Robert Parry: Bohemian Grove and Reagan's 'Treason'. "

In 1992, the protectors of Ronald Reagan's legacy and George H W Bush's presidency were in a bind. They had gained the upper hand in shutting down an investigation into allegations that Reagan and Bush had gone behind President Jimmy Carter's back in 1980 to undermine his negotiations to free 52 Americans held by Iranian radicals, but then one of their crucial alibis collapsed. In a stranger than fiction moment, these protectors turned to the exclusive Bohemian Grove, the target of a new round of Occupy protests this weekend, as a location for cobbling together a replacement alibi, thus sparing the Establishment the unpleasantness of a thorough investigation into what had the appearance of "treason" by the widely admired Reagan and Bush Sr. Official Washington had thought questions about the so-called "October Surprise" of 1980 had been put to rest in November 1991, when the neoconservative New Republic and the pro-establishment Newsweek splashed debunking articles on their covers. Both magazines claimed that an alleged meeting between Reagan's campaign chief William Casey and Iranians could not have happened because Casey had an alibi. Instead of meeting with Iranians in Madrid on Monday, July 28, as Iranian businessman and CIA operative Jamshid Hashemi had indicated, Casey was at a historical conference in London, his presence established by attendance records, the magazine said. Gloating that they had proven once and for all that the October Surprise suspicions were "a myth," The New Republic and Newsweek mocked any remaining doubters as "conspiracy theorists." The impact of the magazine stories, and their ridiculing tone, could not be overstated. Ted Koppel's ABC News "Night-line program, which had aired an interview with Hashemi about the Madrid meeting, was humiliated. The producer who had brought Hashemi for the interview was soon out of a job.