“The people who succeeded and did well were those who didn’t stand up, who didn’t write the big stories, who looked the other way when history was happening in front of them, and went along either consciously or just by cowardice with the deception of the American people.”

Robert Parry — Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (1993)

“This perversion of principles – twisting information to fit a desired conclusion – became the modus vivendi of American politics and journalism. And those of us who insisted on defending the journalistic principles of skepticism and evenhandedness were increasingly shunned by our colleagues, a hostility that first emerged on the Right and among neoconservatives but eventually sucked in the progressive world as well. Everything became information warfare.”

Robert Parry — Consortium News

“If there’s any one takeaway to be gleaned from Parry’s legacy, it is that we should all strive to have the CIA know us on a terrified first-name basis.”

Muckrock’s J. Pat Brown

Legendary investigative reporter Robert Parry tragically passed away on January 27 2018. Along with his AP partner Brian Barger, he was the first to report on Oliver North’s activities in the Iran-Contra affair, and the first to describe the Nicaraguan Contras’ involvement with cocaine traffickers. Follow us on Twitter: @Intel_Today

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Robert Parry was an American investigative journalist who wrote extensively about the Iran-Contra scandal.

During the 1980s, he worked for Associated Press. In 1995, he established ConsortiumNews.com as an online resource dedicated to investigative journalism.

Robert Parry has written several books, including Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & “Project Truth.” (1999) and Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq (2004).

Filmmaker Oliver Stone  wrote:

 “Robert Parry’s death Saturday night leaves a giant hole in American journalism. To my mind, he exists now alongside I.F. Stone, Drew Pearson, George Seldes, Gary Webb, and others as seekers of truth at the steep price you seem to have to pay to follow your common sense and your integrity when they are in direct opposition to the tyranny of mainstream media conformity.”

The CIA Files

Muckrock compiled the CIA’s files relating to Robert Parry’s journalism.

“The Central Intelligence Agency archives contain over 100 of his articles, primarily focused on his Associated Press work from the mid-to-late ’80s.”

“While the sheer volume of material speaks to the impact Parry’s reporting was having on the Agency internally perhaps the single greatest indicator of how the CIA felt about Parry is summed up by this handwritten note from the Agency’s Director of Public Affairs.”

The note, from 1984, circled a passage regarding the CIA’s assassination manual that it had been distributing to Nicaraguan contras, and included one word denoting the source of this story: “Bob” [Consortium News]

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Robert Parry on the Lockerbie Tragedy

Parry followed the Lockerbie affair very closely and wrote extensively about it. In a recent email, he told me that he was still interested in the three-decade-old case and that he thought Megrahi had suffered a terrible miscarriage of justice. On June 30 2011, Parry wrote:

“It has been common, for instance, for the Times and other media outlets to state as flat fact that Libyan agents, presumably on orders from Col Muammar Gaddafi, blew Pan Am 103 out of the skies over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 270 people.

However, anyone who has followed that case knows that the 2001 conviction of Libyan operative Ali al-Megrahi by a special Scottish court was highly dubious, more a political compromise than an act of justice.

The Lockerbie case is not simply a historical mystery. It is one of the central reasons why the United States and its NATO allies are insisting that Gaddafi must be removed from power prior to any negotiated settlement of Libya’s ongoing civil war.

In pressing this need to oust Gaddafi first, President Barack Obama made a reference to the Lockerbie bombing at his Wednesday news conference, a presumed “fact” that may have set the White House correspondents to nodding their heads but may well not be true.”

Investigative journalist Robert Parry ‘stood his ground’ against adversity in media

REFERENCES

Outpouring of Support Honors Robert Parry — Consortium News

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Remembering American Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (June 24 1949 – January 27 2018)