United States v. LaRouche

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LaRouche movement

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United States v. LaRouche refers to the prosecution and conviction of American political activist Lyndon LaRouche and his associates on charges of mail fraud, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and tax evasion. There were two federal trials, one in Boston and one in Alexandria, and several state trials; although there were some differences in the specific charges, the trials centered upon the charge that LaRouche and his associates conspired to solicit loans from their supporters, on behalf of organizations they controlled, without intending to repay those loans. LaRouche was convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and sentenced to a prison term of fifteen years which began in 1989. He was paroled in 1994 after serving five years. Twelve of his associates served total prison ranging from one month to 13 years.

According to LaRouche and his supporters, the trials were politically motivated.

Contents 1 Investigations 2 Raid and indictments 3 Boston trials 3.1 Frankhouser trial 3.2 Main trial 4 Involuntary bankruptcy 5 Alexandria trial 5.1 Motion in limine 5.2 Voir dire 5.3 Trial 5.4 Income tax 5.5 Conviction & imprisonment 6 Prosecution of LaRouche associates 6.1 Alexandria Federal trial 6.2 State trials 7 Appeals 8 Claims of LaRouche supporters 8.1 Attempts at exoneration 9 Notes 10 External links

[edit] Investigations

Investigations into financial improprieties by LaRouche groups were started un the mid-1980s by the U.S. government and by eleven states. According to Edward Spannaus, a defendant in the trials, there was a memorandum (later obtained by LaRouche's attorneys and submitted as an exhibit in the trial) written on January 12, 1983, by former FBI chief William Webster to Oliver "Buck" Revell, head of the Bureau's General Investigative Division. It requested information on the funding of LaRouche and the U.S. Labor Party. A complaint by Henry Kissinger had been raised at a meeting that day of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board by senior member David Abshire, asking for an FBI investigation.^[1][2] A federal grand jury reportedly began investigating "an extensive nationwide pattern of credit card fraud" by LaRouche organizations in November 1984.^[3] That same year a New Jersey bank froze the accounts of LaRouche's 1984 presidential campaign due to allegedly fraudulent credit-card charges.^[4] The time frame for the investigations is disputed by LaRouche's attorneys, who filed an appeal in which they claim an ongoing government investigation began in the 1960s under the FBI's COINTELPRO program (see appeals.)

In January 1985 a grand jury subpoenaed documents from the National Democratic Policy Committee (NDPC), and three other LaRouche organizations: Caucus Distributors Inc., Fusion Energy Foundation, and Campaigner Publications Inc. Seven weeks later, on March 29, 1985, a court held them to be in contempt and fined them $45,000 per day. The fines for all the organizations eventually totaled over $20 million.^[5]

Investigations by a separate federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia along with state agencies in New York, California, Minnesota, Illinois, and Washington were also underway.^[6] The FBI, IRS, FEC^[7] and other federal agents and personnel were conducting their own investigations. The Internal Revenue Service revoked the tax exempt status of the Fusion Energy Foundation in September 1985, and a year later the State of New York sought to dissolve the corporation, alleging that it used "persistently fraudulent and illegal" means to solicit donations.^[8] U.S. Attorney in Boston William Weld announced in January of 1986 that he would convene a national conference "to coordinate a prosecutive and investigative effort" against LaRouche. The conference was held the following month in Boston.^[9] Three states, Alaska, Indiana, and Maryland, banned fundraising by Caucus Distributors Inc. in May 1986, due to the sale of unregistered promissory notes.^[10] The Illinois Secretary of State began civil proceedings against Caucus Distributors Inc. in June 1986, seeking an injunction to bar deceptive business practices.^[11] A fundraising ban was instituted on the "Independent Democrats for LaRouche" in Minnesota, and confirmed on appeal to the Supreme Court.^[12]

LaRouche lawyers filed a series of related civil suits against individuals, agencies, and businesses. They sued U.S. Attorney William Weld and former Attorney General William French Smith to try to stop the FBI investigation of the credit card case. They sued the New Jersey bank that had frozen their credit card merchant accounts. They sued Chemical Bank in a similar suit. Edward Spannaus, a treasurer for LaRouche campaigns, filed complaints with the state bar and the U.S. Justice Department against one of the Assistant U.S. Attorneys in the case.^[13]

[edit] Raid and indictments

Beginning October 6, 1986, the Leesburg, Virginia headquarters of the LaRouche organization were searched in a coordinated, two day raid by hundreds of officers of the FBI, IRS, other federal agencies, and Virginia state authorities, supported by armored cars and a helicopter. The agents also surrounded the heavily-guarded^[14] estate, where LaRouche was living, for the duration of the search, but did not enter it.^[15][16] While surrounded, LaRouche sent a telegram to President Ronald Reagan saying that an attempt to arrest him "would be an attempt to kill me. I will not submit passively to such an arrest, but ... I will defend myself."^[17] LaRouche offices in Quincy, Massachusetts were searched as well.

Warren J. Hamerman, Chair of the NDPC, said the searches "conducted by Donald Regan's associate William Weld's forces against presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche's headquarters coincides with Don Regan's desperate attempts to maintain the cover-up on AIDS."^[18] LaRouche later said that the raid was ordered by the Soviet premiere as part of an assassination attempt. "The man with the mark of the beast on his head, Mikhail Gorbachov (sic), has demanded my elimination," said LaRouche.^[19]

On the same day as the Leesburg search, the Boston grand jury handed down a 117-count indictment that named ten LaRouche associates, two corporations, and three campaign committees. They were charged with making unauthorized credit charges that defrauded $1 million from over 1,000 people. The charges also included a scheme to raise funds by soliciting loans with no intention of repaying them. The National Caucus of Labor Committees was charged, along with others, of conspiring to obstruct justice. Prosecutors charged that defendants had burned records, sent potential grand jury witnesses out of the country, and failed to provide subpoenaed evidence. LaRouche was quoted in the indictment telling an associate that, in reaction to legal problems, "we are going to stall, tie them up in the courts...just keep stalling, stall and appeal, stall and appeal."^[20] Three of the indicted associates remained at large for over a year,^[21] and investigators were allegedly given false information.

Meanwhile the state cases were progressing. On February 16, 1987, the Commonwealth of Virginia indicted 16 LaRouche associates on securities fraud and other felonies.^[22] On March 3, 1987, the State of New York indicted 15 LaRouche associates on grand larceny and securities fraud.^[23]

On June 30, 1987 LaRouche was added to the Boston federal indictment with one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice.

[edit] Boston trials

[edit] Frankhouser trial

The opening of the Boston trial, before Federal Judge Robert Keeton, was planned for September 1985 but was delayed to December when one of the defendants, Roy Frankhouser, was granted a severance of his case which was tried first.^[24] Frankhouser had been an informant for the ATF and other law enforcement agencies, in addition to being a neo-Nazi and a former Pennsylvania Ku Klux Klan grand dragon. Frankhouser had convinced the LaRouche organization that he was actively connected to U.S. intelligence agencies, and become a security consultant for LaRouche.^[25]

Frankhouser revealed that, in order to justify his $700 a week salary, he and LaRouche security employee Forrest Lee Fick had invented a connection to the CIA.^[26] He said that he had persuaded a friend to play a former top CIA official (named "Ed" by Frankhouser, after "Mister Ed") in meetings with LaRouche.^[27] When LaRouche found out about the grand jury investigation he reportedly told Frankhouser to get the CIA to quash it. Frankhouser told LaRouche that the CIA wanted him to destroy evidence and hide witnesses.^[28] Frankhouser claimed that on another occasion LaRouche sent him to Boston to check on the grand jury investigation, but that he went to a Star Trek convention in Scranton, Pennsylvania instead, from where he called to warn LaRouche that the FBI had wiretapped his phones. LaRouche was called as a defense witness in Frankhouser's trial but he refused to testify, exercising his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.^[29] Roy Frankhouser was found guilty of obstruction of the federal investigation into credit-card fraud.^[30] He was sentenced to three years and a $50,000 fine.^[31] After his conviction he was granted immunity against further prosecution and compelled to testify against LaRouche in the Boston trial.

