MK ULTRA Zombie Expressions of Elderly Victims of the Peoples Temple

JONESTOWN: THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH IT WAS A CIA COVERT MEDICAL  EXPERIMENT

My special thanks to Bonnie Faulkner of Guns and Butter of KPFA as one of the few if any progressive radio programs airing a special program this afternoon on November 18, 2009 on the 31st anniversary of one of the nation’s most horrific mass murders in U.S. History involving some 918 people, 305 children, and 40 infants, predominately African-Americans, mass slaughtered in a remote isolated rainforest of Guyana of South America at a covert concentration camp called Jonestown.

It aired a rocking alternative view of Jonestown that it was a governmental coordinated CIA MK ULTRA racial medical-agricultural experiment. This evening I checked KPFA archives on the internet to hear it again, but Bonnie Faulkner’s explosive expose on Jonestown is the only program missing at the KPFA’s 2:00 p.m. air slot. I image that it shook up a lot of Bay Area liberals and progressives sitting on the fence blind to Fascism, Racism, and Nazism that continuing rot away the moral core of this country. 

PEOPLES TEMPLE: THE UNBEKNOWN BRUSH WITH THE CIA CULT OF DEATH

 My first unbeknown brush with Rev. Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple was in Downtown Oakland at the T&D (Turner & Dahnken being the chain) Theatre at 419 11th Street. I recall it was soon after the mass development demolition of Downtown Oakland had begun in 1965-67 that there was a religious group with a number of black people carrying on daily and night services at the recently closed theatre. As manchilds, a group of young macks as we referred to ourselves were interested in checking out the new girls in town. So, we sat in on some of the services.

The Girl with the Beautiful Natural from http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/

What was puzzling and stuck out about the experience with this group was that we could not separate the girls from a group of small kids that watched and listened to everything we said and the girls’ reactions. We tried to shoo the kids away, but over and over again they just wouldn’t move or leave. One of the girls was an attractive tall light skinned young lady with a natural. All of the younger macks just asked how old she was. It was like the younger kids cried “Ohoo-ohoo, we are going to tell.”  As soon as the kids threatened to tell on them, the girls turned in complete unison with the small kids and ran away. It was so puzzling at the time. It was like something out of a movie. 

Another thing that stuck out about this religious group was that on one of the night services, the pastor claimed that he was going to perform a miracle and resurrect the dead. Being an impressionable manchild as I was, I was very much interested in seeing that incredible phenomenon and planned to attend, but for whatever reasons I missed it.  The man in the Bay Area who claimed to be able to resurrect the dead was none other than the self-proclaimed “Prophet”, Rev. Jim Jones. By 1972, Jim Jones would claimed to have done “over 40” resurrections of the dead. [1]

According to assistant prosecuting attorney of Mendocino County and Peoples Temple attorney, Tim Stoen: 

“Jim has been the means by which more than 40 persons have literally been brought back from the dead this year. When I first came into the church, I was the conventional skeptic about such things. But I must be honest: 

Following the November 18, 1978 mass murder in Jonestown, U.S. Attorney William Hunter was in charge of investigating and covering up the Peoples Temple ties to the CIA. Hunter had a close personal relationship with Temple attorney Stoen ever since they both worked as assistant district attorneys in San Francisco to cover-up a 1975 election fraud perpetrated by Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. When Hunter was promoted to U.S. Attorney, he offered CIA asset Stoen the position of Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney. When this scandalous conflict of interest was disclosed, Hunter stepped down but appointed one of his employees, Robert Dordero, to prosecute Layton. [3] The unsuspecting Charles Alex Gregory had counted the same William (Billy) Hunter as one of his close personal friends and business confidents.

