BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT

Tuesday, July 29, 2003

MSNBC

Scarborough Country

JOE SCARBOROUGH, host

You know, Jesse Jackson's built a career out of moralizing. And

he never misses a chance to proclaim the leader of the civil rights

movement. My next guest is Kenneth Timmerman. He is the author of "Shakedown, Exposing

The Real Jesse Jackson." He is here to explain why Jesse Jackson and NASCAR went

their separate ways and how Jackson, like Pat Robertson, has embraced

Liberia's bloody dictator, Charles Taylor.

Thank you so much for being with us tonight. And let's begin today with the

news that NASCAR would not be giving Rainbow Push money this year. So for

the record, Rainbow Push says they have not officially been told of the split.

Why has that happened? Why has the divorce come along at a time such as now?

KENNETH TIMMERMAN, AUTHOR, "SHAKEDOWN": Well, there's been a tremendous

amount of pressure from the public and from the NASCAR public, from the

National Policy and Legal Center here in Washington, D.C. NASCAR is a

tremendously patriotic group of people.

And you have them giving money to Jesse Jackson, at the same time that Jesse

Jackson is criticizing our troops in Iraq. He's saying that President Bush

is a war criminal. And he's criticizing basically the patriotism of our

national leadership. I think this grated tremendously with the NASCAR fans.

SCARBOROUGH: Well, I got to tell you the fans in SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY were

not very happy either. I mean, we've been getting e-mails nonstop. Every

time we have you on. Every time we talk about the NASCAR shakedown, we have been

getting e-mails. They have been calling NASCAR.

I got to tell you, they just can't believe it. And when you have somebody

like football legend Reggie White, who's actively promoting black drivers

for NASCAR, blasting Jesse Jackson, that's a problem. And this is what he

said. He said: "It is really disappointing to me that Jesse and his

organization would take a quarter of a million dollars from NASCAR and not

do anything with it to try to get black drivers into the sport. It seems as

though Jackson is using his status and his organization to raise money for

his organization."

I got to tell you, that is tough talk. Reggie White, who is a leader in the

African-American community and a hero to many Americans, has just accused

Jesse Jackson of stealing $250,000.

TIMMERMAN: Well, gee, Joe, it sounds like Reggie has been reading my book

"Shakedown." I mean, that's what I reported on in my analysis of Jackson's

35 years of political life. He began this kind of shakedown of black businesses

in Chicago in the 1960's and 1970's. Today he's just doing it for six

figures and seven figures on Wall Street. So.

SCARBOROUGH: But Kenneth, there are not an awful lot of African-American

leaders like Reggie White who have come out in the past and said, hey, you

just stole $250K and did nothing to advance the cause of African-Americans.

That's unusual, isn't it?

TIMMERMAN: No, you are absolutely right. And there's one case that I

reported to in "Shakedown" that is similar, a little bit less high-profile,

but involved black farmers, and black farmers who had been ripped off by

Jesse Jackson, ripped off by the Department of Agriculture. They asked for

his help. Jesse asked them, poor dirt farm farmers in South Carolina and

Virginian and North Carolina, he asked them for $100,000 just to give a

speech.

SCARBOROUGH: Now, Kenneth, it's shocking. And I got to tell you something

else that really is disturbing. In your book, you catalog Jesse Jackson's

role supporting Charles Taylor saying: "Without Jackson's active

intervention, Liberia's Charles Taylor and Sierra Leone's Foday Sankoh were

headed towards international isolation and sanction. Thanks to Jackson, both

retained power to murder another day." Now, what evidence do you have that

Jesse Jackson embraced and helped lift up a bloodthirsty dictator like

Charles Taylor? What evidence do you have?

TIMMERMAN: Well, among other things, I have got a box about this high of

documents that have just been released to me by the State Department. All of

the briefing documents given to Jesse Jackson, when he was President

Clinton's special envoy for Africa between 1997 and 2000, and all of the

transcripts of Mr. Jackson's discussions.

SCARBOROUGH: And what does it say, specifically what does it say about him

supporting Charles Taylor?

TIMMERMAN: Well, what's very clear is that Jackson went out of his way to

legitimize Charles Taylor as president of Liberia at a time when the

international community had branded him a virtual war criminal. They had put

sanctions on Liberia. They had prohibited companies from doing business with

Liberia. They had accused him of trafficking war diamonds from neighboring

Sierra Leone, and supporting Foday Sankoh, the murderer in Sierra Leone, who

was chopping the hands and the feet off children with machetes.

SCARBOROUGH: And so, Kenneth, we got to go, but yes or no, without Jesse

Jackson, Charles Taylor would already be out? Yes or no.

TIMMERMAN: Yes, he would be out without Jesse Jackson. We owe this to Jesse

Jackson to a great extent, I believe.

SCARBOROUGH: Well, that's awful. Thank you once again, Kenneth, for coming

on our show, and that is costing lives right now in Liberia and it may end up

costing American lives.