LaRouche: Calm Down!
The Enemy Is Right
Here In the U.S.A.
On Sept. 18, 2001, Lyndon LaRouche held a wide-ranging interview with Executive Intelligence Review Managing Editor John Sigerson. The transcript of the interview follows. It is also available as an audio archive.
Sigerson: Lyn, it's one week after the attacks on the Pentagon, and on the World Trade Center. You have been making comments over the whole week about that, starting with the events as they were going on last Tuesday. What do you have to say to the American people now?
LaRouche: The point is, the first thing is, people are frightened—the first consideration. The nature of the events is frightening, especially for this generation, and most of this population. They are showing signs of great anxiety; of course, most acute in the D.C. area and the New York area. Under these conditions, people tend to become suggestible. They tend to have fantasies, exert bad judgment.
Now, the first thing a commander does under conditions of war—and there are certain things about this situation which are analagous to war, in the real sense. You must have your troops, the fighting troops, not panic-stricken, calm, realistic, don't try to pump them up with false confidence, but a realistic view of the situation, and a sense that you are effectively in charge. And that's what the American people need now, as opposed to what CNN, for example, and Fox News have been doing with their television broadcasts. The worst possible thing you can do to the American people, to cause the worst kind of crisis.
Look at the situation.
First of all, what has happened to the United States is on last Tuesday, the 11th, it came under attack by a mysterious force, which I know is some kind of rogue operation inside the security screen of the United States. This did not come from the Middle East. It didn't come from Europe. It didn't come from South America. There may be people who are nationals from other parts of the world who were involved in this, but the operation is very sophisticated, and no one could do an operation like this, from outside the United States at present; there's no one who could do what was done here then.
So, we know it's a very high-level rogue operation inside our own country.
Now, that's not the only problem. When something like this happens, many other things begin to go wrong. People who are crazy, begin to do crazy things. People who are frightened, can be set off, shall we say, by these kinds of events, will do crazy things. So you have a general insecurity situation inside the country.
So, you've got to calm the thing down. The President doesn't know who's behind this yet—I think that's a fairly safe thing to say. But we have to approach from a command standpoint, as like a hunter. What a hunter does, as opposed to the bang-bang guy who goes out with a gun and shoots in all directions, hoping to see something: a hunter stalks his prey in a very systematic way. What the hunter does, is reads the spoor, and try to read the mind of that species of animal. Identify the species, identify the spoor, read the spoor, find out what kind of animal you're up against. With an animal.
Now, we're trying to find the perpetrators of this crime, not just to punish them, but to prevent them from doing what obviously they intend to do, something similar, worse, than they did on the 11th of September. So, therefore, you have to have a sense of a government which knows what it's doing, in defining who the enemy is, reading the enemy's mind from his spoor and from his capabilities, going at the problem in a systematic way, and turning to the American people and saying, "Here's what our situation is. Yes, we have an enemy within. It's a very powerful, very dangerous enemy. We don't know how far he's prepared to go, but we must conclude he's prepared to go further than he did on the 11th of September. But we're in charge. We're taking the following measures." That kind of thing.
You've got to give the American people a sense—and particularly the American people—a sense that you care for them, that you understand their problems, that you're in charge and you're taking responsibility. And you've got to calm them down, with a sense, that kind of approach.
That's what I tried to do in the course of the broadcast. I was talking to Jack Stockwell during this broadcast, and Jack and I, in a sense, were talking to each other, but we were both aware of the large listening audience on the radio from that station at that time. And we knew that would be picked up and relayed to other parts of the country. And therefore my job, as, for example, a Presidential candidate, someone who knows what it is to be President, is to say to the American people what I would say as President, and hope that would echoed by the actual incumbent, sitting President in the next phase. And that's what's needed at this time.
There are no guarantees. I think we can lick the problem. But if the American people go crazy, or if they're terrified by what CNN and Fox News and others are doing to them in the mass media, then we're in real trouble.
Sigerson: Do you think the President is going to follow your advice?
LaRouche: I think there are probably by now, there are indications that there are a number of the institutions of the United States who probably agree with me, and probably are thankful for what I did. I certainly know that many governments abroad, or leading circles in those governments, do agree with me.
I think that some of these people who are experts, have the ear of the President as his advisers, I think that they are reporting to him the kinds of things that I would wish them to report to him. There's still a lot of confusion. Still a lot of things are being said, and by others, and things aren't being done that should be done. But I think that to some degree, some of the message is getting through. I just hope, enough of the message, and I hope in time.
