"I wanted to know if Roberts was telling me the truth. He gave me a note that said, 'This is my permission to let the bearer look at my letters,'" Caruana explained. "I didn't succeed at first. The Russian Embassy threw me out, and believe me, I did not want to go. At that time you really didn't just want to go marching up to the Russian consulate; it was the middle of the Cold War! The embassy of an Arab country didn't cooperate either," she said. Eventually, however, Caruana found the verification she had been seeking:
At the Norwegian Consulate there was this secretary who didn't know what I was looking for. I just went up to her and said I'd like to read Bruce Roberts' letters that he gave the embassy, and she said okay. So I had one day of joy of reading these letters, and it did a lot for me because then I knew he was telling me the truth as far as I could check it out, but he really did give letters to this consulate; they have them in a file folder! Then the next day I went back to get more of it, and as I said, it was those notes that I made on that first day that was the basis of the Gemstone Skeleton Key. I did them all in one afternoon. I had of course read the background of the 360 pages that Mae had, but I didn't have a single one of those. I think I did a good job on it, and I know Bruce liked it. That was something that helped me a great deal.
A few days later I noticed that my phone had been tapped. I returned to the Norwegian consulate with my notebook, hoping to take more notes, but the consul told me I couldn't read or take any more notes at the consulate. Then he told me he had spoken to Roberts, and had asked him about me. Roberts had suggested that he read the Playgirl article, and he had done so. Then he asked me whether I had read it. I told him I had written it. Then he pulled out another long new letter Bruce had just given him, and told me that since he had just received this letter from Roberts, and since he had not yet given it to the consulate library, it was still legally his property and he could legally give it to me to read. He offered to lend me the letter, which was an original letter, not a Xerox copy, and asked me to read the letter carefully, note whatever it said that pertained to Norway, and then return the original letter to him. I did that, made a copy of that letter, and returned the original letter to him. I originally prepared the Skeleton Key for my own use, but when Bruce called me in February, 1975 and told me he was sick and in the hospital, I decided to fight back on his behalf by releasing the Skeleton Key, as I did, in March 1975.
Caruana realized that people could easily get sidetracked in minutiae and miss the global picture, so she felt it was important to provide the public with a taste of Robert's material that was accessible--somewhat organized, chronological, and cross-referenced. Robert's writing style is repetitive, minutely detailed, and occasionally cryptic and manic. It demands much of the average reader. The Skeleton Key condenses and refines the ideas yet provides enough background to correlate seemingly unrelated events. Caruana reports that when she first gave Roberts a copy of the Key, he reacted by saying, "Why did you do that?" But not long after he was requesting copies to show people. Roberts could not have written the Key himself; he was too mired in the details and emotions of the story. Conversely, Caruana could write well but wasn't overly invested in the material, which could compromise objectivity.
When Caruana first typed the Skeleton Key on her IBM Selectric typewriter, she included her name and address on the copy she Xeroxed and distributed. After that, however, the file was retyped, often by people who would add or delete parts according to their taste or bias, and these copies were reproduced thousands of times around the world with Caruana's name missing. She has said she was never averse to having her name associated with the file, yet many who have read the Key don't know she wrote it.
I acquired my first copy of "A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File" from my high school history teacher, Henry Denny, who now lives near Prescott, Arizona. Mr. Denny said he was shocked when he first read the Key because it contrasted so sharply with everything he'd learned and taught as a student and teacher of history. He couldn't quite believe the Key was completely true, he said, but it did compel him to look more deeply.
"Bruce Roberts filled in a lot of gaps in many of the official reports. There were too many gaps in the Warren Commission Report, too many gaps in the other accounts of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. and so many others," Denny said. "The Skeleton Key opened those avenues of inquiry for me to really investigate what went on. So much information Roberts mentions in the Skeleton Key has turned out to be accurate."
While the claims made in the Skeleton Key are unsettling, I have always felt the document possesses an internal consistency that justifies our withholding immediate judgment and examining its details more closely. Bruce Roberts' Gemstone letters, as conveyed to us by Stephanie Caruana, redefine the stereotypical definition of "Mafia," the kind of caricature and even glorification we often see in media portrayals, and paint for us a truer picture that shows how deeply the roots of organized crime intertwine every aspect of US politics and culture. While I can't say with certainty that "A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File" is completely true, I am convinced that it's truthful.
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