(Archived document, may contain errors)

7

June 1978

U.S. LABOR PARTY

(Executive Summary)

One of the most active and often confusing organizations on the present-day political fringe in the United States is the U.S. Labor Party, earlier known as the National Caucus of Labor Commit- tees. The available evidence indicates that the NCLC originated in 1968 during the SDS-led upheavals at Columbia University in New York City and that it was created by a 46-year-old activist named Lyndon LaRouche as a so-called "labor committee" within SDS. Forced out of SDS, LaRouche then styled his group the National Caucus of Labor Committees, the name "U.S. Labor Party" being adopted later as a political designation (LaRouche, for example, ran for Piesident of the United States under the aegis of the USLP in 1976).

The NCLC/USLP is completely dominated by LaRouche, who for- merly taught for a time as a "Marxist economist" at an "alternative school" and who also, according to his own account, joined the So- cialistWorkers Party in 1948. He remained a member of the SWP, a Trotskyite Communist revolutionary party, until 1957, during which time he appears to have adopted the "party name" of Lyn Marcus, under which name he has published numerous articles in such NCLC publica- tions as New Solidarity. "LaRouche/Marcus," as he is often called, has recently taken to placing extreme emphasis on such subjects as "deprogramming," which is closely related to his seemingly obsessive belief in the existence of widespread conspiracies against him and against his leadership of the USLP; the alleged machinations of the Rockefellers; and the need to develop nuclear energy, a concern that is also reflected in his creation of the Fusion Energy Founda- tion, an NCLC/uSLP front group'which in turn publishes Fusion, a magazine the content of which is explicitly pro-Soviet and oro- East German. The precise motivation for this concern with n-uclear energy at a time when so much of the Left is actively opposing it's development is unclear, although it has been noted that much of the information gathered by the NCLC/USLP appears to be of particu- larly great potential value to Communist East Germany. Further,

while opposing the Moscow-controlled Communist Party, U.S.A., on a number of grounds, the NCLC/USLP has remained generally pro-Soviet in outlook.

In connection with NCLC/USLP relations with other radical groups, it is of interest to no 'te that the organization has adopted the use of overt violence against them on occasion, even to the extent of mounting a full-blown "Operation Mop Up" in which NCLC people physically attacked members of the CPUSA,, the SWP, and other rival Communist groups. In additionto the CPUSA and SWP, another major rival with which LaRouche has had to contend for a period of several years has been the October League, an avowed Maoist Commu- nist organization.

The elections of 1976 saw a major NCLC/USLP attempt to coalesce with certain Republican and conservative types around the issue of purported fraud by the Carter people. In late November 1976, for example, the Washington Post reported that

In one of the year's strangest political alliances, the U.S. Labor Party, a self-described Marxist organization has joined forces with some Republicans in four states in lawsuits charging fraud in the Nov. 2 presidential election.

The Labor Party also has mounted a national fund-raising campaign among Republicans and prominent conservative organizations to finance its court challenges to the presidential vote in four states -- Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.

Such an attempt to ally with non-Communistshas also been made in connection with the nuclear energy issue. Rival leftist sources have even complained that the NCLC/USLP has supplied information on anti-nuclear activities to police authorities, an accusation which has led to leftist allegations that the NCLC/USLP is a tool of the political Right in this country. Such accusations, however, should be viewed in conjunction with the organization's obviously pro-Soviet pronouncements on research and development of both nu- clear weapons and nuclear energy, as well as in conjunction with its "obvious interest in t4e furthering of nuclear technology in East Germany and other Eastern European countries."

INTRODUCTION

An organization now calling itself either the "U.S. Labor Party" or the "Fusion Energy Foundation," and formerly the "National Caucus of Labor Committees," has been sending out an increasing flood of leaflets, newsletters, papers, and magazines, as well as a highly sophisticated-looking Executive Intelligence Review which have created confusion all across the American political spectrum. Neither the Left nor the Right has a thoroughly-documented explan .a- tion of the organization's nature or purposes. That which is docu- mentable is, to say the least, bizarre.

By all accounts, the organization was founded in 1968 during the disturbances at Columbia University, within a labor committee of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), by the then forty- six-year-old Lyndon LaRouche who was teaching as a "Marxist econo- mist" in a local "alternative school." This man's personal back- ground is important to any understanding of the U.S. Labor Party itself because he gained an early and powerful influence in the or- ganization and has increasingly dominated its activities and literature until he has become its sole, cult-type leader and ap- parently the total source of its political dogma.

A great deal has been written on LaRouche and the U.S. Labor Party in the past few years, in minor publications and pamphlets of both the Left and the Right; and it is remarkable how closely most of the accounts agree on details in his life and on his methods of manipulating the following he has gathered. Perhaps the most con- cise description of this in the public media, however, was in a nearly eighty-column inch story beginning on the front page of the January 20, 1974, New York Times. The occasion for this story was a cult-kidnapping vs. cult-claiming-to-be-"deprogramming" incident in which police arrested six U.S. Labor Party members for "unlaw- fully imprisoning" a young woman member who had recently been ex- pressing.skepticism about the organization's activities and doctrine. After the initial police-blotter type of incident description, how- ever, the article concerns itself mostly with LaRouche and his hand- ling of the Party, and cites as its sources a number of interviews with present and past members, including LaRouche/Marcus himself. Except as otherwise indicated the following several paragraphs are based on that article.

BACKGROUND OF USLP FOUNDER LYNDON LAROUCHE

He was born, of Quaker parents, in Rochester, New Hampshire in 1922, as Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr. He attended Northeastern University for a time, but, he is quoted as saying, was "one of those prodigies" who was ahead of his teachers and so withdrew. At the start of World War II, he declared himself a conscien- tious objector and was assigned to a service camp in New Hampshire where, "he says, he was converted from Kant to Marx by Communist party members." He then had a change of heart about military ser- vice, joined the Army, and served "as a medical corpsman in India and Burma." It is interesting to note that most sources on the Right seem to agree with this "medical corpsman" version of his military service while those on the Left tend toward his having served "in intelligence."

