Triumph of Conventional Wisdom: AP Expunges Iran/Contra Pardons from Barr's
Record
January 16, 2019
Sam Husseini writes that the news agency ignored the nominee's link to a
major U.S. scandal broken by its own investigative reporter at the time, the
late Robert Parry, founder of Consortium News.
By SamHusseini
FAIR
A president facing a major scandal, just as the highest-profile trial is
about to begin, pardons the indicted or convicted officials around him to
effectively stop the investigation that's closing in on his own illegal
conduct.
Trump soon? We'll see. But this actually describes what President George
H.W. Bush did in 1992.
The Iran/Contra scandal revealed, among other things, that the Reagan/Bush
White House had secretly sold missiles to Iran in exchange for hostages held
in Lebanon, using the proceeds to fund right-wing forces fighting the
leftist Nicaraguan government in violation of U.S. law.
On Christmas Eve 1992, just as the indicted former Defense Secretary Caspar
Weinberger was about to face trial, Bush pardoned him and five others,
including former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams and and former
National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane. The New York Times (12/25/92)
reported this as "Bush Pardons 6 in Iran Affair, Averting a Weinberger
Trial; Prosecutor Assails 'Cover-Up.'"
The attorney general for Bush who approved the pardons, William Barr, is now
being nominated for the same position by Trump. Is this background relevant?
Though current news columns are rife with speculation that Trump might
likewise protect himself by pardoning his indicted or convicted associates,
the dominant U.S. news wire service doesn't seem to think so.
In "Barr as Attorney General: Old Job, Very Different Washington" (1/14/19),
Associated Press reporter Eric Tucker made no mention whatsoever of the
Iran/Contra pardons. Rather than seriously examine the trajectory of
presidential power and accountability, Tucker framed the story, as the
headline indicates, as a stark contrast between the gentlemanly Bush and the
"twice-divorced" Trump:
AP describes Barr as "principled, smart and strong-willed."
Serving Trump, who faces intensifying investigations from the department
Barr would lead, is unlikely to compare with his tenure under President
George H.W. Bush.
The false implication is that Bush did not himself face intensifying
investigations from Lawrence Walsh, who operated out of the Justice
Department's Office of Special Counsel. The misleading comparison is
compounded by Tucker describing Trump as "breaking with the practice of
shielding law enforcement from political influence" and ousting Attorney
General Jeff Sessions for "not protecting him in the Russia investigation"
- as if Barr didn't have direct experience in the first Bush
administration with imposing political influence on law enforcement to
protect a president from investigation.
Instead, Tucker cites Barr's supporters calling him "driven by his
commitment to the department" and "very much a law-and-order guy." (The
praise for the new head of the department Tucker regularly covers marks his
article as a "beat-sweetener," a long and unfortunate tradition of
journalists' making their jobs easier by sucking up to sources.)
This deceptive piece was apparently picked up by literally thousands of
media outlets. A search of "unlikely to compare with his tenure under
President George H.W. Bush" produces over 2,400 results.
As Consortium News founder Robert Parry, who broke much of the Iran-Contra
story for AP, would later write in a review of Walsh's book "Firewall:
Inside the Iran/Contra Cover-Up:"
"The Republican independent counsel [Lawrence Walsh] infuriated the GOP when
he submitted a second indictment of Weinberger on the Friday before the 1992
elections. The indictment contained documents revealing that President Bush
had been lying for years with his claim that he was "out of the loop" on the
Iran/Contra decisions. The ensuing furor dominated the last several days of
the campaign and sealed Bush's defeat at the hands of Bill Clinton."
Walsh had discovered, too, that Bush had withheld his own notes about the
Iran/Contra Affair, a discovery that elevated the president to a possible
criminal subject of the investigation. But Bush had one more weapon in his
arsenal. On Christmas Eve 1992, Bush destroyed the Iran/Contra probe once
and for all by pardoning Weinberger and five other convicted or indicted
defendants.
Parry, who died a year ago, left AP after many of his stories on Iran/Contra
were squashed (Consortium News, 1/28/18).
After I criticized AP on Twitter for the omission, a later piece by Tucker,
co-written with Michael Balsamo, noted perfunctorily in the 16th graph: "As
attorney general in 1992, he endorsed Bush's pardons of Reagan
administration officials in the Iran/Contra scandal." (A search on "as
attorney general in 1992, he endorsed Bush's pardons of Reagan
administration officials in the Iran/Contra scandal" produced a mere 202
results.)
While much of the media obsesses over every bit of "Russia-gate," some
breathlessly anticipating the next revelation will surely bring down the
Trump presidency, it's remarkable how little interest there is in the
trajectory of presidential power.
Rather, much of the establishment media has gone to great lengths to
rehabilitate officials from both Bush administrations, including the elder
Bush himself when he died last month. (One exception to the generally
hagiographic coverage of his death was Arun Gupta's "Let's Talk About George
H.W. Bush's Role in the Iran/Contra Scandal" - in The Intercept, 12/7/18.)
Indeed, Trump naming Barr just after George H.W. Bush's funeral could be
seen as a jiu-jitsu move: How could anyone object to his nominating the AG
of the just-sainted Poppy Bush? It's as though Trump were saying, "If you
all like him so much, I'll have what he had." [See the Institute for Public
Accuracy news release, "Barr as AG? Bush and Trump Dovetail."]
AP's actions also fit into the institution-protecting mode of what Parry
derided as the "conventional wisdom" - which in its current formulation
depicts Trump's authoritarian tendencies as aberrations from the norms of
U.S. politics, rather than a continuation of the worst tendencies of his
predecessors.
Sam Husseini is an independent journalist, senior analyst at the Institute
for Public Accuracy, and founder of VotePact.org, which encourages
disenchanted Democrats and Republicans to pair up. Follow him on Twitter
@samhusseini.