The Origin of Robert Parry’s Consortium News

[Octafish]

19. October Reprisals: Investigators of alleged Iran deal face smears, legal threats

October Reprisals

Investigators of alleged Iran deal face smears, legal threats

By John Canham-Clyne

The debate over the "October Surprise" has embroiled some of the country's most prominent journalists--none more deeply then Robert Parry and Steve Emerson. In the latest skirmish, Emerson has threatened to sue Parry--and Parry has produced documents showing that Emerson made false statements in his efforts to discredit Parry's reporting.

As previously reported in Extra!, Emerson for nearly two years has vigorously tried to debunk the "October Surprise," the allegation that the 1980 Reagan campaign cut a deal with Iran to keep U.S. hostages until after the election. Following publication of a House Foreign Affairs Committee Task Force report on the allegations, Emerson picked up the assault in an 8-page article for the inaugural issue (3/93) of the American Journalism Review (formerly Washington Journalism Review).

Assuming the role of media critic, Emerson covered much the same ground he had covered in an earlier New Republic article (11/18/91) and several Wall Street Journal op-eds. Essentially, Emerson repeated the Task Force's (and his own) conclusion that all the sources for the October Surprise are "fabricators."

Like his earlier work, Emerson's AJR piece was filled with personal slams against Parry, former Carter administration official Gary Sick and reporters Craig Unger and Martin Killian. In AJR, Emerson used a quote from former CIA officer and Village Voice reporter Frank Snepp to accuse Parry and Killian of "massaging sources to manufacture information." In the Wall Street Journal (1/14/93), Emerson even suggested that Congress confiscate the earnings from Sick's book October Surprise, to help defray the cost of the Task Force investigation.

According to Bob Parry and the Secret Service, however, it is Emerson who manufactures information.

Clean or Censored?

Parry, a former AP and Newsweek reporter who broke much of the story of Oliver North's illegal Contra supply network, prides himself on old-fashioned notions of objectivity. When Emerson described October Surprise reporters as "believers" in the New Republic, Parry defended himself in a published letter to the magazine (12/23/91).

Parry pointed out that his Frontline documentary (4/16/91) had reported evidence that tended to disprove some of the October Surprise allegations. For example, the PBS show had presented copies of Secret Service records for the detail protecting George Bush between Oct. 15 and Oct. 20, 1980, which tended to show--albeit not definitely prove--that Bush was in Washington, not at alleged meetings with Iranians in Paris. But Parry pointed out that the documents were not complete--they has been censored, or in government-speak, "redacted."

In a printed response, Emerson slammed Frontline's use of the records:

Parry momentarily raised the Secret Service records only disingenuously to question their accuracy. On Frontline Parry claimed that the records "do not specify with whom the candidate met, nor do they supply any other details as to who was actually in the party." In fact, Secret Service records from the period in question never supplied that information. (By describing the records as "heavily censored," Parry raised further suspicions about their authenticity; yet we obtained a perfectly clean set of records under FOIA. Nothing was hidden.)

Parry was dismayed by Emerson's implication that he had lied about what he received from the Secret Service. When Emerson's AJR piece ran--despite complaints from Parry to the magazine's editors that Emerson's past reporting on the subject had been unfairly slanted--Parry wrote a letter to the editor that accused Emerson of pretending to have access to unredacted records. In an unpublished portion of a letter to AJR's editors (the letter was printed in part, 4/93), Parry said that a Secret Service officer told him that Emerson was "lying" about having uncensored copies.

Rather than responding by producing the complete documents, Emerson threatened to sue Parry for libel. Emerson's attorney, Forrest Hainline, threatened Parry with legal action unless he retracted these mostly unpublished accusations. Hainline asserted that Emerson would not have to prove in court that what Parry said was false, because, the lawyer maintained, Emerson is not a public figure. (Hainline also represents Iran-contra figure Robert McFarlane, who is suing Craig Unger over his October Surprise story in Esquire--a suit Emerson reported on extensively in AJR.)

CONTINUED...

http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/october-reprisals/

Seems the rightwing will go to any lengths to smear an honest journalist.