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This article appears in the March 21, 2003 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Lieberman Gang Moves
To Wreck Dem Party

by Anton Chaitkin and Scott Thompson

Behind the recent boasting by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.)—crediting himself with the sabotage of Democratic Party opposition to the disastrous Iraq war adventure—is an explicit, long-standing project by Lieberman's sponsors in the Democratic Leadership Council to wreck the Democratic Party, by organizing a "Bull Moose" ticket splinter operation. This longstanding "Trojan Horse" operation involves Lieberman, his Senate bobbsey-twin, John McCain—the mobbed-up Arizona Republican—and a group of Anglo-American financiers and wealthy criminals, who are among the leading elements within the trans-Atlantic "war party" promoting a new American Imperium.

Along with Meyer Lansky Syndicate offspring Michael Steinhardt, the bankrollers and controllers of this effort include the British "Liberal Imperialist" Tory publishing magnate and Richard Perle patron, Conrad Black, who has taken control of the Washington office of the Hudson Institute as the headquarters of both the Iraq war drive and the "Bull Moose" project; Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox TV, New York Post, and Weekly Standard are the yellow press of record in America; The New Republic co-owner and Al Gore booster Martin Peretz; and obscure financier Roger Hertog, co-owner of The New Republic and Steinhardt and Black's New York Sun.

LaRouche Nails Lieberman Treachery

Lieberman told the Feb. 8-9 Wehrkunde military policy conference in Munich, "when it comes to Iraq, President Bush is just enforcing the McCain-Lieberman policy." In his Feb. 25 "Lieberman Letter," he boasted that he, himself, was "the lead sponsor of the legislation authorizing force against Iraq."

Leading Democratic Party figures have confirmed to EIR, that in recent public appearances, Lieberman demanded that any Democrat seeking public office in 2004 must not discuss the economy; that the only issue to campaign on is U.S. "strategic interests," centering on the need for preventive war; and that for the 2004 elections, it is vital to wipe out all remnants of the Franklin D. Roosevelt tradition in the Democratic Party.

Upon being informed of this latest treachery by Lieberman, Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche issued the following statement on March 12, through his campaign organization:

"With his recent speech denouncing President Franklin Roosevelt, Senator Joseph Lieberman has come out of the closet. Lieberman's motive and connections are already well known. He is leading a charge for a long-standing intention of the Democratic Leadership Council, to split the Demoocratic Party, thus clearing the way for the 2004 McCain-Lieberman 'Bull Moose' ticket being organized by Conrad Black's Hudson Institute."

This Bull Moose project, to splinter and wreck the Democratic Party and replace it with a party of war and empire, to the far right of the GOP, has always been the open goal of Lieberman and the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which he long chaired.

Assault on FDR Legacy

Just after George W. Bush's inauguration, DLC founder Al From declared war on the FDR legacy, writing in the DLC's Blueprint magazine, January 2001: "The New Deal political philosophy that defined our politics for most of the 20th century has run its course; the political coalition it spawned has been split. Like Humpty Dumpty, the New Deal coalition cannot be put back together again. The new electorate is affluent, educated, diverse, suburban."

Reverting to the "third wave" rubbish of Newt Gingrich's ideological mentors Alvin and Heidi Toffler, From babbled, "In the Industrial Age, the working class dominated the electorate. The new electorate of the Information Age is increasingly dominated by middle- and upper-middle class voters who live in the suburbs, [and] work in the New Economy...." As to African-American and Hispanic voters: "We cannot afford to get clobbered among white voters for the simple reason that there are eight times as many white voters as there are black voters, and four times as many white voters as all minorities combined."

Earlier, in the Fall 1998 inaugural issue of Blueprint, DLC authors William A. Galston (a student of Leo Strauss) and Elaine C. Kamarck had asserted that "the shrinkage of the middle class and widening gap between the wealthy and the poor" must not be seen "as grounds for returning to a New Deal-style politics"; nor be the grounds "to mobilize lower-income groups for a new rounds [sic] of interventionist, centralized government that protects Americans against all forms of economic insecurity."