Sigerson: On another question, there's obviously a large, at least according to the media, a large buildup for some kind of military operation in Afghanistan, as a punishment for Osama bin Laden, it seems. Do you think the United States should go into Afghanistan?
LaRouche: No, not at all.
There may be a reason to do something like that, but at this point there is no reason to anticipate going into Afghanistan, or any other country, at this time.
The practical thing is to get a Middle East peace immediately, to end this war which is going on in Israel, in the area of Israel, to bring about peace there. You would hope that Sharon would cooperate with us, and realize that what he's doing, in avoiding the kind of peace process which Oslo set into motion, that he's actually contributing to a great danger to the United States, and many other countries at this time. Therefore, we would hope he would come to his senses, with other Israeli leaders, and work to calm this thing down. Because that's our major danger.
Our major problem is inside the United States. There are two things we have to consider. It is not accidental that this attack, on us, occurred at precisely the time that the ongoing international monetary and financial collapse was reaching a peak point, a point of crisis. And things like this, happen in times like this. So obviously, some very powerful group of people, inside our country, perhaps with some cooperation from outside, but essentially inside our country, decided to do the equivalent of a coup d'etat against the United States. Which meant, methods of terror to make the population malleable, to accept what they're to do, and at some point, come forward, and actually represent a new kind of government of the United States, to replace the present government. That's their objective.
So therefore, one of our things we have to do, we have to preempt this, by dealing with the financial and monetary crisis now.
For example, right now the airline system of the United States is crashing. Not that the planes are crashing, but the finances are crashing. We can't have that. We cannot allow the essential airline industry, which is a part of our national infrastructure, to collapse. Therefore the government must step in, not with a bailout of Wall Street, but with a plan to supply credit and reorganization—that is, government-protected reorganization of the airline industry—to ensure this thing functions. And to give them a plan which would, perhaps over a year, or 10 years or 20 years, allows the industry to come back to full self-sustaining stability. That kind of protection.
There are other things we must do. So therefore, the first thing is to realize we must act upon the general nature of the world situation, the effects of the international monetary and financial crisis, which is a point of danger. Things like the Middle East war, which must be calmed down, a point of danger. We must win the confidence of the American people for measures of this type. And we must act.
In that process we will weaken the potential of the enemy who is now preparing to strike again. And if we make the American people aware of this, then no coup d'etat could be successful in the United States. Then the enemy is morally, and politically, defeated, whatever power he represents. Those, I think, are the immediate objectives.
Sigerson: So, you have talked a lot in the past about a Pearl Harbor effect in the population, as being the only way to get the American population to effectively act, to realize the kind of solutions that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was able to implement, following Pearl Harbor the last time. So you're saying, that this crisis, which some people have also compared to Pearl Harbor, could also have that effect.
LaRouche: Well, I had hoped to avoid anything like a Pearl Harbor effect. My view was, that—I had made certain proposals. Numbers of people around the world, including people close to the Vatican, for example, leading Italian politicians, or Senators, and members of the House of Deputies, and others. People from all over the world had endorsed my proposal for a New Bretton Woods, which means: address the present financial crisis, by admitting that the system we've had for the past 30 years, has failed.
What Nixon set into motion in August 1971, the so-called floating exchange rate system, measures taken by Carter afterward, have been the biggest catastrophe the United States has faced economically in the 20th century—it was a mistake! So, between 1945 and the middle of the 1960s, despite all the mistakes that were made in the period, we had an economy that worked. Europe recovered from a war and depression. South American survived. Japan was rebuilt. Other parts of the world benefitted. Some didn't. We didn't have cooperation with everybody, but it worked. The old system.
So, I said, simply, the American people are not prepared yet, nor other nations, to experiment with some new-fangled kind of approach. They are prepared to say, "This system isn't working. Hey, please, let's go back to the one that did work." And therefore, if you would have enough political figures who would make that decision, and announce it to the American people, you would find a sudden change in the attitude of the American people. Because people, like our Americans, they're frightened people. They don't tell the truth. They deny things that frighten them. They pretend that something else is the problem, rather than the thing that frightens them the most. They will not face up to the idea of a general financial collapse, which threatens their bank, which threatens their employment, which threatens their community—they will not face this reality, unless first, as Franklin Roosevelt understood this very clearly: you have to say, "We know your problem; we're going to deal with it."
