Robert Parry
Sheridan Square Press, New York, 1993
ISBN 1-879823-08-X
This is an account both of the October Surprise story and of the author’s attempts over two years to stand it up. This works at several levels. The first is an intelligible recounting of the main features of the developing October Surprise allegations. He reviews the evidence of the leading sources, interviewing all of them — notably Ari Ben-Menashe — and concludes that many (including Ben-Menashe) were lying or exaggerating in part. Despite this he concludes that the core of the story, that the in-coming Republican team round Reagan did a deal of some kind with the Iranians, is true. If the gun isn’t smoking, it is still warm.
Parry paints a deeply depressing picture of the corruption and sheer stupidity of the Reagan/Bush years — and of the pressure that can be brought to bear upon a dissenting voice trying to operate within mainstream American media. Yep, despite the conspiracy-laden history of American since 1963 — hell’s teeth, U.S. domestic political history is conspiracy — the accusation of ‘conspiracy theorist’ is still the main weapon of intellectual coercion among the Higher Media.
Chasing the story the U.S. government least wanted investigated in the 1980s, Parry has come across the traces of extremely interesting examples of disinformation in action. In this case, most unusually, one of the generators of the disinformation, Oswald LeWinter, is identified, questioned and found to have been supplying information apparently supportive of the October Surprise but containing disinformation elements — classic stuff.
Finally, this is the best account I have read of the sheer difficulty involved in this kind of investigative journalism, in which it is rarely possible to be sure who is telling the truth.
Highly recommended.