Could someone explain to me how the "October Surprise", re:Iran Hostages

[maveric]

was orchestrated? Who was involved? Was Reagan aware of what was going on?
I've heard about this but never really knew how it down.

[genius]

1. See" Cover-up: Behind the Iran Contra Affair" Bush, Sr., is a traitor.

This movie is so well documented. Shows Bush, Sr., to be a real villian and traitor.

[robertpaulsen]

12. Is this a recent documentary?

Is it available to rent?

[robertpaulsen]

20. Found it on imdb

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094913/

Looks good!

[yardwork]

2. There was no "October Surprise"

The concern among Republicans was that the Americans held hostage in Iran would be released in October, boosting Carter's popularity and winning him reelection.

Some folks say that the Republicans made sure there was no October Surprise by striking a deal with Iran not to release the hostages until after Reagan was elected. What happened was that Iran released the hostages on the day that Reagan was inaugarated, which looked very fishy.

I don't have any links or prove that this happened, but if it did I would not be surprised, and I would expect Poppy Bush, who was elected VP to Reagan, to have been the one behind it.

[genius]

10. There are hotel records documenting the meeting.

[Sapphocrat]

3. In a nutshell...

Iran was more than ready to release the hostages before the November election -- but in order to screw up Jimmy Carter's chances of reelection as much as possible,* George Bush I convinced Iran to keep the hostages for another couple of months, until after the election.

Carter went down in defeat -- and the hostages were oh-so-suddenly released the day Reagan was inaugurated.

That's about it. I'm sure others will add to/correct my memory of how it all went down.

* Remember, too, that Carter took a lot of heat not only for failing to negotiate their release, but for the tragic crash of one of our choppers after he OK'd taking the hostages back by force.

[olacan]

4. Is this

documented some where that there was a secret deal?

[tom_paine]

8. Robert Parry has an excellent book on it

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/187982308X/002-0799736-0405659?v=glance

[Minstrel Boy]

14. Good one by Gary Sick, too:

[buycitgo]

18. you got it, baby! I have the book

my sister always gives me books like that for Xmas and birthdays

somebody else just gave me the Clarke book, and that one is one of the best I've ever read.....still reading it, but it's like taking a college course.

he's the Zelig of bureaucracy....first chapter, in particular is a real stunner

they all depended on CLARKE to run the whole show as it was happening.

then they TURNED on him like the swine they are

everybody should read that one

[Sapphocrat]

9. Here you go:

...the weekend of Oct. 18-19, 1980 ... a former and future head of the CIA met in Paris with representatives from a terrorist regime to plot the cynical manipulation of an American presidential election.

It is an act of treason for private American citizens to negotiate political deals with foreign governments without official authorization. But that didn't stop George Herbert Walker Bush and William Casey from sitting down with the Ayatollah Khomeini's mullahs to discuss a matter of mutual interest: making sure the 52 American hostages being held by Iran stayed locked up until after the November election contest between President Jimmy Carter and Republican challenger Ronald Reagan.

The Republicans were terrified of an "October Surprise"--a move by the Carter government to free the hostages before the vote. So ex-CIA chief Bush--now Reagan's vice-presidential candidate--and Casey were dispatched to Paris to offer the Iranians a covert deal to keep the Americans in chains until Reagan was safely in office. The proposed payoff? A newly-elected Reagan-Bush administration would supply Khomeini's military with a secret supply of American weapons. ...

http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd0909.html


The allegations are not vague. They allege that representatives of the Reagan presidential campaign made a deal at a meeting in Madrid with Iranians to delay the release of Americans held hostage in Iran until after the November 1980 presidential elections, so that Reagan's opponent, then President Jimmy Carter, whose team had been negotiating, wouldn't gain a popularity boost (an 'October Surprise') before election day. The allegations included a date-specific allegation that William Casey met with an Iranian cleric in Madrid, Spain, and much of the tardy investigations centered on whether, at the weekend in question he was actually at Bohemian Grove retreat in California. ...

