It Started Over Lunch and Led to the Exposure of One of the Greatest Scandals in U.S. History

The following are remarks at the memorial for Bob Parry delivered on Saturday by Brian Barger, who shared many bylines with Bob (and a drink or two) at the Associated Press, uncovering the Iran-Contra scandal, and provoking the ire of AP editors, nervous about what the two friends were finding out.

By Brian Barger

I remember it was a pleasure to meet Bob in 1984. The CIA was ramping up its covert war in Nicaragua. News reports from the region documented atrocities committed by President Reagan’s “freedom fighters” and their CIA handlers. Congress was starting to take notice, and was threatening to cut off US aid.

I got a call from Betsy Cohn, a Latin America scholar from Georgetown University, saying I should meet this guy from the AP. Over lunch we shared notes. I’d done much of my reporting from Central America and Miami, and Bob from Washington. We agreed there was a lot of low-hanging fruit on this story, and we talked about why there was such reluctance to cover it, particularly among the Washington press corps. We agreed that this could be a good reporting partnership.

And it was in these early days that I learned some important lessons about journalism from Bob.

It started over that lunch, when Bob politely reminded me that I’d buried the lede in a recent story that should have received wide attention – but didn’t. This was Bob Parry journalism lesson number one: Don’t bury the lede.

The story was about a blue, cloth-covered manual produced by the CIA and distributed to contra commanders in Honduras. Bob wanted a copy. So, Bob Parry journalism lesson Number Two: Be persistent. I gave it to him, and Bob produced a deeply reported piece on what thereafter was known as the CIA assassination manual. Lesson number three: Make those ten extra phone calls before calling it a day.

This was the beginning of an enduring friendship that lasted 35 years. It was also the beginning of an enduring work relationship. Over the next two years, we peeled back the story about White House aide Oliver North and the White House role orchestrating a secret war in Nicaragua.

Brian Barger at the memorial for Bob Parry (Photo: Doug Spiro)

As we dove deeper, the story got nuttier. North and the CIA had recruited Cuban Americans who moved on from the failed Bay of Pigs invasion to more lucrative endeavors such as drug trafficking. Soon, contra airstrips in Central America were being used for cocaine shipments. The North network recruited mercenaries from Alabama. They recruited pilots who flew guns down and drugs back. They recruited a DEA official in Costa Rica to fend off probing FBI agents. And they recruited a US Attorney in Miami to prevent a federal drugs-and-guns prosecution from moving forward.

And lots of people began to talk, inside and outside the North network.

So, Bob continually wondered, why wasn’t the mainstream press jumping on this? That question would frame most of Bob’s subsequent career. I think this story stripped away whatever naïveté Bob may have had left about U.S. journalism, and inspired him to see the government – and the press in a new light.

The Illusion of Winning

Bob followed the bread crumbs. He discovered the hand of a senior CIA official, the longtime head of psychological operations, a guy named Walt Raymond. He was moved to the National Security Council to institutionalize what they called black propaganda against the American people. Formerly benign public affairs offices were transformed into “offices of public diplomacy.” One of Raymond’s urgent tasks, Bob reported, was to “paint white hats on the contras and black hats on the Sandinistas.” Another was to systematically discredit journalists who failed to adhere to Washington’s talking points on Central America.

If they couldn’t win on the battlefield, they would at least create the illusion of winning. They called it perception management.

At the National Security Council, Bob was labelled an avowed liberal with close contacts inside the Democratic Party. It was the new red-baiting. I remember one afternoon Bob got off the phone with a State Department public diplomacy officer who had warned him that I might be a Bulgarian intelligence agent who was sleeping with Sandinista operatives. Two days after Bob insisted on evidence to back up such a wild accusation, a thick package arrived containing copies of stories I’d written over the past few years.

But as it turned out, this sort of tactic was enough to dissuade many career-minded journalists from touching the story.

The Story Was Sent Back

During the time Bob and I worked together at the Associated Press in the mid-1980s, we met a wall of resistance to our stories that didn’t make much sense. We turned in one story about the Oliver North network, citing more than two dozen sources, among them aides to North, contra leaders, and U.S. law enforcement officials. The story was sent back. “Can’t you get North to just confess?” the AP bureau chief asked.