[edit] Main trial

The trial of LaRouche and his six co-defendants began on December 17, 1987, although the jury had been picked in September. The 12 defense lawyers made 400 pretrial motions.^[32] The prosecution claimed that pressure to fill fundraising quotas had led to 2,000 instances of credit card fraud, and that organization members had sought to obstruct the investigation. The defense case was that the prosecution was the culmination of a 20 year campaign of harassment by the FBI and CIA, and that they were acting on orders from the CIA when they destroyed evidence and hid witnesses.^[33][34][35] During the trial a search of the personal files of Oliver North was ordered by Judge Keeton in order to look for evidence that North had led an effort to harass and infiltrate the LaRouche Movement, causing an additional delay in the trial.^[36] The search produced a May 1986 telex from Iran-Contra defendant General Richard Secord to North, discussing the gathering of information to be used against LaRouche.^[37] After this memo surfaced, Judge Keeton ordered a search of Vice President George Bush's office for documents relating to LaRouche.

Originally expected to last from three to six months, delays stretched the trial out much longer. Another delay came when the trial was halted to give time for the FBI to search their files for exculpatory documents.^[38] The trial was delayed again when federal agents seized LaRouche properties as part of the involuntary bankruptcy procedure in 1988.^[39] After several jurors asked to be excused due to the length of the trial the defense refused to proceed with fewer than 12 jurors, forcing the judge to declare a mistrial on May 4, 1988.^[40] Before disbanding, the jurors polled themselves and found all defendants, including LaRouche, "not guilty." According to the Boston Herald of May 5, 1988, one of the jurors described the poll: "It seemed some of the government's people caused the problem, adding that the evidence showed that people working on behalf of the government 'may have been involved in some of this fraud to discredit the campaign.'" The National Law Journal called the Boston mistrial a "stinging defeat" for the government; LaRouche commented, "I was cheated out of an acquittal." At the time of the mistrial a LaRouche spokesperson said that the Constitutional Defense Fund, a LaRouche organization, had spent over $2 million on legal and administrative expenses.^[41] Defense attorneys said they would appeal if the government sought a new trial.^[42]

A retrial in Boston was scheduled but delayed by the intevention of the charges in Alexandria. The Boston charges were later dismissed over the objection of the LaRouche lawyers who said they were seeking vindication.^[43] The Assistant U.S. Attorney who handled both cases said after the dismissal, "It was the Boston prosecuting effort which led to the evidence which allowed the indictment and convictions in Alexandria, and I think justice was served by the substantial sentences received."^[44]

[edit] Involuntary bankruptcy

In early April 1987 the government charged in court that LaRouche organizations may have been trying to sell properties for cash to more easily conceal their assets and avoid paying $21.4 million in contempt of court fines.^[45] The U.S. Department of Justice filed an involuntary bankruptcy petition on April 20, 1987 for the purpose of collecting the debt from Caucus distributors Inc., Fusion Energy Foundation, and Campaigner Publications Inc. In an unusual procedure, the companies were seized before the bankruptcy came to trial. Assistant U.S. Attorney S. David Schiller wrote in a brief that the debtors had a "pattern of transferring or commingling substantial corporate assets to their members and other insiders for little or no consideration and for non-business purposes". The trustees reported they were only able to locate about $86,000 in assets.^[46]

The bankruptcy halted the publication of a weekly newspaper, New Solidarity, and a bi-monthly science magazine, Fusion. At least one publication, Fusion, was reborn with a new name but the same editor and material.^[47] Civil libertarians outside the LaRouche group objected to the government seizure of LaRouche publications as abusive.^{[citation needed]}

