Irangate and Secret Arms-for-Hostage Deal

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

RE: MAJOR MEDIA RELEASES STORY ON ORIGINS OF IRANGATE IN SECRET ARMS-FOR-HOSTAGE-DELAY DEAL BETWEEN IRAN AND THE 1980 REAGAN PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

THE NATION (June 20, 1987 & July 4, 1987); IN THESE TIMES (June 24-July 7, 1987); MIAMI HERALD (April 12, 1987); SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER (April 12 & 25 (from LONDON OBSERVER) & July 15,1987); L.A. WEEKLY, March 27-APRIL 2,1987; HAVE JUST PUBLISHED ARTICLES DOCUMENTING THE SECRET DEAL BETWEEN IRAN AND THE 1980 REAGAN-BUSH PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: A REAGAN PROMISE OF ARMS AFTER INAUGURATION FOR IRAN’S PROMISE TO DELAY RELEASE OF THE 52 AMERICAN HOSTAGES UNTIL AFTER THE NOV. 4, 1980 ELECTION – AND THEN FURTHER TO INAUGURATION DAY – TO ENSURE A CARTER DEFEAT.

By Barbara Honegger, White House Policy Analyst, 1981-82
Updated with input from former SAVAK Chief, Mansur Rafizadeh, June 1987

There is growing evidence from a number of major sources, cited below, that the 1980 Reagan-Bush Presidential Campaign actively interfered with Carter’s attempts to free the 52 American hostages in Iran: by dealing with Khomeini’s regime to delay release of the hostages until after the November 4th election in exchange for a promise of arms after inauguration, and by secretly aiding and abetting sabotage of the April 24, 1980 desert rescue attempt. That growing body of evidence, with all citations, follows.

On April 12, 1987, Knight-Ridder newspapers – including the Miami Herald and San Jose Mercury News – ran headline accounts of a secret meeting in early October 1980 between a claimed emissary of the Khomeini government and the chief foreign policy adviser of the Reagan-Bush Presidential Campaign, Richard V. Allen, at which a deal was discussed to hold the hostages until after the election ensuring Carter’s defeat. Also at the meeting were Allen’s aide, Laurence Silberman, and Robert McFarlane, then an aide to Senator John Tower of the Senate Armed Services Committee and later Reagan’s third National Security Adviser and a key figure in Irangate. An earlier but less detailed report of this same meeting ran in the Washington Post on November 29, 1986 (Robert Woodward and Walter Pincus). The meeting took place in a Washington, D.C. hotel not long after the Reagan Campaign had learned, in late September 1980, that President Carter was negotiating for a pre-election release of the 52 hostages (Peter Hannaford, The Reagans: A Political Portrait, p. 285). Allen wrote a memo summarising the meeting, which he now alleges he cannot find; and his answers to questions posed by the Miami Herald make it likely that Reagan and his Campaign Manager, William Casey, were briefed on the meeting after the fact.

Iran’s President during the hostage crisis, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, has confirmed that two of Khomeini’s closest advisers dealt with the Reagan Campaign: Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, then Interior Minister and now Speaker of Iran’s Parliament, later intimately involved in Irangate; and Ayatollah Mohammed Beheshti, then a member of the ruling Iranian Revolutionary Council (Miami Herald, San Jose Mercury News, April 12, 1987). Bani-Sadr said that the deal discussed was to delay release of the 52 hostages until after Reagan became president – both to defeat Carter and to claim false credit for the hostage release to mark the beginning of a “Reagan era.” Bani-Sadr said that following the November 4, 1980 election, top levels of Reagan’s Transition team dealt with these same Iranian representatives to delay release of the hostages until inauguration day, 1981 (San Jose Mercury News, same cite).

There is also evidence that the 1980 Reagan campaign did not just respond to an offer from Khomeini’s representatives, but initiated the deal with Iran to ensure Carter’s defeat at the polls. Captain Gary Sick, Carter’s Iran expert at the National Security Council throughout the hostage crisis, has publicly noted that the Carter White House was aware during the 1980 campaign that “one group attempted to initiate a swap of military parts for the 52 hostages through an individual close to one of the presidential candidates” (All Fall Down, by Gary Sick, Note, p. 422).

Though Allen, Silberman and McFarlane now allege that Reagan and Khomeini did not cut a deal to effectively fix the 1980 election, considerable evidence – some of it from Richard V. Allen himself -supports quite the opposite conclusion, opening the possibility that the Reagan government is illegitimate.

Reagan’s chief campaign adviser on foreign policy in 1980, Richard V. Allen, commented on a major national television news program about “the deal” between Reagan and Khomeini. On November 7, 1986, only a few days after news of Irangate broke, Allen recalled on the MacNeil-Lehrer Hour that on the day after Reagan’s first inauguration – on January 21, 1981 – Allen, who then had just become National Security Adviser, informed Reagan that the wife of a former classmate of Allen’s, Mrs. Cynthia Dwyer, was still being held in Iran – the “53rd hostage”. Mrs. Dwyer, who had been taken captive in May of 1980, was not among the 52 hostages who had then just been released. Allen told the MacNeil-Lehrer audience that Reagan responded, “Get the word out that the deal is off” unless she’s also released (see attached transcript).

