With the mainstream media’s continuing manic obsession with the fake news “Russia-gate” story, the latest frenzied chapter concerns President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. meeting with “a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer” who was seeking to provide damaging information on Hillary Clinton and her 2016 presidential campaign. This is what is described as “opposition research” and is standard operating procedure in political campaigns going back to the days of John Adams versus Thomas Jefferson.
When I worked on the 1984 Libertarian Party presidential campaign national staff, I coordinated research on our opposition candidates’ connections to political extremists.
I had three major opposition research targets:
(1) President Ronald Reagan’s embarrassing ties to crank white supremacists.
Rich Jaroslovsky was a reporter on the staff of The Wall Street Journal who was friendly to our campaign chairman Williamson Evers. (Evers later became Assistant Secretary for the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development in the U.S. Department of Education under George W. Bush). Jaroslovsky published the article below based on detailed information I had leaked to him concerning Reagan’s endorsement of these racist wackos. On the day it appeared, Evers and I had just returned from a rather weird debate with the Populist Party’s VP candidate, cable TV nutrition guru Maureen Salaman, to be greeted with the Journal story on my desk. It was one of the happiest days of my life.
(2) The Reagan Administration’s embarrassing links to conspiracy theory nutball and perennial presidential candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche.
Eventually the media did pick up on this important story after the 1984 election (see below).
In a quirky bit of nostalgia, former “political prisoner” LaRouche has fondly recalled this relationship upon the death of Reagan, of how he and the Gipper together ended the Cold War (see below).
(3) How the Populist Party was the bastard child of America’s number one anti-Semite, Willis Carto and his far-right network of Holocaust Deniers and racists.
The Populist Party’s 1984 presidential candidate, Bob Richards, best known as the Olympic Decathlon Gold Medalist who graced the Wheaties “Breakfast of Champions” breakfast cereal box, had some very unsavory financial connections (later proven unlawful by the Federal Elections Commission) to Carto’s Liberty Lobby publishing empire (resulting in extremely hefty punitive fines to Carto, bankrupting his publishing enterprises) and to former Klansmen and neo-Nazis in leadership positions in the Party. (Carto, in fact, had explicit connections to the same white supremacists I had earlier linked to the Reagan Administration and provided to Rich Jaroslovsky of the Wall Street Journal.)
In a widely-distributed hard-hitting Op-Ed piece, “American Nazis in Populist Clothing,” Libertarian Party presidential candidate David Bergland addressed these concerns. After 33 years I can reveal that the editorial essay was actually ghostwritten by David Gordon, presently the Mises Institute’s esteemed research scholar and book reviewer, from documentation I provided to him.
Ah, those were the days!
Racial Purist Uses Reagan Plug
By Rich Jaroslovsky
Wall Street Journal
Sept. 28, 1984
WASHINGTON — Roger Pearson, a publisher of politically conservative academic journals here, has something other publishers would envy; a glowing letter of praise from Ronald Reagan.
Plenty of well-known conservatives have written for Mr. Pearson’s publications, but his kudos from the most famous conservative of all stands out. Mr. Pearson has used reproductions of his 1982 letter – praising “your substantial contributions to promoting and upholding those ideals and principles he (sic!) values at home and abroad” – in bulk mailings to solicit sales and subscriptions.
Those who have received copies of the presidential letter might be surprised to learn that Mr. Pearson, a British-born anthropologist, has spent much of his career advancing the theory that the “purity” of the white race is endangered by “inferior” genetic stock. He has warned that people of European descent may be “annihilated as a species” unless they act to reserve their “racial identity,” and he currently receives funds from a controversial foundation dedicated to “racial betterment.”
The 57-year-old Mr. Pearson even draws harsh attacks from other elements of the hard right, members of which fear he may discredit their goals. He resigned from the World Anti-Communist League, a federation he once headed, after some of its chapters charged that he encouraged the membership of European and Latin American groups with Nazi or neo-Nazi ties. Former Maj. John Singlaub, who now heads the league’s U.S. affiliate, calls Mr. Pearson an “embarrassment” who is “not at all welcome in any activity” of the group.
“The White House ought to repudiate this bird,” says Justin Finger, civil-rights director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, the Jewish organization. Mr. Finger complained to the White House when he learned of the letter this summer, but he says he hasn’t received any response.
