The Deep State Plots The 1980 Defeat Of Jimmy Carter

[Octafish]

Russ Baker asks: "How do Wall Street, oil companies and the shadow government agencies like the CIA and NSA really shape the global political order?"



The Deep State Plots The 1980 Defeat Of Jimmy Carter

By Peter Dale Scott
WhoWhatWhy.com on Nov 2, 2014

The Safari Club was an alliance between national intelligence agencies that wished to compensate for the CIA’s retrenchment in the wake of President Carter’s election and Senator Church’s post-Watergate reforms. As former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal once told Georgetown University alumni,

In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here, your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything. It could not send spies, it could not write reports, and it could not pay money. In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran. (1)

After Carter was elected, the Safari Club allied itself with Richard Helms and Theodore Shackley against the more restrained intelligence policies of Jimmy Carter, according to Joseph Trento. In Trento’s account, the dismissal by William Colby in 1974 of CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton,

combined with Watergate, is what prompted the Safari Club to start working with (former DCI Richard) Helms (then U.S. Ambassador to Iran) and his most trusted operatives outside of Congressional and even Agency purview. James Angleton said before his death that “Shackley and Helms … began working with outsiders like Adham and Saudi Arabia. The traditional CIA answering to the president was an empty vessel having little more than technical capability.”(2)

Trento adds that “The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations. With the official blessing of George Bush as the head of the CIA, Adham transformed . . . the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a worldwide money-laundering machine.”(3) Trento claims also that the Safari Club then was able to work with some of the controversial CIA operators who had been forced out of the CIA by Turner, and that this was coordinated by Theodore Shackley:

Shackley, who still had ambitions to become DCI, believed that without his many sources and operatives like (Edwin) Wilson, the Safari Club—operating with (former DCI Richard) Helms in charge in Tehran—would be ineffective. . . . Unless Shackley took direct action to complete the privatization of intelligence operations soon, the Safari Club would not have a conduit to (CIA) resources. The solution: create a totally private intelligence network using CIA assets until President Carter could be replaced. (4)

During the 1980 election campaign each party accused the other of plotting an October Surprise to elect their candidate. Subsequently other journalists, notably Robert Parry, accused CIA veterans on the Reagan campaign, along with Shackley, of an arguably treasonable but successful plot with Iranians to delay return of the U.S. hostages until Reagan took office in January 1981. (5)

SNIP...

The oil majors’ manipulation of domestic oil prices, combined with Carter’s failure to bring the hostages home, combined to cause the first defeat for an elected president running for reelection, since that of Herbert Hoover in 1932.

CONTINUED...

http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/11/02/the-deep-state-plots-the-1980-defeat-of-jimmy-carter/

So, DU. Richard Helms not only kept the secrets, he and his secret ilk kept the profits.

[Robbins]

1. Iran-contra

May really had started in 1980 and reason for shipping arms was to repay Iran for helping Reagan get elected.

Don't forget the media may have help coneal part of iran-contra involved drugs coming to US.

[Octafish]

5. Absolutely.

Shocking New Evidence Reveals Depths of 'Treason' and 'Treachery' of Watergate and Iran-Contra

New evidence continues to accumulate showing how Official Washington got key elements of two major presidential scandals of the Nixon and Reagan administrations wrong.

-- Robert Parry

Most importantly: Never forget Gary Webb.

[Jackpine Radical]

29. You can take it back to the Kennedy assassination, for that matter.

[villager]

51. Yup, and the ones that followed. That's why there will never be a "return" to "good government" ...

...in this country, until these crimes are truly faced, and dealt with.

Essentially, the same political actors have been running the country, since Dallas...

[KingCharlemagne]

2. Why else would the Iranians release the American captives on the very day

of Reagan's inauguration? Simple, former CIA Director George H.W. Bush and his cronies (Kashoggi, et. al.) met in Paris and put the fix in with the Iranians: you'll get arms and spare parts from us if you release the embassy hostages when Reagan is President. Not the plotters' fault if the Iranians took them literally.

Oh, "there you go again."

Well, RIP America, your long decline and fall began the day of Reagan's inauguration. Obama's and Clinton's efforts to arrest the slide notwithstanding, nothing can really prevent the nation's slide into full-tilt tyranny after the treasonous coups of Paris 1980 and Iran-Contra went unaccounted for and unpunished.

[Nay]

6. Agreed. It was over in 1980, and I rue the day Mr Nay and I decided to stay

in the US. We had nearly finished all our paperwork to emigrate to Australia, but they stopped accepting immigrants during that high-inflation period. We should have investigated emigrating to Canada instead, but we didn't. I've been sorry every day, esp since I think our son would have done much better in Canada.

You make decisions the best you can at the time, but man, we sure made the wrong one then. We've done fine economically, but we have never felt a part of this country at all, even though we're native-born. The people here are a fucking mystery to me.

[KingCharlemagne]

10. I feel the same way about my cowardly decision not to drop everything and head to Florida in

November 2000 to give direct battle to the brownshirts (actually in white shirts and ties) in the streets. In some ways, I have been doing penance ever since. Even though I voted for Gore, I suppose I had imbibed a little eau de Nader, i.e., that there was no appreciable difference between Bush and Gore. How wrong I was would soon come to make itself evident.

It really doesn't matter to me that Gore eventually conceded. A crucial American principle of one person, one vote was lost in Florida in 2000 and the SCOTUS-inspired coup that ensued shortly thereafter did irreparable damage to this country for many years to come.

But, yeah, you make decisions the best you can at the time, based on what you know or at least think you know at the time. Truer words have seldom been spoken.

[Nay]

12. I was mad because Gore conceded. He should have fought for every damn vote

for as many months as needed. Gore didn't see the important ramifications of him fighting/not fighting to see that the vote in a presidential race was conducted correctly??? I can't believe that!! He had to have known! What was that REALLY about??

All that happened was that Pubs figured out that Dems would roll over for them no matter how outrageous they acted, and they've been taking advantage of that fact ever since. And, as you say, the sanctity of the voting process was irretrievably damaged.

[KingCharlemagne]

15. I've seen some very eloquent arguments in defense of Gore's decision to concede, such

that I can respect his decision to do so, even though I think the issue was important enough to force a constitutional crisis.

Apparently, Gore did not want to risk anarchy and so decided to show deference to the institutional perogatives of SCOTUS. EVEN though there was no absolute precedent that said he had to. Were I Gore, I might have asked then-President Clinton to order in the 82nd Airborne to seize all ballots and do a state-wide recount, thereby pushing aside Katharine Harris and Jeb Bush's undue influence. It was precisely this (or some iteration thereof) that Gore was determined to avoid.

I was actually referring to the time when the recount in, IIRC, Broward County, was in progress and those Republican brownshirts showed up at the door and were able to intimidate and frighten the poll workers into stopping their recount. That's what I should have been in Florida to fight. I shall rue my decision (or failure to decide, more accurately) for the rest of my days.

[Nay]

16. Anarchy, as subsequent issues have shown, would have been the least

of our problems in the long run. IMO, the problem is that Gore and most other Democratic politicians have ignored the long run to their (and our) peril. We SHOULD have had a Constitutional crisis, we SHOULD have had the fight. We didn't, and look where we are now.

[KingCharlemagne]

19. Yeah, no disputing that hindsight is usually 20-20. 'should have,' 'would have,' and

'could have' -- three most popular phrases heard in Vegas, or so I've heard tell

[Nay]

22. Definitely! But I was trying to make you feel better about you not going

to Miami -- yeah, Miami Dems should have been there to stop that shit, but they weren't. And Gore had the standing (and the duty) to represent ALL OF US in his insistence that the votes be counted correctly. His was OUR burden as well, and he dropped it like a hot potato. If it's one thing we need among Dem politicians, it's the courage to do what is right for the country. To stand up for all of us, even when detractors and advisers are saying it would be divisive, anarchic, messy, etc.

This country's entire problem, IMHO, can be reduced to what I said in the above paragraph.

[KingCharlemagne]

25. You join my wife in letting me off the hook for not doing my duty. (My wife says I

probably would have been beaten up or killed had I gone to Florida. She's says, "You're not Superman!"

My own pathetic little failure pales before the failure of my superiors, like Gore. But that's still not sufficient excuse for me.

I disagree with Gore's decision not to force a constitutional crisis, but maybe he had himself imbibed a few drops of the eau de Nader and didn't realize what a dark force was being unloosed upon the world until too late. Had Gore had the gift of foresight to envision Iraq, Katrina and so on, he might not have gone so gently into that good night.

I like the thrust of your remarks though. Hope to read more of your work in the future!

[villager]

32. There should've been actual repercussions for Watergate, actual investigations of the assassinations

Hell, LBJ should've gone after Nixon when he became aware of the treason unfolding in that election.

Democrats have always been "polite" as the far-right steadily dismantles -- dismantled, cause I guess it's really past tense -- our "democracy."

And we've seen exactly where that politeness has gotten us.

[Jackpine Radical]

31. The "Brooks Brothers Riot."

[KingCharlemagne]

39. Thanks, JR. I can never find that goddamned picture when I'm thinking of it. Saving

to my pics folder right now for easier future reference.

[cprise]

40. Me too...

Thanks for posting JR.

