THEORIST OF THE WEIRD IN A DEMOCRAT'S GUISE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706540002-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 13, 2011
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: March 28, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706540002-1
WASHINGTON TIMES
28 March 1986
Theorist of the weird
in a Democrat's guise
By Lucy Keyser
and Myron Struck
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.
Iir. 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 a .ere 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 conservative) He cnn-
stantl targets these conservatives,
typically accusing the m o Bing se-
cretly employed by the KGB, so that
casual or unsophisticated readers or
listeners-cannot distinguish between
the real and the wrong.
"LaRouche represents the kook
i branch of American politics," said
lbrry 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 or-
mer Secretary of State Henry Kis-
singer is an agent o 79oviet influ
ence. ouc e followers have one
so 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
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706540002-1 nmmJ