A Public Broadcasting System's 'Frontline' documentary in 1990 brought the story unavoidably to the surface in considerable detail. ...

http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/O/October-Surprise.htm


1991: ...Gary Sick, a retired career Navy officer and a National Security Council Middle East adviser in President Jimmy Carter's White House, now is writing a book on the subject. His article in the April 15 New York Times, and a one-hour sympathetic examination of the evidence on PBS's "Front Line, " shown nationwide on April 16, left little doubt among open-minded readers and viewers that Ronald Reagan campaign officials promised arms and money to Iran to delay release of 52 American hostages until after the Nov. 4, 1980 presidential election.

What both Sick and the program skirted, however, was the extent of Israel's role, not just as sole source of the arms shipments, but perhaps in instigating the deal as well. And, more important, both touched only lightly on the fact that, as "middleman" in the 1980 deal, Israel had the subsequent power to blackmail the Reagan administration, and did. The question this raises is whether that vulnerability to blackmail also extends to President George Bush, who was running as vice presidential candidate on the Reagan ticket at the time the deal was made.

Various parts of the story were reported throughout the summer of 1987 by, among others, Barbara Honegger in In These Times, Christopher Hitchens in The Nation, and Alfonso Chardy in the Miami Herald. This writer, after a September 1987 interview in Paris with Abolhassan Bani Sadr, president of Iran while the hostages were being held and Reagan campaign aides were meeting with Iranian Islamic Republic officials, wrote an extensive report in the October 1987 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and, most recently, in the October 1990 issue. ...

http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0591/9105011.htm


The day (Gary) Sick's piece appeared in the times, listing dates and participants in suspected meetings between campaign staffers and Iranian clerics, none of the network evening newscasts even mentioned the story (although ABC's Nightline explored the issue that night and has since aired two investigative reports, produced with the Financial Times of London). The New York times ran a page 10 story the day of Sick's op-ed issue until two weeks later, with another page 10 piece. The first report in The Washington Post, a five-paragraph Reuters story, ran eleven days after Sick's op-ed piece. Over the next three months, Time and Newsweek dealt with the October Surprise one time each: Newsweek in a page 28 story in the April 29 issue, Time on page 24 and 25 of the July 1 issue.

In the time between mid-April, when Sick's piece and a PBS Frontline documentary explored the October Surprise, and early August, when Speaker of the House Thomas Foley announced his decision to move ahead with a full-scale inquiry, there were a number of newsworthy developments. Jimmy Carter accused Donald Gregg, now the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, of leaking classified information from the Carter administration to the Reagan campaign, and Carter staffers raised the alarming allegation that Reagan's campaign may have tipped off the Iranians about a planned second attempt to rescue the hostages; the State Department considered blocking a visa for former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who came to the U.S. to promote his book My Turn To Speak, in which he asserts that the Reagan campaign cut a deal with the Iranians at the height of the hostage crisis; President Bush made his first public denials of the allegations; and eight of the former hostages voiced suspicions about the circumstances surrounding their release.

But many of these developments, which were reported by the wire services and picked up by alternative papers and even by the Phil Donahue show, were missed altogether by the major media. And a story that could make Deep Throat look shallow has yet to make the cover of Time or Newsweek. ...

http://www.cjr.org/archives.asp?url=/91/5/october_surprise.asp



Russian Prime Minister Sergei V. Stepashin wrote a six-page report in January 1993 confirming that agents of Ronald Reagan's presidential election campaign met with Iranian officials in 1980 to delay release of the 52 U.S. hostages to insure President Jimmy Carter's defeat.

The explosive new proof of the Reagan campaign's plot to sabotage Carter's reelection is contained in the July-August edition of I.F. magazine, published by the respected investigative journalist, Robert Parry, who has written extensively about the "October Surprise." ...

http://www.pww.org/past-weeks-1999/Oct%20surprise%20plot.htm


Much, much more out there -- just start Googling!

[papau]

7. No real "proof" - just Bush's whereabouts unknown but witness places

him in Paris at hotel meeting with Iran fellow - after which there was no give by Iran as to letting the folks go before the election.

So do you believe the witness (to Bush being at Hotel in Paris with Iran gov fellow) in the middle of the campaign? - we don't know what was said but do you believe that the refusal by Iran to continue negotiations after Paris meeting date was related to meeting?

And then there is the release 5 minutes after Reagan was sworn in.