[strawberries]

8. the hostages were released

a few months before Reagan's inauguration, but right after he won the election. Technically Carter was till president

[KingCharlemagne]

11. You are wrong, sir or madam. The hostages were released the day of Reagan's inauguration. I

remember it because it sent a chill down my spine.

The hostages were formally released into United States custody the day after the signing of the Algiers Accords, just minutes after the new American president, Ronald Reagan, was sworn into office

For a review of the chronology, please see the link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis

[strawberries]

13. you are right

it was minutes after his swearing in. I lived thru it too, but for some reason my memory thought Carter was still president.

I was just getting into politics at that time. Time goes by fast. The 70s were difficult times for a lot of people

[Octafish]

21. That bothered me, too. Plus it's SOP for the top of the national security heap.

Treason worked like a charm for Nixon and Crew in '68.



George Will Confirms

Nixon’s Vietnam Treason

by BOB FITRAKIS & HARVEY WASSERMAN
CounterPunch, Aug. 13, 2014

Richard Nixon was a traitor.

The new release of extended versions of Nixon’s papers now confirms this long-standing belief, usually dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” by Republican conservatives. Now it has been substantiated by none other than right-wing columnist George Will.

Nixon’s newly revealed records show for certain that in 1968, as a presidential candidate, he ordered Anna Chennault, his liaison to the South Vietnam government, to persuade them refuse a cease-fire being brokered by President Lyndon Johnson.

Nixon’s interference with these negotiations violated President John Adams’s 1797 Logan Act, banning private citizens from intruding into official government negotiations with a foreign nation.

Published as the 40th Anniversary of Nixon’s resignation approaches, Will’s column confirms that Nixon feared public disclosure of his role in sabotaging the 1968 Vietnam peace talks. Will says Nixon established a “plumbers unit” to stop potential leaks of information that might damage him, including documentation he believed was held by the Brookings Institute, a liberal think tank. The Plumbers’ later break-in at the Democratic National Committee led to the Watergate scandal that brought Nixon down.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/13/nixons-vietnam-treason/

THIS is why Secret Government is un-American: It is undemocratic and evil.

[JHB]

49. "Why else"? Pure spite...

I do think Reagan's people colluded with the Iranians, but "why else?" is not a rhetorical question. There is a legitimate answer: out of sheer spite, to get in one last parting shot at Carter.

Remember, at the time Carter was the face of "The Great Satan" to the Iranians, they hated him, burned him in effigy. Letting them go just after he left office was seen as one last "f*** you!" at Carter. The Iranians were perfectly capable of it.

That was the view held by Gary Sick, the principal White House aide for Persian Gulf affairs from 1976 to 1981 (i.e., mostly Carter, but also some time under Ford and Reagan). He held that view until 1990 or so, dismissing the claims about collusion as rumors. It was only later, after he found corroboration of arms shipments from Israel to Iran and had sifted through records and conducted interviews, that he stopped dismissing it as a product of the Middle Eastern conspiracy-theory mills.

It was Sick's change on the subject that finally spurred congressional hearings on it -- he was too inside-the-Beltway to ignore. But at that point plenty of Washington insiders had an interest in making sure it stayed buried.

[KingCharlemagne]

52. That's very interesting. I had forgotten the name of Gary Sick until you

mentioned it. Of course, the Iranians giving Carter a final 'Fuck You' iillustrates the principle of irony in action, since RR turned around and dispatched RummyDummy to Baghdad in 1983 as America's secret envoy to the Iraqis to re-establish diplomatic relations and collaborate militarily to check Iranian expansion in the Gulf. The Iranians should have saved their F-Us for Reagan, imho, since he was arming both sides in the Iran-Iraq War to Iran's massive disadvantage. (Granted, the Iranians would not have known this in 1980-81 but still . . . )

Do you think we will ever know the true story? I wouldn't put anything past those spooks Bill Casey and George H.W. Bush, which is why I incline to the secret Paris deal. Sick's hypothesis, though, bears careful scrutiny and consideration.

[YarnAddict]

3. Were you around in 1984?

I loved President Carter, but sometimes I felt like I was the only one. He was a deeply principled man, but the media portrayed him as incompetent and ineffectual. I remember even SNL was in on the act, doing a skit where he showed up at a podium with a foam doughnut because he had hemorrhoids! There was much ado about him having to fight off a vicious swimming rabbit. He got the blame for gas lines.

There were a couple of things he did for which he did deserve criticism, and those were in his response to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. Boycotting the Olympics seemed--well, passive-aggressive. The Olympics were supposed to be completely non-political, and with the 1984 Olympics being held in LA, it just seemed to invite a retaliatory boycott. IOW, two consecutive Olympics that were virtually meaningless.