The attorneys who represented the LaRouche entities in the bankruptcy trial filed a brief stating that the action was unprecedented and improper, alleging that it deviated from the standard rules of involuntary bankruptcy, and that members of the Alexandria prosecution team from the second criminal trial were involved in the planning and execution of the bankruptcy.^[48]

During the bankruptcy trial in September 1989, an FBI agent destroyed evidence (credit card receipts, cancelled checks, and FEC filings) immediately after he had promised the court he would preserve them.^[49] On October 25, 1989, Judge Martin V.B. Bostetter dismissed the government's involuntary bankruptcy petition, finding that two of entities involved were nonprofit fund-raisers and therefore not subject to involuntary bankruptcy actions.^[50] Bostetter said the government acted in "objective bad faith" and the bankruptcy was obtained by a "constructive fraud on the court.",^[51] Appeals that went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court found that the matter of the involuntary bankruptcy would not change the outcome of LaRouche's convictions in a second trial held in Virginia.

The LaRouche organization asserts that it has proof, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, which shows that the purpose of the bankruptcy wa to simply shut down the affected entities rather than to collect fines.^[52]

The U.S. Attorney said, "Essentially the court holds that we did not abuse the bankruptcy filing, just that we should have filed differently". He also noted that only a minimal amount of money had been collected.^[53]

[edit] Alexandria trial

On October 14, 1988, LaRouche and six associates were indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia before Judge Albert V. Bryan, in whose district LaRouche resides. The court is known as a "Rocket Docket" because it speeds even complicated cases without delay.^[54] The indictments included various conspiracy charges, including conspiracy to commit mail fraud. LaRouche was also charged with conspiring to hide his personal income since 1979, the last year he had filed a federal tax return.

[edit] Motion in limine

Judge Albert V. Bryan granted a prosecution motion in limine, ruling that the defense would not be permitted to discuss, or even allude to, the fact that the indebted entities had been placed in involuntary bankruptcy. It also excluded certain other avenues which the prosecution had reason to expect that the defense would pursue, such as claims of vindictive prosecution and a history of political harassment by the government.^[55]

LaRouche's attorneys claimed on appeal that this prevented them from presenting their defense, that being that the LaRouche organization no longer controlled the indebted entities, and that the decision not to repay debts was made by government trustees. This appeal was rejected.

[edit] Voir dire

The defense made a motion for voir dire in the second trial; voir dire is not mandatory in federal court. The request was denied.^[56] An Amicus curiae brief, one of many that were filed on appeal, charges that unlike Judge Keeton, who devoted three weeks to jury selection, Alexandria Judge Albert V. Bryan spent two hours, and did not permit individual questioning of prospective jurors. The brief asserts that this contributed to the result that most jurors in the Alexandria trial were present or former government employees. Jury Foreman Buster Horton was the U.S. Department of Agriculture liaison to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).^[57] This appeal was later rejected.

[edit] Trial

The prosecution presented evidence that LaRouche and his staff solicited loans with false assurances to potential lenders and showed "reckless disregard" of the facts. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kent Robinson presented evidence that LaRouche's organization had solicited US$34 million in loans since 1983. In his opening statement to the trial, Robinson said,

Members of the jury, this case is about money. It's about how the defendants got money, and to a lesser extent, what they did with that money when they got it... The defendants, all seven of them, are charged in engaging in a scheme to defraud. That is, to obtain those loans by making false promises, false pretences, saying things to potential lenders which they knew weren't true.^[58]

LaRouche supporters claim the amount that was not repaid was $294,000, but according to testimony reported by the Washington Post (17 December 1988), the amount of funds not repaid by 1987 topped $25 million. The most important evidence was the testimony of lenders, many of them elderly retirees, who had lost thousands of dollars in loans to LaRouche that were never repaid. Several witnesses were LaRouche followers who testified under immunity from prosecution. LaRouche did not testify.

