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In 1971, LaRouche organized the New Solidarity International Press Service as a wire service for his publications. In 1974, he founded the weekly Executive Intelligence Review, of which he is Contributing Editor. Former Reagan advisor and National Security Council senior analyst, Dr. Norman Bailey, has said that the LaRouche network was "one of the best private intelligence services in the world." In 1974, LaRouche co-founded the Fusion Energy Foundation and, in 1984, participated in the founding of the Schiller Institute with his current wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche.
He has written numerous articles, pamphlets, and books published mostly by his own press. These include his autobiography The Power of Reason (1980), There Are No Limits to Growth (1983), and a second autobiography, The Power of Reason 1988. His 1984 textbook, So, 'You Wish To Learn All About Economics, circulates internationally in several languages, as does his 1991 The Science of Christian Economy.
Separating fact from fiction in LaRouche's biography is made difficult by the barrages of conflicting accounts generated by the LaRouche movement and its critics (see Dennis King and Chip Berlet.) LaRouche writes in his autobiography that he developed his ideas in the 1950s and has advocated them consistently ever since. He claims to have pioneered such ideas as the International Development Bank, the Strategic Defense Initiative or "Star Wars," and the so-called Eurasian Land-Bridge. It also claimed that he was used by the Reagan administration as a "back-channel" for negotiations with the Soviet Union.
According to a speech made by LaRouche science advisor Paul Gallagher, LaRouche and his representatives met with Reagan administration Energy Secretary Donald Hodel, Interior Secretary James Watt, Science Adviser Dr. George Keyworth, and State Department official Richard Morris in early 1981. Gallagher also claims that later that year Lyndon and Helga Zepp-LaRouche met with CIA Deputy Director Bobby Ray Inman, and cites the following remarks, made in early 1993 at the National Press Club by former head of German Military Intelligence, Gen. Paul-Albert Scherer:
- "In the Spring of 1982 here in the Soviet Embassy there were very important secret talks that were held.... The question was: Did the United States and the Soviet Union wish jointly to develop an anti-ballistic missile defense that would have made nuclear war impossible? Then, in August, you had this very sharp Soviet rejection of the entire idea.... I have discussed this thoroughly with the developer, the originator of this idea, who is the scientific-technological strategic expert, Lyndon LaRouche. The rejection came in August, and at that point the American President Reagan decided to push this entire thing out into the public eye, so he made his speech of March 1983."
In his book, Dennis King identifies Scherer as a long-time LaRouche supporter.
According to the Berlet/Bellman report for PRA, "New Right military specialist, retired General Daniel O. Graham, says LaRouche followers have significantly hampered his work. Graham, Director of Project High Frontier which supports and helped develop President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative plan for anti-missile defense, says the LaRouche groups have 'caused a lot of problems by adopting our issue in an effort to sieze credit for the idea.' 'They also mounted a furious attack on me personally,' says Graham. 'Even today I get mail asking if I'm in league with LaRouche,' he adds wearily." LaRouche countered, "President Reagan's initial version of SDI was consistent with what I had introduced into U.S.-Soviet back-channel discussions over the period beginning February 1982. However, immediately thereafter, the mice went to work. Daniel Graham, the leading opponent of SDI up to that time, now proclaimed himself the virtual author of the policy, and was used, thereafter, to remove all of the crucial elements from the original policy." There is no independent verification outside of LaRouche group media, however, of the claim that LaRouche originated or played a major role in the development of "Star Wars" missile defense.
LaRouche has also had contact with some foreign leaders. On May 23, 1982, he met with Mexican President José López Portillo, and advised him to suspend foreign debt payments (which was done in August 1982), and to declare exchange controls and nationalize Mexico's banks (done in September 1982). Years later, on December 1, 1998, while sharing the podium with Helga Zepp-LaRouche before a meeting of the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics in Mexico City, former President Lopez Portillo said "It is now necessary for the world to listen to the wise words of Lyndon LaRouche."
