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So, in January 1993, Hamilton and the task force decided to bury the Russian report.
"We got the stuff from the Russians just a few days before" the task force's own report was set for release, Barcella told me in an interview in 2004. "We weren't going to be able to look into it, whether it was new information, disinformation or whatever it was."
When I asked him why the task force didn't just release the Russian report along with the task force report, Barcella responded that the Russian report was classified, precluding its disclosure to the public. There was no interest in pressing for its declassification, though Hamilton would have been in a strong position to do so and presumably the incoming Clinton administration would have cooperated.
Instead, the Russian report was simply boxed up and filed away with other unpublished information that the task force had collected in its year-long investigation. Barcella said he envisioned the material ending up in some vast government warehouse, "like in the movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark.'"
Actually, the Russian report found an even less elegant resting place. In late 1994, I discovered the task force's documents, including the Russian report, in boxes that had been piled up in a former Ladies Room in an obscure office off the Rayburn House Office Building's parking garage. [To examine the key "Ladies Room" documents, click here.]
Having hidden the Russian report and other incriminating evidence, Hamilton and his task force turned next to managing how the Washington press corps would treat the debunking report. The task force briefed friendly reporters making sure the debunking conclusion got wide dissemination.
Then, a news conference was held on Jan. 13, 1993, to release the task force's findings. However, copies of the report were not given to reporters beforehand.
In a strange process, the reports were kept shrink-wrapped at the front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing room while Hamilton and his Republican co-chairman Henry Hyde conducted the news briefing, followed by questions mostly from reporters who had already bought into the debunking.
Copies of the task force report were only handed out after the news conference was over.
Then, to ensure that there would be little or no second-guessing, Hamilton composed an op-ed for the New York Times that was entitled "Case Closed." The article cited the supposedly solid alibis for the whereabouts of Casey as the key reason why the task force findings "should put the controversy to rest once and for all." [NYT, Jan. 24, 1993.]
Floor Speech
Ten days later, Henry Hyde took to the House floor to gleefully mock anyone who still doubted the October Surprise innocence of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
During a "special order" speech, the white-haired Hyde did acknowledge some weaknesses in the House task force findings. Casey's 1980 passport had disappeared, as had key pages of his calendar, Hyde admitted.
Hyde noted, too, that French intelligence chief deMarenches had told his biographer that Casey did hold hostage talks with the Iranians in Paris in October 1980. Several French intelligence officials had corroborated that assertion.
But Hyde insisted that two solid blocks of evidence proved that the October Surprise allegations were false. Hyde said his first cornerstone was hard-rock alibis for Casey and other key suspects.
"We were able to locate [Casey's] whereabouts with virtual certainty" on the dates when he allegedly met with Iranians in Europe to discuss the hostages, Hyde declared. (Those alibis included Allen's writing down Casey's home phone number and Casey's nephew recalling his father chatting with Casey on a specific day a dozen years earlier.)