It is vital to recognise that this “deal” Reagan referred to in his response to Richard Allen on January 21, 1981 could only have been an agreement between himself and Khomeini, not between Carter and Khomeini. By the time Reagan made this remark to Allen, all aspects of President Carter’s deal with Khomeini had already been consummated: The 52 American hostages had left Iranian soil and billions of dollars in Iranian funds had already been unfrozen and electronically deposited in an account in Iran (All Fall Down, by Gary Sick). Reagan therefore must have been referring to a separate deal between himself and Khomeini, his own deal – in all likelihood the completion of an agreement originally discussed at the secret October 1980 meeting between his top foreign policy adviser, Richard V. Allen, and the Iranian emissary.

There is additional evidence from inside the Reagan Campaign that Richard Allen was in fact involved in negotiating a pre-election deal with the Khomeini regime to delay release of the hostages until after the election. According to a Reagan Campaign aide on the Research Staff for the candidate’s plane whose duties required her to be in the campaign national headquarter’s “Operations Center” communications centre in Arlington, Virginia, on or around October 24-25, 1980, at approximately 11:05 p.m. a jubilant staffer said, “We don’t have to worry about an October Surprise (the Reagan Campaign’s code name for a pre-election release of the hostages). Dick cut a deal.” The staffer insists that “Dick” could only have referred to Richard V. Allen (“Larry King Live,” Dec. 4, 1986, phone-in call from 1980 Reagan Campaign aide Barbara Honegger.) In response to a question from King, King’s live guest the night of the Honegger call-in, Carter’s former White House Chief of Staff, Hamilton Jordan, said, “I have no information that would contradict what she has just said.”

If Reagan and/or Richard Allen contacted Iran on January 21, 1981, as Allen implied in the MacNeil-Lehrer interview cited above, threatening to break off “the deal” with Iran unless Cynthia Dwyer was released, a record of that phone call, or other communication, may still exist. After Irangate broke, Larry Speakes, then White House spokesman, revealed at a press briefing that some presidentially-initiated phone calls to foreign heads of state are recorded using a “patching system” onto an audio tape machine in the White House basement Situation Room. On November 28, 1986 Speakes said the White House would make any such taped records available to official investigators (San Francisco Chronicle). As of April 13, 1987, the Washington Post reported that both the House and Senate Committees investigating Irangate and Special Investigator Lawrence Walsh have requested new documents and evidence dating back to the beginning of Reagan’s first presidential term – that is, to the very day that Richard Allen has reported Reagan told him to “get the word out that the deal’s off” unless hostage Cynthia Dwyer was also freed, and when a tape recording of a call to Iran may have been made. According to a memo by White House Counsel Arthur B. Culvahouse, Jr., a new White House records search in response to the Congressional and Walsh requests, to determine the true origins of Reagan’s arms-and-hostages dealings with Iran, includes a search for all relevant audio tape recordings (Washington Post, 4/13/87).

If Reagan’s side of a pre-election deal with Khomeini was to explicitly or tacitly authorise secret Israeli and/or “private” arms shipments to Iran once in the presidency, and if he ordered that Iran be informed the day after his inauguration that the deal was off unless Mrs. Dwyer was released, as Allen told MacNeil-Lehrer, it should be expected that clandestine arms shipments did flow to Iran, but not until Mrs. Dwyer was released. In fact, this appears to be the case. Mrs. Dwyer was not released until February 9, 1981 – after Secretary of State Alexander Haig said that the outcome of her case would affect U.S. policy toward Iran (In These Times, June 24-July 7, 1987, p. 13) – and Israel began secret shipments of U.S. arms and spare parts to Iran, approved by Haig, immediately after, in mid-February/March 1981 (San Jose Mercury News, 4/12/87, p.21; Miami Herald, 4/12/87; Los Angeles Times, 1/25/87). Future investigations should determine the exact relative dates of Mrs. Dwyer’s release in Iran and the first U.S.-approved Israeli shipments of weapons and spare parts to that country.

Once Mrs. Dwyer was released, Administration-approved arms shipments started flowing to Iran from Israel and continued for approximately 10 months – plausibly as Reagan’s part of a pre-election deal with Khomeini. In January 1981, Reagan’s first Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, met with Israeli Defence Minister Ariel Sharon to discuss the upcoming arms shipments to Iran (Newsweek, 12/8/86). According to a close Haig associate, permission for the shipments came through Robert McFarlane, then counsellor to Haig at the Department of State – the very man who had arranged the secret October 1980 meeting between Reagan’s foreign policy chief Allen and the Iranian emissary to discuss the deal that the shipments would fulfil (Washington Post, 11/29/86). On February 20, 1981, Haig was briefed on the proposed Israeli sales of U.S.-made arms to Iran for his meeting with then Israeli Foreign Minister, Yitshak Shamir. According to the written minutes of the meeting, Haig gave approval for the shipments (Newsweek, 12/8/86; Wall Street Journal, 12/12/86, p.54), after having said publicly that the resolution of Mrs. Dwyer’s case would affect U.S. policy toward Iran. According to the Washington Times (December 16, 1986, p. 10 A), Michael Ledeen, then State Department consultant to Haig and McFarlane, and Howard Teicher, chief of politico military affairs for the National Security Council, also supported the approval of the Israeli shipments of U.S. arms to Iran that then began in February of 1981. Both men were also later centrally involved in Irangate.

