North, Secord, and Bush edit
BOSTON -- Lawyers for Lyndon LaRouche, six followers and five LaRouche political groups battled the government on Tuesday for access to classified FBI information concerning LaRouche and key players in the Iran-Contra scandal.
Several of the defense lawyers sought to dismiss the case after being denied immediate access to the information, but U.S. District Judge Robert E. Keeton deferred ruling on the requests until after questions about access to the FBI files are resolved.
Defense attorneys, at hearings outside the presence of the jury, have presented evidence in recent weeks of FBI infiltration of LaRouche organizations.
They also have gained access to a one-page memo from retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard Secord to Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, the former National Security Council aide, in which Secord reports "our man here claims Lewis has collected info against LaRouche." Lewis was not further identified.
The memo, found in North's safe after he was fired because of his role in the Iran-Contra affair, was surrendered to LaRouche defense lawyers after the special prosecutor investigating the scandal acknowledged its existence. Secord, reached on Tuesday in Washington, said he could not recall the memo and said he never had crossed paths with LaRouche. Secord was one of North's principal operatives in his network of private aid to the Contras.
Defense lawyers have said they will prove the Reagan administration plotted to ruin LaRouche because he refused to support Reagan's programs to aid Nicaragua's Contras. They also argue that the government has improperly withheld evidence that could prove their case, which could be grounds for dismissal of the charges.
They contend that North directed the FBI to gather information against LaRouche and infiltrate his organizations as part of a larger FBI surveillance of groups opposed to the administration's Central American policies. [..]
After learning of the May 1986 Secord-North memo, defense lawyer Michael Reilly requested any information the government had about LaRouche and Lewis that might be favorable to defense claims.
The prosecutor in the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Markham, surrendered documents from FBI files to Reilly, but the FBI later told Markham that he was not supposed to release the material.
Other defense attorneys now want copies of the documents.
— LAROUCHE ATTORNEYS FIGHT U.S. ON SECRET DOCUMENTS :[SUN-SENTINEL Edition]. The Associated Press Sun Sentinel [serial online]. March 9, 1988:3A.
A document released yesterday by the FBI appears to support claims by the Lyndon LaRouche organization that it has been the target of political spying by the FBI and the CIA. According to the document, three Texas-based men told FBI agents in 1986 that they were asked by both the bureau and the CIA to penetrate the LaRouche group. It is unclear from the document whether the FBI viewed the men as credible informants. The document, which was declassified yesterday, is cited by lawyers for LaRouche as contradicting earlier prosecution claims that no such penetration occurred. LaRouche is on trial in federal court charged with credit card fraud and obstruction of justice. The document, a composite of several entries in FBI files, indicated that FBI agents from the San Antonio and El Paso offices interviewed Fred Lewis, Gary Howard and Ronald Tucker about their contacts with the LaRouche group. The document said the three were employees of Peregrine International Associates, a nowdefunct company that contracted with the Pentagon to perform covert operations abroad. [..]
Yesterday, Keeton ordered Markham to search FBI files to determine by Monday whether any documents in the FBI's possession indicate that the LaRouche organization was targeted for infiltration by other government agencies. The FBI reportedly has nearly 5,000 pages of files on LaRouche and his followers. The assistant US attorney previously contended that he had provided the defense with all government material useful to its case.
But LaRouche's attorneys, noting that the material was not brought forth until the 60th day of the trial, asserted that the defense would not have obtained the material except for a freedom of information request to independent counsel Lawrence Walsh, who provided a communication seized from Lt. Col. Oliver L. North's safe that was presented in court on Monday.
During the FBI interview of Lewis, Howard and Tucker, "the men claimed they had previously been requested by the FBI and CIA to penetrate the LaRouche organization," according to the document.
The group the three men were said to work for, Peregrine International, was reportedly implicated in plots to assassinate the Ayatollah Khomeini, to kidnap and kill drug smugglers and to help train the Nicaraguan contras, according to two articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer last year.
