A pro-Reagan operative at the National Security Council stole President Carter’s debate briefing book on foreign policy and delivered it to the Reagan campaign. A subsequent investigation found James Baker’s fingerprints on the book, but a committee suggested William Casey was probably involved in the theft. There was suspicion that Lt. Colonel Oliver North and Major General Richard Secord sabotaged Operation Eagle Claw, the failed rescue mission launched by Carter on April 25, 1980.
According to Mansur Rafizadeh, a secret C.I.A. team directed by William Casey sabotaged the mission.Rafizadeh was a C.I.A. agent who had run SAVAK. Rafizadeh had been a C.I.A. operative for 18-19 years. In his book, he added that the Reagan-Bush people specifically required that the hostages not be released until Reagan was sworn in. They did not want Carter to have any role and opposed return of the hjostages after the election was over.
He also said that people on the C.I.A.’s Iran desk were wildly anti-Carter in 1980. However, it is unthinkable that Americans involved in the rescue effort could have wanted it to fail and there is no good evidence that they did anything to produce this result. Yet, several people who would be closely tied to George H.W. Bush’s black operations in subsequent years were part of the rescue effort. Oliver North was aboard a helicopter near the Turkish border. General Richard Secord was the main planner, and Albert Hakim was involved in ground operations. Hakim fled Baghdad 24 hours before the operation; his job was to obtain ground vehicles. . As is known, only 5 of the eight helicopters got to the site in working condition. The Pentagon review board found astonishing incompetence and negligence in the operation Later, Cynthia Dwyer, who had not yet been taken as the 53rd hostage, told a minister that the C.I.A. deliberately botched the operation.
It is known that the C.I.A. paid for polling by Richard Beale and Richard Wirthlin to learn what would be the effect on Reagan’s lead in the campaign of Carter were to secure the release of the prisoners. The results were swent directly to the Reagan campaign. They confirmed the opinion of some that Reagan must disrupt Carter’s efforts to gain the release of the hostages.
Casey was able to get in touch with the Iranians with the help of the French intelligence service, Count Alexandre de Marenches. Carter had unwittingly sealed his own fate by refusing to trade arms for hostages. However, there is strong evidence that the Israeli’s played a major role in opening dialog between the Republicans and the Iranian government. The Israelis had been asked to sell a limited number of arms to Iran, and they wanted a green light from potentially the next American government to sell more. For that reason, Israeli intelligence sent an Arab merchant with Iranian ties to negotiate with Republican operatives at the L" Enfante Hotel in Washington. He proposed the kind of deal Casey negotiated, except that Israel would immediately begin unlimited arms sales The main Iranian spokesman was Ayatollah Mohanned Baheshti, an aid to Speaker Ransanjani and assistant to Ayatollah Khomeini.
Casey was a hard-bitten capitalistic high-roller with intelligence experience. He knew how possession of power would have positive economic consequences for himself and his friends. Others may have been driven more by ideology. Carrying on 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. One would think that patriots would want the hostages returned as soon as possible and would support the nation’s foreign policy in a time of crisis, even if the president was a Democrat.
What led these people to violate the law overcame any patriotic impulses to carry on their own destructive foreign policy. The best answer is that they were so convinced by their own ideology and attacks on the Democrats that they felt justified in doing anything necessary to restore Republican control of the White House. It was as though elected Democrats automatically lack legitimacy, except when they co-operate in enacting and carrying out Republican policy. There was an op-ed piece and a PBS special outlining the facts in this matter in 1991.
Not one Republican politi C.I.A.n or pundit expressed any interest in the possibility that this may have happened. So-called liberal politicians and journalists showed little interest when it became clear that there was not overwhelming evidence that President George Bush was involved. The Secret Service records for Bush at that time were only partially made available to Congress. Because they were redacted, Bush’s claims to have been in Washington could not be proven.
One agent claimed to have been with the Bushes much of that day, but it was later proven that the agent was jogging along the C and O Canal that day and not on duty. Years later, Yasir Arafat told Jimmy Carter that the Republicans had asked them to help with the arms deal used to keep the hostages captive until after the election. In 1993, Russia Supreme Soviet agreed to give 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. The Russian report added that Robert Gates, then a Carter NSC staffer, was in Paris negotiating on behalf of Reagan and that Casey attended meetings at the Ritz Hotel in Madrid and Paris.
The Russians saw a bidding war between Carter and Reagan for control of release of the hostages, with the Republicans able to disrupt the Carter operation and make a deal with the Iranians. A Congressional task force had just concluded that the Republicans did not interfere in the hostage crisis before the Russian report arrived, and nothing was done to change the Congressional report. Some of the Russian report was based on allegations of former Israeli intelligence official Ari Ben-Menashe. Israel said he had never been a government employee until he produced documents. Then the Israelis simply said he was lying about the October Surprise. The Russian Report was ignored, and ended up in a box of documents in a former ladies room in the Rayburn Building.1
Among other things, Casey promised that Israel would sell some arms and parts to Iran immediately and that they would sell many more after Ronald Reagan became president. The Republicans promised to provide about $5 billion worth of arms. Much later, in May, 1986, McCarlane visited Iran and was taped saying that up until then the Reagan administration had provided 1.3 billion in arms and add3ed that it would provide trhe rest. The Iranians were also promised the return of $12 billion in blocked funds. Prime Minister Menachin 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. Former Iranian president Bani-Sadr was ale to provide investigators with details of the money transferred to Iranians , along with bank account numbers. 2
Showing posts with label October Srprise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label October Srprise. Show all posts
Monday, January 10, 2011
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
THE “SHADOW C.I.A.” AND THE REVENGE OF THE SPOOKS: THE OCTOBER (1980) SURPRISE: Part One
In 1980, Ronald Reagan’s Republican operatives worked with the shadow C.I.A. as well as agents within the Langley based agency and with Iran to frustrate President Jimmy Carter’s efforts to secure the release of 52 hostages. At the very least, they violated laws prohibiting private diplomacy.
Most of the plotters had backgrounds in national security work and believed that Carter had weakened the C.I.A. and was not following a sufficiently strong foreign policy. Neo-Conservatives and some conservatives were embracing the idea that the Soviet Union was using terrorism across the globe to attack the West, and they were angry that Carter did not seem to accept their theory. Once in power, Bill Casey, one of the key figures in this October Surprise, would plant false information in the press to make Lybia look even worse than it really was in order to strengthen the Reagan administration’s anti-terrorism offensive.
The idea that the Soviet Union was promoting terrorism throughout the world developed among some of the right-wing old guard in the C.I.A. in the late 1970s and was forcefully propounded in Claire Sterling’s The Terror Network, the contents of which became an article of faith for right-wingers, including, Reagan, Haig, and Casey. There was very little evidence to support the claim, other than evidence that the Soviets were probably behind the effort to kill John Paul II.
When Director of Intelligence Robert Gates instructed subordinates to flesh out this charge in 1985, there was little evidence to support it, but eventually it developed that his guess was correct. An unbiased observer could claim that the US sponsored more terrorism than the Soviets in the 1980s and probably build a very strong case.
Beginning in 1979, the Department of State began listing states that were involved in sponsoring terrorism. The listing began as part of a serious effort to deal with terrorism. Soon it became the centerpiece of a program to claim that the nation’s enemies, including the Soviets were involved sponsoring terrorism. Claims of about communist state-sponsored terrorism frightened people and were useful in obtaining larger and larger military appropriations. 1
Fifty two Americans were seized by Iranian militants in November, 1979 and were being held as hostages through the 1980 American political campaign. . In the 1980 race for the White House, Republicans heard that the Carter administration might trade plane parts for hostages in Iran. The parts were necessary because Iraq had invaded Iran. F.B.I. wiretaps were to show that Cyrus Hashemi, who was supposed to be helping Carter deal with the Iranians was actually helping the Republicans block Carter and make their own deal. The deal saw large amounts of BCCI money sent into Hashemi’s bank , First Gulf Bank and Trust, sometimes flown into Paris . The F.B.I. followed these transactions because it was looking for drug and arms transactions. When the Reagan administration took power, the wire taps were ended and Hashemi was warned of the activities of US enforcement agencies that concerned him.
Thirteen years later, his older brother Jamshid testified before a Congressional Committee about this, but investigators were blocked from pursuing the matter. The investigators who were Senate employees were even barred by Bob Dole, Mitch McConnell, and Jesse Helms from leaving the District of Columbia to pursue leads. The House side of the investigation was run by a Democrat who had a record of cooperating with Republicans on touchy matters.
Republicans immediately and continuously denounced the possible Carter deal with the Iranians as treasonous. They alerted friendly military officers to keep close tabs on military airports for signs this could occur. Meanwhile, the Republicans secretly negotiated with representatives of a enemy foreign power. Active and former C.I.A. officers and assets played major roles in the deal with Iran. They detested Jimmy Carter for his attempts to reform the agency and were determined to keep him from being reelected. Former C.I.A. men manned round the clock an office at the GOP campaign’s Arlington Operations Center in order to keep tract of developments in Iran.