In 1974, a former member of LaRouche's U.S. Labor Party, Gregory Rose, published an article in National Review alleging that LaRouche had established contacts with Palestinian terrorist organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and also with the Iraqi mission to the United Nations in New York. These contacts culminated in LaRouche's visit to Baghdad in 1975, during which he made a presentation to the Baath Party conference on the topic of his "Oasis Plan," a proposal for Arab-Israeli peace based on the joint construction of massive water projects. During 1975, LaRouche's newspaper New Solidarity began running articles favourable to Iraq, and extensively quoting Saddam Hussein, at that time Iraq's vice-president. Rose also alleged that LaRouche at this time was in contact with Soviet diplomats.
Dennis King and Chip Berlet
Two writers who have written highly critical material on LaRouche are Dennis King and Chip Berlet. Their criticism is distinguished by their claim that they are exposing a "hidden agenda", and that LaRouche is essentially the opposite of what he professes to be.
The only substantial biography of LaRouche is Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism, by King (Doubleday, 1989). King, an investigative journalist, charges LaRouche with developing an intellectualized version of fascism mixed with political cultism and anti-Semitism (see Political views of Lyndon LaRouche.)
LaRouche polemicists have made much of the fact that King, who is considered a leftist, received funding from the conservative Smith-Richardson Foundation to write his book, but there has been no clear demonstration that this funding influenced the book's content. According to the book's acknowledgments (pp. 399-401), King also received funding and other help from liberal sources such as the Stern Fund. In fact, King's book is largely based on a lengthy series of articles in the Manhattan weekly Our Town, written and published before he obtained funding from any foundation (See Our Town archives, 1979-1980; photocopies of this series available from Political Research Associates.) LaRouche publications claim that King received funding from Smith-Richardson subsequent to meetings at the home of John Train (see LaRouche's critics,) but acknowledge that this occurred several years after the publication of the Our Town series.
The LaRouche movement alleges that Our Town was controlled by the controversial Roy Cohn . The late Cohn did promise pro bono counsel for Our Town and King after LaRouche sued them, but King soon fired Cohn as a result of allegations from confidential sources that Cohn and LaRouche had made a secret deal. (LaRouche dropped the suit shortly after King obtained new counsel.) (See court papers in LaRouche v. Our Town, New York State Supreme Court, New York County, 1979.) King devoted chapter 26 of his book to the byzantine rivalry of LaRouche and Cohn, and is unsparing in his criticism of both. "No two antagonists ever deserved each other more," King wrote (p. 252).
Chip Berlet wrote his first of several articles about LaRouche in 1979 for the Chicago Sun Times. LaRouche sued Berlet and King for defamation, along with NBC News and the Anti-Defamation League, but LaRouche lost the case, and the same jury awarded damges to NBC.
According to Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons:
- "Though often dismissed as a bizarre political cult, the LaRouche organization and its various front groups are a fascist movement whose pronouncements echo elements of Nazi ideology. Beginning in the 1970s, the LaRouchites combined populist antielitism with attacks on leftists, environmentalists, feminists, gay men and lesbians, and organized labor. They advocated a dictatorship in which a 'humanist' elite would rule on behalf of industrial capitalists. They developed an idiosyncratic, coded variation on the Illuminati Freemason and Jewish banker conspiracy theories. Their views, though exotic, were internally consistent and rooted in right-wing populist traditions."
- Chip Berlet & Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America, p. 273.
See also LaRouche's critics
LaRouche and the press
LaRouche has had an antagonistic relationship with the American news media throughout his career. In a September 24, 1976 op-ed in the Washington Post, entitled "NCLC: A Domestic Political Menace," Stephen Rosenfeld wrote: "We of the press should be chary of offering them print or air time. There is no reason to be too delicate about it: Every day we decide whose voices to relay. A duplicitous violence prone group with fascistic proclivities should not be presented to the public unless there is reason to present it in those terms." During the 1980s, the print and electronic media rarely mentioned LaRouche's name without the prefix, "political extremist." The LaRouche campaign in 1988 attempted to poke fun at this practice by broadcasting a national TV spot which featured a montage of clips of different TV announcers, all saying "political extremist Lyndon LaRouche." During this period, the theories of Dennis King and Chip Berlet also received some coverage in the mainstream press.
In March of 2000, the Los Angeles Times printed a facsimile of the Democratic Presidential Primary Ballot with LaRouche's name airbrushed out. However, more recently these practices appear to have largely died out.