At the end of the first ten months of American arms shipments, Israeli Defence Minister Ariel Sharon travelled to Washington to ask Secretary of Defense Weinberger for a continuation, who reportedly said no. Sharon then went to Haig who had McFarlane handle the matter. McFarlane spoke with Israeli official Kimche and shortly another $10-$15 million in military spare parts and fighter plane tyres moved from Israel to Iran (Wall Street Journal, December 12, 1986; Washington Post, November 29, 1986).

There can be no question that the Reagan Administration knew what it was approving in those first ten months of his first term. In a May 1982 interview with the Washington Post, Israeli Defence Minister Ariel Sharon said that Israel had informed the Administration in advance of each of its 1981 arms shipments to Iran and that the U.S. did not object: “We gave them (the Reagan Administration) the lists. They knew exactly (what was being sent),” Sharon told the Post.

In the first ten months of the Reagan presidency, a second series of U.S.-made arms shipments to Iran occurred simultaneously or near-simultaneously with the Administration-approved Israeli shipments, organised by Iranian exile Cyrus Hashemi. According to the Los Angeles Times (June 12/13, 1987), Hashemi claimed that the 1981-to-early-1982 arms sales “were part of an effort necessary to get the (original 52) hostages released.” Claiming to be a cousin of Iranian Parliamentary Speaker Rafsanjani (though this alleged blood relationship is questioned by former SAVAK chief Mansur Rafizadeh) who (Rafsanjani) had been involved in reported pre-election and pre-inauguration dealings with the Reagan Campaign, Hashemi offered to open back channels to obtain release of the 52 hostages in 1980, and in 1981 oversaw the second series of U.S. arms shipments to Iran in the first ten months of Reagan’s presidency (Washington Times, 12/17/86; San Francisco Chronicle, 1/6/87, from the Washington Post Wire). The Administration knew of and made no effort to stop the shipments (Washington Times, 12/17/86). Because of their timing, the Hashemi shipments may have been part of a Reagan Campaign quid-pro-quo for Iran’s delaying release of the 52 hostages, ensuring Carter’s defeat. According to the Los Angeles Times cited above, a U.S. government informant who worked closely with Hashemi said that U.S. Customs officials informed him that Hashemi was murdered by government agents to prevent him from talking about the link.

A September 16, 1986 affidavit by Paul R.Grand, attorney for former Khashoggi counsel Samuel Evans in a New York arms sales conspiracy case related to Irangate, contends that the 1981 Hashemi shipments had been secretly approved by the Carter Administration (Washington Times, 12/17/87). This, however, is extremely unlikely. First, ex-President Carter has denied categorically authorising or sending any arms to Iran during his term in office (ABC News, Feb. 11, 1987). Second, though Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, has stated in his memoirs that Carter did secretly offer Iran weapons for the freedom of the 52 hostages, Brzezinski also notes that the attempt failed because the Israelis were already selling arms and F-4 tyres to Iran, effectively sabotaging the effort (Time, July 25, 1983, p. 27). Those Israeli arms shipments to Iran had in fact begun after the May 9, 1979 execution of the leader of the Jewish community in Tehran, Habib Elkanian (Los Angeles Times, Nov. 22, 1986), and were discovered by U.S. intelligence and reported to Carter in the spring of 1980, (Jody Powell, syndicated column, Houston Post, Jan. 14, 1987; San Francisco Examiner, January 16, 1987). Carter’s attempt to bargain arms for hostages with Iran in October 1980 therefore failed because competing Israeli shipments were still ongoing. In October 1980, as he was attempting to bargain with Iran, the CIA detected the latest Israeli shipment of arms from the port of Eilat, which caused Carter to “go off the wall”. (LA Times, 11/22/86 and All Fall Down, by Gary Sick). Secretary of State Muskie complained about the sales – of spare tyres, wheel and brake assemblies for Iran’s American-made F-4 Phantom fighter jets – to Prime Minister Begin. Begin at first denied the shipments, but, when given an ultimatum by Carter to cease and desist, acknowledged the tyre deliveries and promised that they would be stopped. Though the F-4 part deliveries were stopped, U.S. intelligence sources told Time magazine that Israel continued to sell tank parts and ammunition to Iran through the election in direct contravention of Carter’s ban, thereby scotching his attempt to deal with Iran directly (Time, July 25, 1983, p.27). It wasn’t until immediately after the election that a top official of the key Israeli lobby, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, Morris Amitay, approached Reagan’s foreign policy adviser Richard Allen about resuming sales of the F-4 wheel and brake assemblies stopped by President Carter (San Francisco Chronicle, 11/29/86, from the Washington Post Wire).

For all of the above reasons, it is unlikely that Paul Grand’s affidavit in the above-mentioned New York criminal case related to Irangate, is accurate – i.e. that Carter secretly initiated Cyrus Hashemi’s arms shipments to Iran, which continued some 10 months into the Reagan presidency. It is far more likely that the Hashemi shipments were initiated by the CIA, plausibly in conjunction with the secret “intelligence operation” inside the Reagan Campaign (see below).

