We have seen how with some finesse it is possible to turn theories and observations which are not conspiracy theories into conspiracy theories, for the purpose of discrediting them or evading substantive argument. Now let us consider what happens when a journal like Newsweek is confronted with a theory that really is a conspiracy theory.
Newsweek's cover story on Nov. 11, 1991, was entitled "Making of a Myth: How Reagan and Bush Came to Be Falsely Accused of Treason in the Iran Hostage Release." The alleged treason involved a deal between the 1980 Reagan campaign and the Iranian government not to release the American hostages until after the US election, thus avoiding an "October Surprise," that is, an earlier release which incumbent president Jimmy Carter could take credit for. This has been "a mother lode for conspiracy junkies for the past decade," NW says.
We note first that NW has substituted "junkies" for the usual word, "buffs," to imply that conspiracy theorists are not only eccentric hobbyists but addicts, thus perhaps criminals themselves. Either as "buffs" or "addicts," they cannot be serious researchers. In this case, the "junkies include Gary Sick, a former top-level presidential adviser (under Carter), Barbara Honegger, who worked as a research and policy analyst for the Reagan-Bush campaign and later in the White House Office of Policy Development, the former hostages who called for a congressional investigation, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which was to conduct the investigation, and all other Americans who are interested in the truth about what NW, in its wisdom, knows is a "myth."
NW claims to have "found that the key claims of the purported eyewitnesses do not hold up. What the evidence does show is the murky history of a conspiracy theory run wild." In fact, NW's investigation is nothing more than a superficial review of evidence which others, particularly Barbara Honegger and Gary Sick, have collected. Strangely, although NW mentions that Sick's book was due to be published that very week, the editors were in such a hurry to get this article out that they didn't wait to read it. This is a crude but unfortunately effective way to avoid dealing with the evidence presented by the most credible witness in the case.
"The October Surprise theory has been kicking around for the past 11 years..." NW tells us (p. 18). In other words, it's Old News. This is a standard ploy, the implication being that if there were a grain of truth in the story it would have been exposed long ago. Thus an issue like this one is largely ignored by the mainstream press for 11 years, and then dismissed when it can no longer be ignored, on the grounds that if it was ignored for so long in the first place it cannot possibly have any substance–a classic example of circular reasoning.
Just as conspiracy theorists are depicted as silly eccentrics ("buffs") or dangerous sickies ("addicts"), the theory itself, if one is forced to take it seriously, is something to be combated. It is not the alleged conspiracy that is unhealthy and dangerous, but the theory of the conspiracy. NW presents the background of the October Surprise story as if it were the epidemiology of a virus.
The virus begins to "run wild" in 1990 when it finds an "outlet" in "right-wing political extremist Lyndon LaRouche" (p. 19-20). LaRouche has been adopted by the Establishment press as the prototypical Dangerous Nut whose very name discredits any idea it is associated with. This is the purpose it serves here. The reader is not informed that LaRouche, nutty or not, got on the presidential ballot in twenty states in 1988, was arrested three weeks before the election, and then was tried, convicted and sentenced in the record time of four months to an inordinately harsh 15 years in prison. His followers are not the only ones who say he was railroaded and consider him a political prisoner. Former attorney general Ramsey Clark, for example, agrees.
Given its depraved source (the LaRouche publication Executive Intelligence Review in December 1980), the idea that "pro-Reagan British intelligence circles and the Kissinger faction" had succeeded in October 1980 in torpedoing President Carter's last-minute attempts to make a deal with Teheran (p. 20) merits no comment from NW. This is putting it rather mildly, though, compared to the current accusations, whereby the Reagan people not only foiled Carter's deal but made one of their own. NW does mention, parenthetically, that Kissinger denied the EIR report, which is presumably why the mainstream press continued to ignore the matter for another seven years. If Kissinger said it didn't happen, it didn't happen. If this is NW's attitude, they qualify as "right-wing political extremists" themselves, one would think.
The story "got its next boost"–since any such folderol could not possibly get around on its own merit–and "finally made it into the mainstream" in 1987 via the Miami Herald and the New York Times. This time the folderol came from former Iranian president Bani Sadr, who had become convinced that the Iranians in charge of hostage policy (Rafsanjani, Beheshti and Khomeini's son) had indeed made a deal with Reagan's people in October 1980 to delay the release of the hostages until after the election.
The next paragraph is worth considering closely:
The timing [of the New York Times article, August 1987] was propitious–high summer, so to speak, for conspiracy buffs. The reason was the Iran-contra scandal, which proved that the Reagan administration had indeed engaged in secret dealings with Iran. Although the exact starting point of those secret negotiations remains obscure to this day, it seems clear that the roots of Iran-contra run deeper than anyone has been able to document publicly. The Reagan White House, it seems clear, was obsessed by Iran during the early 1980s. Iran-contra also showed that the administration was eager to engage in covert action, and that it was ready to lie, destroy documents and cover up a range of covert activities that violated the law (p. 20).