At that point, when people have a credible offer of a solution for their problem, they will now admit the problem exists. Under those conditions, if enough American people, leaders, had said to the American people during the year 2000, during the Presidential election campaign, "This is the situation. This is what we have to do about it, this is what we have to be prepared to do." The American people would have listened—or most of them. And politicians would then have the support of the American people, and we would have this thing under control.
If you don't deal with a problem like this in a timely fashion, if government says, as the Gore campaign, and the Bush campaign said in the year 2000, "We're not going to talk about it." Not a single one of them said a word about the worst financial crisis in history, which was coming on down then. Not a word. They're running for President. The biggest thing anyone's going to face as President in the year 2001, is the worst financial crisis in modern history. Not a word. Not a whimper. They left the American people exposed psychologically, to the impact of something for which the American people were not prepared, psychologically.
If you try to run an operation like that, and you keep postponing; you pretend it's not true—"Oh no, the market will always rebound," things like that. When it hits, the shock will drive people into a state of anxiety, where their behavior becomes unpredictable, highly irrational, and dangerous. And that happened.
So now we've come to a Pearl Harbor effect. As I saw in that famous Sunday in December 7, 1941, as I was walking the streets of New York that morning, Manhattan, and it was a strange atmosphere in the streets. It was Sunday. The streets were largely deserted. I walked into a hotel lobby where I had a business appointment, and I found out what was happening—Pearl Harbor had been struck. And during the rest of that day, people were running looking for the recruiting offices, military recruiting offices. In panicked mobs. "I want to join up, I want to join up." So, that was a Pearl Harbor effect which changed the behavior of the American people in one day.
And we've come to that time where we have a Pearl Harbor-like effect, not a good one, but an effect, and therefore we have to change now. So therefore, the leaders have to respond to this reality, and reassure the American people, not with phoney promises, but reassure in a way that makes the American people ready to face the problem. And then work on the solutions.
Sigerson: You said that the enemy is within. Do you expect further attacks, and if so, it's hard to imagine, but do you expect further attacks soon, or will the enemy wait for things to calm down?
LaRouche: No.
This attack that was done in New York and in Washington, targetted the people of the United States. What did they hit?
They hit New York City. New York City is symbol of the financial power of the United States—that's only a symbol, it's not really the financial power of the world, but it's a symbol of that in people's mind. It's the greatest concentration, outside of London, of the financial center population. They attacked the personnel in the Pentagon, which is the command of the military forces. These were psychological attacks against the U.S. population. It was not an attempt to kill the President—no sign of it. And, as I read the mind of the enemy, the enemy had no intention to kill the President at this time. Maybe later, yes. Though the people who said there was a threat to the life of the President, were right. Anytime something like this happens, the Secret Service, and other agencies, have to assume there's a threat to the President, and act as if they had actual knowledge of a threat, under those conditions, even if there's no actual threat known. The very fact of an attack on New York City in that way, indicates that there's a threat to the President of the United States; you don't do that to the United States, without representing a potential threat, immediately, to the life of the President.
Because what do you want to do with it? Why do you want to attack the United States? Obviously, to defeat it. How can you defeat it with an attack like that? Well, maybe, bring down its government, attack its centers of government. They weren't at that this time. This time, they were trying to panic the American people.
Now that means that they're not ready to make the coup d'etat yet. That means that they'll be looking for a next operation which would probably, knowing the mind of the animal, will be different than this operation, that just happened. But it will be a larger scale attack on the American population.
Then, if the population is sufficiently malleable, by being terrified by this, then they might go for the actual coup d'etat. But we're looking at a threat of a coup d'etat against the United States government.
Now, therefore, I know how these things can be done. I've been at this counterintelligence for a long time.
So, we're playing a mind game against an animal, in the forest, an animal whose spoor I have read, and whose necessary species I know. I do not know the names of the animals. I don't know where they're located. I can guess. Therefore, we're playing a mind game against the enemy, which is this animal—the coup potential, the rogue element inside our security forces, with whatever allies it has and accomplices it has. Therefore, we have to conduct our policy not merely to find him, and neutralize him, but we also have to take measures which will frustrate his ability to achieve the effects for which he aims.
Therefore, we have to do as I say. First of all, you have to calm the population; you have to say what the enemy's nature is. Stop talking about Arab terrorists; this is not our problem. They're are problems of that type in the world, but this is not our problem here. Name the names—as much as we can. Say what the danger is. Say we're determined to stop it, and say that if the enemy tries to run a coup d'etat, the American people will rise up and destroy him if he tries it.
That's the first thing to be made clear. Because we don't know where he is. We don't know where to hunt him out. We don't have his name, but we know what kind of an animal he is, and we know what his game. Therefore, we maneuver as you in warfare, where you don't see the enemy's eyes. You know his troops are there, and you deal with him accordingly.
Sigerson: Well, let's get this a little bit clearer, though. I mean, there are people in the United States now who are arguing that it's the U.S. government that did it. I've heard arguments going so far as to say, that George Bush did it himself. Now, you're saying that it's rogue elements inside the government.
LaRouche: They're inside the government, probably, but you have Mr. X. See, Mr. X on the one hand is a government official, or a member of some part of the security establishment. Maybe a retired general officer, acting in some other capacity. So, you know him by his right name, his ordinary name. But he has another identity, as a member of this organization.
Also, in these kinds of things, an operation like this has a very tricky command structure. The command structure is designed to be an efficiently centralized command structure, but on a need-to-know basis, so the various elements that are being deployed, really don't know what they're doing. We've seen this before.
Sigerson: But, inside the United States.
LaRouche: Inside the United States. The danger lies inside the United States. An outside attack on us would be dangerous to anyone, any enemy. We don't have much power left, but we have that kind of power. Nobody better attack the United States from the outside. We are vulnerable to an attack delivered by an agency from the inside. And that's something I think frightens some people in government, who may suspect I'm right on this one.
How do you tell the American people they have to look for the danger from the inside? Isn't it convenient to say, we're going to go out and hit somebody, particularly when you have idiots like CNN, and Fox News, clamoring for the United States to go out and run a "clash of civilizations," to turn the planet into a global religious war, in attacking a billion Muslims on this planet—stirring up you know not what else?
They're nuts. And the first thing is to shut these guys. Don't take away their civil rights, but come out and say, "These are clowns, don't listen to them."
If the President of the United States says, "Don't listen to CNN, don't listen to Fox News, they're a bunch of irresponsible clowns lying to you, and just trying to drive you crazy," it probably would a very good thing for him to do.
Sigerson: Okay. What should, then,... you've gone through what Americans shouldn't fear. What should your average American do under these circumstances?
LaRouche: First of all, is face the truth.
He needs some help. I found that what we're doing, what I'm doing and my associates are doing, and others, is working. That people to whom we speak, you know... First thing you do is, how do you speak to American people? Speak in a calm voice, even level, calm—"Relax, friend." "Let's think about this, think about what you're saying, think about what you're being told. Do you really think it's true?"
Get people from panicking, get them to think. We find, it's works. Oh, you'll have a few people who are crazy already, driven crazy by this stuff. But most people will tend to think, if you approach them in the right away.
So, first of all, we have to, I, my associates, and others, have to approach the American people calmly: Say, "Look, it's a terrible threat. We don't deny it." "There's a terrible depression coming down. Don't deny it." But we say, we can lick these things. We can defeat the enemy. We can control this depression. We can survive this quite nicely. We did it under Roosevelt; we've learned lesssons—we can do it again. So we don't need to worry about that. What we need to worry about, is, can we get ourselves together, to get the governement to do what it has to do.
That's what has to be done essentially. If you got the American people mobilized behind you, on the basis of that kind of voice, that kind of determination, you know have an army, the army of the people of the United States. The army will mobilize as an army, to fight the enemy it has. And I think this army will do fairly well.
Sigerson: In 1995, your magazine, Executive Intelligence Review, put out a special report which discussed in great detail, the British intelligence involvement in all sorts of terrorist activities internationally, and domestically. Do you think there's a British involvement in the current operations?
LaRouche: Yes. There are probably two sides in Britain on this one, as there are in this country.
For example, terrorism, modern terrorism, in the present form, was unleashed as a mass phenomenon in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere in 1968. Some of the same people who were leaders, or key participants, in terrorism in 1968, such as, for example, the Basque terrorists in Spain, have been continuously functioning as terrorists to the present day.
Sigerson: That's the ETA.
LaRouche: The ETA. They're part of this operation. They were part of the operation.... Remember we had this planned terrorist deployment in Washington, D.C. for the end of September. This was headed up by an international intelligence figure named Teddy Goldsmith. Teddy Goldsmith is the brother of the deceased Jimmy Goldsmith, who's a key part of Iran-Contra, what we called Iran-Contra, that created the Afghansi operation, which created Osama bin Laden, created him. So this was a British-American-Israeli operation, essentially—this terrorist operation, and it was used for political effects. It was not a bunch of independent terrorists running around organizing terrorists organizations. These things were organized from the top, by the so-called secret, or special warfare, branches of govenrment, or similar kinds of government agencies, and powerful agencies, financial and so forth.