Later, in 1985, Cyrus Hashemi was also intimately involved in laying the foundation for Reagan’s Irangate deals. In June 1985 he met with Iranian go-between Manucher Ghorbanifar, Saudi businessman Adnan Khashoggi, and Casey associate Roy Furmark in Hamburg, West Germany at the very beginning of discussions on the Irangate deals, and the next month, July 1985, met with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Khashoggi when they first discussed the same deals (San Francisco Chronicle, 1/6/87, from Washington Post Wire). Shortly before his death in July 1986 – which many believe to have been murder (Executive Intelligence Review, August 1, 1986, p. 47; Los Angeles Times, June 12/13, 1987) – Hashemi also offered to help the government gain release of the American hostages in Lebanon, and was allegedly working with the Administration on a sting operation which resulted in the above-mentioned New York arms conspiracy case when he suddenly died (Washington Times, 12/17/86).

If Reagan, Richard Allen and William Casey did cut a secret deal with Iran in October 1980 to delay release of the 52 hostages until after the election in exchange for authorising U.S. arms shipments to Iran after inauguration, one would expect the Iranians to have dropped their initial demands for arms to the Carter Administration. That is, if a future Reagan Administration had bound itself to authorise weapons shipments, Iran could afford to drop that part of its demands to Carter and focus on unfreezing its financial assets. In fact, this is precisely what happened. Early in the negotiations between the Carter Administration and Iran, Iran insisted on receiving the $300 million worth of weapons and military spare parts that it had purchased under the Shah and was still owed by the United States.

On October 10, 1980, Carter received a demand from Iran, through Germany, for an inventory of all the military goods the Shah had already paid for; and on October 11, 1980, Carter’s Iran crisis core group drafted a message for his approval offering Iran a package of aircraft and spare parts that could be made available upon the safe release of the 52 hostages (All Fall Down, by Gary Sick, p. 369-370). After that date – and probably just after the Washington, D.C. meeting between Reagan’s campaign representatives and Iran’s emissary – Iran suddenly and inexplicably changed its tune 180 degrees, leaving all discussion of military shipments completely out of its demands (All Fall Down, above cite). By October 22, 1980, Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Ali Rajai explicitly excluded shipments of military equipment and spare parts from playing any role in the negotiations with Carter for release of the hostages (All Fall Down, by Gary Sick, pp. 371-372).

Similarly, if the Reagan Campaign cut a deal with Iran to hold the 52 hostages until after the 1980 election, one would expect there to have been a significant change in the date Iran was prepared to release the hostages. In fact, there was such a major change. On Sept. 9, 1980, when Rafsanjani, Khomeini’s son Ahmed, and Ahmed’s son-in-law Sadegh Tabatabai first met to outline Iran’s demands to free the hostages, their release was planned by -that is, on or before – election day, November 4, 1980 (All Fall Down, by Gary Sick, p. 364). To do so, however, would have given Carter his “October Surprise”, which the Reagan Campaign feared as certain defeat. Within a month, Reagan’s top aides were meeting in Washington with an Iranian emissary to discuss delaying release of the hostages until after the election.

It is probably no coincidence that the very men involved in and knowledgeable about the secret October 1980 discussions between the Iranian emissary and the Reagan Campaign moved into precisely those positions in the new Reagan government from which to authorise U.S. arms sales implementing the deal. Richard V. Allen, the principal participant in the original October 1980 meeting with the Iranian emissary, became Reagan’s first National Security Advisor. Robert McFarlane, also a participant in the October 1980 meeting, became Counsellor to Secretary of State Alexander Haig, from which post he encouraged Haig to approve Israel’s shipments of U.S.-made arms to Iran in the first 10 months of the Reagan presidency. From his post as the new Director of the CIA, Reagan’s former Campaign Manager, William Casey, made no effort to halt Cyrus Hashemi’s U.S.-made arms sales to Iran in the first 10 months of the Reagan presidency (Washington Times, 12/17/86). Michael Ledeen, later involved in initiating the Irangate deals, became Special Adviser at the Department of State reporting to McFarlane, from which post he too encouraged Haig’s approval of the Israeli shipments. When Ledeen was asked by Barbara Walters on ABC’s “Nightline” (12/18/86) whether he was present at the “original 1985 meeting” on the Irangate deals, he cryptically answered that “There is some question as to how early the ‘first meetings’ were”. Richard Secord became Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Near East and South Asia, the chief Middle East arms sales adviser to Secretary of Defense Weinberger, from which post he was positioned to authorise the Israeli arms shipments out of the Pentagon. Secord had also headed planning for the sabotaged (see below) Desert One/Eagleclaw hostage rescue attempt in April 1980 (Secord’s testimony in the Irangate hearings; San Jose Mercury News) playing directly to Reagan’s benefit in the campaign for the presidency. Oliver North, who had worked with Secord and the CIA in Laos, worked with him again on the Saudi AWACS vote and was quickly moved to the National Security Council in August 1981 after only a year at the Naval War College (Wall Street Journal, 12/12/86, p.54; Chicago Tribune, 3/15/87). From this post at the NSC, North discovered the possibly-planted $1,000 in Richard V. Allen’s safe resulting in Allen’s forced early exit as NSC Adviser and then inherited Allen’s safe (Time, 1/5/87, p.45). As a result of North’s “find”, William Clark, inexperienced in foreign affairs, moved into Allen’s position as NSC Adviser, quickly bringing McFarlane and Donald Fortier from the Department of State to work hand-in-glove with North. As Senate Committee aides, McFarlane and Fortier had worked closely together when McFarlane arranged the original October 1980 meeting between Richard Allen and the Iranian emissary.

Richard Allen, Laurence Silberman and Robert McFarlane allege to have no recollection of the identity of the Iranian emissary with whom they met in October 1980 to discuss a deal to release the 52 hostages on Reagan’s terms and timing. This is not believable. It is more likely that they are unwilling to reveal his identity because to do so would make the link to Reagan’s later Irangate deals all too clear. From information now available, three likely candidates emerge for the Iranian who met with Reagan campaign aide Richard V. Allen and McFarlane in October 1980:

1. Cyrus Hashemi Hashemi, at the time, 1980, fitted the description given by the Washington Post (11/29/86) of the go-between who met with Richard Allen and McFarlane in October 1980: “a high-level Iranian exile”. He was a former banker (President of the now-defunct First Gulf Bank and Trust); a claimed cousin of Iranian leader Rafsanjani (Los Angeles Times, 12/28/86; this alleged blood relationship is questioned, however, by former SAVAK chief, Mansur Rafizadeh, personal communication); with ties to the CIA (Washington Times, 12/17/86); to Israeli Irangate dealer David Kimche and Ariel Sharon (Israeli publication DAVAR, Nov. 24, 1986); to Israeli intelligence (DAVAR, 11/24/86) and partner with Irangate money man, Adnan Khashoggi in the World Trade Group (Los Angeles Times, Dec. 28, 1986, “The Iran Deception”). As Hashemi offered to set up back channels to Iran in 1980 (Washington Times, 12/17/86), claimed to have done so and sold U.S. arms to Iran in 1981 and 1982 as part of a deal to obtain release of the 52 hostages (Los Angeles Times Wire, in San Jose Mercury News, June 13, 1987, p.21A), and was close to Israelis Kimche and Sharon who arranged for Haig’s authorisation of Israel’s arms shipments to Iran in February 1981 following Mrs. Dwyer’s release, Hashemi is the prime candidate for the Iranian who met with Allen and McFarlane in October 1980 – which may explain his reported murder by government agents to prevent him from talking (above cite, San Jose Mercury News). Before his death in London on July 21, 1986, Hashemi was in contact with Oliver North’s Irangate network (Jack Anderson column, Jan. 26, 1987; San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 6, 1987, from the Washington Post Wire). As noted earlier, the Reagan Administration knew of Hashemi’s shipments of U.S.-made arms to Iran in the first 10 months of Reagan’s first term, and did nothing to stop them. Only years later, in July 1984, was Hashemi indicted by the Reagan Justice Department for the 1981 shipments, but the CIA intervened, and Hashemi’s attorney, Elliot Richardson, argues that, had he lived and had the charges against him not subsequently been dropped, Hashemi’s defence would have been that the 1981 shipments were authorised by the CIA – i.e. by William Casey, Reagan’s 1980 Campaign Manager (Washington Times, 12/17/86).
2. Manucher Gorbanifar A second likely candidate for the man who met with McFarlane and Richard Allen in early October 1980 to offer the Reagan Campaign a deal to release the 52 hostages after the election is Manucher Gorbanifar, who later figured prominently in the Irangate deals as go-between inside Iran. We know that Gorbanifar was likely in contact with the Reagan Campaign and/or Reagan post-election Transition Team before Reagan’s January 20, 1981 inauguration because a key piece of disinformation for which Gorbanifar has been identified as the primary source – that Gadhafi was planning to assassinate Reagan in 1981 – was the key topic at Reagan’s first National Security Council meeting on his first full day in office – January 21, 1981 (San Jose Mercury News, Seymour Hersh), the same day Reagan told Richard V. Allen, his new NSC Adviser, to tell Iran that “the deal is off” unless Mrs Dwyer was released. The second major topic at that first NSC meeting was Iran (Washington Post, 2/20/87).In late 1980, according to ex-SAVAK Chief and CIA double agent Mansur Rafizadeh, retired CIA agent George Cave, then once again under CIA contract, asked Rafizadeh if Gorbanifar could help to gain the release of the 52 hostages through “back channels” (Time, Feb. 2, 1987, p. 22). Cave was later involved in the May 1986 trip with McFarlane to Iran arranged on the Iranian end by Gorbanifar.
3. Albert Hakim A third likely candidate for the man who met secretly in October 1980 with Reagan Campaign aides and McFarlane is Richard Secord’s business partner, Albert Hakim. At the time of that meeting, Hakim was an Iranian citizen living outside his country and so fitted the Washington Post’s description (11/29/86) of the emissary as a “high-level Iranian exile.” Hakim did not become a naturalised American citizen until 1983 (San Jose Mercury News, Jan. 31, 1987; other reports, however, say Hakim became a naturalised citizen in 1984).

