October Surprise conspiracy theory

The October Surprise conspiracy theory refers to an alleged plot to influence the outcome of the 1980 United States presidential election, contested between incumbent president Jimmy Carter (D–GA) and his opponent, former California governor Ronald Reagan (R–CA).

One of the leading national issues during that year was the release of 52 Americans being held hostage in Iran since November 4, 1979.[1] Reagan won the election. On the day of his inauguration—in fact, 20 minutes after he concluded his inaugural address—the Islamic Republic of Iran announced the release of the hostages. The timing gave rise to an allegation that representatives of Reagan's presidential campaign had conspired with Iran to delay the release until after the election to thwart President Carter from pulling off an "October surprise".

According to the allegation, the Reagan Administration rewarded Iran for its participation in the plot by supplying Iran with weapons via Israel and by unblocking Iranian government monetary assets in US banks.

After twelve years of mixed media attention, both houses of the US Congress held separate inquiries and concluded that the allegations lacked supporting documentation.[2]

Nevertheless, several individuals—most notably former Iranian President Abulhassan Banisadr,[3] former naval intelligence officer and U.S. National Security Council member Gary Sick, and former Reagan/Bush campaign staffer and White House analyst Barbara Honegger—have stood by the allegation.

Background

In late 1979 a number of U.S. hostages were captured in Iran during the Iranian Revolution. The Iran hostage crisis continued into 1980, and as the November 1980 presidential election approached, there were concerns in the Republican Party camp that a resolution of the crisis could constitute an "October surprise" which might give incumbent Jimmy Carter enough of an electoral boost to be re-elected.[4] Carter's rescue attempt was first written about in a Jack Anderson article in The Washington Post in the autumn of 1980.[5] After the release of the hostages on 20 January 1981, mere minutes after Republican challenger Ronald Reagan's inauguration, some charged that the Reagan campaign had made a secret deal with the Iranian government whereby the Iranians would hold the hostages until after Reagan was elected and inaugurated.[6]

The issue of an "October Surprise" was brought up during an investigation by a House of Representatives Subcommittee into how the 1980 Reagan Campaign obtained debate briefing materials of then-President Carter. During the investigation (a.k.a. Debategate), the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the House Post Office and Civil Service Committee obtained access to Reagan Campaign documents and discovered numerous instances of documents and memorandum referencing a monitoring effort for any such October Surprise. The Subcommittee, chaired by former U.S. Rep. Donald Albosta (D–MI) issued a comprehensive report 17 May 1984, describing each type of information that was detected and its possible source. There is a section in the report dedicated to the October Surprise issue.[7]

Origins

The first printed instance of the October Surprise conspiracy theory has been attributed to a story in the December 2, 1980 issue of Executive Intelligence Review, a periodical published by followers of Lyndon LaRouche.[8] Written by Robert Dreyfuss,[9] the article cited information gleaned from "Iranian sources" in Paris as well as "Top level intelligence sources in Reagan's inner circle" as stating that Henry Kissinger met with representatives of Mohammad Beheshti during the week of November 12, 1980.[8] The story claimed that "pro-Reagan British intelligence circles and the Kissinger faction" meeting with the Iranians six to eight weeks prior had interfered with "President Carter's efforts to secure an arms-for-hostage deal with Teheran."[8] The LaRouche movement returned the story in the September 2, 1983 issue of New Solidarity stating "The deal...fell through when the hard-line mullahs boycotted the Majlis in late October."[8]

Chronology

The House October Surprise Task Force outlined as "principal allegations" three supposed meetings between representatives of Reagan's campaign and Iranian government officials in the summer and fall of 1980 to delay the release of the hostages: 1) a meeting in Madrid during the summer, 2) a meeting at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, D.C that autumn, and 3) a meeting in Paris in October.[10] The Task Force characterized three other alleged meetings or contacts as "ancillary allegations": 1) a meeting at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. in early spring 1980, 2) a meeting at the Churchill Hotel in London in the summer of 1980, and 3) a meeting at the Sherry Netherlands Hotel in New York in January 1981.[10]

