James Mann: As we attempt to study the broad subject of misconduct by the Department of Justice, and we look at Ruby Ridge, and we look at Waco, and we look at Demjanjuk, and other cases of perhaps lesser notoriety, we cannot overlook the case that is perhaps the most pervasive (and I'm stealing the words from Ramsey Clark, I think), most pervasive case of misconduct by the Department of Justice, in the history of this country: broader-based, longstanding, abuse of power beyond expression, abuse of power through the use of Federal agencies, including, even, a Bankruptcy Court.

Throughout the days of the LaRouche ordeal of criminal charges, Odin Anderson, a lawyer from Boston, has been the solid rock of criminal defense and counsel, far and above any other person. He can, therefore, speak to the subject of misconduct, or such facets of that as he may choose to discuss, better than anybody, with the possible exception of Lyndon and Helga. He has, literally, devoted a major portion of his life in the last 7 or 8 years, 8 or 9 years, to that task, and we appreciate him taking the time to be here from Boston, to make some such statement as he wishes to make, and be responsive to questions.

Thank you.

Odin Anderson: Thank you, Congressman, honorable panel. It's I who thank you for this opportunity to speak about the LaRouche case.

I'm thankful. As I looked up and counted names, there are only 11 of you. If there had been a twelfth, I would have been tempted to re-try this case in front of you, assured, I think, that Mr. LaRouche would finally get a fair trial.

If I could add one piece to the explications of plea bargaining that have already been offered, just because there is an unseemly bottom side to the rock that I don't think has been directly addressed, “plea bargaining” used to mean, as everyone described, the opportunity of a defendant, who felt he might have exposure, or at least the possibility of conviction, to come to the prosecution and offer a plea, in exchange for a lesser sentence. And that was the original meaning and fact of the term.

What it's come to mean, particularly with reference to the Federal government, the various United States attorneys, and the Department of Justice, is that they come to you, and, as testimony from our earlier witness so horribly sums up, tell you that if you don't do something, they're going to send you to jail for 200 years. So that's become the “plea bargain.” You do what they tell you, or you get 200 years. That's the new meaning of the term “plea bargain,” as defined by the Justice Department of the United States.

I have represented Lyndon LaRouche since 1984, at which time he was directly targetted by the Department of Justice, through its U.S. Attorney's office in Boston, although there is a history of many years of harassment prior to that.

Why is this case of Lyndon LaRouche of interest to you busy Senators and Representatives of color, who have very busy agendas, and a lot of work to be done for your own constituencies?

Because political targetting is political targetting, whether it's on the basis of race, which we see constantly, and you deal with it in every day of your lives, before you became elected Representatives and certainly now, in a different way, for other political reasons. Political advocacy of various kinds, if it is not of the sort that is favored and smiled upon by the Federal government, becomes the object, under the direction of the Justice Department, of targetting and, ultimately, prosecution. And that's what happened in the case of Lyndon LaRouche, and it's what happened in many of the other cases, if not all of the other cases, that you've been addressing this morning.

Back in the late sixties, you probably remember a student organization called the Students for a Democratic Society, (SDS); very active on campuses, particularly around the Vietnam War, but also on many other issues of political importance to the United States; economic, social, a broad range of issues.

Mr. LaRouche, and a number of political associates of his, became involved in those very same issues. But they had a difficulty with SDS, and essentially founded their own group, which became known, originally as a faction of SDS, the Labor Committees. They ultimately became known as the National Caucus of Labor Committees, which was and remains a political association, a voluntary political association of people who share like political views.

Probably the best way to demonstrate the government's venal behavior, and the unconstitutional activities undertaken directed out of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, is to show you their own documents, and read to you their own words. And, by way of history, I'd like to have No. 1 put up on the screen.

What you see before you, is an FBI memorandum from the SAC, the Special Agent-in-Charge, of the New York Field Office of the FBI, to the Director. It's dated March, 1969. And, it requests authorization of the Director to issue a false leaflet, to stir up antagonisms between these various factions of SDS. Now, I'm sure that's a tactic familiar to all of you, if in slightly different form. They want to disseminate this leaflet under false cover, to various of these groups, and stir up as much controversy between them, hopefully, undermining their ability to act in concert, and getting them into faction fights, which would destroy their efficiency and cohesion.

Well, if you put up No. 2, you'll see that they got that authority from the Director of the FBI, and his blessing: “Authority is granted to anonymously mail copies of the leaflet submitted.” Now, I'm not going to bother to show you the leaflet, because it's a piece of scurrilous garbage. It's available for anyone who would like to see it. It was called “The Mouse Crap Revolution,” but its intent and purpose was exactly as defined in the letters. This is the Department of Justice, this is the FBI at work in the 1960s, under what was called “Cointelpro,” or “Counterintelligence Program.”

This program was in place, until a set of hearings, which I'm sure Congressman Mann remembers were convened in the 1970s, in both the Senate and the House, which gave rise to a new set of guidelines for FBI conduct, called the “Levi guidelines.” Well, we got the guidelines, but the behavior didn't change; all that changed was the words.

A number of other convenient avenues of similar conduct have opened for the government in the meantime, largely through Executive Orders issued by the Presidents of the United States, which entitled the FBI, and other agencies within the intelligence community, to essentially engage in any activity that they deem appropriate, provided they can cover it with a “national security cover”. We'll get into that a little bit more, later.

So in 1969 and the 1970s, this was the kind of activity which was going on against the LaRouche political movement, and many others, including people you're well acquainted with personally.

If we could move on to the next overlay [Exhibit No. 3]. This is to the Director, again from the SAC in New York, regarding the named subject, Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr., also known as Lyn Marcus, as they suggest. This is one of the most incredible pieces of FBI material that I have ever seen. And I have to stress something to you, all of you who were involved in the effort. And you'll ask: what is our agenda? How do we fight against these wrongs, these evils emanating from the very center of our government?

One of the difficulties, is that you can't get the proofs. Where are the proofs? The proofs are hidden. It has taken us, literally, years. I appreciate the kind words, but my time is de minimis, compared to the time of all of the others who have contributed to the effort, to bring this case to the point at which it currently exists. An unsatisfactory point, but a point, nonetheless, where we have established evidence which clearly demonstrates, to any honest and unbiased viewer, the level of government misconduct that went into this entire witch trial of Lyndon LaRouche.

Question: What is the CPUSA referred to in the document?

Odin Anderson: That's the Communist Party of the United States. What this memorandum suggests, is that the Communist Party has let the FBI know, that they want to eliminate Lyndon LaRouche for their political reasons. They consider him to be a “politically dangerous person,” and the Communist Party wants to eliminate him.

If you look at the bottom, New York proposes submitting a blind memorandum to the Daily World, to foster these efforts. Is the FBI climbing in bed with the Communist Party, in order to effect the elimination of Lyndon LaRouche from the political scene? I think we all know what that means. And they go on to say, that it's believed, that once LaRouche is eliminated, the political effectiveness of the National Caucus of Labor Committees will, thereby, be diminished, and it will cease to be of any political significance. Here, again, is the FBI, in the 70s, in operation.

Years went by, and the members of the National Caucus of Labor Committees continued their political efforts. Now, they are considered, Mr. LaRouche is considered, extremely controversial by many. Those he's considered controversial by, tend to be those whose policies are inconsistent with his, or those that he has named as operating against the best interests of the society and peoples of the United States. And we all know, that those people tend to be very powerful people.

Moving on to a period in the 1980s, after Mr. LaRouche had engaged in an actual political agenda: He has run for President of the United States on four or five occasions, beginning in 1976, under the umbrella of a political party founded by him, the U.S. Labor Party, and, since that time, as a Democrat, not always warmly welcomed by the Democratic National Committee, but as a Democrat nonetheless. One could wonder whether you'd want their arms around you in the first place, but....

So, moving into the 80s: Henry Kissinger, who we all know by name, and some probably remember by reputation and actions, was a very powerful man. Mr. LaRouche took exception to his policies, which he considered to be genocidal, particularly in the context of the financial policies, and the conditionalities imposed on the Third World by the World Bank, and IMF, and got, therefore, into a serious row with Mr. Kissinger.

And Mr. Kissinger, writes to (on his letterhead) William Webster, then the Director of the FBI [Exhibit No. 4]. They had recently had a lovely social occasion together at the place called the Grove, where these powers associate, and frolic around, in various curious ways. Kissinger asks for the assistance of Bill Webster in dealing with “the LaRouche menace.”

If we can go to the next overlay [Exhibit No. 5]. “Buck” Revell, who was the head of counterintelligence for the FBI, at the time, is sent this memorandum by William Webster, who had been contacted by David Abshire of PFIAB, that's the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. And the same parties, Henry Kissinger and his colleagues, are now raising before PFIAB, the question as to whether LaRouche. is operating as a foreign intelligence agent, and they want them to look into this.

Now, what does this do? The accusations are bad enough, but the reality is terrifying. This triggers the Executive Order I referred to earlier, Executive Order 12333, which allows virtually any form of conduct, any activity, to be undertaken, provided it's under this National Security cover. So, this was the beginning of a national security-covered operation against Mr. LaRouche and his colleagues.

Why do we have these documents? Not because they gave them to us. They hid these from us. We finally, after years of fighting FOIA litigation cases, were able to peel off small pieces of this grapefruit. There's still a lot left down there. We haven't even got to the seeds yet, we're still working through the pulp, and they fight us at every turn. But, we've been able to obtain, through FOIA, and discovery, in a number of cases that have been brought, including a case directly against the FBI, alleging this misconduct on a past, and continuing basis, certain proofs of the actions that we knew occurred, but didn't have the documents for. Now, we have some.

The common denominator among all of these cases, is twofold. It's, as I said, political targetting, and it's the Criminal Division of the Justice Department. Can you imagine a more frightening thing, than the realization that the worst abuses of our constitutional rights, as a people and as individuals, are, in fact, being planned and directed out of the very heart of the agency that's supposed to be protecting those rights?

You probably also know, from your own experience, that the first place they try you, is in the press. Only then do they try you in the courts; once they've set the stage; once they've poisoned the mind of the community against you. Then, they haul you into court, where you can't get a fair trial, because the jurors who are sitting there, have been told for days, months, years, or millennia, what a bad person you are, and what horrible offenses you've committed against the moral or social fabric of the community.

Well, that's precisely what happened in the LaRouche case, more so than in any other case. The case of Mayor Barry of Washington may come in a close second.

But in the LaRouche case, the press assault began, not by accident. Beginning in the same period of the 80s, a private financier in New York City,  John Train, with reach into the media community, by virtue of his social and financial circumstances, convened a group of media types in a salon that he hosted in his apartment, to plan a press campaign against LaRouche, and his political movement. Their objective was threefold: to tar and feather Lyndon LaRouche and his colleagues as best they could; to advocate and press for prosecutions of any kind, in any place; and, ultimately, to destroy and jail LaRouche, and destroy the political movement which he headed.

Among those who attended this meeting, were members of and persons associated with the intelligence community, as well as people with political axes to grind against Mr. LaRouche, such as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, which has, historically, done everything it could, financially and editorially, to label Mr. LaRouche as an anti-Semite, as a fascist, as a racist, as a “Hitler,” a “little Hitler,” and some of the most scurrilous names we can imagine hurling in another person's face without basis.

NBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Reader's Digest, and a number of others, began a campaign of the most libelous and vindictive accusations one could imagine, some of them so vile and unfounded, that I have to mention just one of them, as an example.

NBC, on a nationally televised broadcast, accused Lyndon LaRouche and associates of having plotted and participated, in fashions unexplained, in the assassination of Olof Palme, the Prime Minister of Sweden. This at a time when LaRouche was running for political office in the United States.

Of course, once the Berlin Wall came down, and the Stasi, the East German intelligence agency, was disassembled, we learned, from a high-ranking Stasi officer who went public in a statement to some magazine in Europe, that this accusation against LaRouche, had been planted by the Stasi. So there you are. The intelligence communities; whose hands are they holding? It makes you wonder precisely where this veil of conspiracy and concert of action ends.

I want to move on briefly and specifically to the LaRouche cases, which are, in fact, a series of cases, that began in 1984.

In 1984, Mr. LaRouche sued NBC, and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, in Federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on libel charges, on the basis of the accusations which I've already told you about.

We tried that case. NBC lied through their teeth. In fact, we had FBI documents that indicated that the NBC reporter had received proprietary and non-public information from four agencies of the Federal government, with reference to Mr. LaRouche.

So they make the stories up, and then they leak them to people who want to use them against you. (laughs)

We lost the case.

Sen. Robert Ford: [inaudible] ... maybe everybody else knows, but I don't. And I know I'm the only person who doesn't. Could you tell me, Mr. LaRouche isn't an African-American. And, apparently, he isn't Jewish. So, why LaRouche? Who was he? Why did they go after him?

