Founder Lyndon LaRouche Frequency weekly Year founded 1974 | Categories Political magazine Publisher EIR News Service Inc. Country United States | |
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Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) is a weekly newsmagazine founded in 1974 by the American political activist Lyndon LaRouche. Based in Leesburg, Virginia, it maintains offices in a number of countries, according to its masthead, including Wiesbaden, Berlin, Copenhagen, Paris, Melbourne, and Mexico City. As of 2009, the editor of EIR was Nancy Spannaus. As of 2015, it was reported that Nancy Spannaus was no longer editor-in-chief, that position being held jointly by Paul Gallagher and Tony Papert.
Contents
- Background
- Criticism
- Related publications
- Books and special reports
- Notable staff and contributors
- References
EIR is one of a number of publications owned by the LaRouche movement. Others include The New Federalist; 21st Century Science and Technology; Nouvelle Solidarité in France; Neue Solidarität, published by LaRouche's Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität in Germany; and Fidelio, a quarterly magazine published by the Schiller Institute, also in Germany. The New Solidarity International Press Service, or NSIPS, was a news service credited as the publisher of EIR and other LaRouche publications.
The New Federalist suspended publication in 2006 as a result of money troubles; Fidelio magazine published its last number in 2006 because editor Kenneth Kronberg decided to stop working on it; in April 2007 he committed suicide. New Solidarity International Press Service was supplanted by EIR News Service because New Solidarity newspaper was shut down in 1987, after the massive 1986 Federal raid on LaRouche's headquarters in Leesburg, VA.
Background
John Rausch writes that the magazine emerged from 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 controversial articles, 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. In 1997 it published review of the book "La face cachee de Greenpeace" (The hidden face of Greenpeace), which claimed that Greenpeace "is an irregular warfare apparatus in the service of the British oligarchy". The magazine 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. 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. 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 claimed to have been obtained from renegade agent Richard Tomlinson (although the government later conceded that the list did not originate with him). An EIR spokesman said they received the information unsolicited.
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.
Iran's government-controlled Press TV often interviews analysts from the Review, including a 2013 interview with Review spokesman Lawrence Freeman which concluded that the West was liable for the Algeria hostage taking. Press TV supported his conclusion that "the US and their puppets Saudi Arabia and Qatar which have in the first place played a role in the creation of rebels are the root cause of incidents such as that which took place in Algeria."
Criticism
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. The New York Review of Books said that Executive Intelligence Review "echoes Kremlin propaganda".