By Michael Miner
“Dear Colleague, I want to share with you the National Labor Relations Board’s final report on the crushing vote against the Newspaper Guild’s recent attempt to colonize the Sun-Times advertising department. Advertising staff decided by a margin of 2-1 to reject old-style collectivism. The vote was a 118-60 humiliation for the paid guild activists and their dwindling band of followers in the editorial department.
“In rejecting the guild by such a clear margin, I believe advertising staff have said they do not want to import into their department the divisiveness and old resentments that the guild has nursed for years in the editorial section.
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The clues were subtle, and the FBI agents missed them. As the two G-men, accompanied by a couple of police officers from Skokie, grilled white supremacist Matthew Hale about Benjamin Smith’s murderous rampage, Kirsten Scharnberg stood behind Hale and scribbled on a notepad. Bonnie Trafelet moved around Hale’s parlor shooting pictures–cameras, badges, and passes dangling from her neck. At one point an FBI agent said sharply to her, “Are you trying to intimidate me?”
“Oh, we thought you were some of his followers,” said a Skokie cop.
What’s more, Scharnberg and Trafelet had been there first. They were visiting with Hale in his living room the night of July 8 when loud knocking and shouts of “FBI!” rang from the front porch. Hale got up and answered the door, and led his new callers into the outer parlor.
