[Liberty Lobby and its journalist associate The Spotlight went defunct in 2001, but have transitioned to appear as the American Free Press.
Very confusing as the SPLC launches a brickbat of hate vitriolic against the AFP which to us is a badge of respectability....Hmmm...Ed.]
Congressional Record | ||||
Proceedings and Debates of the 97th Congress, First Session | ||||
Vol. 127 | Washington, Wednesday, September 9, 1981 | No. 123 | ||
THE REAL ANTI-COMMUNISTS? HON. LARRY McDONALD OF GEORGIA Wednesday, September 9, 1981 -----Spotlight for September 7, 1981, carried a three-page attack on this Congressman; Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society; John Rees, the Washington editor of the Review of the News; and Herbert Romerstein, a congressional staffer. Robert Welch needs no defense; he was fighting communism long before the Spotlight editors discovered direct mail fundraising. However, a few of the Liberty Lobby/Spotlight distortions deserve correction. -----Interestingly enough, much of the spotlight article appears to have been lifted from the writings of the LaRouche cult. That cult uses a variety of organizational names including the National Caucus of Labor Committees, the U.S. Labor Party, and the National Democratic Policy Committee. The attacks by LaRouche's leftists draw heavily on such pro-Communist sources as Philip Agee's Counter-Spy magazine, the National Lawyers Guild, and the Nation. -----These attacks from Liberty Lobby and Spotlight are continuing and remain wildly inaccurate. In the Spotlight edition dated September 14, for example, it is claimed that there is a relationship between my office and muckraking columnist Jack Anderson. My colleagues | by now are well aware of how Anderson and I feel about each other, and how inane is such an allegation. -----The charges against this Congressman and Mr. Robert Welch by Spotlight attack center around our support for John Rees, a journalist who has for some 15 years exposed terrorist and subversive threats to America, and in doing so has become one of the leading experts in this field. The information published by Spotlight about Mr. Rees is highly inaccurate. What is particularly interesting is that the Spotlight material consists of the same errors of fact found in the attacks published by the overtly leftist LaRouche group. As any teacher can tell you, when tow students come up with the same error in a paper, one of them is copying. -----For example, here is how Larouche's Executive Intelligence Review publication reported the fact that author Grace Metalious left her fortune to John Rees: -----Subject is named in Matalious's will. However, he relinquished any claim when it was discovered the estate owed $200,000 to the government. -----The same story in Spotlight: -----Rees was named sole heir to her estate, but renounced his legacy quickly when he learned it consisted of approximately $200,000 in debts. -----Spotlight's copying of the LaRouche material is obvious, but more importantly, both Liberty Lobby and the LaRouche cult preferred to publish a major distortion rather than publish the truth which is a matter of easily checkable public record. The facts are that the Metalioius estate was assessed on February 26, 1964, at over $1,000,000 and that 4 days after he found he had been named heir, John Rees signed legal documents renouncing all claims to the fortune in favor of the Metalious children. -----These facts were widely reported by American newspapers and magazines. But LaRouche's Communists chose to print a lie and Spotlight chose to copy and republish the same lie. -----Both the LaRouche group, which admits it is a Communist organization, and Liberty Lobby's Spotlight attack the role John Rees played in Newark, N.J., in 1967 and 1968 against the Communist-instigated rioting. In fact they seem both fascinated and alarmed by the success of John Rees in calming the community tensions that led to rioting, loss of human life, and millions of dollars in property damage. -----The Spotlight story, based on the version of events compiled by LaRouche's leftists, accuses Rees of being a "public ally of left-wing dissident groups." In fact, in Newark John Rees was well known as a consultant to the Police Department and close friend of Police Commissioner Dominick Spina who aided in stopping the rioting being promoted by Communist led agitators. -----A careful reading of the LaRouche material indicates that their complaint against Rees was that he was attempting to "pacify" the situation -- in other words, end the rioting. This is the substance of an article attacking John Rees in the newspaper of Lyndon LaRouche, New Solidarity, January 8, 1973, entitled "The 1967 Riot and the Police-Baraka Deal." -----In their attack, the LaRouche leftists charged that the efforts to end the | rioting by gaining the support of all Newark community spokesmen and leaders were "mainly pursued by the local police authorities and by the anti-Communist cranks of the House Un-American Activities Committee" and consisted of the fabrication and dissemination of what they termed "Communist conspiracy theories." -----What this amounts to is that John Rees and Herbert Romerstein, then an investigator for the House Committee on Un-American Activities, was able to organize a radio program during which the Newark Police Department; the leader of one of the white groups, Anthony Imperiale; and the leader of a black militant group, LeRoi Jones -- now known as Imamu Amiri Baraka -- urged the rioters to stop rioting, and said that the violence only benefited the white Marxists from the Students for a Democratic Society led by Tom Hayden, who had come into Newark to instigated the violence. | ||
