The October Surprise . . . a special feature program from The Other Americas Radio. Richar
The October Surprise . . . a special feature program from The
Other Americas Radio.
Richard Allen was head of the October Surprise Working Group. It
met every morning to try to come up with ways to prevent Carter
from bringing the hostages successfully home.
You have to remember that Reagan realized he would win as long as
Carter didn't pull off a last-minute hostage rescue.
It was meant to release the hostages . . . exactly . . . the moment
Ronald Reagan was president.
Barbara Honegger: Not just many of the key witnesses but the key
witnesses in this entire affair have been, in my opinion,
murdered.
The best way to get to the bottom of controversial activities is
to air the facts. Air them dispassionately and carefully, and let
the chips fall where they may.
November 1979. Fifty-two Americans were taken hostage in Iran. The
American public was held in suspense as the Carter administration
worked to bring the hostages home--first, in the failed Desert One
rescue attempt, and then through negotiations with the
revolutionary Iranian government. In October of 1980 an agreement
was reached to unfreeze Iran's monetary assets for the safe return
of the hostages. For some reason, the hostages were not released
until January 20, 1981, the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as
president. In the dawn of the Reagan era, many, in momentary
blindness, neglected to seriously question the implications of such
an event. It is now charged that in the few short months before the
1980 presidential election, the tremors of a domestic
destabilization of America by Americans was shaking the nation.
The October Surprise. Produced by The Other Americas Radio. I'm
Jane Perry. In this special program we will examine allegations
that members of the Reagan-Bush campaign cut a secret deal with
the Ayatollah Khomeini before the 1980 election. We will also
explore what may have been the deliberate failure of President
Carter's Desert One hostage rescue mission.
Honegger: The very possibility that Carter could bring the
hostages home was close to certain to wreck a Reagan
bid for the presidency; so the Reagan campaign took
phenomenal secret measures to ensure that the Carter
White House was not successful.
Perry: Barbara Honegger was a researcher with the Reagan-Bush
campaign in 1980. Subsequently she spent two years in
the White House as a policy adviser to President
Reagan. Honegger's investigation into this issue has
revealed a disturbing story of treason, blackmail and
sabotage.
Honegger: Reagan's 1980 campaign manager, William Casey, was
knowledgeable, before the fact, of the upcoming Carter
Desert One rescue attempt of April 1980. Now that is a
phenomenal fact, because many of even the highest-level
officers in Carter's own Central Intelligence Agency
were kept in the dark about that very Desert One rescue
operation.
Perry: Historian and author Donald Freed suggests links
between the Reagan-Bush campaign and the failed
Desert One rescue operation.
Freed: Precisely the people in the intelligence community
commissioned to develop some kind of rescue for the
hostages were clearly those elements of covert action
close to Casey and demonstrably hostile to Carter.
Perry: Was the CIA loyal to President Carter--or to candidate
Ronald Reagan? Jonathan Marshall is an investigative
journalist and co-author of the book The Iran-Contra
Connection. Like Donald Freed, he views with suspicion
some circumstances surrounding President Carter's
hostage rescue attempt.
Marshall: Miles Copeland, who had had some CIA connections in
his past, ran in the Washington Star a hypothetical
hostage rescue piece--how he would do it--and it's so
remarkably close to the actual mission, and came only
about one or two days before the mission took place,
that there is legitimate room for at least questioning
as to whether it was some kind of leak that came out in
the form of fiction to protect him from charges that he
had sabotaged it.
Freed: He printed a scenario for a rescue in the desert, and
that story was later broadcast on Radio Iraq and Iran,
and it was certainly heard in Iran. So the most
closely guarded secret was, in effect, foreshadowed by
this scenario.
Perry: Several years after leaving the White House, Barbara
Honegger's research shows some startling links between
the players of the 1980 hostage rescue operation and
what has come to be known as "the secret team."
Honegger: And then, of course, we have Mr. Richard Secord, Oliver
North, and Albert Hakim. Richard Secord was one of the
chief planners for the so-called "failed" Desert One
rescue attempt; Mr. North was involved in that rescue
attempt, in the mother ship, which was on the Turkish
border awaiting the cue from Mr. Secord to fly into
Teheran to rescue the hostages; and Mr. Albert Hakim
was in charge of the ground operations for the Desert
One rescue attempt--in particular, obtaining the trucks
and other vehicles that were going to be necessary for
it. Mr. Hakim skipped town, left Teheran, 24 hours
before the rescue attempt was to take place; and the
reason for that, as detailed in my research
documentation, was that Secord, North and Hakim had
absolutely no intention of seeing Desert One carry
through, and so sabotaged the operation.
