law for institutions of its type. The Legislature?s Franklin committee was told that when an audit was called for, King would pick up a special phone, call someone in Washington, and the audit would be called off.


DeCamp was a state senator from 1971 to 1987

edit: I suppose "state banking officials" doesn't mean the state senate banking committee.
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Postby freemason9 » Sat Oct 03, 2009 1:30 pm

In all likelihood, "state banking officials" probably referred to a banking industry body that was appointed by banks to regulate themselves, as is usually the case in the banking industry.

One of the reasons that JD wasn't re-elected as state senator was that he, himself, was being accused of pedophilia; somehow, a newspaper came in possession of some nude photos of his little girl in the bathtub. She was about two years old, I believe. He had a hell of a time fighting that one off.

They were really after his ass in Nebraska.
The real issue is that there is extremely low likelihood that the speculations of the untrained, on a topic almost pathologically riddled by dynamic considerations and feedback effects, will offer anything new.
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Postby Searcher08 » Sat Oct 03, 2009 2:50 pm

freemason9 wrote:In all likelihood, "state banking officials" probably referred to a banking industry body that was appointed by banks to regulate themselves, as is usually the case in the banking industry.

One of the reasons that JD wasn't re-elected as state senator was that he, himself, was being accused of pedophilia; somehow, a newspaper came in possession of some nude photos of his little girl in the bathtub. She was about two years old, I believe. He had a hell of a time fighting that one off.

They were really after his ass in Nebraska.


Werd.

Senator Schmidt (sp?) was told that proceeding with the Franklin investigation would entail a severe political and financial cost, which duly happened to him.

My impression of deCamp is that he embarked on the Franklin case to debunk it. When he gradually began to establish the enormity of it, it would have demolished his mid-Western Republican certainties and torpedoed his political ambitions. I think he could probably have been a Vice-Pres level or at least a senior member of the Senate if he had been willing to sell his soul and 'manage' the investigation.
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Postby Jeff » Sat Oct 03, 2009 3:31 pm

Searcher08 wrote:My impression of deCamp is that he embarked on the Franklin case to debunk it.


Thanks to this thread I've been going back to deCamp's book and reviewing some things that have always troubled me and discovering other things that trouble me now as well. A lot tied up with his "dear friend and mentor," Bill Colby.

Like, Colby's encouragement that deCamp continue his investigations.

deCamp wrote:
To quote his exact words, "This case is so much bigger than you think. It goes to the very highest levels; we have to keep pulling the strings."


We have to keep pulling the strings? Isn't that an unusual construction? DeCamp has implicit faith in Colby's good will. Very useful for Colby. DeCamp writes that "He discovered me by examining files of new, young officers being shipped to Vietnam, who might have 'special talents.'"

Does this picture make sense: that Colby "reactivated" deCamp, even unawares, to keep the highest levels apprised of what was being uncovered and to ensure that deCamp was the source of the most sensational disclosures? DeCamp needn't have been aware of his deeper role, particularly since his trust for Colby was unassailable.
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Postby lightningBugout » Sat Oct 03, 2009 3:54 pm

Jeff wrote:Does this picture make sense: that Colby "reactivated" deCamp, even unawares, to keep the highest levels apprised of what was being uncovered and to ensure that deCamp was the source of the most sensational disclosures? DeCamp needn't have been aware of his deeper role, particularly since his trust for Colby was unassailable.


Really interesting point. How would Colby's probable murder fit in to that picture?
"What's robbing a bank compared with founding a bank?" Bertolt Brecht
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Postby chiggerbit » Sat Oct 03, 2009 3:58 pm

Jeff said:

Like, Colby's encouragement that deCamp continue his investigations.


Well, frankly, so much of this larger story is from deCamp's mouth that it's kind of hard for me to assess the facts, except through his filter. In other words, did Colby actually encourage deCamp?

Does Bryant get rid of that filter?
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Postby Jeff » Sat Oct 03, 2009 3:58 pm

lightningBugout wrote:Really interesting point. How would Colby's probable murder fit in to that picture?


Loose end? Or it may have had nothing to do with Franklin after all. Colby had presumably made other enemies in his line of work.
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Postby lightningBugout » Sat Oct 03, 2009 4:07 pm

chiggerbit wrote:Jeff said:

Like, Colby's encouragement that deCamp continue his investigations.


