"October Surprise":
Los Angeles Times; April 18, 1991
Written by Alexander Cockburn
The central premise, surely correct, is that back in the fall of 1980 an overriding fear of Ronald Reagan's campaign strategists was that President Jimmy Carter would win the release of U.S. hostages held in Iran in time to get them home before the November election and thus triumph in the polls.
Against this possilibity of an "October Surprise," so the theory goes, such Reagan operatives as the late William J. Casey, campaign boss and subsequent head of the CIA, held secret parleys with the Iranians in which a deal was hatched: The hostages would be held till after the election, and in return the new administration would send arms to Tehran.
"Ronald Reagan cut a deal with Iran before the 1980 election to send arms in exchange for Iran's agreeing to delay the release of our 52 hostages." - Barbara Honegar, former White House Policy Analyst under Reagan and a member of Bush's 1980 election campaign staff
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October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan:
amazon.com
The October Surprise (including: what the KGB knew and the American people didn't... from the Real History Archive):
webcom.com
On Jan. 11, 1993, Russia's Supreme Soviet sent a secret cable to the U.S. Congress. The cable claimed that Russian national security files held evidence that two U.S. Presidents and two CIA directors had committed an act of treachery with Iran's radical Islamic government in 1980.
Despite its explosive potential, the document was kept from the American people. It was buried in a pile of cardboard boxes, left behind with a host of other unclassified and secret papers in an obscure storage room on Capitol Hill: a real-life "X-Files."
* October Surprise X-Files (Part 1): Russia's Report
By Robert Parry
WASHINGTON -- On Jan. 11, 1993, the nation's capital was readying itself for the Inauguration of President Bill Clinton, the first Democrat to sit in the Oval Office in a dozen years. Temporary grandstands were going up along Pennsylvania Avenue. The city brimmed with a celebratory air that fills the capital whenever a grand event like an Inauguration takes place. But in an obscure set of offices near the U.S. Capitol, a congressional task force was coping with another problem, one that had seeped out over those same twelve years to stain the Republican victory that had last changed party power at the White House, in 1980.
The House task force was concluding a year-long investigation into claims that Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign had interfered with President Carter's negotiations to free 52 Americans held hostage in Iran. A mixed bag of Iranian officials, foreign intelligence agents and international arms dealers had alleged a Republican deal behind Carter's back. But the task force had decided there was "no credible evidence" to support allegations that the Reagan campaign had blocked Carter's possible "October Surprise" of an election-eve hostage return.
Carter's failure to free those hostages over 444 days had sealed his political doom and boosted Reagan from a neck-and-neck race to a resounding electoral victory. The hostages' release, as Reagan was completing his Inaugural Address on Jan. 20, 1981, opened a floodgate of patriotic fervor that reshaped the political landscape and made Reagan a hero.
The possibility that this pivotal moment in modern American history had resulted from a nearly treasonous dirty trick had drawn understandably angry denials from Reagan-Bush loyalists -- and even from Democrats who feared that the public would lose faith in politics if the charges proved true.
So, with a collective sigh of relief, the House task force debunked the charges by adopting an elaborate set of alibis for the key players, particularly the late CIA director William J. Casey, who had run Reagan's campaign. One of the Casey alibi dates was nailed down, according to the task force, because a Republican operative had written Casey's home phone number on a piece of paper that day, although the operative admitted that he had no recollection of reaching Casey at home.
Nevertheless, with a host of such dubious alibis, the 968-page report was shipped off to the printers, with a public release set for Jan. 13, 1993. Washington journalists, already briefed on the task force findings, were preparing to praise the report as "exhaustive" and "bipartisan."
But two days before the news conference, a cable arrived from Moscow. It was a response to a query dated Oct. 21, 1992, that Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., who headed the House task force, had sent to Sergey Vadimovich Stepashin, then chairman of the Supreme Soviet's Committee on Defense and Security Issues. Hamilton asked Stepashin -- whose job was roughly equal to chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- what information the Russian government had about the so-called "October Surprise" charges.
The Supreme Soviet's response was delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow by Nikolay Kuznetsov, secretary of the subcommittee on state security. Kuznetsov apologized for the "lengthy preparation of the response." It was quickly translated by the U.S. embassy and forwarded to Hamilton.
Carter vs. Reagan
To the shock of the task force, the six-page Russian report stated, as fact, that Casey, George Bush and other Republicans had met secretly with Iranian officials in Europe during the 1980 presidential campaign. The Russians depicted the hostage negotiations that year as a two-way competition between the Carter White House and the Reagan campaign to outbid one another for Iran's cooperation on the hostages. The Russians asserted that the Reagan team had disrupted Carter's hostage negotiations after all, the exact opposite of the task force conclusion.
As described by the Russians, the Carter administration offered the Iranians supplies of arms and unfreezing of assets for a pre-election release of the hostages. One important meeting had occurred in Athens in July 1980 with Pentagon representatives agreeing "in principle" to deliver "a significant quantity of spare parts for F-4 and F-5 aircraft and also M-60 tanks ... via Turkey," according to the Russian report. The Iranians "discussed a possible step-by-step normalization of Iranian-American relations [and] the provision of support for President Carter in the election campaign via the release of American hostages."
