SCHILLER INSTITUTE WEBCAST

Pelosi’s Lies Expose Criminal Intent Behind Coup Plot Against Trump

This is the edited transcript of the Schiller Institute’s December 15, 2019 interview with Helga Zepp-LaRouche, by Harley Schlanger. A video of the webcast is available.

Harley Schlanger: Hello, I’m Harley Schlanger with the Schiller Institute. Welcome to our webcast with our founder and President Helga Zepp-LaRouche. It’s Dec. 15, 2019.

Events over the last weeks concerning impeachment of President Trump, and other things, have made very clear that the real issue we’re dealing with is war and peace. We had the vote of two articles of impeachment voted up by the House Judiciary Committee; the release of Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report, Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation, and commentary on it; and then also, some very revealing comments from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Why don’t we start, Helga, with the recent developments around the Horowitz Report and especially the comments from former CIA analyst Larry C. Johnson, and former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney?

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: I think most noteworthy are the signs that the impeachment coup—and Trump has called it a coup, and it is a coup—may actually backfire, bigtime. Now, I’m not normally advertising Der Spiegel, but the cover story of its upcoming print copy [Dec. 14, 2019, #51], has another one of those unspeakable Trump cartoons, but in the text announcing the coming issue, it basically says that he may “get away with it.” In other words, the impeachment may fail. I think that that is an interesting sign that Der Spiegel probably smells a change in the wind.

Most interesting for our viewers—that is, you—is the “Fireside Chat” our colleagues at LaRouche PAC posted last Thursday, featuring Bill Binney, who has the absolute, forensic proof that there was no Russian hack in the computers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server. Binney has provided, many times, details proving that the whole story that depends upon the claim that Russia hacked he DNC is a lie, because the speed with which the files were transferred speaks to a local download and not to a hack via the internet. That evidence has never been published; it was introduced into the trial of Roger Stone, but the judge, Amy Berman Jackson, did not accept it. But this fraud actually underpins the entire Russiagate narrative.

Bill Binney is therefore, a very important witness in this whole affair, because he used to be the technical director of the NSA. As I mentioned, he was just on LaRouche PAC’s “Fireside Chat” program, together with Barbara Boyd, Larry Johnson, and also Sean Stone, the son of filmmaker Oliver Stone.

This program is a must see for anybody who wants to get to the bottom of the coup d’état being attempted against the United States. It establishes that there is now a growing number of whistleblowers in the United States, around the VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity), who are saying that the impeachment, and before that, Ukrainegate, and before that, Russiagate, cannot be maintained.

In this particular Fireside Chat, the guests levied some very important criticisms of the Horowitz Report, saying it does a pretty good job of establishing the remarkable criminality of the FBI. That has been documented very well in the report and reflects a lot of investigation.

Larry Johnson then also made the point that the Horowitz Report has a very strange, almost cover-up quality to it, as concerns the origins of the anti-Trump campaign. I think that is very, very interesting.

The Horowitz Report

The Horowitz Report put together the documentation that this was a conscious setup, in which a relatively unimportant person, George Papadopoulos, an early member of the Trump Campaign, who was consciously targetted by Joseph Mifsud, who, in the report, is still being portrayed as somehow having links to Russia, or being a Russian agent, while in reality, the only connection which does exist is that he worked very closely with MI6, with the CIA, with the FBI, and in all likelihood, is rather an agent of these forces; that Mifsud consciously sought out Papadopoulos, and planted the information that the Russian government had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

Neither in this report, nor anywhere else, did anyone ever asked, what kind of “dirt” the Russians had on Hillary Clinton. Nevertheless, this hearsay was provided by Papadopoulos to Alexander Downer, Australia’s High Commissioner (Ambassador) to the U.K., and that hearsay was then was passed on, and was then the basis for the so-called Russiagate.

