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: Py many injuries and some persons required hospitalization. “Operation Mop-up” was front-page news in” virtually every Amerigan progressive newspaper during 1973, and it is difficult to believe it was not _known to Newman and his followers when they first contacted NCLC a few weeks after Operation Mop-Up was declared a success by LaRouche. Furthermore, physical assaults by NCLC mem- bers against critics were reported regularly well into 1976, and periodic assaults by LaRouche fundraisers still occur. In 1974, many former NCLC members report, they were still requiredto take paramilitary training classes led by fellow members. The trigger for Operation Mop Up was a “March, 1973 warning by NCLC to the Communist Party, USA. to stop opposing the creation by La- Rouche of an alternative to the Black-led Nation- al Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) which LaRouche denounced as being part of a “union- busting slave-labor” alliance. LaRouche set up an alternative, the National Unemployed and Wel- fare Rights Organization (NUWRO), and, ac- cording to LaRouche, NCLC then sent delegations into public Communist Party meet- ings, “demanding that this criminal behavior ofthe CP leadership” — that is, support for the original NWRO—“be openly discussed and voted down by the body assembled.” Eyewitnesses recall this “discussion” usually consisted of primarily-white and young NCLC members standing up and disrupting meetings of the primarily-Black and older NWRO with calls for a debate on LaRouche’s charges against NWRO leaders until members of the audience were forced to physically drag the NCLC mem- bers out of the meeting. These confrontations be- came formalized under Operatioa Mop-Up. supporting the-ptiginal Black-led NWRO, they too were attacked by the predominantly white NCLC supporters. While the Operation Mop-Up attacks were officially ended in late 1973 or early et boat te ‘" te yao United Autoworkers and other industrial unions. Reports of these assaults continued through 1976, and NCLC members have continued until recent- 6 - Political Research Associates } ly to assist in assaults on members of Teamsters for a Democratic Union and another rank-and- -file-Feamster-reform group, PROD.. In 1974, according to former NCLC members, LaRouche first began to seek contact with ex- tremist and anti-Semitic right-wing groups and in- dividuals around the idea of tactical unity in opposing imperialism and the ruling class in general, and the Rockefellers in particular. LaRouche’s obsession with conspiracy theories blossomed in 1974, and during this period he - began expounding a view linking certain Jewish in- stitutions to a plot to destroy Western civilization and usher in a “New Dark Age”. This is the character of the NCLC that at- tracted Newman and his followers in early 1974. In his 1974 book Power and Authority, Newman wrote that his followers would “organize in the spirit outlined” by LaRouche. The question is not how long the Newmanites worked under the political leadership of Lyndon LaRouche, but how they can explain what attracted Newman and his followers to LaRouche in the first place. To this day NAP leadership has refused to renounce or to deal candidly or accurately with the fact that the Newmanites at one time joined an organiza- tion which was at best a collection of paranoid sexist homophobic thugs and at worst a nasceni Using the FBI to Harass Dissidents It was during the period:shat the Newmanites were involved with NCLC that NCLC began to collect and disseminate intelligence on progres- sive groups. It is well documented that NCLC went on to provide intelligence to domestic and foreign government agencies. While documents released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that U.S. government agencies frequently dismissed the material provided by the NCLC, it " was provided nonetheless. As early as February, 1974, NCLC representatives met with an official in the U.S. Department of Commerce to “provide _ substantial evidence which would exonerate dum released under the Freedom of Information Act. ae Preside: tiNiaoe from Mee ee