Well, frankly, so much of this larger story is from deCamp's mouth that it's kind of hard for me to assess the facts, except through his filter. In other words, did Colby actually encourage deCamp?

Does Bryant get rid of that filter?


Well, Bryant's case is built largely around victim testimony. Much of which emerged with no apparent connection to DeCamp. There are many kids who reported abuse by King and Baer in addition to Boner, Owen, King and Bonacci. The ways in which their disclosures became public seems to be entirely unrelated to DeCamp.

I would say that, from what I recall, Bonacci, in his interview with DeCamp, seems to be the only one who made any reference to mind control experimentation. He is also the only one who is specifically described as being DID and/or having his memories surface *in* therapy. That may be worth some real consideration. His disclosures included the most striking or sensational material (ie Bohemian Grove, Johnny Gosch's abduction, etc). I hate to cast any sense of doubt in Bonacci's direction and he did pass multiple lie detector tests, IIRC, but he would seem to be the primary glue that held together the argument for the conspiracy extending quite as far as it did.
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Postby chiggerbit » Sat Oct 03, 2009 4:11 pm

One of the reasons that JD wasn't re-elected as state senator was that he, himself, was being accused of pedophilia; somehow, a newspaper came in possession of some nude photos of his little girl in the bathtub. She was about two years old, I believe. He had a hell of a time fighting that one off.


Hell, I wouldn't consider taking photos of one's children in a bathtub to automatically be suspicious. It would depend on the photos. Of course, I think we've become more squeamish in the last couple of decades of enlightenment about sexual abuse. But surely there was more to it than that. Or the photos were pretty "explicit". Wasn't his wife one of the orphans on the airlift out of Vietnam that he helped with? How old were the two of them when they got married?
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Postby lightningBugout » Sat Oct 03, 2009 4:18 pm

chiggerbit wrote:Hell, I wouldn't consider taking photos of one's children in a bathtub to automatically be suspicious. It would depend on the photos. Of course, I think we've become more squeamish in the last couple of decades of enlightenment about sexual abuse. But surely there was more to it than that. Or the photos were pretty "explicit".


Sounds like a really coarse smear-job to me. I worked in a one hour photo place in college and the threshold for suspicion of inappropriate content with photos of nude kids was very very limbo low. Usually it was left up to the manager of the shop to determine if someone should be reported to the cops. I saw instances in which the most harmless of photos were reported and would picture soccer moms being completely befuddled when the cops came knocking.

If someone had managed to get photos of DeCamp's kids nude, even completely harmless ones, I think it would be very easy to smear him even if the charge was 100% baseless.
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Postby Jeff » Sat Oct 03, 2009 4:30 pm

lightningBugout wrote: I hate to cast any sense of doubt in Bonacci's direction and he did pass multiple lie detector tests, IIRC, but he would seem to be the primary glue that held together the argument for the conspiracy extending quite as far as it did.


Bonacci also provided physical characteristics of Gosch and details of the abduction that had not been released to the press.
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Postby chiggerbit » Sat Oct 03, 2009 4:31 pm

Thanks to this thread I've been going back to deCamp's book and reviewing some things that have always troubled me and discovering other things that trouble me now as well. A lot tied up with his "dear friend and mentor," Bill Colby.


Now consider the point that deCamp ran for the Nebraska state senate while still stationed in Vietnam!
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Postby bks » Sat Oct 03, 2009 4:39 pm

Jeff wrote:
Does this picture make sense: that Colby "reactivated" deCamp, even unawares, to keep the highest levels apprised of what was being uncovered


Bryant writes that it was Schmit who suggested bringing Colby in as Franklin Committee counsel, but of course it's DeCamp that introduced Colby and Schmit a few years earlier. Is there any evidence that DeCamp had influence on Schmit at the time of the Franklin Committee's formation?

chiggerbit wrote:
Well, frankly, so much of this larger story is from deCamp's mouth that it's kind of hard for me to assess the facts, except through his filter. In other words, did Colby actually encourage deCamp? Does Bryant get rid of that filter?


Bryant has Caradori's investigation notes and Bryan conducts his own interviews of several of the people on Caradori's "Leads List", so I'd say he does. Bryant's book is very good (halfway through).
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