Parts of the The Franklin Scandal read like a great crime novel. Parts of it read like Nick was trying to build an impregnable legal fortress of fact to make his case stick, which can slow down the story a bit, but as the facts come together, it is staggering.
The book has two main heroes, Gary Caradori and Alisha Owen. An honored veteran of the Nebraska State Police and private detective, Caradori was chief investigator for the legislative committee. He tracked down Larry King's reputed photographer in Chicago and flew his private plane there to retrieve incriminating photographs (pedophiles do love their porn). On his return flight, Caradori's plane blew up in mid-air and the photographs were never found. The wreckage was spread over a wide area on a farm. The FAA was ruled that Caradori had lost control of his plane for an "unknown reason."
Unlike most of the children who were abused during the scandal, Alisha Owen did not come from a massively dysfunctional family. Her parents were stable church-going Christians who happened to have energetic, rebellious teenagers. At the age of 14, she fell in with the wrong crowd, started going to Larry King's parties, and later claimed that Robert Wadman, the Omaha chief of police, had raped and impregnated her and shoved the barrel of his gun up her vagina. She was put on trial for perjury.
Under enormous pressure from the media and law enforcement to recant, she refused. Friends who previously supported her story did recant and testified against her (and later recanted their recantations). Her younger brother, under arrest for joy riding in a stolen car, was found dead in his jail cell shortly before her trial. It was ruled a suicide despite indications of a beating before he ostensibly hanged himself. Nick makes a strong case that Owen's lawyer, Pamela Vuchetich, was having an affair with the FBI agent, Mickey Mott, who appears to have been orchestrating Owen's prosecution. Just before Owen's trial, Vuchetich abandoned her client and started representing two key witnesses for the prosecution. This alone violated four or five of Owen's constitutional rights. The account of the trial must be read to be grasped. Suffice it here to say that I didn't think such a blatant kangaroo court was even possible in the United States, and none of the appeals went anywhere.
Owen did four years in prison for perjury. She has been a model citizen since her release and raised her daughter, who, I'm told, looks like Wadman.
Larry King was quickly removed from Omaha and hidden away for "psychiatric evaluation" after his credit union collapsed. He then pleaded guilty to financial crimes and did nine years in prison. He has never been questioned about the pedophile ring.
Why is the story still important? It's not just an Omaha story.
King's partner in crime in Washington appears to have been a man named Craig Spence, surely one of the oddest figures in the history of American politics. Once a correspondent for ABC in Vietnam, Spence subsequently made a living blackmailing rightwing politicians in Japan. In Washington, he had a large house that he used for parties. The house was bugged from floor to ceiling, and he often seemed to be in possession of information he could have learned only from the bugs. He bragged about his CIA connections. He was also in possession of White House china, proudly and illegally displayed in his house, that he likely grabbed on midnight tours of the George H. W. Bush White House. "Homosexual Prostitution Inquiry Ensnares VIPs with Reagan, Bush," was the headline in the June 29, 1989 Washington Times. Sub-headline: "Call Boys Took Midnight Tour of White House." Spence, according to the article, was the organizer. Later articles said that Spence had been the tour guide on three more occasions and had a 15-year-old boy with him. At least one victim of the Omaha ring, Paul Bonacci, says he went on a late-night tour of the White House. Spence committed a convenient suicide later that year.
When homosexuals in government were discovered in past decades, the argument for firing them was that they were subject to blackmail (even after they were outed). Almost nobody makes that argument anymore, but surely pedophiles would be subject to complete control by blackmail and should not be anywhere near government, unless it's a government prison.
The FBI has had a reputation for dirty tricks and blackmail for its entire history. The revelations about COINTELPRO, the campaign of harassment against the left during the 60s, were shocking to anyone with a concern for freedom of speech. If it became known that the FBI covered up a pedophile ring of the rich and powerful, I think most Americans would react as they reacted to the Penn State scandal, and the FBI would be drastically reorganized. Minimally, a number of agents in the Omaha office in the late 80s and 90s are guilty of the worst sort of malfeasance.
If it's bad for quack psychotherapists "implant" false memories in their patients, how much worse is it when the FBI does the implanting with threats, beatings and perjury trials?
The Omaha World-Herald was the foremost local cheerleader for persecuting teenagers instead of investigating their claims. One of its own columnists, Peter Citron, had a long history of arrests for pedophilia and child porn and was implicated by two witnesses at Larry King's sex parties. The long-time publisher of the World-Herald, Harold Anderson, was a big supporter of Larry King and had raised money for the Franklin. During the 18 years that King presided over the Franklin, the newspaper never noticed that King was living a hugely expensive lifestyle when he was supposedly making $17,000 a year in salary. The World-Herald Company is co-owner of Election Software and Systems, which counts half the election ballots in the United States.
Americans have plenty of obvious reasons to hate the rich and powerful. Wars for oil, rampant pollution, the destruction of individual rights, the constant lying about everything. It's all on the front page, and it's like old furniture in the living room. It's hard for most people to notice. Boutique evil of the Gerry Sandusky sort affects fewer victims, but is more easily understood once the initial denial breaks down. If the denial of the Franklin Credit Union scandal ever breaks down, the consequences will reverberate far higher than happened at Penn State. Except for all those who died in suspicious accidents and suicides, the witnesses are still out there. Some might even talk about it. They talked to Nick Bryant.
Until the paperback version of The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse and Betrayal comes out in October, you can read more at Franklinscandal.com.
CHARLES M. YOUNG is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper. His work, and that of colleagues JOHN GRANT, DAVE LINDORFF, LORI SPENCER and LINN WASHINGTON, JR., can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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