christic@igc.org (06/10/91)
================================================================== /* Written 6:50 pm Jun 7, 1991 by christic in cdp:christic.news */ /* ---------- "UPDATE: `OCTOBER SURPRISE'" ---------- */ ================================================================== NEW EVIDENCE SUGGESTS REAGAN-BUSH CAMPAIGN BLOCKED HOSTAGE RELEASE By ANDY LANG Convergence Magazine, Christic Institute, Summer 1991 The final humiliation for President Jimmy Carter on Ronald Reagan's inauguration day was the release of the 52 American hostages held by Iran. The Iranian captors allowed the hostages to leave 30 minutes after Reagan took the oath of office. Nothing had worked for the Carter Administration during the year that elapsed between the storming of the United States Embassy in Teheran on Nov. 4, 1979 and the Presidential election on Nov. 4, 1980. An economic embargo against Iran, a failed military rescue operation and promising diplomatic negotiations all disappointed hopes for an early end to the crisis. But evidence has now surfaced that lends new credibility to reports that the Reagan-Bush campaign secretly negotiated a deal with Iranian representatives to keep the hostages in captivity until the Republicans won the 1980 Presidential election. The evidence also raises new questions about George Bush's role in the alleged negotiations with Iran. Some sources charge that Bush travelled to Paris between Oct. 18 and 20, 1980, to meet with Iranian representatives. Bush himself has denounced this charge as ``vicious,'' but the White House and the President's sympathizers in the mass media have circulated at least three conflicting alibis for Bush's movements on those dates. The ``October Surprise'' could be the mother of all scandals, possibly more shameful than the Watergate and Iran-contra affairs rolled into one. Deliberate actions by private citizens to prevent the release of American hostages could expose those responsible to charges of treason and kidnapping. There is also evidence that Reagan-Bush campaign officials were informed illegally by insiders in the National Security Council and Senate Intelligence Committee about the hostage negotiations. Former President Jimmy Carter told Robert Morris of the Village Voice that he believes Donald Gregg, then a senior national security aide and later national security adviser to Vice President Bush, was one of the officials who kept the Reagan-Bush campaign informed about the Administration's moves to free the hostages. Despite persistent allegations reported by In These Times, Z Magazine and other progressive periodicals, the mass media ignored the story until April, when an op-ed article by former national security aide Gary Sick in the New York Times and a PBS Frontline documentary reported by investigative journalist Robert Parry gave the allegations a new aura of respectability. Sick, a Navy officer attached to the Carter Administration's National Security Council as a Middle East expert, is now an adjunct professor of Middle East politics at Columbia University. Sick says he dismissed the allegations at first, but thought the timing of the hostage release--30 minutes after Reagan took the oath of office--``was peculiar.'' ``We had reports later on that the people holding the hostages in fact were standing with watches, waiting at the airport, to make sure that the time had passed, that Carter was no longer President, before releasing the hostages,'' he told Frontline. Years later, Sick's research for a book on the hostage crisis led him to conclude that the early reports of a deal between the Reagan campaign and the Iranians were accurate. ``In the course of hundreds of interviews, in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East,'' Sick wrote in the Times, ``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.'' Sick says he has interviewed about 15 separate sources who claim to have direct knowledge of the secret negotiations between the Reagan-Bush campaign and the Iranians. A number of the sources are ``respectable people,'' Sick told Frontline. Other sources were ``money movers, arms dealers, low-level intelligence operatives, people who work undercover and who, for one reason or another, are now dissatisfied with their lot and are prepared to talk about some of what they knew, perhaps with considerable exaggeration.'' ``[F]inally,'' Sick said, ``I . . . passed a point where it was harder to explain away the people who were supposedly all lying to me for reasons that I couldn't understand than it was to believe that something in fact happened.'' The hostages were seized in 1979 by Iranian radicals who wanted to disrupt relations between Iran's revolutionary Government, then still in the hands of moderate reformers, and the United States. At first, the nation rallied around Carter's economic and diplomatic measures to pressure Iran to free the Americans, but in April 1980 a secret attempt to stage a military rescue mission ended in failure. The hostage-taking was exploited by the Reagan-Bush campaign as an example of national humiliation and weakness. But Reagan campaign officials told Frontline they were afraid the Carter Administration would engineer the release of the hostages before the election--an ``October Surprise'' in the words of Vice Presidential candidate George Bush--to deprive the Republicans of their best campaign issues. ``There was concern,'' Reagan-Bush campaign adviser Martin Anderson told Frontline, ``that President Carter and some of his people might try to arrange a release of the hostages timed so as to have a major effect on the election.'' The campaign organized an ``October Surprise Group'' chaired by future National Security Adviser Richard Allen to track the Administration's hostage negotiations and plan countermoves. Sick's allegations center on William Casey, chair of the Reagan campaign and for six years director of central intelligence in the Reagan-Bush Administration. Casey, who died in 1987, reportedly met with Iranian representatives in Madrid and Paris before the November election. One important source for this charge