If you are one of the tens of thousands of Americans who understand the fact that the legal proceedings against Lyndon LaRouche and his associates were the result of one of the most corrupt judicial frameups in U.S. history, you have probably had the following experience. You have given a friend, or neighbor, a copy of the ``Summary of Relevant Evidence Demonstrating the Innocence of Lyndon LaRouche and Co-Defendants,'' a pamphlet put out by LaRouche's 1996 presidential election campaign in the millions of copies, or brought up LaRouche's views on the economic crisis, or other political developments, in a political discussion. In response, you've gotten a reaction of the following sort: ``Don't talk to me about LaRouche; he's a crook.''
You may have been immediately intimidated, but many of you have not. Instead, you've answered your friend or neighbor: ``No, LaRouche and his associates were the targets of a secret government witchhunt, put together by Henry Kissinger, Ollie North, and George Bush.''
``Oh, no,'' says your neighbor. ``You don't believe that, do you? He was convicted of a crime. I know. I read it in the press and saw it on TV.''
You may have replied: ``Do you know anything about LaRouche directly, or his writings?''
``I don't have to,'' your neighbor might say. ``I rely on the new media.''
That seals the case. What you are dealing with in this situation, is a victim of mass-brainwashing by the U.S. media, an individual who has taken his ``opinion'' from a mass media which, itself, participated in the deliberate campaign of defamation against LaRouche and his associates. Someone who retails such opinions about LaRouche, is probably stupid enough to have money in the stock market as well.
Millions of Americans have been the victims of what amounts to a brainwashing campaign against LaRouche, carried out between 1984 and 1988, in the USA and internationally, with more intensity, duration, and scope, than against any personality not a major figure of government. As a result, even still today, there are millions of U.S. citizens who have been so thoroughly brainwashed by a mass-media campaign coordinated through Henry Kissinger, George Bush, et al., that those duped persons react with knee-jerk outbrusts of baseless, irrational rage, at the mere mention of the name ``LaRouche.''
It's past time this brainwashing was broken. Not only do 5 LaRouche associates sit in prison in the Commonwealth of Virginia, despite their innocence, after years of incarceration. But also LaRouche himself remains under the cloud of his conviction, at a time when his ideas of economic development and social justice are urgently needed, to prevent the ongoing financial disintegration and impending blowout from leading to a collapse of civilization into a New Dark Age. Destruction by defamation
When the first phases of the attack on Lyndon LaRouche and his organization began, there is no question but that certain Establishment figures wished to see him dead. As early as 1973, the FBI was collaborating with its agents in the Communist Party-USA in discussion of ``eliminating'' LaRouche. When the para-military raid against the offices of publishing companies associated with LaRouche occurred in 1986, there was clearly a live option to stage a shoot-out in which LaRouche would end up dead. There are other instances as well, of assassination attempts.
Eventually, however, the chosen method to destroy LaRouche and his movement was by prosecution and defamation. The defamation itself was critical to the success of the legal cases. And in the wake of the prosecutions, the process of defamation is even easier.
As is documented in the sections of this pamphlet devoted to the Train salon, there was nothing accidental about the rash of negative propaganda which was circulated about LaRouche in the 1983 to 1988 period. While the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL), the New York Times, and the drug mob-linked High Times and Our Town had launched their own attacks on LaRouche prior to 1983, these had not dimmed his influence. After all, the headline of the High Times article, by pot-head Dennis King, was ``They want to take your drugs away,'' a blatant appeal to the drug-using minority of the U.S. population at that point.
But in 1983, the Secret Government apparatus which Ronald Reagan had set up through Executive Order 12333, in December 1981, and which was headed by George Bush, took a more top-down approach. They pulled together a meeting of representatives of nearly every major news outlet, along with others, to coordinate a ``public diplomacy'' campaign against LaRouche. As a result of this conspiracy, the most popular media outlets came to feature lies and slanders against LaRouche. These included Readers Digest, NBC-TV, and the Wall Street Journal.
In addition, after two associates of LaRouche won the Democratic Party primary in Illinois in March 1986, a new wave of defamation took off. This wave was characterized by the input of the ADL, itself a close ally of dirty factions in the intelligence community, and the ADL's report on LaRouche as a ``political extremist.'' From that time forward, in virtually every news wire and news report--thousands and thousands--the name Lyndon LaRouche virtually never appeared without the prefatory negative nonsense phrase ``political extremist.''
Anyone who simply relied on the corrupt news media, now found it impossible to find out what LaRouche stood for. No substantive act or policy statement of his was ever covered; he simply received the characterization of ``political extremist.'' And corrupt federal prosecutors shut down the two mass publications of the LaRouche movement, through an illegal forced bankruptcy, cutting off an in-depth counterattack.
To the average member of the American public, who is ``other-directed'' enough to care about public opinion, this did the trick. Even those who thought they had supported LaRouche programs against drugs and for economic development, now believed that there was something wrong with him, because the media said so. As LaRouche's attorneys pointed out in the appeal of his conviction, the density of hostile propaganda, particularly in the northern Virginia area where his second trial occurred, created a steamroller of prejudice against him and his co-defendants. And after the railroaded conviction of LaRouche and his six associates in 1988, the blanket of defamation was even more effective, combined as it was with fear that truth could not win out against the secret government apparatus.
Progress toward justice
A lot has changed since LaRouche and his associates were sent off to prison in January of 1989. In particular, the realization has grown that the Reagan-Bush Justice Department was among the most corrupt political institutions around. This perception has spread through the Black community, the labor movement, and a large section of Middle America, that was shocked to the core by the atrocities of the Waco and Ruby Ridge massacres by the FBI. It has been increasingly clear to millions of Americans, that, while LaRouche and his movement were singled out for particularly brutal treatment, we were not alone in being the targets of judicial witchhunts and suppression.
Outside the United States, LaRouche's wife, Helga Zepp LaRouche, led the fight to make an international scandal out of the treatment given her husband by the U.S. Justice system. Thousands of dignitaries signed an appeal to the U.S. President for LaRouche's freedom, thus contributing to the political climate in which LaRouche himself was released on parole January 26, 1994.
Soon after that, LaRouche began a campaign for exoneration of himself and his associates. This campaign has brought forward hundreds of state legislators, and hundreds of other dignitaries, to urge that justice finally be done. One highlight of this campaign was the convening of an Independent Committee of lawyers and international dignitaries, in September 1994, who reviewed the 6 volumes of evidence which the courts had never heard, and concluded that there had been ``gross, even conspiratorial, misuse of prosecutionarial and investigative powers by officials and agents of the U.S. Government.'' The other, even more dramatic, were a set of hearings carried out by a panel of state legislators in September 1995. This panel heard testimony on the LaRouche case, and three others -- the series of infamous Frühmenschen prosecutions of African-American elected officials, the legal witchhunt against the falsely accused Ukrainian autoworker John Demjanjuk, and the case against former Austrian President Kurt Waldheim. In the LaRouche case, it was established that there is a corrupt, permanent bureaucracy in the Justice Department, which was responsive to the Kissinger-Bush order to ``get LaRouche.''
In the late fall of 1995, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators called for Congressional investigations of all the above cases, including that of LaRouche.
Through the course of the exoneration campaign, it has become common knowledge within national political circles, and state legislators, that LaRouche and his associates were subject to political targetting, particularly by the Bush political apparatus. Yet the fear of taking on the ``official line'' set by the mass media, still prevails. It is backed up by the fact that that media reflects the power of the heavily British-influenced Eastern Establishment.
LaRouche vs. Bush
One major break in the campaign to exonerate LaRouche came in the fall of 1996, when the {San Jose Mercury News} published its investigation of the introduction of crack cocaine into the Los Angeles ghetto, as a result of the Contra operation. This expose once again opened up the file of one of the most filthy political operatives in the U.S., Sir George Bush.
As the LaRouche movement had exposed back in the late 1980s, and again in its campaign against Ollie North in 1994, George Bush was the individual in charge of the dirty operations which ran the Contras, and Iran-Contra. He was in charge of an international gun and drug-running network which resulted in the creation of the Afghansi terror network, and the importation of tons of cocaine into the U.S., through Ollie North's ``freedom fighters.'' In this capacity, he came head to head against the LaRouche movement, and did his best to destroy it.
Bush's political machine, even now that he is out of office, is very much alive. The most visible operative is none other than Kenneth Starr, Bush's Solicitor General, and a blatant political operative in the witchhunt against President Clinton. But, never assume that Bush's activities are all out in the open; his business networks, including those of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, are engaged in filthy business all over the world, especially as Bush seeks to install his son, George Jr., as the next President of the United States.
But, Bush's troubles are not over -- not by a long shot. The effects of his crimes are still with us, including the persecution of the LaRouche movement. It is Bush who should be in jail, not LaRouche and his associates.