Al Gore, Vice President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC    20500


Al Gore:

Who supports your candidacy? Disturbed by the possibility that you stand some chance of becoming president of the United States, I tried to get some idea of where support for your candidacy might be coming from. At the Center for Responsive Politics web site, I found a list of "Al Gore's Top Fundraisers" who have raised in excess of $100,000, and heading that list (which is alphabetical) was "Fred Baron, TX (Baron & Budd)," and so I jotted down the name of Fred Baron as a campaign contributor at which my research could begin. Immediately after that, I discovered the Common Cause web site which listed "Al Gore’s Board of Directors," a list of soft money contributors to Democratic national party committees, and heading that list (which was ordered by size of contribution) was the name of Haim Saban, credited with making a contribution of $337,000, and so I also jotted down the name of Haim Saban as a second campaign contributor worth checking out in my preliminary research. Looking at the second of these two lists, I found the name of Fred Baron also on it, credited with $146,500 in soft money contributions; and looking at the first of these two lists, I found the name of Haim Saban also on it, credited of course with over $100,000 in hard money contributions. Researching the names Fred Baron and Haim Saban online quickly leads to citations of much larger amounts donated or gathered by them in support of either yourself or of the Democratic party over many years, as for example the following: "Starr should be tried for treason," cried Haim Saban, the creator of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, who raised $1.5 million for Clinton in a single night at his house in September 1997. John Podhoretz, The Liberal Imagination, Weekly Standard, 27-Mar-2000, online at www.weeklystandard.com/magazine/mag_5_27_00/podhoretz_feat_5_27_00.html. However, pausing to sample from this scattering of large figures will not add appreciably to our conclusions, and so will be dispensed with for the present.  It is enough for our purposes to conclude that Fred Baron and Haim Saban demonstrate a particularly strong interest in seeing you elected as the next president of the United States, and so perhaps they are a reasonable place to begin answering the question of who supports your quest for office. One of the questions that I hoped would be clarified in my investigation was whether the donations of these two constituted personal sacrifices that they were willing to suffer in their struggle to produce a better America, or whether their donations were investments which they expected you to repay with interest in the event that you became president.

Fred Baron Mainly from Alison Frankel's article, Traitor to his Class, in the The American Lawyer 06-Jan-2000, we learn that Frederick M. Baron assumed the presidency of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America in July 2000, and heads the 70-lawyer, 300-employee, Dallas law firm of Baron & Budd of which he owns 35%, and of which together with law partner Lisa Blue (to whom he is married), owns "a majority of the firm's shares."  Plaintiff asbestos litigation provides between 50 and 80 percent of the firm's revenue.  In 1998, Fred Baron estimated that his law firm was currently handling 9,500 to 10,000 asbestos cases. Fred Baron has discovered that class action law suits make him less money than litigating claims one at a time, and so he does the latter, turning his firm into a "veritable asbestos litigation factory," earning him "tens of millions of dollars representing thousands of victims of corporate wrongdoing."  The result of this modus operandi has been that Baron made a pile of money, court dockets were congested, asbestos producers were bankrupted, much of the money went to the lawyers and not the victims, and what compensation victims did receive was slowed. If anything goes wrong at Baron & Budd, we aren't subject to any indecision knowing where to lay the blame — it has to be upon Fred Baron himself, as he is in total control: "He doesn't do a good job of delegating" and "He's an absolute dictator."  And there is much that has been going wrong at Baron & Budd of late, as described by numerous articles available online, as for example the following five: (1) Accidental exposure: excerpt from a 20-page legal guide prepared by Baron & Budd law firm for their clients engaged in asbestos-injury cases, Harper's Magazine. (2) Walter Olson, Thanks for the memories: how lawyers get the testimony they want, Reason, June 1998. (3) Tim Wyatt, Law firm's memo in asbestos lawsuit sparks ethics debate: Baron & Budd founder says papers to prepare witnesses are appropriate, Dallas Morning News, 28-Sep-1997. (4) Patrick Williams, Christine Biederman, Thomas Korosec and Julie Lyons, Toxic Justice: Lawyer Fred Baron says he's one of the good guys, fighting a war against evil asbestos manufacturers.  