Alex Constantine,
author, answers questions posed by CTRL editor Kris
Millegan.
CTRL: The Conspiracy Theory Research List
www.ctrl.org
Q. What got you interested in conspiracies?
My interest in fascist conspiracies, to be specific, began about 12 years ago. I was the proverbial academic nabob engaged in writing plays and short stories, also book, film and television reviews for publications in southern California. I frowned at any claims of political conspiracies. But back in Ohio I had run an alternative newspaper in a blighted urban area, where I had written hard news stories about police abuse, urban renewal and gentrification, redlining by the insurance companies and such, and craved an opportunity to cover a story with some substance as news.So I flew up to San Francisco and covered the John Doe 60 trial. This was not exactly your workaday murder case. It involved the kidnap and cannibalizing of a homeless man by a couple of SF Satanists. One of them had a swastika tattoo on his face. The other, Cliff St. Joseph, was a waiter. Together, they had abducted "John Doe 60," took him to St. Joseph's apartment, strapped him down, pumped him full of Phenobarbitals and proceeded to carve on him all night long. They cut a pentagram into his chest, ate one of his testicles, and tortured him with knives until he bled to death. The body was left under a truck parked south of Market.
All of this, of course, was repulsive, led me to ponder how anyone could sink so low as to commit this atrocity. I interviewed the lead witness; a 20-year-old kid named Eddy, over the course of three days. Eddy informed me that there were some 22 members of this satanic cult, including police officers and some very wealthy people living across the Bay. One of the cultists involved with St. Joseph worked for the Bechtel Corp. There were ties to SDI and the Reagan White House. How could this be? What did these killers have to do with Republican politicians? Moreover, Eddy told me that he'd been whisked off the street one day by a CIA agent, and held for three days of questioning.
I returned to Los Angeles, shaped my trial notes into a story. It appeared in the LA Weekly. But I was not done with this atrocity and its attendant leads. CIA? Reagan? Star Wars? Mind Control? What the hell was going on? I was obsessed and had to have some answers. I began buying newspapers from around the world, calling reporters and investigators, searching for relevant information and to my surprise it existed. My nagging curiosity regarding Satanism led me to mind control and fascism. I had quite a catalogue of information assembled when I turned on the radio one evening and heard Mae Brussell for the first time. She was then on Michael Aquino's case, which dovetailed neatly with my own work. I phoned parents of children involved in the Presidio child molestation case that I'd interviewed a few weeks before, told them about Mae Brussell's program, and they phoned her. Mae set up an interview with them and attended the parents' meetings. I had arranged this as a way of establishing trust, but before I could lay the groundwork toward a meeting with her, she was dead. This hit me very hard. I drove to Monterey and explained my own work and interest in Mae Brussell to Al Kunzer at KAZU. Kunzer produced the radio program that aired her work. He put me on the air for four hours over a two-day period. The response was very favorable. Kunzer asked me to make it a weekly conspiracy show, so I tried to pick up where Mae had left off, as a way, I think, of keeping her alive. I refused to let a voice so important be stilled by mere human mortality, and still feel this way.
Q. Can you give us some of your background?
I grew up in northwest Ohio. Went to college and graduate school there, studied English literature, primarily. My father was ruined by the Mafia, so perhaps I should have caught on early, but my interest was then in writing, particularly the books of Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Roth, Mailer, and other American writers. I was a high school student in the 1960s, and remained a liberal, but generally steered clear of politics. The move to Los Angeles and discovery of domestic fascism was formative. I haven't read a novel since, and went ten years without seeing a single movie. My interest in political conspiracies consumed every waking moment, and I did nothing but research in this period. I still have little time for anything else, though I'm learning how to relax and enjoy life a little. I have also been, for 12 years, a victim of electronic harassment, and this only feeds my obsessions. Torture has a way of inspiring resistance, and I will not give it up until the day I expire.Q. Where we you when Kennedy was shot?
In a grade school classroom. We were allowed to go home early that day. I remember the national remorse, the sad images on television, but comprehended little about the significance of this event. As a researcher, however, I have "gotten off the grassy knoll," and as a rule study fascist conspiracies that have not been widely written about, as has the Kennedy assassination. The new book on the music business is a case in point.Q. Was being a writer a career choice?
