The October 1980 Surprise

National Security was used to cloak other irregularities in the Reagan years. In 1980, former CIA agents, some active agents, at least one member of Jimmy Carter’s NSC staff, and some Republicans led by William Casey held a number of meetings with Iranian representatives and concluded an agreement whereby arms and cash would be given the Iran leaders in return for holding 52 American hostages until after the election. Some conservative career military personnel cooperated by tracing movements of supplies, equipment, and arms through military bases to make sure President Carter had not succeeded in making a deal with the Iranians. The career and retired intelligence personnel were probably motivated by anger over Carter’s purges in the intelligence community. . It is unclear just who was at what meeting and when, but it would take an act of faith to deny that the October Surprise deal took place. The movements of William Casey and some others have been relatively easy to trace, but an absolutely air-tight case that George H.W. Bush attended the most important meeting in Paris cannot be established. . Among other things, Casey promised that Israel would sell some arms to Iran immediately and that they would sell many more after Ronald Reagan became president. The Iranians were also promised the return of $12 billion in blocked funds.

Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who had promised not to sell so much as a shoelace to Iran, cooperated with the Republicans’ efforts to undermine the Carter position. These activities thoroughly undermined the activities of the legitimately elected government of the United States and weakened the U.S. position in bargaining for the return of the hostages. Years later, in an interview on the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, former Reagan national security advisor Richard Allen inadvertently confirmed that the Reaganites had made a deal with Iran to hold the hostages until after the election. He said that Cynthia Dwyer, a journalist, was retained by the Iranians to make sure that the Republicans carried out their end of the deal. No one asked him “what deal” and to this day mainline commentators deny there was a deal.

Carrying on private diplomatic negotiations with a foreign enemy is a violation of the law, as was coordinating arms shipments to Iran, before and after Reagan took power After Carter was out of office, Yasir Arafat told him that the Republicans had asked them to help with the arms deal used to keep the hostages captive until after the election. Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was asked if there was an October Surprise and replied, “Of course it was.” He was later pressured to explain away his comment, but it is believable as Menachem Begin detested Carter and would have done anything to hurt the American president. In 1993, Russia gave Congressional investigators files that showed that Casey met with the Iranians in 1980 and that Robert Gates and George H.W. Bush were involved in the deal with Iran.

A much longer account will be posted later.

Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum