In an obscure lawsuit filed in New York a decade
ago,
Robert Eringer
September 13, 2008 12:00 AM
In an obscure lawsuit filed in New York a decade ago, ex-Teamsters honcho
Ron Carey incidentally revealed the names of the union's dirty tricks henchmen
under James Hoffa Jr., president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Dirty tricks not new tactics for Teamsters
THE INVESTIGATOR
ROBERT ERINGER
TEAMSTER DIRTY TRICKSTERS
They are Richard D. Leebove, 56, and George R. Geller, 57.
Both were decade-long disciples of convicted felon and blowhard fantasist
Lyndon LaRouche before throwing in with the Teamsters union.
Mr. Leebove bills himself as a "communications consultant." Mr. Geller is
a lawyer. They are based in Michigan.
According to the suit, in which Mr. Carey alleged libel against Mr. Hoffa,
Messer's Leebove and Geller "learned and adopted LaRouche's smear tactics,
including extracting the worst possible inference from neutral facts or
suppositions; deploying elaborate conspiracy theories, using forged documents,
anonymous circulars, and fabricated statements; and impersonating the legitimate
press."
Gee, that sounds like part of the playbook for a campaign deployed by the
Teamsters against this newspaper, possibly to include a recent nationwide
forged check scam that neatly evaded wire or mail fraud -- by utilizing UPS,
whose drivers are Teamsters -- and FBI scrutiny.
It goes on: "For the past two decades, Leebove and Geller have consistently
advocated the cause of corrupt and mob-linked Teamsters -- they have deployed
LaRouchite dirty tricks on behalf of corrupt Teamsters officials -- (depicting
others) as supposed pawns of sinister international conspiracies involving,
among others, the British royal family, the Kennedys and the Rockefellers."
So let's take a look at Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche Jr. and his nutty U.S. Labor
Party (USLP), where Mr. Leebove and Mr. Geller schooled, trained and operated
through the 1970s, before they put their sinister skills to work for Junior,
son of Jimmy Hoffa -- who wreaked criminal havoc upon his union, went to
prison, disappeared after his release, presumed to have been murdered by
his brother Teamsters.
Mr. LaRouche, now 85, four decades ago portrayed himself as the "American
Lenin," then truly flipped his lid in 1972 when girlfriend Carol Schnitzer
ran off with an Englishman. Mr. LaRouche sank into deep depression, refusing
to leave his New York City apartment. When finally he re-emerged, it was
with grand delusions of a vast conspiracy against him led by the British
Royal Family. He proclaimed that the queen of England was the world's biggest
drug dealer and that she personally had called for his head, that Hare Krishna
was a British Intelligence operation, and that a "British Psychological Warfare
Division" created The Beatles.
Mr. LaRouche's USLP started life in the late 1960s as a Marxist cult, but
broke thin ice separating Lunatic Left from Radical Right when Mr. LaRouche
returned from a trip to Baghdad and issued a "Security Memorandum" dictating
that USLP merge with the Right "to defeat this common enemy" (the
Rockefellers).
Party lieutenants made contact with Liberty Lobby, a neo-Nazi outfit in
Washington D.C., that pretended populism even while declaring -- in its Spotlight
newspaper --that the Holocaust was a hoax. Former Spotlight staffer Vincent
Drosdik called the LaRouchies "a bunch of idiots even more crackpot than
Liberty Lobby, known by some as Liberty Lobotomy."
In 1976 Mr. LaRouche renounced Marxism and declared his Party a patriotic
front.
Their gambit was to make international contacts, often with foreign intelligence
services, by creating what looked on the surface to be legitimate news magazines
with names like The Campaigner and Executive Intelligence Review. Or, as
the late Congressman Larry McDonald put it (in Congressional Record): "The
Labor Party have a history of contacting prominent persons with offers of
help and then using the names of those persons to attract other support."
An example: They approached retired Gen. John Singlaub and offered to "brief"
him. The general caught on quick: "This kooky bunch of anti-Semitic Jews
hounded me for months, they flooded me with documents, they showed up at
places where I spoke."
In 1977, Mr. LaRouche decided that German terrorists Baader-Meinhof had placed
his name on their hit list. So he hired an eccentric security consultant
named Mitchell WerBell III to train Party members in martial arts and how
to shoot guns at his 66-acre farm in Powder Springs, Ga. Once described as
a caricature of a secret agent, the late Mitch WerBell liked to reminisce,
over Chivas Regal, about the time he bombed North Vietnam with live rats
infected with bubonic plague.
Little wonder an editorial in the New York Times condemned the ideas of Mr.
LaRouche as "repulsive in ideology, frightening in their manipulative power
over its adherents and hallucinatory in their theories on conspiracy."
Mr. LaRouche wrote that "the international Zionist conspiracy" was responsible
for Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance -- and went to prison for credit-card fraud
in 1988.
Back to Mr. Leebove and Mr. Geller. It is unclear whether they played army
with Mitch WerBell. But it is clear Mr. Leebove brought down Ron Carey at
the direction of James Hoffa Jr.
Kate Bronfenbrenner, Director of Labor Education Research at Cornell University,
told the Wall Street Journal: "Hoffa hired Leebove to do his dirty work,
to dig up dirt and to intimidate and manipulate people."
It is not a charge Mr. Leebove denies. "Two or three of us brought down the
sitting president of the Teamsters," he confirmed for the Journal.
Fielded as a USLP candidate for Illinois attorney general in 1978 (he lost),
Mr. Leebove bailed from Mr. LaRouche's Party when he saw better opportunity
for himself in organized labor, first helping John Cody win re-election at
his New York construction workers local by telling union members that Mr.
Cody's opponent had received money from -- but of course -- a conspiracy
involving the Rockefellers and the Kennedys. Mr. Cody won -- and was later
convicted of labor racketeering.
Messer's Geller and Leebove then climbed into bed with the Brotherhood of
Loyal and Strong Teamsters (BLAST) -- an early-1980s anti-reform goon squad
renowned for using LaRouche-style intimidation tactics. The President's
Commission on Organized Crime in 1986 issued a report that blasted BLAST
for its violence against union reformers.
"Leebove threatened me," a labor insider told The Investigator. "It worries
me because I personally witnessed him physically attack someone."
In 2006, Mr. Leebove was Mr. Hoffa's campaign chairman; he also acts as Mr.
Hoffa's media spokesman.
Continued the labor insider, who fearfully requested anonymity: "Leebove
is Hoffa's right-hand guy. He runs staff meetings and makes decisions for
Hoffa. Problem is, not only does Leebove do dirty tricks, dirty tricks is
all he knows.
If you have a story idea for The Investigator, contact him at
reringer[at]newspress.com. State
if your query is confidential.
|