Former West German military counterintelligence chief backs LaRouche one hundred percent. Testimony of Brig. Gen. (ret.) Paul-Albert Scherer at Sept. 1987 ICLC-sponsored hearing in Virginia to defend LaRouche against prosecution. Says the KGB is out to get LaRouche because he's in the forefront of the fight for the "values of the advanced culture of Western civilization" and is a "first-order personal obstacle" to the Soviets' plans to exterminate the West. Alleges that as early as the 1970s, "experts were amazed at [LaRouche's] connections and his access to special information on terrorism, the drug scene, the intelligence services themselves, and on the details of developments in the Eastern bloc countries and in the Middle East." Scherer also states: "In keeping with my duties as a bearer of state secrets...I asked around to friendly intelligence services and in political circles, before I took up any direct contact with the LaRouches. The fact that I did take it up, and can speak publicly about it here, says enough..."
LaRouche the fantasy-Hitler announces plan (1987) to dominate the planet. When a notorious anti-Semite and fan of the Third Reich's Wehrmacht schedules a conference in Munich (of all places), invites Bundeswehr officers and defense contractors, urges them to develop a new generation of "mass-killing" superweapons that can "dominate this planet," and warns that "we had better move quickly, before it is too late," this can only be interpreted in one way. (And note that one of LaRouche's co-speakers, Brig. Gen. (ret.) Jobst Rohkamm, calls for formation of new commando units based on Wehrmacht experience on the Eastern front.) But we should be grateful for little things: At least Lyn didn't hold the event in a beer hall.
* "Revolt in the Germany military" (EIR, Jan. 27, 1989). Although the Soviet Union was heading towards collapse, the LaRouchians were happy to ignore this historic trend in the interests of building support for West Germany's military budget while slyly spreading a bit of fascism on the side. EIR "correspondent" Rainer Apel, who would play a key role 14 years later in covering up the circumstances surrounding the death of Jeremiah Duggan, inveighs against "cowardly" politicians and a supposed "witchhunt against the armed forces on the part of the media, leftist and peacenik groups, and the opposition Social Democratic and Green parties." And Apel claims:
"A sense of 'this far, but no farther,' has been reached among many in the armed forces now....Among senior officers in all Bundeswehr services, rage has been building, and the mood is building toward an open political revolt against the politicians." Apel was careful to use the adjective "political" before the noun "revolt," but the passage is still suggestive of something more than officers testifying before a commission, and can fairly be seen as an attempt to push the envelope and to depict a direct military role in politics as somehow an acceptable response to the Soviet threat (which was still perceived by many Germans as being extremely serious) and the alleged threat from left-of-center political parties and movements within West Germany.
* "German Secret Service: 'KGB Runs Peace Movement'" (New Solidarity, Aug. 8, 1983). Here's an intriging article from the period during which the LaRouchians were mucking around with death squad organizers in Spain and harassing Petra Kelly (as by handing her the severed head of an animal in a box) under the direction of Anno Hellenbroich. Reporter Susan Welsh, wife of LaRouche's creative accountant, claims that Big Brother (Heribert Hellenbroich of the BfV) had stated in a radio interview that "the Soviet Union is funneling millions of deutschemarks to the West German 'peace movement' to create a 'hot autumn' of violence and political chaos this year." And that terrorist groups might "use upcoming planned demonstrations against U.S. missile deployment as the cover for terrorist acts and assassinations."
If H. Hellenbroich actually said what Welsh claimed he said, then his statement might indicate that former military counterintelligence chief Gen. Paul-Albert Scherer was correct in his 1987 assertion that the LaRouchians had gained serious attention from some elements of the German security services.