The first sentence contains three underlying propositions. We are not aware of them unless we take the time to analyze the language carefully, but that is the point: they are subliminal messages. To repeat the themes I've already discussed:
1. People who pursue the truth in this matter are eccentric hobbyists ("buffs").
2. This conspiracy theory is not good for us. Continuing the epidemiological metaphor introduced earlier, the story broke out under "propitious" circumstances, like a virus, in "high summer." August 1987 was a happy time for the evil conspiracy buffs, but dangerous for us because it followed immediately upon the Iran-contra scandal: we were ripe for infection by further unhealthy thoughts.
A third point puts an interesting twist on the already established notion of conspiracy theorists as buffs and addicts:
3. The conspiracy buffs are themselves the true conspirators. "Timing" requires an agent, someone who does the timing. Therefore, the re-emergence of the October Surprise story was purposeful. Who was behind it and why? The New York Times? Bani Sadr? We are not told. But clearly there has been a conspiracy against us, the public–namely, a conspiracy to infect us with yet another noisome conspiracy theory. Who can be behind this conspiracy but the conspiracy buffs, our real enemy?
In the rest of the paragraph, NW says Reagan's people were indeed guilty as charged in the Iran-contra affair. This is supposed to explain why the October Surprise story broke out in August 1987. But it also contradicts the propositions underlying the first sentence. If Reagan et al. were guilty in Iran-contra, NW should take more seriously the October Surprise charges. We do not notice this contradiction because NW has long delivered its foregone conclusion that the October Surprise story is a "myth."
The paragraph, then, contains two messages–one subliminal, one straightforward. The subliminal one is comprised by the underlying propositions in the first sentence, the other by the rest of the paragraph. Consider how these two messages would appear if the first were stated as clearly as the second:
The October Surprise story is dangerous nonsense. The Iran-contra story is absolutely true.
Now we feel compelled to insert a "but" between the sentences and ask Why? The fact is that we have not been given a shred of evidence up to this point in the article to support the first sentence, though we have been told in a number of different ways that it is so. This is brainwashing, not argumentation. It is effective for the same reasons that advertising is effective, and the proof of its effectiveness is that when we read the NW text, we do not ask Why? NW has conditioned us to accept its foregone conclusion. Remove the packaging and what it is trying to sell us appears in a very different light.
By the time NW gets around to the facts, they appear almost superfluous. NW contends that 1) Casey did not go to Madrid in July 1980, and 2) the Paris meeting in October did not occur.
The obvious question with respect to 1) is, even if Casey didn't go to Madrid, did he go to Paris? NW admits that "the second meeting [i.e. in Paris] involved either Casey and Gregg–or Casey, Bush and Gates–on the American side" (p. 23), but proceeds to discuss only the question of whether Casey was in Madrid. According to Barbara Honegger, "Mr. Casey is far more likely to have made the rendezvous in Paris than Mr. Bush" (October Surprise, New York: Tudor, 1989, p. 104), but NW doesn't even consider this possibility.
Every bit of NW's "solid evidence" concerning Bush's whereabouts on the dates in question is in Honegger's book, which has been systematically squelched ever since it appeared. NW continues that campaign here. First Honegger is described as a "would-be Deep Throat" alongside CIA operative Richard Brenneke, Mossad operative Ari Ben-Menashe, and Jamshid Hashemi, the brother of Iranian arms dealer Cyrus Hashemi. Then her assiduously researched argument, based on the testimony of many witnesses, is reduced to a remark by a Reagan campaign staffer she overheard in October 1980, as if this were all she had to say. Ignoring the real evidence, NW chides Honegger for not being "able to identify this alleged staffer or say whether she had any reason to believe the staffer knew what he was talking about" (p. 21). The second problem with Honegger, according to NW, was that she
seemed to have some difficulty in separating fact from fiction. Even Christopher Hitchens, a columnist for The Nation magazine and a sometime proponent of the October Surprise theory, said her exposé was "diffuse and naive" (p. 21).
NW offers nothing to support this accusation, nothing to explain Hitchens' remark. One suspects that Hitchens is quoted here in an attempt to associate Honegger with what NW would consider left-wing "extremists," despite the fact that conspiracy theories are more widespread on the right than on the left, and despite the fact that Honegger, as a former Reagan adviser, is hardly left-wing.