is Jamshid Hashemi, an Iranian arms dealer. Hashemi says he and his brother Cyrus organized two meetings in July 1980 between Casey and an important Iranian cleric, Mehdi Karrubi. Karrubi is now speaker of the Iranian parliament. The meetings were held in a Madrid hotel room. Hashemi says Casey's proposal was ``blunt.'' ``Casey said the Iranians should hold the hostages until after the election and the new Reagan Administration would feel favorably towards Iran, releasing military equipment and the frozen Iranian assets,'' he told Frontline. Karrubi and Casey returned to Madrid for a second meeting in August where the Iranian cleric ``expressed acceptance,'' Hashemi said. ``The hostages would be released after Carter's defeat.'' Hashemi's account of the meetings has been confirmed by two other sources, Sick wrote in the Times. At about the same time as the Casey-Karrubi meetings in Madrid, Sick wrote, ``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.'' Sick cited two former Israeli intelligence officers as his sources. Is Hashemi lying about the Casey meetings? If he is, not even the severest critics of the ``October Surprise'' allegations have been able to explain why the Iranian arms dealer would deliberately mislead Sick. Hashemi is not under indictment or facing trial on any charges. Moreover, Hashemi is not the only source who has spoken out on the Madrid meetings between Casey and Iranian representatives. Frontline interviewed Arif Durani, an arms dealer now serving a 10- year sentence in Federal prison for selling arms to Iran. According to Durani, Iranian officials told him Karrubi met in Spain with Casey. Another source, retired Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe, claims to have seen intelligence reports on Casey's trip to Madrid. ``The Americans agreed to release money and make promises for the future when Reagan-Bush take over (sic) to make relations better,'' he told Frontline, ``and the Americans also promised that they will allow arms shipments to Iran. . . . And this is why Israel was brought in.'' Even though the fundamentalist Iranian Government was a sworn enemy of the Jewish state, Israel feared Iraq's growing military power in the region. In the mid-1980s Israel was the source for weapons shipped to Iran during the Iran-contra affair. Retired Air Force Gen. Richard Secord secretly used the profits from these sales to finance the contra war against Nicaragua. But if the ``October Surprise'' allegations are true, Israel actually began in late 1980 or early 1981 to supply the Iranians with arms as part of the deal negotiated between Iran and the Reagan-Bush campaign. In mid-September 1980 Iraq invaded Iran. The Iranians, now desperate for military supplies, sent an emissary to Washington. Sick's sources speculate the Iranians were following two tracks, negotiating simultaneously with the United States Government and the Reagan-Bush campaign. Sadegh Tabatabai, Khomeini's emissary to the United States, told Frontline that he and the State Department quickly reached agreement on a quid pro quo. The hostages would be returned and the United States would release Iranian assets and arms deliveries frozen by the Carter Administration. ``At the end of the talks, I was very optimistic,'' Tabatabai said. ``Carter had accepted the conditions set by the Iranians.'' The atmosphere seemed favorable for an agreement: The United States wanted the hostages, and Iran needed military supplies. This arrangement closely resembled the deal Casey allegedly proposed in Madrid. There was one important difference, however: The Administration's formula involved the immediate liberation of the hostages, while Reagan's team wanted to stall the release until after the election. Despite agreement between Washington and Teheran on the hostage- arms quid pro quo, the Iranian Government seemed to put the issue on ice. What happened? In October, according to Sick's reconstruction of events, Casey met in Paris with representatives of the Iranian and Israeli Governments. Final agreement was reached on the proposals first advanced earlier that year in Madrid: Iran would not release the hostages until after the election, and Israel would ship arms and spare parts to Iran. Former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr says the meetings were held at the Hotel Raphael. Nicholas Ignatiew, an arms dealer, says his contacts in French intelligence told him that ``some very important'' meetings took place between Oct. 19 and 22 in Paris at the Hotel Raphael, followed by two meetings in Florida. Both Casey and Donald Gregg were present, according to Ignatiew's sources. Gregg was a senior official in the National Security Council. He went on to serve as Vice President Bush's adviser on national security and is now the United States Ambassador to South Korea. Ari Ben-Menashe says he was one of several Israelis sent to Paris at Casey's request to help coordinate arms deliveries. ``The Iranians were basically willing to release the Americans--the hostages--immediately,'' he told Frontline. The Reagan negotiators said to wait till January. ``The Iranians were saying, `Just give us the money and you can get your guys.''' Another arms dealer with ties to the intelligence community, William Hermann, told Frontline he learned of the Paris meetings from Hamid Naqashian, an arms procurer for the Iranian Government, on the day after Reagan's inauguration. ``Naqashian told me that a deal was struck by the Reagan Administration in October of 1980, before the election, not to release the hostages until after he was sworn in. . . .'' For years Richard Brenneke, an Oregon businessman who describes himself as a former contract agent for the C.I.A., has been saying the agency ordered him to Paris in October 1980 to launder money for the Reagan-Bush campaign's deal with the Iranians. Casey was ``giving the orders'' when he met with the Iranians, Brenneke told Frontline. ``It was a case of, `Okay, you're going to get your weapons. We're going to get our hostages. Your weapons are going to get there as fast as we can get them to you, but