Part 5
Or you can “garner” “intelligence” , as well as “investigative” “news” “scoops” through less than savory means.
2-15-80: Lyndon LaRouche […] has said that his campaign workers impersonate reporters and others, contending that the covert operation is necessary for his security. […] Mr. LaRouche, who says that he is a counter-intelligence expert[…]“Where a press is running a dirty operation against me like Ewing’s little Keene Sentinel,” Mr. LaRouche said in an interview yesterday, referring to its publisher James Ewing, “That’s an open target. We can impersonate them all we want to because they are doing it to us. It’s just open season.”The Monitor had no immediate comment on Mr. LaRouche’s statements. Mr. Weing also said that he had no comment. Jon Breen of The Telegraph said, “Neither Mr. LaRouche’s comments nor his candidacy are worth commenting on.”
There you have it! Lyndon LaRouche running around the New Hampshire primary, his staff impersonating local news reporters. This would become a habit and a pattern, a tactic in LaRouche’s arsenal.
8-20-82: In a sworn statement Miss [Sara] Fritz [White House correspondent for US News and World Report] said she was called last February 11 by the First National Bank of Boston about an interview that Richard D Hill, the bank chairman, had given a woman who said she was Miss Fritz. A distorted account of the interview later appeared in American Labor Beacon, she said. The bank gave Miss Fritz the New York City telephone number the woman had furnished.“I called this number and asked to speak to Sara Fritz of US News and World Report,” she said in court papers. “My call was transferred, and when a woman answered, I asked ‘Is this Sara Fritz?’ She replied ‘Yes.’ I then asked ‘Of US News and World Report? Fritz?’” She responded by asking, ‘Who is this?’ and when I identified myself as being from US News and World Report, she abdruptly terminated the call.” […]Four months later, Miss Fritz said, she learned she had been impersonated again by someone who got information from the National Association of Home Builders. A dsitorted account of that interview was published in Executive Intelligence Review under the Burdman byline, she said.
And that is how you write a piece for one of LaRouche’s publications! Or, occasionally attack your opponents. In 1984, LaRouche lost a libel suit against NBC for labelling him an anti-semite and a cult leader, and NBC successfully counter-sued for trying to sabotage an interview with Patrick Moynihan (the Democratic “neo-conservative” for the 1980s, who also had the termerity to take his LaRouche primary opponents deadly seriously) by impersonating network reporters and Senate Aides. He was ordered to pay $3 million, to which he and his lawyers pleaded poverty.
To recap his presidential bids: Walter Mondale was an agent of Soviet influence and was controlled by a Swiss dominated grain cartel. And “Moscow is committed to establishing world dominance by the Russian Empire by approximately the time of the massive 1988 Thousandth Year celebration of the establishment of Christianity in Russia.” In 1988, he explained that “AIDs and a coming economic crisis, which could strike as soon as August, will convince the American establishment that we better have someone, even if we don’t like the person, who can handle these problems. Even if he is an outsider. Even if we don’t like his style. Weven if he can’t be controlled. At the same time, the crisis will persuade Americans to turn away from the boob tube, the latest soap, and the clowns now running for the Democratic nomination to elect me. I think the country will want me, not because they like me or love me, but because people want this problem solved.” AND “We are on the edge of the biggest financial crisis in hisstory. This is a war. The AIDs issue is going to make me a national folk hero.”
It came to pass just as he said. Larouche drummed the beats of National Defense, fighting any sense of detente, for “Gorbachev has communicated to the US government … that he demands the elimination of me as a precondition of d’etente.”
1988 also saw a reporter for the Executive Intelligence Review inject the rumor that Michael Dukakis had a history of mental illness into the campaign. At a press conference, Ronald Reagan — to his discredit — responded to this suggestion with “I’m not going to attack an invalid.” Dukakis reacted by brushing the issue aside, a tendency that Democratic politicians seem to have which grills them in the end.
Each election cycle, television networks would groan as Federal Election laws and equal time requirements compelled them to sell prime-time commercial slots to Lyndon LaRouche. LaRouche repeatedly purchased half hour slots to ramble on the issues of the day, and the impeding apocalyptic economic scenario, and the conspiracy against him. They became ubiqutous to the point where Saturday Night Live had the re-occuring bit “Lyndon LaRouche Theater”, written by Al Franken — playing off on some stylistic similiarites between the informercials and the opening of “Masterpiece Theater”. There was a pattern to the tv ratings for these informercials — up against one of the top rated program, say, for example Cosby sitting at #1, the informercials finished dead last in the ratings — significantly below the next to last rated programs, for instance the weak-signaled Fox’s Saturday night line-up.
At the same time, eyebrows were constantly raised as LaRouche fought through the court system his right to federal matching funds. Still today LaRouche is mentioned as example #1 in the case against the nation’s campaign finance laws or various proposed reforms. In the meantime, LaRouche was racking up campaign finance misdeeds — it appears he was rather lacksadasical in reporting and he did not show much respect for the process — and there his troubles began.