Perry: The hostage rescue team consisted of eight helicopters,
six C-130 transport planes, and 93 Delta Force
commandos. But Delta Force never made it to Teheran.
Only five of the eight helicopters reached the site of
Desert One in operable condition. Perhaps this is due
to a bizarre incident that occurred on the deck of the
aircraft carrier Nimitz, where the helicopters were
tightly guarded. General James Vaught, the mission's
task force commander, suspects the incidents on the
Nimitz may have been a deliberate effort to stop the
hostage rescue mission. According to General Samuel
Wilson, who investigated the many failures of the Eagle
Claw rescue mission, the Pentagon's review panel found
negligence on a level surprising even to those
hardened to military incompetence. The incident on the
Nimitz is only one of the many strange events
surrounding the Desert One hostage rescue mission.
Barbara Honegger takes us back to Teheran during the
rescue attempt.
Honegger: This mysterious fifty-third hostage, Mrs. Cynthia
Dwyer, who was in Iran and who had not yet been taken
hostage at the time, told Reverend Moore, an American
Presbyterian minister who was there and interviewing
her at the time by phone, that the CIA had sabotaged
the rescue attempt. She told him that immediately after
the so-called "aborted" failure. And we also know from
Reverend Moore, who was in Teheran at the time of the
so-called Desert One rescue attempt, that a mullah who
was at a prayer meeting heard a siren that went off in
Teheran, and stood up in the middle of the prayer and
said "God is great, God is good, your helicopters have
just crashed in the desert." There are a number of
other reasons and independent sources we have for a
sabotage, but it was definitively sabotaged and there
was advance multiple-failure planning.
Perry: The failed Eagle Claw rescue mission left eight men
dead and three helicopters in the desert filled with
classified documents, which fell into the Iranians'
hands.
The benefits to be gained by President Carter's
success in bringing the fifty-two hostages home sent
tremors through the Reagan-Bush campaign
headquarters. Barbara Honegger was working for the
Reagan campaign at the time.
Honegger: Richard Werthlin, who was Ronald Reagan and George
Bush's 1980 presidential campaign pollster, had
determined that an "October surprise," which was a
successful attempt by Jimmy Carter to release the
hostages and bring them home before the 1980 election,
would be the death knell to a Reagan-Bush presidency.
That was determined by Reagan and Bush's pollster in
March of 1980--which, not coincidentally, was
approximately one month before the sabotaged Desert One
rescue mission.
Perry: Investigative reporter Jonathan Marshall:
Marshall: We know that the Reagan people were extremely
concerned about what they called the "October
surprise"; and that Reagan's campaign manager, William
Casey, later to become head of the CIA, was running
what he called an "intelligence operation" against the
Carter camp. This, of course, came out when David
Stockman revealed that Reagan had prepared for his TV
debates with Carter using a stolen briefing book. We
know now that the espionage operation was much broader
than just stealing some briefing books: it included
former military officers, CIA people, FBI agents, and
the like, who tapped into the Carter camp, into the
intelligence bureaucracy, to find out whether this
"October surprise" would actually happen; because if it
did, and if it were successful, it would have cost
Reagan the election.
Perry: Was the CIA loyal to Carter--or Casey?
Carter's new CIA chief, Stansfield Turner, had
removed about 600 people from their jobs in the area
of covert operations, which made for a very unhappy
network. Congressional investigations have since
revealed that active-duty CIA officers were working
with the Reagan-Bush campaign.
Historian Donald Freed:
Freed: Casey, at various points in his career, sometimes
officially, and sometimes unofficially, operated in a
kind of old-boy network. In 1979 and '80 it's clear
that the fear of an "October surprise" motivated a
network being drawn up by Casey.
Perry: In October of 1980, Casey decided to create the October
Surprise Working Group. Barbara Honegger:
Honegger: Richard Allen was head of the October Surprise Working
Group. It met every morning to try to come up with
ways to prevent Carter from bringing the hostages
successfully home.
Perry: To what extent would the Reagan-Bush campaign go to
prevent President Carter's success? Recently
declassified CIA documents reveal that in the waning
days of the 1980 campaign Reagan advisers met with an
envoy of the Iranian government.
