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Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
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On 7/4/14 11:37 AM, Joseph Catron wrote:
On Fri, Jul 4, 2014 at 6:27 PM, Louis Proyect <l...@panix.com
<mailto:l...@panix.com>> wrote:
Actually, Larouche used to meet with highly placed officials of the
Reagan administration to finger anti-nuclear activists.
Really? Not doubting your word, but was he ... saner, then?
Comrades have to remember to include the list address when they are
replying, just as I did now.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/cult/larouche/larou1.htm
Some Officials Find Intelligence Network 'Useful'
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
January 15, 1985
Norman Bailey recalls that soon after he joined the National Security
Council, he received a call from NSC officials asking him to talk to a
group of followers of right-wing presidential candidate Lyndon H.
LaRouche Jr. who were offering intelligence information to the agency.
Bailey, then NSC's senior director of international economic affairs,
said he found the visitors' intelligence on economics and foreign
affairs surprisingly on target.
He said he met with LaRouche's followers numerous times in 1982 and 1983
in his Executive Office Building office, and three times with LaRouche
himself -- including once for dinner at LaRouche's rented Loudoun County
estate. Bailey said he circulated within NSC a well-researched position
paper that two LaRouche followers wrote about fusion energy.
"Some of them are quite good," Bailey said of LaRouche's associates. He
said that he found them to be "useful" because of their "excellent"
international contacts.
"They can operate more freely and openly than official agencies" such as
the CIA, Bailey said. "They do know a lot of people around the world.
They do get to talk to prime ministers and presidents." Bailey also has
described LaRouche's organization as "one of the best private
intelligence services in the world."
It's a view shared by others in powerful places in Washington.
Through dogged work, the LaRouche organization has assembled a worldwide
network of contacts in governments and in military agencies who meet
regularly and swap information with them, officials and former members said.
In Washington, the LaRouche group has spent the last several years
currying favor with officials of the NSC, CIA, Defense Intelligence
Agency, Drug Enforcement Administration, the military and numerous other
agencies, as well as with defense scientists doing classified research,
according to federal officials and ex-members of the LaRouche group.
"They've made a very concerted effort to influence the government," said
Richard Morris, counselor to Interior Secretary William Clark and
formerly Clark's assistant when he was NSC chief. "Their influence never
went beyond the mid-level. There's no way they could influence the
president."
"They obviously want to impress, with their knowledge, people who are in
the know in Washington," said Ray S. Cline, a former top State
Department and CIA intelligence official who said he was approached by
LaRouche associates in 1980 and has spoken with them a number of times
since. "They're terribly eager to find somebody" in government to talk to.
The LaRouche group stepped up its presence in Washington about 1981,
when President Reagan took office, and it has publicly promoted many of
his initiatives in its publications and on Capitol Hill.
Contacts With NSC, CIA
An NBC documentary in March disclosed the LaRouche group's contacts with
NSC and CIA officials, and in November The New Republic magazine
published an article by reporters Dennis King and Ronald Radosh that
detailed LaRouche's Washington connections. King has reported on
LaRouche's group for six years and has broken many stories about it.
In Reagan's first term, Executive Intelligence Review, a LaRouche-tied
magazine, ran interviews with such officials as Agriculture Secretary
John Block, Defense Undersecretary Richard DeLauer, Associate Attorney
General Lowell Jensen, Commerce Undersecretary Lionel Olmer and
then-Sen. John Tower (R-Texas), at the time chairman of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, The New Republic reported.
High-level Reagan administration officials "have found LaRouche as
useful in supplying information and promoting their policies as LaRouche
has found them in legitimizing his cause," The New Republic said.
LaRouche associates also have been active for years in West Germany,
France, Italy, Mexico, Argentina, India, Thailand and many other
countries, according to LaRouche-tied publications, ex-LaRouche
associates and former government officials. The group has had dealings
with a number of foreign government and military officials, according to
these sources.
LaRouche himself has had private meetings with Jose Lopez Portillo when
he was Mexico's president, Argentine President Raul Alfonsin and the
late Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. LaRouche also met with Iraqi
officials during a visit to the Middle East in 1975.
Most of the 22 active and retired government and military officials
interviewed said that they have been wary of speaking with the LaRouche
associates.
It may seem far-fetched that a group that says that Walter F. Mondale is
a Soviet secret police "agent of influence" and that the queen of
England is involved in international dope-dealing could be "useful" to
top federal government officials.
But a number of government officials say much of the group's
intelligence is accurate. The LaRouche outfit has had more than 100
intelligence operatives working for it at times, and copies the
government in its information-gathering operation, ex-members and other
knowledgeable sources said.