Yes. I wanted, at an early age, to be a novelist and writer of short stories and plays, so my path is not as I envisioned it. It is, in many ways, more satisfying as the one I set out to follow. But the political situation is so critical; I don't feel there is time for other pursuits.Q. What conspiracy research has had the most lasting affect on you?
I'd say it was not any single bit of research, but the EM assaults on my mind and body, and the attempts to kill me. I have endured years of intense physical pain, been knifed, shot at, beaten, nearly killed by the LAPD, almost burned out by a serial killer (Glenn Rogers), etc. All of this has away of feeding one's taste for revenge, and mine is acute. I don't mind admitting this, because revenge is my primary motivation. Hunger for knowledge and justice comes in a close second.Q. Would you recommend the Conspiracy genre to aspiring writers?
No. I recommend years of reading about corporate fascism and Nazi history. Fascism is inherently conspiratorial, and the study of it is often maligned as "conspiracy theory." The conspiracy genre per se is a largely a ghetto that any good researcher should avoid at all costs. For every book I write, 30 are published that are intended to discredit legitimate researchers. The field is so polluted with disinformation that I recommend students of fascism depend upon their own work and steer clear of spoon-fed "theories."Q. What is your opinion of the Colliers brother's book Votescam?
Much of it concentrates on local, small-scale acts of electoral sabotage. The Fascist Right has been determining elections for decades via political assassination, libel, sex traps, "negative" campaigning, innuendo, and so=on. The actual fixing of the ballot occurs, naturally, but it's risky for the perpetrators because there are too many factors to control, and exposure is common. Some politicians on the Right have fertilized their sour grapes with the book, most notably Robert Dornan of California, but even in this case the fraud amounted to a relative small number of votes. And what of better-known cases say the Mafia's Chicago fix in the Nixon-Kennedy race? I looked into it years ago, and learned that some allegations concerning Kennedy and the mob were exaggerated, and that Nixon's mob pals also pulled strings in Chicago, and this, it seems to me, is a better subject for a book than the examples cited in the Collier book. This is my personal opinion,however, and have no argument with those who find the book informative or even revelatory.Q. Any thoughts on the upcoming elections?
If you are asking how it will turn out, sorry, but I don't make predictions. Any researcher who does is engaging in a conceit, placing him above the arduous task of comprehending the present, as if one's political "wisdom" qualifies one to play the role of seer. Some prominent researchers fall into this game, and have had to wipe away a quantity of facial egg. Even a researcher of Mae Brussell's stature can make the mistake of trying to predict the future. Brussell once opined that Pete Wilson, the former governor of California, was being groomed for the White House. As it developed, this was not the fait accompli she perceived it to be. Will the spawn of Prescott Bush rise again? Appears to be so, but only a fool would stake his reputation by suggesting that GWB's political prominence is certain. Too many x-factors at play. Dick Cheney COULD have a coronary. The DEA agents who have been trying to expose the cocaine-distribution network allegedly headed up GW and Jeb Bush, discussed on Michael Levine's radio program a few months back, MAY find a wider public forum. Gore's seedier pursuits, including the mind control connections that were the subject of Harlan Girard's Congressional testimony a couple of years ago, COULD be exposed. Either candidate COULD go out in a plane crash. I demur on the predictions, but widespread corruption and the drift to open fascist rule is and will be the rule until the voting public drops its interest in Kathy Lee and body worship and "Millionaire" and the WWF and pop music and the cinematic classic of the week, etc., and addresses the hard realities.Q. What do you think of Trance Formation of America and the story that Cathy O'Brien tells?
Whatever I think, it is unsubstantiated. That makes it grist for debate, and little else. My own approach is to drop personal experiences -- and my own beat anything you know -- and stick with information that I can document.Q. What are your thoughts on HAARP?
Anything HAARP can allegedly do have been done by other means perfected long ago. HAARP is a small cloud in a big sky.Q. Have you received much mainstream coverage about your books? And why or why not?
No. I'm anti-establishment in the extreme, so the establishment does its best to ignore me.
Q. What has been the reception to your latest book, The Covert War Against Rock?
Without exception, good reviews from the rock press. VH1 has based a series partly on the book. BBC has sent three crews over for interviews. All in all, I couldn't be more pleased.
Q. What will your next book be about?
Don't know yet. I'm thinking of doing a Psychic Dictatorship II.
Q. How do you find about "secret stuff?"
Research -- long hours of it.
Q. What do you see for the future?
An escalating war of every man against every other man.
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