Welsh complains that H. Hellenbroich's "forthright statement was not to the liking of some high-level personages, for it received no coverage whatsoever in the German press." She also says that a "subsequent scheduled [TV] interview" with H. Hellenbroich was "cancelled at the last minute." Apparently, she thinks this was a plot to prevent the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche from gaining influence, but a simpler explanation is that the BfV chief was sending an indirect message to the East Germans and the KGB not to try anything because the BfV was on the case. If this were his motive, then the lack of further press coverage would be perfectly understandable.
The article goes on to claim that the Lutheran student association at Mainz University had joined with "formerly jailed terrorists" to plot military "sabotage." And that, according to unnamed law enforcement officials, a "terrorist 'general staff'" had been created in northern Germany to "plan actions against NATO and U.S. munitions transport." Thus did the German peace movement get transmuted through Welsh's creative reporting into a hugely dangerous plot. (The LaRouchians and their assigned infiltrators had done the same thing in the United States in 1978 re the Seabrook nuclear reactor protests, giving the New Hampshire state police an excuse to round up a large number of demonstrators for no legitimate reason.)
The Welsh article (which almost certainly would have appeared in the German language edition of New Solidarity or have been a rewrite of material appearing therein) is only one of many pieces of evidence, involving greater or lesser degrees of ambiguity, that suggest it's time to finally get to the bottom of all this--in the interests of justice for Jeremiah Duggan if for no other reason: Who, really, was behind the COINTELPRO style operations against Petra Kelly and the Greens? And why was the LaRouche organization removed forever from the BfV watch list in spite of many complaints about the group's extremist behavior and anti-Semitism? Indeed, why was it first removed from the watch list in 1978--when LaRouche's public expressions of Jew hatred were at their height--and why was the decision not promptly rescinded when it became clear that LaRouche and his wife Helga Zepp-LaRouche (the leader of the political wing of his German organization) were spouting Holocaust denial?
* Der Spiegel on LaRouche and the Hellenbroich brothers. This 1984 article (text in German preceded by a summary in English) from the Federal Republic of Germany's most prestigious newsmagazine is the source of our information on how BfV official Heribert Hellenbroich took the LaRouchians off his agency's watch list, and kept them off. There may be more here than just a case of an older sibling protecting a younger one. For instance, H. Hellenbroich tells reporter Jörg-R. Mettke that brother Anno, chief of LaRouche's intelligence operation, had refused to tell him where the group's money came from. Huh? Think about it: A leader of a suspicious extremist group conducting private intelligence operations in Germany won't say how his outfit is financed, but Germany's counterintelligence chief--operating on the front lines of the Cold War during years of great tension--fails to instantly restore the suspicious group to his watch list. Perhaps H. Hellenbroich really did know where much of the money was coming from, because the BfV and other security services were supplying it.
* "Petra Kelly: Profile of a Political Whore," New Solidarity, June 3, 1985. This garbage was first published in Neue Solidarität, the German LaRouchian newspaper, in 1982, under the title "Did You See This Whore on TV?" The original version appeared at a time when the Federal Republic's security services were very worried about the Green Party and the peace movement, in both of which Kelly was playing a leading role. I personally suspect that the BfV, the MAD, and/or some element of the U.S. intelligence community had a hand in the COINTELPRO-style campaign against Kelly of which this article was a part. The campaign involved defamation of Kelly and those closest to her, stalking, threats (like delivering to her the decapitated head of an animal), cornering her on a train, and shoving around her grandmother.
Over the years, it has not been uncommon for LaRouche to put together this type of total harassment package, whether in pursuit of his own ideological or personal goals or on behalf of a client or hoped-for client. The intent is to make the targeted person feel isolated and paranoid, so that he or she will suffer a nervous breakdown or a heart attack, or else commit suicide. LaRouche, who's long been fascinated by "psywar" tactics, refers to this method as the creation of a "controlled aversive environment" (see more on this concept in "Lyndon LaRouche and the Art of Inducing Suicide"). And to whip up the LaRouchian cadre to participate in such an effort, the targeted person is demonized as a symbol of evil and as less than human.