Honegger: We do know from published accounts in the Knight-Ridder
papers across the country that Richard V. Allen, who at
the time was the chief foreign policy adviser on Ronald
Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign, met with Robert
McFarlane, soon to become a key person in Irangate, and
an alleged emissary from Khomeini's regime, in
Washington D.C. in early October of 1980, to discuss a
deal to delay release of the hostages until after the
November 4, 1980 election, insuring Reagan's victory,
insuring Carter's defeat. There is no question that
that meeting happened; Richard Allen and McFarlane have
acknowledged that it did.
Perry: Barbara Honegger was a campaign researcher and later
Policy Adviser to President Reagan. Robert McFarlane
told reporters that the Iranian that approached him was
referred to the Reagan-Bush campaign, but later was
judged to be a fraud, and dismissed. According to
Richard Allen, allegations of a secret deal are
"absolute baloney."
Honegger: Mr. Allen and McFarlane deny that any deal was cut. But
the bulk of the evidence shows that that's not the
case. In particular, Richard Allen had referred to a
deal between Reagan and Iran back in late November of
1986 on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. He was being
interviewed at the time, and he was referring to the
very first day that Reagan was president of the United
States. Allen recalled for the MacNeil/Lehrer audience
that he--Allen--told Reagan, then just president, that
there was a fifty-third hostage, a Mrs. Cynthia Dwyer,
who had not yet been released. She was still being held
in Teheran, and Reagan responded, and Allen told
MacNeil/Lehrer's audience, "You get the Iranians on the
phone for me, and I'm going to tell them that our deal
is off unless she is also released." Well, you would
have expected the interviewer on MacNeil/Lehrer to
jump and say, "Just a minute, sir, what deal was
that?" Now the reason that that had to have been, in my
studied opinion, a deal between Reagan and Khomeini,
made before Reagan became president, is because at the
time that Reagan made that phone call to Iran, ALL,
categorically ALL, of Carter's deal with Khomeini had
been consummated. So, when Reagan said "Tell Iran the
deal's off . . . " unless Mrs. Dwyer was released, he
had to have been referring to his own deal.
Perry: Because Iran's arsenal was comprised of U.S.-supplied
weapons, they were dependent on U.S.-made spare parts
and ammunition. On October 22, following Carter's
lengthy negotiations for the release of the hostages,
the Iranians' persistent demand for U.S. weapons was
suddenly dropped. Iranians said they did not link the
release of hostages to obtaining military spare parts
from the U.S. The president of Iran at the time, Abol
Hassan Bani-Sadr, explains why, though facing war with
Iraq, Iranian negotiators no longer demanded these
essential military supplies:
Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr:
It is now very clear that there were two separate
agreements: one, the official agreement with Carter
in Algeria, and the other one a secret agreement with
another party which, obviously, it is now apparent,
was Reagan. They made a deal with Reagan that the
hostages should not be released during the Carter's
administration, and that they should be released when
Reagan became president. So then, in return, Reagan
would give them arms. We published agreements which
indicated that the arms would be received in March,
approximately two months after Reagan became
president.
Perry: During this interview in Paris, the former Iranian
president gave copies of the weapons contracts to The
Other Americas Radio. Bani-Sadr then went on to charge
that former CIA men, including Casey and Ghorbanifar,
had collaborated in engineering this treasonous deal.
Bani-Sadr: These former CIA people, along with the former SAVAK
left over from Shah's period, and the Israelis,
maintained contact; and they are the ones that
organized the hostage-taking, and also they are the
ones that organized the arms exchange.
Perry: Shortly after being deposed, while in exile in Paris,
the former president of Iran said he received military
intelligence reports which noted that George Bush and
Richard Allen were among those who had met with
representatives of Beheshti at the Hotel Rafael in
Paris. Barbara Honegger:
Honegger: One of the founders of Hezbollah, the Iran-loyal
terrorist organization, which has blown up a Marine
barracks and also our American embassies in both Kuwait
and Beirut in the early 1980s, sent a representative to
the Paris meeting, before the 1980 election, with
Allen, Bush, and top officials of the Central
Intelligence Agency, to cut the secret deal with the
Reagan campaign to delay the release of our hostages in
exchange for a promise of arms, that began being
shipped to Iran in 1981.
Perry: Former Iranian president Bani-Sadr said this meeting
took place some time during the last two weeks in
October 1980. We checked the New York Times computer
Nexus, which revealed no mention of any campaign or
public appearances by George Bush from the 21st to the
27th of October--just one week before the 1980
presidential election. A press secretary in George
Bush's office found that his campaign calendar was
unaccounted for during these same six days. Barbara
Honegger recalls an incident that occurred in the very
same time period of October 21st-27th 1980, when she
was working at Reagan-Bush campaign headquarters in
Arlington, Virginia.