The article quoted a staff attorney for the Senate Iran-contra committee as saying Peregrine International may have been a precursor to the "privatization" of foreign policy that characterized the use of privately funded individuals, most of them former military officials, for secretly aiding the contras and delivering US arms to Iran.
The three men told FBI agents that "during 1984 they were in contact with supporters of LaRouche. That year Lewis introduced Jeffrey Steinberg a LaRouche official to Howard. Steinberg told Howard he wanted to hire Howard and others for a possible covert action in foreign countries. Also it was indicated that Steinberg had asked Lewis to rescue a LaRouche supporter who had been kidnapped in Colombia by drug or terrorist groups," according to the document.
Odin Anderson, an attorney for one of the LaRouche defendants, said yesterday that to his knowledge, Steinberg's only request involved escorting a LaRouche supporter, Patricia Londono, back to the United States from Colombia. Anderson said he was not aware of any other "covert operations" requested by LaRouche officials.
The trial of LaRouche and the other defendants on charges of credit card fraud and obstruction of justice has veered deeply into the area of national security this week. Last month, one defendant, Roy Frankhauser, was sentenced to a three-year federal prison term and fined $50,000 for plotting to block a federal grand jury investigation into the alleged credit card scheme to raise more than $1 million for the 1984 LaRouche presidential campaign.
The document that was seized from North's safe and presented in court Monday indicated that the FBI was inverviewing Lewis. The document, sent from Retired Maj. Gen. Richard Secord, said: "Our man here claims Lewis has collected info against Larouche. . . ."
LaRouche defense attorney William Moffitt Tuesday said that Markham told him "our man" refers to Oliver Revell, executive assistant director of the FBI.
But in a telephone interview with a reporter for the Knight-Ridder newspapers, Secord said yesterday that "our man" refers to John Cupp, an aide to Secord.
Monday afternoon, Markham told the court that he might have to disqualify himself from prosecuting the case because of a possible conflict of interest.
But Markham said yesterday's release of the second document removed him from the potential conflict. The conflict apparently would have involved Markham's defending the FBI's classification process and thereby withholding material from the defense that could be useful to its case.
Anderson, the defense attorney, yesterday blasted Markham for calling LaRouche suspicions of government penetration an "Orwellian fantasy."
"He has specifically mocked our claims that we were targeted for political spying and specifically denied any surveillance or penetration by the government, calling our claims the creations of the bizarre minds of the defendants and their counsel," Anderson added yesterday.
LaRouche officials have contended that the administration turned against the organization in 1984, when it began to oppose President Reagan's Central America policies, specifically his support for the Nicaraguan contras.
Before that period, LaRouche officials shared intelligence with members of the National Security Council and other government agencies, according to spokesmen for the group.
LaRouche defense attorneys acknowledged yesterday that they did not know where further information on Peregrine's personnel would lead in the trial but contended that the Secord-to-North telex had been withheld by the prosecution.
Markham told Keeton that the prosecution did not suppress the telex and had "no idea that it existed." He said once the document had been located through a freedom of information request, "we promptly arranged to retrieve it and to have it declassified and produced."
— Ross Gelbspan and Ed Quill, Globe Staff FILE SUGGESTS US SOUGHT TO SPY ON LAROUCHE :Boston Globe March 10, 1988:1.
The federal judge presiding at the trial of Lyndon LaRouche and six of his followers yesterday ordered the prosecutor to search the file index of Vice President George Bush and other White House officials to determine whether federal informants had infiltrated the LaRouche organization.
The move by Judge Robert E. Keeton in Boston expanded the initial search he ordered Wednesday of the indices of FBI, CIA and National Security Council files for the names of alleged federal informants and others with possible connections to LaRouche.
LaRouche defense attorneys are contending the prosecution has withheld documents that might prove that the Reagan administration plotted against LaRouche because he refused to support programs to aid Nicaragua's contra rebels. [..]
A document declassified and released Wednesday appeared to support arguments by defense attorneys that the LaRouche organization had been the target of political spying by the FBI and the CIA.
