Talk:Chip Berlet

What are the source(s) for claiming that Chip Berlet and Dennis King "have accepted money from known right wingers, for the purposes of carrying out their campaign against LaRouche, including from the John Birch Society's John Rees and from billionaire philanthropist Richard Mellon-Scaife"??? A quick look through foundation grant records did not substantiate this claim.

-- Diane
 * Diane, the claim is supposedly substantiated what is referred to as the Quinde Affidavit by someone who worked with the LaRouche publication Executive Intelligence Review. EIR is not exactly a publication to be taken seriously. I'll revert those edits once more -- bob

-- I did major edits on both the Chip Berlet and Dennis King pages. Berlet researches and writes on much more than LaRouche. King acknowledges Berlets assistance with information for his book but that doesn't make them colleagues. High Times is more of an alternative magazine on American culture than solely on recreational drugs. The Quinde affadvit was reported as fact when it was a statement by someone from the LaRouche publication Executive Intelligence Review -- I'm not prepared it as fact simply because they make a claim. -- bob

-- 172.192.22.221 -- I have reverted your edits several times. 1) I explained why I have edited your contribution the way I did. Instead of responding you have simply re-instated your preferred version without justification. It would be more appropriate if you could substantiate your claims than try and insist they be retained on SourceWatch without supporting evidence. 2) High Times seems to me to be about far far more than support for decriminalisation of drugs. The current editions table of contents contradicts your narrow description: http://www.hightimes.com/mainsite/About/content.php?page=toc0406 3) Your complaint that both Chip Berlet and Dennis King got published there on the LaRouche organisation seems pretty strong evidence in itself that the magazine is about more than drug reform. 3) You make the claim that a conservative foundation is a CIA front but provide no supporting evidence. SourceWatch's policy is to be 'fair and accurate' but we can't simply take a claim that can't be checked at face value. Unless you can provide evidence that can be checked to support your statements I'm afraid I'll have to keep reverting your edits. cheers - bob

Bob, the crux of your argument is that "EIR is not a publication to be taken seriously." You dismiss the Quinde affidavit on the grounds that you personally dislike EIR. I could dismiss Berlet and King just as easily on the same grounds, but I don't. Furthermore, the Quinde affadavit is interesting because it was submitted as sworn testimony in federal court, not because it appeared in a publication. The source for the Quinde affadavit is NameBase.org, which you may wish to characterize as a "website not to be taken seriously," but then you have a problem, because SourceWatch is riddled with citations from Namebase, and you'd have to discount them all. And... to say that High Times is not primarily a magazine for people who are interested in drugs, puts you in the same category as those people who used say that they buy Playboy "only for the articles."

(another response) You might want to re-assess EIR. General Anthony Zinni, who last night appeared on 60 Minutes, gave an exclusive interview to EIR 3 weeks ago; he was followed a week later by Gen. Joseph Hoar, another former head of CENTCOM who opposed the Iraq war. On the other hand, here's a guy that seems to share Bob's low regard for EIR: Michael Rubin, writing in the National Review. Of course, Rubin's colorful rant is provoked by the fact that everybody else in the world seems to be listening to EIR.

Postscript from 172.192.78.55: The High Times articles targeted LaRouche as an opponent of drug decrim. One was entitled "They Want To Take Your Drugs Away."

Bob, you're running a cover-up -- a whitewash. And, I note you are no longer bothering to offer an argument to justify your campaign.
== Sorry had to go offline for an hour or so before I finished what I was doing and posted to the talk page. Comments in response to the various points above:
 * I happily stand by by comment that EIR is not a credible publication. (Remember the one about the Queen of England and drug running?) (172.192.22.221: Yes, I do. It was coined by Mark Nykanen, when he was working as a telejournalist for NBC back in 1980, and falsely attributed to LaRouche. I believe Nykanen and Berlet knew each other. It is becoming increasingly clear to me, Bob, that you are as willing to accept gossip that appeals to your prejudices, as you are unwilling to accept documented material that offends them. BTW, have you actually read EIR, ever?)
 * I added material from Berlet's bio on his history both pre and post PRA. Plus the range of publications he has been published in. (This also makes the debate over how best to describe High Times redundant). (172.192.22.221: Why don't you just post material from the bios of all the subjects covered by SourceWatch? Oh -- because that would make SourceWatch useless.)
 * The reference claiming 'suspicious' funding of PRA I'll relocate to the PRA talk page. I couldn't see anything 'suspicious' there - just a list of grants from various foundations as listed in 990 forms etc. It is more relevant to the PRA page if anywhere (though the data is rather dated) and not a page on Berlet.

