Larouche's Tangled Web

Just a few months ago, Lyndon LaRouche was widely regarded as a weird joke. A 63-year-old former Communist, he now lives in millionaire-style luxury on a heavily guarded, 174-acre compound in Virginia, wages fringe presidential bids and is head of an eccentric and paranoid political movement. At airports around the country, his impassioned, clean-cut followers hawk propaganda calling for the quarantine of AIDS victims and accusing numerous notables, including Henry Kissinger and Walter Mondale, of being Soviet agents. But when two LaRouchites posing as mainstream candidates won the Illinois Democratic state primary nominations for Lieutenant Governor and secretary of state in March, the bhagwan of American politics became a force to be reckoned with. The more so since his National Democratic Policy Committee, all but unnoticed, claims to have fielded more than 750 candidates in primary contests around the country, including 149 would-be Congressmen and 14 aspirants for the U.S. Senate.

Some of the LaRouchites' latest activities have shown them to be far more aggressive than mere purveyors of political twaddle. A dedicated adherent last month gained access to the country home of Katharine Graham, chairwoman of the Washington Post Co., and snooped around the upstairs bathroom where her husband Philip's body was found after he committed suicide in 1963. The uninvited guest said he was sketching the bathroom for a "research project." Members of the Trilateral Commission meeting in Madrid last month received harassing phone calls from people who posed as Israeli journalists seeking information about the foreign policy organization, which LaRouchites believe is part of a sinister conspiracy of international financiers. When one Trilateralist asked if the caller was a LaRouche follower, he sputtered in confusion and broke off the conversation.

In Chicago last week, an arrest warrant was ordered for the Democratic nominee for Illinois secretary of state, LaRouchite Janice Hart. Judge Morris Topol accused Hart of "thumbing her nose at the court" by failing to appear on a disorderly conduct charge brought last year, when she purportedly disrupted a lecture by Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland. To protest the cleric's alleged support of the International Monetary Fund, a perennial LaRouche target, Hart handed Weakland a piece of raw liver, calling it a pound of flesh. Hart's attorney said she was unable to appear in court last week because she was in West Germany "campaigning for patriots" in that country's upcoming parliamentary elections. Hart garnered attention earlier this spring by leading an anti-drug parade through Chicago's Loop. She rode the streets in a 1942 armored vehicle with Robert Patton, a LaRouchite Senate candidate in New Hampshire.

On the basis of descriptions given by former followers, the LaRouche organization in many ways resembles a religious cult. Since the movement began to expand dramatically in the mid-'70s, members have often been subjected to a grueling process of indoctrination. LaRouchites have at times been browbeaten into rejecting not only their old political beliefs but in some cases their families and friends to make them utterly devoted to the movement. Defectors claim that members often worked around the clock, beyond the point of exhaustion, soliciting contributions and loans by telephone. LaRouchites, they say, are taught to demonstrate absolute loyalty to their leader and to regard him as a fount of political wisdom.

For the past 20 months, a federal grand jury in Boston has been investigating charges of credit-card fraud committed by LaRouchites. Solicitors at airports have allegedly urged individuals to make contributions or purchase literature with credit cards. Once they had obtained a person's account number, LaRouchites allegedly added unauthorized charges, in some cases totaling several thousands of dollars.

Under fire, Lyndon LaRouche usually accuses his opponents of trying to destroy him for political reasons. But while he seems to be relishing his newfound notoriety, many observers believe that the current publicity might help weaken, if not wipe out, the movement. Since Illinois, LaRouche followers have failed to win any significant victories. "They've been exposed. What they stand for has been exposed," says Donald Rose, a Chicago political consultant. "The light of day is going to disturb this fungus."