Another key element in this is the role of Gen. Michael Flynn, who used to be the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in the Obama Administration, and according to all reports and information, was a very honest person, because he did not go along with the wars of aggression by Obama against Syria, for example; he made himself very much disliked by Obama in 2012 when he went to the White House to brief Obama that the weapons which were supposedly given by the United States to the “moderates” in the Middle East, actually landed in the hands of the terrorists; Obama didn’t like to hear that. Flynn was fired. And when Flynn attended a dinner with Putin in 2015, the intelligence services took that as the way to target not only Flynn, but to then pin the Russia connection to Trump as being via Flynn.

Now, what Larry Johnson has also established is that General Flynn went to the officials of the United States before he participated in this dinner with Putin, which is the common rule for all people working in the security field; he asked them for permission, he got the permission, he briefed them afterwards about the dinner. And the funny thing is that this guy Mifsud also participated in that dinner with Putin and General Flynn, and also Sean Stone, who was also on the “Fireside Chat” show reporting about all of this.

If you listen only to the mainstream media in Europe or in the United States, for that matter, you will never have an inkling of what is going on—that this so-called Russiagate, and the entire coup, have been an intelligence operation targetting Trump from the very beginning of his Presidency, and Flynn even before that. I think this discussion sheds a completely different light on what’s going on with the whole affair. I think, therefore, it’s a must-see for anybody who wants to have a competent judgment on the present strategic situation.

Schlanger: I think it’s crucial to note also that Attorney General Barr and his chief prosecutor, U.S. Attorney John Durham, commented on the Horowitz Report, disagreeing with his conclusion that there was no malign intent, and stating that they’re continuing to work on their investigation.

Another comment that was very significant was that of civil liberties attorney Alan Dershowitz. Helga, what do you think of his comment, that the whole impeachment is an attempt to destroy the office of the American Presidency, and turn us into a parliamentary system?

The Drive to Replace the Presidential System with a Parliamentary One

Zepp-LaRouche: If the impeachment of the President, in a Presidential system can be done on the grounds of partisan opposition,— because at this point it’s just the Democrats who want to “weaponize” the impeachment in order to get rid of Trump. They fear, correctly, that in the 2020 election, they cannot win an honest election campaign. Dershowitz makes the point that if this goes through, a very dangerous precedent will have been created, thus destroying the American republic and its Presidential system, and replacing it with a British parliamentary system, whereby a prime minister can be gotten rid of just with a majority vote in the parliament.

Now, I think this is, indeed, very important, because we can see not only in Great Britain, with the Brexit, but also all over Europe, that the parliamentary system is not functioning anywhere to protect the common good—or democracy, for that matter.

I think there is an effort to weaponize the impeachment process, and that must not be tolerated. Raising the issue of the American republic and Presidential system is very, very, important.

Schlanger: It’s worth noting that your late husband Lyndon LaRouche, many years ago, particularly zeroed in on this danger of America being turned into a parliamentary system by taking away the power of the President.

Pelosi Tells the Truth About Lying, and Lies About the Truth

Speaking of which, we have some very interesting comments coming from Nancy Pelosi, perhaps inadvertently, about why she didn’t support impeachment of Bush, which you probably want to discuss with our listeners. She said, what this is really about is not Ukraine, but that “All roads lead to Putin.” What do you make of Pelosi’s comments?

Zepp-LaRouche: Well, I don’t know—Mrs. Pelosi has a real inability to even stick to her lies, and that’s not a good thing for somebody in her position. First of all, she admitted, in a comment to a student questioner at a town hall at Johns Hopkins University that she knew in 2003 that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that she was told that in her capacity as ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, even before she was Speaker of the House, and that she knew it was conscious lying to the public to say that Iraq had such weapons.

For her to admit that now is quite incredible, because the Iraq War—which was based on lies, there were no weapons of mass destruction—as people well remember, led to millions of people losing their lives, I think around a million Iraqis in the war, and then many more millions after the war because of the sanctions, and because of the devastation from the war. And it naturally also led to the loss of life of, I think, 4,400 American soldiers, and it naturally contributed to the refugee crisis, which has torn Europe apart, and created an incredible suffering for many millions of people.

