Several days ago on contentions, I pointed out that Robert Dreyfuss, Senior Correspondent of The American Prospect, once worked as the “Middle East Intelligence Director” for Lyndon LaRouche’s Executive Intelligence Review newspaper. This is not news—nor is it a secret—but, to my knowledge, no one at The American Prospect has publicly addressed concerns that one of their writers has ties to the LaRouche organization. The only reason I brought it up was to point out the irony that a Prospect writer would express so much fascination with and heap ridicule upon the LaRouche movement, not seeming to understand that one of her work colleagues has a long history with the demagogue and cult-leader.
But the radio silence from The Prospect and its writers in response to my post has been rather odd. Here are some very simple questions for the Prospect (and the other publications for which he writes, not limited to The Nation and Rolling Stone), an answer to any of which would be warmly appreciated:
Did you know about Dreyfuss’s ties to the LaRouche movement when you hired him?
Has he in any way refuted his past work for LaRouche?
Why do you endorse and hawk his LaRouche-published book, Hostage to Khomeini, on your website?
To my knowledge, based on thorough internet searches, Dreyfuss has never renounced his past official affiliation with the LaRouche organization. So, for all we know, he still thinks favorably of LaRouche, having moved onto more ostensibly respectable work at The American Prospect. His journalism, however, characterized by unoriginal conspiracies about neo-con domination of American foreign policy, does not appear to have changed much from the tinfoil hat stuff characteristic of LaRouche. Perhaps the leading lights of the liberal blogosphere can explain why they aren’t troubled by The American Prospect’s employing a man with ties to what the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based, liberal watchdog group Political Research Associates refers to as a “fascist movement.”
Michael Scheuer Watch #8: Please Pass the Truth Serum
As I noted in the previous edition of this series, in a letter that appeared in the June 2005 COMMENTARY, Michael Scheuer claimed that between 1992 and 1999, CIA officers working in the units led by him accomplished a number of important counterterrorism feats, which he then proceeded to enumerate. The final accomplishment on his list was generating “all–repeat, all–of the chances that the United States has ever had to capture or kill bin Laden.” Scheuer continued by saying “that there is no need to take my word for any of this” and “for the last item, read the 9/11 Commission report.”
I have now re-read the report. Scheuer–he is called “Mike” in the report to conceal his then-still-secret identity–figures prominently in the narrative. How does he come out?
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