As no attempt was made to conceal the relationship, word of the budding "romance" quickly spread among the attendees at Clifty Falls. Event producer Rick Walters testified that on Sunday, he observed Craig and Linda repeatedly kissing as they jubilantly announced they were getting married.

Those that knew of Linda's marital status were shocked. After being privately confronted by Christian Media hosts Rick Walters and Ralph Haaff on the obviously unscriptural behaviour, Craig later claimed he was only providing emotional support for his "friend" and had not undertaken an intimate relationship with her. As he stayed in the Midwest after the Clifty Falls event, through a series of telephone and personal contacts, he began to clash with Walters and Haaff.

Portwood then called me and sought to drive a wedge between Walters and Haaff and myself claiming "they aren't helping the ministry" with their narrow-minded ways. Craig then accused me of gossiping about he and Linda in the week before the event!

As the event ended, Craig relocated to Linda's home state of Michigan, and opened a post office box address in her small town. He subsequently moved into a motel where, as of this writing, he is visited in the evenings by Linda Kristich - who was still living with the husband she was divorcing. As I had quietly dropped Craig's program from our schedule as soon as I learned of the looming scandal, Craig quickly arranged to purchase shortwave time in the hour immediately following Christian Media's broadcast sign-off - thus giving many listeners the impression that the program that had previously been on Christian Media's broadcast schedule was still on the network.

Because Craig didn't have much money when he left Oregon and producing a daily shortwave hour is a relatively expensive proposition, we can't help but presume the broadcast fees are coming from Linda as she battles her husband for his substantial inheritance monies. Linda Kristich's broadcast aspirations were confirmed as she substitute hosted for Craig Portwood's "Beacon of Truth" program on October 15th and 16th of 2002.

As Craig began to once again broadcast his shortwave radio program, it became apparent that his statements were frequently directed towards his former friends who would not condone his present behaviour. Veiled references to 'false prophets' that he used to be associated with worked their way into his broadcasts. Ironically, no one at Christian Media had any desire to publicly criticize Craig as all parties continued to hope he would reverse course. Instead, Craig began to attack Walters and Haaff claiming they were gossiping about his relationship with Linda!

Because Craig began contacting individuals known to Rick Walters and Ralph Haaff claiming that he had been wronged by them, Rick Walters, Ralph Haaff, and Kirke Wise (all hosts at the network and all present at the Clifty Falls event) privately confronted Craig in a lengthy taped telephone conference call. Although Craig "repented" during that call, his erratic behaviour continued. Indeed, sometime later he claimed in print "I would have rather been confronted privately" - inaccurately indicating that his "accusers" had gone public, and had not privately confronted him. The tape recorded private conversation indicates this claim is simply untrue.

"I have been accused of breaking the 7th commandment (thou shalt not commit adultery). I am guilty of breaking the 10th commandment ("...thou shalt not covet thy neighbors wife...") which is bad enough as it is. Initially, this was difficult to see because I had been accused of adultery instead. Even though there was no sexual motive in that covetousness, I did covet her, and desired to have a Godly wife." [emphasis in original]

The letter goes on to state that "I did tell this sister, that if God were to release her from her commitment to her unbelieving husband, I would be honored to be her husband. It was a mistake to even think along such lines, and I was foolish enough to speak of her privately as 'my future fiancée.'"

Although the letter continues with Craig writing "This was indeed wrong, and I repent of it openly," there are significant inaccuracies in the publication itself that seek to spin the circumstances favorably to Craig Portwood's Scripturally unjustifiable point of view. In short, it's clear the "repentance" was only damage control and not a genuine contrition - for Craig has not changed his course at all. 

It's difficult to see, for example, how a man can covet a woman with "no sexual motive." Furthermore, Craig blatantly lied in the publication by writing "I would have rather been confronted privately, as commanded by our Savior..." when his own statements in the same newsletter plainly indicated he was confronted privately - by me as well as the previously mentioned trio of network associates.

Thus, even though the newsletter seeks to minimize the egregious nature of the transgression, in the process of 'damage control' he is compounding the problem with statements that are simply untrue. For example, in that same essay Portwood writes "As for the accusation, I forgive those who have shown that they are no more perfect than myself, and will not count as enemies, those who I attempt to admonish as brethren."

If Craig has "forgiven" those that had the courage to privately reprove his misbehaviour (even as he falsely claims he was never "confronted privately"), then I might ask why he arranged to have two fresh recruits to his cause go on the air and attack those he has "forgiven?"

To put it another way, although he has now claimed that he has repented of his sin, Craig has surreptitiously arranged to have two avowed enemies of Rick Walters substitute host for him on his shortwave program. This was clearly retaliatory. In the process, Portwood has been blatantly lying to cover his attacks. For example, in a Beacon of Truth broadcast by a substitute host named Greg Jones that was aired on October 17th 2002, Mr. Jones vehemently criticized Rick Walters by name.

