Background
John Rausch writes that the magazine emerged out of LaRouche's desire in the 1970s to form a global intelligence network. His idea was to organize the network as if it were a news service, which led to his founding The New Solidarity International Press Service (NSIPS), incorporated by three of LaRouche's followers in 1974. According to Rausch, this allowed the LaRouche movement to gain access to government officials under press cover. As NSIPS's funds grew, EIR was created.
In the 1980s an annual subscription cost $400. Nora Hamerman, an EIR editor, said in 1990 that the magazine had a circulation of 8,000 to 10,000. She indicated the magazine was owned by the EIR News Service, but declined to say who owned the news service. An ad on a LaRouche website urged readers to subscribe. "As you will quickly discover, the Executive Intelligence Review is not an ordinary weekly news magazine. Every week, EIR runs unique political analyses, reports and interviews which you can't find anywhere else."
The magazine has published a number of conspiracy theories, including that Queen Elizabeth II is head of an international drug-smuggling cartel, that another member of the British royal family killed Roberto Calvi, the Italian banker who died in London in 1982, and that the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 was the first strike in a British attempt to take over the United States. It sometimes expands its articles into book-length pieces, which have included Dope, Inc: The Book that Drove Henry Kissinger Crazy (1992) and The Ugly Truth about the ADL.
Rausch writes that, despite the connection to LaRouche, EIR has received attention from the mainstream press on a few occasions. John King, a reporter for The Globe and Mail of Toronto, reported in 1984 that EIR employee regularly appeared at press conferences in Washington, D.C. and New York to harangue people they perceived as opponents. In 1988, one of its reporters, Nicholas Benton, received an answer during a press conference from President Ronald Reagan in response to a question about Michael Dukakis, which received considerable attention from other news outlets. In 1998, one of its senior writers, Jeffrey Steinberg, was interviewed on British television regarding LaRouche's theory that the royal family had ordered the assassination of Diana, Princess of Wales. EIR has been described as the "foremost exponent of the 'murder, not accident' theory" of Diana's death.
EIR offices were searched in 1986 as part of an investigation into LaRouche-related businesses. In 1988, EIR offices shared with another LaRouche entity, Fusion Energy Foundation, were seized to pay contempt of court fines related to the investigation. Contributing editor Webster Tarpley said that the closure was an effort by "the invisible, secret, parallel government" to silence LaRouche because of his presidential campaigns. LaRouche and several EIR staff members were eventually convicted of mail fraud and other charges. For more information see LaRouche criminal trials.
Following criticism of financier George Soros by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in 1997, Malayasian news media began printing vitriolic reports of Soros, some of them sourced to EIR or even copying text from the magazine verbatim. Ahmad Kassim, a politician who was instrumental in introducing LaRouche's ideas to Malaysians, described EIR as a "news service like Reuters or anything else" and compared LaRouche to Abraham Lincoln.
In 1999, EIR made international news when it listed on its website the names of 117 agents of the United Kingdom's MI6 intelligence service, a list obtained from renegade agent Richard Tomlinson. An EIR spokesman said they received the information unsolicited.
In 2002 Arnaud de Borchgrave, Editor-in-Chief for The Washington Times, called Executive Intelligence Review "an anti-Semitic potpourri of disinformation, factoids, rumor, gossip, loony tunes and an occasional fact." EIR Counterintelligence Director Jeffrey Steinberg refers to that paper as the "Moonie Washington Times". The Times was founded by Sun Myung Moon.
Read more about this topic: Executive Intelligence Review
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