JD:Stories started floating out as always happens when some incident like that occurs and some of the stories involved missing money that was used for this and that but some of those stories were even strange. They were coming from kids all over. Young kids - 16, 14, 13 - kids telling about how they had been on Larry's private jet to this party or that party. Or that they had been at the Republican National Convention here or they had been at this political event in Washington and the stories had to do with they were there and were used as drug couriers. You know 13, 14-year old kids back then going through the airport could get through without anyone asking twice about anything. They pack them full of cocaine or whatever on little packs they'd carry on their bodies, between their legs, etc, etc. - young boys, young girls. And the kids also were telling these stranger tales that seemed bizarre at the time: that they had had sex or were involved in sex with this or that famous politician or businessman or whatever.
And I was one of the first ones who stood up and said this has got to be the most hilarious, ridiculous story I've ever heard. First of all, I knew Larry King. What the heck! I was head of banking at the time he was when he was doing his banking stuff, the head of the senate banking committee here in Nebraska. So I said, It's absurd. Well the stories started cropping up more and more and I said something else and I said look if I believe even one of these crazy stories I'd be the first one to stand up and demand that something be done. Then I got a letter from a kid named Paul Bonacci who was in a jail in Omaha. And he said, Look, if you come and talk to me, I can show you that these arent just fake tales.
AJ: Now later, you took his diary that went back like 5 years and had ink experts and forensics experts look at it. He had written all this stuff down.
JD: Yeah, that was the strange thing about this kid. I wish I had been able to do that throughout life but anyway when he was a little boy, he was about 18 when I had meet him in jail, 17 or 18. And as a young kid his uncle or grandfather or somebody had taught him religiously to keep a diary where you mark things down everyday. Well, he did it and he did it in detail. So when I went and visited with him and he told me these strange tales and then you had the head of psychiatry from one of the major medical institutions in the state say, "Hey, this kid he ain't crazy. He's a multiple personality and he's probably telling the truth because multiples don't need to lie. They just switch personalities.
Anyway, so to make a long, long bizarre story short. I found out that he was in jail because he had been one of those intimately involved in all this, and he had to be shut up real quick. Im making that as a conclusion now at the time I didnt realize that. But and so they locked him up and charged him with touching another boy on the outside of his pants, a cousin or something.
AJ: Senator, talk right into your telephone for me.
JD: Anyway, they have him there and I finally agreed I would represent him and that led to a long, long tale that's got me deeply involved in researching and investigating the whole collapse of that credit union and the personalities involved. Ultimately, on the advice of my best friend, closest friend, godfather, whatever, eventually writing a book because he told me thats what I should probably do to protect myself. And that man was a man named Bill Colby. About the time that I started writing the next book, Bill, as you know was head of the CIA and ended up floating dead in a pond somewhere. But I won't get into that right now. Anyway, so I wrote the book and as I got at the very beginning of this story and working on it, one of the things that I did do was as I say, as you say, obtain the diaries of this young boy to see just what he did say and then I had them checked.
AJ: And it wasn't just that. I mean they've got
JD: Forensic experts and the forensics were because somebody said he could have just made this all up later. He could have made this up later. And so I wanted to make sure that this wasn't done. So we had forensic examiners said that this ink was done at a certain time and this could of only been done and on and on. Anyway, to get to the heart of the discussion
AJ: One more point, Senator John Decamp, because I've actually seen the Discovery Channel documentary that never aired and we actually played it here locally in Austin. I was sent a copy of it. They found hundreds of videotapes in King's office. The police saw it and freaked out, hid it and never released it and for all those other children, people actually got convicted of this stuff.
JD: Oh, yeah.
AJ: I want people to understand. This all happened folks.
JD: This isn't a fantasy. I ended up winning a million dollars on behalf of, against awful, awful, awful overwhelming odds, including the Omaha World Herald newspaper that attacked me so viciously because one of the key individuals that I got locked up in prison was their editor - one of their editors - another individual. But anyway
AJ: People are going to prison for this
[Cross-talk]
JD: Jack got released from prison here about what 8 or 10 months ago.
AJ: Hold on. And you were actually just out of the senate. You were hired to go whitewash the operation because you know this is ridiculous.
JD: That's what I was hired for. Yeah, yeah. But I did the opposite.