  • March 1980: Jamshid Hashimi, international arms dealer, is visited by William Casey at Washington's Mayflower Hotel, who asks that a meeting be arranged with "someone in Iran who had authority to deal on the hostages".[11]
  • March 21, 1980: Jamshid Hashimi and his brother Cyrus Hashimi meet at the latter's home.[12]
  • April 1980: Donald Gregg, a U.S. National Security Council aide with connections to George Bush, meets Cyrus Hashimi in New York's Shazam restaurant, near Hashimi's bank.[13] Former Iranian President Abolhassan Banisadr said in his 1991 book My Turn to Speak that he had "proof of contacts between Khomeini and the supporters of Ronald Reagan as early as the spring of 1980.... Rafsanjani, Beheshti, and Ahmed Khomeini [the Ayatollah's son] played key roles."[14]
  • Last week of July 1980: At a meeting in Madrid arranged by the Hashimi brothers that includes Robert Gray, a man identified as Donald Gregg, and Mahdi Karrubi, William Casey says that if Iran could assure that American hostages were well treated until their release and were released as a "gift" to the new administration, "the Republicans would be most grateful and 'would give Iran its strength back.'"[15] Karrubi says he has "no authority to make such a commitment."
  • About August 12, 1980: Karrubi meets again with Casey, saying Khomeini has agreed to the proposal. Casey agrees the next day, naming Cyrus Hashimi as middleman to handle the arms transactions. More meetings are set for October. Cyrus Hashimi purchases a Greek ship and commences arms deliveries valued at $150 million from the Israeli port of Eilat to Bandar Abbas. According to CIA sources, Hashimi receives a $7 million commission. Casey is said to use an aide named Tom Carter in the negotiations.[16]
  • September 22, 1980: Iraq invades Iran.
  • Late September 1980: An expatriate Iranian arms dealer named Hushang Lavi claims he met with Richard V. Allen, the Reagan campaign's national security expert, Robert "Bud" McFarlane, and Lawrence Silberman, and discussed the possible exchange of F-4 parts for American hostages, but Lavi says they asserted they "were already in touch with the Iranians themselves". (Silberman, Allen, and McFarlane deny they met with Lavi, but reporter Robert Parry obtained a copy of Lavi's 1980 calendar after Lavi's death, which corroborated the Iranian's account.)[17]
  • October 15–20: Meetings are held in Paris between emissaries of the Reagan/Bush campaign, with Mr. William Casey as "key participant", and "high-level Iranian and Israeli representatives".[18]
  • October 21: Iran, for reasons not explained, abruptly shifts its position in secret negotiations with the Carter administration and disclaims "further interest in receiving military equipment".[19]
  • October 21–23: Israel secretly ships F-4 fighter-aircraft tires to Iran, in violation of the U.S. arms embargo,[19] and Iran disperses the hostages to different locations.[20]
  • January 20, 1981: Hostages are formally released into United States custody after spending 444 days in captivity. The release takes place just minutes after Ronald Reagan is sworn in as president.

Investigations

Frontline

The investigative journalism TV series Frontline produced a 1991 documentary which "investigate[d] startling new evidence about how both the Carter and Reagan camps may have tried to forge secret deals for [the Iranian] hostages during the 1980 presidential campaign.[21]

External video
FRONTLINE (S09E08) The Election Held Hostage, April 16, 1991, Frontline

Gary Sick

External video
Booknotes interview with Gary Sick on October Surprise, December 1, 1991, C-SPAN

Gary Sick wrote an editorial[19] for The New York Times and a book (October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan)[22] on the subject. Sick's credibility was boosted by the fact that he was a retired Naval Captain, served on Ford's, Carter's, and Reagan's National Security Council, and held high positions with many prominent organizations; moreover, he had authored a book recently on US-Iran relations (All Fall Down). Sick wrote that in October 1980 officials in Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign including future CIA Director, William Casey, made a secret deal with Iran to delay the release of the American hostages until after the election; in return for this, the United States purportedly arranged for Israel to ship weapons to Iran.