Composed by Pearson Associate
Though the letter bore Mr. Reagan’s signature, it was actually composed by a Pearson associate who had joined the White House staff. There isn’t any evidence that the president knows Mr. Pearson, and Mr. Reagan’s public statements on race don’t bear any resemblance to Mr. Pearson’s writings. But the incident shows how a highly ideological presidency – conservative or liberal – can be used by well-connected outside activities (sic!) to gain respectability.
What’s more, the White House isn’t disavowing the letter, or repudiating Mr. Pearson, although it wants him to stop using the letter to sell subscriptions to two journals he currently publishes, the Mankind Quarterly and The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies. Anson Franklin, an assistant presidential press secretary, says: “The president has long-held views opposing racial discrimination in any form, and he would never condone anything to the contrary. But that’s a general statement; I’m not addressing Dr. Pearson specifically.”
The White House says the letter was written after Mr. Pearson sent to the president a copy of his journals that didn’t espouse his controversial racial views. Not all such gifts are answered so glowingly, but in this case Mr. Pearson had a champion in Robert Schuettinger, then a mid-level White House official and currently in the Defense Department.
Mr. Schuettinger says he has known Mr. Pearson for several years and is on the editorial board of one of Mr. Pearson’s publications. He concedes he wasn’t aware of all of Mr. Pearson’s past activities but says “there is absolutely no valid … to accuse him of racism,” though Mr. Pearson may have been “a little naive” in his associations.
In two lengthy interviews, the affable Mr. Pearson largely refuses to comment on the record about his activities, though he doesn’t dispute the central elements of this account of them. But he insists, “I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve said or written.”
‘Breeding Ideal Types’
Among those writings is an old article calling for the use of artificial insemination to preserve “pure healthy stock” and allow “breeding back the ‘ideal’ types.” The 1958 article, in a magazine Mr. Pearson founded called Northern World, also warned of a “terrible outcome” should such a program of genetic selection “fall into the hands of the cosmopolites or one-worlders, or any who wish to see our race and our heritage destroyed.
Other Pearson writings appeared in Western Destiny, a magazine published by the far right, anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby. Mr. Pearson edited Western Destiny briefly in the mid-1960s and wrote several books on race and eugenics that were issued by Liberty Lobby’s publishing arm. These pamphlets are still sold by the National Socialist White People’s Party, the Arlington, Va.-based American Nazi group; Mr. Pearson says he doesn’t have any connection that group.
After breaking with Liberty Lobby Leader Willis Carto in a personal dispute, Mr. Pearson began moving more into the conservative mainstream, holding academic posts at several small colleges and authorizing (sic! authoring?) an anthropology textbook. In 1977, he was on the original board of editors of Policy Review, a journal published by the Heritage Foundation, a mainstream conservative think tank. Knowledgeable sources say he was asked to resign when Heritage officials learned of his background.
Mr. Pearson currently runs a tax-exempt organization called the Council on Social and Economic Studies out of a three-room suite in a downtown Washington apartment building. Besides his publishing income, he acknowledges that he also receives money from the Pioneer Fund, a controversial New York-based trust fund dedicated to “racial betterment.” The fund also has supported the work of psychologist William Shockley, who holds views on race and heredity similar to Mr. Pearson’s.
Mr. Pearson’s current publications, which generally downplay his racial views, boast contributions from some eminently respectable conservative political figures. Spokesmen for several of Mr. Pearson’s contributors say they weren’t aware of his background when they submitted articles.
“Generally, the conservatives are so concerned with conspiracies on the left that they don’t realize when they may be part of a conspiracy on the right,” asserts John Rees, a contributing editor of the John Birch Society’s magazine and a harsh critic of Mr. Pearson.
Source: Rich Jaroslovsky (1984, September 28). Politics ’84 — Controversial Publisher: Racial Purist Uses Reagan Plug. Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition), p. 1. Retrieved November 6, 2007, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 27121258).