Jurors heard testimony from nine lenders who had loaned a total of $661,300 to help LaRouche fight the "war on drugs" but only received $10,000 in repayment. One of the prosecutors, John Markham, siad those loans represented "just a very small portion of unrepaid borrowing". Other testimony asserted that, as of 1987, half of the $4 million borrowed by the 1984 presidential campaign was unpaid, and that only $5 million had been repaid out of $30 million in non-campaign loans.^[59]

LaRouche denied all the charges, calling them "an all-out frame-up by a state and federal task force," and said that the federal government was trying to kill him. "The purpose of this frame-up is not to send me to prison. It's to kill me." LaRouche said. "In prison it's fairly easy to kill me... If this sentence goes through, I'm dead."^[60]

[edit] Income tax

One of the charges against LaRouche was that he had conspired to avoid paying income tax, not having filed a return in ten years. LaRouche claimed to have had no income. LaRouche lived in on a 172 acre (700,000 m²) estate in Round Hill, Loudoun County, Virginia, with a pond and horse ring. It was purchased for his use by Oklahoma oilman David Nick Anderson for $1.3 million, with LaRouche organizations paying rent to cover the $9,605 mortgage.^[61] LaRouche had named the property "Ibykus Farm" after a work by Friedrich Schiller.^[62] His wife, Helga LaRouche, is reported to have overseen hundreds of thousands of dollars in renovations to the property.^[63] The LaRouche defense argued that Ibykus Farm was a "safehouse" needed for the security of LaRouche and others,^[64] whereas the government argued that security expenditures were "misplaced priorities."^[65]

In 1985, a judge in a separate case had described LaRouche's testimony about being almost penniless as "completely lacking in credibility".^[66] In 1986, in the same case, LaRouche said that he did not know who had paid the rent on the estate, or for his food, lodging, clothing, transportation, bodyguards, or lawyers since 1973. The judge fined him for failing to answer.^[67] In all the LaRouche group spent over US$4 million on Virginia real estate during this period, according to trial testimony reported in the Washington Post (17 December 1988).

[edit] Conviction & imprisonment

On December 16, 1988,^[68] LaRouche was convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud involving more than $30 million in defaulted loans; 11 counts of actual mail fraud involving $294,000 in defaulted loans; and one count of conspiring to defraud the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. The judge said that the claim of a vendetta was "arrant nonsense", and that, "the idea that this organization is a sufficient threat to anything that would warrant the government bringing a prosecution to silence them just defies human experience."^[69] Jury foreman Buster Horton told the Washington Post (17 December 1988) that it was the failure of LaRouche aides to repay loans that swayed the jury in the Virginia case, and that the jury "all agreed [LaRouche] was not on trial for his political beliefs. We did not convict him for that. He was convicted for those 13 counts he was on trial for."

While in prison LaRouche released claims that he was tortured as part of an assassination attempt.^[70] LaRouche ran two political campaigns from prison: for Virginia's 10th Congressional District in 1990 and for U.S. President in 1992.^[71] One of his cellmates during his incarceration was televangelist Jim Bakker. Bakker later devoted a chapter of his book, I Was Wrong, to his experience with LaRouche.^[72] LaRouche was paroled in 1994 after serving five years of the 15-year sentence, the normal schedule for parole at that time. LaRouche commented later that "...in effect, George H.W. Bush put me in the jug, and Bill Clinton got me out."^[73]

[edit] Prosecution of LaRouche associates

[edit] Alexandria Federal trial

As part of the trial in Alexandria, five of LaRouche's associates were also found guilty. His chief fund-raiser, William Wertz, was convicted on ten mail fraud counts. LaRouche's legal adviser and treasurer, Edward Spannaus, along with fundraising operatives Dennis Small, Paul Greenberg, Michael Billington, and Joyce Rubinstein, were convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Wertz and Spannaus were sentenced to five years each (Spannaus served two and a half years^[74]) and $10,000 fines.^[75] The others received three-year terms and various fines.