The followers of LaRouche and five LaRouche political groups have been charged with allegedly defrauding people of over $1 million by the unauthorized use of their credit cards to help LaRouche finance his 1984 presidential campaign. LaRouche is charged with trying to obstruct the investigation into the alleged scheme. While the index files are being searched by Assistant US Attorney John Markham, the jury in the 62-day trial has been sent home until Monday. [..]
Keeton said he was not ordering that the actual files be searched at this time, but only that the indexes to each file be searched to see whether the names of any alleged FBI informants are referenced. He said he would decide later whether a more thorough search is warranted.
"You have an obligation to look at it the indices and call my attention to something," Keeton told Markham. Keeton also demanded to know why information that initially had not been provided to the defense was now appearing in the form of recently declassified documents.
He was referring to a telex entered as an exhibit two weeks ago that had been sent by retired Air Force Gen. Richard Secord to Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North in May 1986, when North was a National Security Council aide. The telex memo, obtained from North's files, indicates that an informant, Fred Lewis, had told FBI agents that he had collected information against LaRouche.
The telex led to further inquiries about Lewis, which produced a second FBI document that was declassified and released Wednesday.
This second document, a cut-and-paste collection of excerpts from a larger FBI file, states that Lewis and two of his associates, identified as Ron Tucker and Gary S. Howard, were interviewed by FBI agents from the San Antonio and El Paso field offices. The three men told agents that they "had previously been requested by the FBI and CIA to penetrate the LaRouche organization." However, the document also notes that "the FBI has failed to direct their operations against LaRouche."
Defense attorneys also have requested that Markham go through the indices for any references to Peregrine International Associates of Dallas, a private corporation founded in 1981 by Howard and Tucker.
According to reports published last year in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Peregrine received encouragement and personnel from the Pentagon to mount operations deemed too sensitive for government involvement, including a 1982 plot to kill Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Peregrine also received Pentagon clearance for vigilante-style schemes to kidnap and kill drug smugglers in Peru, Honduras, Belize and several Caribbean nations, the reports said.
The Inquirer reported that Howard said he and Tucker met "all the time" in Washington with Pentagon intelligence specialists and the CIA to discuss missions. They said that they believed their firm was the model for what allegedly became the Reagan administration's policy of using private companies to carry out politically unacceptable covert operations.
— LAROUCHE TRIAL JUDGE ORDERS SEARCH OF VICE PRESIDENT BUSH'S INDEX FILES Boston Globe March 11, 1988:17.
Defense lawyers in the trial of Lyndon LaRouche and six of his followers charge the government has withheld evidence that federal informants may have infiltrated LaRouche's organization. The lawyers have moved for dismissal of the case, or at least a continuance while a massive search of federal files is made. But presiding US District Judge Robert E. Keeton, while ordering an index search of several federal agencies to determine where alleged informants' names may be cross-referenced, has rejected motions to dismiss. He has ordered that the trial resume during the searches.
In a memorandum and order issued Thursday, Keeton said the defense motions "fail for lack of either factual or legal support" and that "no proof has yet been produced to support the serious charges" that the government withheld exculpatory evidence. [..]
In the latest response to the defense charges, John Markham, assistant US attorney, said Thursday he might call Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state, as a witness to rebut defense claims that Kissinger instigated an alleged move by the FBI to harass LaRouche and his followers.
LaRouche lawyers said they would welcome the opportunity to cross-examine Kissinger, whom LaRouche, a fringe candidate, has often called a Soviet spy.
The defendants maintain that evidence of widespread fraud and obstruction was fabricated by FBI and CIA infiltrators as part of a Reagan administration effort to destroy the LaRouche organization and have called for a search of FBI, CIA and National Security Council files, as well as Vice President George Bush's and other White House files.
What the defense hopes to discover is evidence of entrapment -- specifically that former LaRouche security adviser Roy Frankhauser was an agent of the government when he allegedly advised LaRouche to destroy evidence and to send some of his aides out of the country just before they were indicted. In essence, the lawyers are suggesting that Frankhauser was whispering in LaRouche's ear at the request of the government and, if LaRouche followed the advice, the government could then indict him for obstruction of justice.