Sick, who had been a PhD student at Columbia University at the height of the Vietnam War, was a Carter White House staffer and admitted that "The story is tangled and murky, and it may never be fully unraveled." He was unable to prove his claims, including that, in the days before the presidential election with daily press pools surrounding him and a public travel schedule, vice presidential candidate George H. W. Bush secretly left the country and met with Iranian officials in France to discuss the fate of the hostages.[23]

Senate investigation

The US Senate's 1992 report concluded that "by any standard, the credible evidence now known falls far short of supporting the allegation of an agreement between the Reagan campaign and Iran to delay the release of the hostages."[24]

Danny Casolaro

In 1991, freelance writer Danny Casolaro (among others)[25] claimed to be almost ready to expose the alleged October surprise conspiracy, when he suddenly died a violent death in a hotel bathtub in Martinsburg, WVA, raising suspicions. He appeared to be traveling on leads for his investigation into the Inslaw Affair. His death was ruled a suicide.

House of Representatives investigation

The House of Representatives' 1993 report concluded "there is no credible evidence supporting any attempt by the Reagan presidential campaign—or persons associated with the campaign—to delay the release of the American hostages in Iran". The task force Chairman Lee H. Hamilton also added that the vast majority of the sources and material reviewed by the committee were "wholesale fabricators or were impeached by documentary evidence". The report also expressed the belief that several witnesses had committed perjury during their sworn statements to the committee, among them Richard Brenneke,[26] who claimed to be a CIA agent.[27]

The Village Voice

Retired CIA analyst and counter-intelligence officer Frank Snepp of The Village Voice compiled several investigations of Sick's allegations in 1992. Snepp alleged that Sick had only interviewed half of the sources used in his book, and supposedly relied on hearsay from unreliable sources for large amounts of critical material. Snepp also discovered that in 1989, Sick had sold the rights to his book to Oliver Stone. After going through evidence presented by Richard Brenneke, Snepp asserted that Brenneke's credit card receipts showed him to be in Portland, Oregon, during the time he claimed to be in Paris observing the secret meeting.[28]

Newsweek

Newsweek magazine also ran an investigation, and they said that most, if not all, of the charges made were groundless. Specifically, Newsweek found little evidence that the United States had transferred arms to Iran prior to Iran Contra, and was able to account for Bill Casey's whereabouts when he was allegedly at the Madrid meeting, saying that he was at a conference in London. Newsweek also alleged that the story was being heavily pushed within the LaRouche Movement.[29]

The New Republic

Steven Emerson and Jesse Furman of The New Republic also looked into the allegations and found "the conspiracy as currently postulated is a total fabrication". They were unable to verify any of the evidence presented by Sick and supporters, finding them to be inconsistent and contradictory in nature. They also pointed out that nearly every witness of Sick's had either been indicted or was under investigation by the Department of Justice. Like the Newsweek investigation, they had also debunked the claims of Reagan election campaign officials being in Paris during the timeframe that Sick specified, contradicting Sick's sources.[30]

An investigation by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting found that Emerson's evidence was incorrect, noting "Ironically, in media circles, it is Steve Emerson's dismissal of the October Surprise that turned out to be enduring – even though much of his evidence turned out to be wrong."[31] Mark Ames noted that the article "relied on invented evidence later exposed as fake and disowned even by Emerson."[32]

Continuing allegations

Among the more mainstream and moderate figures to state that the October Surprise did in fact happen is former Iranian President Banisadr.

Former Iranian President Banisadr

It is now very clear that there were two separate agreements, one the official agreement with Carter in Algeria, the other, a secret agreement with another party, which, it is now apparent, was Reagan. They made a deal with Reagan that the hostages should not be released until after Reagan became president. So, then in return, Reagan would give them arms. We have published documents which show that US arms were shipped, via Israel, in March, about 2 months after Reagan became president.

