LaRouche's chief of staff decided he'd had enough:

Open Letter to Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. from Kostas Kalimtgis ("Gus Axios")

In the opening paragraphs of this 1981 letter, Kalimtgis adopts a conciliatory pose and appears to distance himself from his own defenders. Readers should be aware that he faced a very complicated political and legal situation (and feared for his--and his wife's--physical safety on top of this). He managed, however, to present a devastating psychological portrait of his former mentor. As to the response from LaRouche: the Queen was not amused.--DK

Jan. 26, 1981

Dear Lyndon:

Last week I received an abusive phone call from Jeff Steinberg who in the course of the discussion harangued me about Bob Cohen's "pimping" (for me!) and my "factionalizing." My wife has also been repeatedly confronted with such abuse. I wish to reassure you and others that I would never degrade myself by allowing myself to become the instrument of enemy efforts to demoralize or destroy the membership of the organization which I spent so many years in building.

I shall always retain for you the same respect I had in 1968 when in the course of a single lecture you communicated the connection between creative mentation and the lawfulness of expanded reproduction in a way that resolved for me the most crucial problems that I had been grappling with for several years. Furthermore, your independent discovery, which allowed you to develop economics as a science and the further elaboration of that discovery through a political process which you initiated is a matter of history. These accomplishments are not subject to opinion or to rejection on my part due to ephemeral disagreements on other matters. If, therefore, others, be they misguided individuals or agents, choose to "rally around" my person, I hope that you will spare me the humiliation of ascribing to me the responsibility for such an occurrence.

I must nevertheless inform you that I have been under continuous pressure to respond to your memos by very responsible members who interpreted my silence as a sure sign of guilt. They could not understand, nor did I dare to explain to them that I had realized from early on that any attempt on my part to defend myself would be met by the most virulent outpouring of McCarthyite-like indictments. I concluded that once such a process was unleashed, the ICLC would become prey to a variety of operations despite our intentions.

My worst fears of what could happen should I have defended myself were nothing compared to the harm you did without the benefit of any response or provocation from my quarter. I shudder to think what may have ensued if I had allowed myself to be swayed by those members who demanded that I either defend myself or in silence be found guilty.

Lately I have been repeatedly amazed at your miraculous ability to weave rumors, lies, facts, half-truths and international developments to suit your purpose of the day.

It is the same disregard for truthful facts that characterizes every piece of filth that you have circulated about me. You accuse me of attempting to strip your security during the Democratic convention even though you knew full well that I was incapacitated at the time, with absolutely no power to determine policy even if I had chosen to. Again you lie when you charge that I chased business ventures and used the organization to that end when you possess all necessary knowledge of how I repeatedly tried to sell off future business assets and business ventures to meet our immediate political and security needs.

I find it too tedious and demeaning to defend myself against every new lie which you and your minions concoct on a daily basis. I have lived my entire life according to a dedication to humanity which my parents instilled me with. I have been active politically towards that end since I was 12 years old. I have never benefited nor have I sought benefits according to the standards of banalized society. Under no circumstances would I, or could I, be influenced into making political decisions based upon "family, sex or money" consideration. I would prefer suicide before resorting to such degradation, and indeed my record in the organization is a testament to that fact no matter how much slander you circulate in order to obliterate that truth.

Your actions over the past two months have proven to me that even though you are of great accomplishment in the realm of science and philosophy you are deficient in statesmanship. You lack an indispensible quality Plato calls 'sophrosene,' a term usually mistranslated as 'temperance.' You have made yourself a prisoner of a cult of infallibility around your person, and you have manufactured a chain of security rationalizations to prevent discussions on any matter, even on the most inconsequential detail, whenever such a detail threatens to pierce the cult of your infallibility.

On any such occasion you resort to alternatively bludgeoning (and stroking) the individuals involved until they submit, often by using the most despicable modes of psychological manipulation. Despite your commitment to truth in other matters, you find it appropriate on those occasions to rewrite history and to lie lest you be proven wrong. That is why you did not have the capacity to retract the lies you uttered when you returned from Germany. Though I gave you no occasion to find fault with my conduct—since I remained silent and isolated—you became even more obsessed and wrote memo after memo and thus became prisoner to your own lies. Each new memo with its fresh findings was written—not to me, but in response to some member who had been foolish enough to express some doubt; doubt which was then reported to security and which you felt compelled to respond to by inventing more extravagant slanders and crimes. First, you called me a liar, a thief, classified me as clinically insane and because there was still doubt in the membership it was only natural that the next step was to connect me to some form of agentry. You have thus created a situation which has left no alternative for me but either accept your infallible falsifications—accept that I am insane, immoral and have been so since the fall of 1978—or to resign from the organization.

I have chosen to resign, because it is my responsibility to do so. I cannot allow you to create a precedent whereby anyone can be subjected to charges of insanity, and backroom frameups, because they choose to disagree with you in an honorable and proper way. Furthermore, I will not fall into the trap of defending myself against charges which could put members and even yourself in legal jeopardy. Unlike you Lyn, I do not say to myself that "even if I were put before 10 grand juries I would tell them that I knew nothing..." You have rejected every appropriate forum within which I could have presented every sensitive fact. You also knew that I was not about to make a public presentation of material that could irrefutably clear me of all your malicious charges, but would ultimately be used to bring harm to many members and to the organization.

If I had chosen to follow your method and to irresponsibly react out of honor, pique or self-righteousness that is what I would have done. However, over the years I have acquired, no doubt inadequately, approximations of that quality 'sophrosene' which you totally lack. I have also learned to couple that quality with a deep respect for people who despite their problems, have made sacrifices to the organization—unlike you Lyn, who out of personal vendetta can within 24 hours degrade such people and label them thieves, traitors, and agents.

In that sense, despite your greatness you could not have founded the American Republic, nor could you have risen to the heights of Lincoln's statesmanship. I am afraid that you will never develop those qualities because of your psychological need to surround yourself with people who must at all time feel compelled to pay homage to your infallibility, and to even amplify your errors in these matters despite their better knowledge.

I am not bitter, depressed or existentially enraged as I follow each day's outburst of slanders that paint me as the new Satan for the benefit of the gullible. Nothing that you write Lyn can hurt me or surprise me any longer; for once the corruption of malice and lies spreads, it creates an environment from which no good can come. I am only deeply distressed at the effect this has on the membership whose power of judgment is the most important asset of the human race. We have seen repeatedly in this century the pernicious effect that big lies have had on the powers of reason of the citizenry, on whose powers ultimately the development of civil society depends.

Once the members believe that our financial difficulties during and immediately after the campaign resulted from thievery; or that the poor NEC [National Executive Committee] was destroyed by me beginning in 1978; that there was no campaign because evil Kostas was stealing money...then the membership despite its greatness will have committed moral suicide.

I wish you the best and hope for the successful implementation of the principles and policies of the ICLC.

Good-bye,
Kostas
(signed)