by Scott Creighton
Now, why won’t President Bush meet with the Iranians to discuss this situaton? His daddy did (In fact Bush Sr. met with them while they were holding Americans hostage, to discuss selling them Weapons of Mass Destruction).
The story of the “October Surprise” conspiracy is one that is still shrouded in mystery and secrets heaped upon shredded documents. But the story is quite simple to follow;
“The October Surprise conspiracy was an alleged plot that claimed representatives of the 1980 Ronald Reagan presidential campaign had conspired with Islamic Republic of Iran to delay the release of 52 Americans held hostage in Tehran until after the 1980 U.S. Presidential election. In exchange for their cooperation, the United States would supply weapons to Iran as well as unfreeze Iran’s monetary assets being held by the US government.” Wiki, here.
Seems simple enough; the campaign staffers of the Reagan/Bush ’80 team didn’t want the incumbent, President Carter, to make any headway in the negotiations for the release of the hostages before the upcoming elections. The Iranian Hostage Crisis had dragged on for 400+ days at that point, and the negative feelings about it promised to weigh in heavily on Reagan’s behalf in the upcoming elections.
So, as the story goes, members of the Reagan team allegedly met with representatives of Ayatollah Khomeini to hash out a plan that delayed the release of those hostages until after the election.
In fact, the hostages were released 20 minutes after Reagan was sworn in as president.
Now there were several investigations into the “October Surprise” conspiracy. In the Senate, they simply stated that there was not enough evidence to support the prosecution. But the House investigation went much further.
The House investigation concluded that everyone was lying, so therefore Reagan and Bush Sr. were cleared of all wrong-doings. As it just so happens, that investigation was headed up by Lee Hamilton. The same Lee Hamilton who was one of the Co-Chairmen of the 9/11 Commission Report, and the same Lee Hamilton who, after the Iran/Contra Affairs came to light, decided NOT to investigate.
” As chair of the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, Hamilton chose not to investigate President Ronald Reagan or President George H. W. Bush, stating that he did not think it would be “good for the country” to put the public through another impeachment trial.” Wiki, here.
His links to the Bush family and this administration continue even today.
“He sits on many advisory boards, including those to the CIA, the president’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, and the United States Army.“
Although they have succeeded in discrediting most of what Gary Sick had attempted to expose, there are still many key players who have come forward since, that are harder to dismiss:
“Richard Allenwas the Reagan campaign’s foreign policy chief. In 1980, he penned a note claiming that George H.W. Bush had asked him to look into a rumor about the hostages. A “plane-load of former CIA officers” had taken up residence in campaign headquarters, he said in 1980. The “nutballs,” he said, made him decide to work in a separate office.” Wiki, here.
“Barbara Honegger was a member of the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign team and Reagan White House policy analyst. After the 1980 election, Honegger headed Reagan’s gender discrimination agency review before resigning in August, 1983. While working for Reagan she discovered information that made her believe that George H. W. Bush and William Casey had conspired to assure that Iran would not free the U.S. hostages until Jimmy Carter had been defeated in the 1980 presidential election, and she alleges that arms sales to Iran were a part of that bargain.”
“Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, first elected President of Iran after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, claimed in a December 17, 1992 letter to the U.S. Congress, that he had first learned of the Republican “secret deal” in July 1980 after Reza Passendideh, a nephew of 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 [the Republicans] would make the same offer to my [radical Iranian] rivals. He further said that they [the Republicans] have enormous influence in the CIA.”
Beni-Sadr went on to say:
“It is now very clear that there were two separate agreements, one the official agreement with Carter in Algeria, the other, a secret agreement with another party, which, it is now apparent, was Reagan. They made a deal with Reagan that the hostages should not be released until after Reagan became president. So, then in return, Reagan would give them arms. We have published documents which show that US arms were shipped, via Israel, in March, about 2 months after Reagan became president.”
Now, there are all kinds of allegations out there, some put Bush Sr. at high-level meetings in Paris, where this plan was finalized. But one thing is certain; The Reagan Administration continued to trade arms, illegally, to Iran through their Friends in Israel during the Iran-Contra affair.