— Former Iranian President Abolhassan Banisadr[33]

Barbara Honegger

Barbara Honegger was a member of the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign staffer and later a Reagan White House policy analyst.[34] Since 1995, she's been Senior Military Affairs Journalist at the Naval Postgraduate School.[35] After the 1980 election, she headed the U.S. Attorney General's Gender Discrimination Agency Review under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, before resigning from her post in 1983.[36] While working for Reagan, she claims to have discovered information that made her believe that George H. W. Bush and William Casey had conspired to assure that Iran would not free the U.S. hostages until Jimmy Carter had been defeated in the 1980 presidential election, and she alleges that arms sales to Iran were a part of that bargain.[37] In 1987, in the context of the Iran-Contra investigations, Honegger was reported as saying that shortly after 22 October 1980, when Iran abruptly changed the terms of its deal with Carter, a member of the Reagan campaign told her "We don't have to worry about an 'October surprise.' Dick cut a deal.", with "Dick" referring to Richard V. Allen.[38]

Kevin Phillips

Political historian Kevin Phillips has been a proponent of the idea. In his book American Dynasty, although Phillips concedes that many of the specific allegations were proven false, he also argues that in his opinion, Reagan campaign officials "probably" were involved in a scheme "akin to" the specific scheme alleged by Sick.[39]

Ernest Backes' revelations

Banker Ernest Backes from Clearstream (Luxembourg) claimed he was in charge of the transfer of $7 million from Chase Manhattan Bank and Citibank, January 16, 1980, to pay for the liberation of the hostages. He gave copies of the files to the National French Assembly.[40]

Robert Kane Pappas

In his 2004 documentary Orwell Rolls in his Grave Robert Kane Pappas presents evidence that representatives from the Ronald Reagan campaign met with representatives from Iran to ensure that the hostages would not be released until after the election. He concludes that after the congressional commission turned back any accusation of wrongdoing, the story and scandal were never reported further.[41]

