The secret history of the Reagan years -- and of today

I'm grateful to the reader who, in the comments section two posts down, linked to this page for more information on Michael Ledeen. The link takes you to Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era by Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, Jane Hunter, originally published by the South End Press in 1987.

One cannot understand the origin of the current war without understanding Ledeen. One cannot understand Ledeen without reading up on the key role he played in promulgating the so-called "Bulgarian connection" to the shooting of Pope John-Paul II.

A quick scan of the internet will tell you that quite a few Americans still buy into this lie, even though Europeans have long recognized the story as disinformation. An Italian court fingered Ledeen as a ringleader of the hoax-peddlers.

Alas, the printed material proving what I've just said is now as rare as hen's teeth, available only to those few fans of yellowing books and microfilmed newsclips. Herman and Brodhead's important book The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection is almost impossible to find, even at large university libraries.

There were, in fact, quite a few good books and articles published during the 1980s -- material which exposed the many scandals which marked the era. The scarcity of that material explains why people born 20-35 years ago believe the hagiographic fairy tale version of the Reagan years. They never heard of Terpil and Wilson...Secord and Singlaub...Sterling and Ledeen...EATSCO...October Surprise...Vicki Morgan...Licio Gelli at the Reagan inaugural...and all the rest of it.

And most young people have never heard about the disinformation packets which the rightist networks regularly pumped into the info-stream. If you're over 40, perhaps you will remember the inane allegations of Libyan hit squads...Sandinista synagogue-burning...Nicaraguan drug-running...Soviet control of the American media...

We were inundated with that slop. As soon as one lie was exposed, we'd get hit with more slop.

The secret history of the Reagan era has retreated from view, which is why younger folk don't don't recognize key names. One such name is Michael Ledeen.

Why did Ledeen try to convince the world that the KGB shot the Pope? Not to turn America's citizenry anti-Soviet. We were already anti-Soviet.

I am convinced that Ledeen lied about the Pope shooting because he wanted war. I am also convinced that Ledeen helped to engineer the Niger forgeries because -- once again -- he wanted war. This time, he got his war.

Lord only knows what lengths will he go to in order to engineer war with Iran.

Question: How can we get the material published in the 1980s before a wider audience? Kids in their 20s have to have access to the truth about what really occurred when I was their age.