PRESS RELEASE
Lyndon LaRouche Interviewed
On Radio Radicale, Rome, Italy
U.S. Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche was interviewed on a popular Italian radio station, Radio Radicale, on Sept. 20. The interview was broadcast from Rome during morning "drive time," and aired again on Sept. 22.
Radio Radicale is the official radio of the Radical Party and is popular well beyond its party base, since it is the only national radio that broadcasts live Parliament discussions. The interview was conducted by journalist Andrea Billau.
Billau: Radio Radicale. Once more, we deal with last week's terrorist attacks in the United States, and we do it by listening to a "voice out of the chorus," directly from the United States. Our listeners know this figure already, because we interviewed one of his collaborators, Amelia Robinson, who was also collaborator of Martin Luther King, and she told us about him. Today, he is on line with us: He is Lyndon LaRouche, an economist, several-time candidate for the U.S. Presidency. Good morning Dr. LaRouche!
LaRouche: Good day to you.
Billau:: I want to start with an article I have read, in which LaRouche insists that what happened last week in the United States is a genocidal attack carried out by rogue forces, coordinated from within the United States, because no foreign power has the capabilities to do what was done last Tuesday [Sept. 11]. Well, can you explain this statement, an important and serious statement, to us?
LaRouche: What was done could not be done by so-called international terrorist organizations. And technically, it could not have been done by the United States to the Soviet Union in the days of the old Cold War. This was a highly professional, top military operation. And this involves large resources and coordination, which do not exist outside of the United States. It involves elements which were recruited by the United States and other intelligence services of Europe and Israel, back during the days of the so-called Iran-Contra operation.
Looking at this professionally, what we are looking at, is the mode of operation which these acts of this past Tuesday, were the first days of an ongoing, attempted coup d'etat against the government of the United States. The very mode of the attack has two characteristics which will tell you what the issue is.
First of all, it occurs in the midst of the end-phase of the biggest financial collapse of modern history. Secondly, the obvious intention is what is called "geopolitical." The purpose of the attack is to set forth a clash of civilizations, as proposed for example by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel P. Huntington. There is a movement, as you know, in the world, for cooperation in face of the present world financial and related crises, especially on the Eurasian continent. This has been accelerated by concerns over the financial crisis, to find a new way of building our way out of the crisis. Other powerful forces are determined to prevent that from happening. On the surface, in the United States itself we get a lot of propaganda, especially from CNN, Fox News and people like that; but behind the scenes, in the relevant institutions, there is an awareness on the general nature of the crisis as being what I have just described, and serious people are working on that problem.
We hope, however, that we can get that job done before the next attack comes, because there will be an intended next attack. One of the things we are concentrating on is to get an early agreement to a Middle East peace between the Palestinians and Israel, because the danger is setting off a religious war, which then would create an uncontrollable world situation. That essentially sums up, in a small package, my views.
Billau: Therefore, in your view, Mr. LaRouche, Osama bin Laden is not responsible for this terrorist attack?
LaRouche: No. Osama bin Laden is a nuisance which was created by joint efforts of the British, U.S., and Israeli intelligence services, back during the days of the Afghansi War. In the meantime, he has become a nuisance to Russia, to other countries, so that those who are trying to evade the issue, are trying to get a focus on him as the problem. He is a problem, but he is not the problem behind the crisis behind the crisis in the United States today.
Billau: In order to better understand: Are you saying that there was a conspiracy, internal, not only to the United States, but to various Western countries as well? Who are the players in this conspiracy, and what result do they want to achieve?
LaRouche: We do not know who the players are. It is like hunting an animal, by a professional hunter. We do not have the name and the pedigree of the animal, but you have to read the spoor to know what the species is, what the habits are, and you have to read the mind of the animal. If you look at that from that standpoint, it becomes very clear as to what the nature of the identity of the animal behind this problem is. It is a certain mentality among people in Britain, in the United States and elsewhere, especially associated with the financier-speculator community. The crisis motivates them, as it was described in a Council of Foreign Relations study done last year in July: to think in terms of dictatorship as a way of dealing with the world financial collapse. This overlaps a group of people who shares the Brzezinski-Huntington conception of a clash of civilizations, as part of the way to handle this problem.
