Sept. 30-Oct. 6, 1989

There were two major turning points which occurred during this week in history— in 1986 and in 1989— and they are intimately related to the choices which now face the United States, and the world.

October 6, 1986 was the fateful day on which the largest state-Federal police force assembled since the Palmer Raids of the early 1920s, was deployed against the offices and residence of political leader Lyndon LaRouche. The 400-man team, comprised of ATF, FBI, State Police, and other assorted agents, utilized helicopters, at least one Armored Personnel Carrier, and an overwhelming show of force, to swoop down on the rather small town of Leesburg, Va., allegedly in order to seize documents pursuant to a Federal indictment for conspiracy to commit mail fraud.

In fact, as the behavior of the task force made clear, the included, if not the main, purpose of the raid was to physically eliminate LaRouche himself, whose residence just outside the town was surrounded by military hardware. The "theory," as later revealed in court proceedings, was that these forces were necessary in order to deal with expected armed resistance from LaRouche's security detail. Legally, however, the small army of Federal and state officials had no reason to enter the area where LaRouche lived, as there was no indictment or search warrant issued against him, or anyone else living on the premises, nor were the relevant documents assembled there.

The ominous standoff lasted all day Oct. 6, while FBI men with axes broke into the offices of the publishing houses associated with LaRouche's political movement, and carted away boxes of documents. Helicopters buzzed over LaRouche's residence, and the tensions ran high, as three associates of LaRouche were arrested at gunpoint, and it looked as though anything might happen. In the evening of that day, LaRouche sent a telegram to President Reagan, advising him of the danger of an assassination attempt.

At that very moment, the President was involved in a non-military strategic confrontation with U.S.S.R. chief Mikhail Gorbachov in Reykjavik, over the Strategic Defense Initiative policy which President Reagan had developed out of LaRouche's initiative. The President held firm against Gorbachov, as well as against the murder of the SDI's author.

Over the course of the next day, the military deployment around LaRouche's residence was removed. Those who had aimed to kill LaRouche, had lost this round by intervention of circles around the President.

The subsequent events, around the further indictments, the trials, and the eventual imprisonment of LaRouche and 10 associates, are well known. But this early inflection point should not be overlooked. A high-level faction in the U.S. Establishment had been determined to kill the individual whom they considered a major impediment to their plans to subvert the American republic into an empire. Others, ensconced in the U.S. government, prevented it from happening, thereby preserving LaRouche to play a decisive role in history subsequently.

The crucial moment in which that role should have been decisive came in October-November 1989, with the victory over the Communist regime of East Germany, and the breaching of the Berlin Wall. The final dismantling of that Wall came on Oct. 3, 1990.

Once again, it had been Lyndon LaRouche who forecast the collapse of the communist regime, and had called, in October 1988, for the reunification of Germany around a program of economic development. In fact, had LaRouche and his movement been able to organize freely at that time, his proposals might have been taken up at the time of German reunification— a moment of historic opportunity for reversing the decades of conflict and division that had subsisted since the Cold War was started by Winston Churchill.

Yet, by early 1989, those who had been unable to physically eliminate LaRouche, had succeeded in railroading him into prison, and the momentous events of fall 1989-1990, had to proceed without him on the scene. While LaRouche's policy input was carried forward, with the issuance of his Productive Triangle proposal in the winter of 1989, the effort was severely crippled by the fact that the author was imprisoned.
...more