The LaRouchite Critique

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While Carto's Liberty Lobby network was recruiting Fletcher Prouty, Bo Gritz, longtime CIA critic Victor Marchetti, and assassination conspiracy researchers Mark Lane and Dick Gregory, the LaRouchians were probing government misconduct and linking U.S. political elites to their global conspiracy theory.

In the LaRouchite worldview, the oligarchic families of Great Britain are the font of all world evil. Over the years LaRouchian literature has maintained that political leadership in Great Britain is really controlled by Jewish banking families such as the Rothschilds, a standard anti-Jewish theory that influenced such bigots as Henry Ford and Adolph Hitler.²¹

In their book Dope, Inc: Britain's Opium War against the U.S., first published in 1978, the LaRouchians assert that the oligarchy in Great Britain is in league with Jewish bankers to control the smuggling of drugs into the United States. Arch-rightist and former U.S. intelligence operative, the late Mitchell WerBell said the book was of "outstanding importance," because it told "the history of a political strike against the United States in an undeclared war being waged by Great Britain."

LaRouche's periodicals mix anti-Israel views with anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, but were among the first periodicals to run articles exposing aspects of the arms-for-hostages deals and the covert Contra aid network, well before a fateful plane crash first tipped off the mainstream press to the full extent of the story.

Many reporters in the mid 1980's were contacted by LaRouchians who offered assistance and documents to help research the Iran-Contra story. This assistance was accompanied by their relentless peddling of typical LaRouchian distortions regarding vast conspiracies, yet many of the individual documents and sources provided by the LaRouchians checked out as factual. Some reporters decided it was proper to glean what facts they could from the LaRouche material, assuming they could successfully exclude the lunatic analysis. This process is neither new nor remarkable, reporters deal with questionable sources constantly. Furthermore, right-wing coverage of government intelligence abuse is not unique to the LaRouchians. Other far-right groups such as Liberty Lobby and its Spotlight newspaper have also circulated similar information. In fact, persons formerly affiliated with the Liberty Lobby and the LaRouchians independently confirm that there was a back-door information exchange between the research staffs of both groups in the late 1970's and early 1980's.

The LaRouchites, as well as Liberty Lobby, were among the beneficiaries of the information flow from right-wing anti-CIA circles during the early 1980's. Herb Quinde, an intelligence policy analyst for the LaRouchians, says that in the 1980's the LaRouchians were contacted by a group of disaffected former and current intelligence specialists who Quinde referred to as "the Arabists." Both government and private sector analysts confirm that there are persons critical of current U.S. foreign policy reliance on Israel whose ideas are discussed in policy meetings. These persons are sometimes referred to as "Arabists." They represent a minority viewpoint in government circles that needs to be factored into political equations. Most of these persons are geo-political pragmatists who think that oil is the key to the Middle East and so support for Israel is misguided since Israel doesn't have oil. Others simply support a more even-handed policy in the Middle East, especially concerning Palestinian rights. The so-called "Arabists" are more accurately seen as a diffuse and broad theoretical tendency rather than an ethnic group, pro-Arab faction, or specific political organization.

Some of these persons, however, have fierce anti-Jewish views and have sought alliances with overt bigots and persons who circulate paranoid conspiracy theories in which Jews are believed to control the world. Their theory at its most paranoid believes Great Britain's intelligence services have influenced U.S. intelligence agencies since the inception of the Office of Strategic Services, precursor to the CIA. Great Britain's intelligence empire is seen as predominantly Jewish, riddled with communists and homosexuals, and with an open line to Moscow. Mossad is believed to manipulate U.S. foreign policy and direct much of U.S. intelligence activity. The CIA is believed to be full of moles, probably inserted by a Anglophile/Jewish/Communist network. True patriots are urged to try to expose this "dual loyalist" reality and push the U.S. to ally with its real friends in the Middle East, the Arab monarchies and familial oligarchies.

These theories have little to do with democracy, social justice or peace in the Middle East, and they use legitimate criticisms of Israeli policies and U.S. pro-Israel policies as a screen to cover prejudice against Jews.

Many reporters were contacted by the LaRouchites offering assistance and documents to help research the Iran-Contra story. LaRouche's Executive Intelligence Review even gets a passing nod from author Ben Bradlee, Jr. in his Guts and Glory: The Rise and Fall of Oliver North. Bradlee acknowledges the help of EIR in decoding the shorthand used by North in his notebooks.

Peter Dale Scott, Jonathan Marshall and other authors who researched the Iran-Contra story say that in the mid to late 1980's, LaRouchians such as Herb Quinde, who had researched the Oliver North network, were involved in the traditional game of the Capitol press corps--circulating documents and trading theories.

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