The Weird World of Elisabeth Carto at American Free Press AN UPDATE FROM MICHAEL COLLINS PIPER TO THE GOOD PEOPLE WHO HAVE COME TO MY RESCUE I just got a letter from a nice lady who told me that AFP was being just as disingenuous as I told her they would be : The lady called and spoke to Julia Foster, the office manager, who praised me up and down and said what a wonderful writer I was, but that I had NOT been fired. Rather, she said, I QUIT when they offered me a contract that I refused to sign. The truth is, I have a copy of my signed contract, signed when I was sitting in a hospital room in April after open heart surgery, no less, and I also have a signed letter from Willis Carto terminating that contract because I had supposedly said bad things about him, his wife, Elisabeth and « fellow employees » (such as John Friend, whom Carto had just fired!). And you’re darned right I said bad things about the people who had mistreated me, not just for the past year but, ultimately, for the last 20 years or more—precisely because I had run afoul of Elisabeth Carto for having had an argument with her sister, Marianne Scharnhorst, who had been employed by The SPOTLIGHT (before AFP came into being at the demise of The SPOTLIGHT). And as you’ll see, Mrs. Carto’s sister was a very real trouble-maker who caused trouble for me and for many other SPOTLIGHT employees. In any case, in a court of law, those signed documents (referenced above) constitute EVIDENCE and the evidence demonstrates that Mrs. Foster, nice lady though she is, is either: 1) deliberately lying, knowing the full story; or 2) passing on a lie having been ordered to do so by the perverse Elisabeth Carto and her dementia-ridden husband (who still retains a skill for spinning a good lie, at least when it comes to explaining away and defending his wife). (On another occasion in the past, Julia told somebody that I was « working at home » – rather than in the office – because I was « too disruptive. » In other words, I dared to disagree with Elisabeth Carto. That was before I was officially fired twice this past year. So they have a history of telling quite creative stories.) If Mike Piper is so rotten and deserved to be fired, well, why not then simply demonstrate how rotten he is? If Piper is such a bad guy, people should know about it. However, of course, the fact is that it all goes back to Elisabeth Carto and her insane behavior (about which all current and past staff are aware) and the AFP staff don’t want to talk about it, nor are they allowed to do so, for obvious reasons. The truth is that even Liberty Lobby’s outstanding attorney, Mark Lane, who fought relentlessly to save Liberty Lobby under fire from the IHR lawsuits that eventually destroyed Liberty Lobby, said, on one occasion, that he believed that it was Elisabeth Carto’s behavior toward the staff in California that helped stimulate a lot of the discontent that was stirred up by outside forces. And the truth is that Elisabeth was even moving to have Mark Lane’s salary cut (even in the midst of the legal affairs that ended up destroying Liberty Lobby.))—working to undermine the very attorney who saved Liberty Lobby in the Hunt and Buckley cases some years before. Here’s the story that only a few people know about . One weekend in approximately 1993-1994 (it was well after we had already fallen under the IHR lawsuits) Willis Carto was getting ready to leave Washington in a rush. He called me into his office and handed me a letter that Carto had written to Liberty Lobby’s longtime and valued counsel, Mark Lane. Carto had been convinced by Elisabeth that Lane was “making too much money” by being paid a regular salary or retainer without “documenting” his work for Liberty Lobby. In other words, it was being suggested to Carto that Lane was essentially taking advantage and not doing his work for a flat fee. Carto was convinced by his wife to demand that Lane provide an hourly accounting of all of his work for Liberty Lobby. In response to Carto’s request, Lane had therefore re-assessed all of his work for Liberty Lobby during the past period and submitted a line-by-line summary, billing Liberty Lobby BY THE HOUR rather than by the standard payment that Lane had been receiving. (In other words, by previous agreement, if Lane did NOTHING in one week or one month he would still be paid if he was working 50 hour weeks on behalf of Liberty Lobby in the courts.) After Lane submitted his HOURLY billing, it