Barcella always seemed to be an odd choice for chief counsel, although he volunteered for the October Surprise job in 1991 and at the time had a reputation as a tough prosecutor because of his work in the 1980s capturing "rogue" CIA operative Edwin Wilson, who was subsequently convicted of selling explosives and other military items to Libya.
However, Barcella had apparent conflicts of interest, including a friendship with neoconservative operative Michael Ledeen, who had been a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal and was linked as well to the October Surprise case.
For instance, an early draft of the task force report had identified Ledeen and another prominent neocon Richard Perle as participating in meetings of the Reagan campaign's "October Surprise Group," though "they were not considered "members.'"
The campaign's "October Surprise Group" was assigned the task of preparing for "any last-minute foreign policy or defense-related event, including the release of the hostages, that might favorably impact President Carter in the November election," the draft report said.
The draft also mentioned a Sept. 16, 1980, meeting on something called the "Persian Gulf Project" involving senior campaign officials, including William Casey and Richard Allen. According to the draft and Allen's notes, Ledeen also participated in that meeting.
However, both references to Ledeen were removed from the task force's final report, apparently after Ledeen spoke with his friend Barcella. [To read portions of the draft report, click here.]
"Yes, I believe I spoke to Larry Barcella about the October Surprise investigation," Ledeen told me in an e-mail exchange last year. "And I undoubtedly told him what I have always said, namely that, to the best of my knowledge, the October Surprise theory is nonsense."
The Barcella-Ledeen relationship dates back several decades when Barcella sold a house to Ledeen and the two aspiring Washington professionals shared a housekeeper. According to Peter Maas's book Manhunt about Barcella's work as a prosecutor on the Wilson case, Ledeen approached Barcella regarding the investigation in 1982.
Ledeen, then a State Department consultant on terrorism, was concerned that two of his associates, former CIA officer Ted Shackley and Pentagon official Erich von Marbod, had come under suspicion in the Wilson case.
"I told Larry that I can't imagine that Shackley [or von Marbod] would be involved in what you are investigating," Ledeen told me in an interview years later. "I wasn't trying to influence what he [Barcella] was doing. This is a community in which people help friends understand things."
Barcella also saw nothing wrong with the out-of-channel approach.
"He wasn't telling me to back off," Barcella told me. "He just wanted to add his two-cents worth." Barcella said the approach was appropriate because Ledeen "wasn't asking me to do something or not do something." However, Shackley and von Marbod were dropped from the Wilson investigation.
Ledeen's associate, Shackley, also had a connection to the October Surprise case in 1980, having worked with then-vice presidential candidate George H.W. Bush on the Iran hostage issue. [For more on Shackley's role in the October Surprise case, see Parry's Secrecy & Privilege. For a document on Shackley's October Surprise work with Bush, click here.]
The Collapsing Case on Wilson
Barcella's golden reputation from the Wilson conviction also has been tarnished in recent years. In 2003, an irate federal judge threw out Wilson's Libya conviction after learning that the U.S. government had lied in a key affidavit which denied that Wilson was in contact with the CIA regarding his work with the Libyans.
The government's false affidavit, which disputed Wilson's defense claim that he had been cooperating with the CIA, was read twice to the jury before it returned the guilty verdict in 1983. Jury foreman Wally Sisk has said that without the government's affidavit, the jury would not have convicted Wilson.
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