At'any event,he seems to have gone through another minor ideological conversion after thewar, this time to a Trotskyite version of communism. For, he saysrhe joined the Socialist Workers Party in 1948, where he remained until 1957. It was apparently during this period that he adopted the "party name" of Lyn Marcus. In a private conversation, one newsman who has written consider- ably about radical political organizations and personalities of- fered the opinion that Lyn Marcus was chosen as a reflection of Lenin and Marx. Whatever the reason for the choice, it has not been a consistent usage with him. Indeed, he seems to have switched back and forth in the use of the two names to the point that those writing about him do the same thing, or resort to speaking of him as "LaRouche/Marcus."

If switching ideologies and names can be said to be one of his characteristics, so can co_o@tinoj-ideas and technologies, people and organizations. The Times article deals at some length with his preoccupation with "br-al-nwashing" and "programming,"es- pecially in situations where he insists that individuals of his party have been implanted with ideas for destroying the party or assassinating him--said to have been done at the hands of the CIA and the KGB, and in another source also British intelligence of- ficials. His descriptions of the processes by which he claims this was done are said to use a combination of computer terminology and sexology. And, indeed, it is noted that during the years he says he was in the Socialist Workers Party he also "worked as a management consultant, systems designer and computer programmer, first with his father and then on his own." Part of this time he was married to a woman from whom he may have picked up a great deal about matters of the mind. The Times article reads:

Mr. Marcus was married to a psychiatrist and has since been divorced; they have a 17-year-old son. He left the Socialist Workers Party with Carol Schnitzer, and later lived with her until she left him in 1972. He now lives with a young woman in her 20's who is in the Labor Committees. LAROUCHE AND SDS

Apparently it was with no little assistance from Carol Schnitzer that he furthered his political ambitions until 1972-- and even afterwards, as will be seen later, in her becoming the marri.age partner of one of his targets for "deprogramming"i.-

Mr. Marcus said he and miss Schnitzer tried to found various left movements "from scratch" without success until 1966, when he began giving courses at the Free University in Greenwich Village. There, he said, they founded the Village Committee for Independent Political Action, which had a joint caucus briefly with S.D.S. and the Maoist Progressive Labor movement.

Out of the Columbia strike came the National Caucus of S.D.S. Labor Committees with Mr. Marcus at its center....

Other sources, both of the Left and Right, either describe Carol Schnitzer as being his wife at this time or travelling under his name, as the two of them taught in radical schools--one indicates he used the name Marcus and she used LaRouche.2

All generallyagree that LaRouche/Marcus used the teaching and political activity he and Carol Schnitzer were involved in to gain control of the 30-odd member SDS Labor Committee in New York. He then steered it into a position on a teachers' strike which the SDS leadership considered "racist"--finally resulting in La- Rouche and his followers being thrown out of SDS. They continued to use the SDS name until early in 1969, when regional and na- tional SDS leaders confirmed the ouster and became rather force- ful about their use of the SDS name. A surprising part of all of this is that LaRouche seems to have managed to take with him not only the New York SDS Labor Committee, but at least some other cities around the country--Ann Arbor, Baltimore, Boston, Ithaca, Detroit, Philadelphia, Rochester, Seattle, Stonybrook, and Wash- 'ington, D.C. For, in his early publications under the group's new name, National Caucus of Labor Committees, he listed members in those localities.3 It is often claimed that these were one or two people, with chapters sometimes not manned at all, but the organi- zation has grown to the point that its claim to branches in some fifty U.S. cities and several foreign ones is quite credible at present.

1. New York Times, January 20, 1974, p. 1.

2. The Herald of Freedom, Frank A. Capell, Ed. and Pub., P.O. Box 3, Zarepath, New Jersey 08890, September 23, 1977, p. 3.

3. New SOLIDARITY, Box 49, Washington Br. Sta., New York, New York 10033, December 14, 1970, p. 2. NATIONAL CAUCUS OF LABOR COMMITTEES

During the period from early 1969 to mid-1972 not much was heard from the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC), as LaRouche was then calling the organization. He, however, was apparently busy developing and expounding on his own particular Marxist interpretations, often using the New School for Social Research in New York as a forum. He was also trying to consoli- date his own power. Those who could be identified in the organi- zation as being sufficiently malleable were going to be allowed to stay, those who could not were eventually to be eliminated. One of his primary means of beginning the purge was to insist on specific and intricate interpretations of Marxist ideology and or- ganizing tactics, literally to pick fights with those who seemed unwilling to bend to his will. One of these, as illustrated in the following excerpt from the long New York Times article, had been perhaps closest to him:

In mid-1972, Miss Schnitzer and Mr. Marcus parted. Early members say that she had served as a target of his wrath at meetings, providing at least a semblance of debate about theories. After she left, they said, Mr. Marcus increasingly insisted on one-man rule, calling dissen- ters C.I.A. agents or accusing them of having "mother problems".

Along this time LaRouche was also working on contacts in Europe, again selecting people who might be led to his way of thinking, trying out his theories on them, and bringing some of them into the organization. A source on the Right claimed that it was from this period that:

... NCLC emerged in its present form with its policies reflecting the fantasies, misunderstandings and bizarre psychology of Lyndon LaRouche who increasingly insisted on one man rule while depending on a curious cabal of Greek and German NCLC members several of whom are not U.S. citizens and who had backgrounds as Communist Party activists.4

He was also consolidating control of the organization's following in little groups scattered about the U.S. A source on the Left described it this way:

In late 1972,. the once decentralizedf subdued, and small Labor Committees began to change. "It was free before

4. The Herald of Freedom, op. cit., p. 4.

that," a former member describes sadly. "Documents be- came more selective. The,group became a lot more cen- tralized.. Certain people were called to New York. When factions started to form, they'd split them apart. Marcus wasn't able to tolerate dissent."

In the spring of 1973, Marcus/LaRouche consolidated a-11 power in the Labor Committees around himself. Upon his return from a European trip, he authorized Operation Mop Up without consulting the National Executive Commit- tee, the highest ranking body in the Labor Committees, and instituted psychoanalytical sessions for the demoral- ized leadership.

It was at this time that the violent attacks against the Communist Party (CPUSA) and the SWP began. Approximately 60 incidents of assaultwere reported in a five-month period between April and September, 1973. In some cases, people were so badly beaten that they had to be sent to the hospital. These attacks were carried out under the name of Operation MOP UP; the idea being that they were goingto "mop up" the CPUSA and the SWP.5

Perhaps some of the enormity of the ego of LaRouche is apparent in the above decision to assault these two bastions of old leftism, both of which had been his Marxist mentors, but a step in the chronology is omitted that is even more revealing.

ATTACKS ON RIVAL GROUPS: "OPERATION MOP UP"

He had already attacked the United Auto Workers, pouring out literature calling its leadership corrupt and perverted, filled with CIA and FBI agents, and incompetent to represent its member- ship. He had begun publication of his newspaper under the name SOLIDARITY, the name of the UAW paper, and only after the institu- tion of a lawsuit eventually to include a number of other charges and to total $30 million dollars, did he change his to New SOLI- DARITY /ae New always printed small and in light type/. He h9d attackeil the-35-tional Welfare Rights Organization (NWARO) and finally came up with his own National Unemployed Welfare Rights Organization (NUWRO). But before he initiated the Operation MOP UP against the Communist Party (CPUSA) described above, in the January 15-19, 1973, edition of New SOLIDARITY he published an open letter to that organization miking what amounted to a merger offer around the welfare rights issue--explaining that a refusal would imperil the CPUSA's status with its own "militant pro-working class members" and would actually lend "support to Nixon's scheming inside NWRO.'16

5. NCLC--Brownshirts of the Seventies, one-time report with bibliography, 24 pp., Terrorist Information Project, P.O. Box 1424, Arlington, Virginia 22210, pp. 3-4. 6. New SOLIDARITY, Box 295 cathedral Park Sta., New York, New York 10025, January 15, 1973, p. 1. When the CPUSA did not take him up on this offer, he called out its doom. In the March 12-16 New SOLIDARITY a full-page plus editorial began:

The Communist Party U.S.A. is now being torn apart in- ternally by the most serious crisis in the more than half-century of its existence. Neither the Palmer Raids, nor the Hitler-Stalin pact, nor the McCarthyite period, not the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU /\u223\'a76viet Union's Communist PartY7, nor 1956 Hungary, nor 1968 Czechosla- vakia can compare with the deadliness of the current situation.

In a nutshell, the problem confronting Gus Hall is this. During this month he must decide whether to turn the CPUSA into a band of CONSCIOUS government agents against the most oppressed strata of the working class in this coun-, try, or he must accept the alternative of a united front with the Labor Committees. He has no third al- ternative.

This seems incredible? There is not the slightest bit of exaggeration in it. That is the CP's situation exactly.7

From wherever one sits this has to be noted as an excellent example of the "Big Lie" propaganda strategy--and it worked. It did not work in the sense that someone sitting in the right wing-of the arena might hope--that two monsters of the Left joined in a struggle so intense that-it debilitated both of them, and maybe destroyed one or the other. It worked in other ways. There could hardly have been a more effective build-up for the already-decided-upon Operation MOP UP mentioned above--wherein emboldened underlings were dispatched from LaRouche's organization to attack underlings of the Communist Party. Some blood was spilled on both sides, but both organizations undoubtedly gained strength in the bristling publicity. Of LaRouche/Marcus's NCLC a leftist source said:

It was also at this crucial moment that money started to come into the organization, that membership began to rise, and that Marcus finally completed the "neat package" which would provide members with answers to all questions .... 8

7. New SOLIDARITY, address as immediately above, March 12-16, 1973, p. 1.

8. NCLC--Brownshirts ... op. cit., p. 4. MEMBERSHIP, FINANCES, AND FRONT ACTIVITIES

There is little question that LaRouche's organization, as have other cult and revolutionary formations, has attracted re- cruits more often from well-to-do families than from the "working class" in whose interest they claim to be operating. Early in 1974, the Washington Post wrote of LaRouche's followers:

Though small in numbers (New York police estimate nation- wide membership at 700 to 1,000), NCLC has attracted into its bizarre world not only sons and daughters of old- line radical families of the 1930s but also children of politically conventional and even prominent families, including the sons of a Ford Foundation vice president, the daughter of the president of Sarah Lawrence College and the son of a high-ranking State Department official.9

And the New York Times account of the kidnap incident had the police arresting the daughter of a prominent Episcopal priest and the son of a department chairman of Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute in addition to those listed above. Other stories, including one in the October 7, 1975 Wall Street Journal have added other NCLC mem- bers names--the son o77a_n ambassador to South Korea, for example.10 Obviously, such recruits, once won over to organizational discipline and doctrine, bring with them useful contacts in the larger society, and money.

That, of course, is a big item with such an organization and, in the case of LaRouche's organization a big question mark for al- most everyone else. Most accounts in the New York Times, the Wash- ington Post, and the Wall Street Journal have mentro-ned NCLC f'lr'- nances, at least briefly--the Wall Street Journal breaking down costs here and there and speaking of a $1 milll'--o-n a year income from membership dues--but about as convincing a review of the sub- ject as seems to be available was found in a source on the Left in a most hostile context:

The question most often asked about NCLC is: Where do they get their money? According to a pamphlet put out by the Labor Organizers Defense Fund (an NCLC front), the NCLC budget covers: an extensive propaganda machine including a worldwide telex system, the twice-weekly newspaper New Solidarity, the New Solidarity printout sheet, the monthly Campaigner magazine, position papers

9. Washington Post, February 17, 1974, p. B-2.

10. Wall Street Journal, October 7, 1975, p. 35. and numerous leaflets; the rent for offices in 11 cities in the U.S. and Europe; and monthly phone bills of $11,000 or more; travel expenses for a network of organizers con- stantly crisscrossing this country and abroad; NCLC also has $173,bOO budgeted for laws suits; and sponsors a slate of well-dressed, well-fed candidates for political office at election time. In addition, there are members working full-time for the NCLC without any means of support.11

It should be injected here that this account, published in 1976, is by no means an inflation of NCLC's activities or production of literature. It tends toward being an understatement of what the organization was doing in 1976, and certainly is in terms of 1978. For example, in addition to the publications mentioned above there are two other hefty ones: the 60-70 page monthly magazine Fusion and the 50-60 page weekly Executive Intelligence Review. k-iso, the "Fusion Energy Foundation," a thInly disguised NCLC front,, and the publisher of Fusion magazine, has held some well-heeled con- ferences on energy wH31-ch have attracted a sprinkling of government scientists and known-to-be-conservative speakers. Members of all LaRouche's various organizations and fronts do a great deal of travelling, indeed. They appear or telephone, saying they are nearby, at the offices of officials of institutions and organiza- tions all across the country. And they do have a number of law- suits pending. A September 1975 appeal for contributions to a de- fense fund claimed there were a 100 such suits--and the Wall Street Journal reported an estim. ated $50,000 cost for defending against a UAW suit alone. The "well-dressed, well-fed" political candidates are also quite real. Indeed, the U.S. Labor Party was created as a 11political arm" for this purpose. It has run candidates in a number of elections, including LaRouche in the 1976 election for President of the United States. For this radio and newspaper ad- vertisements were purchased--and finally a 30-minute national TV appearance.

The other side of the ledger in the accounting just cited ran thusly:

Careful analysis of financial reports in New Solidarity /Die NCLC/US Labor Party's oldest publica-t-ir-o-n7 shows Ehat the NCLC has a weekly income of $6,500, and expenses of $28,000, thus accumulating a weekly deficit of $21,500. Annually, their expenses are $1.4 million, with a deficit of $1.1 million. Their principle earnings allegedly come from the newspaper sales, listed at $4,000 a week.

11. NCLC--Brownshirts.... p. 16. According to printing estimates, this would amount to weekly sales of 16,000 copies (at 25@). With only 1,500 subscribers the $4,000 sales figure would appear to be a gross exaggeration.

Another source of NCLC's income is membership dues. The 600 members pay $24 a month, yielding an annual assess- ment of $172,800. There are also many cases where mem- bers have liquidated their trust funds and donated the proceeds to the coffers of the Labor Committees. Ob- viously, if you believe the world is going to end within the next six months a trust fund is not going to do you much good. Yet even trust funding does not come close to accounting for the NCLC's huge annual budget.12

This source, as do some others, also claims NCLC has received some large anonymous donations and has managed some sizable bank loans for its publications. The Wall Street Journal mentioned a $110,000 donation which "party officials won't identirTy'."13 One leftist publication claims NCLC/USLP receives an estimated $75,000 or more a year from a business it operates from its West 29th Street head- quarters in New York, "Computron Systems.',14 This source also speculates that NCLC has obtained multi-national corporation help for such operations as its international telex, and notes that NCLC's Executive Intelligence Review sells for $225 a year. And there is certainly the possibilitF-that some businesses may pur- chase this publication without knowing anything about its background. Then, a number of leftist sources contend that the CIA and certain wealthy patrons furnish money to NCLC/USLP. One makes the point that such gifts are made in spite of the fact that LaRouche avows the destruction of the givers. In the final analysis, no one outside its own ranks can be sure where the NCLC/USLP and its numerous pub- lications and front groups get what must be considerable amounts of money for their operations. Indeed, for several years some labor unions have been asking the U.S. Labor Department to force the "U.S. Labor Party" to register as a labor organization so that its books would be open to federal scrutiny.15

12. Ibid.

13. Wall Street Journal, op. cit

14. The Public Eye, Repression Information Project, P.O. Box 3278, Washington, D.C., 20010, Vol. 1, No. 1, Fall 1977, p. 22.

15. Wall Street Journal, op. cit.

10

LAROUCHE'S IDEOLOGY

Perhaps those who are not accustomed to readinq the material coming from LaRouche and his various lieutenants wiil not have a full realization of the enormity of their accusations against al- most everyone else nor the enormity of the claims they make for their own future accomplishments. Thus, the statement in the just previously cited financial analysis about people turning their trust funds over to LaRouche because they have come to believe the world may not last another six months might make no sense at all. The situation is one in which people have little choice but to be- lieve everything LaRouche says, or nothing. If you believe every- thing, then you have to accept the proposition that things have come to such a pass that the world will be destroyed in a nuclear holocaust, a world famine, massive conflict in the cities, etc. unless he is successful in saving it. Indeed, during his campaign ?or the U.S. presidency he told hig-audiences: "The fate of hu- manity lies in our hands. If we cease to exist today, the possi- bility for the survival of the human race becomes very small indeed."16

Of course, this is only a slight variation of what he has said all along. When he initiated his Operation MOP UP against the CPUSA and the SWP he was essentially proclaiming to the en- tire U.S. Left: nJoin me or die!" They did not join him--at least in no visible way--and they certainly did not die. In masterful usage of the Big Lie technique he simply overrode the false claim that he could destroy these forces with something on the order of a just-you-wait proclamation of even larger and more mysterious proportions. Shortly after his flurry of attacks against the big targets on the Left, and amidst his continuing claims of conspiracy against him by the KGB, the CIA, British Intelligence, and the wealthy capitalists of the world, he write an article in his magazine The Campaigner, under the name Lyn Marcus, entitled "Beyond Psycholanalysis." It began with these passaaes:

Over the period since September, 1972, organiza- tion of the Labor Committees in North America and Western Europe have been given preliminary expo- sure to techniques more advanced in some aspects than have so far 'been known to professional psycho- logy. These approaches are being developed as in- dispensable auxiliary means for directly overcoming the fatal internal flaw of all socialist organiza- tions, Lenin's included, up to this time. The application of psychological knowledqe in this pro- cess has been a means, not an independent end.

16. Ibid.

Although the general basis for this has been identified in published items earlier and the pro- gram broadly detailed in Spring, 1973 internal trans- actions of the Labor Committees, several ends are served by a public account of the matter at this juncture. it is of relatively trivial significance that our report will remove credible basis for con- tinuation of the sort of reckless, scandal-mongering speculation which the project has recently stirred up among certain nominally socialist groupings. More relevant, we provide qualified professionals with an adequate guide to their own contributing studies and reflections along the lines we outline. More impor- tant, we shall illuminate one of the most important, and hitherto fatally neglected problems of socialist organizations .... 17

He then departs of a fifty-page journey of incredible ram- bling through social and psychological contentions, interspersed with equations and formulas, drawings of models of mental pro- cesses, and portraits of Kepler, Descartes, Beethoven, Koehler, Feuerbach, Freud, Hegel and Spinoza, along with mentions of Kant, Marx, Shelley, Lenin, Engels, Goethe, Heine, Cantor, Felix Klein, Emile Durkheim, and Albert Einstein, among others.. Between these fifty pages and a non-by-lined editorial in the front of the magazine one gets the impression that he has in mind the mass production of "organizers" taught to use psycho- logical techniques to impart a centrally devised and controlled political doctrine and strategy which the editorial describes as "A terrible new weapon:"

For the first time, we, a Left group in the capi- @;iist sector, have undertaken counterattack against capitalist and Soviet psychological warfare tactics, basing this counterattack on a far more advanced and hence more effective technology than any of our oppo- nents.18

In concluding his fifty-page article, Lyn Marcus says there is not much time left in which to establish socialism "(before an otherwise inevitable fascist holocaust)" and in view of the small number of "mere ordinary socialist cadres," something else has to be done. Thus:

The limited but nonetheless unequivocal advances we have effected during the past months sustantiate the conviction that our plunge a few steps beyond psycho- analysis in this respect contributes to saving the hu- man race from the threatened new fascist holocaust.19

17. The Campaigner, NCLC, Box 295, Cathedral Station, New York, New York 10025, September-October, 1973, p. 40.

18. Ibid., p. 8.

19. Ibid., p. 91. If that were not enough, the editorial refers to the Lyn Marcus article and concludes:

With that weapon, our worldwide victory several years hence is absolutely certain. By taking Left politics from the impotent (actually, sexually impotent) realm of "objective" political program, debate, and tactics, into the subjective realm where individual motivation to act is determined, we shall have, at last, estab- lished the science of revolutionary practice. with that terrifying weapon mastered, we shall absolutely win.20

NCLC/USLP AND "DEPROGRAMMING11

Less than six months after this treatise was published, pix of LaRouche/Marcus's followers were arrested in New York for holding another member, Alicia Weitzman, prisoner in her own apartment. She had written a "Help me" note on a sheet of paper, made it into an airplane, and sailed it out a window at the feet of a passerby. Her six comrades insisted to arriving po- lice officers that they were not committing any crime but "de- programming" her to overcome the effects of an alleged brain- washing by the Soviet KGB.21 In the aftermath of this, the New York Times published the long story on NCLC/US Labor Party in whicK__1r_tdealt in some detail with LaRouche/Marcus, his claims of far-flung conspiracies from both the Left and the Right, and his recently developed "theory of psychology to go along with his Marxist economics." The immediate application of this "terrible new weapon" seems to have been toward the type of deprogramming his followers had said they were using on Miss Weitzman. The Times put the first "deprogramming" Marcus himself had performed in the summer of 1973. The target of this effort was said to be an NCLC member who had been in East Germany, named Konstantin George. Marcus said that when George returned to the West he was found to be carrying in his mind an assassination plot against no less than Marcus himself. No details are provided as to how he was "deprogrammed.11 The newspaper devoted considerable space to the second effort, which was apparently some months later, perhaps on the last day of December 1973: Through the fall the ta'lk of conspiracies and brain- washing grew in the movement. Mr. Marcus found his second victim at the annual meeting of the Labor Committees here on the last three days of December.

20. Ibid., p. 9.

21. New York Times, January 4, 1974, p. 33. He was a 26-year-old English member named Christopher White. Mr. White was married last_year to Miss Schnitzer, 10 years his senior. @Apparently the wo- man LaRouche/Marcus had.living with him earlier-7

Mr. Marcus has taped the deprogramming and to a layman it appears obvious that the elements of the conspiracy he claims to extract from Mr. White's mind are either harmless bits of personal history or ideas suggested by Mr. Marcus himself.

when Mr. white resists the questioning at one point, Mr. Marcus shouts at the obviously disturbed youth: "You don't have to communicate a goddamn thing. I know what your mind is."

At another point when Mrs. White is in the room and Mr. White has confirmed one of Mr. Marcus's suggestions, Mr. Marcus says, "Now do you see, Carol? Do you believe?"

There are sounds of weeping and vomiting on the tapes, and Mr. White complains of being deprived of sleep, food and cigarettes. At one point someone says, "raise the voltage,." but Mr. Marcus says this was associated with the bright lights used in the questioning rather than an electric shock. There is also what appears to be an attempt to hypnotize Mr. White by someone, not Mr. Marcus, in'the room.

Mr. Marcus denies that Mr. White was mis- treated in any way. He says a physician, Dr. Gene Inch, also a member of the group, was in attendance throughout.

...During the intensive questioning on one day, Mr. White complains of a terrible pain in his arm.

"That's not real," Mr. Marcus says. "That's in the program."

"The pain is real in my arm," Mr. White screams. 01 have to tell you what's real and stop this crlzy fantasy world. Because it's not my fantasy...." 2 About a month later, within a lengthy story headlined, "The Newest Left: Fighting the CIA, Saving the World," a Washington

22. ibid., January 20, 1974, p. 51. Post reporter writes of interviewing both Christopher White and Lyn Marcus. Marcus said the procedure of deprogramming White was continuing on a periodic basis -- "through gentle psychotherapeutic prodding." Of White the article says:

White, a quiet, soft-spoken Englishman, says he believes he was biainwashed. But when pressed for details he says his true memory, at this partially deprogrammed stage, is still "scrambled" by an intri- cate set of false memories implanted during the origi- nal brainwashing.23

Some time subsequently Christopher White's "depro- gramming" was apparently completed. He returned to active status in the NCLC and his and his 'wife Carol (Schnitzer) White's names appeared as authors in the LaRouche organization's litera- ture. Carol White also is listed as the author of a book on "electromagnetic theory." Then, in January 1978, Christopher' White is shown as the author of a special thirty-two page edition of the NCLC's magazine The C@Maig@Ler in which this "soft-spoken Englishman" makes the most vitriolic of attacks on the British people -- as being actually "not human" -- and upon the Royal Family, the Rothschilds, the Churchills, and other leaders for making them so. He blames them for the problems of the world in general, distress in the U.S., drug traffic into this coun- try, and even the emergence of the Symbionese Liberation Army that kidnaped Patricia Hearst. All of the leaders of Britain are "bestial primitivists," he writes, and must be "destroyed so that humanity might live and prosper under the political con- ditions appropriate to the development of actual human beings." His final lines are: "Let us, with ruthlessness, ensure that the job is done correctly now."

The White article begins with an opening that, if accepted, makes one willing to give up his trust fund to "the cause:"

If humanity survives the next weeks and months, by avoiding thermonuclear war and other major inter- national disasters, perhaps we shall have good cause to celebrate the final shedding of certain cumbrous baggage that we have already been saddled with for far too long. Humanity will only survive by rooting out the nests of evil gathered behind the protective skirts of the British monarchy.... 24

23. Washington Post, Febriiary 17, 1974, p. B-2.

24. The Campaigner, special Edition-, January 10, 1978. Five pages into the article he refers to his own experience with "brainwashing." The Rothschilds,, he says "had me kidnaped and drugged to arrive here in the U.S. as a pawn in a global power struggle they were then launching." The NCLC, both in Europe and North America, was ready for such things, however -- and he cites "The groundbreaking'series of Campaigner articles by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. leading with 'BeTond Psychoanalysis' in the fall of 1973.... if

The Rothschilds have indeed been a frequent target of NCLC literature, but no single name has come up in it as much as Rocke- feller. And 1974 was a banner year for attacks in this direction -- always accompanied by references to "conspiracy" and "brain- washing." A February 1974 New Solidarity leaflet, for example, read:

We have uncovered a mass brainwashing operation in the U.S. We have in our possession detailed capi- talist plans, many of which are already being carried out, to brainwash large sections of the U.S. working class through "behavior modification" programs in ghettoes, prisons, schools and factories.

Every savage who is setting up, supporting or covering up this plot is going on our list. These subhumans are guilty of the worst crime against humanity ever committed, the crime of menticide--the-willful and systematic destruction of the human mind.

The working class must bring these criminals to trial at Nuremburg, where mind-destruction was first out- lawed at the end of World War II. We would not ordinarily demand retributive justice. But this out- rage must be stopped. These vicious scum must be tried. Revolutionary judgement will be passed. Sentences will be imposed and executed. Every person on our list will be accounted for.

At the top of our list are the men who conceived this brainwashing plot: the Rockefeller brothers--the people who brought you the CIA, the Great Oil Hoax, mass layoffs, and who are now planning a CIA-directed military government in the U.S. as their next gift.... 25

The attack goes on -to include union leaders, doctors, psy- chiatrists, psychologists, and industrial managers. But before

25. New Solidarity, leaflet, U.S. Labor Party, New York, Charlotte, and Laurinburg, North Carolina, February 8, 1974, front side.

16

it is over it includes Britain and the "gang of international- cartel capitalists" claimed to be in league with the Rockefellers.

And in November 1974, the U.S. Senate panel considering Nelson Rockefeller's confirmation as vice President found before it:

Lyndon H. LaRouche, also known as Lyn Marcus, the national chairman of the National Caucus of Labor Committees and spokesman for the United States Labor Party ... /;iho7 read a statement calling for the re- jection of Mr. Rockefeller because of his "family's stated program for world reorganization," which he said was modeled "after the conceptions of Hitler's Finance Minister, Hjalmar Schacht."

Mr. LaRouche also spoke about "Rockefeller's super- national conspiracy" and said that "the criminal stupidity and immorality of Rockefeller's fascist economic programs leads directly to general eco- logical holocaust."

Mr. LaRouche's rhetoric was criticized by several members of the committee.... 26

There was at least one other incident in 1974 wherein the NCLC got some publicity over a "deprogramming." This time, however, the effort was by Ted Patrick, who was already weli- known for working with parents who were trying to get their offspring out of various cults.. Patrick claimed that the young woman in this case'had been put "under psychological fear" by NCLC. His effort was to make her use her own mind -- "The more they think, they realize they've got to bring themselves out, start using their own free will." After this, the young woman's parents were hiding her out in Virginia, for fear the NCLC would try to "retrieve" her.27

ATTACKS ON NCLC/USLP BY RIVAL LEFTISTS

By mid-1975 a new series of confrontations between the NCLC and other leftist organizations was getting attention. In amongst the NCLC's various attacks on the Rockefellers and others of the '$richest ruling circles" in the U.S. has always been the accusa- tion that they financed all of the leftists which were also tar- gets of NCLC attacks. These targets, in turn, have often claimed that the same wealthy people were the originators and financial

26. New York Times, November 27, 1974, page 17.

27. Northern Virginia Sun, July 26, 1974, page 3. backers of the NCLC. One particularly sharp attack of this sort against LaRouche and his followers came from the Maoist offshoot of SDS then known as the October League. Under a headline "U.S. 'Labor' Party--Neo-Fascist Gang," the October League's news- paper The Call claimed:

...There is ample evidence to show that NCLC is the paid agent of the ruling class and that it receives encouragement for its destructive activities from the government.

It is currently partially financing its operations through a $48,000 loan form Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank of New York. Rockefeller, "the enemy" which NCLC is fond of berating in its literature, seems to have found a warm spot in his heart for these phony "socialists." Members of the NCLC put up only $16,000 in collateral property to obtain this loan for carrying on their work, according to a former member of this gang.

On the other hand, millionaires like Rockefeller have ample reason to help finance groups like NCLC. In recent months NCLC has been doing the work of the police and has launched cowardly attacks on members of the October League and other left groups who Are uniting in the present fight-back against the effects of the current capitalist economic crisis.28

The paper went an to detail a series of physical and propa- ganda attacks NCLC was accused of making against the October League's organizers at industrial sites around the country.

Again one might ask what damages these attacks do to the or- ganizations involved. If the NCLC/US Labor Party has suffered it is certainly not apparent. To the contrary, it seems better financed than ever and its literature output since the summer of 1975 may have doubled. There is no question but that it has increased. The October League on the other hand has been spec- tacularly successful. It has been in a running battle for suprem- acy among the various Maoist groups in the U.S. since it was formed in 1969 ---shortly after Lyndon LaRouche co-opted the SDS Labor Committee in New York and began his journey into the public consciousness. Under the sole leadership of Michael Klonsky, formerly a national secretary of SDS, the October League has been