The October Surprise Group and the Iran Deal

“October Surprise” was the code-name the top levels of the 1980 Reagan Campaign gave to the dreaded possibility that Carter might bring the 52 hostages home before the election, and win due to a last-minute gratitude vote. As early as March 1980, Richard Wirthlin, Reagan’s pollster, had determined that an absolute condition of a Reagan victory was that an “October Surprise” not happen (Hidden Power, by Roland Perry, pp. 123 and 124). Using the Campaign’s sophisticated computerised polling forecasting system called PINS, he had calculated that Carter would pick up 5-6 extra percentage points if he brought the hostages home at any time before the election, and a whopping 10 percentage points – for a dreaded sure victory – if he could bring them home during a crucial window of opportunity that opened between October 18 and October 25, 1980 (Hidden Power, by Roland Perry, p.144). In response to this finding, in August 1980 Wirthlin ordered his assistant, Richard Beal, to work up a counter strategy to an “October Surprise” (Hidden Power, by Roland Perry, p.124), and, by the time of the October 1980 meeting between Richard Allen and the Iranian emissary about a deal to delay release of the hostages, Richard Allen had been appointed to head Reagan’s crucial, 10-man “October Surprise Group” (San Jose Mercury News, 4/12/87, p. 21A; Albosta Committee Report on the Carter Debate Briefing book investigation, Vol. I, pp. 47-48; and New York Times, Oct. 7, 1980).

Though it may seem unlikely in retrospect in light of the 1980 Reagan landslide, in October 1980 the Reagan Campaign appeared to be in jeopardy. The candidates had been in a dead heat since Labor Day. Carter had assaulted Reagan on “war and peace” issues and a serious Reagan gaffe on pollution had focused press attention on his intellectual qualifications for the presidency. Because Wirthlin had determined that a clear win in a debate, which Reagan could also lose, would give Reagan at most only a 1 to 2 percentage point boost, and because Reagan at the time was only predicted at 6-7 percentage points ahead of Carter projected for election day, when Reagan Campaign leaders met on October 16 and 17 to decide whether or not to debate Carter, it had to be clear to all concerned that if Carter could return the hostages, Reagan should not debate (Hidden Power, by Roland Perry, p. 144). Yet the decision made at that meeting was to debate. The clear deduction is that the leadership of the Reagan Campaign, at least as early as the October 16/17 decision to debate, was acting with confidence that the hostage release would be delayed until after the election. At this point, Richard Allen, leader of the “October Surprise” Group, and Robert McFarlane had met with the Iranian emissary to discuss precisely such an arrangement.

Further confirmation that the inner circle of the Reagan Campaign had certain knowledge – probably from its own dealing – that Iran was not going to release the hostages until after the election comes from William Casey’s comments at the Thursday, October 30, 1980 morning meeting of the “October Surprise” group. With Casey (Reagan’s Campaign Manager), Ed Meese, campaign “intelligence operation” acting head Admiral Robert Garrick, Pete Daily (Reagan’s ad man), and Richard Wirthlin (Reagan’s pollster) in attendance, Wirthlin reported that the just-completed October 28 debate had brought Reagan up only 2 percentage points in the polls projected for election day, for a total projected 7-point lead, but that because an “October Surprise” could still bring Carter 5-6 percentage points, Reagan might lose the election. At this point in the conversation, Campaign Manager William Casey dispelled any concern on account of an October Surprise: “Well, (if Carter wins) it won’t be because of the hostages (release)!” (Hidden Power, by Roland Perry, p.153). It is vital to realise that Casey could not have said and meant what he said given Wirthlin’s projections, which every participant in that meeting placed ultimate confidence in from experience, unless he had certain knowledge that Iran could not or would not release the hostages until after the election – precisely the claimed offer the Iranian emissary had made to Richard Allen, head of the “October Surprise” Group.

Though it would not have ensured a debate victory, the decision by the Reagan Campaign to debate would have been positively affected if its leadership knew at the October 16/17 meetings what Carter was going to say in the debate. In fact, Carter’s 100-page debate briefing book had been obtained from a Carter White House mole and brought into the Reagan Campaign by one of a tight group of ex-CIA agents working for Reagan-Bush, several of whom had come with debate team director Jim Baker from the Bush side of the campaign and were working with Casey’s “Intelligence Operation” (Hidden Power, by Roland Perry, p.144). It is therefore likely that Carter’s debate briefing book was an unexpected windfall of the “October Surprise” intelligence operation, whose primary purpose was to obtain information from inside the Carter White House about the President’s hostage rescue and negotiation plans.

The Reagan Campaign’s “Intelligence Operation” and Sabotage of the Desert One Rescue Attempt

It is well known that Ronald Reagan owes his election victory in 1980 to public revulsion at Carter’s perceived weakness in the continuing Iranian hostage crisis. This sense of weakness stemmed from three major sources: Carter’s lack of success in the negotiations to bring the hostages home, his loss of the October debate, and the failure of his April 1980 attempt to rescue the hostages. To this point, we have reviewed evidence that the Reagan Campaign actually created the grounds for Carter’s failures and perceived weaknesses in the first two instances: in all likelihood cutting a treasonous secret deal with Khomeini agents to delay the hostage’s release until after the election, and using stolen debate briefing books to gain an illegal and unfair advantage over Carter in the October debate.

