On August 5, the U.S. House ofRepresentatives overwhelminglyrejected, by a vote of 345-82, all attemptsto remove the language of the McDade-Murtha Citizens Protection Act fromthe Commerce, State, Justice, and Judi-ciary appropriations bill. The vote rep-resented a stunning victory for justice.

The McDade-Murtha legislation,which had first been introduced as H.R.3396 on March 5, was designed toensure that the rules of ethics and stan-dards of conduct applied to all otherattorneys, be also applied to the Depart-ment of Justice (D.O.J.). It also defines

punishable conduct and penalties, andcreates an independent review board tomonitor compliance.

From the beginning, the bill drewstrong opposition from the permanentprosecutorial bureaucracy inside theD.O.J., which has operated withimpunity as an out-of-control “politicalhit-squad” against elected officials, CivilRights leaders, and political activistsdeemed threatening to the financialestablishment. Indeed, the D.O.J. hasfunctioned as a state-bureaucratic lackeyof the financial oligarchy to eliminateany potential resistance to the latter’s

slave-labor economic policies.Efforts to “keep a lid” on

McDade-Murtha grew in-creasingly difficult as theLaRouche movement led abroad and powerful coalitionof forces to build support forthe bill and ensure that hear-ings not only take place, butfeature the most dramatic

cases of prosecutorial abuse,including the judicial railroad ofLyndon LaRouche and his asso-ciates, the frameup of John Dem-janjuk, and the political target-ting of African-American electedofficials, known as “OperationFrühmenschen.” LaRouche move-ment activists launched anintense drive to mobilize electedofficials, civic and political

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LaRouche Movement Spurs Broad Coalition

Passage of McDade-Murtha Bill: A Stunning Victory for Justiceof the Non-Aligned Movement for a“new, just world economic order”—theonly means by which “mankind will bespared a descent into barbarism,”because, as Zepp LaRouche noted, “thegovernments of China, India, orMalaysia are doing much more at themoment to defend the interests of theirpopulations, and therewith, actuallythose of the entire world,” than are thegovernments of the West.

A short excerpt from a videotapecommissioned by LaRouche on theglobal economic collapse—showing howthe policies of the I.M.F.-World Bank,and international speculators likeGeorge Soros, have, virtually overnight,destroyed what nations such as Indone-sia and Malaysia have built up over 30years—provided the context for thepanel presentations.

On Feb. 18, Lyndon LaRouche hadwarned that “by April or May of thisyear, we could be in something beyondbelief, as a result of our government’sloss of nerve. . . . The next shoe to dropis going to be a big one.” Proving justhow right LaRouche has been were thespeakers on the panel: John Hoefle,EIR’s banking expert, whose exposés ofthe role of derivatives in the comingfinancial blowout have sent shiversdown the spines of Wall Street bankersfor several years; Rachel Douglas, EIR’sRussia editor, who presented the terribletruth behind today’s headlines about thecrisis in the former superpower; andDennis Small, Ibero-American intelli-gence director for EIR, whose tragi-comic portrayal of what “bankers’ arith-metic” has done to the nations of SouthAmerica provoked several shockedquestions from the audience at the con-clusion of the panel.

Nancy Spannaus closed the formalpart of the session by urging the audi-ence to “look at the principles” behindthe New Bretton Woods and similarproposals. When America failed to fol-low up on Franklin Roosevelt’s anti-imperialist initiatives, the Non-AlignedMovement, founded in 1955, picked upthe torch. Today the LaRouche move-ment, and its allies in the developingsector, “are coming together around thisconcept.”

Initial mobilization forMcDade-Murtha. Top:

Philadelphia town meet-ing, Rev. Carl Fitchett

(podium), State Rep.Harold James, chair of Pa.Legislative Black Caucus(right of podium). Right:

Chicago picket-line atOperation Push head-

quarters. Below: DebraFreeman addresses

Maryland town meeting.

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activists, and thousands of ordinary citi-zens across the nation, to contact theirCongressional representatives anddemand they co-sponsor the legislation.

Efforts to kill the bill were spear-headed by House Speaker Newt Gin-grich and an array of D.O.J.-relatedfront groups; by members of Congresswith long-standing ties to the D.O.J.permanent bureaucracy; and, finally, byAttorney General Janet Reno herself.But, by the first week of August, thenumber of co-sponsors of the bill hadclimbed to more than 200 members ofCongress from both parties.

Immediately following the Housereading of the McDade-Murtha provi-sions, which were incorporated as anamendment to Title VIII of the Com-merce, State, Justice,and the Judiciaryappropriations bill,three Republicans, AsaHutchinson (R-Ark.),Bob Barr (R-Ga.), andEd Bryant (R-Tenn.),all former U.S. Attor-neys, moved to amendthe bill by removing theMcDade-Murtha lan-guage, thus triggering a floor debate.

Broad Bipartisan Support

What made it so difficult to defeat theMcDade-Murtha bill, however, was thefact that it enjoyed broad bipartisan sup-port. So, even when John Conyers(Mich.), the ranking Democrat on theHouse Judiciary Committee, rose tooffer a surprise “perfecting amend-ment,” broadening the McDade-Murthaprovision to apply to independent coun-sels such as Kenneth Starr—a cleareffort to split the bill’s supporters alongparty lines—other Democrats rose tooffer passionate support of the Conyersamendment with appeals based more onthe universal principles of justiceexpressed in the U.S. Constitution, thanon rancor between the parties. Members

on both sides of the aisle respond-ed. When the vote on the Conyersamendment was called, in a sharp

rebuke to Gingrich—and to Starr—itpassed 249-182. Forty-eight Republicansvoted to support the measure, confirm-ing that many Republicans simply feelthat Starr has gone too far.

As the debate continued, one mem-ber after another rose to express theiroutrage, and the outrage of the Ameri-can people, at the systemic abuse of thejudicial process by the permanent prose-cutorial bureaucracy inside the D.O.J.Many of the statements were among themost articulate presentations in Con-gressional history. Later, the House ofRepresentatives passed the Commerce,State, Justice, and the Judiciary appro-

priations bill in its entirety.However, the fight is far from over.

The overwhelming support forMcDade-Murtha seems to guaranteethat the public hearings will inevitablyoccur, when the House returns in Sep-tember. To ensure this occurs, theSchiller Institute has begun to expand itsmobilization against D.O.J. tyrannythrough a series of broad-based townmeetings throughout the nation, toexpose the D.O.J. as the financial oli-garchy’s enforcer of such slave-laborpolicies as NAFTA “free trade” andprison privatization.

Mobilization broadensto include NAFTA, prison slave-laborhuman rights abuses. Top: EIR Law EditorEd Spannaus displaysad for privatized prisonlabor at Manassas, Va.town meeting. Left:Nancy Spannaus speaksin Manassas. Below:Institute NortheastCoordinator DennisSpeed addressesNewark, N.J. hearings.

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A Stunning Victory for Justice

Above: Speakers at Washington, D.C. town meeting(left to right): Dr. Fong Nengda, D.C. Shadow Sena-tor Florence Pendleton, Minister Shawn Muhammad,former Burundi Ambassador Jacques Bacamurwanko.

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