Google these articles to find out more about Lyndon H. LaRouche and his connection to the Reagan administration:
Some Officials Find LaRouche’s Group Useful
Leader Lives on Heavily Guarded Estate
Group Makes Political Inroads
LaRouche Says Some Are Out to Kill Him
Critics of Group Hassled
LaRouche Convicted of Mail Fraud
Elderly Seek Refunds From LaRouche
LaRouche Paroled After Five Years in Prison
Some Officials Find Intelligence Network ‘Useful’
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
January 15, 1985
Norman Bailey recalls that soon after he joined the National Security Council, he received a call from NSC officials asking him to talk to a group of followers of right-wing presidential candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. who were offering intelligence information to the agency.
Bailey, then NSC’s senior director of international economic affairs, said he found the visitors’ intelligence on economics and foreign affairs surprisingly on target.
He said he met with LaRouche’s followers numerous times in 1982 and 1983 in his Executive Office Building office, and three times with LaRouche himself — including once for dinner at LaRouche’s rented Loudoun County estate. Bailey said he circulated within NSC a well-researched position paper that two LaRouche followers wrote about fusion energy.
“Some of them are quite good,” Bailey said of LaRouche’s associates. He said that he found them to be “useful” because of their “excellent” international contacts.
“They can operate more freely and openly than official agencies” such as the CIA, Bailey said. “They do know a lot of people around the world. They do get to talk to prime ministers and presidents.” Bailey also has described LaRouche’s organization as “one of the best private intelligence services in the world.”
It’s a view shared by others in powerful places in Washington.
Through dogged work, the LaRouche organization has assembled a worldwide network of contacts in governments and in military agencies who meet regularly and swap information with them, officials and former members said.
In Washington, the LaRouche group has spent the last several years currying favor with officials of the NSC, CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, Drug Enforcement Administration, the military and numerous other agencies, as well as with defense scientists doing classified research, according to federal officials and ex-members of the LaRouche group.
“They’ve made a very concerted effort to influence the government,” said Richard Morris, counselor to Interior Secretary William Clark and formerly Clark’s assistant when he was NSC chief. “Their influence never went beyond the mid-level. There’s no way they could influence the president.”
“They obviously want to impress, with their knowledge, people who are in the know in Washington,” said Ray S. Cline, a former top State Department and CIA intelligence official who said he was approached by LaRouche associates in 1980 and has spoken with them a number of times since. “They’re terribly eager to find somebody” in government to talk to.
The LaRouche group stepped up its presence in Washington about 1981, when President Reagan took office, and it has publicly promoted many of his initiatives in its publications and on Capitol Hill.
Contacts With NSC, CIA
An NBC documentary in March disclosed the LaRouche group’s contacts with NSC and CIA officials, and in November The New Republic magazine published an article by reporters Dennis King and Ronald Radosh that detailed LaRouche’s Washington connections. King has reported on LaRouche’s group for six years and has broken many stories about it.
In Reagan’s first term, Executive Intelligence Review, a LaRouche-tied magazine, ran interviews with such officials as Agriculture Secretary John Block, Defense Undersecretary Richard DeLauer, Associate Attorney General Lowell Jensen, Commerce Undersecretary Lionel Olmer and then-Sen. John Tower (R-Texas), at the time chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, The New Republic reported.
High-level Reagan administration officials “have found LaRouche as useful in supplying information and promoting their policies as LaRouche has found them in legitimizing his cause,” The New Republic said.
LaRouche associates also have been active for years in West Germany, France, Italy, Mexico, Argentina, India, Thailand and many other countries, according to LaRouche-tied publications, ex-LaRouche associates and former government officials. The group has had dealings with a number of foreign government and military officials, according to these sources.
LaRouche himself has had private meetings with Jose Lopez Portillo when he was Mexico’s president, Argentine President Raul Alfonsin and the late Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. LaRouche also met with Iraqi officials during a visit to the Middle East in 1975.
Most of the 22 active and retired government and military officials interviewed said that they have been wary of speaking with the LaRouche associates.
It may seem far-fetched that a group that says that Walter F. Mondale is a Soviet secret police “agent of influence” and that the queen of England is involved in international dope-dealing could be “useful” to top federal government officials.
But a number of government officials say much of the group’s intelligence is accurate. The LaRouche outfit has had more than 100 intelligence operatives working for it at times, and copies the government in its information-gathering operation, ex-members and other knowledgeable sources said.
