Lyndon LaRouche, head of a political cult group and an independent candidate for President of the United States, lost the libel suit he brought against the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith and NBC-TV.
A six-person jury in the Federal Court of the Eastern District of Virginia said last Thursday that the ADL had not defamed LaRouche when it described him as an “anti-Semite” and a “small-time Hitler.” The statements were made by Irwin Suall, director of ADL’s Fact Finding Department, on an NBC-TV program, “First Camera,” aired on March 4, 1984.
During the trial, Judge James Cacheris dismissed the LaRouche charge that ADL and NBC had engaged in a conspiracy to defame him. The judge had previously dismissed charges against ADL’s Midwest director, A. Abbot Rosen, who had described LaRouche as an “extremist in a three-piece suit” on an NBC Nightly News program aired January 30, 1984, which was also the subject of the law suit.
Commenting on the successful outcome of the trial, Nathan Perlmutter, ADL’s national director, called it “a common senses affirmation that bigotry has to be called by its right name. It is also a rejection by a conscientious jury of the un-American vitriolic fulminations of Lyndon LaRouche and his gang.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
