Pitch Magazine

Jan 15-21, 1992

Kansas City, Missouri

Stewart Webb is out there somewhere. Hiding from the FBI, the CIA and the local police. He say’s it’s because he’s the guy “with the goods” on the BCCI scandal. Various law enforcement agencies say it’s because he attempted to kill his ex-wife.

On September 19, a federal warrant for his arrest was issued in Denver, charging him with “transmitting threats to injure another” using interstate long distance telephone circuits.

Dubious charges, perhaps, but this is the same federal judiciary giving first-time drug users 30 years of hard time, so we must assume they are not kidding.

Webb believes them. For the benefits of any feds reading this, I do not know where Webb is. I get random phone calls from him at pre-selected pay phones. He says he is nowhere near Kansas City, but for security reasons, will not say exactly where.

His calls make some fascinating exercises in note taking. Webb says he knows what went down in the S&L/BCCI scandal and Ollie North’s Bible-/cakes-/weapons-for-hostage dealings. The threads of his revelations take circuitous course, but every now and then, he drops a name with a phone number of someone who, he says, will support his allegations. What’s really scary is, they do. (Footnote for lawmen: Save yourself some footwork. Yes, I have checked out some of his sources, but not from any phone you’re likely to suspect me of using.)

Stewart Webb’s story is still unfolding. We will bring you more later. The real point here is not what Webb has to say, but what his story has to say about government conspiracies. In a self-serving quest to hype his latest beat-you-over-the-head-with-it release, Oliver Stone says there was a conspiracy to do in President Kennedy, and so do many other ordinarily sane human beings. There are also supposed to have been shrewd conspiracies to do in President Lincoln, help John Wilkes Booth survive to a ripe old age, get Jesse James off the hook, and to ensure Elvis has the anonymity to enjoy his declining years eating Big Macs and shopping at K Mart. As a society, we are made about conspiracies.

Except that we keep looking in all the wrong places. Without going into a lot of useless detail, a compelling body of logic says there was nothing behind Kennedy’s assassination than a exceptionally lucky nut with a job on the sixth floor and a rifle. The conspiracy to kill Lincoln was peopled with human oddities so off-the-wall that Lee Harvey Oswald would have sluffed them off; and friends, relatives and formal exhumations have established that Booth, Jesse and Elvis are really, really dead.

In the meantime, as Webb and his contacts say, elements within the government are screwing the Constitution royally in a mad quest for the only thing worthy of setting up an intricate conspiracy; money.

According to Webb, much of the S&L loot is still unrecovered.

Anti-porn leader and crook (why am I not surprised by the combination?) Charles Keating stole millions....or at least claims he forgot where he put it. Neil (Son of Poppy) Bush is skating away from his part in the collapse of several Colorado S&Ls by virtue of some nifty courtroom shenanigans involving Republican-appointed judges and a contrived war in the Gulf. Ollie North, by virtue of immunity from prosecution, freely admits his part in Iran/Contra, and seven U.S. Senators are off the hook after taking questionable campaign contributions because no one cares about anything so boring as a bank robbery not staged with guns and masks. The one virtue of stealing money the old fashioned Republican way is no one worries whether or not that shadow on the grassy knoll is really a disgruntled, rifle-toting CIA operative.

Along the way, thousands of people caught up in the S&L mess have lost everything they spent a lifetime working for, and in the case of Iran/Contra several thousand Central Americans are dead. These unfortunates we don’t care about (This is obvious. We Keep electing Republicans.) What we do care about are potential Geraldo/Oprah guests who once slept with the third cousin of a man who says he knows the real significance of the umbrella man in Dealy Plaza. If this is not staring into a sunlit picture of Hell, I don’t know what is.

Meanwhile, Stewart Webb remains on the run. He says he has called over 40 papers across the country with his story hoping someone will take him seriously enough to check out what he says. His supporting documentation seems to be accurate. There are people out there backing up his allegations. The problem is, Oliver Stone is working the talk show circuit this month and there just doesn’t seem to be any time for long boring stories about government bribes and widespread corruption. If Webb wants to get the attention his story may deserve, he’s going to have to come up with some attention-grabbing visuals. *