The other thing was reinstating draft registration. Just when we thought we had put that nasty business behind us, a Democrat was responsible for bringing it back.

[Octafish]

4. Yes. I voted for Jimmy Carter several times in Michigan.

I also remember the guy was responsible for forgiving the Vietnam Draft Dodgers who hid out in Canada.

I love the guy and them, as I knew and know some who took that route. Of course, I have nothing but love for all the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines doing the fighting and dying along with millions of innocent men and women in Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos who should still be alive, were it not for greed.

[YarnAddict]

7. Yes, he did many good things, and

he has been a wonderful ex-President. Can't think of another who went on to do so much good post-Presidency.

[Octafish]

14. President Carter got the shaft from the national security state. Their champion?

Agents for Bush

The 1980 Campaign

by Bob Callahan
Covert Action Information Bulletin

George Bush owed his recent political fortune to several old CIA friends, chiefly Ray Cline, who had helped to rally the intelligence community … and started … "Agents for Bush."

Bill Peterson of the Washington Post wrote in a March 1, 1980 article, "Simply put, no presidential campaign in recent memory – perhaps ever – has attracted as much support from the intelligence community as (has) the campaign of former CIA director George Bush."

George Bush’s CIA campaign staff included Cline, CIA Chief of Station in Taiwan from 1958 to 1962; Lt. Gen. Salm V. Wilson and Lt. Gen. Harold A. Aaron, both former Directors of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Also included were retired Gen. Richard Stillwell, once the CIA’s Chief of Covert Operations for the Far East, and at least 25 other retired Company directors, deputy directors and, or, agents.

… Angelo Codevilla, informed a congressional committee that was "aware that active duty agents of the CIA worked for the George Bush primary election campaign.

… Ray Cline claimed that he had been promoting the pro-CIA agenda that Bush had embraced for years, and that he had found the post Church-hearings criticism had died down some time ago. "I found there was a tremendous constituency for the CIA when everyone in Washington was still urinating all over it," Cline said. … "It’s panned out almost too good to be true. The country is waking up just in time for George’s candidacy. …

In July 1979 George Bush and Ray Cline attended a conference in Jerusalem. … (with) leaders of Israel, Great Britain and the United States. … The Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism was hosted by the Israeli government and … most of Israel’s top intelligence officers … were in attendance. …

… The Israelis were angry with Carter because his administration had recently released its annual report on human rights wherein the Israeli government was taken to task for abusing the rights of the Palestinian people on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. …

The Republican delegation was led by George Bush. It included Ray Cline and Major Gen. George Keegan (former USAF intelligence chief) and Harvard professor Richard Pipes.

Looking for a mobilizing issue to counter the Carter-era themes of détente and human rights, the Bush people began to explore the political benefits of embracing the terrorism/anti-terrorism theme.

… Ray Cline developed the theme that terror was not a random response. … but rather an instrument of East bloc policy adopted after 1969 when the KGB persuaded the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to accept the PLO as a major political instrument in the Mideast and to subsidize its terrorist policies by freely giving money, training, arms and coordinated communications. …

… Within days after the conference the new propaganda war began in earnest. On July 11, 1979, the International Herald Tribune featured a lead editorial entitled "The Issue is Terrorism," which quoted directly from conference speeches. …

SOURCE: Covert Action Information Bulletin No.33(Winter 1990) "The Bush Issue"

http://mediamayhem.blogspot.com/2004_04_11_archive.html

Absolutely true, YarnAddict. Carter has been a great ex-pres, too. When in office, I considered him too conservative. I seem to remember voting for Ted Kennedy in the '76 primary, but in the General Election...

[noiretextatique]

28. this is reagan's TRUE face: the face of pure evil

not the so-called affable, charming guy this picture truly captures his soul

[Dont call me Shirley]

33. What's Reagan so pissed about? Whoa?

[deutsey]

35. That picture captures the real face of Reaganism n/t

[hifiguy]

48. He looks rather like Brezhnev in that pic

doesn't he?

[strawberries]

9. I forgot about the gas lines

even one day and odds the next day. I remember those lines. Geesh, glad to put that behind us

[RebelOne]

17. I remember those lines well.

I lived just a half block from a gas station. I would park my car there at the pumps after closing time. Then I would walk to the station in the morning to be the first in line.

[strawberries]

18. lol

I didn't live near one. Glad to know someone who got first in line

[KingCharlemagne]

20. A couple other black marks for the Carter administration: his continued backing for

the military dictatorship in Indonesia who were brutally suppressing East Timor and his National Security Advisor (and now-foreign policy eminence grise to President Obama) Zbigniev Brzezinski's policy to arm the Afghan Mujaheddin so as to lure the USSR into Afghanistan. Some of the blow back from that set of policies came on 9-11 but Brzezinski remains unrepentant to this day and I have not heard Carter express much remorse either.

