CIA document links the North American ultraright to the "Dirty War" against ETA

Neo-Nazi leaders LaRouche and Quinde met with Spanish police. Shortly after these meetings in Madrid, the GAL began.

By ANTONIO RUBIO, MANUEL CERDAN, DARRIN WOOD
El Mundo, August 6, 1995 (read El Mundo's original Spanish language version here)

Note by D. King (2008): The ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or "Basque Homeland and Freedom") is an armed leftwing nationalist organization that has long engaged in terrorism. GAL (Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberacion, or "Antiterrorist Liberation Groups"), now defunct, was a network of Spanish government-sponsored death squads composed mostly of mercenaries with extreme-right politics. GAL is known to have assassinated 27 people, some of whom were innocent of any involvement with ETA, and to have kidnapped and tortured others.

One of the writers of this piece, Mr. Wood, told me in 1995, based on his team's interviews with former GAL participants, that some of the names of alleged Basque terrorists supplied by the LaRouchians turned out to be innocent people. He also claimed that the LaRouchians had asked the Spanish officials to compensate them by turning over confidential information about the financial holdings of the Spanish-based family of former SS officer Otto Skorzeny (d. 1975), who had been heavily involved after World War Two in the ODESSA (the well-financed escape network for Nazi war criminals). I can only speculate that LaRouche was fantasizing about getting his hands on whatever remained of the rumored ODESSA gold.

MADRID--A secret document of the CIA, dated January 26, 1983, states that North American ultraright leader Lyndon LaRouche maintained relations that year with Spanish police to participate in the anti-terrorist fight against ETA. The agent who wrote the memorandum about the relations between the ultraright leader and the CIA, maintains in the document that LaRouche "has set up contacts with many officials who share his concern--particularly in France, Italy, and Spain--and often serves as a 'catalyst' in the anti-terrorist field."

The CIA document, which was subpoenaed by LaRouche's lawyer during a trial in a Massachusetts court and handed over by the American government, also points out that the contacts of the ultraright leader in Spain "are mostly with the 'old crowd' but he [LaRouche] believes the new crowd can be worked with as well. (Gonzalez may be salvageable if he and his Socialists can be 'broken from Brandt et al.')"

El Mundo has learned from police sources that LaRouche, who began to collaborate with the White House National Security Council when Ronald Reagan was president, has visited Spain on repeated occasions and maintained excellent relations with national ultraright leaders and former high level members of the Interior Ministry. His deputy Herbert Quinde has also been in Spain to collaborate in the fight against terrorism.

On page 151 of the first edition of the book by Melchor Miralles and Ricardo Arques, Amedo: el Estado contra ETA, the journalists of El Mundo point out that "in the first months of 1983, Jesus Martinez Torres and commissioner Jose Maria Escudero--chief of the Central Brigade of Information--ordered Mariano Baniandres to meet with the European delegate for the ultraright Labor Party from the United States, Quinde."

Arques and Miralles maintain that the officials "established a meeting with Quinde in Madrid, which was held in March. Quinde came to the offices of the Brigade, in Madrid's Puerta del Sol, accompanied by a French police official. During the meeting, to which--besides the two guests--also came Martinez Torres and Escudero, they commented on the errors committed by the Batallon Vasco Espanol (BVE) and studied the necessity of professionalizing the 'dirty war' against ETA."

According to the authors of the book, "Quinde promised to facilitate contact with 'professional killers.'" The French official promised to supply information on names, addresses, vehicles, and customs of the ETA leaders living in France.

Police sources who participated in the events mentioned above, confirmed all of this to El Mundo. Near the end of 1982, shortly before the October elections won by the Socialist Party, LaRouche visited Madrid for a meeting with Baniandres. A police commissioner who knew the ultraright leader put them in contact. LaRouche stayed at the Hotel Palace, protected by bodyguards armed with machine guns. It was there that he received the Spanish agents.

After this encounter, Baniandres met with LaRouche's right-hand man, Herbert Quinde. He [Quinde] travelled from Germany where he edited an intelligence magazine. The encounters between Baniandres and Quinde were repeated on various occasions.

On the third or fourth visit, Quinde offered to serve as a bridge with the French police for collaboration in the fight against terrorism. Baniandres, who had by now been named head of the Interior Brigade, organized a meeting with French police at which Jesus Martinez Torres, Commissioner General of Information, Perez Corredera and Jose Maria Escudero were present. For the French, a Lieutenant Colonel who served as the right-hand man for General Pidou, head of the Gendarme, traveled from Paris.

At the meeting they spoke of evening up the score with ETA by using its methods [i.e. terrorism], but finally reached an agreement by which the French government would deport ETA militants via emergency proceedings. This system was used later in 1986 when Jacques Chirac became Prime Minister and Charles Pasqua was named Minister of the Interior.

The French representative asked in return for Spanish collaboration in investigating a group of Corsicans who had sought refuge in the Basque country.

The reunion was immortalized for posterity. From an "Apolo" van, agents of the Interior Brigade photographed Quinde and the French official when they went to the La Barraca restaurant on the Gran Via.

In July of 1983, Mariano Baniandres was removed from his job and from the meetings. Police officer Alberto Elias was put in charge of the subject and he continued the meetings with LaRouche and Quinde. Months later, the GAL were born with the collaboration of foreign mercenaries and French police.

The CIA document discusses the contacts between LaRouche and the Spanish police, and the January 1983 date of the memo coincides with Quinde's trip to Madrid. The presence of an official of the French police is also mentioned in the official document of the North American agency, which states that LaRouche's organization has "sympathetic contacts (collaborators?) throughout the French government and extending right into the Presidential Palace."

The participation of members of the French extreme right and the OAS in the "dirty war" against ETA was of great importance. The GAL recruited mercenaries that had already collaborated with the BVE and with the Triple A at the end of the seventies. Many of them, ideologically Nazis, left their ideology in the closet and collaborated with the police of Spain's first Socialist government. From there, we have LaRouche's praise of [Prime Minister] Felipe Gonzalez who he says is "salvageable."

This translation, posted by Mr. Wood in 1995 on a LISTSERV devoted to Basque issues, has been edited for inclusion on the Lyndon LaRouche Watch website by comparing it with the version stored in El Mundo's electronic archives. Mr. Wood's version contains several phrases and sentences that are not in the archival version; however, the archival version contains a sidebar description of the LaRouche organization that is not in the version posted by Mr. Wood.

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