Against my better career judgment, I took an assignment from PBS "Frontline" which wanted me to examine the October Surprise issue, essentially whether the secret Reagan arms dealings with Iran predated the known Iran-Contra timetable (from 1984 to 1986) and reached back into 1980 when President Jimmy Carter was struggling to resolve a humiliating hostage crisis in which Iran held 52 Americans for a full year before the 1980 election.
Allegations had long existed that the Reagan campaign had contacted Iranian officials behind Carter's back to frustrate his negotiations and thus ensure Reagan's election. The hostages were finally freed immediately after Reagan's inauguration, giving the new President the aura of a tough guy who made America's enemies tremble.
Though I was aware of some facts supporting these suspicions, I also knew that I would be further distancing myself from good-paying jobs in the mainstream media if I took on the assignment. Nevertheless, I agreed to do so.
Our investigation yielded more evidence of a near-treasonous Republican dirty trick, with confirmations from former top Iranian officials and statements by international intelligence operatives and a few people close to the Reagan campaign. But we also found that a couple of purported witnesses were lying and we concluded that the case of Republican wrongdoing was not air-tight.
Instead of our spade work prompting other journalists to dig deeper, the altered media landscape led pro-Reagan and neoconservative media operatives to do all they could to bury the scandal once and for all.
The neocon New Republic and Maynard Parker's Newsweek produced matching "debunking" stories on the same weekend in 1991 relying on the same false alibi regarding the whereabouts of William Casey, a key figure in the mystery, to judge the scandal a myth.
Though inside "Frontline" we knew the Casey alibi at the heart of the two "debunking" articles was false, we also recognized that the political momentum had swung. The new conventional wisdom created by The New Republic and Newsweek articles undermined any political will in Congress to fight for the truth. [For more details, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]
The Internet Age
My experience with "Frontline" and the October Surprise case convinced me further that the only way for American journalism to return to its principles was to locate some firm ground where a flag could be planted and defended, without having to worry about senior editors losing their nerve.
That opportunity arose, ironically, in late 1994 and early 1995 when I accessed dozens of classified pages from a congressional investigation into the October Surprise case, an inquiry that had joined the debunkers (although also rejecting the Casey alibi used by The New Republic and Newsweek).
The classified material that had been kept from the American people told a far different story, adding substantial weight to the allegations that Reagan's team had interfered with Carter's hostage negotiations. However, because the debunking conventional wisdom was so strong, I could find no mainstream (or even liberal) editors interested in the new material.
At that point, my oldest son Sam, who had just graduated from college, suggested that I turn to the Internet and create something called a "Web site" to get this information to the public.
So, I cashed out my Newsweek retirement fund to pay for the project and Sam figured out how to build a Web site (there were no templates at the time). In late 1995, we packaged the October Surprise documents into the first series of articles appearing at what became Consortiumnews.com.
In the subsequent months and years, the Web site began building what amounted to an alternate narrative for the recent history of the United States. We consistently went against the dumbed-down conventional wisdom of the major news media.
For instance, we published a critical biographical series on Gen. Colin Powell at a time when he was the toast of the mainstream press. Nary a negative word could be heard about this "American hero," but our series portrayed Powell as a dangerous careerist.
In 1996, when San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb revived the Nicaragua contra-cocaine story, we were one of the very few news outlets that defended Webb's work. Powerful right-wing and mainstream news outlets (from the Washington Times to the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times) denounced Webb and defended Reagan's beloved contras.
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