Why not? The astonishing claim is made, that "the assumption of rising poverty and near-poverty is false.... The ... middle class is shrinking ... not because poverty is on the march, but because millions of Americans are surging into the ranks of the upper middle class and wealthy." As the poor are to sink from sight, labor unions must go with them: "As labor's share of the Democratic vote declines, the share provided by better-educated upscale voters will increase further [and] ... unions will be less and less likely to provide working majorities...."

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) was right, in January 1995, when he protested to an audience at the National Press Club in Washington that the United States did not need "two Republican parties."

Out To Stop LaRouche's Agenda

Three years ago, the DLC supervised the publication of an authorized book-length group history by Kenneth S. Baer, Reinventing Democrats (University Press of Kansas). The book boasts that the DLC has never been a Democratic Party faction or a grass-roots organization, but has always operated as a pressure group, financed by wealthy speculators and Republicans, and inserted into the Party's leadership, targetting Democratic elected officials for brainwashing and capture.

One well-known senior Democratic Party figure was more blunt: The DLC was created, he said, to stop Lyndon LaRouche from reviving the FDR tradition and taking over the Democratic Party. Given the heavy involvement of such DLC figures as former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), and allied Mega Group financiers such as Edgar Bronfman, in the mid-1980s "Get LaRouche" operation, there is much merit in this observation.

The DLC's book admits that the so-called "New Democrats" movement was launched in the mid-1980s largely out of the political milieu of the neo-conservatives, typified by Senators Moynihan and Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-Wa.). Moynihan's Senate career as a Democrat-in-name-only was launched in 1976 under the guidance of Leonard Garment (a stooge of Detroit gangster Max Fisher and later, with Garment's partner Lewis Libby, the permanent attorney for Marc Rich and his Russian "Mafiya"). Other neo-cons such as Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz—both longtime allies of fascist existentialist philosopher Leo Strauss—helped shape Moynihan's career; this crew and their offsprings compose the "chicken-hawk" faction currently guiding the United States into hell.

The DLC's authorized history blithely relates some of its formative institutional relationships: "The DLC especially admired the [right-wing Republican] Heritage Foundation ... for its influence in shaping public debate. [DLC founder Al] From recalled that the DLC respected Heritage's ability to accomplish 'effective political work [and] message work' and not only inject its ideas into public debate but reshape it as well.' In fact, Ed Feulner, the president of Heritage, met with From and [Will] Marshall to offer some advice on raising money and disseminating ideas." (Reinventing Democrats, pp. 135-136.)

The book skirts the role of hedge-fund gangster Michael Steinhardt in controlling the DLC, for reasons obvious to anyone familiar with Steinhardt's career as a Wall Street conduit for the Meyer Lansky National Crime Syndicate's dirty money. Later a partner of fugitive financial fraudster Marc Rich, Steinhardt created, with the Bronfmans and others, the Mega Group—a successor to Lansky's "Billionaires Club" of leading Zionist gangsters, who spread their cash around to control the Democratic and Republican National Committees, and simultaneously financed the Jabotinskyite fascist takeover of Israel by hooligans like Ariel Sharon.

While downplaying Steinhardt's role in launching the DLC, the "official" history of the group did credit Steinhardt with orchestrating the vicious "Get Clinton" operations, that produced the impeachment drive and the near hostile takeover of the White House by Al Gore in 1998.

Baer wrote: "Joel Kotkin, a PPI [Progressive Policy Institute, DLC's think-tank] senior fellow, made the first public call for a break with [then-President Bill] Clinton. In a Wall Street Journal column [Dec. 7, 1994], Kotkin argued that the New Democrats should sever ties with Clinton, back a primary challenge in 1996, and even consider leaving the Democratic Party altogether....

"The largest ... sign [of this as DLC policy] was its 'Third Way Project'.... Although never overtly claimed by the DLC leadership, there is some evidence that this project was to be the beginning of a third-party movement. According to Michael Steinhardt, chairman of PPI's Board of Trustees until he resigned at the end of 1995, the Third Way Project was to be 'a new approach to separate ourselves from the Democratic Party.' He explained [to author Baer] that the DLC began to take on a more bipartisan focus, which appealed to a number of contributors, including Steinhardt himself, who advocated the formation of a third party and went so far as to meet with Bill Bradley to try to persuade him to run for President in 1996."