So, part of this was British intelligence; you had an element in the United States. Take the United States in the past 25 years.
The terrorism which created the Afghansis was first launched on behalf of the United States by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the man who designated Jimmy Carter to be nominated as President of the United States, and who became his national security adviser. It was under Brzezinski that the Afghansi was created, as an Afghan operation against the Soviet system. It was sort of like a Vietnam operation against the Soviet system.
So, this kind of terrorism is that. That has continued to the present day.
In the 1980s, in the name of counter-terrorism, operating out of one branch of the National Security Council, you had what became known as Iran-Contra. This was another level.
Now, you had the 1970s terrorism, which was organized out of govenrment agencies. In Italy, in France, and so forth. You had the 1980s terrorism, which was organized by the same forces. British and the British, Israeli, and U.S. forces were key in this stuff. Certain elements of NATO—funny, funny departments of NATO—were involved.
Today, this crowd, that is now training and directing the operational aspects of the terrorism planned for Washington, D.C. for the end of this month, this crowd is trained by people who were part of the generation of '68 terrorists, part of the generation of the 1970s terrorists, part of the generation of the 1980s terrorists. So you have a terrorist capability loose on this planet. And this is known, it can be identified, it can be dealt with, it can be exposed, and if you expose adequately, you can neutralize it.
Sigerson: So, you're saying that the enemy that committed this act, one week ago, although U.S.-based, or based partially in the U.S., could be using these elements, like bin Laden, and so forth.
LaRouche: I think bin Laden is not too important. I don't think he's particularly significant for this particular operation. But the same people who, as a command group, were operating in things like the terrorism of the 1960s, '70s, '80s, who were involved in Iran-Contra—which was actually a terrorist operation, if you want to know, an irregular warfare operation. The same people are loose, and it is in that command structure, that somebody could pull together a group of people who have access to all kinds of resources, and know how to do these things.
Because the mind that runs this kind of special warfare operation is a special kind of military mind. So you're looking for top-grade military-strategic specialists, who know how to set up and operation as skillful and technologically-polished as this attack on New York and Washington was. No amateur is going to this; no rough-and-tumble terrorist can do that. They can do certain things; they're part of the auxiliaries of the operation. But they're not the people who can set up the kind of operation we're presented with.
And we have this element—the command element is still here. Nobody's exposed it. It's not been caught. It's ready to strike again. And with the behavior of CNN and so forth, it's being given all the encouragement it needs to strike at its choosing.
The only defense we have now, is an increasing awareness, in some part of the political command-structure and elsewhere; possibly including key people in the White House; who, while not saying much about it publicly, are aware that this kind of problem exists. And therefore, they are probably beginning to act.
The only thing that will prevent the enemy from acting, is our taking some kind of preemptive action of that type. If you expose the problem—a terrorist problem, a cover-up problem—you largely weaken it, if not destroy it.
Sigerson: Do you think that this has anything to do with the Oklahoma bombing?
LaRouche: Well, it's the same kind of operation. The Oklahoma bombing obviously required a capability which Timothy McVeigh did not have, nor his associate. Somebody decided to put the lid on it. He was willing to have himself killed as a martyr for the cause.
Now, what about these guys who flew planes into the Pentagon, or into the two buildings in New York City? They're willing to be martyrs for a cause. They have such pleasure in killing themselves, they could do that with precision. Timothy McVeigh advertised himself as a man who was willing to do what was done at Oklahoma City with precision—well, not precision; he didn't have the capability. But you have organizations like that—and obviously McVeigh came from an organization like that—which is why I protested so loudly against the way in which he was railroaded into a quick conviction. What we needed was counterintelligence, against whatever was really behind what he did.
The problem was, from my standpoint, that when this happened at Oklahoma City, very soon higher authorities stepped in, and put the lid on other leads that might have led to others—"We got the man! Try him! Hang him! Get rid of him! Cover it up!" Like a cat covering up what it just did.
Sigerson: What do you think foreign governments could do, right now, in order to help the United States? I know there are a lot of foreign governments that are very, very wary of what they think the United States is about to do, with the Middle East adventure. They're terrified, in fact.
LaRouche: They're afraid that they think the United States is proposing to do things that are crazy, for the United States and for everyone concerned. That is, launching a so-called revenge attack. Revenge is the worst idea in military science. You never practice revenge in military practice—never! You win wars—war means a peaceful, successful conclusion to a conflict. And your objective is to achieve that, with the least expenditure of time and effort possible, especially life.