We turned in another story, nine months in the works, about contras involved in drug smuggling. The editing was excruciating, and even after our bureau chief edited out any references to CIA involvement, the story was killed. It was only published by accident on the Spanish-language wire before AP executives decided they couldn’t hold it any longer.

It was about this time that we learned that our bureau chief was meeting regularly with North; they each were point-persons in efforts to free AP reporter Terry Anderson, being held hostage in Lebanon.

As sympathetic as Bob was to Terry Anderson’s plight, he thought there might be a conflict of interest, since our bureau chief had insisted on personally editing out stories about North.

After Bob and I left the AP, we continued informally working together for many years.

A Plane Goes Down

In early October 1986, I remember coming out of an interview with a drug pilot at Miami Correctional Center and called Bob to go over what I’d learned. Bob interrupted and asked whether I’d heard the news: A U.S. plane ferrying weapons to the contras had been shot down, and there was a survivor.

That afternoon Bob and I were on a flight to Managua, where we spent the night pouring over boxes of documents, IDs and flight logs that mapped out an elaborate air resupply operation flown out of El Salvador’s Ilopango air base. The operation was run by two CIA operatives: Felix Rodriguez, a close friend of CIA veteran Donald Gregg, then the chief of staff to Vice President George Bush, and Luis Posada Carriles, another CIA operative and veteran bomb-maker who had just escaped, with the help of the CIA and Rodriguez, from a Venezuelan prison where he was serving time for bombing a commercial airliner.

Fast forward to 2018, in one of our last conversations, Bob told me what he’d found in another of his visits to the Reagan library: More documents about Walt Raymond and his efforts to use disinformation as a standard-issue weapon in taming the press.

Bob was not an ideologue. His zeal was in pursuing the truth. There was a lot he didn’t like about the political right, and he didn’t have much patience for the left.

Uncensored Reporting

Since the late 1980s, Bob saw the interventionist neoconservative movement as the biggest threat to US democracy and to stability in the world. And he saw Consortium News as a vehicle for uncensored reporting and an avenue to pursue the kind of historical narrative rare in American journalism today.

Of course, there was also the humorous side of Bob, who kept me laughing many long hours, often at Larry’s, Bob’s favorite gay bar around the corner from my house.

And that reminds me of at least one project Bob and I hadn’t gotten to before he died. We’d come up with this brilliant idea of cashing in on everything we’d learned. We would launch a PR firm. We’d call it Psy-Ops Inc. And to prove our worth, we would select the most unlikely characters we could find, and turn them into winning candidates, using Walt Raymond’s playbook. It sounded like a great idea, but then we had the Tea Party. And then, well, the rest is history.

11 comments for “It Started Over Lunch and Led to the Exposure of One of the Greatest Scandals in U.S. History

  1. robert e williamson jr
    April 18, 2018 at 20:59

    CIA knows when it sets up these conflicts they will be able to kept everything secret , DOJ does their bidding it’s a conflict and it is killing the country.

    Something is inherently wrong with any system that allows government reps to import illegal substances by the ton into the country and the send some one to prison for life because they got caught with an ounce once. The CIA runs drugs for the money just as the cartels do. No taxes are paid on that money because it goes to off shore accounts. Long live the ICIJ. Check Jane Mayers book DARK MONEY , Robert Blum wanted CIA ran with private secret money and he got his wish. The history is in her book and the truth in her notes there.

    Be well friends. Thank you for your patience.

  2. robert e williamson jr
    April 18, 2018 at 20:45

    First my humble apologies for no homage to the late Mr. Parry. I really haven’t crafted words to do him justice. The personal drive and the insight of such men who can then also write so very well is very impressive to me. Super smart guy who was very interested in the truth! To Robert and the truth!
    This directed to James Smith, I think you are right on top of them. And I always wonder, if CIA is trafficking drugs and we know they do, why then doesn’t DEA do something about it. Both Nieves and Mike Vigil I’m having great contempt for. I know the CIA was responsible for the crack problem in the west coast and ultimately the rest of the country. I believe Rick Ross before these two.

