Treason in America by Antoine Chaitkin

[Linda Minor]

Jan, do you have any idea why LaRouche adheres to very strange "the Queen done it guv!" attitude?

I have never really understood this apparent nonsense other than as a deflection...

In the early 90's when I began doing what I call "my research," for want of a better term, I lived in Houston and was bogged down in trying to find out something about a Canadian company called "Cadillac Fairview" which had been involved in commercial construction in Houston in combination with the Texas Eastern Transmission Company, the public company set up by George and Herman Brown of Brown & Root (later Halliburton) to buy up the government's natural gas pipelines built during WWII. I had managed to connect Cadillac Fairview to the Bronfman family and to another public corporation called General Homes, but I had hit a snag.

Somewhat serendipitously I attended a state Democratic Convention and was browsing the vendors' booths when I came upon one manned by LaRouchies who pushed some of their literature off on me. I had always avoided them before, thinking they were just crackpots. I went back to my hotel room and, not having brought anything else to read, started reading their handout newspaper, which--lo and behold--contained an article that talked about the Bronfmans! When I returned home, I immediately subscribed to the newspaper and, not long after, began receiving phone calls trying to sell me more of their product line. That was how I obtained my first copy of Chaitkin and Tarpley's book, the Unauthorized Biography of George H.W. I also read Treason in America and every other book they had in print.

Harley Schlanger was in charge of the Houston group of "organizers," as they called themselves, and I met with him a few times and was even invited to some of their Labor Day meetings in the environs of D.C. in the Arlington area. One of Harley's organizers also made it possible for me to have lunch with Tony Chaitkin to try to share some of my research of the Bronfmans' work in Houston with him. But Tony was very busy all through the weekend and never responded in any significant way to the disjointed data I provided him with.

I also went to a lecture that was given by Webster Tarpley in Houston after that and made the mistake of taking my British-born husband with me. Tarpley was rabidly anti-Brit and made caustically deprecating references to British aristocrats and members of the royal family, which were not explained. Their off-putting attitude toward Brits kept me at a distance from them after that and gave me a good excuse to refuse their entreaties about donating to LaRouche's political runs for president.

In my mind, they never quite nailed down who the "bad guys" were. They did connect bankers in the Bank of England to opium traders--Jardine and Matheson--who, as I recall, succeeded to the British government's interest in the East India Company investments. They also connected associated traders and bankers to the American Astors who moved to England and helped set up the Cliveden Set.

What to this day I have not been able to understand, however, is why their philosophy of guilt by association never translated over into the connection FDR had to both the Astors and the opium trading Delanos. LaRouche worships FDR; yet he seems to ignore the man's entire family background, as well as what his moronic sons did. The conclusion I eventually reached was that there was a foundation set up when Eleanor died that their children have controlled, which is dedicated to extolling the virtues of Franklin and Eleanor. I suspect this foundation may be LaRouche's biggest donor. I have absolutely no proof--other than the biases spewed forth from their writings.

My opinion about what happened historically is that the Brown Brothers bank in New York, after the 1929 crash, was beginning to flounder. They had been managing the fortunes of some of wealthy descendants of opium merchants who were dying off. They needed an infusion of capital and were desperate when they sold out to E.H. Harriman's two sons and their friends from Yale--all members of Skull and Bones. The merger came simultaneously with the change in control of the Equitable Trust from the "liberal" wing of J.P. Morgan to the "conservative" bankers led by David Rockefeller and Chase Manhattan.

One of the Yale friends of the Harrimans was Prescott Bush. Tarpley and Chaitkin paint him and his son as arch villains; nevertheless, they somehow ignore the fact that the same pool of wealth subsidized their heroes Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as their idiot children.