[1] "Operation Guatusa" was a 1985 Guatemalan military offensive against "narco-terrorists" that LaRouche claimed to have masterminded. His security chief Jeff Steinberg supposedly went along with the troops as far as the staging area.
(E-mail sent to D. King, Feb. 4, 2008)
All this Latin American stuff, including death squads, is extremely freaky. The interesting thing is that I would bet that Security had more to do with this than LALC/IALC (Latin American Labor Cttee/Ibero-American Labor Cttee)--particularly GUATUSA.[FN 1]
I don't know if you know this, but there was a huge fight between Security and IALC for years, from New York (pre-1985) all the way down to the day Fernando Quijano finally quit in 2000--Security was trying to take over IALC ops in Latin America, I think...It was one of the dominant strains in the org for many years. Helga [LaRouche's wife Helga Zepp-LaRouche] worked with IALC, and Lyn worked with Security (by which I don't mean physical security, but "intelligence"--Jeff Steinberg, Paul Goldstein, Herb Quinde, etc.), and Helga wanted Paul and Jeff out of the org--they were CIA, she said; while Jeff and Paul, and ultimately Lyn, wanted Fernando and IALC out.
The expulsion of Fernando--because he didn't "quit," he was driven out--was the culmination of a years-long battle. Its perfidy was particularly amazing given that Lyn had lived with Fernando and [Fernando's] wife for a number of years in New York, and given that Fernando had gone out of his way to try to be nice to Lyn when the latter was in Rochester Club Fed [the federal correctional facility in Rochester, Minn.] for five years.
There are those who say that the outrageous assault on Fernando, which included Tony Papert (naturally) denouncing Fernando as a fascist at a membership meeting, and Fernando's erstwhile best friend Dennis Small going along with Lyn--there are those who say that Lyn's outrageous assault on Fernando was a surrogate for what he wanted to do but dared not--blasting Helga and attacking her for all her attacks against Jeff and Paul, who have remained Lyn's supposed lifeline to the supposed American "intel community" for years, and without whom Lyn could not draw breath.
So Helga with her incessant warfare against Jeff and Paul was the real target, but politically and emotionally impossible for Lyn to take on directly. Hence, Fernando was used as the surrogate.
It is, of course, entirely typical of Lyn, Tony et al. that they smeared as a fascist someone who had been in the leadership of the org for years, on the NEC for years, and a ROOMMATE of Lyn's for years--one wonders how it was possible that such a Synarchist fascist Francoist could have gotten into the leadership and stayed there with no one noticing...either Lyn was totally dishonest, or totally incompetent as a leader. But he never seems to notice that awkwardness when denouncing one of his previously close collaborators as "100 times worse than Hitler."
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[1] "Operation Guatusa" was a 1985 Guatemalan military offensive against "narco-terrorists" that LaRouche claimed to have masterminded. His security chief Jeff Steinberg supposedly went along with the troops as far as the staging area.