THE LAYTON FAMILY OF THE PEOPLES TEMPLE: LUCIFIER’S SERVANTS

Tim Stoen along with Deborah Layton-Blakely had been central figures in stashing Peoples Temple assets in the millions in secret bank accounts by establishing two offshore dummy Panamanian corporations: Briget, S.A. and Asociacion Evangelica de las Americas, S.A.  [4]

Deborah Layton is one of the key central figures in the Peoples Temple CIA project. Deborah is the daughter of the southern aristocratic Dr. Laurence Laird Layton of the chemical warfare division of the U.S. Agricultural Department (USDA). Plum Island Animal Disease Center and the chemical warfare division of the USDA was the brainchild of (Operation Paperclip) Dr. Erich Traub straight out of Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler’s secret SS biological warfare laboratory on the island of Insel Riems on the Baltic Sea. [5] Keep that in mind, Jonestown was also an agricultural experimental camp, and Dr. Layton and Layton family were some of its major covert funders.

Deborah Layton’s mother, Annalisa Philips-Layton, was of an elite wealthy aristocratic family of Nazi’s Germany. Lisa’s father Hugo Philips of Hamburg, Germany also reportedly funneled money to Lisa for the Jonestown CIA Medical/Agricultural Experiment.

Lisa Layton’s mother was Anita Lea Heilbut, a daughter of a wealthy Hamburg stockbroker. Under the ruse of escaping from Nazi Germany claiming to be of Jewish descent, Lisa sailed for New York aboard the S.S. Manhattan on May 6, 1938. Her claim to be Jewish was patently false. Sometime in 1931, her sister Eva had entered into Himmler’s SS Lebensborn Program as a pediatric nurse. [6]

The organization Lebensborn is part of the race and settlement central bureau of the SS. It served SS leaders in the selection and adoption of qualified Aryan children as part of its secret plan for a 1000 Year Third Reich of Aryan World Supremacy. In 1935, the Lebensborn as an organization was officially placed under the personal direction of Fuhrer Adolf Hitler. Under the iron fist of SS and the Gestapo, the Lebensborn program was stringently confined only to persons of certified Aryan decent and ancestry.

On April 23, 1938, the American consulate in Hamburg issued Eva Philips of the SS a visa to the United States, like her sister, Lisa, Eva was in the service of Himmler’s SS in America. [7] Eva traveled to Texas and blended into an Old South aristocratic family of Houston were President of the Reichsbank, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, one of the most important figures of Nazi Germany, was positioned.

After WWII, Dr. Schacht had been indicted as a Nazi war criminal. According to the Nuremberg Tribunal, Schacht was an active supporter of the Nazi Party before its accession to power on January 30, 1933, and supported the appointment of Hitler to the post of Chancellor. After that date, he played an important role in the vigorous rearmament programme which was adopted, using the facilities of the Reichsbank to the fullest extent in the German rearmament effort. The Reichsbank, in its traditional capacity as financial agent for the German Government, floated long-term Government loans, the proceeds of which were fused for rearmament. He devised a system under which five-year notes, known as M.E.F.O. bills, guaranteed by the Reichsbank and backed, in effect, by nothing more than its position as a bank of issue, were used to obtain large sums for rearmament from the short-term money market. As Minister of Economics and as Plenipotentiary General for War Economy he was active in organizing the German economy for war. He made detailed plans for industrial mobilization and the coordination of the Army with industry in the event of war. He was particularly concerned with shortages of raw materials and started a scheme of stock-piling and a system of exchange control designed to prevent Germany’s weak foreign exchange position from hindering the acquisition abroad of raw materials needed for rearmament. On May 3, 1935, he sent a memorandum to Hitler stating that “the accomplishment of the armament programme with speed and in quantity is the problem of German politics, that everything else therefore should be subordinated to this purpose.” [8]

The Peoples Temple Jonestown camp sadistic doctor was Dr. Hjalmar Schacht’s namesake, Larry Schacht. It was Dr. Schacht, the Nazi Minister of Economics, who coined the phase entering Auschwitz “Arheit Macht Frei,” or “Work Will Make You Free.” [9]

