Explanatory notes in brackets are by D. King
"dave72," Tuesday, October 16, 2007 - 2:09 PM:
This may not be appropriate here, but I have always had a theory about what may have happened with Jeremiah Duggan. I have to preface this by saying that I was not in the org at the time of his death nor have I spoken with anybody who was. I have two qualifications for posting this theory. One is that I was once a rank-and-file LaRouchie and both remember and can conjure up the mindset. The other is that I once ran crazily onto a busy road and nearly killed myself. I was being pursued by street kids in Rio de Janeiro and felt to be in physical danger. I instinctually and naturally ran through traffic because I wanted to live. If I was killed and there were no witnesses other than the drivers, my death probably would have been ruled a suicide.
Most LaRouchies are not paranoid by nature but when one is in the org one is constantly being reminded that there are agents EVERYWHERE. Anybody that disrupts a deployment, we are told, is probably an agent. People that join the org for short periods and then quit were probably agents or influenced by agents. There was often a sense of frustration that we didn’t decide that someone was an agent till after they had left and presumably inflicted their damage. One had the desire to ensnare one of these agents and somehow send a message to their handlers. I can imagine the glee in Wiesbaden when someone in the leadership there decided that young, articulate, Jewish, British, Tavistock-influenced Jeremiah was an agent. For the life of me, I can’t imagine anyone in the org that I knew deciding to kill poor Jeremiah, but I can imagine someone in the org (even myself) giving the order to scare the sh*t out of him. That could explain the frantic phone call and the horrific events that followed.
"xlcr4life," October 16, 2007 - 6:23 PM and 6:24 PM (merged):
Dave72, every conference we put together [Jeremiah Duggan ended up dead after attending a Schiller Institute conference in Germany that morphed into a cadre indoctrination school] had an underlying theme of us against the world oligarchy. The more the scam artists filled Lyn's head up with delusions, the more intense this became. Now understand that it was insanely high to begin with. In the USA the January 1974 conference was where Lyn unleashed the Chris White brainwashing hoax and we had members who were convinced that they were brainwashed. Bill E., I believe, was sent to Bellevue after he collapsed on the floor and yelled "Deprogram me, deprogram me." Lyn in his bag of cheap parlor tricks knows that you can create a unique hold on people by making them believe that what they are doing is so world historical that there must be an enemy operation against them. Thus, when you get a phone call from your parents or a birthday card from your siblings, it is all part of the plot to get you out of the LC [the National Caucus of Labor Committees, which is LaRouche's cadre organization] and your world historical mission directed by Lyn.
In Detroit we had a conference before the 1980 New Hampshire fiasco [LaRouche's Democratic Presidential primary campaign] where I think Bob C. was running down the hall saying he needed to see Lyn. I was in the lobby of the Masonic Temple we had the conference in when he was tackled by Security and calmed down by Gus [Gus Kalimtgis, LaRouche's chief of staff, who quit shortly after this incident].
During these conferences any questioning of Lyn or the LC's sanity, common sense or anything which disagrees is met with heightened paranoia. In that Detroit conference we had a kid from Queens who said that our bumper stickers were in bad taste. Immediately he became an object of concern as Security had to know where he came from, who was recruiting him, who is his family, why is he here, what is his history in the region [the regional LC organization], etc.
One of the most severe and intensive conferences I attended was in NYC at an East Side Hotel near Grand Central Station in the early 1980s. The Our Town series of Dennis King may have been running, but we also had people from the Yippies who were demonstrating against us. This was elevated into a massive mobilization of the LC to "keep Lyn alive." The conference was being run with a daily buildup in the briefing that Lyn was going to be shot or several assassination attempts would erupt during the conference. We had many members talking among themselves and crying that Lyn was going to be shot. (This may have been around the time Hinkley shot Reagan.)
The feverish pitch was so high that we were told that everybody who attends the meeting is a suspect and we had each of our members sit next to their contacts and others to watch them during the conference. The metal detectors were brought out, and I remember one Security guy crying because one of their security contacts told them that a small gun could be smuggled in with what was called a "crotch sock" that would hold a small caliber weapon between the legs and our metal detecting wands would not pick it up.
During the conference we had a few people faint, and one woman I was told suffered a breakdown and was sent to a hospital.
