Source – consortiumnews.com

– “…Few journalists with the guts, public-spiritedness, and tenacity to unlock official secrets…Trick or Treason is a real-life who-done-it with profound implications for our understanding of the corruption of political power in Washington. Without this book, we can’t begin to understand the story of the October Surprise, the ensuing Iran-contra scandal, and the Iraq-gate scandal that followed”

Trick or Treason’, The 1980 October Surprise Mystery – By Robert Parry

It is the most controversial mystery of the Reagan-Bush era: Did the Republican Party, desperate in 1980 to reclaim the White House, interfere with President Carter’s frantic efforts to free the 52 American hostages held in Tehran and thwart the “October Surprise”? Was there a Republican-Iranian deal that bordered on treason? Or was this stunning allegation a bizarre trick played by a loose-knit band of arms brokers and intelligence operatives?

To answer these questions, award-winning investigative reporter Robert Parry pursued allegations and followed leads in a worldwide odyssey for an elusive–and sometimes dangerous–truth. Beyond the political mystery, this book lays bare an era during which deception evolved into a high art form and the nation’s traditional constitutional safeguards were no match for the lies.

From Booklist

In Parry’s self-image, he must be one of the few journalists with the guts, public-spiritedness, and tenacity to unlock official secrets. The reporter castigated his kowtowing colleagues, as he perceives them, in Fooling America and here picks up the idle spear of investigation and chucks it at a favorite target theory: that Republicans connived with Iranian mullahs to delay release of imprisoned American diplomats, thus denying President Carter an election-eve boost. So Parry received a commission from the Frontline PBS program to ask two questions about July and October 1980: Where was Bill Casey, and where was George Bush? This book is the raw material for the ensuing documentary, which aired in 1991. Parry answers neither question definitively, but he questions their alibis (that Casey was at a history seminar and Bush on a golf course), makes great hay of omissions in their personal records, and finds to his satisfaction that each could have skittered off to secret meetings. Parry himself went around the globe, heavily skeptical of those with something to tell him about the “surprise.” A musty mystery with many angles and cold leads, this should revivify the interest of patrons who took in, or were taken in by, Gary Sick’s October Surprise. Gilbert Taylor

Review

Trick or Treason is a real-life who-done-it with profound implications for our understanding of the corruption of political power in Washington. Without this book, we can’t begin to understand the story of the October Surprise, the ensuing Iran-contra scandal, and the Iraqgate scandal that followed. Trick or Treason is necessary reading if future scandals of this magnitude are to be avoided. –Peter Kornbluh, co-editor of The Iran-Contra Scandal and senior analyst at the National Security Archive

A crack investigative reporter, Parry gives the reader a taste of how it feels to go after one of the biggest–and toughest–stories of the [1980s]. This real-life detective story is populated by more knaves and charlatans than a spy novel–from seedy arms dealers to sleek power brokers in expensive suits. Parry’s odyssey spans three continents and a universe of tantalizing leads, triumphs, and frustrations. If you think that the October Surprise questions have been answered, read this and think again. –Gary G. Sick, former national security advisor and author of October Surprise

http://consortiumnews.com/