Willis Carto archive

Including information about his associates

More Lies from The SPOTLIGHT — January 22, 2001

Attacks Violate 1st Amendment Rights

To close down The SPOTLIGHT by governmental fiat — which would be the end result of capturing Liberty Lobby — would be a violation of the First Amendment, the most important amendment of the Bill of Rights, wrote Liberty Lobby founder and treasurer Willis A. Carto in a declaration to California judge Runston G. Maino and published in last week’s SPOTLIGHT (Jan. 15, 2001).

Carto thus encapsulated the essence of the struggle in which The SPOTLIGHT and Liberty Lobby, publisher of The SPOTLIGHT, are now engaged for their very survival. The enemies of Liberty Lobby are determined to shut down your populist Institution. Meanwhile, our attorneys are working against the clock to stop such an outrageous, unconstitutional miscarriage of justice.

The First Amendment specifically guarantees the press its freedom, a guarantee that no arm of government can take away: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

On the crucial nature of a free press, Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1792: No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will.

Jefferson in his long and distinguished career was no stranger to both praise and vilification by the press. To him a free press did not mean a license to print libelous and false material. Truth is the criterion for a free press. But government censorship for the sake of silencing an enemy is not a standard for such a press.

Now the mission of The SPOTLIGHT is to print news that the Establishment media refuses to print. And first and foremost to print hard-to-get information about legislation pending in Congress as measured by the vote of Liberty Lobby’s Board of Policy.

Liberty Lobby has never had to correct a significant error. Sure, there is the occasional typographical error, but there has never been in the pages of The SPOTLIGHT a deliberate hoax either planned by us or planted on us by our enemies to embarrass and discredit us.

The SPOTLIGHT has faced libel juries only twice: (1) CIA agent E. Howard Hunt claimed he was libeled by a SPOTLIGHT article written by former CIA employee Victor Marchetti, who alleged that Hunt may have been connected to the J.F.K. assassination.

Famed trial lawyer Mark Lane, representing The SPOTLIGHT, proved to a jury that Hunt was connected to the assassination and that the CIA had killed Kennedy. Lane wrote about this historic trial in his book Plausible Denial, of which 400,000 copies were sold.

Of the trial itself, not a word was mentioned in the Establishment media except for a brief perfunctory mention in The Miami Herald, where the trial took place. The SPOTLIGHT, of course, had extensive coverage of this landmark case.

(2) Pundit-hoaxer, journalist William F. Buckley Jr., a close friend and fellow CIA asset of Hunt sued Liberty Lobby for $16 million for libel but collected only $1,001 — which amounted to a win for The SPOTLIGHT.

Both lawsuits were politically motivated and illegal (because the CIA is prohibited by law from operating in the United States), designed by the CIA to destroy The SPOTLIGHT.

The SPOTLIGHT demonstrated that it maintains the highest journalistic standard of any newspaper in the country and carries truth through against the greatest odds.

Anti-Semitism, that most dreaded of smears, is another charge hurled at Liberty Lobby and The SPOTLIGHT. When applied to The SPOTLIGHT and Liberty Lobby it is a 100 percent lie.

In 1984, when syndicated columnist Jack Anderson thought he could get away with calling Liberty Lobby anti-Semitic, he was wrong. Liberty Lobby sued him for libel in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which dismissed the case. Liberty Lobby appealed and won.

Writing for the majority, then-Appeals Court Judge Antonin Scalia (now on the Supreme Court) declared: We are not yet ready to adopt for the law of libel the principle that 10,000 repetitions are as good as the truth. The court refused to adopt a rule that would sanction willful character assassination so long as it is conducted on a massive scale. Anderson appealed to the Supreme Court which remanded the case back to the District Court for trial, but the case was settled out of court.

The chief arbiter of Semitism is the rich, powerful Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The ADL has, because of Liberty Lobby’s uncompromising defense of the Constitution and Christian values, chosen to relentlessly pursue your populist Institution with the intent of destroying it.

Long an unregistered agent of a foreign power, Israel, the ADL cannot tolerate Liberty Lobby’s America-first stance which denies foreign aid to all. With that position, money is automatically denied Israel. But don’t hold your breath waiting for Congress or the Justice Department or any newspaper except The SPOTLIGHT to investigate ADL activities. And that’s why The SPOTLIGHT and Liberty Lobby must be annihilated.

The ADL keeps tabs on Americans and organizations and doesn’t hesitate to intimidate citizens by staging raids on their homes and offices. The multi-jurisdictional raid on the West Coast office of Liberty Lobby and the Carto home in 1995 was prompted by Mark Weber, the ADL and its allies.

Many prominent office holders were toppled by ADL smears when they dared to speak out for America, including Sens. Charles Percy and J. William Fulbright, Reps Paul Findley, Paul McCloskey and John Rarick, among others.

The ADL couldn’t tolerate the pro-American stance of The SPOTLIGHT and Liberty Lobby since the Institution’s inception in 1955. The ADL is not only the most potent of Liberty Lobby’s enemies but the principal purveyor of cultural communism, an alien philosophy whose sole purpose is the destruction of western civilization, sound statecraft and Christian morality, values defended by Liberty Lobby.

All Board of Policy members must sign a loyalty oath to the Constitution. The ADL is loyal to a foreign nation.

The SPOTLIGHT is a responsible, much needed journalistic effort with more serious news exclusives to its credit than any other newspaper published today.

This kind of free and honest journalism is ignored by the rest of the media except when the ADL is smearing it. Then the whole country hears about The SPOTLIGHT when the mainstream media, following orders from the ADL, smears a truly free press.

The complete text of the Carto Declaration can be found on the Internet at www.spotlight.org. Read it and pass the word along.

Remember: Your influence counts … Use it!