But some former employees claim his firm is a factory that mass-produces lawsuits by implanting memories and inventing testimony, Dallas Observer, 12-Aug-1998. (5) Julie Lyons, The control freak: Fred Baron's attempt to spin the story of his law firm's tactics was memorable, to say the least, Dallas Observer, 13-Aug-1998. What such articles as the above tell us (and I often borrow their wording in my summary) is that although in his early days Fred Baron accomplished much good — winning compensation for horribly ill victims from asbestos manufacturers who had clearly acted recklessly — that situation has long changed.  The major asbestos producers have been driven into bankruptcy, and the defendants in the dock today are small players who used asbestos sparingly and secondarily, as for example as a minor ingredient in ceiling tiles for fire protection, or who were family-owned wholesalers that handled thousands of different industrial products back in the 1940s, or who manufactured brakes or turbines or paint, or even who manufactured first-generation respiratory equipment intended to protect workers from asbestos. At the same time, those who were most clearly injured by asbestos have by now either received compensation or are dead, leaving plaintiffs whose symptoms range from uncertain to nonexistent.  In the typical court case today, an asymptomatic plaintiff offers X-ray abnormalities visible only to Baron & Barr doctors, sometimes referred to by defendants as "whore doctors," because they can be bought to testify to non-existent abnormalities.  Where in earlier days the victims had worked directly with friable asbestos, these have been replaced by plaintiffs who had only the slightest exposure to asbestos, if any at all — the ranks of insulators and pipe fitters have given way to house-builders and roofers, supervisors, even office workers and supply clerks, to the point where someone can hop on the claimant gravy train if he spent a summer in college helping to renovate a library.  Law firms park vans in front of union halls, and herd workers through for quick x-rays which nearly always, in the opinion of hired medics, indicate lung dysfunction.  The day has even arrived when X-ray abnormalities are not required to qualify for compensation — some recent cases have awarded compensation to asymptomatic plaintiffs for their fear that they may get cancer. Most disturbing has been the discovery of the Ms. Lynell Terrell memo, "Preparing for Your Deposition," a 20-page internal Baron & Budd document circulated to all plaintiffs, which coaches plaintiffs on how to lie: The questions asked by the defense attorneys are designed to prove that you were NOT exposed to their product.  They will try to confuse you and make you think they know something different from what you recall and that what you are saying cannot be true.  Keep in mind that these attorneys are very young and WERE NOT PRESENT at the job sites where you worked.  They have NO RECORDS to tell them what products were used on a particular job, even if they act as if they do. Make sure to emphasize that you had no idea that asbestos was dangerous.  You will be asked if you ever saw any WARNING labels on containers of asbestos.  It is important to maintain that you NEVER saw any labels on asbestos products that said WARNING or DANGER.  You might even be asked to spell "warning" or "danger" to prove that you would know what these words meant if you saw them. You will be asked if you ever used respiratory equipment to protect you from asbestos.  Listen carefully to the question!  If you did wear a mask for welding or other fumes, that does NOT mean you wore it for protection from asbestos!  The answer is still "NO!"  [...] Questions about asbestos products.  Do NOT mention product names that are not listed on your Work History Sheets.  The defense attorneys will jump at a chance to blame your asbestos exposure on companies that were not sued in your case. Do NOT say that you saw more of one brand than another, or that one brand was more commonly used than another.  At some jobs there may have been more of one brand, and at other jobs there may have been more of another brand, so throughout your career you were probably exposed equally to ALL the brands.  Be CONFIDENT that you saw just as much of one brand as the others.  All the manufacturers sued in your case should share the blame equally!  [...] You may be asked how you are able to recall so many product names.  The best answer is to say that you recall having seen the names on the containers or on the product itself, and the more you thought about them, the more you remembered!  If the defense attorney asks you if you were shown pictures of products, wait for your attorney to advise you to answer, then say that a "girl from Baron & Budd" showed you pictures of MANY products and that you picked out the ones you remembered. If there is a MISTAKE on your Work History Sheets, explain that the "girl from Baron & Budd" must have misunderstood what you told her when she wrote it down.  If there has been a CHANGE to your Work History Sheets, explain that you wanted to make the record clear.  