THEORIST OF THE WEIRD IN A DEMOCRAT'S GUISE

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP90-00965R000403390001-5
Release Decision: 
RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
February 24, 2012
Sequence Number: 
1
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
March 28, 1986
Content Type: 
OPEN SOURCE
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PDF icon CIA-RDP90-00965R000403390001-5.pdf122.44 KB
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403390001-5 J aa WASHINGTON TIMES 28 "larch 1986 Theorist of the weird in a Democrat's guise 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 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 H nn stantl targets these conservatives typica y accusin t em o - cretly employed by the KGB, so that or casual or unsophisticated readers listeners cane distinguish between the real and t e wrong. "LaRouche represents the kook i branch of American politics;' said Terry Michael, spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. He said Mr. LaRouche has been "falsely portraying himself as affili- ated with the national Democratic 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 a e was a KGB mole and- for-mer Secretary of State Henry Kis- singer is an agent of _Soviet intTu ence. ouc e o owers have gone smear 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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403390001-5 ---old