Ollie North has admitted as much.
And when you look at the facts that surrounded the release of the hostages:
… coupled with the fact that they continued to trade arms to Iran during Iran-Contra, it is hard to dismiss the story of the October Surprise completely.
We all know what Lee Hamilton’s decision not to prosecute bought him, but did you know that one of those “nutballs” that Richard Allen was talking about was Robert Gates?
And just look at what Gates got for his devotion.
William Casey, at the time he headed up Reagan’s campaign and later was appointed to head up the CIA under the Reagan Administration.
Caseys resume included:
“Notably he oversaw covert assistance to the mujahadeen (the rise of Osama bin-Laden and the Taliban)resistance in Afghanistan, with a budget of over $1 billion by working closely with Akhtar Abdur Rahman (the Director General of ISI of Pakistan) (the same ISI that sent $100,000 to M. Otta 10 days before Sept. 11th 2001), the Solidarity movement in Poland, and a number of coups and attempted coups in South- and Central America.
According to a 600-page report by the CIA inspector general, Frederick Hitz, the CIA under Casey was complicit in the Contras’ massive narco-trafficking operation which resulted in the crack epidemic.[5]
Casey was also the principal architect of the arms-for-hostages deal that became known as the Iran-Contra affair.
Hours before Casey was scheduled to testify before Congress about his knowledge of Iran-Contra, he was reported to have been rendered incapable of speech, and was later hospitalized… According to Woodward, when he asked Casey if he knew about the diversion of funds to the Nicaraguan Contras, “His head jerked up hard. He stared, and finally nodded yes.” Wiki, here.
Filed under: democracy, Regime Change Tagged: | gary sick, Iran Contra, Lee Hamilton, october surprise, ollie north, Rober Gates, war with Iran
Don’t leave out or forget one of the more notorious SOB’s in this never ending Wars for Israel saga, Michael Ledeen.
From his days of the Iran-Contra affair, to the yellowcake lies to braying and plotting for the U.S. to fight another of Israel’s “existential” enemies, Iran, Ledeen is one (Fill in your description here) bastard.
Michael Ledeen Demands `Regime Change’ in Iran July 2003
by Scott Thompson
Ledeen’s ideas are quoted daily by such figures as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. His views virtually define the stark departure from American foreign policy philosophy that characterized United States actions since September 11, 2001…. Now Ledeen is calling for ‘regime change’ beyond Iraq. In an address titled ‘Time to Focus on Iran: The Mother of Modern Terrorism,’ for the policy forum of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) on April 30, he declared: “The time for diplomacy is at the end; it is time for a free Iran, a free Syria and free Lebanon.”
—William O. Beeman, “Michael Ledeen: Neoconservative Guru,” in The Daily Star, Beirut, Lebanon, May 9, 2003
The same drumbeat for “regime change” that led to war against Iraq, is now coming from the mouths of Vice President Dick Cheney’s “chicken-hawk” cabal; only now, the target is Iran. This destabilization is being run through U.S. private foundations and think-tanks, to overthrow the government in Iran, and run a destabilization, and/or military strike against Iran’s nuclear energy production facilities.
The pointman is Michael Ledeen, who divides his time among National Review Online, JINSA, and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Ledeen is stirring up the networks in Congress and the press, and lining up tainted intelligence to justify war on Iran.
This is the same Michael Ledeen, who, as a consultant to the Reagan-Bush Administration National Security Council in the mid-1980s, was a pivotal criminal figure in the Iran-Contra fiasco, covertly peddling weapons to the very Ayatollahs whom he is now plotting to overthrow. He is also the same Ledeen who now calls for the United States to wage war against Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Libya because, he alleges, they are all “masters of terror.” Yet in the 1980s, Ledeen was one of the biggest promoters in Washington of the so-called Afghansi mujahideen—including Osama bin Laden—whom he touted as “freedom fighters” and “champions of the democratic struggle against totalitarian communism.”