But, those black marks aside, to think that the charlatan and demagogue Reagan defeated the intelligent and noble President Carter (and subsequently Fritz Mondale in 1984) made and makes me despair that much will come of this American experiment with representative self government. Carter looks better and better as the years pass.

[JEB]

23. At least they didn't kill him, just

his Presidency. And our future.

[Octafish]

45. The Oil.

The Precious.

Kurt Vonnegut described a Kilgore Trout work in which an alien, a very small alien, preached the evils of the automobile in Detroit. No one paid attention, but the little guy struck a pose on the bar and gave a good speech about the danger to the atmosphere and all the life depending on clean air. Then, a drunken autoworker mistook him for a match and killed him by striking his head repeatedly under the edge of the bar.

While fiction, that is our reality today. Had the nation followed President Carter's lead and continued on a path toward clean, renewable, fossil-fuel free energy, the world would be a lot better place. Instead, the powers that be, the wealthy forces behind the scenes in US politics, used their power to dump Carter and continue to harvest the planet's black gold.

As these relatively few, who bought Wall Street and Washington, accumulated trillions in wealth, the rest of of us are doomed to penury, disease and whatever other perils they can buy their way out of.

[JEB]

46. Carter was the last time I felt hopeful for our world.

And during the Obama campaign. Kilgore Trout nailed it.

[hifiguy]

24. My, my. This explains a lot of things.

I am well aware of the Reagan/Bush/Casey ratfuck that delayed the release of the hostages and its parallels to the Nixon/Chennault/Thieu ratfuck that derailed LBJ's 1968 peace initiative but this is something new.

Any books about this, Octafish?

[KingCharlemagne]

26. Don't forget Kissinger who was playing footsie with both Nixon and Humphrey's campaigns

at the exact same time. IIRC, Kissinger is deeply implicated in the Chennault\Thieu axis of perfidy. Been awhile since I studied the matter. That fucker Kissinger is walking around a free man even today and may become some sort of Rasputin to Hillary, as disgusting as that seems.

[hifiguy]

30. Kissinger wasn't brought fully into the Trickster's camp

until after the election. He worked for Rockefeller and also knew a bunch of Humphrey people but the ratfuck precedes his time in the Nixon camp IIRC.

That Kissinger didn't die dancing at the end of a rope thirty years ago is an indesribable injustice.

[Octafish]

41. Good books by Gary Sick, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, Robert Parry, and Barbara Honegger...

Eyewitness accounts, evidence, plus the way history unfolded between 1981 and 1987 make it look likely the GOP and the Ayatollah did business way before the Iran-Contra Thing.

There is evidence that members of the Reagan-Bush camp met with representatives of the government of Iran in Washington DC. There are allegations that Bill Casey and George Bush flew to Paris to meet with Iranian higher-ups. The end result is that Iran held the hostages until the minute Pruneface was sworn in.

The story makes sense when one considers that months later, the Reagan-Bush administration gave Israel the OK to send US weapons and spare parts to the Iranians, who were locked in a war with Iraq, whose leader Saddam Hussein the US at the time was openly backing.

There are several excellent books on the October Surprise available by Barbara Honegger ("The October Surprise&quot , Gary Sick ("October Surprise&quot , Abolhassan Bani Sadr ("My Turn to Speak&quot , and Robert Parry ("Trick or Treason&quot .

BTW: One of the people who met with Iranian middlemen in Washington is former Judge Lawrence Silberman, the fellah appointed by George W Bush to head the commission charged with finding out why there were no WMDs in Iraq when US intelligence said there were. Small world.

Here’s a good overview:

http://www.wrmea.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1632:reprise-of-the-october-surprise-is-the-worst-surprise-still-to-come&catid=131


Here’s a link to ConsortiumNews.com’s excellent work:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile.html

[Octafish]

55. My bad! Meant to talk about Joseph Trento and Peter Dale Scott...

...the other day, when first posted. Got waylaid and returned with the thought "Books!" In the meantime...

The State, the Deep State, and the Wall Street Overworld

By Prof Peter Dale Scott
Global Research, March 10, 2014
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Volume 12, Issue 10, No. 5

EXCERPT...