I CRY CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: GENOCIDE

According to John Judge, in the first count of the dead at Jonestown which numbered 408 Dr. Larry Schacht wasn’t there. Allegedly, the second count of the dead amounted to 780. Miraculously, an additional 372 people supposedly appeared dead at Jonestown then it climbed to 913 or 918. After the second count an additional 133 people that escaped the initial slaughters were rounded up out of the rainforest and dragged back to Jonestown and executed. Among the second count, purportedly, Dr. Schacht body appeared, but there is still no independent evidence of his death. Dr. Hjalmar Schacht’s namesake at Jonestown is presumed to have escaped the slaughter with other special team members of the killing squads. On May 10, 1952, Deborah Layton’s grandmother and Dr. Layton’s mother-in-law, Anita Philips died from injuries suffered in a fall from from a window of a New York City apartment house. The police determined that Anita’s death was a suicide when they discovered the following note written in German: “My Friends, know that I, free and proper, am a good American. But I was a gossib and have been estangled in a network of intrigue. I no longer have the strength to free myself from it. Forget me not my beloved children and family. And you, Hugo, forgive me. Live well. All of you loved mankind so well.”  [10]

The network of intrigue that Anita referenced was that she was suspected of being part of SS Reichsfurhrer Himmler’s spy network in New York City. During this time, Dr. Erich Traub was also part of SS Reichsfurhrer Himmler’s spy network in New York. During WW I, Traub was a captain in the German army working as an expert in animal infectious diseases, particularly in horses. His veterinary corps led the germ warfare attacks on horses in the United States and Romania with a bacterium called glanders. He was also a member of the National Socialist Motorists Corps (NSKK) [11] 

The NSKK (German: Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrerkorps) also known as the National Socialist Drivers Corps was paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party that officially existed from  1931-1945. In April of 1930, Adolf Hitler joined the NSKK as one of its first members. In 1945, NSKK was disbanded or went underground.  The group was declared a “condemned organization” at the Nuremberg Trials. This was due to the NSKK’s orgins in Heinrich Heydrick’s SA and its doctrine of Aryan superority required  of its members.

During the 1930’s and preceding WWII, Traub worked at the Rockefeller Institute of Princeton in New Jersey on viruses and bacterium. He was an active member of the Amerika Deutscher Volksbund, a German-American club also known as Camp Sigfried. Camp Sigried was the national headquarters of the American Nazi movement. On weekends, about forty thousand people throughout New York participated in mass Nazi rallies marching in lockstep divisions, carrying swastika flags, burning Jewish U.S. congressmen in effigy, and singing Nazi songs pledging their allegiance to the Third Reich as if they were in Nuremberg Nazi Germany.

Dr. Traub’s detailed debriefing from 1949 under Operation Paperclip of Himmler’s secret SS biological warfare research on Insel Riems, and his activities there and during the war and for the Soviets, laid the groundwork for Fort Detrick’s offshore germ warfare animal disease lab on USAD’s Plum Island. Dr. Traub was a founding father. [13]

From 1957 to 1978, Dr. Laurence Laird Layton worked at the USDA’s Western Regional Science Laboratory in Albany, California just outside of Oakland. CIA consultant Colston Richard Westbrook was also located on the borders of WRSL during the creation and operation of the SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army), and Peoples Temple MK ULTRA project. [14]  At USAD, Dr. Layton secretly along with Dr. Traub continued the racial biological research of Himmler’s secret Biological/Chemical Warfare Program with Jonestown as its secret cohort testing grounds.

It makes absolute sense that Deborah Layton, a descent and bloodline of Himmler’s old SS espionage network, would clandestinely take legal control and ownership of the bulk of the Peoples Temple’s assets for ODESSA which by 1978 may have reach a couple of billions of dollars.  After setting up dummy corporations, Stoen then open accounts with the Swiss Banking Corporation in Panama and the Union Bank of Switzerland and Panama, respectively. White member of the Peoples Temple, Deborah Layton along with Maria Kataris, Terri Buford and Stoen traveled to Panama with several million dollars from social security, foster care, and welfare benefits of its Black members as initial deposits in the new accounts. Stoen also established a Temple branch in the country of Luxembourg that opened bank accounts in London, West Germany, Switzerland, Romania, and Venezuela. The signaturies were not Jim Jones or even Tim Stoen but Deborah, Maria and Terri.  [15]

