Henry Hyde: Mr. Cover-up

Henry Hyde: Mr. Cover-up

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by Robert Parry | Dec 3 2007 - 9:27am |

Official Washington is remembering the late Rep. Henry Hyde fondly,

recalling the Illinois Republican as a well-respected "pro-life" advocate

who held President Bill Clinton accountable for lying about a sexual

dalliance with Monica Lewinsky.

But there was another side to Hyde, who died Nov. 29 at the age of 83. As a

senior member of national security oversight committees, Hyde helped cover

up criminal and political wrongdoing by the Reagan-Bush administrations in

the 1980s and early 1990s.

In August 1986, for instance, Hyde was one of the ranking members of the

House Intelligence Committee who trooped down to the White House to question

National Security Council aide Oliver North about press accounts linking him

to a secret operation to supply the Nicaraguan contra rebels in defiance of

the law.

After North and his boss, John Poindexter, denied the allegations, Hyde

joined Rep. Dick Cheney, R-Wyoming, and committee chairman, Rep. Lee

Hamilton, D-Indiana, in rejecting a bill that would have authorized a formal

investigation.

Later that day, since I had co-authored an Associated Press story citing 24

sources about North's secret network, one of Hamilton's aides contacted me

to say that the committee had sided with the "honorable men" at the White

House over our 24 sources.

"It wasn't a close call," the aide added.

It was, however, an erroneous call.

Two months later, on Oct. 5, 1986, one of North's contra supply planes was

shot down over Nicaragua, and the following month, the Iran-Contra

operation, which involved using profits from secret arms sales to Iran to

help finance the contras, was revealed.

In early 1987, however, Hyde re-joined Cheney and Hamilton on the

congressional Iran-Contra committee, where the three congressmen again

sought to narrow the investigation and minimize what had happened.

Hyde and Cheney led the charge in defense of President Reagan, while

Hamilton engineered immunity for Oliver North and bought into the cover

story that Iran-Contra was mostly a rogue operation.

However, the more serious Iran-Contra investigation led by Republican

special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh eventually broke through the

rogue-operation cover story and also discovered that the chronology of the

covert Iran arms shipments kept stretching back to the early 1980s.

Indeed, a growing body of evidence indicated that the secret contacts

between the Reagan team and the Iranians dated back to Campaign 1980 when

President Jimmy Carter was desperately trying to free 52 American hostages

then held in Iran - and witnesses claimed Republican operatives were trying

to sabotage Carter's efforts.

Since this controversy centered on alleged Reagan-Bush attempts to block

Carter's pre-election release of the hostages, it became known as the

"October Surprise" case, but it also could be viewed as the prequel to

Iran-Contra. [For the fullest account of the October Surprise case, see

Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]

October Surprise Task Force

When the October Surprise controversy finally reached critical mass in 1991,

the House authorized an investigation - and turned again to Hamilton and

Hyde to lead it. (By this time, Dick Cheney had taken a job as George H.W.

Bush's Defense Secretary.)

Much like they had earlier, Hamilton and Hyde approached the October

Surprise probe more as a damage-control operation designed to minimize

partisan bickering than a serious pursuit of the truth.

Evidence pointing to Republican guilt was discounted or ignored, while

alibis were manufactured for key Republicans, including Reagan's campaign

chief William J. Casey and vice presidential nominee George H.W. Bush, on

dates when they were alleged to have met with Iranians.

Hamilton even let Hyde veto the appointment of one Democratic staff

investigator, House Foreign Affairs Committee chief counsel Spencer Oliver,

because Oliver believed the October Surprise charges just might be true.

By fall 1992, the Hamilton-Hyde task force was putting the finishing touches

on a debunking of the October Surprise case, complete with the illogical

alibis for key Republicans. [For details on the alibis, see

Consortiumnews.com's "The Bushes & the Death of Reason."]

However, in the weeks after President George H.W. Bush lost his 1992

reelection bid to Democrat Bill Clinton, new incriminating evidence began

pouring in to the October Surprise task force, so much so that Hamilton's

chief counsel Lawrence Barcella saw no choice but to extend the

investigation several months.

But that option was not acceptable to Hamilton and Hyde. Instead, Barcella

was told to wrap up the inquiry with much of the new evidence simply kept

out of public view. [see Consortiumnews.com's "The Original October

Surprise."]

To shore up the fragile debunking conclusions before the report was released

on Jan. 13, 1993, the Hamilton-Hyde task force selectively leaked its

findings to friendly reporters or to others who weren't familiar with the

controversy's intricate details.

After getting the desired knock-down stories that morning, Hamilton and Hyde

presided over a peculiar news conference in a House committee room.

Though the topic was the task force report, copies were kept shrink-wrapped

out of the hands of reporters. In other words, the reporters weren't allowed

to see the report until after the news conference was over.

The tactic worked. Few reporters actually read the report and even fewer

knew enough to spot the holes. Washington's "conventional wisdom" quickly

solidified around the judgment that the October Surprise was a loony

conspiracy theory.

Hamilton put on the finishing touches by writing an op-ed for the New York

Times, entitled "Case Closed." The article cited supposedly solid alibis for

the whereabouts of William Casey as the key reason why the task force

findings "should put the controversy to rest once and for all." [NYT, Jan.

24, 1993.]

Hyde's Speech

Ten days later, Henry Hyde took to the House floor to gleefully mock anyone

who still doubted the October Surprise innocence of Ronald Reagan and George

H.W. Bush.

During his "special order" speech, the white-haired Hyde did acknowledge

some weaknesses in the House task force findings. Casey's 1980 passport had

disappeared, as had key pages of his calendar, Hyde admitted.