28. The Call, October League, P.O. Box 5597, Chicago, Illinois, 60680, August 1975, page 6.

competing with another similarly prospering Maoist organization, the Revolutionary Union, for the "vanguard" position in forming a 11new Communist Party" in the U.S., along Maoist lines, to dis- place the pro-Soviet Communist Party U.S.A. which they both con- sider to be moribund. Both of these "new left" born organizations have changed their names in the past two years, to symbolize the supremacy each was claiming -- the Revolutionary Union became the "Revolutionary Communist Party," and the October League became the "Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)." The most impressive symbol either could display as an indication of the contested supremacy was recognitio'n in the Peoples Republic of China. In the past the Revolutionary Union has had some-semblance of this through the reception of a number of its delegation by Mao's subordinates. But in August of 1977, the October League/Communist Party (Marxist- Leninist) -- the organization the NCLC made victim for its "coward- ly attacks" -- spurted ahead when Michael Klonsky was received by the new Chinese leader, Chairman Hua Kuo-feng, personally -- and with,. according to the Washington Post and other papers, a "red- carpet treatment" far-surpassing that the Chinese leadership had proffered a few weeks earlier to U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.29

LAROUCHE AS PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

In 1976 Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. ran as the U.S. Labor Party's candidate for the Presidency of the United States. As noted ear- lier, he campaigned on the thesis that if he were not elected, world disaster was a certainty. Apparently he also let it be known that there would be great trouble inside the U.S. Labor Party if he were not elected. Then, on the night before the election he did two things that surely created amazement all across the political spectrum. One, he demanded and was granted a prime-time TV half-hour. Two, he used this appearance to urge a nation-wide NBC audience to vote for Gerald Ford. A source on the Left reported: The USLP delivered $95,000 cash in a paper bag to pay for the time only hours before the telecast to allow their leader to insist, as the many NCLCers do daily on streetcorners, that thermo-nuclear war is months away. And when we sneak by without catastrophe, we will know it was the saving grace of the USLP which prevented it.30

LaRouche is said to have spent $500,000 on his presidential campaign and to have gotten some 40,000 votes in 25 states. As is typical of him, however, he immediately turned this defeat into

29. Washington Post, September 6, 1977, page A-1.

30. The Public Eye, op. cit., page 10. a type of victory--whatever absurdity might have been seen in his running for President in the firit place was quickly lost in his immediate insistence'that the election was a fraud anyway.

ATTEMPTS TO ALLY WITH CONSERVATIVES

And in doing so he hooked his wagon to various conservatives and conservative organizations--even to elements of the Republican Party. Indeed, some sources reported that the USLP had made over- tures to Republicans before the election in an attempt to get them to make charges of an impending fraud by the Carter campaign. And after the election it was rather widely publicized that the USLP was "joining forces" with Republicans in this matter. For example, the Washington Post headlined a story in late November of 1976: "U.S. Labor Party, GOP Join Forces in 4 Vote Challenges." The story ran:

In one of the year's strangest political alliances, the U.S. Labor Party, a self-described Marxist or- ganization has joined forces with some Republicans in four states in lawsuits charging fraud in the Nov. 2 presidential election'.

The Labor Party also has mounted a national fund- raising'campaign among Republicans and prominent conservative organizations to finance its court challenges to the presidential vote in four states- Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.31

Of course, the extent of this alliance was less than might at first have appeared, but even so, had consequences a number of Republicans came to regret. As the news story stated, "the local alliances of Republicans and Labor Party representatives varied widely" from state to state, but the Republican National Committee had a tangential interest in only one, Wisconsin, where it hoped to gather evidence to be used in Congress later to oppose the post-card registration legislation. The LaRouche organization, however, does not observe such niceties, and sent its representa- tives out to raise funds and gather support claiming their efforts were completely endorsed by the Republican National Committee. There were, indeed, some angry confrontations in some localities as U.S. Labor Party members took what little license had been given them and tried to use it for their own purposes. one local Republican official had been quoted as saying, "Our relationship with the Labor Party is a freaky thing, but in this case it

31. Washington Post, November 28, 1976, page A-1. happens that our Republican interest is similar to theirs on' this issue of voter fraud."32 Perhaps he came to feel that the most accurate expression in that statement was the word "freaky."

The year 1976 was, in fact, something of a pivotal point in the NCLC/US Labor Party's move to co-opt people and organi- zations on the Right. In the previously cited article in the October League's newspaper The Call there was a claim that a. mistake in dialing had taken a Labor Party telex message into the wrong hands in Minneapolis. Amonq the instructions from the Party's national headquarters to-its committees in the field had been a directive to establish contacts with political forces on the Right. Reports that this was not only being attempted but meeting with success continued into 1977. Thus, while excerpts of FBI memoranda citing the NCLC as a "clandestinely oriented group of political schizophrenics who have a paranoid preoccu- pation with Nelson Rockefeller and the CIA" and "a violence oriented Marxist revolutionary organization" were coming into print, so were accounts of conferences and joint-speaking tours of NCLC members and those of Right wing organizations. one of the NCLC officials most often seen in these situations was Costas Axios. The Washington Post reported that these "reaches to the Right" by MCLC "one of the most volatile and militant groups in the country" were being made amidst muted tones of political activism which called for "creation of an 'industrial capitalist republic' under a 'Whig' government with a 19th cen- tury Hamiltonian banking system." It was often reported that organizations on the Right were accepting these overtures only with an amount of skepticism. Whatever the nature of this skepticism, if it hinged on the possibility of.NCLC actuallv changing its political goals, it was mistakenly held. In the same article in which the Post spoke of NCLC'c "muted" tones was also a revelation of tH-eremainder of the organization's agenda. Costas Axios, NCLC chief of staff in New York, was asked just where the organization finally fit into the politi- cal spectrum. He said:

We are socialist, but first we must establish an industrial capitalist republic and rid this coun- try of the Rockefeller anti-industrial, antitechno- logy, monetarist dictatorship of today.

once the capitalist republic is established, con- current global economic development will occur and we will enter into a period of the highest pros- perity the world has ever known.

32. Ibi"d.

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With society expanding and material progress being made, you win over the people's minds, and under an advanced technology, including fusion power, there will be a trend toward government of a so- cialist state.33

NCLC/USLP AND NUCLEAR ENERGY

Of course, the phrase "fusion power" was the only relatively recent addition to this verbage. And the NCLC was moving rather rapidly into whatever involvement it could muster in the nuclear power issue. Ostensibly consistent with its fascination with con- servative interests, this involvement was on the pro side of the growing battle between anti-nuclear power activists and the pro- ponents of nuclear power. The fact that NCLC's big interest was fusion power seemed to draw little attention. And, indeed, NCLC Uld-plunge in to "help" the pro-nuclear side." It created what it called the "Fusion Energy Foundation," and held pro-nuclear meetings, and it began publication of still another piece of lit- erature, Fusion magazine, laden with pro-nuclear articles.