was considerably higher than what it would have been in a previous agreement. Lane, again, had done this at Carto’s request. Having received the billing, Carto wrote a letter to Lane telling him that, unfortunately, he (Carto) was forced to sever Liberty Lobby’s relationship with Lane. Carto asked me to read this letter (after Carto had left, and Carto was, at that moment, on the verge of leaving) and then deliver it to Lane by Monday morning. Carto left and I read the letter – shocked. I decided to wait until the very last moment – Sunday night – to deliver the letter. However, fortunately, Carto reconsidered his decision and managed to catch me – as usual – working in the office on Sunday afternoon. He called me from California and asked, “Did you deliver that letter yet?” I said, “No, I was waiting till the very last minute.” Carto said, “Good for you. Don’t. I’ve had some second thoughts and talked to Mark in the meantime.” In fact, Lane had only prepared the hourly assessment (at Carto’s request) to demonstrate to Carto that he (Lane) was actually providing Carto a lot of little-noticed or “unknown” work that Lane did not normally bother to “write down” and “prove” himself. I sympathized with Mark Lane’s plight at the time. I was also being subjected to the same abuse. He and his wife and I had a private discussion about the matter and they were just absolutely amazed that Elisabeth had tried to over-turn a long and trusted working relationship and were quite disturbed about it, since Mark and his wife had become rather fond of Willis himself and often invited Willis and I over to their home for very lovely dinners. But that was not the end of things . it gets worse. In 1994 I spoke to Willis Carto on the telephone. He was in California and I was in Washington. It was a day or so before attorney Mark Lane was scheduled to handle Liberty Lobby’s defense in a Southern California courtroom in the lawsuit that ultimately forced Liberty Lobby into bankrupty. I was enthusiastic about the possibility of Lane once again winning for Liberty Lobby by taking the case to a jury – much as he had done in the famous Buckley case and in the Hunt case before it. I asked Carto: “So you are definitely taking the case to a jury?” Carto responded: “Oh absolutely.” I said: “That’s good.” However, here’s what happened . A day or so later, Mark Lane called Willis Carto to tell him that he (Lane) was getting ready to get on the plane to come to California to proceed with the case (jury selection, etc). But Carto said, “Oh, well, we’ve already started. We decided not to go with a jury. Randy Weir (the West Coast attorney on the ground) thinks we can win the case by just presenting it to the judge and we can save the costs of a long trial.” In fact, Randy Weir had convinced Elisabeth Carto (who was already hostile to Mark Lane and wanting to cut his salary – as outlined above)—that they didn’t need Mark’s expertise and that they could « save money » by eliminating a jury trial. Lane was horrified and jumped on a plane, but it was already too late. The case was lost and Liberty Lobby was directed down the course to bankruptcy. Had Randy Weir been bought off? It’s possible. Weir’s partner, Brian Urtnowski, discovered that Weir was a cocaine-addicted crook. And this discovery brought back memories from Mark Lane (and even Michael Piper) as to strange activity by Weir that indicated that perhaps indeed he had been compromised. (And it’s probably just a coincidence that Weir was a look-alike and talk- alike for a young man who was “advising” Liberty Lobby on the East Coast: Todd Blodgett). But ultimately the blame for the demise of Liberty Lobby could be laid directly at WALTRAUD ELISABETH OLDEMEIER CARTO. Perhaps a jury might have also found against Liberty Lobby, but WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND would expect a judge to rule in favor of Liberty Lobby? I more or less forgive Julia Foster for telling the sad little lies that she is telling since I know that she is under immense pressure from Elisabeth Carto and because of the fact that Julia knows a little bit about the history of the behavior of Elisabeth and her sister, Marianne Scharnhorst. Marianne used to sexually harass Julia’s teen-aged son, Jimmy, who worked briefly at Liberty Lobby. Marianne used to get touchy-feeling with a lot of the younger men (20s or younger) and would make a big fuss over them when they came into the mailroom where she worked.