    Given the accolades given to the two for being the Chief of International Operations a person must ask how can it be that they didn’t do anything about CIA’s dirty work. CIA brought drugs into the country illegally and a guy like Vigil ends up a celeb on TV.

  3. robert e williamson jr
    April 18, 2018 at 20:10

    I would like to thank you for presenting this material. I am your ultimate conspiracy theorist. Neither by education or trade, but I have been a paid observer for most of my adult life. And I don’t like what I’ve seen.

    I believe the deep state is that group which represents the interface that conduit of communications between consisting of the super wealthy elitists ( SWETS) whose money directs the agendas of congress and assignment of the prized congressional committee chairs. The group also includes those committee chairs, the professional cadre of special experts that makeup and are used by the lobby to massage the congress and the major corporate players in the government contracting business designed to most benefit from the efforts to prosecute the agenda of the “SWETS”. This results in the exertion of the superior leverage of undue influence over the legislative, judicial, executive branches of government and the POTUS. It is a rigged game and the C.I.A. described by Arthur B. Darling in his history, ” THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY and instrument of government to 1950, had evolved into that last member of the previously mentioned group, THE DEEP STATE. HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN? DOJ! IT NEEDS TO STOP.

  4. April 17, 2018 at 19:34

    Enjoyed this story about a great truthseeker, Robert Parry. What with all the horrors of the past few days and so many web articles covering the attack on Syria, i didn’t read your tribute to Mr. Parry till tonight. Thanks, Brian Barger.

  5. Ed Rickert
    April 17, 2018 at 13:14

    Thank you so much for your moving tribute to your friend and colleague, Robert Parry. At a time when we drown in the lies of government officials and their journalist enablers Robert’s work , your own work, and those who contribute to this site are the only light in these dark times.

  6. Nancy
    April 17, 2018 at 12:10

    The Iran/Contra episode is one of the most despicable misadventures in U.S. history. It really changed the course of history in Central America in a very tragic way.
    In 1980, when I was young and very idealistic, I went to Nicaragua for the first anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution. After traveling through Guatemala and El Salvador and witnessing the despair and poverty, I was inspired by the enthusiasm and hope of the Nicaraguan people.
    I truly believed they had triumphed over the “yanqui–enemy of humanity” according to their anthem. Very naive of me, I learned throughout the next several years.
    Robert Parry Presente!

  7. Skip Scott
    April 17, 2018 at 07:59

    Great story. Thanks.

  8. backwardsevolution
    April 17, 2018 at 02:04

    Brian Barger – that’s quite a story.

    “The operation was run by two CIA operatives: Felix Rodriguez, a close friend of CIA veteran Donald Gregg, then the chief of staff to Vice President George Bush, and Luis Posada Carriles, another CIA operative and veteran bomb-maker who had just escaped, with the help of the CIA and Rodriguez, from a Venezuelan prison where he was serving time for bombing a commercial airliner.”

    To hop on a plane to Nicaragua in order to follow the arms/drug trade, all I can say is you guys had guts.

  9. April 16, 2018 at 23:55

    “They recruited a DEA official in Costa Rica to fend off probing FBI agents. And they recruited a US Attorney in Miami to prevent a federal drugs-and-guns prosecution from moving forward.”

    Brian, I am guessing this DEA official is Robert Nieves and the US attorney is JANET RENO. I hope you will name names for the less informed…..

    I appreciate your courage in speaking the truth at a critical time in history during the Reagan administration. You and Robert will always have my respect and admiration.

  10. Tannenhouser
    April 16, 2018 at 23:50

    Aren’t friends the best? This story pings my confirmation bias. Belief confirmation prudent……. for some anyways….

    Thanks Brian.

  11. Zachary Smith
    April 16, 2018 at 21:39

    What can I say except that this was a good and fitting bunch of remarks.

    Thanks.

Comments are closed.