Question My question was, what fundamentally caused the collapse of the Soviet Union?

LaRouche: Ah-ha. I did. [laughter]

It's true. You should know it, you have a right to know it. I've already declassified it, but I'll declassify it again for you. It was formerly a big national secret, one of the most precious national secrets of the United States.

To make short. I had already understood what the problems were, the security problems, the failures of the Soviet Union, and so forth and so on. Now, my concern was that, as we approached the end of the 1970s, with nuts like Brzezinski running loose, -- and Brzezinski was absolutely dangerous, he's a lunatic, a dangerous lunatic -- that with the policy we had, of so-called Mutual and Assured Destruction, and the way systems were going, we were headed to the great likelihood of an actual nuclear war, or nuclear exchange, thermonuclear exchange. And therefore, I worked on the question of how do we stop this. What do we do, to end this crazy Bertrand Russell policy, of preventive nuclear war?

Remember, preventive nuclear war was a concept first introduced to the United States government by Bertrand Russell, the so-called pacifist. And anybody who thinks Bertrand Russell is a peace-loving person, or a good person, is some kind of a jerk, or worse. He's no good, he's evil. He was probably the most evil man of the 20th Century. He made Hitler look minor by comparison.

So, my concern was, how do we stop this? So, in my Presidential campaign, to try to make sure that Carter was not re-elected -- I wasn't afraid of Carter, I was afraid of Brzezinski -- in 1979, I issued a paper on strategic defense. Now, the point was, my proposal was, that the United States and Soviet Union, could jointly develop systems which would, in due course, would eliminate the danger of a ballistic missile attack. That is, the effective danger of a ballistic missile attack, and if everybody knows you can't a war by a ballistic missile attack, even partially, then they're not going to fight the war.

And therefore, the question was, how to get that across.

In the beginning of 1980, I was on a platform in New Hampshire, and presidential candidates were seated in a row, like goony birds on a string, up before an audience of about 3000 people, in this New Hampshire motor hotel. It's now been torn down since. And Reagan and I were sitting up in a corner, because the candidates were arranged geographically, and Reagan, as R, was the last one in a row, and I was sitting next to him. So, we got into a conversation, which aroused his curiosity.

So, at a later time, after he'd won the... And also, what happened was, that Bush's attacking me, in New Hampshire in that period, resulted in Bush making mistakes where he threw the nomination, the Republican nomination, -- Bush was supposed to be the frontrunner, then. Reagan was the second runner. Bush was supposed to win the nomination. Bush lost the nomination, because he got into a catfight with me. And Reagan won the New Hampshire primary, and won another primary in the Carolinas, and it was over. Reagan was going to be the President. And this was well-known, that I had destroyed Bush, as I had destroyed a few other people in that [...].

So, he's elected. At that point, November of 1980, I was down in Washington -- I came back from Europe, on other business. Went down to Washington to meet with a number of people, in the incoming Administration, as well as Democrats. In the process, what I did was -- which was typical of visiting firemen going into Washington in a transition period, of an incoming Presidency, is you go in there, and they say, "What's your agenda? What do you want to lay on the table, that we should consider for the incoming Administration?"

So, I had a long list of things, which I had in mind, and one of these was this question of Strategic Ballistic Missile Defense, by using new physical principles. Nothing happened directly at that time, but I already had friends in various parts of the institutions of government, and the Soviet representative in New York, at the United Nations, had approached one of my associates, and had suggested that they wanted to have a new channel of discussion with the incoming President.

So, I had a report written up of that, and I forwarded it into the White House circles.

The answer came back, "Will you take on the job of running a back channel negotiation with the Soviet government?" I had a little back and forth discussion, quickly, and I took the job. It was not a deployment; it was just an arrangement: a private citizen, serving as a back-channel connection between the National Security Council of the United States government, and the Soviet government.

So, in this, I laid this proposal out, and what I did in a special way, is that in February of 1982, before actually beginning the discussion with the Soviet representative, we had a conference in Washington, D.C. About 400 people attended, people from all kinds of government [...], particularly military, U.S. military, and so forth, all came in.

So, I laid out what I proposed, there. I said, "We must, the two superpowers, must come to an agreement on this principle: that we can develop such systems, and by cooperating on agreeing to develop such systems, which can [defeat] ballistic missile threats, not right now, but in the future, -- by coming to that agreement, we can end the threat. And if we apply these technologies, to developing Third World countries and so forth, these new technologies, this can be the road to elimination of the nuclear conflict threat.

I presented this to the Soviet government, beginning February, shortly after that, the week after that. And this continued to my last meeting with the Soviet representatives -- others met with him later -- but my last meeting with him at that point, was February of 1983. At that meeting, the last meeting I had with him, he gave me a report-back from the Soviet government on my proposal. He said, ... and I had said all over the thing, "If the President of the United States, President Reagan, were to make this offer, how would you react?" I didn't say -- just that. I never said the President was going to make the offer; I said, if we makes the offer, how would you react?

So, in February of 1983, the report-back from him, from Moscow, Andropov, the General Secretary of the Soviet Union, said, "no!" Flat no.

And, in response to him, I said, that's very foolish on his part, because, if what we've been discussing, is Soviet policy, and you go ahead with that policy, I can assure you, that within about five years, the Soviet Union will collapse.

I later, shortly after that, repeated that forecast -- that, there's a danger, with this policy on the part of the Soviet Union, which was a very aggressive policy --that under these conditions, the Soviet economy would not take the strain, because of its rotten condition, and the Soviet economy would collapse, within about five years.

As you know, in 1988, I made this press conference in Berlin, on Columbus Day, in which I said, the Soviet system is about to collapse. It'll probably start in... it will start in Poland. Germany will be reunified. The capital of Germany will probably be designated as Berlin, the future, again. And we now face the challenge, the next President is going to face the challenge of the disintegration of the Soviet system, and how we react to the disintegration of the Soviet political system.

And so it collapsed.

And then, I was put in the jug, for that reason, to get me out of there. They were going to kill me. If I wasn't put in the jug, they wanted to kill me. There was a plan. It was an official line. If he beats the case, if he beats the charge, we're going to kill him.

But, I survived. I was not entirely with [ ], but I survived, and we had the broadcast, the national TV broadcast, network TV, in which I represented, included, the details of my televised report at Berlin, on the coming collapse of the system, and the proposal.

And so, the system collapsed.

When the Soviet government did not... if the Soviet government had accepted what I proffered... Remember that President Reagan, on March 23, 1983, made the offer publicly to the Soviet Union, exactly the offer that I'd indicated to the Soviet Union, he might make. If they had accepted that, at that point, even for discussion, world history would have changed, and would have taken a different line.

So, the significance of that today, in response to the question, it gives you an idea of why I have confidence, in what I as an individual can do, in dealing with a world problem. I've been there several times. When history has hung on whether the U.S. government, or others, would accept what I proposed, at a critical point, as a necessary policy. Every time my proposals were rejected, they suffered. And every time they were accepted, minimally, at least, we got some gain. So, I have a confidence as a leader, which is why I answered the question immediately the way I did. I sank the Soviet Union. Not because I sank it, but because when the Soviet government rejected what I had proposed that Reagan propose, after Reagan proposed it, the Soviet government doomed itself as I said would happen at that time.

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