Sometimes the group's intelligence reports reflect the organization's
offbeat and speculative allegations, but much of the time they do not,
according to ex-members and a reading of some of the reports. Its
reports on such subjects as the international debt and the
industrialization of Thailand often read like government memoranda.
John Bosma, editor of Military Space magazine, recalled that in 1981,
while he worked for a congressman on the House Armed Services Committee,
he was approached by a representative of a magazine tied to LaRouche.
The visitor asked about the odometer range of the cruise missile and
other classified information, Bosma said.
"The guy knew what he was talking about," Bosma said. "It's a very
sensitive subject. I was very surprised the guy was asking me questions
at that level of detail. I said it was none of his damn business."
Gathering intelligence for corporations and individuals is one of the
ways the LaRouche organization supports itself financially, according to
LaRouche and former members. In a hypothetical example, a West German
company might hire the group to investigate the Mexican oil industry
for, say, $5,000, said ex-members and persons familiar with the group's
operation.
The organization's dealings with federal agencies have been made easier
by LaRouche's move to Loudoun County last year. The group plans to move
the bulk of its national headquarters there, according to sources and a
Loudoun County official.
"LaRouche wants to wreak big changes on a world scale," a former
LaRouche associate said. "They're trying to get access to the
administration. They're trying to get inside the system through the
old-boy network so they can manipulate it."
Some Officials Angered
The depth of LaRouche's entree in official Washington has caused anger
in some quarters.
Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, whom LaRouche associates have
accused of being a murderer and homosexual, said in an interview that
"there's no excuse" for top CIA and other intelligence officials to meet
with what he considers an unsavory group. "It's a revolting episode . .
. . What can they possibly know we can't find out ourselves?"
Bosma, the military specialist, said he, too, is angry about reports of
dealings between LaRouche and the administration. "If this is true, it's
almost unforgivable . . . . I'm a Reaganite, but I'm flabbergasted and
appalled."
The conservative Heritage Foundation, a longtime LaRouche critic,
expressed worry about possible security leaks in a report issued last July.
"A major concern regarding the LaRouche network arises from its apparent
ability to penetrate high government circles -- especially within the
intelligence and police communities," the foundation said. "While some
[of the LaRouche group's] claims may be overstated, and some of the
contacts may have been low-level or self-generated, the potential for
security breaches and other problems arising from such relationships
remains very real."
After the NBC broadcast, Democratic National Committee Chairman Charles
Manatt called on President Reagan "to end the shocking White House
involvement with the bizarre, extremist cult of Lyndon H. LaRouche . . .
. It is absolutely incredible that a ranking NSC staff member . . .
would have anything to do with the LaRouche people."
When asked about NSC contact with LaRouche, White House spokesman Larry
Speakes said in March that "from time to time we talk to various people
who may have information that might prove helpful to us."
Marlin Fitzwater, another White House spokesman, said last month that
"there's no official or unofficial [Reagan administration] policy or
line in regard to dealing with the LaRouche organization. Any contacts
are made at the discretion of the individuals involved."
For his part, Bailey, now a private economics consultant, said he felt
he should listen to LaRouche.
"It was part of my job [at NSC], gathering information from any source I
could," Bailey said. "You use whatever is at hand," he said, even if the
source is "smelly."
Bailey said that he is "not a supporter" of LaRouche, and disagrees with
him on some things, although he found his group to be "very supportive
of the administration."
LaRouche, in a deposition, said that in the dinner conversation at the
Woodburn Estate in March, Bailey asked his opinion on certain matters.
LaRouche declined to discuss the conversation at length because he said
it was a matter of "confidential national security."
While Bailey recently may have found LaRouche helpful, his dealings with
the LaRouche group have not always been pleasant. In 1975, while he was
a professor at Queens College, Bailey filed a libel suit against a group
tied to LaRouche after it described him as a CIA agent and a "fascist,"
Bailey said.
The suit dragged on for years, until after the LaRouche supporters
approached him at NSC, he said. In 1983, the two sides settled the suit
after a newspaper affiliated with LaRouche agreed to publish a
correction, and the group paid him a "monetary settlement," Bailey said.
He declined to specify the amount.
Bailey said he continues to receive periodic telephone calls from a
LaRouche aide asking his opinion on economic matters.
The LaRouche organization has dealt with other NSC personnel as well,
council officials said.
One was Morris, William Clark's top aide. In an interview, Morris said
he met four times with LaRouche while at NSC in 1982 and 1983, and had
other meetings with his associates.
"We discussed matters of national security concern," Morris said in
October testimony in a U.S. District Court trial in Alexandria. (A
federal court jury found that NBC had not defamed LaRouche, but ordered
him to pay NBC $3 million, after finding that his group had sabotaged a
network interview with a U.S. senator.)