Now, this does not mean that people who think that are behind this coup. That does mean that those in command of the coup effort share that mentality. These would be people who are fanatics, who are located in the so-called religious right, and similar types of people, of which there is an abundance in the United States. This means former, retired, flag-rank officers who share that ideology. This means using part of the vast special-warfare capabilities which the United States and other countries have developed especially since the 1970s. It means the same kind of mentality that was behind terrorism in Italy, France, Germany, and so forth during the 1960s, '70s and '80s.
And, if you study coup d'etats in history, in modern history especially, what is unthinkable to many people, is the idea that what was done in Chile or other countries could not be done inside the United States. But it is possible in the United States under conditions of crisis. And my concern is that, since many people are afraid to say this, I have to take the leading role in encouraging those who should deal with this crisis, to deal with it appropriately. What concerns me the most in this, is the idiocy of the United States taking the policy of seeking revenge as a military policy, taking revenge upon people who may not be guilty of this operation. It is like a Southern, racist lynch mob, just lynching some guy who is African-American, simply because they want to kill an African-American, and it plays right into global religious war, which is the most dangerous thing that one can imagine.
Billau: Well, what really looks enormous in your hypothesis, you must admit, is that such internal Western forces organize, in order to unleash the clash of civilizations, the death of 20,000—we do not know how many, several thousands in any case—of Westerners, of Americans, in particular, with a spirit of, we could say, real kamikazes. Could you give us more elements that would help us to at least imagine such an enormous scenario?
LaRouche: Yes. If you understand the United States as I do: There are plenty of people in the United States, in very high ranking position, who could do that with impunity. Look at certain facts which are well known to people in the Vatican; look at the loss of respect for life; look at the spread of malthusianism as part of this wave of death which has been pushed in the world over the past twenty years; look what has happened with the reform of medical policy, of health care, in the United States; look at the welfare reform of 1996; look at those who propose that the world population must be reduced to a billion or less, quickly; look at a number of people into whose minds such ideas are acceptable; look at the leading U.S. press, and other publications, which shares that ideology; look at the universities, which teach that ideology; look at what has been done to destroy the mind of our young people with Nintendo games, videogames, and so forth. If you look at all those predicates, you have a development of an actually Satanic state of mind, which is spreading among larger parts of the world population, including the United States. My approach, therefore to all this, is not really to understand the problem, but to realize you have to use the crisis as the occasion, in a sense, to evangelize people back to a conception of what Man is. The only real cure of this problem is agape.
Billau: Well, now I would like to ask you this. If such forces had a techical, but also a propaganda capability—in your article, you attack CNN, the world's largest television network—my question is: At this point, did Bush fall into this giant trap, lock, stock and barrel?
LaRouche: Well, yes, and no. Bush is a very limited personality. Gore would have been a different President, but just as bad, in a different way. So, you have the institutions of the United States, especially the financial establishment, which reduced the choice of the President, last year, to these two choices. President Bush is only a limited person in a big job. He is facing, now, a crisis beyond his imagination. The important thing to look at, here, is that the President is the President of a Presidency which consists not only in the institutions of the Executive Branch of government, but, it can also call on the assistance of people who are not anymore active in government. To my knowledge, at this time, the institutions of the United States Executive Branch, at least a great part of it, are recognizing the existence of the problem I have described; they do not fully accept yet everything I have said, but they recognize that I am generally right.
So, on the one hand, you have the United States acting like an insane monster, which is afraid of the public opinion orchestrated by the mass news media; on the other side, the same Presidency, through the institution of the Presidency, is looking into alternatives to the kind of insanities which seems to be the U.S. policy right now.
And, very important, is the cooperation which the President is enjoying with other countries. Cooperation with Russia is very important, as well as with China. Under these conditions, the United States and these countries and Western Europe together, can lead a group of nations which can develop a solution, an alternative to the present crisis.
And the problem, therefore, is to have the key figure of the United State, who is now President, George Bush, to see this situation. This is like in the old days of feudalism: How do the wise advisors of the King advise him, when he really does not really understand how to handle the situation? So, many of us including me in my private capacity, as well as those in official capacities, are working together as much as possible to try to bring a solution to the situation, and escape from the madness which has seized the mind of much of the United States at this moment.
My view is this: If the people of the United States, and its leading institutions, recognize that a coup d'etat is in process, underway, and if leading nations of the world share that concern, then the forces behind this terror, which we just experienced, can not win. And the best way to defeat an enemy is to convince him that he can not win. And that is what I think the objective should be at this time. That is what I am trying to do.