You never go to war for revenge. We had that in the European experience, in the period from 1511-1648; which is the period in which Europe was dominated, and almost destroyed by religious war...
Sigerson: That was the Thirty Years War.
LaRouche: ...but also: from 1511. All the wars of the 16th Century. Most of the major wars, wars of the Netherlands; all the other wars, were largely religious wars. In these religious wars, the character of the warfare was revenge. In the Crusades, there was an element of the same thing. The character of the warfare was religious warfare—revenge.
There are other things in history of the same kind. You never fight war for revenge! You never chase a defeated enemy and try to make war on him. You try to induce him to surrender, or to come to an agreement which ends the causes of the war. And if you have a peace agreement, you honor it! You don't look for victims; you don't look for revenge.
Revenge is a motive which leads to new dark ages of civilization. People who pose it, don't know what they're doing, and should be kept out of political and military command! Fire them! Don't keep them in there! They're a menace to peace and civilization.
So that's one concern, but there's another aspect to this. The governments of the world are afraid, not of terrible things that the United States might do—that's not the fear. The fear, as expressed in France and in Germany in the past week, for example, is the fear that—and they use this language—that this kind of attack will cause a clash of civilizations.
Now, "clash of civilizations" is the language of Zbigniew Brzezinski. Now, Brzezinski represents the kind of mentality—I'm not saying that Brzezinski is behind the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington—but Brzezinski represents the state of mind of the kind of person who would want to do that. He might not intend to do that. But his state of mind would lead at least other people to do that.
Sigerson: As an attack against the former Soviet Union?
LaRouche: No, the purpose is very simple. The possibility now—and it's coming, rapidly—that the Eurasian continent, and its adjoining islands, has been moving into a step-by-step cooperation, economic cooperations for rejuvenation of that continent from the conditions of ongoing financial and monetary collapse. This would mean that the continent would tend to be united as an economic force, for economic purposes.
Western Europe, for example, which is bankrupt, would now have a market opened in China, India and elsewhere, for export of high technology. You would have long-term agreements, large-scale infrastructure projects which would create vast new employment opportunities, and new wealth in Eurasia. This would make Eurasia a power.
Now, there are certain people, in the United States and Britain, who see themselves as the English-speaking, maritime power that rules the world. And they see any such development, involving Japan, Russia, China, India, Southeast Asia, Western Europe—that kind of cooperation—they see as a threat, in the long term, to their continued ability to rule this planet, as a maritime, financier power.
Therefore, there're some people, like Brzezinski, and Kissinger, who say, "Break it up." How do you break it up? Well, you start wars. We've had two world wars, over this issue, in the last century. The British organized World War I, and they're solely responsible for it. Other people were idiots, but the British monarchy, specifically organized it, as a geopolitical war, to prevent France, Germany, Russia, Japan, China, from cooperating around ideas such as the Trans-Siberian Railroad, or the Berlin-Baghdad Railroad. To break that up, the British ran an operation to put France and Russia, against Germany, Austro-Hungary, and so forth. We finally got in—in the war. But, that was a geopolitical war.
World War II was started as a geopolitical war: Some British interests, and some financial interests in New York City—Averell Harriman and company—put Hitler into power in January of 1933, with the intent, that Hitler would move Germany for an attack on the Soviet Union, and then France and Britain would attack the rear of Germany, while Germany was deeply involved in conquering the Soviet Union. That was their plan. It wasn't going to work. So, therefore, the British got the United States to get into the war. We got in happily, because we wanted to defeat Hitler.
But, that's how that war had happened. We're now headed for the potential third geopolitical war in a hundred years. And, Brzezinski wants to start it, to prevent the nations of Central Asia, as being a fulcrum point for bringing East Asia and Western Europe into continguity.
My view, of course, is that, it's in our interest, that Eurasia should unite in that way, for an economic recovery, in Asia, in which we would hope that the United States would participate; and, find that as a market, for what we should go back to producing, and exporting into this part of the world. But, some people, in the United States and Britain, think differently.
Now, the key weapon these guys have: They say, could they induce Israel to start a religious war in the Middle East? Israel could not win a war in the Middle East, now. They have the conventional ability to win a war; but they could not occupy and hold the territory. They would be destroyed by the attempt to occupy and hold adverse territory. So, they would be forced to go to so-called weapons of mass destruction. That would be sufficient to throw the whole continent into flames. Some people say, we don't want the Israelis to do that. Other people say, the United States has to do that. We have to do that. We have to keep the Israelis out, the way it was done with Desert Storm. Keep the Israelis out; we'll do the job, on Iraq. And, the same thing is coming back now.
