[Moderator's note: This review has a definite political agenda. However, it is a review and is posted here as such. As per the author's request, followups have been directed to talk.politics.misc; those wishing to discuss the film as film should edit their Newsgroups line accordingly. -Moderator]
"COVERUP: Behind The Iran Contra Affair"
A film review by Tom Betz
Copyright 1988 Tom Betz
A film produced by Barbara Trent, Gary Meyer, and David Kasper for the Film Empowerment Project.
In July of 1987, MPI, a major video label and distributor, released and sold over 50,000 copies of Oliver North's testimony to the Congressional Iran-Contra Committee. That summer, Barbara Trent returned from Nicaragua, where she had been shooting a documentary film, and upon discovering what MPI was doing, called them up and explained that if people were to believe what North was saying, thousands more innocents would be killed in Nicaragua through his influence, and MPI would have to share the blame for this.
Struck by the moral implications of what had been until then a straight business venture, MPI agreed to provide Trent and the Film Empowerment Project $50,000 from the proceeds of the sale of that video to be used in the production of a film presenting the other side of North's story.
COVERUP is that film. Playing now at Joseph Papp's Public Theater, and opening soon around the country, COVERUP goes deep into the history of the Iran Contra scheme: from its origins in the CIA's coup teams in Brazil and Chile; to the CIA's secret war team in Cambodia and Laos, financed by heroin trafficking into the US; to the Bush/Reagan secret deal with Iran in 1980 to hold the American hostages there for an extra 76 days beyond the date Carter had negotiated for their release, so that they would arrive in the US on Reagan's Inauguration Day, instead of before the November 1980 election; to the CIA's cocaine trafficking on aircraft used to fly weapons to the Contras; to the plan Oliver North drew up for FEMA to suspend the constitution and round up dissenters to a planned US invasion of Nicaragua, and imprison them in military concentration camps.
Unlike the tedium of the Iran/Contra Committee hearings, which was limited by its mandate to investigate only events after 1984, this is a gripping, information-rich film, solidly documented, and well-crafted, particularly considering its minuscule $55,000 budget (labor of the producers was donated... the money was spent entirely on non-labor production costs). It presents a case for the assertion that the election of Reagan and Bush in 1980 was in actuality a coup d'etat effected through electoral means by CIA/NSA agents, many of whom had been fired from the agencies for violating US laws, and for filling their own pockets, and the pockets of the arms and drug dealers they worked with and for, with US government money. COVERUP presents a case for this Iran/Contra scandal representing only the merest tip of the iceberg of the secret government hiding now under Reagan's skirts.
It makes this case, and it makes it convincingly.
No matter what part of the political spectrum you fall on, you must see COVERUP: "Behind the Iran Contra Affair" before you cast your vote for President in 1988.
In New York City, it is currently playing at 6:00 and 7:30 PM, Tuesdays through Sundays at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street. For box office information, you can call 212-598-7100.
For more information of the film itself, and on how you may arrange a showing at your church, school, political organization meeting, or home, you can contact Dan McGuire at Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR/COVERUP), 8th Floor, 130 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001. The phone number for FAIR is 212-633-6700.
COVERUP is currently running in Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as New York. It is scheduled to open soon in St. Paul, Berkeley, Chicago, San Diego, Summerville MA, Austin, Taos, Tuscon, Albuquerque, Denver, Boulder, Madison, Huntington NY, Petaluma and Santa Cruz.
Watch your local listings for its opening near you....and be sure to see it before you vote in November.
You owe it to yourself and future generations of Americans to see for yourself what we are all up against over the next four (and more) years.
|Tom Betz |ZCNY, Yonkers, NY 10701-2509 |UUCP: tbetz@dasys1.UUCP or | ...!cmcl2!phri!dasys1!tbetz
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