Months later, Deborah and Terri returned to Panama on another mission. From there they flew to Paris, rented a car and drove to Zurich, Switzerland, where they opened one or more secret accounts in Deborah’s name or, more accurately, in her account number. Tim Stoen and other trusted couriers then traveled to Switzerland to deposit untold millions into Deborah’s secret bank account. [16]

Following the Jonestown mass murder in Jonestown, the known wealth of the Peoples Temple was viciously seized by Jimmy Carter’s Presidential Administration to offset the expense in returning the corpses, hundreds of black bodies, to the U.S and a small and trivial remaining portion was distributed to the surviving families, but only a small portion of the Temple’s estimated fifty million to two billion dollars was ever recovered.  Millions were missing; millions that were hoarded in secret Swiss accounts in Deborah Layton’s name. [17]

Deborah’s other responsibility in the Temple was as political liaison in Terri Buford’s   Peoples Temple Department of Diversions; the group was established to carry out the Peoples Temple most sensitive work in government. Deborah gathered data on politicians who might be coerced or blackmailed into cooperating with the Temple, hence the CIA. She also wrote forged and anonymous letters endorsing candidates, commenting on pending legislation and presumably threatening politicians who opposed Jones’ politics. Her correspondence was so incriminating that Deborah wore surgical gloves to type the letters on special “D” typewriters that had been purchased second-hand and then destroyed after fulfilling their purpose so as not to be traced to the Temple. [18]

The Girl with the Natural: Shanda Michele James Before her Murder in Jonestown Taken from Deborah Layton's book "Seductive Posion"

It was Deborah Layton-Blakely that allegedly befriended a young Black young lady in Jonestown with that beautiful natural, Shanda Michele James-Oliver, at the Oakland T&D Theatre that one of the young brothers first asked her age.. In Seductive Poison, Layton said that she had been turned into some type of sexual enslaved concubine that was left comatose with mind altering drugs in the Jonestown medical barracks until she was murdered. [19] 

MK ULTRA: THE EYES OF ROSE SHELTON

Our Fragile Brainwashed Elder, Rose Shelton, Slayed in Jonestown, Photograph taken from http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/

I had been told by Rose Shelton’s younger sister who at time was one of my beloved in-laws, who we belovedly called Nanny, that she was one of Jim Jones’ personal nurses. It was either 1974-75 that I was then married to one of Rose’s grand nieces when she visited us in Los Angeles. Nanny and Rose had traveled in the Peoples Temple bus caravan from the Bay Area. For whatever reasons, she couldn’t talk about the Peoples Temple and Rev. Jim Jones in Rose’s presence. In private, Nanny told us that the buses were crammed with people lying in the isles and even stuffed in the luggage compartments. She told us that Jim Jones and Peoples Temple was trying to pressure her to sign over her home on 44^th Street in Oakland off of Telegraph to them. She wanted out while Rose, a very fragile senior elder,  remained one of his most loyal and trusted brainwashed followers and supporters.

I, natively, really didn’t know what to make of Rev. Jim Jones and Peoples Temple. I had recently taken a class in Psychiatry and the Law at Loyola School of Law. I was in interested in race and lobotomies (psychosurgery). As a class, we visited a local mental institution. I was dumbfounded by some type of universal zombie-like blank expressions that I observed in young black mental patients. It was their expressionless and blank eyes that left me bewildered and left an everlasting impression.

During Rose and Nanny’s stay at our house, I went by Ralph’s Grocery Store near Hoover and Vernon in Southeast Los Angeles. At the store, there were a number of people circulating around the store panhandling and operating from a table in the front of the store. It was Peoples Temple members. As I approached the store, one of the sisters approached me and asked for a donation for the temple. When I looked directly in her eyes, I observed uncharacteristic excessive wrinkling of the skin around the eyes as if she has been awake for weeks. In her eyes, I saw that same universal zombie-type blank and unemotional expression that I observed in young black mental patients in the mental institution. It was almost the same expressionless eyes that had left me bewildered and mystified.