Just as NW ignores the question of whether Casey went to Paris, it also ignores what Honegger considers the more likely scenario: Bush may have flown to New York the night of the 18th to meet secretly with Iran's prime minister Rajai, a member of the hostage policy committee, just before Rajai left for Algiers the same night. Curiously, although NW claims that "George Bush did not go to Paris on Oct. 19-20," the night of the 18th is omitted from the discussion, though it is a crucial part of the time period in question (from about 10:00 p.m. on Oct. 18 to between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m. on Oct. 19.) NW relies exclusively on the Secret Service logs, which Honegger shows to be unreliable and contradictory. NW says: "Those logs show that Bush campaigned in New Jersey and Pennsylvania on Oct. 17, and that he went to the Chevy Chase Country club, outside Washington, during the day on Oct. 19." What happened to the 18th?
Honegger points out that no one, including the Secret Service, can personally vouch for Bush's whereabouts from the night of the 18th to late the next day. Unlike Honegger, NW has no curiosity about why Stephen Hart, Bush's campaign spokesman, said Bush flew from Philadelphia to Andrews Air Force Base, while Secret Service records (completed 12 days later) show that he flew to Washington National airport. Why does the Secret Service have him arriving at Washington National at 9:25 p.m. when the manager of the motel where Bush was staying in Chester, Pennsylvania, said he didn't check out until 11:00 p.m. the same evening?
NW further ignores Honegger's revelation that one of the two Secret Service documents purporting to show Bush in Chevy Chase on the 19th was filled out a week afterwards, apparently by one of Bush's campaign staffers. This document states that "security" was "not applicable," meaning that probably no Secret Service personnel were around Bush on the 19th. Honegger describes the other document as "heavily censored." The secretary of the Board of Governors of the club does not remember either Bush or any Secret Service personnel being at the club that day and has no written records. Bush was not a member of the club then (though his wife was), and if he was there for his usual Sunday tennis game, he is more dedicated than most: the weather was rainy, cool, and overcast. Who was his tennis partner?
We read in Honegger, but not in NW, that even if Bush was at the country club between 10:29 and 11:56 a.m. on Oct. 19, as the Secret Service logs show, he could have left Paris shortly after noon and still have been back in Washington by that time, given the six-hour time difference, if he used a military jet, which can make the trip in three hours. Leaving Paris at 11:00 a.m. Paris time would have put him in Washington at 8:00 a.m. on the same day. This would have been time enough to get to Chevy Chase by 10:30 (if he was there), and to the Capital Hilton in Washington by that evening, where he was definitely seen, although the Secret Service records give his arrival time variously as 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. There would certainly have been enough time to fly to New York instead of to Paris, which Honegger thinks is more likely.
NW speaks of "two broad-brush assumptions" of the October Surprise theory. One is that "there is oddly little evidence of any substantial weapons 'payoff' to Iran" (p. 24). What is odd about this? Where would NW expect to find such evidence–in the Secret Service logs?
The second "pivotal notion" is that the Carter/Iran hostage negotiations broke down in October, which October Surprise theorists attribute to the machinations of the Reagan-Bush campaign. NW's explanation for this is that Iran was "distracted" by the war with Iraq. Nevertheless, NW says, Rafsanjani did "try to resolve the hostage impasse while Carter was still in power." This is contradictory, but the point is supposed to be that Rafsanjani could not have been part of the October Surprise deal as some (like Bani Sadr) claim, because he supposedly tried to resolve the problem with Carter. This may convince NW, but it should be obvious that Rafsanjani could not have tried very hard, since the issue was not resolved until Carter was out of the picture, which is precisely the point of the October Surprise theory.
NW says that many Iranians were hostile to Carter and didn't want him re-elected. This is supposed to mean that Carter's negotiations would have fallen through anyway, whether Reagan's crew intervened or not. But it also means that the Iranians would have loved to make a deal with Carter's opponents–which, again, is precisely the point of the October Surprise theory.
According to NW, "the whole notion of the October Surprise" may stem from Khomeini's nephew confusing Carter's men with Reagan's. This is ludicrous. Even if it were true, what difference would it make? It would still have been Reagan's men who made the treasonous deal, whoever Khomeini's nephew thought they were.
NW ends by comparing this case with the JFK assassination:
These details may or may not convince conspiracy theorists who cling to the October Surprise–just as the Warren Commission report failed to convince a whole generation of would-be investigators that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, killed John F. Kennedy (p. 23).
This offers some encouragement. It means that the majority of Americans, who have always believed that the assassination was a conspiracy, are not as naive–or perfidious–as the would-be investigators at NW, who prefer to cling to the Magic Bullet theory and George Bush's coattails rather than find out and tell the truth.