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Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'
Lost History is a kind of All the President's Men, in reverse.
It tells the inside story of how reporters uncovered the Iran-contra
scandal and paid dearly with their careers. More broadly, the book
explains how the vaunted Watergate press corps of the 1970s changed into
the tabloidish Monica Lewinsky press corps of the 1990s -- and how much of
this era's most important history has been "lost."
It tells the inside story of how reporters uncovered the Iran-contra
scandal and paid dearly with their careers. More broadly, the book
explains how the vaunted Watergate press corps of the 1970s changed into
the tabloidish Monica Lewinsky press corps of the 1990s -- and how much of
this era's most important history has been "lost."
About the Author:
Robert Parry, a 22-year veteran of Washington
journalism, broke many of the stories now known as the Iran-Contra Affair,
including the first story about Oliver North's secret contra-support
operation and first story about Nicaraguan contra drug trafficking. His
career with the Associated Press, Newsweek and PBS's Frontline program has
taken Parry to hot spots all over the world, from Iran to Central America.
He now edits the investigative publication, iF Magazine, and the Internet
magazine, Consortiumnews.com
305 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1999
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About the author
Robert Parry
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 21, 2024
This is essential journalistic work, don't get me wrong, and what Parry says in his introduction regarding the way these government-authorised crimes are allowed to fade into obscurity when no one in the mainstream discuss them rings onlymore true a quarter century since the book's publication. The problem is, and this is where Parry's background as an Associated Press writer comes in, that he just lacks the flair to sell this story dramatically over the course of a book. His approach is coldly methodical and factual, but his assiduity on every facet of his story makes for rather colourless reading, suggesting Parry as a great investigative reporter but perhaps not as an author of reportage or non-fiction, where you need a certain arc of tension to keep the reader hooked. More often than I would have liked, his account completely loses itself in a barrage of facts and figures that a good historian is meant to collate for their reader, whilst the dubious font choice and patent lack of a proof-reader have the unfortunate effect of potentially making an uninitiated second-hand-bookstore customer leafing through a copy of this without foreknowledge file it away as conspiracy writing.
It should hardly bear mention that the book is the very opposite of conspiracy and, despite my more formal qualms with it, an essential exposé of the underlining hypocrisy of the "War on Drugs", which has only ever been a war on America's poor and minority communities, as drugs themselves can be (as they always have been in modern history) opportunistically reconfigured as either good or evil for the executive state.
It should hardly bear mention that the book is the very opposite of conspiracy and, despite my more formal qualms with it, an essential exposé of the underlining hypocrisy of the "War on Drugs", which has only ever been a war on America's poor and minority communities, as drugs themselves can be (as they always have been in modern history) opportunistically reconfigured as either good or evil for the executive state.
Displaying 1 of 1 review