The Safari Club Milieu: George H.W. Bush, Theodore Shackley, and BCCI

The usual account of this super-agency’s origin is that it was

the brainchild of Count Alexandre de Marenches, the debonair and mustachioed chief of France’s CIA. The SDECE (Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage)…. Worried by Soviet and Cuban advances in postcolonial Africa, and by America’s post-Watergate paralysis in the field of undercover activity, the swashbuckling Marenches had come to Turki’s father, King Faisal, with a proposition…. [By 1979] Somali president Siad Barre had been bribed out of Soviet embrace by $75 million worth of Egyptian arms (paid for… by Saudi Arabia)….95

Joseph Trento adds that “The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations,… With the official blessing of George Bush as the head of the CIA, Adham transformed… the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a worldwide money-laundering machine.”.96

Trento claims also that the Safari Club then was able to work with some of the controversial CIA operators who were then forced out of the CIA by Turner, and that this was coordinated by perhaps the most controversial of them all: Theodore Shackley.

Shackley, who still had ambitions to become DCI, believed that without his many sources and operatives like [Edwin] Wilson, the Safari Club—operating with [former DCI Richard] Helms in charge in Tehran—would be ineffective. … Unless Shackley took direct action to complete the privatization of intelligence operations soon, the Safari Club would not have a conduit to [CIA] resources. The solution: create a totally private intelligence network using CIA assets until President Carter could be replaced.97

Kevin Phillips has suggested that Bush on leaving the CIA had dealings with the bank most closely allied with Safari Club operations: the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). In Phillips’ words,

After leaving the CIA in January 1977, Bush became chairman of the executive committee of First International Bancshares and its British subsidiary, where, according to journalists Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin in their 1992 book ‘False Profits’ [p. 345], Bush ‘traveled on the bank’s behalf and sometimes marketed to international banks in London, including several Middle Eastern institutions.’98

Joseph Trento adds that through the London branch of this bank, which Bush chaired, “Adham’s petrodollars and BCCI money flowed for a variety of intelligence operations”99

It is clear moreover that BCCI operations, like Khashoggi’s before them, were marked by the ability to deal behind the scenes with both the Arab countries and also Israel.100

It is clear that for years the American deep state in Washington was both involved with and protected BCCI. Acting CIA director Richard Kerr acknowledged to a Senate Committee “that the CIA had also used BCCI for certain intelligence-gathering operations.”101

Later, a congressional inquiry showed that for more than ten years preceding the BCCI collapse in the summer of 1991, the FBI, the DEA, the CIA, the Customs Service, and the Department of Justice all failed to act on hundreds of tips about the illegalities of BCCI’s international activities.102

Far less clear is the attitude taken by Wall Street banks towards the miscreant BCCI. The Senate report on BCCI charged however that the Bank of England “had withheld information about BCCI’s frauds from public knowledge for 15 months before closing the bank.”103

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-state-the-deep-state-and-the-wall-street-overworld/5372843

...which is the groovy time.

Joseph Trento: Prelude to Terror: Edwin P. Wilson and the Legacy of America's Private Intelligence Network

Joseph Trento: The Secret History of the CIA

Peter Dale Scott: The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on U.S. Democracy

[WinkyDink]

27. No! Wait! Is this evidence of a ......(GASP!) CONSPIRACY??!!

[Octafish]

43. Gary Sick, USN: Honest to Goodness...

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)

Congressional Record
article 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:

In December 1979 and January 1980, Cyrus and Jamshid Hashemi, two brothers who had good contacts in Iranian revolutionary circles, approached the Carter Administration seeking support for their candidate in the Iranian presidential elections. I met both of them briefly during that period. Although Washington was sympathetic, their appeal was over taken by events. Their candidate lost but they remained in contact with the U.S. Government, providing useful information about developments in the hostage crisis.

Cyrus died in 1986, only three months after his cooperation with the U.S. Customs Service in a dramatic sting operation that resulted in the arrest of several Americans, Israelis and Europeans on charges of plotting illegal arms sales. Jamshid Hashemi, who was also involved in international arms sales, was not implicated in that affair. I re-established contact with Mr. Hashemi in March 1990 and interviewed him a number of times.

According to Mr. Hashemi, William Casey, who had just become Ronald Reagan's campaign manager, met with him in late February or early March 1980 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. Mr. Casey quickly made it clear that he wanted to prevent Jimmy Carter from gaining any political advantage from the hostage crisis. The Hashemis agreed to cooperate with Mr. Casey without the knowledge of the Carter Administration.

Mr. Hashemi told me that he and his brother helped to arrange two critical meetings. In a Madrid hotel in late July 1980, an important Iranian cleric, Mehdi Karrubi, who is now the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, allegedly met with Mr. Casey and a U.S. intelligence officer who was operating outside authority. The same group met again several weeks later. Mr. Hashemi told me that Mr. Karrubi agreed in the second Madrid meeting to cooperate with the Reagan campaign about the timing of any hostage release.

