ASKING CIVIL QUESTIONS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000201150029-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 19, 2010
• Sequence Number: 29
• Publication Date: April 6, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201150029-1
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ON PAGE
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Flora Lewis
Asking
Civil
Questions
DALLAS
T here was an hour between
planes. A man behind two bro-
chure-laden card tables was
calling out in a midway voice, "Step up
and learn about our space program."
So I approached. I had always won-
dered about the intense young people
who man the Lyndon LaRouche stands,
but I'd always been in too much of a
hurry to stop and talk to them.
The sign said things like "Betts
beams in space than Soviet missiles
here," and "Send Gramm and Rud-
man to Siberia," and "Support nuclear
energy.,,
"Why do you back him?" I asked in a
conversational tone. He glowered and
replied, "Do you support our space
program?,
"I mean, why are you for La-
Rouche?"
"Do you or don't you want a strong
defense?"
"Oh, I see, you ask questions but
you don't answer them."
He was thin, with short, tightly,
curled hair, and his ferret face was
getting redder and more tense by the
moment. His voice, wary from the,
start, became hostile. "Do you want
to buy some literature?"
I said I was more interested in
hearing him explain his point of view.
Clearly he was annoyed, but he ac-
cepted what he took as an unavoid-
able challenge.
"He's against liberal traitors, and
I'm against liberal traitors."
"And what do you mean by that?"
The pale young woman behind the
adjoining card table came to her com-
rade's rescue. He was a hawker, not a
NEW YORK TIMES
6 April 1986
talker. "Do you know the word pa.
triot?" she asked accusingly. An eld-
erly man with a cozy smile wandered
up, and they turned to him in relief,
pointedly ignoring me.
Maybe it was my voice, maybe my
clothes, I don't know how they decided;
so quickly to consider just another air.;
port transient as the enemy. But tbrey;
did. I wasn't looking for a fight, I was
just curious. The whole conversation,
lasted less than two minutes and would
obviously get nowhere.
As it happened, I was on my way to,
Austin for a conference at the Univer-
sity of Texas entitled ,The Future d!
U.S.-U.S.S.R. Relations: Lessons trans
40 Years Without World Wat'." The
idea, we were told, was that for all the:
troubles, something must have gone ? .
right and if we could figure out bow Mi
years without world war wets!
achieved, we might be able to keep',
peace for at least another 40 years.
There were current and former offl.
cials from the National security cow,
cil, the State Department, the P.
gon, the .academics and scien-
tists of ire and a few important Rtu&
slaps at the conference. There were ar-
guments, of course, and keen aware-
ness of the fact that hostility between
the U.S. and the Soviet Union is the big-
gest danger for the world.
But compared with the LaRouche
people's reaction to a casual ques. -
tioner responding to their invitation
to step up and be informed, the at-
mosphere was positively amiable,
Among Americans and Russians,
there was no trouble agreeing that se-
curity and survival were the prime
and common needs for everybody.
At his summit with Mikhail Gorba-
chev, President Reagan indulged in the
f.rtntasy that if the earth faced an inva-
sion by Martians, U.S.-Soviet quarrels
would be quickly set aside in the com-
mon defense of our planet.
When the reference was made in
Austin, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a former
National Security Council member,
said whimsically that he objected on
behalf of Martians, who shouldn't be'
presumed to be hostile. It was a good
point, and a reminder of the question
about the LaRouche people. Whom are
they so instinctively against, and why?
At the time of the industrial summit
in Bonn last year, elections were ap.
preaching for the important West Ger.
man state of Rhineland-Westphalia,
Mr. Reagan, and all the rest of on on
the trail, came to a town where lamp
post after lamppost was emblazoned
with posters carrying snide, thinly dls. .
guised neo-Nazi messages. On investi-
gation, it turned out they were organ.
ized by Mr. LaRouche. His candidates
got nowhere in the German elections,
but they tinctured the atmosphere.
His people made a pitch in Franca.
There is no sign that they had any in-
volvemaent with the extreme right.
wing party of Jean-Marie Le Pen, but
they stood on the main streets of
Paris shouting the same call to arms
that they pitch at Dallas, Dulles, Ken. '
nedy, etc. They have disappeared
from Paris, presumably because of
French resistance to such a foreign.
brand of rabid xenophobia.
This is a time when Americans are
worried about all kinds of fanatics,
for good cause. And tree speech and
free press require us to tolerate our
own fanatics. But we have the right to
?questiop them in a civil way, and if
they can't give a civil answer, they
reveal themselves incapable of the ,
rational discourse- on which d-040-
racy depends. E3
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201150029-1