Media covered up 1980 Iran hostage deal, the ‘October surprise,’ author tells Club
by Vincent Morris
National Press Club, October 24, 2024
Excerpt…
Unger, whose book “Den of Spies: Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason that Stole the White House,” published Oct. 1, says that the issues around the case are larger than questions about our national security apparatus and the role of international politics in a domestic election; it’s about the media.
“One of the great disgraces of our national media in covering this up,” said (author Craig) Unger, who has worked as deputy editor of the New York Observer and editor-in-chief of Boston Magazine. “It was a great scandal and they twisted it and turned it on its ass.”
Although some of the history is still contested, the facts are not. President Jimmy Carter was unable to get American hostages released from Iran. In November 1980, he lost the election to Reagan. In January 1981, just minutes after Reagan was sworn in, the hostages were released.
In his remarks, Unger described how he first came upon the story many years later and turned it into a 10,000 word explosive piece for Esquire magazine. Not long after the piece hit, Unger says he was hired by Newsweek magazine and turned loose to do more investigative work; but “that’s when things went south,” he says.
Unger claims that soon after settling in at Newsweek, his stories about this topic were spiked by editors there. Worse, they printed stories that essentially washed over the explosive charges about the hostage deal, he said.
Unger reserved his most intense criticism for the Washington Post, which owned Newsweek at the time and, he says, had an outsize role in quietly killing the story. He’s also equally critical of Congressional Democrats, who he claims never pursued the dramatic charges as earnestly as they should have.
Continues…
Source:
https://www.press.org/newsroom/media-covered-1980-iran-hostage-deal-october-surprise-author-tells-club
= new reply since forum marked as read