[edit] State trials

The Attorney General of Virginia, Mary Sue Terry, prosecuted eight LaRouche associates on securities fraud charges relating to $30 million in loans. The first trials were in Leesburg, but later trials were held in the larger city of Roanoke. In order for the prosecutions to proceed it was necessary to get a decision by the State Corporation Commission ((SCC) that the loans solicited by LaRouche organizations were securities. Attorneys for the companies argued that a prohibition on raising funds through loans would violate their First Amendment rights. The SCC rejected that argument and decided, on March 4, 1987, that the promissory notes were securities. It ordered six LaRouche organizations-Fusion Energy Foundation Inc., Caucus Distributors Inc., Publication and General Management Inc., Campaigner Publications Inc., EIR News Service Inc. and Publication Equities Inc.-to stop their sale. Injunctions had already been issued in five other states,^[76] and 14 states eventually instituted similar injunctions. At least one injunction, by the State of Minnesota against Independent Democrats for LaRouche, was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which confirmed the lower court.^[77]

According to the Barbara Boyd, a LaRouche associate, "At the center of the Virginia prosecutions was the novel allegation by prosecutors, that political loans advanced for political programs and campaigns, were investment securities, subject to the securities registration and securities fraud provisions of state law. No court had ever declared this prior to the Virginia prosecutions." Boyd asserts that the Virginia State Corporation Commission initially refused to issue a ruling that political loans were investment securities, and only later cooperated. The commissioner who gave the ruling, Elizabeth Lacy, was shortly thereafter nominated as Virginia's first woman Supreme Court Justice, and then refused to recuse herself from the case that had resulted from her decision.^[78]

Six of LaRouche associates were convicted and two pleaded guilty.^[79] Rochelle Ascher, a fundraiser, was sentenced in Leesburg to 86 years (reduced to 10 years) for six charges of fraudulently selling securities and one count each of selling an unregistered security with intent to defraud, selling a security by an unregistered agent with intent to defraud, and conspiracy to commit security fraud.^[80][81]

In two Roanoke trials, four other associates were found guilty of securities fraud charges: Donald Phau,^[82] Lawrence Hecht, Paul Gallagher, and Anita Gallagher.^[83] Richard Welsh and Martha M. Quinde pleaded guilty and received 12 month and one month terms, respectively.^[84][85]

Michael Billington was charged in a Roanoke court with having solicited 131 loans totaling $1.24 million from 85 people even when he knew that the loans would not be repaid.^[86] Represented by a court-appointed lawyer, he rejected a plea bargain that would have limited his prison sentence to the three years he served in the federal case. According to Barbara Boyd, Billington's attorney had not prepared a defense, assuming that Billington would "cop a plea," and the judge refused to permit Billington to substitute a different attorney, despite the fact that one stood ready.^[87] His attorney, Brian Gettings, told the court that he believed LaRouche was making the decisions in the case rather than his client.^[88] Billington was convicted on nine counts of "conspiracy to fail to register as a securities broker." Virginia's court system has the juries determine prison terms though judges may override them. The jury in his case recommended 77 years (out of a possible 90), and the judge refused to lower it because Billington continued to insist upon his innocence (which the judge deemed lack of remorse,) and because he had warned that he would accept the recommendation if Billington requested a jury trial. Billington served a total of ten years in prison before being released on parole. The lead prosecutor said the case involved, "willful and massive fraud that has caused a lot of people to suffer".^[89]

A trial in New York state courts on charges of scheming to defraud resulted in the conviction of Robert Primack, Marielle Kronberg, and Lynne Speed.^[90]

[edit] Appeals

Beginning as early as 1986, LaRouche-related lawyers made numerous appeals of court decisions. The contempt of court fines from the Boston grand jury were appealed. On July 3, 1986 the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the fines.^[91] It was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, who let the decision stand.^[92]