Sometimes the group’s intelligence reports reflect the organization’s offbeat and speculative allegations, but much of the time they do not, according to ex-members and a reading of some of the reports. Its reports on such subjects as the international debt and the industrialization of Thailand often read like government memoranda.
John Bosma, editor of Military Space magazine, recalled that in 1981, while he worked for a congressman on the House Armed Services Committee, he was approached by a representative of a magazine tied to LaRouche. The visitor asked about the odometer range of the cruise missile and other classified information, Bosma said.
“The guy knew what he was talking about,” Bosma said. “It’s a very sensitive subject. I was very surprised the guy was asking me questions at that level of detail. I said it was none of his damn business.”
Gathering intelligence for corporations and individuals is one of the ways the LaRouche organization supports itself financially, according to LaRouche and former members. In a hypothetical example, a West German company might hire the group to investigate the Mexican oil industry for, say, $5,000, said ex-members and persons familiar with the group’s operation.
The organization’s dealings with federal agencies have been made easier by LaRouche’s move to Loudoun County last year. The group plans to move the bulk of its national headquarters there, according to sources and a Loudoun County official.
“LaRouche wants to wreak big changes on a world scale,” a former LaRouche associate said. “They’re trying to get access to the administration. They’re trying to get inside the system through the old-boy network so they can manipulate it.”
Some Officials Angered
The depth of LaRouche’s entree in official Washington has caused anger in some quarters.
Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, whom LaRouche associates have accused of being a murderer and homosexual, said in an interview that “there’s no excuse” for top CIA and other intelligence officials to meet with what he considers an unsavory group. “It’s a revolting episode . . . . What can they possibly know we can’t find out ourselves?”
Bosma, the military specialist, said he, too, is angry about reports of dealings between LaRouche and the administration. “If this is true, it’s almost unforgivable . . . . I’m a Reaganite, but I’m flabbergasted and appalled.”
The conservative Heritage Foundation, a longtime LaRouche critic, expressed worry about possible security leaks in a report issued last July.
“A major concern regarding the LaRouche network arises from its apparent ability to penetrate high government circles — especially within the intelligence and police communities,” the foundation said. “While some [of the LaRouche group’s] claims may be overstated, and some of the contacts may have been low-level or self-generated, the potential for security breaches and other problems arising from such relationships remains very real.”
After the NBC broadcast, Democratic National Committee Chairman Charles Manatt called on President Reagan “to end the shocking White House involvement with the bizarre, extremist cult of Lyndon H. LaRouche . . . . It is absolutely incredible that a ranking NSC staff member . . . would have anything to do with the LaRouche people.”
When asked about NSC contact with LaRouche, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said in March that “from time to time we talk to various people who may have information that might prove helpful to us.”
Marlin Fitzwater, another White House spokesman, said last month that “there’s no official or unofficial [Reagan administration] policy or line in regard to dealing with the LaRouche organization. Any contacts are made at the discretion of the individuals involved.”
For his part, Bailey, now a private economics consultant, said he felt he should listen to LaRouche.
“It was part of my job [at NSC], gathering information from any source I could,” Bailey said. “You use whatever is at hand,” he said, even if the source is “smelly.”
Bailey said that he is “not a supporter” of LaRouche, and disagrees with him on some things, although he found his group to be “very supportive of the administration.”
LaRouche, in a deposition, said that in the dinner conversation at the Woodburn Estate in March, Bailey asked his opinion on certain matters. LaRouche declined to discuss the conversation at length because he said it was a matter of “confidential national security.”
While Bailey recently may have found LaRouche helpful, his dealings with the LaRouche group have not always been pleasant. In 1975, while he was a professor at Queens College, Bailey filed a libel suit against a group tied to LaRouche after it described him as a CIA agent and a “fascist,” Bailey said.
he suit dragged on for years, until after the LaRouche supporters approached him at NSC, he said. In 1983, the two sides settled the suit after a newspaper affiliated with LaRouche agreed to publish a correction, and the group paid him a “monetary settlement,” Bailey said. He declined to specify the amount.
Bailey said he continues to receive periodic telephone calls from a LaRouche aide asking his opinion on economic matters.