I can see the government going after us. But who is Mr. LaRouche, and why is the government treating him this way?

Odin Anderson: For, basically, the same reasons they're going after you. They don't like what he stands for, and they don't like what he's doing. He just doesn't happen to be black.

He's a political leader. In his own right, and through his associates, he has taken positions, and advocated political and social positions that are inconsistent with the mainline policies held by and espoused by certain factions of the Federal government, the Democratic, and Republican parties. And I couldn't sum up for you, in one minute, who the man is, and what he stands for, because he stands for much, and he stands with many, including with you on the issues. He has spoken vigorously against the targetting of black representatives for prosecution, for precisely the reasons you're here today discussing.

In any event, we sued NBC in Alexandria, Va. As soon as that case was over, NBC in Boston, on the very day, I had finished our presentation and was packing up to go back to Boston, ran a so-called “investigative series,” alleging that certain persons associated with the LaRouche political campaign, had made false credit charges against certain contributors. NBC found a couple of contributors who got up and said, “you know, I met these people, and I gave them 35 bucks, and the next thing I knew, there was 100 bucks charged to my credit card.”

Well, I'll say one thing. Mr. LaRouche is very controversial. And people who contributed to his organization frequently, came under various types of criticism for and harassment for those contributions. It could be a wife who says, “what are you giving $100 away? We need to buy new shoes for the kids.” Or, it could be a neighbor. Many times, the amounts of money were larger, so the reasons for opposing the contribution were even greater.

But, if you know anything about credit cards, the only way a person can re-capture money charged to his credit card, which he has authorized, is to claim “it was unauthorized.” Those are the magic words. If you don't use the magic words, you can't collect the $100. So, in order to reverse a credit card charge, one must say, “I never authorized it.”

Therefore, what you're alleging in that case, is that the person did it without your authority, which could be a criminal act.

They started an investigation around this, which they conducted for two years. It ultimately culminated in a trial in Boston.

Of course, another thing you'll all recognize from your personal experiences, is that when they want to charge you and they don't have anything, they charge you with conspiracy; because then, they don't have to prove anything! They just go around, tell a bunch of stories, and hope that the jury is poisoned against you, is going to link it all up somehow, and convict you. So “conspiracy” is the vehicle, and that's precisely what happened in Boston: LaRouche and his colleagues were charged with conspiracy, with a few other specific charges tossed on as an afterthought.

We tried the case for seven months. We weren't even through with the government's case, when the case mis-tried. The reason it mistried, is that the jury had been led to believe that the case would have been over long before, which it would have, had we been able to concentrate on the evidence. But, because of the hearings that the judge was forced to conduct for months and months, on governmental misconduct, the case dragged on, and the jury sat in the jury box.

The jury got frustrated, much as I imagine the jury is beginning to feel out in Los Angeles. They wanted to go home, and the case mistried.

This is an article from the Boston Herald [Exhibit No. 6] I'm showing to you not because of the highlight, “LaRouche jury would have voted ‘not guilty',” although that's true, and comes from the jury foreman, whom they interviewed. But, in the first line of text, there are some very important words from the foreman:

“|’We would have acquitted everybody at this point, and that's based on prosecution evidence', said foreman Dashawetz. “There was too much question of government misconduct in what was happening to the LaRouche campaign'.”

“Government misconduct.” Very seldom do you get a jury to see it, because the government fights you tooth and nail. They lie, they cover up evidence, they, in fact, deny information to their own agents, so that their agents won't be in a position to have to knowingly lie. These are common tactics, and that's what happened here. Fortunately, in our case, we were able to show enough of it to the jury, so that the jury got the smell.

However, the government wasn't about to quit, particularly having taken what was a serious public relations beating. So, they decided to switch forums, come down to a much more favorable forum, in fact the most favorable forum for the government, the Eastern District of Virginia: the so-called “rocket docket,” the home of almost every government agency, and government contractor in the country.

They brought the case down to Virginia, got indictments, and brought us to trial. New charges, new defendants. LaRouche was also indicted again. He was one of the few who was charged a second time. They forced the case from indictment to trial in 28 days.

There's a great book, and it's not a novel, it's a factual book. It is the history of the case shown by the documents of the case; it's called Railroad! and I commend it to your attention. You'll see how the system worked in this particular case, it's all there, and it's not somebody else's words, it's the words from the court documents.

