Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery
In Parry's self-image, he must be one of the few journalists with the guts, public-spiritedness, and tenacity to unlock official secrets. The reporter castigated his kowtowing colleagues, as he perceives them, inFooling Americaand here picks up the idle spear of investigation and chucks it at a favorite target theory: that Republicans connived with Iranian mullahs to delay release of imprisoned American diplomats, thus denying President Carter an election-eve boost. So Parry received a commission from theFrontlinePBS program to ask two questions about July and October 1980: Where was Bill Casey, and where was George Bush? This book is the raw material for the ensuing documentary, which aired in 1991. Parry answers neither question definitively, but he questions their alibis (that Casey was at a history seminar and Bush on a golf course), makes great hay of omissions in their personal records, and finds to his satisfaction that each could have skittered off to secret meetings. Parry himself went around the globe, heavily skeptical of those with something to tell him about the "surprise." A musty mystery with many angles and cold leads, this should revivify the interest of patrons who took in, or were taken in by, Gary Sick'sOctober Surprise.Gilbert Taylor