Kettle calling....

Insignificant e-mail sent by Berthold Reimers within minutes of participating in WBAI's "Report to the Listener." A man who cannot tell a truth accuses Andrew Leslie Phillips of lying.

Andrew,

Shame on you. You keep lying. WBAI had nothing with audit not being done. You are clueless, have no backbones. You decided to leave WBAI and blamed it on Summer but it was because of your paranoia and weakness. Summer gave you a chance to help WBAI because I begged her to do so because I believed in you and gave you the authority to make the changes. Of course, all decisions you make can't go exactly your way because of the money problem we had and could not send to hire what you needed. I gave you full authority and power to make any changes you wanted and I backed you up but you punked out. These are the facts. I thought you were retiring and staying out of Pacifica. I have watched you lied and blamed everyone but you. I have also heard you perpetuate the lie of WBAI keeping double accounting book. This tells me that you are either totally clueless or dishonest. 

Click on image to enlarge

I stayed away from this stupid exchange of this list where ... I will refrain from giving my opinion of this list. But I had to set the record straight. 2018 is a new year and I am no longer letting people lie or be dishonest with impunity.

Be man enough and call me 646-620-7833 and we can talk or I would love to see you face to face eye to eye and see if you can lie in front of me.

Berthold. WBAI Radio 99.5 FM

General Manager

Berthold,

For the record this is how I recall it.

I resigned as interim PD at WBAI in mid October, 2013 after ten weeks on the job because:

1) I knew that if WBAI were to succeed it was imperative to have a strong morning presence. In my first weeks on the job you and Summer Reese failed to provide promised funding and support for the project.  This after Summer Reese and I negotiated with radio agent, Ron Hartenbaum, who'd she’d asked to help find a host for a new morning format at WBAI. This was an audacious proposal that I supported. It was the kind of out-of-the-box thinking Summer was capable of that, along with other deep program changes, may have saved the station. Hartenbaum offered  names like Thom Hartman and David Pakman and finally Karen Hunter who you can read about here:
 :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Hunter. You’ll see she now has her own show on Sirius Satellite Radio. Since WBAI had no facilities, Hartenbaum found WBAI a professional studio at CBS at no cost to run this show. Karen Hunter, offered to help create it as a volunteer though there were expenses of course which you and Summer would not or could not meet. In fact Summer disappeared from the negotiation which was rather unnerving as she ultimately held the purse strings.  The plan was to try Hunter for a few months and see if we could break into the NYC market and become a contender. We'll never know.  

2) After that fiasco I asked WBAI’s operations director, Tony Ryan to coordinate with Jon Almelah, long-time Pacifica Technical Director and Jake Glanz, an old colleague of mine whose kept the WBAI transmitter running at the Empire State building for years, to install a Comrex system at The Commons building in Brooklyn where there was no radio studio.  Laura Flanders had agreed to work with us in the mornings, at no cost. Setting up a Comrex is a simple thing but for some reason it never worked. It was becoming evident that WBAI’s operations skills were insufficient to say the least. Almelah and Glanz were ready, willing and able to take the next step and install a simple studio but that didn’t happen either because there was no support .  A radio station can’t run without a studio and good tech support and "renting" a studio way uptown (but not paying the rent) was not a long term solution. You may recall that I brought all this to your attention.

3) The final straw came when Summer and you overrode my plan to try ween WBAI from the premium and fulfillment model that has been such a long-term disaster at WBAI. Since we had no morning host I was doing the show  - as other program directors had before (and since). But it was never a solution.  You and Summer insisted that Gary Null, with whom I had no personal animosity and who's done a great deal over the years in support of WBAI, take over the morning during fundraising and pitch his products. I walked! I remember Null opening that morning segment with Wagner's - Ride of the Valkyries!

Finally, the fact that you and other managers and some program directors before you, were illegally duplicating material for premiums which was actually against the law - and then not fulfilling listener pledges - frightened the shit out of me. I didn’t want to be a party to that and neither did another program director a while later. You may remember talk of bringing in New York's Consumer Affairs and Attorney General. 

No Berthold, it has nothing to do with backbone. I  don’t know anything about “two sets of books” I do know that WBAI seemed unable to comport with Pacifica’s accounting system and that you were in charge of the accounts. 

And I do know that you have shown no leadership - that you let WBAI flounder during Hurricane Sandy because you were unable to make very simple back-up plans. All you needed was a Comrex and a telephone line. Radio can really shine and provide real and essential services at such times but you failed our community.  WBAI went dark. You should have been sacked then. And I do know that after the Sandy WBAI disaster, over at KPFA where I was the terrible manager Mr Steinberg excoriates, I had KPFA raise nearly $200k for WBAI. I think you and Mr Steinberg, if you ask, will find that I left KPFA with head high and a new very successful morning show in place and the station in good shape despite - shall I say - the kangaroo court orchestrated by Summer Reese and Tracy Rosenberg. 

So though I respect your tenaciousness hanging onto your bloated salary for so long I don't think you have offered much to Pacifica these past seven or so years but the imminent prospect of crashing the whole damn thing.

Andrew Leslie Phillips

917-771-9382

Robert Hennelly was WBAI's PD for a brief period, but he, too, fell victim to amateur management. A prolific print and radio journalist, Bob was a clear misfit in the polluted atmosphere of a crumbling WBAI and thus able to identify with Andrew's problems all too well. He sent the following  letter of support:

Jan 4 at 9:33 PM

​Andrew, it was always a pleasure to work with you. You have an impressive body of work and more importantly you have helped train scores of people ​who have all gone on do to important work.

For you it was always about the collective succeeding. I ran into the same fiscal nightmare you did including Gary Null confronting me just before a pledge drive about WBAI counterfeiting copyrighted material. Evidently, this has been going on for years. 

When I asks around people substantiated it and when I raised it with Summer and Berthold I was terminated. Of course management will say it was because I failed to raise money but my actual termination came a few minutes after I announced DC 37 Executive Committee donating $5,000. 

The continued use of the float of the money generated by pledges to cover other bills, ignoring the legal requirement to cover the premiums that are offered, makes the station an ongoing fraudulent enterprise. 

Current management will hold on to their stranglehold on the station until either law enforcement or creditors intervene.

Bob

Robert Hennelly