Including information about his associates
On January 25, 2001, Willis Carto [WAC] sent a letter to a member of the LSF board of directors. Here is the text of that letter, along with our analysis of its contents:
[WAC] Our brief conversation this morning leaves me in a state of confusion. How can you forget that the IHR, up until October, 1993, could not have been doing better?
False. It could have been doing MUCH better. IHR supporter Jean Farrel had given the IHR assets valued at approximately $17 million. Unfortunately, Carto had improperly taken it upon himself to deal with Ms. Farrel instead of having the IHR staff do the work (Carto had no official position with the IHR at the time he secreted all of Ms. Farrel’s correspondence, and began counselling her on financial matters). As is usual for Carto, he completely botched the job, to the point that when Farrel died, the gift was pulled back
into her estate. Carto then assigned himself the role of recovering whatever he could of the gift for the IHR, on whose behalf he claimed to have power of attorney, but he was only able, after years of litigation, to recoup only about $7.5 million for the IHR. Of these monies, Carto transferred about $150,000 to the IHR, loaned the IHR about $250,000 of its own money, and then pocketed the rest. Without Carto’s interference and utter stupidity, the IHR would have received roughly $17 million, instead of a couple hundred thousand, and there would have been no need for the years of debilitating litigation that have ensued since then.
[WAC] I was directing operations and Weber, Marcellus (who, incidentally is the one who vetoed me offering you a job), Raven and O’Keefe, not to mention the crook, Hulsy.
False. Carto did visit the office every couple of weeks, but he was far from directing operations at the end of 1992, when Greg Raven was hired. [Note also that Carto’s sentence doesn’t even scan.]
[WAC] The IHR and the Journal were doing incredibly well, even against the heaviest opposition in the world.
False. The IHR and the Journal were doing about the same as in the past, with the exception that a tiny fraction of the Farrel money had made it possible to print some books. The circulation was about the same, however, which implies that for Carto, incredibly well
meant that IHR had funds available. Of course, without Carto fouling up everything, IHR would have had millions to spend, and no litigation, so it would have been doing even better.
[WAC] They CONSPIRED together IN SECRET, while collecting good salaries, to take over because they thought there was a lot of money in it for them. That was 1993, Jack, 7½ years ago.
False. After paying out of our own pockets for an attorney’s advice on our legal situation, the IHR staff approached the only two known members of the board of directors, Lewis and Lavonne Furr, to tell them that Carto had suddenly declared that he was in charge of IHR, and was going to eliminate Holocaust revisionism from pages of the Journal in favor of articles on race. As a side issue, we expressed our concerns that Carto may have pocketed the vast bulk of the Farrel money. The Furrs’ initial reaction was that Carto had no power either to change the Journal or spend the Farrel money himself. We urged them to join us in standing up to Carto. Instead, they resigned, but they had never told Carto, whom they had known for many years, about our months’ long contact with them. Carto may not have known, but when company staff members contact the board of directors (who are legally responsible for the corporation), there is no conspiracy. After the Furrs’ resignations, remaining members of the board voted to sever all ties with Willis and Elisabeth Carto. It was all above-board.
[WAC] I at the time did everything I could to keep this from any publicity. The Record shows this. They did not care.
False. Carto did everything in his power not only to publicize this situation, but to flood the country with his deceitful and mendacious claims.
[WAC] These swine wrecked the IHR — that I built up over 13 years — with NO SALARY.
False. The IHR is still going strong, and Carto didn’t build it up (in fact, on numerous occasions he has come close to ruining it). It is true that Carto received no salary, because he had no position of authority with the IHR, and was acting as an unpaid volunteer.
[WAC] I even gave the IHR over $800,000 from the Farrel estate — the rest went to LIBERTY LOBBY’s radio project. All this is documented.
It is false that he gave or even transferred $800,000 to the IHR from any source, let alone from the $17 million Farrel gift.
It is false that all the rest went to the Liberty Lobby radio project. Less than $3 million went to this purpose; the rest of the millions are still unaccounted for. [Note that it was illegal for Carto to transfer ANY of the money to Liberty Lobby for a radio project or any other purpose. That money belonged to the IHR, not to Carto, Liberty Lobby, the Red Cross, or the Sierra Club.]
It is true that the above amounts are documented, but the documents do not support Carto’s claims, even documents supplied by Carto himself.
[WAC] How can you possibly not know after all this treachery that Mark Weber is a confirmed liar? Even his wife says so and everyone with any experience knows this. In 1993 he spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on the phone to everyone he could think of telling them lies about me to prepare for the criminal coup they made.
Mark and his wife Priscilla are in the midst of an acrimonious divorce, and Carto is paying for Priscilla’s divorce attorney. Of course she is going to say nasty things about Mark. It doesn’t help matters that she seems to be mentally unbalanced.
It is false that Mark or anyone else spent hundreds of dollars calling people, or that he was telling them lies, or that there was a coup, or that it was criminal. [Note that Carto has brought something like three dozen lawsuits against IHR, and has won none of them. In almost every instance, the court agrees that the IHR has the law and the facts on its side.]
[WAC] To blame me for this is crazy. WHAT DID I DO WRONG?
He bungled the transfer of a $17 million gift to the IHR, then pocketed several million dollars to which he had no legal right. Since then, he has done everything in his power to destroy the IHR to avoid being called to account. And that’s just for starters.
[WAC] All I did was to literally create the IHR and the Journal and the int’l conferences and paid these treacherous parasites to do the work that I laid out for them. Then to have you blame me for things that happened AFTER they pulled a stunt that is hard to beat for pure treachery is amazing! I don’t get it.
Carto was present at the creation of the IHR, but the credit goes to David McCalden for the idea, and the corporate records show that the IHR was set up by Lewis Furr. There is no mention of Carto anywhere in these documents. Carto had no position of authority with the IHR, as he often stated under oath when asked by Mel Mermelstein and his attorneys. Yet now, Carto claims to have been running/controlling/owning things all along. By the way, the money from the Farrel gift that Carto claims to be his, he obtained access to only by telling others that he was representing the IHR! Prior to getting his hand caught in the cookie jar, Carto consistently claimed that the money belonged to the IHR, and that he was merely acting on the IHR’s behalf.
[WAC] They started it, not me, for God’s sake! How can you miss that? I was going along building the IHR/NOONTIDE PRESS and they sabotaged it. As a result, over 7 years have been lost, and revisionism has been severely retarded If a man has no integrity, like Weber et al, he can only cause harm.
False. Carto started it by announcing that he was running the IHR, by announcing that the entire direction of the IHR was going to change, by stealing the bulk of the Farrel gift, by forcing his way into the IHR offices after being notified by the board of directors that the relationship was severed, by bringing lawsuit after lawsuit, and by relentlessly promoting his lies in The Spotlight.
Carto is right about one thing, though, in saying that a man who has no integrity can cause only harm. This describes Willis Carto to a T.