Hyde noted, too, that the chief of French intelligence, Alexandre

deMarenches, had told his biographer that Casey did hold hostage talks with

the Iranians in Paris in October 1980. Several French intelligence officials

had corroborated that assertion.

But Hyde insisted that two solid blocks of evidence proved that the October

Surprise allegations were false. Hyde said his first cornerstone was

hard-rock alibis for Casey and other key suspects.

"We were able to locate [Casey's] whereabouts with virtual certainty" on the

dates when he allegedly met with Iranians in Europe to discuss the hostages,

Hyde declared.

For instance, Casey had been in California (at the Bohemian Grove resort) on

the late July 1980 weekend of a purported meeting with Iranians in Madrid,

Hyde said.

There was an alibi, too, that same weekend for the late Cyrus Hashemi, an

alleged Iranian intermediary who had ties to the CIA, to Tehran's radical

mullahs and to the corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).

Hashemi was in Connecticut, Hyde said - even though Hashemi's older brother

Jamshid testified under oath that he and Cyrus were with Casey and a senior

Iranian cleric in Madrid that weekend.

The second debunking cornerstone, Hyde said, was the absence of anything

incriminating on FBI wiretaps of Cyrus Hashemi over five months in late 1980

and early 1981 when he was under suspicion for his dealings with Iran.

"There is not a single indication that William Casey had contact with Cyrus

or Jamshid Hashemi," Hyde said. "Indeed, there is no indication on the tapes

that Casey or any other individuals associated with the Reagan campaign had

contact with any persons representing or associated with the Iranian

government."

Crumbling Cornerstones

But under any careful inspection, both of Hyde's cornerstones crumbled. The

alibis for Casey and others were laughably bogus. The clear and documented

record showed that the House investigators had put Casey at the Bohemian

Grove on the wrong weekend. (He was there the first weekend of August, not

the last weekend of July.)

Plus, the proof of Hashemi's presence in Connecticut consisted of phone

records showing two one-minute calls, one from a lawyer to Hashemi's home

and one back to the lawyer. There was no evidence that Hashemi received or

made the calls, and the pattern more likely fit a call asking a family

member when Hashemi was due home and the second call giving the answer.

Hyde was wrong, too, about the absence of incriminating evidence on the

Hashemi wiretaps. But since those wiretaps were secret in 1993, that

argument was impossible to judge then.

However, when I accessed the raw House task force documents in a remote

Capitol Hill storage room in late 1994, I found a classified summary of the

FBI bugging.

According to that summary, the bugs revealed Cyrus Hashemi deeply enmeshed

with Republicans on arms deals to Iran in fall 1980 as well as in financial

schemes with Casey's close friend and business associate, John Shaheen.

And contrary to Hyde's claim of "not a single indication" of contact between

Casey and Cyrus Hashemi, the Iranian banker was recorded as boasting that he

and Casey had been "close friends" for years.

That claim was supported by a CIA memo which stated that Casey recruited

Cyrus Hashemi into a sensitive business arrangement in 1979.

Beyond that, the secret FBI summary showed Hashemi receiving a $3 million

offshore deposit, arranged by a Houston lawyer who said he was a longtime

associate of George H.W. Bush. The Houston lawyer, Harrel Tillman, told me

in an interview that in 1980, he was doubling as a consultant to Iran's

Islamic government.

After Ronald Reagan's election in November 1980, Tillman was back on the

line promising Hashemi help from the "Bush people" for one of his foundering

business deals. Then, the FBI wiretaps picked up Hashemi getting a cash

payment, via a courier arriving on the Concorde, from the corrupt bank,

BCCI.

The House task force had concealed these documents, allowing Hamilton and

Hyde to miswrite an important chapter of recent American history.

Internal Dissent

In his House speech, Hyde also avoided any mention of resistance within the

task force to the bogus alibis for Casey and others.

When a draft version of the report was shown to task force Democrats in

December 1992, a staff aide to Rep. Mervyn Dymally of California quickly

spotted some of the report's absurd alibis.

One of those alibis was that Reagan's foreign policy adviser Richard Allen

had written down Casey's home phone number on one key day, supposedly

proving that Casey was at home. Another alibi was that because a plane flew

from San Francisco directly to London on another key date, Casey must have

been onboard.

According to sources who saw Dymally's dissent, it argued that "just because

phones ring and planes fly doesn't mean that someone is there to answer the

phone or is on the plane." But Dymally's reasonable observations were

fiercely opposed by Hamilton, who pressured Dymally into withdrawing the

dissent.

If the dissent were not pulled, Hamilton threatened to denounce Dymally for

missing task force meetings and for not having his staff aide cleared to

review all classified material.

Hamilton warned Dymally, who was retiring from Congress, that he would "come

down hard" on Dymally. The next day, Hamilton fired all the staffers who had

worked on Dymally's Africa subcommittee.

Seeing the firings as retribution (though Hamilton denied a connection),

Dymally relented and withdrew the dissent, which was never made public. With

the road cleared, the task force report rolled ahead to become the official

history of the United States.

For his handling of the October Surprise case, Hamilton won kudos from

columnist David Broder and other Washington insiders. Hamilton was praised

for his bipartisanship in exonerating well-liked Republicans, Ronald Reagan

and George H.W. Bush, of a dirty trick that bordered on treason.

Hamilton's accommodating investigative style ultimately earned him one of

the highest unofficial Washington honors - the title of Wise Man - assuring

him seats on blue-ribbon panels that have included the 9/11 Commission and

the Iraq Study Group.

Before his death, Henry Hyde was honored as well, awarded the Presidential

Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

[For more details on the October Surprise controversy, see Secrecy &

Privilege. For Hyde's role in the contra-cocaine cover-up, see

Consortiumnews.com's "Hyde's Blind Eye: Contras & Cocaine."]

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson