Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' [Unabridged] [Paperback]

Robert Parry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1999

- Lost History is a kind of All the President's Men in reverse. As that journalistic classic followed Woodward and Bernstein exposing Watergate, Lost History is the inside story of reporters who broke the key stories of the Iran-contra scandal. But instead of basking in praise, they paid a high personal price. In a larger sense, Lost History explains how the Washington press corps of the 1980s missed or under-reported many of the major scandals of the era, from the dirty secret of Nicaraguan contra-cocaine trafficking to the Guatemalan army's genocide against Mayan Indians. Not only does Lost History recover this important historical record from the government's secret files, but it shows how the decade of the 1980s was the missing link in the transformation of the Washington press corps from the glory days of Watergate to the tawdry tabloid moments of Monica Lewinsky. This is a book not only about "lost history" but about a political system that has lost its way.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert Parry, an award-winning investigative journalist, broke many of the stories now known as the Iran-contra affair, including the first story about Oliver North's secret network and the first story about Nicaraguan contra-cocaine trafficking. While working for The Associated Press, Newsweek and PBS Frontline, Parry covered the political intrigue of Washington and international hotspots from Iran to Haiti, from Israel to Nicaragua.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

There is a cynical old saying that the victors write the history. For those of us brought up on Westerns that made the Indians the aggressors and the U.S. cavalry the peacekeepers, we know there's something to that. But it is one of the ironies of the long Cold War that it is the American people -- the supposed victors -- who are seeing their own history sanitize d and miswritten. Even as the archives of ex-communist nations are opened, ev en as truth commissions wring the painful reality out of ex-rightist regimes, the American people are the ones most thoroughly kept in the dark about the unsavory secrets of the past half century. Without doubt, the conventional history is more comforting, less troubling, the American government making the right decisions or at least ones justified by the exigencies of a long struggle against a ruthless enemy. To encounter the secret history is disturbing, unnerving. It comes with a sense of vertigo, the uneasy discovery that what one assumed to be true might not be. The secret history is a challenge. It is the unpleasant reality that exists beneath the surface of our time. It also is a history in danger of being lost, possibly forever. With a national news media absorbed by tabloid journalism and disinterested in serious research, many U.S. operatives who prosecuted the Cold War are agin g and passing away without their experiences being recorded. Other times, the glut of trivial information obscures the pieces of valuable evidence that do enter the public domain. At least in the near term, our understanding of this recent era -- and our nation's role in it -- is way off the mark. It is as if the final price for winning the Cold War is our national confinement to a permanent childhood, where reassuring fantasies and endless diversions shield us from the hard truth of our own recent history...

Product Details

• Paperback: 305 pages
• Publisher: Media Consortium; 1 edition (July 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893517004
• ISBN-13: 978-1893517004
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #185,608 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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104 of 106 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Corruption & Mendacity of White House, CIA Failures in Central America, November 8, 2003

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' (Paperback)

Edit of 21 Dec 07 to add links.

This book is a real gem. It outlines a tale of both corruption and ideological mendacity within the White House, and of ignorance and unprofessionalism with the Directorate of Operations in the Central Intelligence Agency. As one who served on the Central American Task Force at the time, and as a clandestine case officer focused on these matters, I find it especially fascinating that I, from the inside, was truly unaware of the degree to which we were engaged in direct support to a band of contras characterized by drug-running, money-laundering, corruption, rape, torture, routine murders, and perhaps worse of all, total incompetence and ineffectiveness.

There are two aspects of this book that truly stand out for anyone who is committed, as I and most CIA employees are, to the concept that "the truth shall make you free."

First, as the title suggests, there is a "lost history" that is unavailable to the American people. The author is not alone in making this charge. The editors of the history of the Department of State have on several occasions complained, both publicly and privately, that an accurate history of the foreign relations of the United States of America cannot be written without more complete disclosure of our various covert operations. Indeed, Derek Leebaert's book The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World, Jim Bamford's book Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, and Sterling and Peggy Sterling's book Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold, among a number of others books but these three reviewed by me on Amazon and being the most recent and best documentary efforts, all show that America has paid a *huge* cost, a cost running to trillions of dollars in deceitfully mis-spent dollars and lives, for clandestine and covert activities that have inspired enmity, often nurtured environments of genocide and war crimes (Sudan today, for example, given a "bye" for its nominal counter-terrorism support), and spawned vast war profiteering enterprises at the same time that we nurture and encourage dictatorships such as those in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, both of which are protecting Bin Laden, his family (which we allowed to escape from the US rather than taking them hostage--a White House accommodation to its Saudi paymasters), and other terrorists. America needs to understand the truth about such matters, and this book helps.