I was perplexed. I didn’t know what it meant. My wife and I and kids were invited to the Peoples Temple to join Nanny and Rose. Initiatively, I wasn’t interested. But from what Nanny said about the church, and what I had actually observed in the eyes of one its members I had become concerned or deadly curious about what was going on at the Peoples Temple.

It was on a nice and sunny Saturday in Los Angeles that my wife and I went to the Peoples Temple church. I was amazed as I approached the front of an old majestic church at 1366 South Alvarado Street in the Alvarado Terrace Historical District at Alvarado and Hoover. The Peoples Temple was a former First Church of Christ, Scientist, built in 1912. The church has a grand historic Christian Science towering edifice with a mixed Beaux Arts-Italianate-Spanish Romanesque style.

There was dozens of people bustling about the round stairs leading up to the church. The doors were wide open. It was packed with people. There was standing room only. What I saw standing at the pulpit in the church froze me in my steps. At the pulpit looking down at a predominately black congregation was a white guy with a jet-black hair wearing a black robe. He had on large black sunglasses.     

It wasn’t just that a white guy was preaching to a black congregation that initially froze me. There was something about his demeanor and the expression on his face. The image that I saw wasn’t the humble and compassionate Christian pastor that I traditional had become accustomed to. This was different. He was standing there at the pulpit with what appeared to me a mocking posturing figure with a menacing scowl about his face. What Nanny had said about the church and that sister’s empty and tired wrinkled eyes flashed and raced through my mind. My mind was screaming, “this is not right”, “there is something extremely wrong about this.” I couldn’t move. I just couldn’t cross the threshold of that church. I told my wife that I couldn’t go in under no circumstances. She understood. She had promised her grandmother Nanny that she would be there. She entered the church to be with her.    

Suddenly, my mind flashed back to Oakland. I had encountered Rose and this so-called mystic Rev. Jim Jones before. It was at the Havenscourt Jr. High Auditorium at 66^th and East 14^th Street sometime in 1970 or 1971. At the time, I was living with my mother and siblings at the 65^th Street San Antonio Village. I was surprised one evening when I discovered that my little brothers and sister, middle school students, had been invited to attend some type of religious services at their middle school across the street.

I was alarmed that religious services were taking place on school grounds. I am still not sure how they came to be invited, but they weren’t going without me. I attended the religious services as they had planned. It was Rev. Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple circulating on the grounds of the Oakland Unified School District performing religious miracles. I distinctively remembered something odd about Rev. Jones attendant. She was an elderly Black woman with deep dark folds around her eyes. It had been Rose Shelton, my wife’s grant aunt, Rev. Jim Jones’ personal nurse. It was her eyes that evening that had left a burning impression on me. Again, it was those expressionless cold blank eyes buried in a pocket of wrinkling and worn skin. As Jim Jones was performing his phony miracle curing people of cancer by having them pretend to spit out cancer that was fresh chicken livers, I distinctively recalled Rose’s eyes and zombie like appearance as she attended Rev. Jones without the sun shades in his act by hiding and pretending to clutch cancerous matter that had been casted out of the mouth in her white handkerchief hiding the chicken livers.

When I looked directly in Rose’s eyes, it had been the first time that I had observed an uncharacteristic excessive wrinkling of the skin around the eyes as if a person had been awoke for days if not weeks. That was the first time that I had been plagued by some type of universal strange blank and unemotional zombie like demeanor and expressions. The blank expression and emotionless eyes that I observed in young black mental patients in the mental institution in Los Angeles wasn’t the first time it had made an impression on me. It was on that evening in 1970 or 1971 at Havenscourt Jr. High. It had been the zombie eyes of Rose Shelton that first bewildered and mystified me.