LaRouche was convicted, as were all of his co-defendants, again, on conspiracy charges. That was the seminal charge, the rest were just tacked on. This time it was allegations of wire fraud; based on the allegation being that loans were taken from contributors, without intent to repay, or with reckless disregard of that fact that payment wouldn't take place.

Now, these were political loans, made in the political context, by political people, to a political candidate. Everybody knew that. The government knew they had a problem with that...

Now, I missed one piece, which I have to tell you, because it was the key to the way the government dealt with the problem. Back in Boston, the grand jury that was investigating the case, held certain businesses associated with Mr. LaRouche in contempt of court, for not producing documents which were under subpoena, which were being fought during a period of time based on various privacy grounds.

Twenty million dollars' worth of contempt sanctions were imposed. The government sought to collect that $20 million, by filing an involuntary bankruptcy against these organizations in Alexandria, Virginia, at some point prior to the Alexandria indictments.

They also did this, ex parte. The government was the only creditor. This is a violation of Federal law. But, by virtue of their ex parte petition to the judge, they were able to effect the closing of these four businesses, all of which were engaged in First Amendment advocacy and publication. These businesses were closed. They were seized by Federal marshals. They never reopened. The publications were never reprinted.

The $20 million the government sought, was a ruse. In fact, what they intended to do, and what they did do, was close the conspiracy that they alleged in the Alexandria indictments, on the very day that they filed the bankruptcy. What was the point? The moment the bankruptcy was filed, an order issued, that no debts be paid without order of the court. So it was physically impossible for any debts to be repaid after that, thereby creating a pool of persons who were owed money, who couldn't be repaid. The government got five or six of these people to come forward and say, “I was promised repayment and didn't get it,” and that was the basis of the conviction for loan fraud.

We have fought as vigorously as anyone can through the appeals process, and through the mandamus process, without success.

Recently, Ramsey Clark, who has been with me on all of the appeals, wrote a letter to Attorney General Reno, asking for a departmental review of the LaRouche case. I'd like to read you some portions of his letter:

“Dear Attorney General Reno,

I have been an attorney in this case since shortly after the defendants were sentenced in January 1989 and appeared as co-counsel on appeal and on the subsequent motions and appeals in proceedings under 28 U.S.C. sec. 2255 and F.R. Cr.P. Rule 33. I bring this matter to you directly, because I believe it involves a broader range of deliberate and systematic misconduct and abuse of power over a longer period of time in an effort to destroy a political movement and leader, than any other federal prosecution in my time or to my knowledge. Three courts have now condemned the Department's conduct in this prosecutorial campaign. The result has been a tragic miscarriage of justice which at this time can only be corrected by an objective review and courageous action by the Department of Justice.”
(Full text of this letter is also available. Click here.)

The three rulings of the courts that he's referring to, were the ruling of Judge Keeton, the judge in Boston, who found that the government had engaged in “systematic and institutional misconduct in withholding evidence,” exculpatory evidence from the defense during the trial. Number 2 was the Bankruptcy Court, which, after two years of hearings and review, dismissed the bankruptcy, and, found that “the government had acted in bad faith, and had committed a constructive fraud upon the court.”

Number three was more recent, and it bears on a subsequent series of cases. A number of his colleagues were tried in the State courts of New York and Virginia, as part of this joint Federal task force. The Virginia defendants, are, at this moment, sitting in Virginia penal institutions with draconian sentences of up to 77 years in prison.

J.L. Chestnut: How many people?

Odin Anderson: Five at the moment. Five still in custody.

The judge who sat on the New York cases, just recently, in reviewing motions brought alleging Brady and Rosario violations, (essentially--rules which define the obligation to turn over any information which is, or might be, exculpatory) found as follows:

“All of the foregoing circumstances suggest a studied and calculated effort to use against the defendants enormous amounts of information that the Virginia [federal] prosecutor made available to the New York attorney general, without the onus of revealing any of the exculpatory or other pertinent information that a New York prosecutor has an obligation to locate and produce for the defendants. [Footnote omitted.] These circumstances raise an inference of a conspiracy to lay low these defendants at any cost, both here and in Virginia.” [emphasis supplied]

J.L. Chestnut: What relief is there?

Odin Anderson: There are orders of new trials granted as a result of the action.

I've taken more of your time than I should have, not as much as I'd like to. I thank you very much for hearing me.

-30-
 

Return to the Main Page
Top