The other major value of this book is its examination of how the White House, first under Reagan and now under Bush junior, and personified in the activities of one Otto Reich (Reich and Rove are exemplar representatives of the neo-Nazi and neo-conservative aspects of the Cheney-Bush regime), has violated various US laws and values by running psychological operations and media campaigns against its own public. Especially distressing has been the manner in which the National Public Radio (NPR) has been "brought to heel" by threats to cut off its federal subsidies if it fails to accept the lies of the Administration and actually reports truthfully to the public. The Associated Press (AP) is also shown in this book to have subverted the truth and conformed to the falsehoods and propaganda line being purveyed by the Reagan Administration against the American people. The New York Times is specifically cited, on several occasions, and publishing false and misleading information, not because its employees lack ethics (as has recently been the case) but because the NYT is part of the "establishment" and all too eager to betray its readers by publishing the party line from a corrupt White House.

Usefully, the author documents a General Account Office decision on 30 September 1987 that the "white propaganda" of Otto Reich and the Public Diplomacy Office in the Department of State amounted to "prohibited covert propaganda activities" against the US media and the US public. Under Bush Junior the Administration has added blatant lies and manipulated intelligence to its repetoir, and continues to manage covert propaganda against the American people.

Among the most interesting sub-themes the author documents are how Richard Nixon undermined the Vietnam peace talks in order to prevent Johnson from successful resolution, and how Reagan's team undermined the Iran hostage negotiations to prevent Jimmy Carter's ability to resolve that in time for the election. In both cases the Republicans violated the law and engaged in actions that amount to treason--to a betrayal of the public trust. Now fast forward to the recent stories about how Richard Perle was a principal in the Bush Administration's refusal to accept an offer from Saddam Hussein to help in the war on terrorism, allow full US inspection teams, and otherwise give us everything we wanted except his head and the right to loot Iraq. American soldiers are dying today--and a bill we cannot pay is being run up--in Iraq because of Republican treason and Republican lies and Republican propaganda against the American people.

Another important point that this book documents is the sorry reality that CIA analysts cannot trust the CIA clandestine operators to tell them the full truth, and that the US public cannot trust the White House to tell it the full truth (apart from blatant propaganda). The truth in America has been subverted, distorted, and *buried*. As others have documented (see my review of Sheldon Rampton & John Stauber, Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq), the American people are, if they are avid searchers for the truth, able to see only 10% of the facts and undistorted information available to Europeans and Asians.

The book has some flaws--a rotten index, some repetition caused by integrating old and new material--but I rank it as essential reading for anyone who would like to understand how we got ourselves into an unjust war with Iraq, how an extremist Republican Administration was able to do Goering proud by manipulating the American Congress and the American people and the United Nations with a "platform of lies." We have lost history, we have lost ethics, and we are on the verge of losing America and that for which it stands.

Other recommended books, with reviews:
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion
The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA (Touchstone Books (Paperback))
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition

122 of 128 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting, credible, and disturbing as hell, September 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' (Paperback)

This book convincingly explains how the wheels came off of American democracy in the decades following WWII. Many conservatives decry revisionist history. This book shows with power and eloquence that no American citizen can afford to accept conventional history as supplied by the US media. Robert Parry has lived and breathed Iran-Contra since he broke the story as an AP reporter in the mid-80s. Utilizing media reports, DEA reports, declassified CIA reports and named and unnamed inside sources he shows how the Reagan administration devastated Central America and facilitated large scale importation of drugs into the US to finance Contra operations against Nicaragua. This is the most fascinating and important book I have read this year. It is essential reading for anyone who values democracy and has the courage to face recent US history and work for change.

52 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Media Manipulation and Political Corruption, October 28, 2003

By 

William Hare (Seattle, Washington) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' (Paperback)

Robert Parry is a reporter with a wealth of experience who combines knowledge with investigative expertise and a bedrock courage to find the truth and faithfully report it. Here is the reporter who uncovered the illegal government operation of Oliver North in the National Security Council office, which violated federal law by providing weapons, manpower, and logistical advice to the Contras in Nicaragua. The government did its best to smear the Associated Press and later Newsweek reporter, painting him as unreliable and a man with his own agenda, but ultimately the truth won out.

Parry brilliantly documents what the Contras were really all about. The so-called Nicaraguan freedom fighters which President Ronald Reagan referred to as "the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers" were instead involved in a major drug networking operation, aided by the CIA. The result was that scores of youngsters in South Central Los Angeles became drug addicts as they moved their operations into America while battles waged among young gang members over turf control. When Senator John Kerry sought to expose what was happening he too was denounced as a troublemaker operating against America's best interests.

Parry tells about what political correctness really is, and it is far removed from what is depicted by right wingers seeking to pin the tag on liberal critics. To Parry this correctness takes the form of barking on cue in alliance with and as supplicants to the major commercial interests which hold sway not only over those in political power, but on the media itself. His efforts to exercise independence of judgment were accompanied by negative reactions from powers in the media as well as Washington operatives. All the same he prevailed, and hopefully he and others will continue telling their stories despite the fervent efforts to silence them.