OK:
Note: Iran was desperate for arms and spare parts (mostly for their US planes) to fight off the Iraqi invasion in September. Casey (former WW II spymaster) was Reagan/Bush Campaign Director at the time, (and future CIA Director)....
House of Representatives
Creating a Task Force to Investigate Certain Allegations Concerning the Holding of Americans as Hostages by Iran in 1980
House of Representatives - February 05, 1992
[FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES, APR. 15, 1991]
The Election Story of the Decade BY GARY SICK
Suspicions about a deal between the Reagan campaign and Iran over the hostages have circulated since the day of President Reagan's inaugural, when Iran agreed to release the 52 American hostages exactly five minutes after Mr. Reagan took the oath of office. Later, as it became known that arms started to flow to Iran via Israel only a few days after the inauguration, suspicions deepened that a secret arms-for-hostages deal had been concluded.
Five years later, when the Iran-contra affair revealed what seemed to be a similar swap of hostages for arms delivered through Israel, questions were revived about the 1980 election. In a nice, ironic twist, the phrase `October surprise,' which Vice Presidential candidate George Bush had coined to warn of possible political manipulation of the hostages by Jimmy Carter, began to be applied to the suspected secret activities of the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign.
I was a member of the Carter Administration and on the staff of the National Security Council from August 1976 to April 1981, with responsibility for monitoring Iran policy. I first heard these rumors in 1981 and I dismissed them as fanciful. I again heard them during the 1988 election campaign, and I again refused to believe them. I had worked in and around the Middle East long enough to be skeptical of the conspiracy theories that abound in the region.
Then two years ago, I began collecting documentation for a book on the Reagan Administration's policies toward Iran. That effort grew into a massive computerized data base, the equivalent of many thousands of pages. As I sifted through this mass of material, I began to recognize a curious pattern in the events surrounding the 1980 election. Increasingly, I began to focus on that period, and interviewed a wide range of sources. I benefited greatly from the help of many interested, talented investigative journalists.
In the course of hundreds of interviews, in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East, I have been told repeatedly that individuals associated with the Reagan-Bush campaign of 1980 met secretly with Iranian officials to delay the release of the American hostages until after the Presidential election. For this favor, Iran was rewarded with a substantial supply of arms from Israel.
Some of the sources interviewed by me or my colleagues are or were government officials who claimed to have knowledge of these events by virtue of their official duties or their access to intelligence reports. Most insisted on anonymity.
Other sources are low-level intelligence operatives and arms dealers who are no boy scouts. A number of them have been arrested or have served prison time for gun-running, fraud, counterfeiting or drugs. Some may be seeking publicity or revenge, but others have nothing to gain from talking about these events, and genuinely feared for their personal safety. Several sources said they were participants, personally involved in or present at the events they described.
Their accounts were not identical, but on the central facts they were remarkably consistent, surprisingly so in view of the range of nationalities, backgrounds and perspectives of the sources. Because of my past Government experience, I knew about certain events that could not possibly be known to most of the sources, yet their stories confirmed those facts. It was the absence of contradictions on the key elements of the story that encouraged me to continue probing. This weight of testimony has overcome my initial doubts.
The story is tangled and murky and it may never be fully unraveled. At this point, however, the outlines of what I learned can be summarized as follows:
....
...From Oct. 15 to Oct. 20, events came to a head in a series of meetings in several hotels in Paris, involving members of the Reagan-Bush campaign and high-level Iranian and Israeli representatives. Accounts of these meetings and the exact number of participants vary considerably among the more than 15 sources who claim direct or indirect knowledge of some aspect of them. There is, however, widespread agreement on three points: William Casey was a key participant: the Iranian representatives agreed that the hostages would not be released prior to the Presidential election on Nov. 4; in return, Israel would serve as a conduit for arms and spare parts to Iran....
aiipowmia.com
[FROM THE BOSTON GLOBE, APR. 17, 1991]
Reagan-Khomeini Questions
Was the release of 52 American hostages deliberately postponed until after Ronald Reagan's election as president in 1980? Did William Casey, the former CIA chief and Reagan's 1980 campaign manager, strike a deal with Iranian officials in October 1980, promising arms shipments to Tehran on condition that Ayatollah Khomeini delay the hostages' release?
These questions, addressed by public television's investigatory series `Frontline' last night, have haunted many people for more than a decade. The program. `Election Held Hostage,' offered a rare example of television living up to its potential for critical inquiry.
The questions are crucial not only because positive answers would disclose the origins of Reagan's covert missiles-for-hostages deal a few years later. If Casey and others in the Reagan campaign surreptitiously thwarted President Carter's efforts to have the hostages released, they violated the Logan Act, which prohibits citizens from conducting foreign policy, and thereby cast doubt on the legitimacy of Reagan's presidency.
Sources told `Frontline' and Gary Sick, a former member of Carter's National Security Council, that Casey met Khomeini's men in Madrid during July 1980 and in Paris that October.
Sick, who was seeking the hostages' liberation in October 1980, says that an Iranian arms dealer has since told him he helped arrange the meetings in Madrid. There, Sick says, Khomeini's representative promised not to release the hostages before Election Day, and Casey pledged that a Reagan administration would channel weapons to Iran. The hostages were set free minutes after Reagan was inaugurated: US arms were shipped through Israel to Iran soon after Reagan took office....
...There is ample evidence, including accounts by former State Department officials, that secret shipments of U.S. military equipment to Iran did occur shortly after President Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. And, of course, an almost identical deal was made later in Reagan's presidency--with Casey at its center--that became the Iran-contra scandal. |
