PRESS RELEASE
DOCUMENTATION
Wall Street Journal's Column on LaRouche
The Wall Street Journal's June 9, 2003 "Thinking Things Over" editorial-page column by its editor emeritus, Robert L. Bartley, was entitled "Joining LaRouche In the Fever Swamps: The New York Times and the New Yorker go off the deep end." We publish excerpts here, sufficient to show that LaRouche is clearly understood to be, and opposed as, the initiator of the world-wide exposure of the "Straussian cabal" running Bush Administration war policy. See also Lyndon LaRouche's reply.
"It does seem to be true that the LaRouche screed was first in line in thrusting Leo Strauss, author of such volumes as Natural Right and History, into the middle of the debate over the Iraq war. The theme was later sounded by James Atlas in the New York Times and Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker.
"Mr. Atlas's article on 'Leo-Cons' included a photo essay with shots of Mr. Strauss and presumed disciples including Edward Shils, Allan Bloom, Saul Bellow, Albert Wohlstetter, on to Clarence Thomas and Leon Kass.... Mr. Hersh's "Selective Intelligence" basically aired one side of an intelligence debate, defending dovish (or if you prefer, intellectually conservative) CIA analysts. It described the other side as "the Straussian movement," citing Mr. Wolfowitz and Abram Shulsky, head of a special Pentagon shop set up to review intelligence on Iraq. And it included a quote from an academic about 'Strauss's idea—actually Plato's—that philosophers need to tell noble lies not only to the people at large but also to powerful politicians.'
"Looking at the striking similarities in these accounts, the conspiracy-minded might conclude that the New York Times and New Yorker have been reduced to recycling the insights of Lyndon LaRouche....
"To those of us who have lived this history over the decades, the notion of a Strauss conspiracy is totally unhinged. Leo Strauss, I learned as graduate student in the 1960s, was a champion of ancient philosophers, a critic of attempts at empirical political science if not of modernity itself. While this is centuries and leagues removed from Saddam Hussein, it's true that Mr. Strauss did influence Irving Kristol and his wife Gertrude Himmelfarb, and through them other neo-conservatives.
"It happens that I did a lot to put this term on the intellectual map as the 1970s dawned, with profiles of Mr. Kristol and Norman Podhoretz. The "neo" meant that they were conservative converts from earlier radicalism....
"It also happens that I had a long association with the late Albert Wohlstetter, who was in fact the key intellect in promoting new defense policies, in particular the accurate weapons that dominated Iraq, and also in mentoring Mr. Wolfowitz, Mr. Perle and others. But his background was as a mathematical logician and advocate of operational research. Despite Mr. Atlas's ludicrous classification of Wohlstetter as a Straussian, the two had nothing in common except the University of Chicago campus.
"While Mr. Wolfowitz took two courses from Mr. Strauss, he was in fact a student of Mr. Wohlstetter....
"As one of the few people who ran with both neo-conservatives and the Wohlstetter circle, let me testify that they did not appear at each other's conferences or dinner tables. But prominent members of each are Jewish. This is what the recent conspiracy charges are ultimately about....
"This is the ugly accusation an alert reader should suspect in encountering the word 'Straussian,' or these days even 'neo-conservative' in the context of the Iraq debate. Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle find their Jewish heritage a point of attack. But George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are gentiles. Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell don't look Jewish to me, but they also helped draft the basic statement of the Bush Doctrine, the September 2002 'National Security Policy of the United States.'...
"The impulse is so strong that Leo Strauss gets exhumed, words are twisted from their meaning, and the Times and New Yorker make common cause with Lyndon LaRouche."