If you are asked why you certified a first (incorrect) version of your Work History Sheets to be correct and are now saying that it is NOT correct, explain that the first Work History Sheet is ALSO correct and that the second version just makes the record MORE CLEAR. Accidental exposure: excerpt from a 20-page legal guide prepared by Baron & Budd law firm for their clients engaged in asbestos-injury cases, Harper's Magazine. Tim Wyatt of the Dallas Morning News adds the following comments: The memorandum, according to a defense lawyer in an Ohio asbestos case filed by Baron & Budd, is a "psychological masterpiece." "Step by step, it leads the client to the conclusion that in order to win money, the client must be free with his answers and in disregard of the truth," said Tom Riley, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, attorney for Raymark Industries.  "It tells how to lie.  Do it with confidence.  The more confident you are, the more money you'll get."  [...] John Corkery, who teaches ethics at the John Marshall School of Law in Chicago, said the memo is an unethical legal ploy called "I'll tell you the law and you tell me the facts." "And the law is, 'If you were real close to this asbestos stuff and if you can remember the names on the bags, you've got a case, and if you can't, you don't.  So, now tell me the facts, did you remember or not?  Were you close or not?' " Judge Marshall, one of the judges hearing the controversy over the last two weeks, told lawyers in his Dallas courtroom: "The one thing that we should all tell all of our clients, which is notable in its absence in this 20-page document, is ... tell the truth." Mr. Riley, whose client, Raymark, was once forced into bankruptcy by asbestos litigation, said the document "speaks for itself." "And what it speaks of is fraud," he said during an Ohio hearing.  "[N]ot just on this court, but on courts throughout the land, and presumably in litigation that spans decades." Tim Wyatt, Law firm's memo in asbestos lawsuit sparks ethics debate: Baron & Budd founder says papers to prepare witnesses are appropriate, Dallas Morning News, 28-Sep-1997. Definitive, in-depth investigation and analysis was conducted by the Dallas Observer: Reporters have interviewed former Baron & Budd employees who charge that the Terrell memo, far from being an isolated document, is in fact part of a pattern of witness coaching that buttresses a multimillion-dollar lawsuit machine.  [...] The problems arise when the workers Baron & Budd represents — nearly all in their 50s, 60s, and 70s — are asked to identify products they worked with 20 to 30 years ago, as the law says they must in order to collect.  Memories fade, and it is up to Baron & Budd to help revive them, a process that Baron himself admits can involve implanting memories.  [...] • "You will be asked when you FIRST LEARNED asbestos was dangerous and HOW you found out.  Most people learned about the danger when their doctor told them asbestos WAS IN THEIR LUNGS.  It is important to emphasize that you had NO IDEA ASBESTOS WAS DANGEROUS when you were working around it.  The defense attorneys believe that if you KNEW asbestos was dangerous and you continued to expose yourself to it without protection, then you should share the blame for being harmed by it."  [...] • "[B]y the mid 1970s most insulating products being installed no longer contained asbestos.  The public was just beginning to hear reports that asbestos was dangerous...  You want to be PERFECTLY CLEAR ON THE RECORD that you did not expose yourself to asbestos once you learned it was dangerous!"  [...] Yet a number of former Baron & Budd employees say that the information and techniques contained in the memo are widely used, even taught to employees.  They say the Terrell memo was not truly an aberration, but a written example of how the product-identification staff works at Baron & Budd.  [...] Paralegals say — and neither Baron nor Budd denies — that workers are selectively shown pictures of asbestos products they should identify.  Kuntze says that in meetings with clients, she would bring a "3- or 4- or 5-inch binder with pictures of asbestos products, divided up according to manufacturer.  I'd go through page by page and encourage the client to recall the products they used.  It would be pretty strong encouragement.  Most of the time when I left, I had ID for every manufacturer that we needed to get ID for." She already had the answers, she says.  Kuntze just needed the worker to agree she had the correct ones.  Most would wise up pretty quickly, she says.  "Clients understood that products needed to be ID'd for the manufacturers we sued," she says.  [...] Kuntze insists that, for certain periods of time when tactical reasons dictated it was better not to have exposure to a bankrupt company's products, identification of those products was discouraged.  Thus, when a client would say he saw, for instance, a Johns-Manville pipe covering, Kuntze says, she would hand them a line.  "You'd say, 'You know, we've talked to some other people, other witnesses, and they recall working with Owens Corning's Kaylo.  