Among the topics he discussed with LaRouche were international economics
and "strategic defenses," Morris testified. "He had an intelligence
operation that gathered information that he thought was important to the
national security."
"When they spoke in terms of technology or economics, they made good
sense," Morris said in an interview. "They seemed to be qualified in
their areas."
LaRouche said that he has had "continuing off-and-on contacts" with
Morris even now that he's at Interior, and said the two are "old friends."
Morris said that the relationship is much more distant, and that he does
not support LaRouche's positions.
Morris testified that he distributed among NSC officials some of the
information provided by LaRouche and his associates.
In a letter to New Republic editors last month, LaRouche said that after
the NBC broadcast critical of government officials for dealing with
LaRouche, the Reagan administration "distanced itself sharply from me."
After the broadcast, some administration officials made statements
"suddenly totally out of agreement" with earlier friendly statements,
LaRouche wrote.
LaRouche associates also have tried to gain the confidence of top CIA
officials.
LaRouche supporters telephone CIA officials "a lot" to offer information
and try to get more, one knowledgeable official said. "They could
consider that a two-way exchange. To my knowledge it is not a two-way
exchange."
LaRouche said in an interview that he has visited the CIA's Langley
headquarters a few times, and that his associates have visited many times.
A CIA spokesman said LaRouche, his wife and an aide visited the agency
in January, 1983, and met with aides to Deputy Director John McMahon to
talk about a recent LaRouche trip overseas. The CIA spokesman said
LaRouche also visited earlier with Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, who was the
agency's deputy director in 1981 and 1982.
Inman Recalls Visit
In an interview, Inman recalled the visit at his CIA office by LaRouche
and his wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who had just returned from Europe. He
said that she gave enticing information about the West German Green
Party, an antinuclear group. "At the time, nobody in intelligence was
covering them at all," Inman said of the Greens.
Inman, now head of a Texas-based computer research organization, said
the meeting was not extraordinary, because, as a CIA official, he
sometimes met with people returning from overseas trips. He said he did
not give information, but listened.
Inman and other intelligence officials said they doubt the stories,
widely circulated inside the LaRouche group, that the organization has
informants inside the CIA who provide it with intelligence.
Former associates said the organization dealt with several "cutouts," or
intermediaries, who claimed they received confidential reports from the
CIA. The code name for one supposed CIA contact was "Mr. Ed," said
ex-associates, who added they know of no confirmation that the contact
existed.
The group has worked closely with a former CIA operative who has helped
provide security and given information about the international narcotics
trade, ex-members said.
The organization also had close ties for years with a former Office of
Strategic Services guerrilla operative, Mitchell WerBell III, who
introduced members to many intelligence and military figures, sources said.
The LaRouche-affiliated Schiller Institute -- an international group
named for 18th century poet Friedrich Schiller that says it is committed
to the ideals of the American Revolution -- lists on its advisory board
several high-ranking retired and active-duty military officers.
The LaRouche group also tried for years to gain favor in the Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Pentagon's intelligence arm. When DIA
officials first met with LaRouche associates in the early 1970s, they
were impressed with the group's intelligence material, said former DIA
director Daniel Graham.
Graham recalled that LaRouche associates came up with what he called
good intelligence about the situation in Angola, Mozambique and
elsewhere. Graham said that in the mid-1970s, he and DIA colleagues
concluded that some of the information was so sensitive that they
suspected the LaRouche group was getting some of it from the Soviets or
another government. Graham added that he couldn't prove the contention.
Ordered Contacts Stopped
Graham, a strong anticommunist, said that in the mid-1970s he ordered
the DIA to stop dealing with the LaRouche group.
LaRouche associates strongly deny the assertion that the group is a
stalking horse of any foreign government. "It's a weak disinformation
slander put out by the KGB itself," said LaRouche aide Paul Goldstein.
The Heritage Foundation said in its July report that LaRouche takes
positions "which in the end advance Soviet foreign policy goals . . . .
In the worst case, his group may well be the strangest asset for the
KGB's disinformation effort." The charge that the LaRouche-affiliated
National Caucus of Labor Committees has ties to Soviet officials was
first raised in 1979 by the National Review magazine in an article by a
former associate of LaRouche. (It also has been raised in subsequent
publications, such as The New Republic article, and in the NBC libel
suit.) Some former intelligence officials say they back the ex-member's
contention that in the 1970s the LaRouche group maintained contact with
the Soviets through Gennady Serebreyakov, an official at the Soviets'
United Nations mission.
LaRouche, in his letter to The New Republic, confirmed that Serebreyakov
approached him sometime in the mid-1970s, and that the two met twice to
try to end the feuding between the LaRouche organization and East Bloc
nations. LaRouche said the effort was unsuccessful.
