rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (11/02/84)
RAY "THE SHAM" SHAMIE : II [The following is from the BOSTON PHOENIX article referenced below as 1. Some material not quoted is taken verbatim from the article.] "For at least the past decade, Shamie has imbued the workday of his 450 employees with his own philosophy, energetically disseminating radical- right literature...; distributing employee political-action committee funds to some of the nation's most doctrinaire rightwingers...; and scheduling free enterprise & anticommunist pep talks for employees every month on company time" [1]. Shamie alternately places the "one Birch Society meeting" he claims to have attended in 1971, 1974, or 1975. But he has more ties to the Society than he's admitted. For years Shamie regularly promoted the Bircher bible, NONE DARE CALL IT CONSPIRACY by Bircher Gary Allen to employees, & urged them to attend an Allen lecture with their spouses on at least one occasion. Robert Stoddard, chairman of the WORCESTER GAZZETTE newspaper, gave at least $1000 to Shamie's campiagn, as did his wife, Helen; Stoddard was "one of the original incorporators" of the Birch Society [1]. John Harris, Methuen campaign coordinator for Shamie, was a Bircher staffer for years. Camelot PAC, Shamie's em- ployee's political action committee, gave money to John Rousselot (ex-R-CA), a Birch Society kingpin & executive officer since at least the late 60s. But Shamie has many other far right connections. Metal Bellows library contained copies of the Liberty Lobby's weekly newspaper, SPOTLIGHT. B'nai B'rith described the Lobby as "the best financed anti-Semitic organization in the US". The Lobby, which claims the Holocaust never occurred, was "too extreme even for Ronald Reagan, who early in 1981 withdrew his nomination of Warren Richardson" for Asst. Sec/Health & Human Services when Richardson's position as the Lobby's chief counsel became known [1]. At one point, Shamie mailed copies of SPOTLIGHT to employees, including Jewish ones. At a "weekly management meeting" after the mailing, "he extolled the SPOTLIGHT as the newspaper of a courageous organization that `told the truth as no other paper does'" [1]. Shamie began Camelot PAC in 1979 to receive donations from him & his employees, naming it with a JFKism. It was "financed almost exclu- sively through employee contributions. Metal Bellows managers-- engineers & metallurgists & sales directors--gave to Camelot through a monthly payroll deduction, & Camelot gave to conservative office- holders & candidates nationwide" [1]. In 1980 Camelot PAC gave: $500 to Robert Dornan (R-Santa Monica), a hawk during the Vietnam War who invented the POW bracelet & perhaps the leading bakcer of the B1 bomber $1500 to Richard Jones, ex-Army dentist & former director of TRIM, "Tax Reform Immediately", a "self-described `non-partisan network of educational committees or- ganized by the John Birch Society'" [1] $1200 to Terry Dolan's NCPAC, who waged a vicious campaign of innuendo & slander against Ted Kennedy in 1982 $1500 to the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress; it & NCPAC are the 2 biggest conservative national PACs In 1982 Camelot PAC gave: $900 to longtime Bircher officer John Rousselot $500 to Jesse Helms Shamie has publically claimed he holds merely one vote among the many others in Camelot PAC. But Louise Hart of Andover, a Shamie campaign adviser in '82 says: "Bull. it was made more than clear to me that it was his [Shamie's] views that were being pushed. It's his PAC; his philosophy." [1] Shamie's personal contributions to extreme right causes & campaigns over the years have been so huge that he's made the "Viguerie 500", a list created by the self-avowed "crazie" of New Right direct mail, Richard Viguerie, reserved "only for individuals who give generously (& often) to candidates who pass his ultraconservative litmus test" [1]. Other Viguerie 500 members have returned the favor: the following have given $1000 each to Shamie's 1984 campaign: Michael Valerio, Boston, president of Papa Gino's of America & owner of WEEI Robert Krieble, chairman of Locktite Corp. of Connecticut Fred Lennon, chairman of Crawford Fitting of Ohio Mrs. Frances G. Scaife of Pittsburgh Roger Milliken, chairman & chief executive of Milliken & Co. of Spartansburg, SC [1] Shamie still courts groups on the extreme right, years after he says he renounced the Birchers. On July 2, 1983, he & Ron Graham, Shamie's VP for governmental affairs, spoke at the annual convention of WOMEN FOR CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT at the Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge in Newton [1]. Established in 1962 in Mississippi to oppose the desegregation of schools, WFCG still advocates a draconian ultra- conservatism. its president, Agnes J. Smith of North Quincy, who is also a New England director of Mid-America Conservative PAC (MACPAC), sent a letter to 250 conservative activists in Massachusetts in early October to urge a "newspaper-letter-writing & radio-call-in campaign on behalf of Ray Shamie" [1], cautioning them not to mention MACPAC because, the letter said, "we want this to be a grassroots effort on behalf of Ray Shamie" [1]. MACPAC planned to spend almost $20,000 on pro-Shamie radio & newspaper ads. The executive director of MACPAC, Ted Temple, is "a close political associate of Shamie's vice-president, Ron Graham" [1]. Although Shamie's campaign avoided a "formal tie" to a fundamentalist politcal group in Western Massachusetts, "The Bible Speaks" (according to an ex-Shamie campaign worker, "We didn't have to work with them. We knew we had their support" [1]), Shamie has made "no attempt to disavow his campaign's association with MACPAC, the John Birch Society, & the rest" [1]. CONTINUED 1. "The Real Ray Shamie" by Michael Segal & Renee Loth, BOSTON PHOENIX, 10/16/84. Cheers, Ron Rizzo The views herein expressed are my own & do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.