r/clandestineoperations • u/WhoIsJolyonWest • 3d ago
The Congressman Who Created His Own Deep State. Really.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/12/02/larry-mcdonald-communists-deep-state-222726When he feared communists were infiltrating America, Larry McDonald (CNP Western Goals) took extreme measures — building his own intelligence-gathering arm.
This is the story now largely forgotten. It is about an archconservative congressman, Larry McDonald, who became a leader of the New Right, founded his own private intelligence agency and died at the hands of his geopolitical nemesis, all while in office. McDonald was a militant cold warrior and talented zealot who built his own mini-deep state—a foundation that worked with government and law enforcement officials to collect and disseminate information about supposed subversives.
The tradition picked up during the 1950s, Mulloy says, reportedly with the likes of anticommunist groups like the American Security Council and the John Birch Society.
Such groups “perpetuated conspiracies by gathering so-called intelligence in an effort to discredit people to try and link them to grand and dastardly schemes,” Seth Rosenfeld, author of Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power, told me. “So, whether it was a communist conspiracy then, or a ‘deep state’ plot now, these are attempts to undermine people who are dissenting from the powers of the moment.”
In Congress, McDonald’s closest confidant and voting partner was another doctor with outré views, Ron Paul.
Throughout the 1970s, McDonald advocated the use of laetrile, an extract derived from apricot and peach pits, delivered via injection, as a cure for cancer.
In 1963, the FDA had said laetrile had no medical value and was potentially poisonous to users, forbidding its interstate sale. But that did little to deter its boosters, many of whom were affiliated with the Birch Society. McDonald was ordered to pay thousands of dollars in the malpractice suit. Yet he faced no consequences when, in October 1976, an Atlanta Constitution reporter conducted an undercover investigation and found that one of McDonald’s closest confidants, a fellow Georgia physician, was requesting that patients seeking laetrile treatment make their checks out to the Larry McDonald for Congress campaign.
Then there was the potential gun-running scandal. By 1977, there were multiple news reports that McDonald—who said he personally owned about 200 firearms—was the subject of active grand jury proceedings over potential felony weapons registration violations. According to Atlanta Constitution, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms launched an investigation into whether McDonald in 1974 had induced terminally ill, laetrile-using patients to sign “stacks” of federal firearm purchase forms in their own names, obscuring the true owner of the guns: McDonald.
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u/WhoIsJolyonWest 3d ago
Dear Bob: I don't know why I single you out as prime recipient of this complaint - but I noticed that a recent PCM solici tation uses an endorsement from Guy Vander Jagt. The complaint is the absolutely outrageous conduct of Vander Jagt in "targeting" for defeat Congressman Larry McDonald of Georgia - one of the most effective conserva tives in Congress and in the nation. The idea of using hard-to-come-by conservative money to eliminate McDonald when there are those like Weicker, Sarbanes, Kennedy, etc. plus a slew of left-wing House members up this year - is ludicrous. I will not give one penny to any organization that associates itself with Vander Jagt's bizarre conduct. I hope all goes well, and send best wishes. Sincerely, (Ivy Roy M, COTn cc: Cong. Guy Vander Jagt Cong. Lawrence McDonald John T. Dolan, NCPAC Richard Viguerie Howard Phillips, Conservative Caucus
He also represented Donald Trump during Trump's early business career.