At that time, I knew very little about Nazis, mind control or the CIA. During Huey P. Newton’s incarceration at the San Luis Obispo California Men’s Colony, the older brothers as I recalled in specific, Brother DC (Captain Dennis Cox in exile in Paris), told us that it was important to make constant contacts with Huey at the prison because they were torturing him with Chinese-Korean Brainwashing tactics like sleep deprivation. For example he said that they were dropping water just outside his cell 24 hrs. a day until it caused ringing noises in his head. I just didn’t appreciate at the time the wicked ends of Korean torture tactics and sleep deprivation.   

As a manchild, I loved to watch monster and science fiction movies. Rev. Jim Jones and the Peoples and what the system was putting Huey through at San Luis Obispo was a science fiction flick being played out in true life right before my eyes and I at that time had no way of knowing or appreciating its true danger.

Shortly after shielding my younger brothers and sister from Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple on the grounds of the OUSD under Superintendent Dr. Marcus A. Foster, two FBI agents (a black and white team) paid a visit to my mother and siblings while I was away to suggest to her that it was best for my health and safely if I got out of Oakland.

Rev. Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple was a covert governmental coordinated racial medical-social control and pacification experiment that extensively used sleep deprivation tactics as a means of brainwashing and mind control.

Just before his death in April 1992, Charles Alex Gregory, was drawn inside an organization that from all appearances was an instinctively benign group, SIMBA Inc., from the mindset of Roland Gilbert, a former inmate of Lompoc Federal Penitentiary.  

In prison, Gilbert had gone through some type of MK ULTRA operant conditioning experimental behavior modification program. Charles didn’t understand it but SIMBA Inc. was nothing more than Lompoc’s experimental operant conditioning program covertly repackaged as SIMBA’S “The GHETTO SOLUTION” targeting Black children, particularly males that conditioned them and their adult mentors, one of which was Charles Alex Gregroy, into “altered states of consciousness” — a hypnotic state used in mind control in which the mind becomes highly susceptible to suggestion. Gilbert’s mind control paradigm program for SIMBA Inc. was straight out of the Dr. Gregory Bateson, Abraham Maslow and Aldous Huxley’s Esalen Institute; and it singled out and targeted Charles Alex Gregory’s independence and genius for obstruction. Bateson, Maslow and Huxley were some of the most important clandestine architects of the CIA’s MK ULTRA program.

The medical-military-industrial-congressional complex has clandestinely turned Oakland into some sort of far out and futurist medical scientific pacification laboratory and testing grounds because Oakland had become ground-zero and home to Black Power Nationalism and African-American Independence that Charles Alex Gregory presented;  and Liberation.

Oakland was the home of the feared Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party for Self Defense that was sweeping across the World like a wildfire. Oakland had become home to some of the most progressive educational and political systems in the nation and the World. 

The CIA’s MK ULTRA PROGRAM IS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY. The trail to Jonestown runs right through OAKLAND.

[4] Id.

[5] Carroll, Michael C., LAB 257, Harper, NYC (2004) pgs. 7-8

[6] http://www.fonebone.net/Jonestown/02.Chap.txt

[7] Id.

[8] http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/judschac.asp

[9] http://waronyou.com/forums/index.php?topic=3445.0

[10] Id. At footnote 6

[11] Id. At footnote 5, pg. 8

[12] Id.

[13] Id. Page 9

[14] Meier, Michael, Was Jonestown a CIA experiment? a review of the evidence, Mellen House (1988) at page 92

[15] Id. At footnote 3

[16] Id.

[17] Id.

[18] Id.

[19] Layton, Deborah, Seductive Poison, Anchor Books, NY (1999)

As you may know, the NFL isn’t the only league with labor issues on the horizon; NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL all have labor contracts expiring in 2011.  Whoa, right?  The Sports Business Journal calls it “the equivalent of a full solar eclipse on the sports labor calendar.”

Head on over to the SBJ to read the whole thing, because it really breaks down the issues for each league and the awkward positioning of the leagues who instituted a salary cap, but now find it to be not of their liking.

Some quotes from the NFL folks:

And in the NFL, the salary cap system that began in 1993 is not working for owners anymore, said [Jeff] Pash [the NFL chief legal officer], who is leading negotiations for the owners. “It may have been perfectly sound in 1993 when it was entered into, but it has not evolved in a way that reflects the operations of the National Football League in 2009,” Pash said. Among other things, Pash said that system does not take into account owners increased costs, including more privately financed stadiums and debt service.

