How the LaRouchites Exploit Ramsey Clark

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An Associated Press (AP) account of Clark's Fourth Circuit oral arguments noted that "former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, chief attorney for LaRouche's appeal, argued that U.S. District Judge Albert V. Bryan Jr. of Alexandria allowed only thirty-four days from arraignment to trial and failed to adequately question jurors on how much they knew about the defendant."

The Fourth Circuit ruled against LaRouche, saying LaRouche's original attorneys had waited eighteen days before asking for a continuance. An AP story about the decision reported that the appeals panel "also said LaRouche's attorneys made no attempt to press potential jurors to determine `individually anyone who had ever heard of LaRouche,' although certain jurors who said they were familiar with the case or who had worked in law enforcement or had accounting or tax backgrounds were questioned individually."

On further appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court let the convictions stand without a hearing or comment.

In fact, more than a few civil libertarians agree there was evidence of misconduct in the government's investigation of LaRouche, and the closing of LaRouche's newspaper New Solidarity in a federal bankruptcy proceeding raised serious constitutional issues. Still, there is no clear evidence that the alleged government misconduct had a direct bearing on the criminal prosecution of LaRouche and his aides.

When Clark has spoken at LaRouchite-sponsored press conferences concerning the case, there has been extensive coverage in the LaRouchian press. One such story featuring Clark appeared in LaRouche's New Federalist on October 13, 1989. Clark was quoted as saying that even though he had once been a political opponent of LaRouche, he had now come to his defense because of constitutional abuses such as a fast jury selection process, massive prejudicial pretrial publicity, and a jury pool which contained numerous government employees, including law enforcement agents from agencies that had allegedly targeted LaRouche.

Ramsey Clark has steadfastly refused to disassociate his legal work for the LaRouchians from the political work of the LaRouchians, despite the fact that the LaRouchians imply Clark's support in numerous newspaper and magazine articles. Most critics of Clark's silence regarding the LaRouchians say they understand he has a duty as an attorney to represent the LaRouchians fully and vigorously, but feel he has not been sensitive to the ways in which the LaRouchians are using his name in the political arena. These critics point out that the ethical imperatives for an attorney are different than the moral obligations of a leader of an antiwar movement. They say Clark has a political responsibility to distance himself from the LaRouche organization, which is separate from his role as their attorney.

Sometimes it appears that Clark's support of the LaRouche cause has moved beyond mere legal representation. According to the July 6, 1990 New Federalist, on June 19, 1990, Clark spoke at a private meeting coordinated with the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), a multi-governmental association and human rights forum that solicits input from non-governmental groups. The New Federalist reported that "Clark's trip was sponsored by the Schiller Institute's Commission to Investigate Human Rights Violations, a non-governmental organization which is urging the CSCE to take up the case of Lyndon LaRouche, the U.S. economist and statesman who is now America's most prominent political prisoner." The Schiller Institute is a LaRouchian front group which once published a book claiming British Jews helped put Hitler into power.

In his CSCE speech, Clark is reported to have said he had reviewed a random selection of sixty-five published articles on LaRouche appearing in the several years prior to LaRouche's prosecution. Clark reportedly said "here you see that he's called every bad thing you can imagine--Nazi, anti-Semitic, violence-prone, thief--over and over again. Vilification...it was absolutely astounding."

The New Federalist article reported that Clark said that LaRouche was prosecuted on "economic crimes that didn't exist, because this was a political movement, it was not a for-profit activity and wasn't intended to be a for-profit activity, it was a political movement. You make three sentences for five years each to impose a fifteen-year sentence on a man who's sixty-six years old. To destroy a political movement. Obviously....Unless you can wrench [the political process] free from [the] plutocracy that absolutely controls with an iron hand that essentially one-party system, you won't have that change. And that's what the Lyndon LaRouche case is about: you."

At a February 28, 1991 international conference in Algeria to oppose U.S. intervention in the Gulf, Clark shared the podium with long-time LaRouche associate Jacques Cheminade, president of the Schiller Institute in France.

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