got to go again - back later -- bob -- Originally posted to the article page

Numerous researchers have pointed, however, to signs of covert collaboration between Berlet and the right-wingers he professes to oppose:

''"The ADL does not hail from any particular portion of the left-right political spectrum. Such a classification is irrelevant once a group becomes a private intelligence agency, as then they generally inbreed with their adversaries and mutate into a peculiar political animal. John Singlaub's Western Goals, and Political Research Associates (PRA) of Cambridge, Massachusetts, both extremely tiny compared to the ADL, are two additional examples of this phenomenon. All three groups identify with certain constituencies as a flag of convenience: the ADL with the Jewish community, Western Goals with the right, and PRA with the left. But by using the same methods of collecting information -- garbage surveillance, infiltration of target groups, and the use of guilt-by-association in their propaganda -- each of these three groups has perverted itself with clandestinism and denunciation for its own sake.

This opinion of mine is based on statements from John Rees {formerly of Western Goals and a person with extensive computer files on the left), Chip Berlet of PRA (formerly a BBS operator, with extensive files on the right), and testimony from Mira Boland of the ADL (extensive files on everyone). All admit to attending one or more secret meetings in 1983-1984 with U.S. intelligence operatives such as Roy Godson, representatives from intelligence-linked funding sources, and journalists such as Patricia Lynch from NBC. Besides Berlet, other leftists attending included Dennis King and Russ Bellant. The purpose of these meetings was to plan a campaign against Lyndon LaRouche.

-- Daniel Brandt (from NameBase NewsLine, No. 2, July-August 1993)

-- Continuing on from above queries:


 * The Quinde affidavit: All we have is a paraphrasing of an affidavit tendered by someone working for a LaRouche publication in support of an application for LaRouche. The application, from what I can make out, was rejected. If, as seems was the case, the affidavit was important supporting material, why did the case fail? Did the judgement comment on the affidavit?


 * The Namebase citation and the commentary by Brandt: The Namebase entry paraphrases the affidavit but has no confirmation or comment from Berlet or others. So it appears as untested information. The later Brandt commentary states that "all admit" to attending one or more meetings and that his opinion on Berlet et al was based "on statements" they made. But it is not clear who they made these statements to? Was it Brandt? Or was this a reference to statements reportedly made to Quinde and cited in the original affadvit.

-- bob

172.192.22.221 - 1) Yes I have read EIR. 2) Actually material from bios is drawn on in many D articles/profiles as it is usually primary source information. - bob

- I've known Chip Berlet for years and he was once an active participant in [pnews-l:http://pnews.org/signup.shtml] and it is really worthwhile to read "The Right Woos the Left," which is pretty much a classic about conspiracy theories. Check it out. Do a search on the internet.

Berlet, Chip. Right Woos Left: Populist Party, LaRouchian, and Other Neo- Fascist Overtures to Progressives, and Why They Must Be Rejected. December 16, 1991. 62 pages. Available for $6.50 from Political Research Associates, 1310 Broadway, Suite 201, Somerville MA 02144 - with whom I have absolutely no connection. See: [PRA:http://www.publiceye.org/rightwoo/rwooz9.html]

---TheGolem - [Hank Roth -:http://pnews.org/]

Edit note
Reverted out of context addition by "The Blimp" of an out of context quote from Raimondo Bob Burton 06:37, 26 September 2008 (EDT)

This page is not for personal attacks
Please do not bring the same edit wars that plague the Wikiepedia enty on me to Sourcewatch. Bob Burton was within his rights as an editor to revert material that was from a dubious source.--Cberlet 21:25, 6 January 2011 (UTC)