Duane "Dewey" Clarridge

In his final interview, former CIA operations officer and Iran-Contra figure Duane Clarridge claimed that the October Surprise had occurred as depicted in George Cave's novel, October 1980.[42]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Abstract of pre-election news broadcast
  2. ↑ Task Force to Investigate Certain Allegations Concerning the Holding of American Hostages by Iran in 1980 (January 3, 1993). Joint report of the Task Force to Investigate Certain Allegations Concerning the Holding of American Hostages by Iran in 1980 ("October Surprise Task Force"). Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. OCLC 27492534. H. Rept. No. 102-1102.
  3. ↑ Neil A Lewis (1991-05-07). "Bani-Sadr, in U.S., Renews Charges of 1980 Deal". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-07-31.
  4. ↑ "John McCain and the October Surprise". New York Observer. Retrieved 2009-01-27. The term "October surprise" is most famously associated with the 1980 campaign, when Republicans spent the fall worrying that Jimmy Carter would engineer a last-minute deal to free the American hostages who had been held in Iran since the previous year. Carter and Ronald Reagan were locked in a close race, but an awful economy and flagging national confidence made the president supremely vulnerable.
  5. ↑ Lenahan, Rod (1998). Crippled Eagle: A Historical Perspective Of U.S. Special Operations 1976–1996. Narwhal Press. p. 178,. ISBN 1-886391-23-8.
  6. ↑ Lewis, Neil A. (1993-01-13). "House Inquiry Finds No Evidence of Deal On Hostages in 1980". The New York Times. Retrieved 2014-09-21.
  7. ↑ Unger, Craig (2004-09-28). "The Ascendancy of George H. W. Bush". House of Bush, House of Saud. Scribner. ISBN 978-0-7432-5339-0. "Unauthorized Transfers of Nonpublic Information During the 1980 Presidential Election", report prepared by the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the Committee on the Post Office and Civil Service, 17 May 1984, pt. 1 (see Chapter 3 footnotes 54–60)
  8. 1 2 3 4 Barry, John (November 10, 1991). "Making Of A Myth". Newsweek. Retrieved April 5, 2015.
  9. ↑ Dreyfuss, Robert (December 2, 1980). "Strange diplomacy in Ira" (PDF). Executive Intelligence Review. New York: New Solidarity International Press Service. 7 (47): 43–44. ISSN 0273-6314. Retrieved April 5, 2015.
  10. 1 2 "October Surprise Task Force" 1993, p. 71.
  11. ↑ Joseph J. Trento, Prelude to Terror: Edwin P. Wilson and the Legacy of America's Private Intelligence Network (Carroll and Graf, 2005), 202–03.
  12. ↑ Trento, 203.
  13. ↑ Trento, 204.
  14. ↑ Trento, 209.
  15. ↑ Trento, 205, quoting Gary Sick, October Surprise (1991), 84.
  16. ↑ Trento, 205-07.
  17. ↑ Trento, 207-08.
  18. ↑ Martin, Harry V. (1995). "Bush Deal With Iranians". Free America (aka The Napa Sentinel). pp. (see also: "Pilot's full account of Bush's Paris flight"). Retrieved 2008-12-09.
  19. 1 2 3 Sick, Gary (1991-04-15). "The Election Story of the Decade". The New York Times. pp. op–ed. Retrieved 2008-12-23. (Congressional Record mirrored reprint)
  20. ↑ "Tehran Militants Said to Hand Over Custory of Captives". The New York Times. 1980-11-28. pp. A1. Retrieved 2008-12-20.
  21. ↑ PBS. PBS http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages//frontline/programs/info/916.html. Retrieved 2 October 2017. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  22. ↑ Gary Sick. 1991. October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan. New York: Random House.
  23. ↑ "New Reports Say 1980 Reagan Campaign Tried to Delay Hostage Release". New York Times. April 15, 1991. Retrieved September 13, 2017.
  24. ↑ U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations; "The October Surprise: Allegations and the Circumstances Surrounding the Release of the American Hostages Held in Iran", U.S. Government Printing Office; Washington, DC., 1992
  25. ↑ Linsalata, Phil. The Octopus File, The Columbia Journalism Review, November/December 1991, accessed October 20, 2008.
  26. ↑ search: i.e., Brenneke, (New York Times)
  27. ↑ Emerson, Steve; "No October Surprise", American Journalism Review, University of Maryland, vol. 15, issue n2, ppg. 16–24, 1 March 1993 (fee)
  28. ↑ Snepp, Frank (1992-02-25). "October Surmise". Village Voice (reprinted in Congressional Record, dated 1992-02-24). Retrieved 2008-12-26.
  29. ↑ Making of a Myth, Newsweek; November 11, 1991
  30. ↑ The Conspiracy that Wasn't; Steven Emerson and Jesse Furman, The New Republic; November 18, 1991
  31. ↑ Canham-Clyne, John (November 1, 1993). "October Reprisals". Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Retrieved April 1, 2016.
  32. ↑ Ames, Mark (January 11, 2013). "If Andrew Sullivan is "The Future of Journalism" then Journalism is F*cked". The Daily Banter. Retrieved April 1, 2016.
  33. ↑ Interview with Barbara Honneger (author of October Surprise, Tudor, 1992)
  34. ↑ New Statesman Society, Volume 1, Issues 13-21. Statesman & Nation Publishing Company Limited. 1988. p. 16.
  35. ↑ http://blog.lege.net/content/Seven_Hours_in_September.pdf
  36. ↑ Gil Troy (2013). Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980's. Princeton University Press. p. 261.
  37. ↑ https://www.amazon.com/October-Surprise-Barbara-Honegger/dp/0944276466/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1
  38. ↑ Jack McKinney (3 August 1987). "A Question Never Asked Did Reagan Cut Deal With Iran To Win In '80?". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved 2014-09-21.
  39. ↑ Phillips, Kevin (2004). American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush. Penguin Books. pp. 278–290. ISBN 0-670-03264-6. , reviewed at Amazon.com "search inside" feature
  40. ↑ See Denis Robert and Ernest Backes, Revelation$, Les Arènes publishing, 2001
  41. ↑ Orwell Rolls in his Grave
  42. ↑ Schou, Nicholas (April 24, 2016). "THE 'OCTOBER SURPRISE' WAS REAL, LEGENDARY SPYMASTER HINTS IN FINAL INTERVIEW". Newsweek.

Further reading

  • Abbie Hoffman and Jonathan Silvers, "An election held hostage", Playboy Magazine, October 1988
  • Barbara Honegger, 1989. October Surprise. New York: Tudor. ISBN 0-944276-46-6.
  • Brian Josepher, 2009. The Complete and ExtraOrdinary History of the October Surprise. ISBN 978-1439226476.
  • Robert Parry, 1993. Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery. ISBN 1-879823-08-X.
  • Kevin Phillips, 2004. American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush. ISBN 978-1422362600.
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