Another MAJOR issue?  Proskauer Rose, the New York law firm, has a seat at each one of the tables.  How about that? Not bad for the PPP (profits per partner) in this downturn.  It does suggest some questions, though.  Are the leagues working in cahoots?  Is there some sort of informal information sharing going on?  How tall are those chinese walls? How does one CBA agreement effect the others? The Sports Business Journal article mentions that there is typically not “pattern bargaining” like there might be in auto labor deal.

If the leagues can’t collude, can the unions?

[NBAPA Executive Director Billy] Hunter said the expiration of all four deals in the same year was something he discussed at length with Gene Upshaw, his good friend and the former NFLPA executive director, before Upshaw died unexpectedly last year.

“If it resulted in any one group being locked out, I think he sort of saw himself at the front because the NFLPA agreement is the first to expire.” Hunter said. He has not yet addressed this issue with Upshaw’s successor, Smith.

Upshaw, Hunter said, “thought it provided an opportunity that I guess we could all … unify if we all kind of took a universal position about the concerns of our players.”

Four League Strike or Lockout?  Can you imagine how dark our 2011 would be?

I have a lot to learn about this and about the NLRB rules. But needless to say, this will be a focus of the blog.

Update: Also, not sure this is particularly productive, but want to see if I can start a twitter meme: #savesports2011

Update 3/16/09: Sports Illustrated’s Don Banks provides some great insight into how the NFLPA came to their decision of unanimously electing DeMaurice Smith, an outsider to become the new executive director of the  NFLPA.  A strong vision and detailed strategy on how Smith will approach the CBA discussions with the NFL and the belief that applying congressional pressure that threatens the NFL’s tax exempt status to ensure the league operates in good faith is just one of the strategies that put him over the top.  That strategy makes it clear that Smith is ready to play hardball in the CBA negotiations with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and could be a sign that a lock-out could realistically happen in 2011.  It is going to be a very tough negotiation with the two sides looking like they will want to hold their ground and demonstrate their power as new leadership.

Breaking from Hawaii: The NFLPA has elected Washington DC attorney, DeMaurice Smith as their new executive director.  Smith, an NFL outsider was considered a dark horse candidate behind former NFLPA Presidents Trace Armstrong and Troy Vincent.

Smith created a detailed business plan on how he would run the NFLPA that was more than a 100 pages long and highlighted the key issues facing the NFLPA and shared it with the NFLPA Executive Committee during his interview process, his initiative propelled him into becoming a finalist for executive director and the most powerful union in sports.

While he has no labor or employment background, Liz Mullen and Daniel Kaplan of the Sports Business Journal point out that his experience is similiar to NBA Players Association Executive Director Billy Hunter and the NHL Players Association Paul Kelly. Smith was an assistant U.S. attorney and has political connections to the Obama administration and U.S. attorney general Eric Holder.  Hunter had been a U.S. attorney and Kelly was an assistant U.S. attorney.

The NFLPA’s decision to go with Smith will allow the organization to move forward with a united front and put behind the controversies that came up during the selection process.  Smith’s election and position as an outsider with no sports industry experience symbolizes a major change for an organization that had been run by NFL Hall of Fame player, Gene Upshaw for the last 25 years and indicates that the players were able to break from what was thought to be a comfort-level of having a former player serve as the union boss factor into the decision.  Smith’s election also signifies that the NFLPA was looking for someone to serve as a competent CEO that also understood the importance of understanding the political landscape and ensuring that the NFLPA had a presence.

Smith’s first order of business will be to introduce himself to the players he will represent as the union faces negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement with the NFL.  Given the timing and the need to move quickly, I would:

• Put Smith through a media training boot camp
• Take a proactive effort to introduce him to current NFL and retired players by holding a series of conference calls
• Conducting select sit-down interviews over the next week with ESPN, SI’s Peter King, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, Sports Business Journal and the NFL Network (all media outlets players are sure to be paying attention to)

More will be written over the next few days that will introduce Smith to the sports business world.