When the Boston case ended in mistrial, LaRouche lawyers appealed the decision to retry the case. In their appeal, heard October 5, 1988, they argued that a retrial would violate double jeopardy.^[93] Following the convictions in the Alexandria court, prosecutors moved to dismiss the charges from the Boston court, cancelling the retrial. The LaRouche lawyers appealed that decision on March 13, 1989, arguing that they needed the trial to exonerate LaRouche. "My imprisonment is the American Dreyfus case", LaRouche said in a January 1989 interview from prison. The prosecutor denied claims of a conspiracy, describing the theory as an "Orwellian fantasy ... that we are hiding some supersecret spy plot which, if exposed, would exonerate them."^[94]

A 1989 appeal filed by the LaRouche defendants argued that, due to the motion in limine granted by Judge Bryan in the Virginia case, the jury never heard the two central features of LaRouche's actual defense: first, the long history of "adversive government actions" against the LaRouche organization, and second, that the government, through the involuntary bankruptcy and related actions, had "intentionally... subverted their ability to raise funds and pay their debts."^[95] In the pro-defense book Railroad! the authors write that "...the judge invaded the province of the jury, preventing the jurors from hearing the facts which would enable them to competently determine the question of criminal intention."^[96]

LaRouche's attorneys claimed the investigations of LaRouche and his organization began in the 1960s as part of COINTELPRO, and "culminated in an intense 5-year program by what may be characterized as a national multi-agency 'Get LaRouche' task force."^[97] According to the appeal, the task force included both Criminal and Tax divisions of the U.S. Department of Justice, The U.S. Attorney's Office in Alexandria, the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, IRS, U.S. Postal Service, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Virginia Attorney General's office, Virginia State Corporation Commission, and the Loudon County Sheriff's office. LaRouche's attorneys claimed on appeal that the lower court's decision on their in limine prevented them from presenting their defense, that being that the LaRouche organization no longer controlled the indebted entities, and that the decision not to repay debts was made by government trustees. This appeal was rejected.

There were numerous Amicus curiae briefs that were filed on appeal. One by Dr. Albert Bleckmann, director of the Institute for Public Law and Political Sciences at the University of Muenster, raised further objections to the lack of voir dire, the exclusion of evidence under the motion in limine, the fact that the government did not approach LaRouche about his tax situation before indicting him for tax violations, and concerns about double jeopardy because of the nearly identical charges in the Boston and Alexandria trials.^[98] A similar brief was filed by over 100 American attorneys, and raised the additional issue of possible violation of Sixth Amendment rights due to a rush to trial.^[99] Others raised the issue that non-payment of loans is not a criminal offense, but had been made one through politically motivated misuse of conspiracy laws,^[100] and that more generally, a "crime of thought seems to have been camouflaged as a common law crime."^[101]

On July 3, 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected without comment an appeal by LaRouche and his six co-defendants that claimed the Alexandria court had tried to silence them.^[102]

A three-judge panel of Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously confirmed the Alexandria convictions on January 23, 1990,^[103] They found that the defense had not asked for a continuance in a timely manner, had not indicated that significant flaws in the case were due to lack of time, and had not pressed jurors about their knowledge of LaRouche.^[104] Five months later the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case.^[105]

[edit] Claims of LaRouche supporters

The convictions of LaRouche and his associates were a defining moment in the history of the LaRouche network. LaRouche supporters and others, including hundreds of elected officials from the US and other countries, insisted that LaRouche was jailed, not for any violation of the law, but for his beliefs (see attempts at exoneration.) LaRouche also alleged systematic government misconduct:

"The record shows, that for nearly thirty years, elements of the U.S. Department of Justice have been engaged in world-wide political targeting of me and my associates. This includes early 1970s operations run in conjunction with Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger's U.S. State Department. During the last ten years or so of that period, some U.S. officials, and others, have challenged the relevant agencies with some of the evidence which shows, that those prosecutions and correlated harassment of me and my associates, had been clearly fraudulent, politically motivated targeting."^[106]