we don't want the hostages right now. You are going to hold onto the hostages and you are going to see that they are well-treated.''' The C.I.A. continues to deny the agency ever employed Brenneke. Government records, Frontline says, show that Brenneke worked with European arms dealers to supply Iran in the 1980s. One document says Brenneke told a Pentagon intelligence officer about top secret TOW missile sales to Iran three days before President Reagan secretly authorized them. In Paris, Brenneke told Frontline, Casey approved the Iranian Government's shopping list and explained how private funds could be used to buy weapons for Iran: ``There were--and I added this up as I went along--somewhere between $35 million and $40 million was going to change hands. That is, it would wind up being used either for the purchase of weapons to be . . . delivered to Iran. . . . Casey at the time told me that I would have the authority to withdraw funds from a Mexican bank and he says, `There probably will be an American bank or two involved in this whole thing.' He said `yes' on virtually every hand-held weapon that was asked for. He limited the number of TOW missiles in the initial shipments. . . . Tires were a big item.'' The Reagan Administration attempted unsuccessfully to destroy Brenneke's credibility after he testified in a 1988 Federal trial about the Paris meeting. The Justice Department quickly indicted the Oregon businessman on charges of lying to a Federal judge about Paris and about his relationship with the C.I.A. A Federal jury in Portland, however, found Brenneke not guilty of the charge. One of the Government's witnesses against Brenneke was Donald Gregg, at the time national security adviser to Vice President Bush and, according to Brenneke and other sources, a participant in the Paris meetings. Gregg claimed he spent the October weekend at a Delaware beach and offered as proof a photo of himself and his family wearing bathing suits. But the photo showed the Gregg family on a sunny day. Brenneke's defense lawyer introduced weather records showing that conditions on the Delaware shore that weekend were cold and cloudy. Did George Bush accompany his future national security adviser to Paris? ``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,'' Sick wrote in the Times. ``Three of the sources say they saw him there.'' Sick is undecided about this allegation, however. Brenneke says he did not see Bush in Paris but was told by a friend, pilot Heinrich Rupp, that the Vice Presidential candidate was there. Ari Ben-Menashe, the former Israeli intelligence officer, also claims he saw Bush in Paris that weekend. If Bush did not travel to Paris it should be a simple matter for the White House to prove where he was on the weekend of Oct. 18 to 19. Bush, then a candidate for Vice President, was under 24-hour Secret Service guard. Records should be readily available to document his activities every day of the campaign. Bush himself has described the allegations as ``grossly untrue, actually incorrect, bald-faced lies'' and insists he can ``categorically deny any contact with the Iranians or anything having to do with it.'' But, astonishingly, the White House and its sympathizers in the press have circulated a number of contradictory alibis for the dates Bush allegedly met with the Iranians. During the Brenneke trial, for example, the prosecution put two Secret Service witnesses on the stand to testify that they were protecting Bush in the United States when the Paris meetings reportedly took place. But under cross-examination the agents said they could not recall seeing Bush at all that weekend, nor could they recall whether or not they were on duty. The Government also failed to produce any records proving the agents were with Bush or that Bush was in the country. Since then, additional conflicting accounts have surfaced. *Frontline obtained ``heavily-censored Secret Service documents'' that showed Bush's secret service detail spent the weekend at a suburban country club outside Washington, D.C. The records do not specify who was in the party, however, and do not mention George Bush. *On May 8 the right-wing Washington Times reported that ``Reagan- Bush campaign records, independently confirmed'' by the newspaper, proved that Bush spent Sunday, Oct. 19, at home. ``The Secret Service says he awoke about 6:30 a.m., had lunch at his Washington home and spent the day there preparing [a] speech. He returned home from the speech about 9 p.m.'' the Washington Times reported. *Also on May 8 conservative columnist L. Gordon Crovitz, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, wrote in the Journal that on Oct. 19 Bush had lunch at the Supreme Court with Justice Potter Stewart and his wife. Stewart is now dead, his wife reportedly suffers from chronic memory loss and no office records or diaries have been produced to support this alibi. The hostages were finally released on Inauguration Day. Former Iranian President Bani-Sadr told Frontline that ``[i]f there had not been contacts with the Reagan-Bush group, the hostages would have been let go six months before the U.S. elections.'' ``Almost immediately'' after the hostages returned, Sick wrote in the Times, ``according to Israeli and American former officials, arms began to flow to Iran in substantial quantities.'' By spring 1982, according to former State Department Israeli desk officer David Satterfield, Israel had shipped about $53 million in weapons and spare parts to Iran. According to a former senior official in the Israeli defense ministry, the Israelis submitted detailed lists of their shipments to the Reagan Administration. A senior Israeli intelligence official said the deliveries included parts for F-4 fighters, M-48 tanks and M-113 armored personnel carriers. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew Lang 151251507 CHRISTIC telex Christic Institute tcn449 TCN Washington, D.C. christic PeaceNet 202-529-0140 BBS uunet!pyramid!cdp!christic UUCP 202-797-8106 voice cdp!christic%labrea@stanford Bitnet 202-462-5138 fax cdp!christic@labrea.stanford.edu Internet