In return, he was promised that the Reagan Administration, once in office, would return Iran's frozen assets and help them acquire badly needed military equipment and spare parts. Two other sources subsequently described these meetings in very similar terms in interviews with me and my colleagues. The Carter Administration had no knowledge of these meetings.

At about the time of the second meeting in Madrid, according to two former Israeli intelligence officers I interviewed, individuals associated with the Reagan campaign made contact with senior Government officials in Israel, which agreed to act as the channel for the arms deliveries to Iran that Mr. Casey had promised. Israel had been eager to sell military equipment to Iran, but the Carter Administration, which was maintaining a total arms embargo on Iran, had refused to agree.

As the threat of war with Iraq began to mount in early September 1980, Iran opened direct hostage negotiations with the Carter Administration. In retrospect, it appears that Iran may have been playing both sides, seeking the highest bid for the release of the hostages. The Carter Administration, however, did not realize it was involved in a three-cornered bidding contest, and resisted Iran's apparent interest in military equipment.

The Iraqi invasion of Iran on Sept. 22, 1980, added both urgency and confusion to the various negotiating tracks. Two former Reagan campaign aides told me that this generated new fears within the Reagan-Bush campaign that war pressures would lead Iran to release the hostages before Election Day, thereby improving President Carter's chances.

Adding to the complexity, the Carter Administration secretly had been developing plans for a possible second hostage rescue mission, after the failure of its earlier mission, Desert 1, in April. It became operational in September 1980. Richard V. Allen, Ronald Reagan's first national security adviser and a member of his campaign, told me that one member of the rescue team contacted him and gave him a description of the second rescue plan. Shortly thereafter, the Reagan-Bush campaign launched a major publicity effort warning that President Carter might be planning an `October surprise' to obtain the release of the hostages prior to the election.

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.

At least five of the sources who say they were in Paris in connection with these meetings insist that George Bush was present for at least one meeting. Three of the sources say that they saw him there. In the absence of further information, I have not made up my mind about this allegation.

Immediately after the Paris meetings, things began to happen. On Oct. 21, Iran publicly shifted its position in the negotiations with the Carter Administration, disclaiming any further interest in receiving military equipment. From my position at the N.S.C., I learned that Cyrus Hashemi and another Iranian arms dealer secretly had reported to State Department officials that Iran had decided to hold the hostages until after the elections.

Between Oct. 21 and Oct. 23, Israel sent a planeload of F-4 fighter aircraft tires to Iran in contravention of the U.S. boycott and without informing Washington. Cyrus Hashemi, using his own contacts began privately organizing military shipments to Iran. On Oct. 22, the hostages were suddenly dispersed to different locations. And a series of delaying tactics in late October by the Iranian Parliament stymied all attempts by the Carter Administration to act on the hostage question until only hours before Election Day.

After the election, the lame-duck Carter Administration resumed hostage negotiations through Algerian intermediaries, but the talks stalled. On Jan. 15, Iran did an about-face, offering a series of startling concessions that reignited the talks and resulted in a final agreement in the last few hours of Jimmy Carter's Presidency. The hostages were released on Jan. 21, 1981, minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President.

Almost immediately thereafter, according to Israeli and American former officials, arms began to flow to Iran in substantial quantities. A former senior official in the Israeli Ministry of Defense told me that the shipments by air and sea involved hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment and that detailed lists of each shipment were provided to senior officials in the Reagan Administration. Moshe Arens, the Israeli Ambassador to Washington in 1982, told The Boston Globe in October 1982 that Israeli's arms shipments to Iran at this time were coordinated with the U.S. Government `at almost the highest of levels.'

Former officials and participants in the Reagan-Bush campaign team uniformly have denied any personal knowledge or involvement in such a deal, although none of them categorically denies that contacts with Iran before the 1980 election may have taken place. Richard V. Allen vehemently denies any agreement between the campaign and Iran over the timing of the hostage release. He told me and others, however, that there are `self-starters' in every campaign and that he cannot vouch for every `independent, freelance, spontaneous, over-the-Iransom' volunteer.

Can this story be believed? there is no `smoking gun' and I cannot prove exactly what happened at each stage. In the absence of hard documentary evidence, the possibility of an elaborate disinformation campaign cannot be excluded.

But all of that must be balanced against the sheer numbers and diversity of the various sources, from eight countries on four continents. Some 20 individuals, including myself and some of the sources mentioned above, have been interviewed and can be seen tomorrow night on the Public Broadcasting Service's documentary series `Frontline.'

The allegations of these individuals have many disturbing implications for the U.S. political system. One is the tampering with foreign policy for partisan benefit. That has, of course, happened before and it may well happen again, but it assumes special poignancy in this case since it would have involved tampering with the lives and freedom of 52 Americans.

