Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery.

• Author: Bleifuss, Joel

In January 1993, the October Surprise Task Force of the U.S. House of Representatives concluded there was "no credible evidence" to support allegations that officials of the 1980 campaign to elect Ronald Reagan and George Bush cut an arms-for-hostages deal with representatives of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. With that verdict, the House officially laid to rest allegations that Republican operatives conspired to keep the fifty-two American hostages held in Iran until after the election, to ensure the defeat of President Jimmy Carter.

Buried less than a year, the October Surprise scandal came back to life last fall with Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery, an engaging journalistic whodunit by Robert Parry. In the 1980s, Parry--a Washington reporter for the Associated Press and later Newsweek--made a name for himself as the first journalist to expose the CIA's contra assassination manuals, the White House's covert propaganda operation, and the Oliver North network. As the 1980s neared their end, Parry and his Newsweek editors began to clash. Parry wanted to give the Iran-contra scandal a deeper look. Newsweek editors opted for the overlook. In June 1990, Parry resigned.

Two months later, the PBS documentary program Frontline asked Parry to delve into the October surprise. Parry had his doubts.

"Already," he writes, "my career had been damaged by insisting that the Washington press corps had too readily accepted the Iran-contra cover story blaming the scandal on North and some of his expendable colleagues. Examining an even riskier set of allegations would alienate my mainstream-press colleagues even more." But Parry accepted the assignment, reasoning that if he did not take it he would be guilty of the spineless timidity he had criticized in his Washington colleagues.

So Parry set out to get to the bottom of the scandal. He discovered that those who knew Reagan/Bush campaign chief William Casey best had no doubt that he was capable of making under-the-table deals with Iran.

Casey's wife, Sophia, told Parry, "Oh, he would talk to Iranians, sure. He had no reason not to." When asked if she knew whether he had spoken to Iranians before the election, she responded, "I really don't know, but I say he would do it, I'm sure." She swore, however, that her husband never would have done anything to delay the hostages' release.

Sophia Casey provided Parry with an...