Time to Rebut the LaRouchites
by Chip Berlet
Before the advent of the Internet, it made sense not waste any time trying
to rebut the many false, outlandish, and conspiracist claims made by Lyndon
H. LaRouche, Jr. and his followers and supporters. Few people read them, and
fewer believed them.
Now it appears that more and more people are accepting a number of false claims
about me and my work. This has been escalated by LaRouche supporters attempting
to insert false and biased material into the excellent Internet resource, Wikipedia--a
free public domain encyclopedia. Especially irritating was a claim on a discussion
page that I had invented quotes by LaRouche. This is false. (See quote page
links below).
One aspect of the conspiracist claims by the LaRouchites was that I was part
of a vast conspiracy to target LaRouche for negative publicity as part of a
planned indictment of LaRouche by the federal government. They called a series
of meetings hosted by conservative activist "The Train Salon," and claimed
I was part of the conspiracy. I attended a 1985 meeting at Train's home in
New York to debate LaRouche with conservvative activists. The federal grand
jury in Boston had been established in 1984. I hardly could have conspired
to push for a grand jury that was already sitting. Furthermore, in 1981, Russ
Bellant, Dennik King, and I had already issued a press
release and press packet
calling for a government investigation of LaRouche.
And even before that, an
article I had written in 1980 in the weekly alternative newspaper the Chicago
Reader, had prompted a letter
from the office of the Attorney General in Illinois asking me to document my claims of questionable financial activity
by LaRouchites in Illinois. I provided all the documents that I was making
available to the public, but did not reveal any confidential sources or notes.
The investigation was started.
A year later the Chicago Sun-Times followed up with several hard-hitting
articles and an editorial calling for the investigation to move forward.
Alan P. Henry, "Anti-drug group finances extremists," Chicago
Sun-Times, 10/11/81
Editorial,
Chicago Sun-Times, 10/14/81
Alan P. Henry, "An extremist with an audience," Chicago
Sun-Times, 11/29/81
After the articles appeared, Chicago police informed me that an informant
had been approached by a person claiming to represent the LaRouche group seeking
to hire the informant to carry out acts of serious and life-threaening vandalism
on the homes or cars of both Sun-Times reporter Alan Henry and me.
As time permits, I will be updating this page.
For now, I leave you with this curious FBI memo
For more quotes, see:
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