Reply #21: The Stay-Behind Secret Government did him in, politically. [View All]

The Original October Surprise

By Robert Parry
October 25, 2006

History turned in December 1992 when the truth about what happened in the pivotal 1980 presidential election might finally have been revealed to the American people. Just a month after Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush, the dam that had held back the 12-year-old secrets finally gave way.

An investigative House Task Force was putting the finishing touches on a report intended to debunk the longstanding October Surprise allegations of Republican interference with the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980. The bipartisan Task Force planned to treat the story as a conspiracy theory run wild.

But suddenly the Task Force found itself inundated by a flood of new evidence going the other way, indicating that the long-whispered suspicions of a grotesque Republican dirty trick a dozen years earlier were true.

Task Force chief counsel Lawrence Barcella, who had been onboard for the debunking, was stunned by the late surge of new evidence. He concluded that it couldn’t be ignored and that it justified extending the investigation at least a few more months.

Years later, Barcella told me that he recommended a three-month extension to the Task Force chairman, Rep. Lee Hamilton, but the Indiana Democrat rejected the idea of taking the extra time to check out the new evidence. An extension would have required getting approval from the new Congress being seated in 1993.

Plus, Hamilton, who was about to ascend to the chairmanship of the House International Affairs Committee, had other priorities. He treasured perhaps more than anything his reputation as a respected centrist figure in a capital city torn by partisanship.

Hamilton, with his no-nonsense butch haircut and home-spun eloquence, was a candidate for one of Washington’s highest unofficial honors, the title of Wise Man. Indeed, Hamilton’s passion for bipartisanship had made him the Democrat that the Republicans most wanted to run an investigation into Republican wrongdoing.

When Hamilton was chosen in late 1991 to chair the October Surprise Task Force, Republicans hailed his selection. Hamilton then selected investigators who weren’t inclined to press too hard, even as Hamilton’s GOP counterpart, Rep. Henry Hyde, staffed his side with tough-minded partisans.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/102506.html