The re-publication in 1985 of the article sliming Kelly may have been triggered by her filing of a defamation suit in New York against the LaRouchians. Although they affected great confidence that they could destroy her at trial, the reader will note that they prudently changed the title of the German article, which referred to Kelly as a "whore," into one which merely called her a "political whore."
* "Green Party's Petra Kelly Faces Grilling Under Oath," New Solidarity, Oct. 10, 1986. In this propaganda assault written on the eve of Kelly's deposition (and, in the typical cowardly fashion of the LaRouche movement, published without anyone's name on it), the continuing attacks on her are justified on the grounds that she and the Green Party were working against "U.S. defense policy" and were part of a Kremlin plot to drag the Federal Republic of Germany out of NATO. (The article then displayed a certain rhetorical confusion with its allegations re the Green Party's "pro-fascist, pro-Soviet, and terrorist policies and activities.")
The most striking feature of this anonymous rant is its relentless sexism: "aging starlet of the pro-Moscow Green Party," "apparent specialty[] of seducing septuagenarian political and military leaders into working for Moscow's 'peace' movement," "has paraded herself as a liberated female who recognizes none of the traditional customs or institutions," "had an abortion" (as if forced abortion were not then and is not now a policy of the LaRouche organization practiced on hundreds of women; read here) and "Green Party witch...famous for her crying jags and other unrestrained outbursts." And then the final dehumanization: "Perhaps for the first time...Kelly will be forced to face the political evil she represents." Evil woman, evil witch, evil environmentalist, evil Soviet agent, evil subhuman--that's how the LaRouchian mind works, and why they just love death squads.
* "Green Party Leader Kelly Falls Apart at Pre-Trial Deposition," Oct. 13, 1986. Here's a prime example of the LaRouche organization's gloating over the discomfort that they've caused (or fancy that they've caused) to targeted individuals.
In the case of the Kelly deposition, the celebratory sadism is over their presumably successful tormenting of an allegedly fragile and hysterical woman. The litany is as follows: "By the conclusion of the deposition, Kelly was reduced to a frightened infant...," "Miss Kelly's assertion that she has been libelled by being characterized as an unchaste person is perhaps one of the most laughable allegations ever included in an American defamation case...," "Her feminist vocabulary...," "She frequently ranted and raved throughout the deposition...," "The deposition went so poorly for the plaintiff that she became seized with prolonged fits of paranoia," and (in the caption that accompanies New Solidarity's photo of Kelly) "She has that haunted look."
Now I'm very skeptical that everything went as well for the LaRouchians in this deposition as they claim. Especially since they had already described my own 1984 deposition in LaRouche v. NBC in a manner that was highly inaccurate. And I can't help remembering how LaRouche dropped Chip Berlet and me as defendants in the NBC case, claiming in a "fit of paranoia" that we were plotting to murder him in the deposition room--a convenient excuse for avoiding having to answer questions from our attorney, the only one on the defense team who knew the right questions to ask and had the requisite aggressiveness. But that's a story for another day. The point here is what the LaRouchians believed had happened in the Kelly deposition--and the buzz they experienced as a result.
* Former member of LaRouche Youth Movement alleges widespread sexual exploitation in German branch. "Lightseeker" writes (in a Sept. 19, 2012 posting on Factnet) that Helga Zepp-LaRouche, "in the name of saving Africa and mankind from Armageddon," allows "impressionable teenagers to be sexually exploited by abusive and stupified male cult victims," bullies young women into inappropriate sexual relationships, and engages in "emotional and psychological blackmail" of female LYMers. This document treats the subject in a generalized way, which is often the case when an issue of abuse is first raised. If detailed information follows from Lightseeker or other ex-LYM members, it will raise fresh questions about why the German government, which in general takes the problem of destructive cults seriously and has exerted much effort to control the Church of Scientology, turns a blind eye to the LaRouche organization and indeed seems to be protecting it.
Petra Kelly, 1947-1992.