Don't you think you saw that?'  And they'd say, 'Yeah, maybe you're right.' "  [...] Says Kuntze: "There was at least one time, maybe more, that I went to Brian Weinstein [her supervisor and a Baron & Budd attorney] and said I didn't think a particular settlement was right.  That I can't believe we're doing this.  I was basically told to be quiet or leave." The paralegal who asked not to be identified confirms that Kuntze told her she routinely led clients to give specific testimony. "She said, 'Oh God, yeah, I used to prep those guys all the time.  You know half of them couldn't read or write.'  And when they couldn't identify things, she'd say, 'Certainly you were exposed to this, don't you remember?'  And steer them that way.  Very, very suggestive." The former paralegal recalls being asked to falsify product-ID information the very first week she was on the job. "They were having me fill out the product IDs [forms that the paralegals had gathered from clients]...  There was a man, he was some sort of contractor.  He had absolutely no exposure to asbestos — none.  There was nothing in his work history." As she scanned the paperwork, Russell Budd walked by the office she was working in.  "I got up and walked out and said, 'I don't know what to do.  This man has not had exposure at all.'  He looked at me and said, 'Oh you're a smart lady.  Be creative,' and he turned and he walked away." She says she then went to her immediate supervisor, who she recalls also told her to "fill it in, make up stuff." "I was shocked," she says. When she refused to fill in product names, the supervisor simply took over the file, she says.  "I don't know what happened to the case after that."  [...] "Do we implant memories?  Yeah, probably we do.  Is that something that is wrong?  I don't believe it is." [says Fred Baron]  [...] But not all the workers she saw were so ill.  By her estimate, "at least 50 percent" had no outward symptoms of illness, and that disturbed her. For those workers who weren't obviously ill being deposed by opposing lawyers, one Baron & Budd-produced document has this bit of advice: "If client says he doesn't like thinking about [getting cancer], get him to say the reason is because he is afraid of getting it, and it upsets him to think about it, but nevertheless, he does think about it." This suggestion goes to the notion that workers can recover for emotional distress caused by their asbestos exposure. Baron dismisses questions about whether clients should be coached to say they fear cancer.  "Every client that you'll ever see says he is afraid of developing cancer," he says.  "We want that on the record." But the former Baron & Budd lawyer recalls it differently.  She says the firm's lawsuit process was designed to exaggerate the fear of cancer in many clients who had little increased risk of cancer, because a scared client is an effective witness. She found this incredibly cruel. "I would tell my clients after the deposition that they have a higher likelihood of being hit by a bus than being killed by asbestosis," she recalls.  They would hug her and say thanks. By the time her clients came in for their depositions, their cases had been on file for some time, and they were usually well-versed.  "They sounded like recordings," she says.  And a good thing it was, too, as she says she first saw them just an hour before their depositions began. "You sit at that deposition and [most of the time] your client isn't sick and does not remember what he had for lunch, much less the particular brand name of asbestos — if he knows what it is — he worked with some 30 years ago.  [And] you realize that this is not legitimate."  [...] Among the documents the former Baron & Budd lawyer obtained from another employee were photocopies of handwritten notes apparently taken by an attorney named Angelyn Schmid during an internal training session.  The notes admonish lawyers to explain to workers that their claims for damages might be weakened if they had seen warnings from manufacturers that asbestos was hazardous.  In essence, the law in some states says that if the workers knew that a product was very dangerous and continued to work around it, that fact can affect their ability to recover money from the manufacturers, according to Joe Sanders, a law professor at the University of Houston. "Warn [plaintiff] not to say you were around it — even if you were — after you knew it was dangerous," the handwritten notes read. The notes also suggest that workers should not say they were exposed to asbestos beyond the mid- to late '70s.  By the '80s, the dangers of asbestos were widely known, so anyone who continued to work unprotected with the product by then could be presumed to have contributed to the risk — thus weakening any claims for damages.  [...] "The lawyer," says Baron, "needs to sit [with the client] and say, 'Now, before I ask you whether you've been diagnosed by another doctor, you need to know that if you have been, your case will be barred by the statute of limitations.  