We must now ask whether the Reagan Campaign might have gone so far as to actively participate in sabotaging Carter’s attempt to rescue the hostages. Considerable information points in that direction, in particular a number of links between Reagan Campaign Manager William Casey’s “intelligence operation” and the secret group of covert military and intelligence operatives involved in planning and executing the “failed” rescue attempt. Details of those links follow. But first, some necessary background.

1. The EagleClaw/Desert One Rescue-Intelligence Operation: Secret CIA LinksDuring the 1979-80 hostage crisis, the U.S. Army set up a special “Intelligence Support Activity” unit in Iran that was so secret many of Carter’s top CIA officials did not know of its existence (Rebel, Jan. 1984). The key mission of the new, top-secret “Intelligence Support Activity” (ISA) team was Operation Eagleclaw – the classified code name for the failed, and probably sabotaged, attempt by President Carter to rescue the 52 American hostages beginning with a three-helicopter landing in the desert some 200 miles outside of Tehran in April 1980. The more public name for the Operation was “Desert One”. Eagleclaw’s Air Force component was from the Air Force Office of Special Plans, which carries out its secret activities under joint control with the CIA (San Jose Mercury News, Dec. 12, 1986, p. 23A).
2. The Reagan Campaign’s “Intelligence Operation”: Secret CIA LinksReagan Campaign Manager William Casey first used the term “intelligence operation” to describe the Campaign’s organised efforts to thwart a Carter hostage surprise at a breakfast meeting with Ed Meese and reporters on the second day of the Republican National Convention in Detroit (Washington Star, July 15, 1980). That “intelligence operation” consisted of a network of active and retired intelligence and military officers (Hidden Power, by Roland Perry; Albosta Committee Reports on the Carter Debate Briefing Book Investigations, Vol. 1, p. 52), including some active CIA men, a number of ex-CIA operatives who had been laid off or fired by Carter’s CIA chief, Stansfield Turner (The Rebel, January 1984, “A Question of Treason”) and associates of Casey’s from his days in the World War II O.S.S., predecessor of the CIA. The ex-CIA men working with Casey in the campaign were known as the “CIA Cowboys” – “the ones who run around and do things” (Rebel, Jan. 1984). (Casey’s law firm, Rogers and Wells, which represented the Shah’s family fund, The Pahlevi Foundation, was also riddled with ex-CIA agents who had served with him in the O.S.S. and who were available to assist the campaign (The Rebel, Jan. 1984).

   The operative head of the campaign’s intelligence network, Admiral Robert Garrick, reported to Ed Meese; Meese reported to Casey. Casey ordered Garrick to “use all the military contacts you have” and all the CIA men who had come to the campaign from the Bush side (Hidden Power, by Roland Perry, p. 131; All Fall Down, by Gary Sick, p. 371; and New York Times, 7/783). Garrick’s operation had as its primary goal to gain advance intelligence on, and influence, any attempt by Carter to release the hostages before the November 4th election. On October 24, 1980, Meese ordered Garrick full-time on special assignment for the “October Surprise” operation (Albosta Committee Reports, Vol. I, p. 50).

   Acting as head of the intelligence operation, reporting to Garrick, was Stephan Halper, son-in-law of former CIA Deputy Director Ray Cline, who (Cline) was also a close Reagan Campaign adviser (Rebel, January 1984). Through Cline, Halper had far-reaching access to both active and inactive CIA sources and covert operators, among them Robert Gambino, former CIA Director of Security (Albosta Committee Reports, Vol. I, p. 49; New York Times, 7/7/83). Gambino was one of four rotating officers in charge of the Reagan Campaign national headquarter’s nerve centre, the “Operations Center.” The other three were Davis Robinson, Michel Smith and Montcrief Spears – all from the Bush side of the Campaign (Albosta Committee Reports, Vol. I, p. 36).

