October Surprise: Top Reagan Backers Persuaded Iran to Hold the Hostages Until after the 1980 Election

[Dante]

Well, we know that Republican officials and campaign staffers believed Carter would win if the hostages were returned before the election. We know that Democrat officials and campaign staffers believed the same thing. Casey and his bunch weren't taking any chances.

Stop posting opinions as fact

 

[mikegriffith1]

Stop posting opinions as fact

They weren't opinions. We now know, and have known for some time, that both Republican and Democrat officials and campaign staffers believed that if the hostages were returned before the election, Carter would likely win the election. That's not an opinion. That's a well-documented--and uncontroversial--fact.

Stop posting inane replies about a subject you haven't studied in the least bit.

 

[Dante]

They weren't opinions. We now know, and have known for some time, that both Republican and Democrat officials and campaign staffers believed that if the hostages were returned before the election, Carter would likely win the election.

again

opinion posing as fact

If you could only swallow your pride on this one and substitute "could" for "would" you'd have something

and "would likely" is more f a possibility, than it is a probability.

see?

officially spanked by Dante

 

[mikegriffith1]

again opinion posing as fact

No, it is a fact that both GOP and Dem officials and campaign staffers believed that if the hostages were returned before the election, Carter would most likely win. This is not opinion. This fact has been discussed in numerous books, in memoirs by both GOP and Dem officials and staffers. Stu Eizenstat mentions this in his book President Carter: The White House Years.

If you could only swallow your pride on this one and substitute "could" for "would" you'd have something. and "would likely" is more of a possibility, than it is a probability.

You'd better check a dictionary. "Likely" is usually the first synonym listed for "probable." "Most likely" is even stronger.

see? officially spanked by Dante

Uh-huh. You might want to get a better handle on the English language before you engage in such juvenile posturing in the future. You've read nothing on the subject of the thread, and all you do is keep making inane comments that have nothing to do with the evidence under discussion.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Speaking of damaging, severely dirty campaign tricks, we should talk about the egregious lie that Jerry Falwell spread in speeches all over the country and on TV ads. Although this dirty trick was not as damaging as Casey's October Surprise deal with the Iranians, it did great damage.

Falwell claimed that in a White House meeting Carter told him he had to have gays on his staff because gays in the U.S. needed representation on his staff. Falwell made this false claim to audiences all over the country. When confronted with a recording of the meeting that proved Carter said no such thing, Falwell admitted he had fabricated the story. Yet, Falwell then helped fund a TV ad that showed a concerned mother telling her child that Carter was a bad man because he encouraged homosexuality.

This lie did great damage to Carter's support among evangelical Christians, a voting block that he had won handily in 1976. The sizable drop in evangelical support cost Carter the states of Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, where he lost by razor-thin margins.

 

[mikegriffith1]

We have two more sources on the effort by Reagan campaign officials to delay the hostages' release until after the election: Ben Barnes, a former conservative Democrat and a former lieutenant governor of Texas, and Joseph Verner Reed, a longtime aide to David Rockefeller and a high-ranking Reagan campaign official who worked closely with William Casey.

Barnes came forward in 2023 to admit that he accompanied John Connally on a visit to Arab leaders in the Middle East when Connally urged those Arab leaders to tell the Ayatollah not to release the hostages until after the election because Iran would get a better deal from Reagan.

Joseph Reed's family released a letter that Reed wrote after the 1980 election in which he bragged that he had "given my all" to ensuring the hostages were not released before the election. Thank goodness someone in Reed's family realized that Reed's actions were nothing to brag about. Also, a former CIA officer overhead Reed talking with Casey about how they had acted to thwart the hostages' return until after the election. Reagan appointed Reed as the U.S. ambassador to Morocco after he took office.

Finally, it is noteworthy that the diplomatic cable from the American Embassy in Madrid that revealed Casey's visit to Madrid stated the embassy did not know why Casey was in Madrid. This is significant because normally when a person of Casey's standing visits a country, the visit is coordinated with the U.S. embassy in that country. Casey was a former high-ranking official in the Nixon and Ford administrations, in addition to being Reagan's campaign manager. Yet, the U.S. Embassy in Madrid had no idea why he was in Madrid.

The 'October Surprise': Inside Carter's Grueling 1980 Iran Hostage Crisis

Today's New York Times story is credible but less significant than recent evidence from Madrid that Ronald Reagan's campaign manager tried to delay releasing the hostages until after the election.

oldgoats.substack.com

Consortiumnews.com

The Consortium is a website dedicated to independent investigative journalism

www.consortiumnews.com

William Casey (Almost) Certainly Delayed the Release of Iran Hostages to Help Reagan

It has long been suspected that Reagan's campaign chief William Casey convinced Iran that they could get a better deal by releasing American hostages after the election of Ronald Reagan. Available documents, recent interviews, and the vast circumstantial evidence present a damning case, argues a...

www.hnn.us