So, there are people who have a mentality which tends to push them into schemes of this type. You have a war-game that was run in July of 2000, in New York, at CFR.
Sigerson: Council on Foreign Relations—
LaRouche: Yeah. Which ran this simulation: What do you do when an economic crisis—along these kinds of lines.
So, we have people, typified by Brzezinski—people like that—who, in the establishment, are talking and thinking in these terms. So, therefore, why assume that there are not other people in the establishment, maybe with general or flag officer rank, or retired, and others, who think the same thing, share the same thoughts, and say, "Well, we're men of action. We're going to do something about it." How do we get the United States to go that way? Well, you terrify the United States; you overthrow the government; you establish the equivalent of a military dictatorship. And we go gung-ho! Right?
And, that's the kind of danger.
So, therefore, what happens in Russia—which is key in this thing: The key nation for cooperation, with the United States, is Russia. Russia is on bad times; so are we! It does not have the degree of military power it had ten years, twelve years ago. But, it is a great power, still. It has the command structure at the top, including military intelligence and other elements of command structure, which are that of a great power. And, it's the greatest power on this planet, after the United States, in terms of this capability.
Russia wishes to recover. It has a President, Putin, who, around him, is oriented toward recovery and a Eurasian cooperation. Who has sought and is willing to cooperate with the United States. If we and Russia—if the President of the United States and the President of Russia—agree on this problem, and say we're going to outflank it, under those circumstances, the nations of Western Europe will rejoice, and will cooperate. And much of the rest of the world will cooperate. And, then, we can, as a global force of allied nations, or nations which are acting as partners—we could bring this problem under control. That's the possibility.
So, therefore, yes: They are concerned. What they're afraid of, is that, if we don't get the kind of cooperation, between the United States and Eurasia; between the United States and Russia, and with Western Europe, China, India, and so forth—Japan, and so forth—unless we get that kind of cooperation, this world is headed for Hell.
So, therefore, the immediate, obvious danger, is: The United States will do something foolish, in military adventures, in so-called reprisal warfare. The more general danger is, that we don't cooperate, for a much higher purpose, of bringing this world into order, where this kind of threat no longer arises.
Sigerson: To change the topic a little bit. On the question of the financial situation: Yesterday, the stock market opened. It went down quite a bit. I think, today, the airlines went to the White House, hat in hand, asking for a huge amount of government aid—direct aid—to help bail them out. The government seems disposed to giving large quantities of money, for, obviously, the reconstruction of New York—the World Trade Center; but, seems to also want to give a lot of money elsewhere. Is this the right direction to go? Or, what would be the effect if they just continued to print money this way?
LaRouche: A bailout is absolutely wrong. You have two tendencies, in the United States, on this issue. There's a general understanding, we have to deal with this financial collapse. Wall Street is about to go under. No question about it. Greenspan, and similar, like-minded idiots, are hitting the panic button. "Bail out! Bail out! Bail out! At any price! Bail out for tomorrow! Bail out for tomorrow! Bail out for tomorrow! We don't care about next week: Bail out tomorrow—!" They're crazy. They're men of desperation.
There are other people in the woodwork, who are key bankers, political influentials, who disagree strongly with Greenspan, and say, we've got to do other things—of the kind that I've been proposing.
Now, the government should not pour out money, to bail out bankrupt corporations. You don't do that in a private bankruptcy, do you? You have a firm. You want to save the firm. The firm's accounts show that it is technically, financially, bankrupt. What do you do? You put the firm under bankruptcy protection. You want it to continue to function. You freeze certain things. You come in and give it protection, against foreclosure. You come in—. Now you get a line of credit organized, organized by the government; not money, but a line of government credit—like store credit. The government creates a line of credit, which is a guarantee, that this company will be able to function,—or this group of companies, this industry, will be able to function in its normal fashion, over the next ten, twenty years. It's undergoing reorganization, will find a way of dealing with this pile of unpaid bills, which it can't handle, at present.
So, you don't want more stock speculation. You don't want to boost the stock, by a big infusion of money. What you want to do, is, you want to walk in and say, "Okay, boys. We'll give you bankruptcy protection, as an industry. An emergency has been created; an emergency, which has been created by the world financial crisis; an emergency which has been aggravated, by what has happened here, with this incident in New York and Washington, which was terrible. Therefore, under the conditions of emergency, we will give you production. The power of government, will protect you. You will also be given—we'll go to the Congress. We'll get you a long-term line of credit. What you need? Ten? Twenty years, to rebuild? You'll get it! Not as cash. Not as payment to your stockholders: But insurance that you continue to do that job, that you're doing. That you will function. That you will maintain your equipment. You'll maintain your flights."