Honegger: In late October, as part of my job on the writing staff
of the national campaign headquarters, I was required
every night to cover the news. I went into the
operations center, which was the nerve center, the
communications center, of the national headquarters for
the Reagan campaign in 1980, to cover the 11 o'clock
news. As I did so, I was amazed to see a complete 180-
degree shift, over the last week and a half or so, in
the mood in the operations center. Because of the worry
about the "October surprise," that mood had been one of
anxiety and tension for a week to a week and a half;
and suddenly there was a party atmosphere. My first
thought that it was someone's birthday, I walked up to
a woman who worked for the gentleman who was in charge
of the operations center, and asked her what was going
on; and she said "Oh, haven't you heard? We don't have
to worry about the October surprise. Dick cut a deal."
She was standing next to a very heavy-set gentleman
whom I didn't recognize, and I said, "Dick . . . you
mean Dick Allen?" and she then got jabbed in the ribs
by the man and just said, "Let it go. Dick cut a deal."
Perry: A deal with Khomeini? Investigative journalist Jonathan
Marshall shares some doubt:
Marshall: There is one at least logical problem that has to be
addressed, that doesn't rule the theory out; but to
have made a bargain with the Iranians before the
election, that the hostages' return should be delayed
in return for arms, would have given the Iranians, on a
silver platter, the biggest blackmail card imaginable.
If we think about the arms-for-hostage deal, that alone
caused one of the biggest scandals in recent American
history. That at least was for what you might call a
good cause, to bring the hostages back early. To delay
the return of hostages for domestic political gain, in
return for arms, would have led not only to
impeachment, but just the drawing and quartering of
anyone who had made such a bargain.
Honegger: In fact, we do know that the Khomeini regime, and
Hezbollah in particular, has been blackmailing the
Reagan-Bush administration ever since 1981. We know
from Oliver North's own notes that profits from the
Iran arms sales were going to Hezbollah right from the
beginning--millions and millions of dollars' worth of
those profits--and because American hostages were not
released as a result of those money payments to
Hezbollah, it is clear that in fact those were hush-
money payments; because Hezbollah and the Iranians
have in fact been blackmailing Reagan and Bush and
their administration, precisely because of what they
know about the treasonous 1980 deal.
Perry: Mansur Rafizadeh is the former U.S. chief of SAVAK,
the Shah of Iran's secret police. He was also a covert
agent for the CIA, and was in communication with
factions in both United States and Iranian governments
during the hostage crisis.
Rafizadeh: The CIA asked me to get in touch with a powerful source
inside of Iran. So I took the liberty, our demand: the
Americans, they want the hostages to be released, that
is all! The answer came back in a few days, you are
wrong. American government, they don't want the
hostages to be released, or possibly there are
government inside of the government, or they're lying
to us, or they're lying to you. That's not the demand.
What else they want?
Perry: George Bush had been director of the CIA during the
Nixon administration, and still had many friends in the
agency. Former SAVAK chief Rafizadeh told The Other
Americas Radio that secret negotiations between
Khomeini and CIA elements loyal to the Reagan-Bush
campaign had arranged a deal to keep the hostages in
Iran until Reagan was in the White House.
Rafizadeh: After the election was done, Khomeini was going to
release the hostages. Why Khomeini was going to
release the hostages--because he didn't understand, he
doesn't know the system of government; he thinks Reagan
is in office tonight, he's going to put President
Carter and his family in jail tomorrow morning, and
here we go! But as soon as we told him, no, no! still
Carter is president!--then, the deal was made, to
release the hostages exactly the moment Ronald Reagan
was president.
Question: Did this have anything to do with promises that the
Reagan campaign had made to the Iranian government, or
was it just enough that the--
Rafizadeh: No, no, no, it was promised for the arms. At that time
the deal was made that the hostages would be released
when Ronald Reagan is in the office, and then we will
ship them arms.
Question: And who made that agreement?