But the Republicans were making separate overtures to the Iranians, also in Europe, the Russians claimed. "William Casey, in 1980, met three times with representatives of the Iranian leadership," the Russians wrote. "The meetings took place in Madrid and Paris."
At the Paris meeting in October 1980, "R[obert] Gates, at that time a staffer of the National Security Council in the administration of Jimmy Carter and former CIA director George Bush also took part," the Russians said. "In Madrid and Paris, the representatives of Ronald Reagan and the Iranian leadership discussed the question of possibly delaying the release of 52 hostages from the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Teheran."
Both the Reagan Republicans and Carter Democrats "started from the proposition that Imam [Ruhollah] Khomeini, having announced a policy of 'neither the West nor the East,' and cursing the 'American devil,' imperialism and Zionism, was forced to acquire American weapons, spares and military supplies by any and all possible means," the Russians wrote. According to the report, the Republicans won the bidding war.
"After the victory of R. Reagan in the election, in early 1981, a secret agreement was reached in London in accord with which Iran released the American hostages, and the U.S. continued to supply arms, spares and military supplies for the Iranian army," the report continued. The deliveries were carried out by Israel, often through private arms dealers, the Russians said. Spares for F-14 fighters and other military equipment went to Iran from Israel in March-April 1981 and the arms pipeline kept flowing into the mid-1980s.
"Through the Israeli conduit, Iran in 1983 bought surface-to-surface missiles of the 'Lance' class plus artillery of a total value of $135 million," the report said. "In July 1983, a group of specialists from the firm, Lockheed, went to Iran on English passports to repair the navigation systems and other electronic components on American-produced planes." Then, in 1985, the weapons tap opened wider, into the Iran-contra shipments.
The Russian 'Bomb'
The matter-of-fact Russian report was stunning. It also matched other information the task force had. The Israelis, for example, had shipped U.S. military spares to Iran in the early 1980s, with the acquiescence of senior Reagan administration officials. But the Russians weren't clear about where their information came from or how reliable it was.
After receiving the Russian report in January 1993, a U.S. Embassy political officer went back to the Russians seeking more details. But the Russians would state only that the data came from the Committee on Defense and Security Issues. The embassy political officer then speculated that Moscow's report might have been "based largely on material that has previously appeared in the Western media."
But apparently, there was no serious follow-up -- even though Moscow, the communist enemy in the 1980s, claimed to possess incriminating evidence about two CIA directors (Casey and Gates) and two U.S. Presidents (Reagan and Bush). Though the Russian claims about Carter's negotiations with Iran might cause embarrassment, Carter, as President, possessed the constitutional authority to negotiate with a foreign power. The Republicans did not.
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Corroboration
Other internationally prominent figures have added weight to the October Surprise story in recent years. In early 1996 in Gaza, Palestinian president Yasir Arafat informed ex-President Carter that Republicans had approached the PLO in 1980 seeking help in arranging an October Surprise deal. [For details, see Diplomatic History, Fall 1996] The chief of French intelligence, Alexandre deMarenches, also told his biographer that the French secret service had helped Casey arrange meetings with Iranians in Paris in 1980. [See Trick or Treason. ]
More confirmation came from Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who was Iran's president in 1980. In a Dec. 17, 1992, letter to the U.S. Congress, Bani-Sadr said he first learned of the Republican "secret deal" in July 1980 after Reza Passendideh, a nephew of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, attended a meeting with Cyrus Hashemi and Republican lawyer Stanley Pottinger in Madrid on July 2, 1980. Though Passendideh was supposed to return with a proposal from the Carter administration, Bani-Sadr said Passendideh proffered instead a plan "from the Reagan camp."
"Passendideh told me that if I do not accept this proposal, they [the Republicans] would make the same offer to my [radical Iranian] rivals. He further said that they [the Republicans] have enormous influence in the CIA. ... Lastly, he told me my refusal of their offer would result in my elimination." Bani-Sadr said he resisted the threats and sought an immediate release of the American hostages. But Bani-Sadr said Khomeini, the wily Islamic leader, was playing both sides of the U.S. street.
GOP-Iran Tension
According to Bani-Sadr's account, the secret Republican plan to delay release of the hostages until after the U.s. elections became a point of tension between him and Khomeini, with Bani-Sadr threatening to expose the scheme. "On Sept. 8, 1980, I invited the people of Teheran to gather in Martyrs Square so that I can tell them the truth," Bani-Sadr wrote to Congress. "Khomeini insisted that I must not do so at this time. ... Two days later, again, I decided to expose everything. Ahmad Khomeini [the ayatollah's son] came to see me and told me, 'Imam [Khomeini] absolutely promises'" to reopen talks with Carter, a step which Khomeini took by dispatching his son-in-law, Sadegh Tabatabai, to West Germany to meet with Carter officials.
The Tabatabai initiative quickly led to a tentative agreement between Carter and Iran for release of the hostages. But back in Teheran, radical mullahs with close ties to cleric Mehdi Karrubi derailed the Tabatabai plan by boycotting sessions of the Iranian parliament so a quorum was absent. The political tension over the hostages also led to Bani-Sadr's ouster as president, a major victory for radicals who still rule Iran. The American hostages were not released until Jan. 20, 1981, minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president.
Though Bani-Sadr cited his first-person knowledge of the maneuvering inside Teheran, the House task force that examined the October Surprise issue in 1992 dismissed the ex-president's account as mere speculation reached "by a circuitous route." The task force concluded that "Bani-Sadr's analysis demonstrates how some Iranians may have mistakenly misled themselves to believe that Khomeini representatives met with Reagan campaign officials."
The task force also rejected the allegations of Paris meetings, accepting Bush's emphatic denials. In spring 1992, Bush reiterated those denials at two separate news conferences in response to unrelated questions. Then seeking re-election, Bush decried the October Surprise investigation as a "witch hunt" and demanded that he be cleared of allegations that he traveled to Paris.
In June 1992, the bipartisan House task force, chaired by the ever-accommodating Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., did as Bush wished. The task force cited partially censored Secret Service records which seemed to back Bush up. Those records indicated that Bush arrived home in Washington on Saturday night, Oct. 18, 1980. Then, on Sunday morning, he went to the Chevy Chase Country Club in the morning and, along with his wife Barbara, visited someone's residence in the afternoon, the records indicated. The name of the afternoon host was deleted.
The Secret Service documents were regarded as strong evidence of Bush's innocence. But the counsel to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Spencer Oliver, challenged the accuracy of the Secret Service records and criticized "the failure of the [Bush] administration to cooperate with the October Surprise probe."
Unanswered Questions
In a six-page report listing "unanswered questions," Oliver noted that "the administration has refused -- for nearly two years -- to turn over to Congress the complete Secret Service records for that weekend." And Oliver added, "at least one of the two Secret Service supervisors who has been made available has lied to investigators in an interview."
Oliver noted that Secret Service supervisor Leonard Tanis had told congressional investigators that he recalled taking Mr. and Mrs. Bush to the Chevy Chase club for a brunch with Supreme Justice Potter Stewart and his wife on Oct. 19. But none of the other Secret Service agents on the Bush detail remembered any such trip.
Tanis's story then fell apart when Mrs. Bush's Secret Service records were obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request and showed her going not to the Chevy Chase club that morning, but to the C&O Canal jogging path. Stewart was dead by 1992, but his widow also denied that she had brunch with the Bushes that morning. The Chevy Chase alibi had collapsed.
That left the afternoon trip which showed both Bushes going to visit an unidentified friend at a redacted address. The Bush administration flatly refused to give any more information to the House task force, unless it agreed never to interview the alibi witness and never to release the name. Amazingly, the task force accepted the administration's terms. The congressional investigators never spoke with the mysterious host and never asked if George Bush indeed was with Barbara Bush that afternoon.
"It can be fairly said that President Bush's recent outbursts about the October Surprise inquiries and [about] his whereabouts in mid-October of 1980 are disingenuous at best," wrote Oliver in 1992, "since the administration has refused to make available the documents and the witnesses that could finally and conclusively clear Mr. Bush ... of these serious allegations."
Oliver urged that all relevant documents and witnesses be subpoenaed. "Until these steps are taken, this matter can never be finally resolved," he wrote. "The Republicans have been against this investigation from the outset, they have condemned it and criticized it at every opportunity. They have sought to block, limit, restrict and discredit the investigation in every possible way and have even employed the president of the United States to lead the attack on this investigation. ... They have attempted to button up the investigation and to cover up the evidence. The public has a right to know these things."
But Oliver lost the internal battle. The task force followed its exoneration of Bush with a similar pattern of inadequate investigation through the rest of its work. Evidence supporting the October Surprise allegations was either ignored or hidden. [For details, see The October Surprise X-Files: The Hidden Origin of the Reagan-Bush Era. ] A bipartisan understanding apparently had been reached that questions about high-level treachery by the president of the United States were not "things" that the public had a right to know.
Four years later, I asked Jamshid Hashemi if he would have made his allegations again, knowing that official investigators would treat him as dismissively as they did. Hashemi, now a U.S. citizen, had encountered only grief for his testimony. He was badgered by Republican lawyers who demanded that he recant. When he didn't, word was leaked from the task force that he and Ben-Menashe would be referred to the Justice Department for perjury prosecution. No such charges were ever lodged, but Hashemi had to live with the suspicions and doubt.
Still, Hashemi didn't hesitate in his answer. "I certainly would do it again," he said, "because the moment I swore to the flag of the United States, from that moment onward, my commitment toward the people of the United States was 10 times what it was before." ~
consortiumnews.com
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Arms for hostages (once again, second go-round...):
carleton.ca
encarta.msn.com
fas.org
papers.ssrn.com |