The following morning, I concluded that Craig Portwood's continued misbehaviour had passed the point of private reproof and should be publicly repudiated. Craig had been privately confronted almost 2 months before, and was not only still denying physical contact with a married woman when multiple parties had provided eyewitness testimony to the contrary, he was escalating his attacks on all that stood up and told the truth. In my broadcast of October 18th 2002, I pointedly rebuked Craig (as well as Greg Jones and another recently recruited Portwood associate named Dave Wilson).

s soon as it became clear to Craig Portwood that I would be standing firmly against him as he clashed with Haaff, Walters, and Wise, a series of anonymous attacks began against me. Three days after I publicly rebuked Portwood on the air on October 18th 2002, I received a call from Rick Walters who asked me about an e-mail he had just received that was sent under my name. It seems that some unknown party had established a counterfeit e-mail account using my name, and had corresponded with Walters in a clumsy attempt to embarrass me and presumably Rick Walters as well.

The fraudulent e-mail has "me" proposing to commit a fraud upon the public by surreptitiously setting up a "marketing venture" that will operate "secretly" using an "invisible corporation." The forgery goes on to seek to seduce Rick Walters into getting involved in this "opportunity." It is signed with my name.

Rick was not deceived and forwarded the e-mail to me. The interesting fact in this sleazy effort to attack Christian Media is it was made on the Internet at the same time that Craig Portwood had just begun to use the Internet himself. Indeed, for most of his tenure with Christian Media, Craig steadfastly refused to utilize the e-mail capabilities of the Internet except on rare occasions - and then he never had an e-mail account of his own. In the entire time I've known Craig Portwood, one of the few e-mails I've ever received from him was received within hours of the imposter's e-mail that was sent to Rick Walters.

To put it another way, in that same week, Craig sent his first e-mail to me criticizing Rick Walters and Ralph Haaff, and threatened to "attack" me. At the same time, an e-mail purporting to come from me was sent to Rick Walters seeking to entrap him in some bizarre scheme. It should be obvious that actually masquerading as someone in an effort to damage a relationship is spiritually indefensible (if not criminal) behaviour.

The campaign of 'dirty tricks' against Christian Media became even more nasty in the days that followed. One of the commercial sponsors of Craig's independent radio program, a man named Dave Wilson, began telephoning my home phone number at 2 and 3 AM, belligerently challenging me to a debate. Mr. Wilson was obviously drunk. Since it is self evident to anyone speaking with Mr. Wilson that, in addition to an apparent problem associated with the consumption of liquid spirits, the man has not yet achieved a grade school proficiency in the English language. Because the scripture says "He that reproveth a scorner getteth to himself shame" (Proverbs 9:7), I declined his "invitation" to a debate. We have no doubts here as to how he obtained my private telephone number.

Shortly thereafter, yet another type of e-mail fraud was attempted. Again, the target was Rick Walters. In this instance, Rick received an e-mail from a woman that represented herself as a "Martha Krebbs." She stated that she had made a substantial financial gift to Rick through Christian Media. The sender of the e-mail indicated that she had given $2,491 for Rick Walter's airtime - but also stated that the funds had gone directly to Christian Media. This was another fraudulent attempt to try to plant seeds of doubt concerning me (James Lloyd) in the mind of Rick Walters.

There was no such person in the database, and no such gift was made. The return e-mail address was also a fake. Interestingly, this tactic was almost identical to the one utilized by Genesis Communications Shortwave radio host Bill Brumbaugh a couple of years ago, when Brumbaugh had been exposed as fraudulently claiming he had produced several award winning videos. To try to divert attention from the fact that he was exposed as a common con-man, lying on the air about his non-existent credentials, Brumbaugh had claimed that an unnamed couple he refused to identify had given funds to Christian Media on his behalf. No receipt, no canceled check, and even the identity of the "donor" was withheld by Brumbaugh as everyone was asked to just 'take his word for it.' 

Craig Portwood was with the network during that period, and observed the tactic first hand. In the present effort, the fraudulent "donation" was a variation on the same tactic in what appears to be an attempt to drive a wedge between Rick Walters and this ministry. As previously noted, just after the Clifty Falls event where Craig was reproved by Ralph Haaff and Rick Walters, during his first phone contact with me, he sought to drive a wedge between Rick Walters and myself.  

Shortly after that episode, Christian Media experienced a lengthy power failure at the network. Although we could not connect the studio link to our Shortwave stations, we managed to contact several hosts who, in a makeshift fashion, called in to our stations and broadcast several programs directly. During this frenetic scrambling as we sought to get back on the air using generators, an unknown party telephoned a host on another network, and posed as a representative of Christian Media.

This person called Nancy Koernke, who does a program on another network. The unnamed man, identifying himself as a representative of Christian Media, suggested to Nancy that since the network was down with technical problems, she could call the Shortwave station directly and take some of Christian Media's paid broadcast time with our blessing. This was WBCQ -- the same station that Craig Portwood placed his program with upon separating from Christian Media. 

Because Koernke's program was carried on WBCQ during an hour which Christian Media does not control, she was known to the station technician who was deceived and put her program on the air during one of our paid hours.

This was a deliberate theft of our airtime. Our subsequent investigation determined Nancy Koernke was innocent of any complicity and had been duped by an unknown party. However, the individual that perpetrated this criminal act (it is a federal felony to commit interstate fraud), had to be aware of our technical predicament - indicating they monitored Christian Media on a regular basis. They had to know Nancy Koernke's show was on the same station, and they had to have an intimate understanding of how network programs are 'patched' into affiliate Shortwave stations. Craig Portwood is one of only a handful of people in the entire country that fits all three criteria. Indeed, during his tenure at Christian Media, Portwood repeatedly attempted to bring Koernke's program to our network - so he knows of her and has her home telephone number.

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