Now, have you been diagnosed by another doctor?' "Does that mean I've gotten the client to lie?" Baron asks.  "You know, if you don't like that, then you don't like the way law is practiced. "And do we suggest testimony?  Of course we do," says Baron, who nevertheless insists his employees never suggest false testimony.  [...] Two out of 12 Baron & Budd clients interviewed by the Observer admitted they continued to work around asbestos long after they knew it was dangerous.  And public records from their lawsuits show they testified otherwise. One Baron & Budd client, who asked not to be identified because his case is still pending, says he learned that asbestos was dangerous in 1978 or 1979, when OSHA came out to his workplace.  Yet his interrogatory answers, filed by Baron & Budd, contain the standard statement that "Plaintiff learned that asbestos could be harmful to his health through the media." Likewise, Willie Jean Armstrong of Pleasant Grove, Alabama, the widow of a Baron & Budd client, told the Observer that her husband was warned about the dangers of asbestos at least 10 years before he testified he did.  At the time, his company forbade its workers to take their work clothes home to be washed because of the danger from asbestos dust.  [...] Baron says that rules governing lawyers make it clear that informing clients about the consequences of their answers is ethical. "Look," he says. "For instance, you're in an automobile accident.  You come in here and say, 'You know what?  I ran the red light.'  I'm not going to then sit here and say, 'Well, you are going to have to tell them you didn't.' "But if you come in here and say you were in an automobile accident at an intersection, I'm going to say, 'Now if you tell me you ran the red light, that means you are going to lose your case.'  And then wait for your answer." Baron says this hypothetical is "absolutely, positively" ethical. Patrick Williams, Christine Biederman, Thomas Korosec and Julie Lyons, Toxic Justice: Lawyer Fred Baron says he's one of the good guys, fighting a war against evil asbestos manufacturers.  But some former employees claim his firm is a factory that mass-produces lawsuits by implanting memories and inventing testimony, Dallas Observer, 12-Aug-1998. Needless to say, the above revelations did not cause Baron & Budd major setbacks: How did Baron & Budd react when this document came to public light? With the same strategy pursued so brilliantly by the Clinton White House: not only refusing to apologize for anything, but proposing that they are the real victims. Walter Olson, Thanks for the memories: how lawyers get the testimony they want, Reason, June 1998. The impression left by the above information is that — whatever he may have been in his beginnings — today Fred Baron has become a parasite, and the suspicion arises that when he strives to help set anyone up as president of the United States, it might be in order to win protection for his parasitism.  The Dallas Observer's citing an estimate that Baron & Budd had grossed $800 million from asbestos litigation by 1994 gives us some idea of the amounts Fred Baron has to gain from continuing his asbestos litigation at its usual high volume; and the disappearance of real victims and real victimizers makes us understand that such high volume can only be maintained with the help of fraud.  Several million dollars spent protecting Fred Baron's income, then, would constitute a small investment for prolonging the life of a goose that lays golden eggs.  If Fred Baron's practice was legitimate and commendable, then he wouldn't need your protection, and so that any campaign support he might then have offered would not be suspected of being motivated by his fear of losing a long-remunerative but increasingly-threatened livelihood. What some American voters might like to see from you is an admission that Fred Baron represents a corruption not only of the American justice system, but also of the American character, seducing vast numbers of Americans into preferring extortion over productive labor as a means of supplementing income.  And what some American voters might like to see even more is your refusing to rely on campaign contributions from people whose agenda includes the corruption of the American way of life. Anyone who is familiar with the case of John Demjanjuk, and more broadly the practices of the US Office of Special Investigations (OSI), will immediately recognize that the same suborning of perjured testimony as we have seen at Baron & Budd above has been the standard practice at the OSI ever since its inception in 1979, and even before that when war crimes prosecutions were still being conducted by the Special Litigation Unit.  The corruption of American justice, then, can be seen to be prolonged and widespread, with Baron & Budd constituting merely one recent manifestation.  The anticipation of a president who not only fails to oppose such prolonged and profound corruption, but instead benefits from it, cannot but throw informed voters into a state of unease for the safety of the American republic.