Markham, the prosecutor, has charged that the searches bear no relation to the credit card scheme and are simply a distraction and a delaying tactic.
Keeton, in his order rejecting motions to dismiss or delay the trial, said the scope of the searches of federal agencies appeared too broad for the purpose of the trial.
In seeking to limit the searches, Keeton said that, for example, a full search of Bush's files "would cause an indices search certain to produce very lengthy lists of files having no conceivable relevance to the object of the search."
Keeton allowed the index searches of files outside the Justice Department after a freedom of information request turned up a previously undisclosed telex sent by retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard Secord to Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North in May 1986. The telex indicated that an informant, Fred Lewis, had told FBI agents he had collected information against LaRouche. [..]
The Secord-North telex led to further inquires about Lewis, which produced a second FBI document, which was declassified 10 days ago and presented to the court. It states that Lewis and two of his associates were interviewed by FBI agents and they "had previously been requested by the FBI and CIA to penetrate the LaRouche organization."
This second document led to further requests by the defense for a broader search of federal agency files. But Keeton, in heated exchanges with LaRouche's lawyers, has maintained that the lawyers have not been helpful to him in deciding just how far the searches should go.
Keeton said that without limiting the search and going into "every page of every document in the possession of the United States" the search would become Sisyphean, a term relating to the mythical Sisyphus, whose labors required continual redoing. Because, he said, "New files would be created while old files were being searched."
— JUDGE SAYS LAROUCHE TRIAL TO CONTINUE DURING SEARCH FOR GOVERNMENT INFILTRATION Ed Quill, Globe Staff. Boston Globe 20 Mar. 1988,33
Lawyers for Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. said today that they had subpoenaed the personal notebooks of Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, the former White House aide who the political extremist contends directed a government plot to ruin him.
The subpoena demands that North surrender any documents that mention the defendants, government witnesses or three intelligence operatives who told the FBI they were asked by top FBI and CIA officials to infiltrate LaRouche organizations.
Defense attorney William Moffitt said North's lawyers have indicated they will ask U.S. District Judge Robert E. Keeton to quash the subpoena.
Word of the subpoena surfaced as hearings continued into whether prosecutors have withheld from LaRouche lawyers evidence that supports defense claims that the FBI, CIA and other government agencies harassed and infiltrated LaRouche groups.
Because of numerous disputes over defense access to classified records discussing apparent infiltration, Keeton delayed resumption of testimony in the case to April 19 at the earliest. The jury has been in court one of the last five weeks.
LaRouche, six aides and five LaRouche political organizations are charged with conspiring to obstruct a federal grand jury investigation of alleged credit card and loan fraud by fund-raisers for LaRouche's 1984 presidential campaign. Four of the organizations are charged with fraud.
LaRouche, who is seeking the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, contends that evidence of fraud and obstruction was fabricated by FBI and CIA plants in his organizations, and that North was behind the plot because of LaRouche's opposition to President Reagan's contra aid programs.
To support the North subpoena, Moffitt cited a memo in which retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord tells North of an apparent effort to collect information against LaRouche. One of the three intelligence operatives is mentioned in the memo. North and Secord have been indicted for their roles in the Iran-contra scandal.
Since the disclosure of the Secord-North telex a month ago, the defense has pressed for access to a wide range of government files, most of them classified.
Keeton ruled last week that seven classified FBI files contained information that should be given to defense lawyers, and the judge said today that an additional five classified FBI files contained material relevant to the defense. The FBI has refused to declassify the files on grounds they would expose high-level intelligence sources and possibly endanger national security.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John Markham proposed today that Keeton allow the FBI to keep the files secret provided the government discloses summaries of the information the judge determined to be relevant. The defense lawyers oppose Markham's plan and have demanded that they be allowed to see the classified files under a protective order that would prohibit them from discussing their contents. Keeton is to consider the issue at a Monday hearing.
