Part |-Sat., Feb. 16, 1980 POLITICS/ 1980 Los Angeles Times LaRouche Trying to Lose Splinter Label WASHINGTON -They are political evangelists, a small but dedicated band of youths who stop people at airports, post offices and traffic lights to promote their leader and candidate for President of the United StatesLyndon H. LaRouche. They have been known as the U.S. . Labor Party and the ! National Caucus of Labor Committees. Defectors from those groups contend they are paramilitary, cult -like organizations with a core membership of about 500 in the United States. Their candidate, a 57-year-old former New York management consultant, promises to cure all the nation's ills within 30 days of his election on the Democratic ticket. "The world is run by conspiracies," LaRouche says. He blames everything from rising gasoline prices to the anti-nuclear movement on "the British- Maltese-Zionist forces of evil." Observers have long grouped LaRouche and his followers on the fringe of politics. In 1976, running under the U.S. Labor Party banner, LaRouche polled 40,041 votes -only 0.05% of the total cast. But now LaRouche has developed a sophisticated political organization, qualifying for federal matching funds. In 1978, the U.S. Labor Party fielded 72 candidates in 17 states, more than any other minor party, according to one survey. And since 1974, the Labor Party has won between 8% and 32% of the vote in at least 19 local contests from Washington state to North Carolina, the survey reports. By jettisoning his third party label and running in the Democratic primaries, LaRouche is attempting to move up from splinter group status. That effort has been helped substantially by the increase in LaRouche's financial base this year: He has received $327,864 in federal matching funds so far, the third presidential candidate to qualify in 1980 by showing that he had raised at least $5,000 in each of 20 states, with contributions of $250 or less. In New Hampshire, LaRouche deluges audiences with elaborate historical references and presents his views with a clipped accent and an authoritative style. His primary audience appears to be working people, especially in the state's rural areas. "He's presenting himself as a reasonable guy and what he's saying, people want to hear," concluded a -a-car agent at the Manchester, N.H., airport. "The LaRouche people are all over the place, and they're organized very well at the grass-1 level. They're going to do well in this state." In an informal telephone poll taken last week by radio station WEMJ in Laconia, N.H., LaRouche received 4 out of 36 Democratic votes, beating Gov. Jerry Brown, who got none. LaRouche has become adept at tailoring his remarks for his wider audience, steering clear of the Marxism and conspiracy theories that once dominated his speeches. "My function President is not ambition. My function is knowing that we need national leadership,' LaRouche began recently at a Kiwanis Club dinner in Rochester, N.H. Wearing a conservative, threepiece suit and yellow -tinted glasses, LaRouche outlined his pro-nuclear, pro-business, right -to-life philosophy. Most importantly, he stressed, he would put the country back on a gold-based monetary system to stop inflation. Experts at the International Monetary Fund and U.S. Treasury contend that gold is far too unstable to be used today as a basis is for currency and that in fact such a change would benefit primarily the gold-producing countries of the Soviet Union and South Africa. But LaRouche's ideas apparently were well received that night by the Kiwanians. "He's quite a cookie. I think he's speaking from the bottom of his heart," said Harlan Calef, whose family owned a general country store in Rochester for the past 125 years. But just the night before, talking to an intimate group of his own supporters, LaRouche had reverted to ! his more exotic theories. Asked about his opinion of rock 'n' roll music, he embarked on a 20-minute exegesis that referred to Plato, the Irish monks of the 6th and 7th centuries, John Bull, Dionysius, Yale University's Skull and Bones society and other "cults." He concluded: "Rock was not an accidental thing. This was done by people who set out in: a deliberate way to subvert the United States. It was done by British intelligence." LaRouche, born in New Hampshire in 1922 the son of a shoe company "road man" and an active Quaker mother, believes himself to be "the leading political economist of the 20th Century to date," according to his recent autobiography, "The Power of Reason." During his "miserable" youth, when he was nicknamed "Big Head" by his less intellectual peers, LaRouche preferred to spend his time Lyndon H. LaRouche reading Descartes, Leibniz and Kant, according to the autobiography. As a young man he joined the Socialist Workers Party, "perfected the theories of Marx," married and had a son and worked as a management consultant in New York. But as early as 1940 he had decided, his book says, that the central purpose of his life was "making men in my own image." In 1966 LaRouche recruited young intellectual students from Columbia and other East Coast universities to found the National Caucus of Labor Committees. At the time, the group seemed to be "an intellectual Leftist organization, as opposed to a mindless activist group," one former member said. Today the group has its headquarters in New York and has an estimated 3,000 sympathizers, organized by members who operate out of 37 offices in North America and 26 in Latin America and Europe. "The original idea was that capitalism was going to collapse, and the Labor Committee was going to organize workers to create a socialist America. . . Members felt they were part of the elite that was going to resurrect human knowledge and save the world," the defector said. "There was something admirable about what they started to do. But it was purely delusional." LaRouche followers today still talk about their group as a "Platonic academy," where members are being trained as "the intellectual leaders" of the country, to spark "a new Renaissance." But many have left the group over the years as it has gone through sharp twists from the extreme left to the extreme right, reflecting the changes of LaRouche's personal views. In 1971, the NCLC founded its own "intelligence units" and in 1972 selected members began paramilitary