If you are not in the LC you will not know what is going on at these conferences. Your real goal is money and recruits. If you have some younger contacts, the goal is to get them to join the LC and quit their job and move in and deploy at a card table shrine [LaRouche literature sales tables at airports, on city streets, college campuses, etc.]. They may have been hemming and hawing, but this is the time to get them.
Older members with families, your job is to get some bug money from them and any friends they bring.
These national conferences cost a good buck as you lose income for each day and then you have to transport and house people. So the phone team is expected to come up with some big bucks and you want new LC members.
The LAST thing you want at a meeting is a Jeremiah Duggan asking questions, not worshipping Lyn and taking pictures and notes. As soon as the background is looked at you will see that in the crazy world of LC profiling, a British Jew who knows about Tavistock and just called your group crazy about Jews and Tavistock is not going to be high on the friendly list. [The Tavistock Institute and Tavistock Clinic are a London research institute and mental health network, respectively, that the LaRouchians have long fancied are part of a giant plot to brainwash the world and assassinate LaRouche.]
What disturbs many ex-members is how the LC did what it did during the grand jury investigations with people leaving and being sent overseas [to avoid subpoenas] and other things of this nature. I would not wish this on any family, and reading the many releases by Jeff [Jeff Steinberg], Chaitkin [Anton Chaitkin] and Lyn about Jeremiah and his mother shows me how the LC is real creepy.
On many blogs one will find that the word "creepy" is what is used to describe the actual contact with an LYM or LC member...
Many people here should have their own memories of national conference fun.
"shadok," October 16, 2007 - 6:26 PM:
Dave72, I agree with you, it is a possibility [that the LaRouchians just intended to scare Jeremiah]. However, when you say "I can’t imagine anyone in the org that I knew deciding to kill poor Jeremiah"... well, the org is used to recruiting all sorts of strange and deranged people with all sorts of backgrounds and psychological problems. As a matter of fact, the org is responsible for recruiting anyone at any cost--with no apparent supervision or control. The trick is to let the members believe they are "free" when in fact they are like fishes in a bowl: they don't see the bowl!
The control comes from the top as usual. Lyn sets the agenda, he creates the controlled environment, the conditions which force his fishes to move in a certain direction rather than another one. That's his expertise. The "mind control" works by controlling the environment both physical and mental (ideological). Look at the hostile environment he created around Ken Kronberg before Ken committed suicide! Now if Lyn had decided to "take care" of "Jeremy" (as he calls him now), he was in a position to do it. Bear in mind that the post-ICLC modus operandi of the org is different. The ICLC [International Caucus of Labor Committees] used to operate in a hierarchical, quasi-military way. Now, with the LYM [LaRouche Youth Movement], Lyn is playing the same kind of dangerous deadly game Mao used to with the Red Guards. And there were casualties!
The problem with your theory is that it is contradicted by the postmortem evidence: it appears that Jeremiah was beaten to death by a blunt object. Moreover, after Jeremiah's death many LYMers either were sent far away, or left, or some were asked to stay out. Jeremiah was also described by HZL [Helga Zepp-LaRouche] as an "enemy of the org"--and the LYMers, especially the French ones, were ordered to shut up.
All that we need is a new inquest, which the org so strongly opposes.
"kheris," October 16, 2007 - 7:59 PM:
Dave 72, the scenario you propose is plausible. Without a proper autopsy or investigation we won't know for sure if Jeremiah was beaten. However, deliberate harassment leading to his death during an effort to escape constitutes responsibility on the part of the players who participated, including Schiller Institute leadership who endorsed it. Now if we could just get the evidence to prove it.
"eaglebeak," October 16, 2007 - 10:22 PM:
Kheris, you're absolutely right on Jeremiah's death. The other thing that would create criminal liability, responsibility, felonies, etc. for the Schiller Institute leadership would be coverups--obstruction of justice.
It would be useful if Erica Duggan and the people helping her would brief the German authorities (and the British) on the LaRouche organization's track record with regard to obstruction of justice, especially the famous case of the Boston Credit Card Three--Sanders, Gelber and Park--who fled the country for five years or more, to avoid the Boston Federal grand jury probe into credit card hanky-panky in 1984.
All three did Federal time in plea agreements when they came back, in 1990 or thereabouts. No question the LaRouche org goes in for obstruction of justice.
Second, I think there's more on the tax front vis-à-vis PMR and the LaRouche entities, and other related government-oversight fronts too, perhaps.
Dear me, what a mess.