Haim Saban Haim Saban is the world's leading supplier of television programming, feature films, home video, music, and consumer products for children.  However, he does not see his mission as one of educating children or of improving them: "Another statement made by Saban is that children don't watch television to be educated, and they never will.  After several hours of school, children are looking for a means of entertainment, and who better to fill that want than the media." (Matt Coffel, Response or responsibility, online at www.student.ipfw.edu/~coffmr01/REVLITREVIEW.htm. What happens when the goal of improving children is relegated to secondary status can be illustrated by one of Haim Saban's creations, the television series Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, eliciting world-wide protest from parents and teachers following an unprecedented outbreak of child violence imitating the show's unprecedented level of televised violence.  One instance of this world-wide reaction was initiated by parent complaints in Ontario which led to a review by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) which released its decision on 24-Oct-1994, the gist of which was as follows: When one removes the opening and closing credits and the commercials from the calculation of program length, the dramatic action covers approximately 17 or 18 minutes of each program.  Of that time, there are, quite uniformly, three or four fighting sequences, which consume between 4.5 and 6.5 minutes, which is to say, between 25% and 35% of the running dramatic time.  [...] Far from containing very little violence, the series appeared to convey considerable violent physical activity.  [...] Not once in any of the episodes was there depicted any attempt to resolve conflict by any technique other than fighting.  [...] The Council also noted that none of the martial arts fight sequences (or fight sequences using weapons) resulted in any physical damage caused to the show's heroes or to the "putties", who are distinctly humanoid in appearance.  There was never an appearance of blood, broken bones, contusions or any form of physical consequence.  Although the Power Rangers and the "putties" are continually knocked for loops, spinning through the air, they land on the ground or elsewhere and bob up again as though nothing had happened.  [...] Those who view this absence of physical damage as a positive rather than a negative consideration lose sight of the importance to children of understanding the consequences of their acts.  In real life, punching and kicking do have physical results in almost every instance.  [...] Suggesting that the martial arts kicking and punching techniques do not have serious, or even minor, physical consequences invites, if not encourages, the seemingly risk-free imitation of the physical acts of aggression by children who have not reached the age of discernment, namely, the very audience for this program. Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, Ontario Regional Council, Decision of 24-Oct-1994 regarding the television series, "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers," online at www.cbsc.ca/english/decision/940405.htm. The CBSC decision neglected to mention that in addition to the injury that a child's punching and kicking can inflict on the target of his attack, it might bring injury upon the attacker himself in the case that he unwisely chooses a target who is both stronger than himself and lacking the discernment to moderate his reply. Although one might hope that the Power Rangers television series was atypical of Haim Saban's programming, comments such as the following suggest the alternative interpretation that his motivation is dominated by considerations of profit and neglectful of the welfare of his young viewers: I tuned into Fox's Saturday Morning Line-Up to see what they had to offer.  It's been years since I last watched it, (my heart left with X-Men), and I wanted to see what they had to offer.  The oft over-looked program called Digimon was on.  I looked at my options of things to do, and since I wasn't interested in taking our Christmas lights down, (don't ask), I figured Digimon it was.  I never saw so many no-no's in one half hour in my entire life.  A monster was impaled.  A plane with living beings crashed, and there was no mention of parachutes.  AND A MAN LIT UP A CIGARETTE AND SMOKED IT!!!!!!!!!  I was amazed, and quite pleased, that this form of entertainment was being left untouched, (for those most part I guess), and left in it's virgin form.  I had to see who the distributor was.  What I saw after the credits made my jaw drop three feet.  Saban was behind it. Dragon Ball Blast, online at www.videogamers.com/ramza/editorials/ed090.htm. Thus, as in the case of Fred Baron, Haim Saban gives the appearance of making vast amounts of money in activities that are damaging to American society, and of having encountered opposition, and so of hoping for protection from an administration that he has helped put in power.  