LaRouche and his lawyers asserted that the Anti-Defamation League sought to destroy his organization, and that the prosecution was the result of a conspiracy between the ADL, the government, and the media.^[107][108] This claim stems from a series of meetings which LaRouche publications refer to as the "John Train Salon."^[109]

In testimony to submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 13, 1998, the LaRouche-affiliated Schiller Institute claimed that "[t]he inability to repay lenders and other crediters was the consequence of an unprecedented involuntary bankruptcy proceeding initiated by the Justice Department against those companies in 1987, initiated in an ex parte, in camera proceeding.^[110]

Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte, a professor of constitutional and international law at the University of Mainz in Germany, compared the LaRouche trial to the Dreyfus affair, which he called "a classical example of a political trial". He wrote, "Just as LaRouche was, the French Capt. Alfred Dreyfus was deprived by the structure of the trial procedures, of any opportunity to prove his innocence, and facts critical for his defense were excluded from the trial.^[111]

[edit] Attempts at exoneration

On November 8, 1991, Angelo Vidal d'Almeida Ribeiro, the Special Rapporteur for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, filed a request to the US Government based on a complaint that had been filed concerning the LaRouche case. The US government responded by saying that LaRouche had been given due process under the laws of the United States. The UN took no further action.^[112]

One of LaRouche's appeals attorneys was former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. In a 1995 letter to then-Attorney General Janet Reno he said that the case involved "a broader range of deliberate and systematic misconduct and abuse of power over a longer period of time in an effort to destroy a political movement and leader, than any other federal prosecution in my time or to my knowledge." He asserted that, "The government, ex parte, sought and received an order effectively closing the doors of these publishing businesses, all of which were involved in First Amendment activities, effectively preventing the further repayment of their debts."^[113]

The LaRouche organization organized several panels of sympathetic legal experts, elected officials and journalists from other countries, to have them review the case and issue their findings. These included the Curtis Clark Commission,^[114] and the Mann-Chestnut hearings.^[115]

On September 18, 1996, a full page advertisement appeared in the New Federalist, a LaRouche publication, as well as the Washington Post and Roll Call. Entitled "Officials Call for LaRouche's Exoneration," (see text), Its signators included Arturo Frondizi, former President of Argentina; figures from the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement such as Amelia Boynton Robinson, James Bevel, and Rosa Parks; former Minnesota Senator and Democratic Presidential Candidate Eugene McCarthy; Mervyn M. Dymally, who chaired the Congressional Black Caucus; and artists such as classical vocalist William Warfield, and violinist Norbert Brainin, former 1st Violin of the Amadeus Quartet. LaRouche's Schiller Institute paid for the advertisement. Amelia Boynton Robinson was at that time a board member of the Institute; James Bevel and William Warfield had been active in various LaRouche organizations.

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Washington Post 17 December 1988 article on Virginia conviction.
• Washington Post 13 January 1985 article on LaRouche mansion and unusual lifestyle
• [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/cult/larouche/larou7.htm Washington Post 12/23/90 article on elderly seeking repayment of loans
• "The World's Most Expensive Glass of Sherry," Chap. 33 from Dennis King's Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism
• The human rights issues in the Virginia LaRouche cases LaRouche rebuttal to the Washington Post articles.
• Summary of the LaRouche cases on a LaRouche-affiliated site
• "The John Train Salon Delivered Perjured Testimony in the 'Get LaRouche' Trials," Executive Intelligence Review website
• "The John Train Salon and the Evidence of Criminal Fraud Filed With the Fourth Circuit Court," Executive Intelligence Review website
• "The Man in the Iron Mask: The Task-Force Prosecution and Attempted Silencing of Lyndon LaRouche," documentary video by LaRouche organization
• "Why Lyndon LaRouche is in Jail" transcript of a national broadcast paid for by LaRouche's presidential campaign in 1992
• Report on the Mistreatment of Political Prisoner Lyndon LaRouche
• Transcript of sentencing proceedings - Alexandria, Va., January 27, 1989