training, according to LaRouche. "After recurring assaults by Communist Party, Socialist Workers Party and other groupings, a security section was added to the intelligency organization," LaRouche wrote in his book. The NCLC started what it called "Operation Mop-Up," striking out against its enemies, including Communist Party members, according to the LaRouche book. The NCLC also allegedly began harassing its nonviolent critics, including journalists. There were reports they were engaging in violence, "so we decided to do a piece on them," recalled Joe Klein, a founder of the Boston Real Paper newspaper, who now w works for New York magazine. When Klein and a colleague were covering a 1973 NCLC meeting, LaRouche® pointed them out in the crowd and "a couple of his followers started making a move on us," Klein said. "One of them grabbed Church (Klein's colleague) by the beard and slammed him against the wall." Klein said that although they escaped without injury, his family "started getting .. threats at 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. We decided to put a police guard at the Real Paper." "They succeeded in intimidating the Real Paper into not running the piece. I voted to run the story," Klein said. Although the Operation Mop- -Up days are over, LaRouche opponents and a number of journalists say the telephone calls continue. "I got two phone calls. They call up and say you'd better stop attacking us, otherwise you're going to be very sorry," said Irwin Suall, an executive of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith in New York. Two weeks ago in Rochester, N.H., a young woman from the University of New Hampshire was verbally abused by an angry LaRouche campaign worker after she asked the candidate critical questions and talked to a reporter at a rally. The LaRouche aide called her a "prostitute" and refused to let her ride a bus back to the FEC OK'S MATCHING FUND OF $33,783 FOR LAROUCHE By ELLEN HUME Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON (P)-The Federal Election Commission has voted to authorize another $33,783 in federal campaign matching funds for Lyndon H. LaRouche, the former U.S. Labor Party standard-bearer who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. It brings to $327,864 the amount of money given LaRouche under the law that provides partial federal funding of primary campaigns by matching contributions raised privately. However, commission member Frank Reiche challenged the new grant on Thursday. He complained that LaRouche has not filed his 1979 campus with the other students who had attended the rally. "The power that LaRouche seems to have over people scares me. He presents a lot of complicated, really unrelated information which I don't think people really understand, and then he draws a simple conclusion," said the student, who asked not to be named. When asked about their treatment of the student, LaRouche aides charged that she was a "plant" from Gov. Brown's campaign, which she denied. LaRouche conceded to The Times that his group may have made harassing calls, but he said it was "only when it is overwhelmingly justified ..for the general good." LaRouche also charged that Klein had harassed LaRouche's parents and was "a liar and a degenerate." LaRouche's group has filed many lawsuits against journalists and others. In 1976 they took on the Federal Election Commission for refusing to qualify LaRouche for federal matching funds. According to documents filed in U.S. District Court, the FEC alleged that LaRouche's 1976 application for matching funds contained "false and misleading statements." Specifically, the FEC's field audit argued there was a pattern of lastminute contributions in the form of money orders and cashiers' checks, all drawn at about the same time from the same Bowery Savings Bank in New York City, but purporting to be contributions from Massachusetts, Colorado, North Carolina, Delaware, Connecticut and Indiana. In its court challenge, the U.S. Labor Party successfully argued that the FEC had been too quick to launch an audit and should first have insisted year- end report on campaign finances, which was due Jan. 31. Reiche said LaRouche also has never filed his personal financial report as required under provisions of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978. "This appears to me to be a lack of attention to compliance with the reporting requirements of the law," Reiche said. "This is no minor omission. I take it very seriously." Officials of Citizens for LaRouche said the year- -end report would be filed promptly. They contended it had been held up by FEC auditors. They said also that the personal finances report will be filed on Feb. 20 under an agreement reached earlier with the commission's staff. on more clarifying documents from the party. Mindful of that ruling, which found that the FEC had to see "patent irregularities"on the LaRouche application in order to justify an audit, the FEC conducted on audit this time and granted LaRouche his matching funds. LaRouche spokesman Ted Andromidas said the presidential campaign has raised about $800,000 so far, including $150,000 from simultaneous fund-raising events held in 18 cities on Jan. 15 and $130,000 from contributors who saw LaRouche's ABC television show on Jan. 20. Documents filed at the FEC show that more than 3,600 persons from more than 20 states have contributed to the current campaign, ranging from an oboeist with the New Jersey Symphony who gave $16, to a New Orleans Buick dealer, who gave the legal maximum of $1,000. A large block of contributors are executives and employees of Computron Technologies Corp., a New York computer programming firm whose clients include Mobil Oil, AT&T, Colgate- and Citibank. LaRouche confirmed that about 40 of his followers work for the firm. But he denied charges by former Labor Party members that Computron or other companies have provided direct financing to his group. LaRouche said neither Computron nor other companies had ever given money directly to the presidential campaign or to his organizations. Instead, he said, the organizations have developed their current $4.5 million to $6 million annual gross income "mostly by members' contributions and sale of publications." The publications include a twiceweekly newspaper called New SoliPlease Turn to Page 21, Col. 1