His support of your candidacy for president might be interpreted as an investment whose payoff would come at the time that you as president began removing obstacles to his venturing further in the direction of harming American youth in order to further increase his wealth. In the case of Haim Saban, there is one further objection, which begins with our noticing that he lived in Israel until the age of 22, and which continues into our wondering whether it is possible that his takeover of children's programming has been engineered largely under Israeli auspices and using Israeli manpower — which conclusion is suggested by such evidence as that the movie Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie has the following creators: • Haim Saban (Executive Producer), emigrated from Israel at the age of 22; • Shuki Levy (Executive Producer/Screenwriter/Composer), born and raised in Israel; • Jonathan Tzachor (Producer), grew up in Israel and flew in the Israeli Air Force for seven years; • Ilan Rosenberg (Director of Photography), a native of Israel and a US citizen since 1990; • Yuda Ako (Production Designer), born in Israel and moved to the US in 1971. (The above information is available online on the Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie web site at www.powerrangersturbo.com/tprf.htm.) Although one cannot readily gain a comprehensive picture of Saban-empire personnel, one does keep coming across pieces of information that it is disproportionately Israeli, as for example: • Ronnie Hadar (Senior Vice-President of Production, Saban Entertainment), grew up in Israel and served in the Israeli army. (Terri Ann C. Guingab, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Biography FAQ, 14-Mar-1996, online at www.media.mit.edu/Personal/manny/power/text_docs/mmpr_bio_faq.txt.) Even if individuals such as the above are today landed immigrants in the United States, or even American citizens, it is possible that they still retain their Israeli citizenship, and in this sense can be considered to be foreign nationals.  Thus it might be hypothesized that foreign nationals largely control children's television programming in the United States today. Were it the case that foreign nationals exercised disproportionate influence over U.S. information channels that served adults, there would be less cause for concern because adults possess critical faculties which allow them to reject biased or manipulative or corrupting content.  However, children do not possess such critical faculties, and are largely defenseless in the face of bias or manipulation or corruption, and so they do require protection. And were it the case that the foreign nationals who controlled children's programming in the United States originated from a country adhering to Western values — say Britain or Sweden or France — then again Americans would have less cause for concern.  However, Israel does not adhere to Western values, and so Americans do have a right to be concerned over the possibility that Israeli influence over children's programming may ultimately be used to disseminate Israeli values and beliefs to American children. As examples of the ways in which Israel does not adhere to Western values, we note that Israeli culture is saturated with ethnocentrism, intolerance, hatred, racism, and xenophobia, as I outlined in my letter to you of 23-Aug-2000.  Also, Israel is profoundly misogynistic, as I outlined in my letter to you of 24-Aug-2000.  Israel is guilty of massive war crimes.  Israel is home base to a world-wide organized-crime syndicate.  Israel is the center for the sex-slave trade in Slavic women.  Israeli justice is primitive enough to have produced the 20th century's counterpart of the 19th century trial of Alfred Dreyfus — namely, the show trial of John Demjanjuk.  Israel contributes toward the impoverishment and destabilization of the Former Soviet Union by plundering it of its brains.  Israel's need to keep Jewish-holocaust fabrications from being exposed may be largely responsible for world-wide efforts to suppress free speech, as for example the efforts in Canada by the Canadian Jewish Congress.  The Jonathan Pollard case revealed Israel spying against the United States not so that it could use the stolen information itself, but so that it could trade it to the Soviet Union. Because of such Israeli characteristics as the above, anyone who holds Israeli citizenship may be suspected of harboring values which are antagonistic to those on which the United States was founded, and that is why the seizure of control of television programming aimed at American children by a group that may hold Israeli values must be viewed by Americans with trepidation.

Could you come clean? What would be really helpful to the American voter, and to the observer outside the United States who also will be affected by the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, is for you to go down the two lists of major campaign contributors that I cited at the top of the present letter, and to outline each contributor's characteristics as I have done in the cases of Fred Baron and Haim Saban. Perhaps my selection of these two prominent supporters has been an unlucky one, and the others will give less cause for concern; but on the other hand, perhaps the two I have chosen have been representative, or have been even the best of a bad lot, and the others will give equal or greater cause for concern. It is important for the American voter, and for the world, to know which of these alternatives is the case, and you are best placed to provide this information.

Lubomyr Prytulak