Jeffrey Steinberg, a top aide to LaRouche, said group members never
passed any information to Serebreyakov. Steinberg also said the National
Review article was largely incorrect.
Steinberg said LaRouche associates frequently invite Soviet officials to
their seminars. "We want them there" to know the group's thinking, he
said. He said that LaRouche associates have visited the Soviet Union
repeatedly. "They run into Soviet officials all the time," Steinberg said.
For his part, one retired senior military official, retired Army major
general John K. Singlaub, has expressed concern about the group's
contacts with him.
Singlaub recalled in an interview that in the late 1970s, when he was
stationed at Fort McPherson, Ga., after a publicized clash with
President Carter over U.S. policy in Korea, he was approached by
LaRouche associates, who said they liked his hard-line style.
After Singlaub's 1978 retirement, they attended Singlaub's lectures all
over the country, he said. They showed him their intelligence reports
about Iran, Western Europe and other topics, and Singlaub said some of
it was surprisingly good.
"Initially I was convinced they were trying to build up credibility that
they had a good intelligence network that I could rely on," Singlaub said.
In 1979, he continued, the LaRouche supporters began telling him that
the U.S. military deserved a "major break" and that Carter had done a
disservice to the military.
"They said, 'You military people are going to be the savior of the
country . . . . We want to work closely with you. We have intelligence
that can help you,'" Singlaub recalled.
Grew Suspicious of Goals
He said he grew suspicious of the LaRouche supporters' goals and cut off
relations with them.
Just as Singlaub said the LaRouche supporters used pro-military rhetoric
with him, a former Drug Enforcement Administration official said they
expressed strong opposition to narcotics traffickers when talking with him.
"They took a basic law enforcement narcotics control position," said
John Cusack, the DEA's former international operations chief, who added
that around 1976 he started receiving telephone calls from LaRouche
associates researching the narcotics trade, and had numerous discussions
with them.
LaRouche associates asked "intelligent" questions, said Cusack, now a
staff member at the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and
Control. "They always seemed to know what the law enforcement agencies
were doing. They were well-informed . . . . Sometimes they told me
things I didn't know, but it turned out it was true." Cusack added that
they had "very good contacts" with local police departments.
The group has cultivated these contacts for about 10 years, and many law
enforcement officials subscribe to its publications.
In spring of 1977, LaRouche associates gave New Hampshire law
enforcement officials detailed but speculative reports that the
Clamshell Alliance, an antinuclear group then planning a protest at a
nuclear plant, was a terrorist group financed by the Rockefellers. The
May 1977 protest was not violent, although 1,400 people were arrested.
The group also has sold intelligence reports to a number of foreign
governments, according to LaRouche and current and former associates.
Steinberg said in a deposition that several years ago, LaRouche
associates investigated terrorism for Italian officials. LaRouche said
in an interview that his associates were hired to provide intelligence
to the South African government. Ex-members said the intelligence
reports dealt with the antiapartheid movement.
Some current and former U.S. officials who do not want to be identified,
as well as ex-members, expressed concern that LaRouche's overseas
activities may lead foreign leaders to think that he somehow represents
the U.S. government, and take his statements as a "trial balloon" of
U.S. policy.
At times LaRouche associates, identifying themselves as representatives
of the LaRouche-affiliated National Democratic Policy Committee,
arranged meetings with foreign leaders, who sometimes mistakenly thought
they represented a faction of the Democratic Party, former associates of
LaRouche and other sources said.
LaRouche said in an interview that he represents a "back channel," or
confidential intermediary, for foreign officials who tire of dealing
with the "idiots" in the State Department. "I'll telephone somebody in
the White House and say, 'Look, a dear friend of ours in Mexico wants to
have the president know something.'
'Incredible Intelligence Files'
But foreign leaders sometimes express confusion about LaRouche's
messages because of their often rambling nature, former associates said.
The LaRouche group has developed "incredible intelligence files" on
foreign government, business and labor union officials, as well as their
counterparts in this country, said one ex-member.
Some of the LaRouche associates who work on intelligence have university
training in their areas. They keep up by reading dozens of newspapers
from around the world and interviewing experts, former members said.
"Many, many times I'd find I knew more about what was going on than the
academics," said one former member who worked on intelligence. "People
on the outside would be saying I was insane for being with LaRouche ,
but here I was talking to a European head of state's security man."
Graham, the former DIA director, said LaRouche's intelligence operation
is no joke, and has developed contacts in the intelligence community.
"In my time in the intelligence community, I found too many gullible
folk," Graham said. "I kept warning my people.
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