So for her to basically say, “Yeah, yeah, I knew all of that,” and then not to have acted then to try to stop it—that destroys her entire credibility! Everybody who is concerned about these wars, should demand investigations. To their credit German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and the French President Giscard d’Estaing opposed the war, and did not participate in it. Nevertheless war crimes were committed, and I think it is owed to the victims of this lie, or this war based on lies, that justice be reestablished. So I really call on all those who are concerned about justice, international law, human rights, and democracy, for that matter, to demand that this be taken up, and not just pass.

Pelosi also lied on another matter: On one occasion, said the impeachment was a very recent thing, and then in another comment she said, Oh, we were at it for two and a half years—which is true.

Now, Trump tweeted on that, pointing to the fact that Pelosi was called a liar on that point, too.

So, I think Pelosi is completely discredited, and the way she has been talking has caused many people to ask if she was sober when she made these statements. I think she is really totally discredited in every respect.

Schlanger: Speaking of lies and wars, we have a report that we’ve been repeatedly lied to about the war in Afghanistan. This is also something which should be investigated, shouldn’t it?

Zepp-LaRouche: Yeah, this is incredible. Of all places, the Washington Post revealed that the American administration, over years—after all this war has been going on for 19 years—lied about supposed progress being made, while in reality the situation on the ground in Afghanistan is absolutely horrendous. So I think this is also one of the lies which should be investigated. Democratic Party Presidential pre-candidate Tulsi Gabbard announced that she will start a congressional hearing about that, and I think that is just one more of the failures of the neo-liberal/neo-con establishments of the West, confronted with the utter failure of their policies in every respect. I think this is another thing which is worth thinking about.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Francis Fukuyama declared the “end of history,” that democracy and the Western neo-liberal model would spread around the world. Well, if you look at the present situation, you can see that that neo-liberal model is completely, utterly failing. We have mass demonstrations of literally millions of people in the streets. In Chile, two million people are out in the street almost every day and every night; mass demonstrations in many countries around the globe—Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Algeria; the French general strike is continuing, probably throughout Christmas; the German farmers are out with convoys of tractors every weekend now in different cities.

So, I think the point for us to reflect about here is the absolute inability of the Western establishment to comprehend why their policies are leading to such disasters. They are definitely resistant against any kind of advice and are unable to correct their policies, and I think that that has a big implication as well.

New Security Architecture Must Supersede NATO

Schlanger: We saw that in two other conferences recently: the NATO conference, where, again, it’s a Cold War scenario, even as there are very interesting developments with the Trump-Lavrov meeting; and the Normandy Four meeting [Ukraine, Russia, France, Germany]. What do you make of the NATO conference?

Zepp-LaRouche: French President Emmanuel Macron recently said that NATO was “brain-dead.” Trump had already said NATO was obsolete. I think that is absolutely the case. When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991 and the Warsaw Pact dissolved, NATO lost its raison d’être. All the confrontation today against Russia and China is just being built up to justify making big salaries for the bureaucrats in the NATO apparatus and also for the military-industrial complex. So I think it is much time lost, but not too late to replace NATO with a completely different system, a security architecture which includes Russia and China, because the present confrontation policy is really implying the danger of a big war.

Many people around the world are now reflecting, who may not like Trump at all, but who realize that Trump is trying to have a decent relationship with Russia and China; while, if Hillary Clinton had become President, we could have had World War III already.

So, I think it’s time for NATO to fold up. I think we need a new approach, an approach which guarantees the long-term survivability of the planet and humanity, and I think people should also reflect that NATO should be a relegated to the status of an institution of the past.

Schlanger: It seems that a new security architecture was part of what was discussed by President Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in their meeting December 10 at the White House.

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes. I think it’s important that Trump, when he was in France at the beginning of December, had mentioned several times that an arms agreement on nuclear weapons is the number one question on the strategic agenda. Trump even talked about the need to stop the production of nuclear weapons and get rid of them completely, but that has not been noted by the mass mainstream media. I think that Trump’s bring that up reflects the fact that he, indeed, wants to have peace with Russia and China, and all the Trump-haters should really become objective about this point.

Changes in the Climate Change Arena

Schlanger: Talk about the failure of these trans-Atlantic institutions—at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP25) in Madrid, Spain we saw that the attempt to impose a global austerity shutdown of energy production ran into some fairly serious problems.