Years later, in a November 7 interview on the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, former Reagan national security advisor Richard Allen inadvertently revealed 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 it most mainline commentators deny there was a deal. Allen was also to refer to all the former C.I.A. men working in the Bush operation as” a plane load of disgruntled C.I.A." officers "playing cops and robbers." Robert McFarlane also has acknowledged that the October Surprise deal did occur. Mc Farlane eventually told German reporter Martin Kilian that an an Iranian first alerted Senator John Tower that his country was interested in a deal to exchange the hostages. Tower later led an investigation of the Iran/Contra scandal.
McFarlane was then working for Tower and seems to have been the first person to raise the possibility of the Republicans making a separated deal with the Iranians, Outbidding Carter. McFarlane attended the first Washington meeting with an Iranian emissary. Also present were Richard Allen and Lawrence Silverman, a former C.I.A. man, who would later be appointed a federal judge and was to claim that Lawrence Walsh’s investigation of Iran/Contra and Oliver North was unconstitutional.
The talkative McFarlane later told a Greek journalist that the October Surprise involved the promised shipment of $5 billion worth of arms to Iran, and that $1.3 billion worth had been sent by 1986. In 1988, CBS had a documentary on the October Surprise prepared for airing on Sixty Minutes, but it was never shown 2
Republican campaign manager William Casey, a former C.I.A. hand, Edwin Meese, and others successfully negotiated a deal with representatives of the Iranian government to assure that the hostages would not be released while Jimmy Carter was president. Casey had the help of many active and former C.I.A. personnel who resented Carter’s reforms at the agency. Robert Gates, executive assistant to Stansfield Turner leaked word that Carter was negotiating with the Iranians and the Republicans information, and Carter was certain that NSC member Donald Gregg also fed national security information to the Republicans. “Eyes Only” and “ Top Secret” documents from the US embassy in Tehran were found in Reagan’s campaign files. The Gipper simply said he had no idea how they got there.
Some years later, Reagan’s Second Attorney General Richard Thornburgh blocked a Freedom of Information Request to obtain F.B.I. tapes of the conversations of Iranian banker and arms dealer Cyrus Hashemi. Among the tapes were two telephone calls from a Houston lawyer who said he represented vice presidential candidate George H.W. Bush. The first call was about a $3,000,000 payment to Hashemi and the last was about a large payment that was to be made in 1981. They are called the “Pottinger Tapes,” and reveal that a active C.I.A. official was explaining how arms would be shipped to Iran without detection by the Carter government. In 1995, a sworn deposition from senior C.I.A. agent senior C.I.A. officer Charles Cogan was found among discarded papers of the committee that hastily looked into the October Surprise. Cogan told of a meeting at Langley in 1981 at which high ranking Republican visitors bragged about disrupting Jimmy Carter’e efforts to secure the release of the hostages.
Most of the plotters had backgrounds in national security work and believed that Carter had weakened the C.I.A. and was not following a sufficiently strong foreign policy. Neo-Conservatives and some conservatives were embracing the idea that the Soviet Union was using terrorism across the globe to attack the West, and they were angry that Carter did not seem to accept their theory. Once in power, Bill Casey, one of the key figures in this October Surprise, would plant false information in the press to make Lybia look even worse than it really was in order to strengthen the Reagan administration’s anti-terrorism offensive.
The idea that the Soviet Union was promoting terrorism throughout the world developed among some of the right-wing old guard in the C.I.A. in the late 1970s and was forcefully propounded in Claire Sterling’s The Terror Network, the contents of which became an article of faith for right-wingers, including, Reagan, Haig, and Casey. There was very little evidence to support the claim, other than evidence that the Soviets were probably behind the effort to kill John Paul II.
When Director of Intelligence Robert Gates instructed subordinates to flesh out this charge in 1985, there was little evidence to support it, but eventually it developed that his guess was correct. An unbiased observer could claim that the US sponsored more terrorism than the Soviets in the 1980s and probably build a very strong case.