— LaRouche Lawyers Subpoena Oliver North's Notebooks; References Sought to Infiltration Efforts John King. The Washington Post Apr 7, 1988. pg. a.39
Although lawyers for political extremist Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. say that nothing short of acquittal is a victory for the defense, it is clear that the mistrial declared in Boston Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Robert E. Keeton was a flat-out triumph for LaRouche. The prosecutors' actions in the case-including failure to give the LaRouche defense potentially relevant documents until well into the five-month-long trial-gave a crucial opening to LaRouche lawyers, who are known for their aggressive, time-consuming maneuvers. When Keeton held seven weeks of hearings on whether the government knowingly withheld the documents, the case's entire center of gravity shifted away from the alleged obstruction of justice by LaRouche and six associates, and toward the terrain where the LaRouche group feels most at home-murky allegations of government misdeeds and anti-LaRouche plots. [..]
Hearings on the defense argument will focus on who is responsible for the delays: the government or the defense. The hearings could last many months.
Delays are nothing new in this case. Since the FBI began its investigation of the LaRouche group in October 1984 for allegedly ripping off contributors to his presidential campaign, LaRouche group lawyers have filed objections, motions and appeals of every description, effectively derailing the probe and the trial schedule for months at a time.
LaRouche and his associates were on trial for allegedly trying to stifle the FBI's probe of their finances by hiding witnesses, burning subpoenaed documents, and otherwise trying, in their own words, to "spike" or "quash" the investigation.
LaRouche lawyers filed more than 400 motions, making wild allegations of anti-LaRouche conspiracies involving the Soviet KGB, the CIA, the FBI, Vice President Bush, Henry Kissinger and many others. Keeton threw out almost all these legal filings-until March.
Two months ago, in the middle of the trial, prosecutors said government agencies had found documents that could be relevant to the case. The documents concerned a number of former federal informants, some of whom had dealings with associates of former White House aide Oliver North.
In response to defense requests, Keeton then held seven weeks of hearings on possible government misconduct in the LaRouche case.
Finally, on Wednesday, Keeton declared a mistrial, citing the lengthy hearings as a cause of the trial delays that were causing hardship to several jurors who never expected the trial to last so long. Several jurors expressed frustration with the delays-one told Keeton the whole trial was "half-assed"-and said they had to get on with their lives. [..]
"Okay, boys, there's egg on your face," LaRouche said, directing his comments to prosecutors. He repeated allegations that the case is a result of massive conspiracies against him by Bush, North and others. He added that nothing short of exoneration would please him.
"We were cheated out of an acquittal," LaRouche said, "by dilatory tactics of the government."
But government officials have said it was not they but the LaRouche defense that caused delays. LaRouche lawyers, echoing the conspiracy-minded rhetoric of LaRouche himself, have made countless accusations of U.S. misconduct, and have requested reams of U.S. documents, many of them classified. They continually alleged the government was lying when it said it had turned over all relevant information about the case.
In March, the tactic paid off.
Prosecutor Markham acknowledged then that the federal government had some documents about some longtime Texas-based informants for federal agencies who had offered the FBI some information about LaRouche.
Markham turned the documents over to the defense; later FBI testimony revealed that the FBI repeatedly threatened to prosecute Markham for releasing these documents, which the FBI considered to be still classified.
In addition, 55 days into the trial, Markham gave the defense a number of documents about a Loudoun Countybased FBI informant named Ryan Emerson, who had briefly infiltrated the group in 1986 for the FBI. The judge said Markham should have released the documents earlier.
Markham also discovered that the FBI had other files, going back to the 1960s, about Emerson's FBI work. The defense said this was more evidence of government coverup.
The recent seven weeks of hearings-during which the jury was removed from the courtroom-dealt largely with whether these classified files should be turned over. Keeton concluded they did not, but the delay helped irritate the jury and cause the mistrial.
— May 6, 1988 Mistrial Seen As Triumph For LaRouche;Documents Issue Crucial to Defense; John Mintz. The Washington Post Washington, D.C.: May 6, 1988. pg. a.14