BuzzFlash Reviews

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

From online reviewer Robert Steele about "Lost History," a classic insight into America's gruesome foreign policy secrets under the Reagan/Bush I administrations:

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", Jim Bamford's book "Body of Secrets", and Sterling and Peggy Sterling's book "Gold Warriors", 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.



Table of Contents
Introduction: A Search for Lost History 3
Part 1 The 1980s--The Missing Link
Chapter 1 'Project Truth' 31
Chapter 2 'Perception Management' 56
Chapter 3 Containment 79
Chapter 4 A Breakthrough, of Sorts 109
Chapter 5 'Good for the Country' 127
Chapter 6 Tale of Two Scandals 145
Chapter 7 Cuban Connection 159
Chapter 8 Contra-Coke 178
Chapter 9 Crumbling Cover-up 193
Chapter 10 Justice Denied 207
Chapter 11 CIA Confession 224
Part 2 Before, After & During
Chapter 12 How Others See It 248
Chapter 13 Lying First 265
Chapter 14 The CIA Analysts 272
Chapter 15 Sins of the Father 279
Index 293

BuzzFlash.com comment:

The failure of the American Congress and the mainstream media to come to terms with the ghastly and deadly secret foreign policy under the Reagan Administration (with the direct Iran-Contra complicity of George Herbert Walker Bush) was the direct precedent for the Cheney-Bush gruesome shadow government.

It should also be noted that the failure of the Clinton Administration to pursue unfinished investigations into the illegal conduct of the Reagan-Bush I administrations set the precedent for letting the GOP get away with criminal behavior today.

Robert Parry eventually had to leave the mainstream press because he dared to report the truth about Iran-Contra and the death squad, torture-enabling foreign policy of the Kissinger/Reagan/Bush I years of rule.

This is his story about what he discovered as an investigative reporter and that you won't find much of in the mainstream press.


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