Unmasking October Surprise ‘Debunker’
October 30, 2011
http://consortiumnews.com/2011/10/30/unmasking-an-october-surprise-debunker/
*Special Report:* The fake “debunking” of the 1980 October Surprise case
in the early 1990s was driven by a few “journalists,” including Steven
Emerson, who has been identified in a recent report as a “misinformation
expert” spreading anti-Muslim propaganda, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
In another blow to the crumbling cover-up surrounding Ronald Reagan’s
secret dealings with Iran during the 1980 presidential campaign, a key
“journalist” who “debunked” the October Surprise allegations in the
early 1990s has now been identified by a recent study as a member of a
right-wing “misinformation” network.
Entitled “Fear, Inc.,”
<http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/08/pdf/islamophobia.pdf>the
129-page report by the Center for American Progress lists Steven
Emerson as one of five “scholars” who act as “misinformation experts” to
“generate the false facts and materials” that are then exploited by
politicians and pundits to frighten Americans about the supposed threat
posed by Muslims.
<http://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/stevenemerson1.jpg>
Steven Emerson
The report offers a rare glimpse into the right-wing propaganda network
that has exploited America’s post-9/11 hysteria and transformed those
fears into a powerful political movement to get millions of Christians
and Jews to support legislation and policies that target Muslims and
their communities.
But the historical significance of noting Emerson’s role in this
“Islamophobia network” is that he is revealed to be a propagandist
willing to distort information for ideological ends, not the serious
journalist that he successfully posed as during the 1980s and 1990s.
In more recent years, followers of Emerson’s work have come to
understand that he has very close ties to Israeli right-wingers in the
Likud Party – and that his “journalism” often has reflected their
political needs and interests.
But Emerson also had those ties in the late 1980s and early 1990s when
the Iran-Contra scandal – and a precursor scandal known as the October
Surprise – threatened to expose Likud’s secretive actions in helping
Republicans unseat President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election and to
entangle the Reagan administration in a clandestine foreign policy
outside the view of the American people.
The Iran-Contra investigation exposed Israel’s hand in facilitating
illicit arms shipments from the Reagan administration to Iran in
1985-86. But the inquiry also unearthed evidence that those
Israeli-brokered arms sales dated back years earlier – and may have
emanated from treacherous contacts between Republicans and Iranians in 1980.
In 1980, as President Carter was trying desperately to free 52 Americans
who were being held hostage in Iran, Israel’s Likud leaders were eager
to see him defeated for reelection out of concern that he was too
friendly to the Palestinians and might demand that Israel accept a
Palestinian state. At the time, Likud was envisioning an expansion of
Jewish settlements into that land.
Ronald Reagan’s campaign, too, had an obvious interest in seeing Carter
fail to gain a last-minute release of the hostages, what vice
presidential candidate George H.W. Bush termed Carter’s possible
“October Surprise” to help his chances right before the election.
SNIP>
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