.And it sent its organizers into the field to observe the activities of anti-nuclear activist groups -- and to try to pass out its own literature. Sources on the Left soon began to com- plain that NCLC was "spying on nuclear foes" and reporting on them to the police. These charges, in such publications as the Maoist-oriented Guardian and the Socialist Workers Party's The militant, were, of course, accompanied by the usual rhetori-c about NULC being "an obvious ultra-right group with links with various police agencies." There were also some rather convin- cing bits of evidence that the NCLC had volunteered minor amounts of information -- had, in fact, apparently sought out law en- forcement agencies to provide information to them.34 It also appeared that the type of information being provided was no more than the police could easily obtain for themselves -- mostly from literature circulated publicly by the anti-nuclear activists. Conversations with law enforcement intelligence divisions who had been contacted*by NCLC confirmed this opinion.

"MONITORING THE ECONOMY"

Sources on the Left were also arguing, however, that NCLC was engaging in industrial espionage with which to ingratiate itself with corporations, utility companies, and "wealthy capi- talists" in general. In fact, one such source contended NCLC

33. Washington Post, August 16, 1977, page A-9.

34. Guardian, 33 West-17th Street, New York, New York 10011, June 22, 1977, page 8. The Militant, 14 Charles Lane, New York, New York 10014, July 1, 1977, page 5.

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had been doing this since the early 1970s -- "monitoring the economy" to advance their understanding of where the economy was going and how they might best serve those "elements of finance capital who may also fund them." Specific, formal reports were described as being prepared providing information on economic history and development in various areas of the United States. The explanation this leftist source offered for NCLC gathering this type of information was:

There are several reasons why the NCLC monitors the economy in this way. First, in order to make claims credible to the ruling class, they need to understand capitalist trends. Second, the group needs figures on all industries of any size in order to correctly approach them for funding, and also to be better equipped to supply an alternative which could lead them into power.

The NCLC has printed a pamphlet called "How To Take Over The Economy in 24 Hours." This should further explain exactly where the group sees itself on the political spectrum. They are not working, nor do they want to work with others, but are only inter- ested in attaining power.35

This rationale, of course, seems quite far-fetched, if not a little paranoic itself. Even a suggestion of taking over any large economy in 24 hours sounds as if it is out of some comic opera. What possible reason could NCLC have for such informa- tion?

POSSIBLE FOREIGN COMMUNIST CONNECTIONS

A source from the Right contends that NCLC/USLP has been gathering all kinds of industrial information for which it has no use itself. It claims this has been particularly true of the or- ganization's operations in West Germany -- where the majority of its European branches are located. There NCLC is said to gather information that would be useful primarily to the East Germans.36

Another source on the Right cites NCLC's European connec- tions and speculates that they finally include contacts with East German and Soviet agencies, perhaps even as sources of funds. 'A double-barreled operation is here envisioned. Information is gathered, and disinformation is out out. The suggestion is that

35. NCLC -- Brown Shirts', op. cit., page 16.

36. The Herald of Freedom, op. cit

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Soviet purposes in the U.S. could be well-served by having a "counterfeit opponent" to the traditionally pro-Soviet Communist Party USA, which can be manipulated to attack other leftist groups on the one hand and to prop up its warnings about right-wing "fascist threats" on the other. All of this, without having the regular Communist Party USA perform tasks which would be embar- rassin37or would compromise.its pose as a legitimate political P-X -.Z -

Still another source summarizes the NCLC/US Labor Party sit- uation by saying the American Left thinks the USLP "is an Estab- lishment police-gang set-up to disrupt the-American left-wing 'movement for social change'". That is not true, it says, "the Establishment sponsors the rest of the American left" -- and it details the Rockefeller-Rothschild conspiracy theory that has per- haps made the U.S. Labor Party's literature attractive to ultra- conservatives. But, this publication continues:

More realistically, the_Right suspects the USLP to be a KGB project. Whether this be true or not, the USLP does support most of the Soviet Union's policy and propaganda lines. It is well to remember that most of the American Left, contrary to naive conservatives, does not support the Soviet Union .... 38

CONCLUSION

There is no hard evidence readily available to support the theses of any of the sources. There are some indicators that agree with at least parts of all of them -- those from the Left and the Right.

It is unmistakably true that NCLC produces literature and engages in activities that cost much more money than its visible sources of financial support will account for. It is also true that NCLC both collects and disseminates information that is hard to associate in any final sense with its publicly known objectives -- as murky as they are. This has been true all along, and it is certainly pointed up by the NCLC's intrusion in the nuclear power issue -- and that intrusion has not been slight. Even with its bizarre record, it is difficult to see how the creation of a "Fusion Energy Foundation," and the publication of a full-sized magazine such as Fusion, squares with even the most far-fetched schemes previously to come out of NCLC.

37. The Rising Tide, Washington, D.C., August 16, 1976, page 1.

38. suppressed Truth Review, Alpine Enterprises, P.O. Box 766, Dearborn, Michigan 48121, Vol. 1, No. 2, winter 1977-78, page 4. It is also true that, while attacking leftists in the U.S. including the pro-Soviet Communist Party U.S.A. -- NCLC has generally taken a pro-Soviet position in its literature. This has been the case in the magazine The Campaigner, and perhaps even more so.in the Executive Intelligence Review -- an article entitled "Soviets Lay Cards On Table: Will Win War If Provoked" in the March 7, 1978 edition, and one in the March 21 edition insisting that the U.S. "must immediately join with the Soviet Union" on Middle East matters, as examples. Material in Fusion is still more pointed. It is blatant in its pro-Soviet positions on research and development in both nuclear weapons and energy, plus having an obvious interest in the furthering of nuclear technology in East Germany and other Eastern European countries. Finally, however, the objectives and motivations of the NCLC/ US Labor Party are indeed a mystery -- obscured by activities and literature more bizarre and circuitously produced than those of perhaps any other political extremist group with which we have had to contend. One thing, however, is most certain -- and the organi- zation's record leaves no doubt about t@is -- anyone who allies himself with this group, whatever it is, does so at his own peril.

Francis M. Watson Research Associate Rockford College Institute