Rafizadeh: CIA. CIA. And we learn about that agreement, also,
ahead of time . . . General Oveissi learn that they are
going to send arms to Khomeini, the deal is made; he
told me that. I believe that as much involvement
William Casey had, or Richard Allen had, George Bush
had--look at George Bush: he's intelligent, he's smart,
he knows the business, he was running CIA--
Question: He was apparently very popular in the CIA--
Rafizadeh: Very popular in CIA. So I don't believe George Bush was
not involved in it. No. He was involved in it. The
other thing--Khomeini did all the damage to Carter. He
didn't do any bad thing to Reagan. He released the
hostages the moment Reagan was president. Hostages,
they were sitting in a plane, in Mehrabad Airport,
there is a documentary film from CBS, NBC, anyone can
watch it. And the guards, they are standing by with the
radio. The moment Ronald Reagan was president, they
signal the plane, they took off. Why didn't they send
them two days before? Why they didn't wait until the
next day to do it? And after, the shipment of the arms
start from Tel Aviv.
Question: So this is in 1981--
Rafizadeh: '81. 1981, we are talking, not 1985. Now, if anyone is
going to tell me that the government of Israel shipped
arms to Iran without the knowledge or permission of the
United States, I don't believe it.
Perry: Mansur Rafizadeh.
On July 18th, 1981, an Argentine cargo plane crashed on
the Soviet-Turkish border. It was loaded with weapons
in transit from Israel to Iran. High-level Israeli
officials have said that the Reagan administration knew
and approved of the arms dealings the crash exposed.
The cargo of spare parts and ammunition were all
American-made. From reports in the New York Times and
Wall Street Journal, we know of two separate groups of
shipments to Iran in 1981. The first, as we have
already heard, was shipped through Israel with
authorization from the Reagan administration officials.
The second group of arms was shipped by an Iranian-born
arms merchant, Cyrus Hashemi. Hashemi had worked for
the CIA beginning in 1975. He died suddenly of a rare
form of acute leukemia in 1986. Congressional
investigators noted that the CIA has chemical
injections and sprays that can cause such symptoms. One
informant said he was told by U.S. customs officials
that Hashemi had been "bumped off" by government
agents. Private research consultant Barbara Honegger:
Honegger: Mr. Cyrus Hashemi was murdered by government agents
because of his knowledge of the 1981 links; and Mr.
Cyrus Hashemi, before he was murdered, which was in
July of 1986 in London, England, Mr. Hashemi had told
colleagues and associates that the original 1981
shipments were part of necessary arrangements and deals
to accomplish the delay of the release of the original
fifty-two hostages.
Perry: Is it a coincidence that many of the key witnesses to
this entire affair have died under similar and
questionable circumstances? The scandal may be bigger
than anyone imagines. The alleged deal to prevent
President Carter's reelection in 1980 could be the root
of the Contragate scandal. According to an Athens
newspaper account of tapes made of Robert McFarlane,
the U.S. had shipped $1.3 billion worth of military
equipment to Iran by 1986, and a total of $5 billion in
military equipment was promised. As we have heard from
former CIA operative and chief of U.S. SAVAK, Mansur
Rafizadeh, these shipments began in 1981, when there
were no longer any U.S. hostages left in Iran.
Rafizadeh: They are making remarks all the time that we will
disclose those secret tapes, secret information, later
on. And I believe that the Reagan administration is
blackmailed by Khomeini. Because they have so much dirt
going on between them.
Perry: Congressman John Conyers has wondered why Reagan
administration officials approved weapons shipments to
Iran in early 1981. Conyers is probing contacts between
Iran and the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign. The charges
stated in this program, of unlawful activity by Richard
Allen, George Bush, and others, are those of treason.
They require further investigation.
Honegger: These individuals have had an arrogant contempt for the
will of the American people as expressed through the
Congress of the United States, and the laws of the
United States. I know, having been in this White House,
and from my research since, that this contempt for the
rule of law in this country comes because these people
have an erroneous belief that they are serving a
higher law.
Perry: The October Surprise was produced by Eric Schwartz,
Carolyn Selar, and Dale Lewis of The Other Americas
Radio. Interviews were conducted by Robin Stallings and
Paul Cheney. Music for this production was written and
performed by Brian Parris. The Other Americas Radio is
a not-for-profit, independent broadcast group based in
Santa Barbara, California. Executive Producer, Eric
Schwartz. For a free catalog of our taped programs,
please write to: The Other Americas Radio, P.O. Box 85,
Santa Barbara, CA 93102. Audiocassettes of The October
Surprise are available for $8.00. Write to: Box 85,
Santa Barbara, CA 93102. Funding for this presentation
was made possible by contributions from radio listeners
throughout the United States. I'm Jane Perry. This is
The Other Americas Radio.
E-Mail Fredric L. Rice / The Skeptic Tank