Along the road to the third-party sabotage game, was a trans-Atlantic connection, which has recently formed the axis for imperial fascist politics: "Beginning in earnest with the election of Tony Blair and his 'New Labour' government in Great Britain in May 1997, the DLC viewed its public philosophy as part of a world-wide revolution in center-left politics. This 'Third Way,' wrote From, is 'the worldwide brand name for progressive politics for the Information Age.... Interaction between the New Democrats and New Labour had gone on before Blair's election.... Once Blair was elected, however, the notion and promotion of the Third Way became a DLC ... priority."

Although Bill CLinton was only a half-hearted affiliate of theirs, the DLC backed Clinton's 1992 Presidential race for the simple reason that he was the only Democratic Party candidate with the charisma to beat George H.W. Bush. Very soon into Clinton's first term, Steinhardt and his Mega Group cronies turned savagely against Clinton. Conrad Black, right-wing publishing mogul in Canada, Britain, and Israel, and partner to the Bronfmans, started up a get-Clinton operation based initially in Black's London Telegraph, with backup financing from ultra-right-wing fanatic Richard Mellon Scaife.

Michael Steinhardt quit the DLC chairmanship in 1995, turning it directly over to Joe Lieberman, who was widely known as "the Senator from Mega" for his slavish loyalty to the Steinhardt-Bronfman mob. With Steinhardt and Rich in the background through the late 1990s, Lieberman publicly repudiated Clinton in a Mega-orchestrated campaign to pressure Clinton to resign, and turn the Presidency over to another Mega loyalist, Al Gore. The Peretz-Steinhardt-Hertog New Republic demanded Clinton's scalp, in a September 1998 editorial, which signalled the full-scale DLC drive to bust up the Democratic Party.

These same players ultimately conduited their overt campaign for an anti-Democrat third party Presidential initiative through the neo-conservative Hudson Institute, financed by Conrad Black and staffed by U.S. and Israeli war-crazies in and around the Bush Administration.

Lieberman naturally tries to avoid public identification with billionaire Steinhardt, who has backed only Republicans and right-wingers. But publicly acknowledged is a personal, "religious" connection. Steinhardt, a professed atheist, hired Rabbi Irving "Yitz" Greenberg as a spiritual counsellor. The latter became, simultaneously and conveniently, personal spiritual advisor to Senator Lieberman. When Steinhardt organized the international campaign to con President Clinton into pardoning his partner Marc Rich, he got Rabbi Greenberg to write to Clinton on Rich's behalf, on the stationery of the Holocaust Museum where Greenberg was chief executive. Recently Steinhardt and Rich were in Israel together, helping Lieberman's hero Ariel Sharon win the Jan. 28 elections by influencing Israeli Labor Party leaders to sabotage their own Labor Party chairman, Amram Mitzna, Sharon's opponent.

Lieberman, War, and the Assault on Democrats

The Lieberman for President website, in a Feb. 8, 2003, press release about the Munich Conference on Security Policy, says, "As they have in last few years, Lieberman and Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) are leading a delegation of Senators and House members to the ... Wehrkunde conference." In Munich. Lieberman said, "Five years ago, after Saddam ejected the UN inspectors, John McCain and I gave up on containment and introduced the Iraqi Liberation Act, which, when it became law, made a change of regime in Baghdad official U.S. policy. You might therefore say that, when it comes to Iraq, President Bush is just enforcing the McCain-Lieberman policy."

Lieberman partner McCain is the ostensibly leader of the "Bull Moose" third party revolt, modeled on the 1912 Theodore Roosevelt operation, which installed the Fabian racist Woodrow Wilson into the Presidency. But McCain's chief organizer, Marshall Whittman, of the Hudson Institute, and formerly Congressional Liaison for Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, has been given access to the DLC's propaganda magazine, Blueprint, to peddle the wrecking operation.

In a July-August 2001 Blueprint guest column, Whittman wrote: "Bull Moose progressivism—the reform politics of Teddy Roosevelt in the 1912 election ... has been sighted recently.... [It is] a new force, a synthesis of the best of progressivism and conservatism.... John McCain's ... message of political reform, patriotism, and an economics of the middle class [has] struck a chord. It [has] resonated with the most dynamic force on the political scene, the rise of the independents."

The following year, Whittman was again given space in the DLC's Blueprint to further his call for a third-party revolt behind the McCain-Lieberman war party.