The LaRouche organization has dealt with other NSC personnel as well, council officials said.
One was Morris, William Clark’s top aide. In an interview, Morris said he met four times with LaRouche while at NSC in 1982 and 1983, and had other meetings with his associates.
“We discussed matters of national security concern,” Morris said in October testimony in a U.S. District Court trial in Alexandria. (A federal court jury found that NBC had not defamed LaRouche, but ordered him to pay NBC $3 million, after finding that his group had sabotaged a network interview with a U.S. senator.)
Among the topics he discussed with LaRouche were international economics and “strategic defenses,” Morris testified. “He had an intelligence operation that gathered information that he thought was important to the national security.”
“When they spoke in terms of technology or economics, they made good sense,” Morris said in an interview. “They seemed to be qualified in their areas.”
LaRouche said that he has had “continuing off-and-on contacts” with Morris even now that he’s at Interior, and said the two are “old friends.”
Morris said that the relationship is much more distant, and that he does not support LaRouche’s positions.
Morris testified that he distributed among NSC officials some of the information provided by LaRouche and his associates.
In a letter to New Republic editors last month, LaRouche said that after the NBC broadcast critical of government officials for dealing with LaRouche, the Reagan administration “distanced itself sharply from me.” After the broadcast, some administration officials made statements “suddenly totally out of agreement” with earlier friendly statements, LaRouche wrote.
LaRouche associates also have tried to gain the confidence of top CIA officials.
LaRouche supporters telephone CIA officials “a lot” to offer information and try to get more, one knowledgeable official said. “They could consider that a two-way exchange. To my knowledge it is not a two-way exchange.”
LaRouche said in an interview that he has visited the CIA’s Langley headquarters a few times, and that his associates have visited many times.
A CIA spokesman said LaRouche, his wife and an aide visited the agency in January, 1983, and met with aides to Deputy Director John McMahon to talk about a recent LaRouche trip overseas. The CIA spokesman said LaRouche also visited earlier with Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, who was the agency’s deputy director in 1981 and 1982.
Inman Recalls Visit
In an interview, Inman recalled the visit at his CIA office by LaRouche and his wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who had just returned from Europe. He said that she gave enticing information about the West German Green Party, an antinuclear group. “At the time, nobody in intelligence was covering them at all,” Inman said of the Greens.
Inman, now head of a Texas-based computer research organization, said the meeting was not extraordinary, because, as a CIA official, he sometimes met with people returning from overseas trips. He said he did not give information, but listened.
Inman and other intelligence officials said they doubt the stories, widely circulated inside the LaRouche group, that the organization has informants inside the CIA who provide it with intelligence.
Former associates said the organization dealt with several “cutouts,” or intermediaries, who claimed they received confidential reports from the CIA. The code name for one supposed CIA contact was “Mr. Ed,” said ex-associates, who added they know of no confirmation that the contact existed.
The group has worked closely with a former CIA operative who has helped provide security and given information about the international narcotics trade, ex-members said.
The organization also had close ties for years with a former Office of Strategic Services guerrilla operative, Mitchell WerBell III, who introduced members to many intelligence and military figures, sources said.
The LaRouche-affiliated Schiller Institute — an international group named for 18th century poet Friedrich Schiller that says it is committed to the ideals of the American Revolution — lists on its advisory board several high-ranking retired and active-duty military officers.
The LaRouche group also tried for years to gain favor in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Pentagon’s intelligence arm. When DIA officials first met with LaRouche associates in the early 1970s, they were impressed with the group’s intelligence material, said former DIA director Daniel Graham.
Graham recalled that LaRouche associates came up with what he called good intelligence about the situation in Angola, Mozambique and elsewhere. Graham said that in the mid-1970s, he and DIA colleagues concluded that some of the information was so sensitive that they suspected the LaRouche group was getting some of it from the Soviets or another government. Graham added that he couldn’t prove the contention.
Ordered Contacts Stopped
Graham, a strong anticommunist, said that in the mid-1970s he ordered the DIA to stop dealing with the LaRouche group.
LaRouche associates strongly deny the assertion that the group is a stalking horse of any foreign government. “It’s a weak disinformation slander put out by the KGB itself,” said LaRouche aide Paul Goldstein.
