Note: Michael Bornowitz is a fictional character who will play a key role in the LaRouche Administration.
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Michael Bornowitz The Lyndon LaRouche I Knew
In August 1962 I was fresh out of law school and studying furiously for the state bar exam. I would lock myself in my apartment and pore over law book after law book, until the letters blurred together on the page and the sky was pitch black. My friends started to worry about me, and knowing my interest in politics asked me to come to see the local Democratic congressional candidate speak. At that point the only thing I had heard about Lyndon LaRouche was that he was a former campaign manager who had narrowly won the primary and faced a tough fight in the general election. The man who stepped on the stage hardly looked like a politician. In fact with his balding scalp (complete with a bad combover) and horn-rimmed glasses he resembled several of my law school professors. Then he spoke and I was transfixed. I have memorized much of that speech, and would occasionally repeat it to him to stroke his ego. In part it went:
“My fellow Americans today our nation faces threats as great, if not greater, than those we faced before the Second World War. On the international stage we face the threat of nuclear annihilation. Do you realize that at any moment Moscow could turn the Earth into an irradiated hell? [He was fond of reminding us that he had predicted the Cuban Missile Crisis; using this statement as proof] As if that wasn't enough a Red tide is sweeping through Asia, threatening to devour Vietnam. Domestically we have heard plenty of voices calling the New Deal “communist” and demanding its repeal. Well I say that if protecting the elderly and infirm is communist, that feeding the poor is communist, or that giving workers the right to a union is communist then I am a regular Leninist!”
I went to several more of his speeches before I finally worked up the courage to write to him. To my shock he personally wrote back and answered all of my questions. LaRouche had a unique ability to make every detail part of a larger context. When I asked him about the conflict in Congo for instance he was able to explain how colonialism had made Communism popular in Africa, and thus America needed to create strong allies as a bulwark. We communicated for several years, and actually met once or twice, before in 1966 he offered me a job as his personal attorney. I was shocked. Why would a Congressman choose to be represented by someone who had only been practicing law for 3 or 4 years? To LaRouche however my experience was not the most important factor. More important was that I was dedicated and loyal, which in LaRouche's mafia don-like mind meant that he could put his faith in me. My youth was also important, because as LaRouche often reminded me “Give me someone when they're young and I can make them follow me forever.”
Robert Caro The Fall: Lyndon LaRouche and the Unmaking of the American Dream
What is most remarkable about LaRouche's six years in Congress is how unremarkable they were. He never rose beyond a junior member of the Education and Labor Committee, and the number of bills he sponsored can be counted on two hands. This was largely due to his personality. LaRouche had a massive ego, which on the floor of the House translated to an inability to compromise or admit he was wrong. Other Representatives found him overbearing and secretive, or as Sam Rayburn put it “Lyndon LaRouche is a smart man who thinks he's the next Einstein.” Perhaps the most important thing about LaRouche's tenure is the momentous historical events that were happening at the same time. The years between 1963-1969 saw the Civil Rights Act pass, the beginnings of the Vietnam War, the Great Society, assassinations, riots, the rise of the counterculture, amongst others. And Lyndon LaRouche had a front row seat to all of it, making all three of these issues central to his platform. Although his actions as President would show that his belief in civil rights was probably a charade to gain the votes of blacks and northern liberals, at the time he was seen as one of the most vehement defenders of civil rights. He accepted an invitation to the March on Washington, and throughout much of his career he advocated for increasing the protections of the Civil Rights Act. However LaRouche's opinions on Vietnam shifted with the times. As the anti-war movement became more popular he became a vocal critic, but post-war he moderated his views, stating “The problem wasn't that we got into Vietnam, it was that we had no intention of winning.”
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His time in Congress also marks the start of LaRouche's intelligence network. LaRouche's personal attorney Mike Bornowitz observed that LaRouche “believed that knowledge was power, and was willing to go to any lengths to get it.” Bornowitz also noted that “A large part of my job was to meet with people from the government and think tanks to pick their brains about whatever issues Lyndon felt he needed to know.” His government contacts increased massively in 1968 after he was introduced to a colorful mercenary named Mitchell WerBell III. WerBell had been a member of the Office of Strategic Services (a precursor to the CIA), and by the 1960s was a mercenary working for various groups and countries (among them Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic and anti-Castro exiles), as well as an arms dealer who the Army allowed to travel throughout Southeast Asia to demonstrate his suppressors and silenced weapons. These various activities had made WerBell a lot of friends in the military and intelligence services, who he introduced LaRouche to for a small fee. But LaRouche wanted to know more than just world affairs; he wanted knowledge that could be used as a weapon. To that end around 1966 LaRouche's supporters began infiltrating various groups and spying on political enemies. Unlike his intelligence on world affairs, which was an open secret in Washington, LaRouche did everything in his power to keep his spying on other politicians secret. Only the most trusted LaRouche supporters were given this assignment. “It was some serious cloak and dagger stuff,” one of them remembers, “We had dead drops, code names, shit like that.” As President LaRouche expanded this program into something far more far-reaching and sinister.