Billau: And yet, it seems as if the general orientation of the United States and its allies is to launch a vast offensive against terrorism, but with very precise targets such as the famous bin Laden, Afghanistan, and other states which could have offered their support—Iraq etc. Then, despite the divisions and the awareness inside some circles in the U.S. administration, indicated by LaRouche, it looks like what you expose as the wrong answer, is exactly taking place.
LaRouche: Well, if they do not change their policy, then you can look for a planet-wide dark age coming soon. That policy is insane, we have got to change it. And those who study the history of religious wars know exactly what I am saying. What His Holiness has been working for over the recent period, especially, in this line, is absolutely indispensabile for the world at this time. And if we do not change the policy, we know what the penalty is. Therefore, we cannot assess policy on the basis of prevailing opinion, if the acceptance of prevailing opinion means Hell. This is the time for real leaders and real heroes who lead the poor sheep out of the valley.
Billau: A signal of a counter-tendency, in the last hours, is Arafat's statement against terrorism, the Israeli withdrawal from some positions in the West Bank and Gaza, and the possible meeting between Perez and Arafat. Could this, according to LaRouche, help to reverse the tendency?
LaRouche: It probably could. Once people understand that there is no such thing as international terrorism—it does not exist; terrorism is nothing than a method of war; it is not run by independent terrorist organizations. What the Israeli government is doing, what the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] is doing, is as much terrorism—it is even more so—than what the Palestinians are doing. If we bring about Middle East peace, or at least a peace agreement, go back to the Oslo Accord, back to Rabin's policy, then, as the activity of Secretary of State Powell has suggested, that turning point in the Middle East could be a turning point against the danger of the spread of general warfare. Therefore, the concentration of Powell and others on that particular point at issue, is extremely important.
Billau: Well, before we conclude our conversation, I would like to shortly go back to the terrorist attack and in particular, to the ongoing investigations. In the United States a network of terrorists has been identified, with names, family names, pilot licenses. etc. Is all this fake, according to you?
LaRouche: This is typical of desperate institutions which are trying to pretend that they are solving the problem. This has the characteristic of a witchhunt. If you are going to conduct an investigation of that kind, you don't spew it all over the mass media. When you hear this kind of public releases from government agencies, you say: Are they trying, actually, to investigate the case, or, are they trying to pretend to investigate the case? A lot of these names could be false; already there are strong indications of that. What you are dealing with, is a state of denial. You have to look at the state of mind of many institutions in the United States; corresponding to a decline in the moral and intellectual capability of the American people, is an increase in the state of denial.
Now, this includes people in key positions, faced with the fact that a major coup d'etat is in progress in the United States, and all leading institutions have the evidence that proves that. Then you say: Oh, no, it cannot be true; it must be these poor foreigners who are doing that to us. And this will be encouraged greatly by the retired flag-officer types, and similar types, who are running the coup. To turn U.S. public opinion and institutions into search of the enemy who is not there, in order to conceal the enemy who is there. The Americans would like to believe that the danger is a foreign danger, which can be eliminated solely by going to attack the foreigners, not dealing with the thing which is more fearful to them, the danger of the enemy within.
Billau: Lyndon LaRouche's thought is very clear. I wish to conclude by asking what do you think could Europe, and Italy as an ally of the United States, do in this situation.
LaRouche: First of all, you build up the cooperation which is developing between the United States, Russia, Western Europe, and other countries. An honest collaboration is what is needed. Not submission, but honest collaboration. You tell the United States government it is insane—but you do it politely. But also, provide alternative suggestions. People will sometimes not accept the existance of a problem unless somebody tells them the solution to that.
Remember, the underlying ground to this crisis is the collapse of the international and monetary financial system. We are now going over the edge in the worst monetary and financial crisis in world history. And that is where the underlying basis for collaboration should lie, not just on the negative side of dealing with this threat. If we can get collaboration in making the fundamental reversals in bad policies which have caused this crisis, they will bring the strong collaboration across the Atlantic which will help to solve this crisis. We have to get madness, panic, the revenge-seeking out of the problem; then we can solve it. And I would say, in one word: agapé.
Billau: Good. I thank Lyndon LaRouche, economist, several times Democratic candidate to the U.S. Presidency. And, we remind you now, because we forgot to do it at the beginning, LaRouche was imprisoned for five years during the Bush Presidency, the father of the current President. He was liberated after an international mobilization of Parlamentarians including, in Italy, Emma Bonino and Flaminio Piccoli.
Thank you Mr. LaRouche; and I wish everybody good work and good day.