Zepp-LaRouche: Well, that is good thing. They could not agree to a final communiqué, and there was a great lack of unity, the United States was not the only nation unwilling to go along. I think China also did not sign, despite the fact that they say they are doing a lot on climate protection. Saudi Arabia; but also many of the developing countries, took the position that since changes in the climate were not been caused by them, because they have no industrial development, therefore the industrial countries should compensate them.

Now, that may not be the answer, but they just chose that argument to say that they are not willing to sign an agreement they perfectly well know would mean the end of their dreams to overcome poverty and underdevelopment. Remember that already in 2009, at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen, the G77 countries gave a press conference where they said they would never sign such a suicide pact. I think it’s very good that this monstrosity did not achieve the result desired by the climate freaks.

Schlanger: As we look at these institutions, we would be remiss if we didn’t bring up the problems in the European Union, typified on the one hand by Ursula von der Leyen, the new President of the European Commission, going ahead with a radical austerity “Green New Deal,” and at the same time, Christine Lagarde, who’s now the new President of the European Central Bank, talking about continuing a policy which has been threatening to collapse the whole European economy. What can you say about these policies?

Zepp-LaRouche: Well, Ursula von der Leyen has a completely wrong position. If she is not stopped, this woman’s policies will mean the end of Europe as an industrial continent. What she announced with the European Green Deal is an absolute monstrosity, which aims to direct all financial streams into so-called “green” technologies and investments, which is being completely destructive of the real, physical economy. The idea of “decarbonizing” the economy would leave only low energy-flux dense power sources, and that would be completely insufficient for industrial countries. My Germany and all the other European countries would be completely destroyed. Of course, she’s against nuclear energy. Not coincidentally, this is, is exactly the “great transformation” of the economy Hans Joachim Schellnhuber has been pushing since 2004!

I just looked back in my files and discovered that I had written articles about that many years ago, saying that the whole thing was really escalated in 2004 with the German-British climate conference in the British Embassy in Berlin, which was opened by Her Majesty the Queen, Elizabeth, herself. At that time, she made Schellnhuber a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and he’s been calling himself CBE ever since.

And at that conference in 2004, it was decided among German and British financial circles that green financing would be the big business of the future. And that naturally led to the report which the Schellnhuber people gave the WBGU (German Advisory Council on Global Change), put out after the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan in 2011. The idea was to have a complete “transformation” of the world economy, decarbonize every economy by 2050. Some even crazier radicals are now talking about 2030: Doing this would mean total population reduction, simply because it would destroy entire branches of industry.

Volkmar Denner, the CEO of Bosch, issued a strong criticism of von der Leyen’s program, saying this would constitute a dire threat to the auto industry, and that if this policy got through, the auto sector would need structural support.

In an article I wrote yesterday, I pointed out that Denner’s sentiment is understandable, but still reflects the usual kind of mistake in thinking that if your field of endeavor is attacked, that you need structural reforms and support for your sector; but if you look around the globe, the people in Chile, in Iraq, in France, in Germany, the farmers, they all are demonstrating because their area is threatened, but if all of them fail to understand that their individual problems are derivative of the neo-liberal system, then none will find a solution. They may protest a little bit, maybe get some compensation, but then go out of business, and the larger process of destruction continues.

Global Solutions Exist

That is why I’m saying that everybody who is now suffering from the consequences of these neo-liberal policies must take up the solution for the whole picture, and that is: a global Glass-Steagall. We need to put an end to the casino economy. By the way, since you mentioned Lagarde, she wants to continue the policies of her predecessor Mario Draghi; she even said the sentence which made Draghi infamous, that he would do whatever it takes to save the euro, which means opening the money sluices, going for complete “quantitative easing,” leading eventually to a hyperinflation like in 1923. We are very close to that. So if these policies continue, then economic chaos, social chaos, and also security consequences of unpredictable dimensions will result.