Another implication is that leaders of the U.S. exposed themselves to the possibility of blackmail by Iran or Israel. Third, the events suggest that the arms-for-hostage deal that in the twilight of the Reagan Presidency became known as the Iran-contra affair, instead of being an aberration, was in fact the re-emergence of a policy that began even before the Reagan-Bush Administration took office.

But finally, it implies a willingness to pursue private, high-risk foreign policy adventures out of sight of the electorate. That may be realpolitik. Its practitioners may indeed win big. But it is profoundly antidemocratic.

During my research, I spoke to several of the former hostages. I was deeply moved by the response of one in particular. After listening to the evidence, he said simply: `I don't want to believe it. It's too painful to think about it.' Painful it is. But the rest of us are obliged to think about it. Hard.

SOURCE: http://fas.org/irp/congress/1992_cr/h920205-october-clips.htm

[WinkyDink]

54. Oh, I was convinced decades ago. I'm mocking the anti-CT cranks.

[pa28]

34. To this day Carter believes it was a coincidence the hostages were released as the oath was read.

The day before the inauguration he was "negotiating" with intermediaries in Africa who claimed to know someone who knew someone with a connection to the hostage takers. The president himself.

He's such an intelligent guy but it seems he was up against things he didn't quite understand. Maybe his own sense of integrity would not allow him to see what was really happening.

[Dont call me Shirley]

36. Thanks, Octafish. You always have the most excellent posts.

Around the time Reagan was inaugurated, I was young and didn't follow politics at the time. I had a very frightening lucid dream which woke me in fear, the Nazis were marching down my road toward my house. The dream is still as vivid and frightening now as it was then. I always wondered why I had that dream and it's significance. Little did I know then.

[greatlaurel]

37. K and R

[malaise]

38. Important thread

Thanks

[libtodeath]

42. K&R

[CanSocDem]

44. Carter had/has so much promise.

He was like the 'second coming'. Everybody liked him-even Hunter S Thompson who wrote in RS that he was almost ashamed to feel the glow he felt for Carter. Playboy Magazine did an interview and all they could get him to say was that he "lusted in his heart". He advocated the decriminalization of cannabis. Of course, like the current guy, the reality of becoming POTUS is not fully appreciated until one is handed 'the keys'.

By then it is too late to realize your agenda is irrelevant, and it is probably the oil industry that will be calling the shots. And if they don't like you or feel threatened by your quaint attitudes toward democracy, there are ways---refined since the 60's----to get rid of you and your wacky ideas. Your Drug Czar gets busted for coke and Quaalude's, an embassy is seized by "students", and gas lines around the USA.

However Robert Sherrill’s close analysis of the American oil industry demonstrates that American oil companies, not Iranian turmoil, were primarily responsible for the gas shortage.

And when Carter wasn't re-elected it was clear to me that 'age of aquarius' was over. Not only could they crush a cultural revolution, they could masquerade as the government. When Bush1 became RR's VP, the reign of the BFEE went public.

"The oil majors’ manipulation of domestic oil prices, combined with Carter’s failure to bring the hostages home, combined to cause the first defeat for an elected president running for re-election, since that of Herbert Hoover in 1932."



.

[JEB]

47. The deep cynicism that has ruled since the ousting of Carter

is getting harder and harder to live with. Literally.

[bobthedrummer]

50. 1 day before William Joseph Casey's scheduled appearance before the House Select Committee on

Intelligence/HSCI while being "examined" in his Agency office by CIA physician Dr. Arvel Tharp Casey suffered a "seizure" etc...etc...etc...

Here's a few links about William Joseph Casey for those that love the truth

William J. Casey (Wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Casey

Walsh Iran/Contra Report Chapter 15
William J. Casey (Federation of American Scientists archives)
http://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_15.htm

William J. Casey (Spartacus Educational page)
http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKcaseyW.htm

I salute you for starting this thread, Sir. K&R I also voted for President Carter twice.

on edit:
William J. Casey (SourceWatch)
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=William_J._Casey_(CIA_Director)

[True Blue Door]

53. Treason is the Republican breakfast of champions.

They harm America to help themselves, always.

On the other hand, Jimmy Carter was a weak President. I've watched his speeches and televised addresses on Youtube, and they are sickeningly limp and distracted. The man grew up in a different America than the one he presided over, and didn't appear to understand that.

In his head, America was still a rural Norman Rockwell nation looking for folksy wisdom, but it was an increasingly urban and suburban country that wanted urgent action and clear leadership.

Ronald Reagan was an actor, and could sense what kind of image to project, even though it was a complete lie in his case.

[ellie]

56. Hey Octafish!

I haven't seen you around in a while! Bookmarking this for later.

[Odin2005]

57. The original October Surprise.