In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
October Surprise
Kevin Phillips and the October Surprise
Some of you may even recall the story. Its basic outline went like this: In the runup to the 1980 election between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, it became clear that the outcome largely hinged on the release of the 52 Americans who had been held hostage by Iran since November 1979. If Carter was able to obtain their freedom, he was likely to win re-election. If he failed, it was nearly certain Reagan would win. As you may recall, the latter was what happened. The hostages were freed on the day of Reagan's inauguration. Later it emerged that a cadre of Reagan campaign officials -- led by former CIA chief William Casey, who was the campaign manager -- may have actually negotiated with Iran behind the scenes to ensure precisely this outcome. There were even indications they may have been involved in sabotaging the attempted rescue of the hostages.
The story gained real traction in the early 1990s when a former Carter intelligence official named Gary Sick released a book detailing the plot. It was promptly pooh-poohed by articles in Newsweek and The New Republic, and a brief House investigation came up dry. Afterward, anyone who even suggested they thought the scenario had any credibility was dismissed as a loony conspiracy theorist. Even the respected AP reporter Robert Parry found himself a journalistic pariah for his dogged pursuit of the story; you can find the results of much of his work at his marvelous Web site Consortium News.
Phillips not only resurrects the story, he examines the evidence and finds that it is almost certainly substantial, despite the all-too-eager earlier dismissals of its substance. More to the point, he compiles a wealth of subsequent evidence, most of it having emerged since 1992, pointing to his conclusion that "Bill Casey -- a born schemer and true buccaneer -- and his associates probably were involved in machinations akin to those Sick alleged." This evidence includes intelligence material from the French, the Soviet Union, Israel and Iran, as well as material that has been ignored by the House investigators.
All of this ties in with Phillips' theses that the October Surprise was a precursor to Iran-Contra (in fact, he argues, the latter was actually a confirmation that the former had occurred) as well as Iraqgate -- the consequences of which, he ably demonstrates, have come home to roost in the current war in Iraq.
Bush the elder became VP in '80 by participating and aiding the "October Surprise" act of treason.
For more on The October Surprise:
October Surprise: Finally, Time for the Truth is a good update.
Jamshid Hashemi still claims that in the summer of 1980, he and his brother, Cyrus, participated in secret meetings involving William J. Casey and Iranian intermediaries representing Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In a recent interview with The Consortium, Jamshid Hashemi repeated his account that meetings in Madrid, Spain, in late July and then in August, 1980, resulted in an agreement to release the 52 American hostages only after Reagan took office. In exchange, the radical Iranian government got commitments for secret shipments of U.S. military supplies.
...
Leon [Richard Leon, A Republican lawyer on the October Surprise congressional inquiry task force] and the Republicans did succeed in getting the task force to reject the October Surprise allegations lodged by Hashemi and more than a score of other individuals. Those other witnesses included: former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr (who gave a detailed account of the Iranian-Republican contacts from his view in Teheran), senior officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization (now including PLO chairman Yasir Arafat, who has described overtures from Republicans to interfere in the hostage crisis), French intelligence chief Alexandre deMarenches (who told his biographer about secret GOP-Iran hostage meetings in Paris), and Ari Ben-Menashe (a former Israeli intelligence officer who described Israel's behind-the-scenes role in helping Reagan seal the October Surprise deal).
Quite a witness list. Here's another update:
Russia's Prime Minister and October Surprise
In May 1999, as the world’s press detailed the biography of Russia’s new prime minister, Sergei V. Stepashin, the reporters missed one of the most curious chapters.
In the closing days of George Bush’s presidency in 1993, Stepashin secretly reported to the U.S. Congress that the outgoing president had participated in a scheme with Iran that bordered on treason.
Stepashin informed a special House task force that Russian intelligence information implicated Bush along with former President Reagan and CIA directors William J. Casey and Robert Gates in a series of clandestine contacts with Iran during the 1980 presidential campaign.
Stepashin, then chairman of the Supreme Soviet's Committee on Defense and Security Issues, had overseen an official review of what Moscow’s intelligence files revealed about Republican secret activities aimed at undercutting President Carter's desperate efforts to free 52 American hostages held in Iran in 1980.
You might be hearing about another October Surprise for this election. One theory is that the government already has in custody Osama and will reveal this in October (for a big boost for Bush), or that they could easily capture him and are letting him stay free until October. There are scarier senarios. All this sounds like paranoia until you realize that Bush the elder and others actually delayed the freeing of American hostages so Reagan could win, and that was when we had a somewhat responsible media. Now anything goes.
- rob 4:42 PM - [PermaLink] -
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