The Heritage Foundation said in its July report that LaRouche takes positions “which in the end advance Soviet foreign policy goals . . . . In the worst case, his group may well be the strangest asset for the KGB’s disinformation effort.” The charge that the LaRouche-affiliated National Caucus of Labor Committees has ties to Soviet officials was first raised in 1979 by the National Review magazine in an article by a former associate of LaRouche. (It also has been raised in subsequent publications, such as The New Republic article, and in the NBC libel suit.) Some former intelligence officials say they back the ex-member’s contention that in the 1970s the LaRouche group maintained contact with the Soviets through Gennady Serebreyakov, an official at the Soviets’ United Nations mission.
LaRouche, in his letter to The New Republic, confirmed that Serebreyakov approached him sometime in the mid-1970s, and that the two met twice to try to end the feuding between the LaRouche organization and East Bloc nations. LaRouche said the effort was unsuccessful.
Jeffrey Steinberg, a top aide to LaRouche, said group members never passed any information to Serebreyakov. Steinberg also said the National Review article was largely incorrect.
Steinberg said LaRouche associates frequently invite Soviet officials to their seminars. “We want them there” to know the group’s thinking, he said. He said that LaRouche associates have visited the Soviet Union repeatedly. “They run into Soviet officials all the time,” Steinberg said.
For his part, one retired senior military official, retired Army major general John K. Singlaub, has expressed concern about the group’s contacts with him.
Singlaub recalled in an interview that in the late 1970s, when he was stationed at Fort McPherson, Ga., after a publicized clash with President Carter over U.S. policy in Korea, he was approached by LaRouche associates, who said they liked his hard-line style.
After Singlaub’s 1978 retirement, they attended Singlaub’s lectures all over the country, he said. They showed him their intelligence reports about Iran, Western Europe and other topics, and Singlaub said some of it was surprisingly good.
“Initially I was convinced they were trying to build up credibility that they had a good intelligence network that I could rely on,” Singlaub said.
In 1979, he continued, the LaRouche supporters began telling him that the U.S. military deserved a “major break” and that Carter had done a disservice to the military.
“They said, ‘You military people are going to be the savior of the country . . . . We want to work closely with you. We have intelligence that can help you,'” Singlaub recalled.
Grew Suspicious of Goals
He said he grew suspicious of the LaRouche supporters’ goals and cut off relations with them.
Just as Singlaub said the LaRouche supporters used pro-military rhetoric with him, a former Drug Enforcement Administration official said they expressed strong opposition to narcotics traffickers when talking with him.
“They took a basic law enforcement narcotics control position,” said John Cusack, the DEA’s former international operations chief, who added that around 1976 he started receiving telephone calls from LaRouche associates researching the narcotics trade, and had numerous discussions with them.
LaRouche associates asked “intelligent” questions, said Cusack, now a staff member at the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. “They always seemed to know what the law enforcement agencies were doing. They were well-informed . . . . Sometimes they told me things I didn’t know, but it turned out it was true.” Cusack added that they had “very good contacts” with local police departments.
The group has cultivated these contacts for about 10 years, and many law enforcement officials subscribe to its publications.
In spring of 1977, LaRouche associates gave New Hampshire law enforcement officials detailed but speculative reports that the Clamshell Alliance, an antinuclear group then planning a protest at a nuclear plant, was a terrorist group financed by the Rockefellers. The May 1977 protest was not violent, although 1,400 people were arrested.
The group also has sold intelligence reports to a number of foreign governments, according to LaRouche and current and former associates. Steinberg said in a deposition that several years ago, LaRouche associates investigated terrorism for Italian officials. LaRouche said in an interview that his associates were hired to provide intelligence to the South African government. Ex-members said the intelligence reports dealt with the antiapartheid movement.
Some current and former U.S. officials who do not want to be identified, as well as ex-members, expressed concern that LaRouche’s overseas activities may lead foreign leaders to think that he somehow represents the U.S. government, and take his statements as a “trial balloon” of U.S. policy.
At times LaRouche associates, identifying themselves as representatives of the LaRouche-affiliated National Democratic Policy Committee, arranged meetings with foreign leaders, who sometimes mistakenly thought they represented a faction of the Democratic Party, former associates of LaRouche and other sources said.