This article includes highlights from the Executive Directors Forum at the Sports Lawyers Association Conference in San Francisco.

Donald Fehr, Executive Director and General Counsel, MLBPA

Mr. Fehr addressed a variety of issues, including the Mitchell Report:

• George Mitchell had no agreement and no participation of the Players Association, effectively placing the Players Association in a classic adversarial position.
• Mitchell refused to let the Players Association see the report until 1 hour before the press conference announcing his findings.  This provided the named players and Players Association no opportunity to make corrections or substantially review the report.
• George Mitchell was a private lawyer hired by Bud Selig.  Accordingly, any conversations between players and Mitchell would not be protected by any privilege doctrines.  Furthermore, a prosecutor would not be bound by any agreements between Mitchell and a player.  What lawyer would suggest that his or her client speak with Mitchell and open himself up to possible prosecution?
• The Mitchell Report was characterized by unfairness and a lack of due process.  Players were named and had no real opportunity to respond or cross examine the sources who named them.  All of the normal elements of the adversarial system, intended to ensure due process, were absent.
• Performing enhancing drugs are not merely a problem in sports, by a societal problem.

Eugene Upshaw, Executive Director, NFLPA

Mr. Upshaw touched on the Collective Bargaining Agreement between NFL owners and the NFLPA:

• NFL owners have an opt-out clause in November 2008, and have indicated that they intend to do so.  If the owners do opt-out, 2009 will be the last season with a salary cap and 2010 will be an uncapped year.
• Owners do not want to play players 60% of the overal revenues.  However, the Players Association will not take less, setting up a potential showdown.
• On the issue of retired players, the NFLPA made 21 improvements in the last 12 months – it set aside money for players with dementia; set up assisted living facilities and joint and hip replacement centers.
• Mr. Upshaw took issue with the criticisms that he does not care about retired players and his former teammates, saying that anyone that criticizes him on that issue do not know him or hirs record.
• Mr. Upshaw is optimistic that owners and the Players Association will have an agreement – “what is the alternative?”

Billy Hunter, Executive Director, NBAPA

Mr. Hunter spoke about the current status of affairs between the NBA and its Players Association, which he described as relatively quiet:

• The argument that players need to spend more time in college before entering the pros is unavailing.  Of the top 10 players in the NBA, 7 players entered the NBA directly from high school.  The other 3 players only spent 1 year in college.
• With respect to increasing the age limit for entering the NBA, the Players Association is “not going to give a gift to the NCAA money machine.”

Paul Kelly, Executive Director, NHLPA

Mr. Kelly spoke generally about the state of the NHL:

• The on-ice product has never been better, there is a large crop of good young players and the next few player drafts appear strong.
• The NHL is more international than other sports.  In fact, NHL players will play a prominent role in the winter olympics with 175-200 players playing for their respective countries.  The NHL will be emphasizing the international element of their sport, and will be more international games in the coming years.  However, the NHL’s agreement with the International Ice Hockey Federation concerning transfer agreements is about to expire.  There will not be an agreement going into this year’s NHL Draft.  It remains to be seen how the NHL will be affected.
• Larger numbers of college hockey players are leaving college early for the NHL, hurting the college programs.  The NHL is looking to address the issue, but seeks to maximize options for young players and is not inclined to place restrictions on players entering the NHL.
• The television issue is a primary issue for the NHL and the league continues to work on expanding coverage, and its options.

Reacting to NBA Players Association director Billy Hunter’s comments about security for the 2008 All-Star festivities in New Orleans, Rockets guard Tracy McGrady said Tuesday that he is concerned about safety to the point he might consider skipping the event, the Houston Chronicle is reporting.

“If I don’t feel I’m going to be safe, if I am on that team, I will look into probably not even going,” McGrady said.

Hunter said in a Newsday article Monday that the union might consider suing the NBA if it does not believe New Orleans can safely host the event.

Houston Chronicle