Robert Parry

Robert Parry helped expose the Iran-Contra scandal for The Associated Press in the mid-1980s. He broke the story on the Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare (a CIA assassination manual provided to the Nicaraguan contras) in 1984. That same year he was awarded the George Polk Award for National Reporting. Then in 1985, he was the first to write about Oliver North's involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal. He and Brian Barger then reported on the CIA and Contras cocaine trafficking scandal. AP originally refused to publish the cocaine trafficking story if not for their Spanish affiliate accidentally publishing a translation. He reported for Newsweek from 1987 - 1990. As propaganda had gradually come to pervade American journalism, he founded Consortiumnews.com, in 1995, as the first investigative news magazine based on the Internet. He was awarded the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence by Harvard's Nieman Foundation in 2015.