LaRouche said in an interview that he represents a “back channel,” or confidential intermediary, for foreign officials who tire of dealing with the “idiots” in the State Department. “I’ll telephone somebody in the White House and say, ‘Look, a dear friend of ours in Mexico wants to have the president know something.’
‘Incredible Intelligence Files’
But foreign leaders sometimes express confusion about LaRouche’s messages because of their often rambling nature, former associates said.
The LaRouche group has developed “incredible intelligence files” on foreign government, business and labor union officials, as well as their counterparts in this country, said one ex-member.
Some of the LaRouche associates who work on intelligence have university training in their areas. They keep up by reading dozens of newspapers from around the world and interviewing experts, former members said.
“Many, many times I’d find I knew more about what was going on than the academics,” said one former member who worked on intelligence. “People on the outside would be saying I was insane for being with LaRouche , but here I was talking to a European head of state’s security man.”
Graham, the former DIA director, said LaRouche’s intelligence operation is no joke, and has developed contacts in the intelligence community.
“In my time in the intelligence community, I found too many gullible folk,” Graham said. “I kept warning my people.
© Copyright 1985 The Washington Post Company
Executive Intelligence Review
A PERSONAL REFLECTION
I Remember Ronald Reagan
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
June 6, 2004
This morning’s press brought me stunning news: the death of U.S. President Ronald Reagan. Although we actually met on but one occasion, at Concord, New Hampshire, for a candidates’ night, in January 1980, that meeting between us changed world history in ironical ways which are reverberating still today.
The continuing significance of that encounter is that it led to meetings with the incoming Reagan Presidential team, in Washington, D.C., later that year, and new meetings with key representatives of the new Presidency over the interval into 1984. The most important product of those meetings was my 1982-83 role in conducting back-channel talks with the Soviet government, on behalf of that Presidency. The leading topic of those talks, coordinated through the National Security Council, was my proposal for what President Reagan was to name his “Strategic Defense Initiative” (SDI). That proposal changed the world.
In reflection on that and related experience, over the following years, I was often bemused in reflecting on the paradoxical features of that relationship to the President during that period. In part, the affirmative aspects of the relationship were rooted in our sharing the experience of our generation, despite the decade’s difference in our age: the common experience of President Franklin Roosevelt’s leadership of the U.S. economic recovery and the defeat of fascism. In all my dealings with the Reagan Administration during that time, this area of agreement was clearly, repeatedly demonstrated, whereas, on economic policy otherwise, such as the subject of Professor Milton Friedman, we were almost at opposite poles.
One point about those matters needs to be cleared up; and it is my special, personal obligation to do so. While it is true that Soviet General Secretaries Andropov’s and Gorbachev’s repeatedly hysterical rejection of President Reagan’s offer of March 23, 1983, and not military threats from the U.S.A. and its allies, led to the fall of the Soviet system six years later, it was the folly of the Soviet government, not threats by the administration of President Reagan, which led to the end of the Soviet system in the way that occurred. On March 23, 1983, the President had made a public offer, which he renewed later, to find a way to escape the system of “revenge weapons.” It was the Soviet rejection of the President’s offer which brought down the Soviet economy and the break-up of the Soviet Union. Had the President’s offer been accepted then, during the years which followed, the history of the world would have made a better turn than it did then, better for both the U.S.A. and Russia, a better way toward a better world today.
Had we reacted to the break-up of the Comecon/Warsaw Pact bloc as I proposed publicly in October 1988, the worst of the miseries experienced during the 1989-2004 interval to date, on all sides, would have been avoided. Those 1989-2004 failures of U.S. and European policies on this latter account, do not detract from the indelible achievement of President Reagan’s most stunning intervention in history, as first announced on March 23, 1983. Such is his enduring personal landmark in all truthful future accounts of U.S.A. and world history. Ironically, the U.S. Democratic Party’s leadership never understood any of this, to the present day; that makes it all the more important that President Reagan’s achievement on this account be commonly acknowledged by his survivors, Republican, Democratic, and others, today.
Such is the nature of the institution of the U.S. Presidency. That is not past history. It is a lesson in statecraft which the new generations of this world must still learn today.
10:14 am on July 15, 2017
