THEORIST OF THE WEIRD IN A DEMOCRAT'S GUISE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100640012-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 5, 2010
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: March 28, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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WASHINGTON TIMES
28 March 1986
Theorist of the weird
9'se
in a Democrat's
By Lucy Keyser
and Myron Struck
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche Jr.
has said the Nazi Holocaust was
nothing more than a Zionist hoax
since it was the Jews who brought
Adolf Hitler to power.
He has alleged that Queen
Elizabeth II runs a worldwide drug-
smuggling operation. He says that
his followers beat up and hospital-
ized members of Communist Party
U.S.A. when it rejected his offer to
merge the party with one of his or-
ganizations.
In his autobiography, Mr.
LaRouche says: "My principal ac-
complishment is that of being, by a
large margin of advantage, the lead-
ing economist of the 20th century."
Mr. LaRouche, to the chagrin of
Democratic Party regulars, is on a
roll. Two of his followers won nomi-
nation for lieutenant governor and
secretary of state, leaving regular
Illinois Democrats scrambling to
find a way to recast their slate in the
coming general election.
Nationwide, 149 LaRouche candi-
dates are running for the House of
Representiatives, 14 for the Senate,
six for governor and 618 for other
offices.
The Illinois election, besides
drawing attention to the two state
candidates, has cast a spotlight on
Mr. LaRouche and how, through the
last quarter century, he has been re-
garded as a political chameleon.
Mr. LaRouche's past, says Warren
Hamerman, the chairman of Mr.
LaRouche's latest political cult, the
National Democratic Policy Com-
mittee, is something Mr. LaRouche
is proud of.
"The left says he's right, the right
says he's left,' said Mr. Hamerman.
"But Lyndon LaRouche is a remark-
ably consistent individual on poli-
cies.
An economist and prolific author,
Mr. LaRouche, now 63, has had a
unique political career marked by
ties to radical groups on both the
extreme right and left. His follow-
ers, to the dismay of the Democratic
Party, are now trying to find cred-
ibility as Democratic primary candi-
dates.
The LaRouche movement, while
regarded as something less than an
organized political party, is believed
to be comprised of several thousand
followers who regularly seek to find
their way onto electoral ballots.
In the March 19 Illinois primary,
LaRouche followers Mark J. Fair-
child, 28, and Janice Hart, 31, won
races for lieutenant governor and
secretary of state, respectively, de-
feating the hand-picked favorites of
Democratic gubernatorial nominee
Adlai E. Stevenson III.
Mr. Stevenson said "these candi-
dates are not Democrats ... we have
to purge ourselves of them. We have
to get them off the ticket:'
But he couldn't. Mr. Stevenson an-
nounced yesterday that he was get-
ting off their ticket, and will run as
an independent.
Mrs. Hart, who compared herself
to a hell-raising Joan of Arc, prom-
ised to "put every drug pusher be-
hind bars" and, to do that, she said
she would "roll those tanks down
State Street;' the main drug haven in
Chicago.
Her colleague, Mr. Fairchild, calls
for universal testing for AIDS and
quarantines for carriers of the
deadly virus.
Those positions represent only
the tip of the LaRouche message to
America - a view of the political
scene that critics say is warped by
attempts to harass opponents and
create a climate of fear.
"He's on the fringe of American
politics where cults merge with
paranoia and doctrine can be best
understood in terms of pathology,"
according to Mid-Atlantic Research
Associates Inc. (MARA), a private
intelligence-gathering service.
MARA said that Mr. LaRouche
has tried to gain a wider audience for
"his bizarre theories and fanati-
cism" by running for president, rais-
ing and spending millions of dollars
in the process.
Just as he sabotaged the electoral
i process in the Democratic primary
in Illinois, so Mr. LaRouche has sab-
otaged legitimate debate. He has be-
come adept at mixing fact and mali-
cious fantasy so skillfully that he
sometimes succeeds with attacks on
legitimate conservatives He
i stantly targets these conservatives
type ing se-
cretly employed by the KGB so that
casu or unsophisticated rea ers or
listeners cane distinguish between
fl the an the wron .
"LaRouche represents the kook
branch of American politics;' said
lbrry Michael, spokesman for the
Democratic National Committee.
He said Mr. IaRouche has been
I "falsely portraying himself as affili-
ated with the national Democratic
i Party"
Mr. Hamerman asks Democrats
to welcome LaRouche candidates
into their fold to "focus on the issues
that dominate the world of reality
for the voters and to initiate a discus-
sion on these issues."
Instead, Democratic National
Committee Chairman Paul G. Kirk
has warned state party officials to
screen - candidates for LaRouche
ties, because Mr. LaRouche's Na-
tional Democratic Policy Committee
is in no way affiliated with the DNC.
"The Illinois results indicate we
must take additional steps to educate
voters about extremist candidates
whose views, once known, would be
rejected by legitimate Democrats,"
Mr. Kirk said.
"The best way to explode their
chances for success is to let them
speak for themselves," said Ann
Lewis, national director for Ameri-
cans for Democratic Action, which
this week is sending its members a
list of quotes from Mr. LaRouche
showing his "irrational" philosophy.
The LaRouche message charges
that former Vice President Walter
Mon dale was a KGB mole
mer Secretary of State Hen Kis-
singer is an agent of viet m u-
enc ouc e followers have gone
'so far as to kill the household pets of
a reporter who wrote critically
about the movement.
Still, Mr. Hamerman insists, "We
have to restore open debate on the
issues. Not slander, not innuendo,
not personality, but what are the is-
sues that are facing the nation and
where do people stand:"
MARA reported that Mr. LaRou-
che's political movement uses sev-
eral constant tactics to achieve his
ends: "character assassination ...
when LaRouche feels there is some
advantage to him by discrediting
them; multiple fronts ... to mute the
evidence of LaRouche control; and
penetration of target groups either
to gather information or to attempt
to disrupt the group:'
"The LaRouche political saga has
been marked by repeated attempts
to penetrate other totalitarian
groups of the `international socialist'
and `national socialist' varieties in
STAT
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 order to manipulate elements of the
Democratic and Republican par-
ties:' MARA says.
Mr. LaRouche's history of vicious
rhetoric, violence and his claim to be
a conservative led three mainstream
conservative leaders Tuesday to
warn that the LaRouche network
poses dangers for Republicans, as
well as Democrats.
Paul Weyrich, president of the
Free Congress Research and Educa-
tion Foundation, denounced as an
"outrage" Mr. LaRouche's assertion
that he is "connected with the right"
and said "they [the LaRouche move-
ment] are anti-American."
Dubbing Mr. LaRouche the
"Bhagwan of American politics," Mr.
Weyrich said of Mr. LaRouche and
his followers, "they have no place in
American politics."
"They never were, are not and
never will be connected with any-
thing we do or stand for," Mr. Wey-
rich said. "I don't want them to be
allowed to tell that lie to a national
audience."
Milton Copulos, a senior policy
analyst for the conservative Heri-
tage Foundation, said Mr. LaRouche
has, in the past, been associated with
the Ku Klux Klan, makes anti-
Semitic statements and his followers
have made physical attacks against
Communist Party U.S.A.
"We're not talking about your gar-
den variety fruitcake:' Mr. Copulos
said. "We're talking about somebody
who's actually engaged in violence
in the past:'
Retired Army Lt. General Daniel
Graham, director of 1.igh Frontier
Inc., an organization backing Pres-
ident Reagan's Strategic Defense
Initiative, also disassociated his
movement from Mr. LaRouche.
Two years ago Gen. Graham re-
jected Mr. LaRouche's attempts to
join forces in support of the SDI
plan. Shortly thereafter a LaRouche
publication, Executive Intelligence
Review, carried a front-page picture
of Mr. Graham with the headline
"The psycho-sexual impotence of
General Danny Graham:"
"That's a rather strange de-
scription of a man with seven chil-
dren, isn't it?" Gen. Graham said.
"He said I was shacked up with a
KGB agent - my wife was quite sur-
prised."
Critics, such as Gen. Graham, Mr.
Weyrich and Mr. Copoulos say Mr.
LaRouche's stand on issues like SDI
are examples of how the LaRouche
positions are designed solely to at-
tract conservatives to their fold.
"This man is not for SDI," Gen.
Graham said. "He insists on the
most difficult way, politically and
technically, to achieve it and ridi-
cules anyone who doesn't agree with
him. They [the LaRouche people]
take an issue like SDI and do their
best to destroy it by behaving like
idiots."
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Whatever his politics, or motiva-
tions, Mr. LaRouche has remained a
shadowy figure, sequestered behind
armed guards - even while at home
at a sprawling estate in Northern
Virginia's horse country.
The literature he has produced
outlines wide-ranging conspiracy
theories which finger the
Rockefellers, Israel, London bank-
ers and mainstream US. political
figures as being involved with an
elaborate attempt to dominate the
world through economic de-
struction.
As a propagandist, an illusionist
of words, Mr. LaRouche is a master.
The son of a shoe industry consul-
tant in Lynn, Mass., Mr. LaRouche's
rise to dubious prominence came as
Lyn Marcus - a play on words that
some ascribe to his veneration of Le-
nin and Marx.
Politically, Mr. LaRouche was
unfocused. He moved from the phi-
losophy of Immanuel Kant to the
communist teachings of Marx. He
has said he then became a socialist
after watching leftist demonstra.
tions against British rule.
After leaving the Socialist Work-
ers Party in 1957, Mr. LaRouche
billed himself as a "professional
economist and Marxist" and tried to
start his own cult movement. In 1966
he taught at the Free University of
New York-which was organized by
a splinter faction of the Communist
Party U.S.A.
Breaking out of his self-contained
political shell, Mr. LaRouche be-
came an activist at the age of 45. He
authored "The Power of Reason:' an
autobiography, and wrote "The Se-
crets Known Only to the Inner Elite"
and "What Every Conservative
Should Know About Communists:'
Mr. LaRouche became the leader
of the radical Students for a Demo-
cratic Society's Labor Committee,
but in 1969, following a dispute over
support of the New York City
teachers' strike, the SDS forbade
him to use its name.
So Mr. LaRouche took another
stab at creating his own movement,
dubbing itself the National Caucus
of Labor Committees and the Inter-
national Caucus of labor Commit-
tees. Claiming chapters around the
United States and in Europe, the
group concentrated on recruiting
new members, distributing a news-
paper called "Solidarity" and purg?
ing members who questioned it.,
leaders' interpretations of Marxist
theories.
The New York Times reported
that in the early 1970s Mr. LaRouche
advocated self-defense training for
members and that dissidents of the
group were kidnapped and "depro-
grammed" by LaRouche loyalists.
Mr. LaRouche's organization has
grown despite his vacillating from
alliances with the Socialist Workers
Party and the U.S. Communist Party
to his current, self-proclaimed label
as a "conservative Democrat" who
claims he wants to guide his follow-
ers along the path of Franklin D.
Roosevelt.
The sources of funding for his po-
litical network are obscure, cloaked
in myriad political groups, publica-
tions and business enterprises. The
most active political arm is the Na-
tional Democratic Policy Commit-
tee, a name that falsely associates it
in the public mind with the Demo-
cratic National Committee, set up by
Mr. LaRouche in August 1980.
It is Mr. LaRouche's NDPC that is
fielding candidates across the na-
tion, but some experts doubt that the
LaRouche philosophy was instru-
mental in bringing success in Illi-
nois.
Pollster J. Michael McKeon, who
detected a "big core vote" for
LaRouche candidates, said "most
people didn't know what the
LaRouche party stood for but they
were fed up with both the other par-
ties. Both parties were missing most
of the emotional issues. . . not keying
into the working-class people and
getting the common-man touch:'
Mr. McKeon said that the
LaRouche candidates "hit the air-
waves with high intensity emotional
issues that they pick up from talking
with people on the streets:'
"They've been out there for the
last three years, handing out litera-
ture on the streets and in front of K
mart and two blocks from my house
in Joliet:' he said. "They're not talk-
ing radical Third World stuff -
they're talking hot emotional issues
like crime, drugs and unemploy-
ment."
The ability of Mr. LaRouche's net-
work to sway the public with super-
ficial approaches to middle-class
issues was proven to Mr. Weyrich
when his wife and son came home
saying they had donated money to
solicitors for an anti-drug group and
a group that supports "star wars:'
Mr. Weyrich said.
"I saw their literature and I went
through the ceiling when I realized
it was from LaRouche:' Mr. Weyrich
said, adding his wife had given about
$10 to a person who approached her
at a supermarket in Annandale ask-
ing her to help stop drug abuse in the
neighborhood.
His son, a high-school student.
who favors President Reagan's SDI
policy, had given about $2 to another
LaRouche worker.
"People are drawn in because of
the message they hear;" Mr. Weyrich
said. "They [LaRouche people] cloak
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themselves in conservatism, but un-
less you look beneath the surface
you're liable to be taken in by this
sort of lying deceit:'
Even well-informed politicans
have fallen prey to Mr. LaRouche's
methods, Mr. Weyrich said, remem-
bering a call years ago from then-
Sen. Carl Curtis, Nebraska Republi-
can, who was excited after reading a
LaRouche flyer.
"He thought there was a resur-
gence of conservatism in the Demo-
cratic Party and I said 'You stay as
far away from them as you can get; "
Mr. Weyrich said.
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