LaRouche Wrote of Using AIDS to Win Presidency

Writings by political extremist Lyndon H. LaRouche and his legally embattled empire reveal a strategy beginning last fall to win international acceptance, and eventually the White House, by making use of public fears about AIDS.

Two weeks after LaRouche disclosed his strategy and asked supporters to “Spread panic, not AIDS,” trusted supporters in California unveiled Proposition 64, the controversial AIDS measure on the Nov. 4 ballot.

The suggestion that LaRouche has political motivations for sponsoring the AIDS initiative in California has been leveled by opponents ever since Proposition 64 qualified for the ballot. “All along it’s been clear--he has publicly stated that if this passes here he will introduce it in 17 states,” said Torie Osborn, an official of the Stop LaRouche-No on 64 campaign.

However, the sponsors of Proposition 64 have sought to play down any political connection, saying instead that they and LaRouche are concerned only about saving lives.

LaRouche detailed his view that AIDS could be politically useful in a 1985 book, “A Program for America,” that announced he was running for President in 1988. The book was published by The LaRouche Democratic Campaign, his campaign committee.

AIDS was presented as the leading plank of the LaRouche platform for 1988, and also as the political issue that will allow LaRouche to win the favor of more voters than he has wooed the three times he has run for President before.

AIDS, the book predicts, will be the “last straw” for voters who believe the nation has gone into moral and educational decay. AIDS is the best issue to use to get Americans aroused politically because they fear for their families, the book says.

“The AIDS epidemic and the growing signs of a government cover-up are beginning to move the majority of the citizens to a mood of political revolt,” LaRouche wrote in a personal message included in the book. “Those citizens, set into motion by the AIDS crisis, are . . . a political army on the move.”

The “silent majority,” as LaRouche called them, will also rally behind him because they are fed up with the Democrats’ catering to gays. Homosexuality, the book said, is a “filthy and immoral practice” and people have come to resent gays for spreading the deadly disease.

LaRouche, who is regarded by Jewish groups as anti-Semitic, also has a long history of attacks on gays.

His umbrella organization, the National Caucus of Labor Committees, swung into action when the strategy was prepared last fall. An in-house scientific group published reports alleging that AIDS can be spread in schools, restaurants, even barbershops.

Internal documents provided The Times by Midwest Research Associates, a Chicago group that monitors extremist groups, showed that the LaRouche groups’ internal computer linkup carried daily reports on the reception that LaRouche candidates around the country received when they advocated the quarantine of AIDS patients.

An Oct. 2, 1985, “European OpsBulletin” directed LaRouche offices overseas to rally their local supporters around the AIDS issue. It sent the text for an AIDS leaflet by the Schiller Institute, a LaRouche organization that is active in Germany, to be distributed at rallies and also included a report that LaRouche organizers had met with success by using the AIDS issue during a radio program in Stockholm.

Federal officials, who obtained indictments recently against five organizations and 10 followers, say that LaRouche heads a multinational network of companies and groups that promotes his political goals. Their activities sometimes include illegal fund-raising tactics, theft of credit card numbers, threats and harassment of opponents, authorities in several states say.

LaRouche’s top aides in California publicly announced that they were circulating petitions for an AIDS initiative on Oct. 23, 1985. They said it was needed to compel health officials to use “traditional” public health tactics against AIDS. The initiative would require health officials to test for AIDS antibodies, record the names of those testing positive and require their removal from food handling and school jobs.

Medical Disagreement

Virtually all of the state’s medical experts, including noted AIDS researchers, have denounced the initiative, saying it would have a devastating effect on the fight against AIDS and plunder the state’s supply of blood.

Sponsors of the initiative said originally that they were independent from LaRouche’s political activities. They formed a new group and called it PANIC--the Prevent AIDS Now Initiative Committee. Khushro Ghandhi, its president, is West Coast director of LaRouche’s National Democratic Policy Committee and a frequent candidate for local office in Los Angeles. Brian Lantz, the PANIC vice president, ran for U.S. Senate this year and had previously run for Congress in the Pacific Northwest under the LaRouche banner.

Any semblance of independence was dropped when financial reports filed with the state showed that most of the money for Proposition 64 had come from LaRouche headquarters in Leesburg, Va. In recent weeks, several top LaRouche aides have flown to California to appear as experts on AIDS.

In addition, the LaRouche newspaper, National Solidarity, recently noted the importance placed on Proposition 64 by reporting that two longtime LaRouche followers in Los Angeles, Ted and Dorothy Andromidas, were touring northern European countries to rally support for the initiative.

So far, at least, the LaRouche network has not felt the need to pump much money into the election campaign. They have followed a similar strategy in Illinois, where followers won the Democratic nominations for lieutenant governor and secretary of state this year at negligible expense.

In the latest official disclosure reports, PANIC said it had spent about $10,000 since qualifying the measure for the ballot. The main campaign group against the measure, Stop LaRouche-No on 64, has spent more than $1 million.

Last week, Pacific Bell disconnected the telephone lines to PANIC headquarters in Los Angeles. The phones are in the name of Caucus Distributors Inc., one of the LaRouche groups indicted in connection with credit-card fraud charges.