Just the same way used to protect the railroads. It's a national asset. It's an essential part of our national infrastructure. We need it! Therefore, we're not going to sit back, and watch it go down the drain. It's ours. It may be private companies, but the benefit these private companies are giving us, is ours. Therefore, we protect our interest in what they're doing, and keep them functioning.
We have a number of cases like that. We have a situation like that in much of the energy industry—and utility area. Same thing. We're going to have other sections of the economy, that are going to go under—the same thing. What we have to do, is reorganize the finances. Put the shebang under bankruptcy reorganization. Organize lines of credit—not pour money out—to get people back to work.
And, what we have to do, above all, is, put the U.S. economy back among breakeven. Look, for the past years, the United States has been running a massive current account deficit. That is, we have been earning less, than we have been spending, in buying from the world. Therefore, for a great number of years, this means that we have been operating as bankrupts. Been operating at a loss. We no longer have the ability to generate the wealth to pay our own bills. We have been borrowing money from the world—from yen, and other parts of the world, flooding in as financial capital; we've been printing paper money, at a hyperinflationary rate, as a way of keeping it going. We can't go on like this!
The solution is: We can reorganize everything. But, how are you going to have a viable company, or a viable national economy, when you get through with all the reorganizing? You have to have a growth factor. It means you have to put people to work, producing wealth. We have a vast infrastructure gap in this country, and in the world. We must do two things: We must have an export drive, in cooperation with Eurasia, especially, in which we are now going to commit ourselves to produce products that the world needs for the development of its infrastructure: rail systems, and other kinds of things they need; technology needed for local communities, around the world. We're going to produce that, on long-term arrangements. We're, at the same time, going to increase our internal, domestic employment, by cranking up some of the infrastructure development, we desperately need, such as the utility industry. So, we will crank it up.
So, we will now bring the economy above a loss ratio, which—we're now operating at a loss! as the current account deficit teaches us. We must now go to the profit side, where we are actually producing more and earning more, than we're spending! Now, the way to do that, is not to cut the number of people who eat! The way to do it, is to put a number of the people who are unemployed or inadequately employed, into producing things we need.
So, that's what government has to do.
Sigerson: Well—that's good! Do you have any final comments?
LaRouche: No, I think, just what I said, at the beginning. We're in a terrible crisis, the worst crisis we've faced, probably since the Civil War in our country. And, since a long time in the history of European civilization. It's a terrible crisis. It's awful. We saw what happened in New York; what happened in Washington: It's awful. It could become much worse.
Some of us, think about what our lives mean for the future of humanity. And, we act, not because of what benefit we calculate for ourselves, personally, in the here and now. We estimate what we should do and what we do for future generations of humanity. When people used to have children, and maintain families, and didn't get divorces every time they didn't like the dinner, that one or the other cooked—you had long-term perspectives on the basis of children and grandchildren. People would locate their connection to the future, in terms of the family. That has not become so fashionable, nowadays. Usually, the children are taught in school to hate their parents, and so forth: It's not a very good situation.
But, there are some of us around, who still think that way: That the importance of our lives, lies not in what we get, but it lies in what we give, to the future of humanity. People who think like that, as I do, are leaders. They're not only leaders, because they're qualified to be leaders—because that does qualify them to be leaders—but, they're just committed to be leaders. It's like a profession. It's like being a doctor. It's like being a teacher. You don't do it, because you want to get money; some do, of course. But, you do it, because, you think, that's what you, as a person, should do, with your life. The teacher looks at the children, and says, "What's going to become of these children, as a result of my being a teacher?" The physician thinks, "What's going to happen to my community, as a result of my being a physician?" They have a sense of identity, which reaches beyond their mortal life. They're leaders, on all levels.
We, who are leaders, or who have the capacity to think as leaders, must take the crisis of our time, think as leaders, and try to impart our sense of building the future, to the rest of our citizens. And, say to them, that, no matter what happens, to any of us, we guarantee, that your life, will not be wasted. That, whatever good you do, the rest of us are dedicated to perpetuate, for the benefit of the future of humanity. And, you can smile, because your future, in that sense, is assured—your sense of identity.
Sigerson: Thank you very much, Mr. LaRouche.
