William Schaap [Covert Action Information Bulletin] Dies

[Peter Lemkin]

William H. Schaap, Radical Lawyer, Author and Publisher, Dies at 75

By SAM ROBERTSMARCH 2, 2016




William H. Schaap, in Cuba in 1999

William H. Schaap, a radical lawyer, author and publisher who fought against investigative abuses by government agencies at home and abroad, died on Feb. 25 in Manhattan. He was 75.
The cause was pulmonary disease, his niece Rosie Schaap said.
Mr. Schaap began his activism in law school, counseling students arrested in Chicago for protesting segregated housing.
As a lawyer, he defended Columbia University students arrested in 1968 for occupying campus buildings to protest the war in Vietnam. In the late 1960s, he left a Wall Street law firm where he was an associate and moved to Japan and Germany with his wife, Ellen Ray, to counsel resisters to the war in Vietnam.
In 1976, they formed what became CovertAction, a publication that reported on illegal Central Intelligence Agency activities. It also identified C.I.A. agents by name, from unclassified sources, a practice outlawed by Congress in 1982. Mr. Schaap also represented C.I.A. whistle-blowers, like Philip Agee.
In 1980, in a letter to The New York Times, Mr. Schaap, Ms. Ray and Louis Wolf, the editors of what was then called The Covert Action Information Bulletin, wrote, "We do not object to intelligence gathering; we object to the covert interference in the affairs of other nations, the refusal to let the people of those nations decide for themselves upon their leaders, their systems of government and the forms of institutions they desire."
Mr. Schaap and Ms. Ray often singled out The Times for criticism through their Institute for Media Analysis and later a monthly news-media watchdog magazine, Lies of Our Times. They criticized, among other articles, what they called favorable coverage of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and of F. W. de Klerk, the president of South Africa during apartheid, in The Times and other mainstream publications.
They also founded Sheridan Square Press, which published the New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison's "On the Trail of the Assassins: My Investigation and Prosecution of the Murder of President Kennedy," which was a source for Oliver Stone in making the 1991 film "JFK."
After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Mr. Schaap lived part time in New Orleans, representing displaced homeowners.
William Herman Schaap was born in Brooklyn on March 1, 1940, to Maurice Schaap, a salesman, and the former Leah Lerner, a French teacher. He received a bachelor's degree from Cornell University in 1961 and graduated from the University of Chicago Law School.
Mr. Schaap's older brother was the sports broadcaster Dick Schaap, who died in 2001, and who once wrote: "I write, mostly to entertain, to make people smile, perhaps even laugh. My brother writes, mostly, to incite, to make people angry, perhaps even to act."
Ms. Ray died in 2015. Mr. Schaap is survived by a sister, Nancy Silvio.

[Peter Lemkin]

William Schaap's Testimony at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Trial

by court testimony


Published November 30, 1999
Usage Public Domain Mark 1.0
Topics psychological operations, PsyOps, black operations, BlackOps, psychological warfare, PsyWar, black propaganda, gray propaganda, war propaganda,disinformation, corrupt media, professional liars, propaganda, agitprop, spin, state media, major media, corporate media, embedded media, military psychology, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, COINTELPRO, Counter Intelligence Program, Mighty Wurlitzer, front organizations, front companies, Big Lie,information warfare



The eight video parts here are of the testimony by expert witness, Attorney and Professor Emeritus William Schaap in the November-December 1999 Memphis, Tennessee wrongful death lawsuit trial of Loyd Jowers and co-conspirators in the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Schaap gave his testimony on November 30, 1999. The jury of six whites and six blacks found Jowers guilty of involvement and that the US government was involved in carrying out the assassination.
William Schaap's testimony concerns the US government's near-total control over the major media (i.e., news agencies, newspapers, etc.) and its extensive use of disinformation campaigns (i.e., outright lying on a massive scale) targeted against the US public. His testimony is based upon US government primary-documentation divulged in US Congressional hearings and the resulting reports, as well as by the testimony of named government officials involved in the disinformation operations.
The transcript of Schaap's testimony is available at the following link:
Proceedings, November 30th, 1999, Volume IX, Case No. 97242-4 T.D., Circuit Court of Shelby County, Tennesseehttp://archive.org/download/WilliamSchaa...Trial.html
The following is the complete trial transcript:
Complete Transcript of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassination Conspiracy Trial, Case No. 97242-4 T.D., Circuit Court of Shelby County, Tennessee, Nov. 15-Dec. 8, 1999, 14 vols.http://archive.org/download/WilliamSchaa...script.pdf , source: http://www.thekingcenter.org/sites/defau...SCRIPT.pdf