[papau]

17. Seems there is real proof of treason/felony (Logan Act) - sorry - forgot!

The 'October Surprise' sabotage] was a covert operation by the Reagan-Bush campaign that secretly forged a deal with the Iranian radicals who, after overthrowing the US-backed Shah, were holding 52 Americans (including several CIA agents) as hostages. In exchange for holding the hostages until after the <1980 Presidential> election, the Reagan-Bush team offered the Iranians millions of dollars in arms, material, and other considerations. .......Most damning is the fact that other participants, including senior Iranian government officials and intelligence operatives from several countries, have publicly confirmed they were involved in secret deal.... Further confirmation came in 1993, in the form of a six-page Russian intelligence report that corroborated much of the story. The sensitive report was released by Russia's prime minister as a gesture of post-Cold War cooperation, in response to a request for information from a US Congressional task force investigating the charges. 15 But the report was suppressed, task force chairman Rep. Lee Hamilton (backed by Henry Hyde) sandbagged the rest of the inquiry


"During the first week of December, Executive Intelligence Review reported that Henry Kissinger 'held a series of meetings during the week of November 12 in Paris with representatives of Ayatollah Beheshti, leader of the fundamentlist clergy in Iran.' ......According to EIR, 'it appears that the pattern of cooperation between the Khomeini people and circles nominally in Reagan's camp began approximately six to eight weeks ago, at the height of President Carter's efforts to secure an arms-for-hostages deal with Teheran. Carter's failure to secure the deal, which a number of observers believe cost him the November 4 election, apparently resulted from an intervention in Teheran by pro-Reagan British circles and the Kissinger faction.' These revelations from EIR are the first mention in the public record of the scandal which has come over the years to be known as the October surprise. The hostages were not released before the November election, which Reagan won convincingly. That night, according to Roland Perry, Bush said to Reagan, 'You're in like a burglar.' Khomeini kept the hostages emprisoned until January 20, the day of the Reagan-Bush inauguration, and let the hostage plane take off just as Reagan and Bush were taking their oaths of office....quite apart from questions regarding George Bush's presence at this or that meeting, there can be no doubt that both the Carter regime and the Reagan-Bush campaign were actively involved in dealings with the Khomeini regime concerning the hostages and concerning the timing of their possible release. In the case of the Reagan-Bush Iran connection, there is reason to believe that federal crimes under the Logan Act and other applicable laws may have taken place. George Bush had now grasped the interim prize that had eluded him since 1968: after more than a dozen years of effort, he had now become the Vice President of the United States."


"Over the past two decades, more than a score of witnesses – including senior Iranian officials, top French intelligence officers, Israeli intelligence operatives and even Palestine leader Yasir Arafat – have confirmed the existence of a Republican initiative to interfere with Carter’s efforts to free the hostages before the U.S. presidential election in 1980. In 1996, during a meeting in Gaza, Arafat personally told former President Carter that senior Republican emissaries approached the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1980 with a request that Arafat help broker a delay in the hostage release. 'You should know that in 1980 the Republicans approached me with an arms deal if I could arrange to keep the hostages in Iran until after the elections,' Arafat told Carter. The existence of the Republican-Iranian meetings in Paris also was confirmed by three senior French intelligence officials, including French intelligence chief Alexandre deMarenches, according to evidence uncovered by a later congressional investigation. David Andelman, a journalist who was deMarenches’s biographer, testified to a House task force that the French intelligence chief admitted setting up the Paris meeting for Casey... In January 1993, another piece of corroborating evidence was sent to Congress by the Russian Supreme Soviet, which pored through intelligence files in Moscow at the request of the task force and reported finding documents showing that Casey had traveled to Europe in 1980 for meetings with Iranians.....Despite this body of evidence, the Republican hierarchy has steadfastly rejected the October Surprise charges. That denial was backed by a bipartisan House task force that agreed in early 1993 that there was 'no credible evidence' to support the allegations of a Republican-Iranian deal."
History will be on the ballot Nov. 7 - Robert Parry
Consortium News, 5 Nov 2000
Robert Parry is an investigative reporter who broke many of the Iran-contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek

"Little did the Russians know that not only did the House task force ignore the Stepashin report, but actually stuck it in a box that was piled unceremoniously on the floor of a former Ladies Room off a congressional parking garage."
Russia's Prime Minister and October Surprise
Online Journal 1999

[louis-t]

16. I remember Repubs at the time saying...

the Iranians released the hostages on inaugural day because they were SO AFRAID of Reagan.