Beginning in 1979, the Department of State began listing states that were involved in sponsoring terrorism. The listing began as part of a serious effort to deal with terrorism. Soon it became the centerpiece of a program to claim that the nation’s enemies, including the Soviets were involved sponsoring terrorism. Claims of about communist state-sponsored terrorism frightened people and were useful in obtaining larger and larger military appropriations. 1
Fifty two Americans were seized by Iranian militants in November, 1979 and were being held as hostages through the 1980 American political campaign. . In the 1980 race for the White House, Republicans heard that the Carter administration might trade plane parts for hostages in Iran. The parts were necessary because Iraq had invaded Iran. F.B.I. wiretaps were to show that Cyrus Hashemi, who was supposed to be helping Carter deal with the Iranians was actually helping the Republicans block Carter and make their own deal. The deal saw large amounts of BCCI money sent into Hashemi’s bank , First Gulf Bank and Trust, sometimes flown into Paris . The F.B.I. followed these transactions because it was looking for drug and arms transactions. When the Reagan administration took power, the wire taps were ended and Hashemi was warned of the activities of US enforcement agencies that concerned him.
Thirteen years later, his older brother Jamshid testified before a Congressional Committee about this, but investigators were blocked from pursuing the matter. The investigators who were Senate employees were even barred by Bob Dole, Mitch McConnell, and Jesse Helms from leaving the District of Columbia to pursue leads. The House side of the investigation was run by a Democrat who had a record of cooperating with Republicans on touchy matters.
Republicans immediately and continuously denounced the possible Carter deal with the Iranians as treasonous. They alerted friendly military officers to keep close tabs on military airports for signs this could occur. Meanwhile, the Republicans secretly negotiated with representatives of a enemy foreign power. Active and former C.I.A. officers and assets played major roles in the deal with Iran. They detested Jimmy Carter for his attempts to reform the agency and were determined to keep him from being reelected. Former C.I.A. men manned round the clock an office at the GOP campaign’s Arlington Operations Center in order to keep tract of developments in Iran.
Years later, in a November 7 interview on the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, former Reagan national security advisor Richard Allen inadvertently revealed 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 it most mainline commentators deny there was a deal. Allen was also to refer to all the former C.I.A. men working in the Bush operation as” a plane load of disgruntled C.I.A." officers "playing cops and robbers." Robert McFarlane also has acknowledged that the October Surprise deal did occur. Mc Farlane eventually told German reporter Martin Kilian that an an Iranian first alerted Senator John Tower that his country was interested in a deal to exchange the hostages. Tower later led an investigation of the Iran/Contra scandal.
McFarlane was then working for Tower and seems to have been the first person to raise the possibility of the Republicans making a separated deal with the Iranians, Outbidding Carter. McFarlane attended the first Washington meeting with an Iranian emissary. Also present were Richard Allen and Lawrence Silverman, a former C.I.A. man, who would later be appointed a federal judge and was to claim that Lawrence Walsh’s investigation of Iran/Contra and Oliver North was unconstitutional.
The talkative McFarlane later told a Greek journalist that the October Surprise involved the promised shipment of $5 billion worth of arms to Iran, and that $1.3 billion worth had been sent by 1986. In 1988, CBS had a documentary on the October Surprise prepared for airing on Sixty Minutes, but it was never shown 2
Republican campaign manager William Casey, a former C.I.A. hand, Edwin Meese, and others successfully negotiated a deal with representatives of the Iranian government to assure that the hostages would not be released while Jimmy Carter was president. Casey had the help of many active and former C.I.A. personnel who resented Carter’s reforms at the agency. Robert Gates, executive assistant to Stansfield Turner leaked word that Carter was negotiating with the Iranians and the Republicans information, and Carter was certain that NSC member Donald Gregg also fed national security information to the Republicans. “Eyes Only” and “ Top Secret” documents from the US embassy in Tehran were found in Reagan’s campaign files. The Gipper simply said he had no idea how they got there.
Some years later, Reagan’s Second Attorney General Richard Thornburgh blocked a Freedom of Information Request to obtain F.B.I. tapes of the conversations of Iranian banker and arms dealer Cyrus Hashemi. Among the tapes were two telephone calls from a Houston lawyer who said he represented vice presidential candidate George H.W. Bush. The first call was about a $3,000,000 payment to Hashemi and the last was about a large payment that was to be made in 1981. They are called the “Pottinger Tapes,” and reveal that a active C.I.A. official was explaining how arms would be shipped to Iran without detection by the Carter government. In 1995, a sworn deposition from senior C.I.A. agent senior C.I.A. officer Charles Cogan was found among discarded papers of the committee that hastily looked into the October Surprise. Cogan told of a meeting at Langley in 1981 at which high ranking Republican visitors bragged about disrupting Jimmy Carter’e efforts to secure the release of the hostages.
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