So we need a global Glass-Steagall separation of the banks; we need a national bank in every country. During the postwar period, for example, the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau financed the German economic miracle. These national banks in all countries must cooperate in a new Bretton Woods system, acting on a global scale to finance reconstruct the real, physical economy, including a crash program for higher technologies like fusion power and propulsion; and facilitating international cooperation in space research and travel.

It is all actually very easy, because the framework for this already exists, in the form of the Belt and Road Initiative (the New Silk Road). I think everything will depend on our ability to get the European countries and the United States into a mode of cooperation with Russia and China on these policies and not go to war confrontation.

I think this is the key to whether we have peace or war in this time, and the entire impeachment process against Trump is only designed to prevent such a potentiality. I think there is a chance that we can turn it around, but it requires that you, our viewers, get active with us. You should help to spread what I said in the beginning of this interview about the Trump impeachment. You should subscribe to this channel, we should get many more people to be aware of it, and help us to mobilize for the solutions, which only the Schiller Institute and the LaRouche movement in general is promoting.

Mine is an urgent appeal to you, to not sit on the fence of history. In this very crucial moment, where the chance to get a different system is absolutely present, it does require the activation of people on the highest levels: So, join us in this effort!

China

Schlanger: One additional point on that, Helga. The same people who are running the impeachment coup against Trump are also running the vicious attacks against China. There was a very significant report that came out this last week, about what the Chinese are doing that we should be copying in terms of education. What your response to that report?

Zepp-LaRouche: Many viewers are commenting that we in the Schiller Institute are “too pro-China.” They are repeating the lying line that the Chinese communist system is a dictatorship. I think probably we should have, sometime in the near future an entire program devoted to discussing China directly. But I really want to tell people, now: If you have not been to China yet, plan your next vacation there. Just go and see China for yourself, take in the incredible development that is taking place there. EIR has just released a new pamphlet, “End the McCarthyite Witch Hunt Against China & President Trump,” saying that the McCarthy-like targetting of Trump and China, which comes from the same circles must be stopped. So, if you don’t already have a copy, get one and help us distribute it.

In this pamphlet is a photograph that I, myself, took in 1971, in the countryside near Shanghai, China, which shows how extremely underdeveloped China was at that time; and just beside my photo is a photo of an ultra-modern, fast train system. The transformation of transport in China in only 40 years, should give you an insight into the very rapid economic development direction this country is taking.

None of this has anything to do with the kind of communism which existed in the Soviet Union—or East Germany (G.D.R.) for that matter—but it is what the Chinese themselves call “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” meaning it’s absolutely created by Confucian principles, which have been, sort of, in the genes of the Chinese population for 2,500 years.

Now, I want to say something about the most recent PISA [Program for International Student Assessment] study, which is made every three years, testing 15-year-olds in terms of three important fields: reading ability, mathematics, and science. In all three categories this year, Chinese pupils ranked at the top, while Germany and the United States, for example, ranked in the middle—falling actually, in terms of their ratings. An article in the Chinese media commented that maybe the West should reflect that the excellent education result from China has something to do with the policies of China and the success of the Chinese model.

I’ll leave that as food for thought, to start you on your way to ridding yourself of your prejudices, and informing yourself about what is really going on, especially why it is that the Chinese model is so attractive for so many developing countries—because it opens up a perspective for them to overcome their own poverty and underdevelopment. This is the reason we put out this pamphlet. You can get it by downloading it from our website https://larouchepub.com/special_report/2019/20191123-EndChinaWitchhunt.pdf or you can get a print copy by writing to us. Whichever method you choose, help us distribute it; encourage others to engage in serious discussions, rather than sterile, prejudicial party-line chatter, because that is very much in need.

We really must have a debate about the future of humanity, about what the right policies are: how to get back to the idea that the future is something we can shape, and create, and make positive for all of humanity, rather than just trotting our usual ways and being unconscious of what history is really all about at this incredibly exciting moment.

So, get active with us. And otherwise, I wish you a Merry Christmas!

Schlanger: And for those of you who want to go deeper into China and its programs, we have the World Land-Bridge report, a thorough study by the Schiller Institute. With that, Helga, thank you very much, and we’ll see you again next week.

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes, next week.