[proud patriot]

5. I believe Reagan bargained to give missles in exchange for hostages

or something .

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

6. Go to

http://consortiumnews.com

I'm sure you can find some info there.

[JHB]

11. web resources

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


http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/lost3.html
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/lost4.html

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/lost10.html
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. 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.

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 would make the same offer to my rivals. He further said that they 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.


http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile.html
In January 1993, despite the new evidence, Hamilton’s task force pressed ahead with its conclusion of Republican innocence.

The debunking report was sent to the Government Printing Office in early January with a formal release scheduled for Jan. 13. Reporters at leading newspapers were briefed that the longstanding charges had turned out to be bogus.

Then, on Jan. 11, 1993, Stepashin reported back with the results of his internal Russian investigation. Translated by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and forwarded to Congress, Stepashin's six-page report stated that Moscow possessed detailed information about secret initiatives undertaken by the Reagan-Bush campaign to negotiate a delay in the hostages’ freedom.

"William Casey, in 1980, met three times with representatives of the Iranian leadership," Stepashin's report read. "The meetings took place in Madrid and Paris."

[Minstrel Boy]

13. Know who whitewashed October Surprise for Bush Sr?

Lee Hamilton, who's doing a similar favour for Bush Jr on the 9/11 commission.

"Hamilton held a press conference to clear Bush before the investigation into the deal between the Reagan-Bush candidates for presidential office and the Iranians, had even started. Hamilton then admitted he had not interrogated witnesses or talked with his special attorney hired to Investigate the matter."

http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/hamiltonoctsurprise.htm

[buycitgo]

19. why do you think they put him on the new Warren commission?

he did the SAME THING for Iran/Contra

that was even worse

more far-reaching, plus it gave them the blueprint for setting up the OSP

used DOD cause the CIA was less complaisant than it was w/Casey

[HamdenRice]

15. That's only half of it -- or less!

To use the words of Maggie Thatcher, let's not go wobbly on our adversaries here. Some of you are suggesting that because there may not be complete evidentiary records placing Bush I in Paris to commit treason, that the scandal was only alleged or rumored. That's missing the forest for the trees. There is a lot we know as fact, which resulted in several convictions of Reagan officials.

Remember, the scandal was called Iran-Contra. You forget the second half. The money that the Reagan admin earned as secret profits from selling arms to Iran was placed in a Swiss bank account under the control of Ollie North. What was great to the admin (from their warped perspective) about this, was here was money that was not allocated by Congress! It was like Ollie had a secret wing of government with a budget not controlled by Congress.

So they used these massive secret profits to pay for the war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua -- the rag tag assortment of thugs, death squaders, Cuban Bay of Pigs veteran fanatics and Somoza exiles called the Contras. This was after Congress had specifically passed a law forbidding the admin from funding the war against Nicaragua.

The CIA was flying planeloads of arms to countries neighboring Nicaragua,where John Negroponte -- soon to be proconsul in Baghdad -- supervised the illegal war.

There was also pretty convincing evidence that to get more bang for their buck, the admin allowed cocain trafficers based in Central America to use the empty CIA planes to bring cocaine back into the US to add to the slush fund. As the street price of cocaine plummeted, drug lords created the cheap smokable catastrophe called crack.

When the main Central American despot acting as clearinghouse for this cocaine trafficing --Manuel "pineapple face" Noriega -- later got mad at his US counterpart -- Bush I, who was running the drug running sideline -- and threatened to tell all, operation Panama was launched, Noriega was seized, and has been held incomunicado in a max security prison ever since.

I remember the day the Contra side of the story broke, which made the October surprise rumors suddenly much more proveable. A CIA plane crashed in central America, and the pilot Eugene Hasenfus, told all to Nicaraguan TV. That day, National Security advisor (forget his name, McFarlane?) unsuccessfully attempted suicide (forget -- did he slit his wrists? or take poison?) The next day, CIA director Bill Casey literally dropped dead of a supposed brain tumor. Bob Woodward has a good story about Casey's sudden death being so incredible that people in Washington wanted to dig up his coffin to check if he was really in it.

It was a bizarre and obvious scandal that was not just a felony, but treason and a successful coup against Carter.