Dennis King

Dennis King (b. 1941) is the author of Get the Facts on Anyone, and Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism. He is active on the internet and the speakers' circuit as an expert on investigative journalism methods and as an analyst of political and religious sects and cults.

King and LaRouche
King has made much of his reputation by investigating Lyndon LaRouche, charging that LaRouche's organization has worked with Klansmen, mobsters, rightwing Latin American military officers and assorted intelligence agencies around the world. According to King's book and articles, LaRouche expresses anti-Semitism in both open and euphemistic forms.

In a review of the book for the New York Times, George Johnson, an editor of the Week in Review of the paper and the author of Archietcts of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics, wrote that "it is clear that the LaRouche conspiracy theory is designed to appeal to anti-Semitic right-wingers as well as to Black Muslims and nuclear engineers. But in trying to see Mr. LaRouche as a would-be Führer, Mr. King may be trying to tie together the whole unruly package with too neat a ribbon. A number of loose ends hang out, not least of which is the fact that many members of Mr. LaRouche's inner circle are Jewish." Johnson went on to state that "this is the best book that is likely to be written about this strange man and his movement."

King also charges that LaRouche's organization has defended alleged Nazi war criminals such as rocket scientist Arthur Rudolph, who ran the Nordhausen slave-labor weapons factory during World War Two.

King wrote a series of 12 articles on LaRouche for the Manhattan newspaper Our Town in 1979-80 and wrote or co-wrote follow-up pieces over the next few years for The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, High Times and other publications. These articles are available on his website (see below). King claims that his methods for "decoding" political discourse, although controversial in the late 1970s, are today widely used by political journalists and commentators in the United States to deconstruct the utterances of mainstream political leaders as well as extremist ideologues.

For many years the LaRouche organization has attempted to discredit King and halt his investigations. LaRouche sued King for libel on three occasions, but each time dropped the suit (or dropped King as a defendant) before King's lawyers could take LaRouche's deposition and ask him about the allegedly anti-Semitic statements in his writings. One of the three suits, LaRouche v. NBC (E.D. Va. 1984), went to trial after King was dropped as a defendant; LaRouche lost, and the jury awarded compensation to the remaining defendants. According to affidavits filed by King's attorneys in LaRouche v. NBC, King had been harassed by the LaRouchians via death threats (they allegedly promised to string him from a lamppost and beat out his brains with a baseball bat), over 500 harassing phone calls, visits from LaRouche operatives posing as legitimate journalists, and fliers circulated under the doors of neighbors in his apartment house alleging that he was a homosexual.

According to King, in recent years the LaRouche organization has targeted King on the Internet with false or misleading allegations. For instance, they have called him a "drug lobbyist," citing an article he wrote for the December 1981 High Times magazine. The LaRouche organization has repeatedly claimed that this article was entitled "They Want to Take Your Drugs Away," which was actually the sub-title of an article written for High Times by King's colleague Chip Berlet. King has never written an article with such a title. The title of his High Times article was "Hypocrites! Anti-Drug Cult Linked to Mob Cronies." You can read it at.

In great detail, this article outlined what King described as a sinister relationship between the LaRouche group and the Meli crime family (heroin traffickers in the Detroit area), Carlos Marcello (crime lord of New Orleans), Tony Provenzano (a prominent New Jersey labor racketeer), Frank Sheeran (the Teamster thug who would confess 23 years later to having killed Jimmy Hoffa--thus giving the lie to LaRouche's 1978 claim that the "Zionists" had done it), and assorted other hoodlums. The article also alleged that LaRouche's then security adviser, the late Mitch WerBell III, had underworld connections (WerBell had been a co-defendent with Cleveland crime boss John Nardi in a giant Florida pot-smuggling case--the defendants got off after the government's key witness died in a mysterious small-plane crash). In addition, the article alleged that LaRouche's 1980 Presidential campaign had paid $96,000 to a political consulting firm controlled by the business partner and closest friend of Rolland McMaster, a Meli crime family linked Teamster leader, convicted felon, and ardent LaRouche supporter who once had been Jimmy Hoffa's chief enforcer, specializing in the use of dynamite. None of the allegations in King's article (repeated in Chaps 34-38 of King's book along with fresh allegations regarding LaRouche's dealings with cocaine dictator Manuel Noriega) were ever disputed by LaRouche, WerBell, Marcello, McMaster, Sheeran, or any other hoodlum or mob-connected lawyer or businessman named in the article.

Another allegation by LaRouche supporters frequently repeated on the Internet is that King and Chip Berlet were paid for transportation expenses by John Rees, a John Birch Society activist and FBI informant. member to speak on LaRouche at a gathering of journalists at the home of investment banker John Train in the early 1980s. In fact, John Train's home was only a few blocks from King's home of the past 25 years (as the LaRouchians well know). King walked to the meeting and denies ever receiving any payment whatsoever. However, Berlet acknowledges receiving the expense money. The LaRouche organization has further alleged that funding for King's book was arranged at the John Train meeting. King was allegedly introduced to prominent right-wing moneybags Richard Mellon Scaife, NBC telejournalist Pat Lynch, and others. On Aug. 6, 1984, attorneys for LaRouche depositioned Dennis King. When asked about the circumstances under which he was introduced to Pat Lynch, King was silent. His attorney, Scott McLaughlin, interrupted the deposition, and took King out into the hallway for 20 minutes; when they returned, King claimed he could not recall how he had first met Lynch.

LaRouche supporters make much of the fact that King was once a member of the leftwing Progressive Labor Party, but carefully avoid giving the dates. King in fact left the PLP in 1973--over thirty years ago. In attacking King on his political past, the LaRouchians never mention the fact that many of LaRouche's key cadre also came out of the PLP.

When King's book on LaRouche was published in 1989, it received favorable reviews in the Washington Post, The New Republic, The Nation, Commentary, the New York Times, the Voice and many other mainstream publications.

King acknowledged funding assistance from the liberal Stern Fund and the conservative Smith Richardson Foundation, for work on Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism. The Stern Fund has also funded the Center for Media and Democracy (SourceWatch).

Books

 * Dennis King, Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism, Doubleday, January 1989. ISBN 0385238800; available online at.
 * Dennis King, Get the Facts on Anyone, Third Edition, Macmillan Reference USA, June 1999. ISBN 0028628217

Contact details
Web: http://lyndonlarouchewatch.org Email: dennisking@Safe-mail.net Weblog: http://denniskingblog.typepad.com/dennis_king

Other SourceWatch Resources

 * Chip Berlet
 * Smith Richardson Foundation