Some Serious Takes on Gary Sick, Etc.

For those of you who haven't kept up, Gary Sick is one of those sickos who's been most responsible for that October Surprise conspiracy theory; the one which alleges that Reagan cut some sort of deal with Iran to delay the release of the hostages until after the election. It's a patently absurd allegation and here are what some of the more serious people are saying............. 1) "The New Republic" - According to "Wikipedia", Steven Emerson and Jesse Furman of The New Republic, also looked into the allegations and found “the conspiracy as currently postulated is a total fabrication”. They were unable to verify any of the evidence presented by Sick and supporters, finding them to be inconsistent and contradictory in nature. They also pointed out that nearly every witness of Sick had either been indicted or was under investigation by the Department of Justice. Like the Newsweek investigation they had also debunked the claims of Reagan election campaign officials being in Paris during the time-frame Sick claimed they had been, contradicting Sick’s sources.............2) "The Village Voice" - Again, according to "Wikipedia", "Retired CIA analyst and counter-intelligence officer Frank Snepp of The Village Voice compiled several investigations of Sick’s allegations in 1992. Snepp alleged that Sick had only interviewed half of the sources used in his book, and supposedly relied on hearsay from unreliable sources for large amounts of critical material. Snepp also discovered that in 1989, Sick had sold the rights to his book to Oliver Stone. After going through evidence presented by Richard Brenneke, Snepp asserted that Brenneke’s credit card receipts showed him to be in Portland, Oregon, during the time he claimed to be in Paris observing the secret meeting.............3) The U.S. House of Representatives - Also from "Wikipedia", " The House of Representatives’ 1993 report concluded “there is no credible evidence supporting any attempt by the Reagan presidential campaign—or persons associated with the campaign—to delay the release of the American hostages in Iran”. The task force Chairman Lee H. Hamilton also added that the vast majority of the sources and material reviewed by the committee were "wholesale fabricators or were impeached by documentary evidence". The report also expressed the belief that several witnesses had committed perjury during their sworn statements to the committee, among them Richard Brenneke,^[18] who claimed to be a CIA agent."............4) The United States Senate - Also from "Wikipedia", The US Senate’s 1992 report concluded that "by any standard, the credible evidence now known falls far short of supporting the allegation of an agreement between the Reagan campaign and Iran to delay the release of the hostages".............5) The "Washington Post" (direct), In an interesting footnote to the October Surprise myth, Jamshid Hashami, who first came to public attention 1i 1991 by "claiming to have helped Ronald Reagan's 1980 Presidential campaign negotiate to delay the release of U.S. hostages in Iran after the election,...pleaded guilty (in London in December 1998) to swindling (Reston, VA corporation) Octogon and other businesses In Europe, Asia, and the United States out of millions of dollars through a series of elaborate scams".............6) Strong (I&NS 8.2 direct), a classic example of ... the paranoid political conspiracy exposé.... Unsubstantiated hints of exotic government sponsored assassinations are part of a larger pattern involving a double standard in evidence evaluation. Honegger makes "extensive use of Richard Brenneke" and, in general, the book can be dismissed as the work of a common conspiracy theorist gone off the deep end of history.............7) Newsweek (direct), NEWSWEEK has found, after a long investigation including interviews with government officials and other knowledgeable sources around the world, that the key claims of the purported eyewitnesses and accusers simply do not hold up. What the evidence does show is the murky history of a conspiracy theory run wild.......What has kept the October Surprise conspiracy theory alive is a chain of "super-sources." Self-proclaimed eyewitnesses, many with suspect credibility, have spun a tangled--and often contradictory--tale about an arms-for-hostages deal that seemed to foreshadow the later Iran-contra scandal.............So, just how damned ridiculous IS this theory (gee, let's see, Gary Sick and these other lunatics versus Lee Hamiliton, The "Village Voice", "Newsweek", "The New Republic", and the "Washington Post", that's a really tough one - NOT!!)? This theory is so damned ridiculous that even Oliver Stone won't make a movie about it. Youza, huh?