Two LaRouche Movement members, Kynan Thistlethwaite and José Vega, along with their friend Ben Smith who had attended the Schiller Institute Youth Conference on Oct. 15, intervened on former United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at an event in New Haven, Connecticut on Nov. 3. The event was for the William F. Buckley, Jr. Program at Yale University, and was sponsored by the Young America’s Foundation, a conservative youth organization founded in 1969 at Vanderbilt University. The venue, Yale’s Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall filled to capacity during the event, with an audience totaling more than 400 people.
Around the middle of his speech, Pompeo had remarked that one individual he knew had described him as “the worst Secretary of State in American history,” an accurate assessment which provoked Thistlethwaite to stand up, and reply to the former Secretary’s remarks, “Yeah, and you’re right. You are the worst Secretary of State in history!” Thistlethwaite had stated that the policies implemented by Pompeo, during his tenure with the Trump Administration, had brought the U.S. to the brink of thermonuclear war with Russia and China. He also referenced the January 3, 2020 assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a gross violation of international law which almost brought the world into World War III, in which Pompeo played a very pivotal role. Russian President Vladimir Putin had recently referred to the assassination in his speech to the Valdai Discussion Club on Oct. 27, which he said is proof of the Anglo-sphere having “no scruples about anything they do” while proclaiming the moral authority of their rules-based order to the rest of the world.
After Thistlethwaite was escorted out by security, along with police, Vega stood up immediately after and shouted at Pompeo that he should be in jail for his treatment of Australian journalist Julian Assange, and for the thousands of dead children in Syria and the Middle East which Pompeo caused through brutal interventions and sanctions. “You are no different than Obama,” Vega charged, “You are no different than Bush. You’re the exact same apparatus.” Ben Smith, who recorded all the footage of the intervention, immediately spoke up after Vega was escorted out, calling Pompeo “the swamp monster Donald Trump was trying to purge.” Pompeo responded to the protesters that the killing of Soleimani in 2020 and the various interventions he supervised in Syria had “saved countless lives.”