3. Links Between The Two OperationsThe question naturally arises, was the Casey-Garrick-Halper-headed Reagan Campaign intelligence operation, which included active as well as former CIA operatives, in communication with, in cooperation with, or even secretly giving directives to whomever staged the “mechanical failures” that caused the Operation Eagleclaw/Desert One rescue attempt to fail? Considerable evidence supports the conclusion that it was:
   1. Though many of Carter’s top CIA officers did not have advance knowledge of Eagleclaw, Reagan’s Campaign Manager and mastermind of his intelligence operation, William Casey, did. He was in communication with Air Force General Richard Secord, who headed the secret planning team for the rescue Operation (Secord’s testimony to the Irangate hearings; and Daniel Freed, “A Question of Treason”, The Rebel, Jan. 1984).
   2. Both the Eagleclaw Operation and the Reagan Campaign’s intelligence operation included active CIA operatives; and the CIA’s Iran Desk was rabidly pro-Reagan and anti-Carter at the time of the 1979-80 hostage crisis and U.S. presidential campaign (Witness, by former SAVAK Chief Mansur Rafizadeh, p. 346). Eagleclaw’s Air Force component came from the Air Force Office of Special Plans, which operates in cooperation with the CIA (San Jose Mercury News, Dec. 12, 1986, p.23A). A staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Angelo Coderilla, told the Albosta Committee investigating the Carter Debate briefing book matter that he had been told that Reagan Campaign agents included active-duty CIA operatives. Reagan’s “October Surprise” team head, Richard Allen, kept a campaign phone log which included references to Coderilla’s intelligence about the hostage situation (Albosta Committee Reports, Vol. I, p. 52). It is therefore likely that Coderilla’s source for his information about Reagan’s active-duty CIA-agent moles was Richard Allen himself, who later met with the Iranian emissary about a hostage-delay deal (Miami Herald, 4/12/87). Mrs. Cynthia Dwyer, the “53rd hostage”, told Rev. Charles Moore just after the failed rescue attempt in Iran that the CIA had intentionally made the operation fail (Rev. Moore, personal communication).
   3. Five years after Eagleclaw, four of the then-retired military officers who helped plan it were back working with then-CIA Director Casey overseeing Reagan’s Iran and Contra arms operations: Ret. Air Force Major General Richard Secord, Ret. Air Force Lt. Col. Richard B. Gadd, Ret. Air Force Col. Robert C. Dutton, and Army Special Forces Master Sgt. John C. Cupp (San Jose Mercury News, 12/12/86, p. 23A). At the time of Eagleclaw, Gadd and Dutton worked with the Air Force’s Office of Special Plans, which carries out operations under joint secret control with the CIA (San Jose Mercury News, above cite). Cupp was the non-commissioned officer in charge of selection and training of Intelligence Support Activity personnel for Eagleclaw, and now works with Gadd’s private company, American National Management Corporation in Vienna, Virginia. When Hasenfus’s plane, “Fat Lady”, crashed in Nicaragua in October 1986, a radio code manual with the name “Dick G.” was found aboard the plane together with documents linking it to Oliver North and the White House – “Dick G.” standing for Richard Gadd (all references from San Jose Mercury News, above cite). All three men will testify before the House and Senate Select Committees investigating Irangate, and should be asked about these links.
   4. Prior to the April 1980 rescue attempt, the acting director of the Reagan Campaign’s intelligence operation, Robert Garrick, was in close contact with John Coale, a Washington, D.C. attorney who represented the 13 hostages released early from the American Embassy in Tehran (Albosta Report, Vol. I, p. 54).
   5. On Sunday, April 20, 1980, two days after Carter’s decision to go ahead with the rescue attempt and only 96 hours before the April 25th mission, a close O.S.S. associate of William Casey’s, Miles Copeland, published an article in the Washington Star outlining nearly every major aspect and some details of a “hypothetical” Eagleclaw operation, including the location of rescue planes in Oman and the likely location of waiting ships and the desert helicopter landing site. In the article, Copeland states that he had participated with the “Kings of Covert Action” from his O.S.S. (predecessor to the CIA) days – a thinly veiled reference to O.S.S. top operative William Casey – in planning an attempt to rescue the 52 hostages (Rebel, Jan. 1984, “A Question of Treason”). Copeland thereby implied that the failed Eagleclaw/Desert One rescue attempt was the result of secret collaboration between Secord and his operatives and Casey’s “October Surprise” intelligence operation which included active-duty, Reagan-loyalist CIA operatives.
   6. Copeland’s article is by no means the only major instance of the Reagan Campaign’s link to press reports designed to sabotage Carter’s attempts to bring the hostages home. On October 15, 1980, WLS TV station in Chicago, an ABC affiliate, ran a story that Carter was discussing a deal to send military spare parts to Iran in exchange for release of the hostages. During the Albosta Subcommittee investigations on the Carter debate briefing book matter, a witness testified that the source of that report was a top active officer in U.S. intelligence linked to the Reagan-Bush Campaign who wanted it publicised to sabotage consummation of a possible deal by which the hostages might be released before the election. “The suggestion (from the witness) was that publicising the secret hostage negotiations would have delayed a pre-election release of the U.S. hostages in Iran, to the benefit of the Reagan-Bush Campaign.” (Albosta Committee Reports, Vol. 1, p. 57). The WLS reporter, Larry Moore, refused to disclose his source’s identity to the Albosta Committee, but might be convinced to testify in the Irangate hearings. It is probably no coincidence that on the same day, October 15, 1980, the Reagan campaign’s foreign policy adviser, Richard V. Allen, wrote a memo referring to his “ABC-xyz” source (Albosta Committee Reports, Vol. I, pp. 51 and 52). WLS TV is an ABC affiliate station.
   7. Robert McFarlane, instigator of the October 1980 meeting between Reagan Campaign “October Surprise Group” leader Richard Allen and the Iranian emissary, was appointed to head the whitewash investigation of the “failures” of the Eagleclaw rescue attempt. At the time, McFarlane was Senator John Tower’s man on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He held the post from 1979 to 1981. In the investigation, McFarlane covered up collaboration by the inner circle of the CIA with the Khomeini regime, and, in all likelihood, with the inner circle of the Reagan Campaign’s intelligence operation as well.

The Rescue Attempt Was Sabotaged and Iran Was Given Advance Knowledge

There is no question that the Desert One rescue attempt was sabotaged and that Iran had advance warning because of Copeland’s article. It was repeatedly broadcast by Iran Radio up until the day of the April 25th rescue attempt. Commander of the Eagleclaw operation, Charles Beckwith, noted that there was a sudden and suspicious increase in desert traffic the night of the attempt, and later told Newsweek that a number of the CIA’s agents stationed in Tehran pulled out early, as if they had known in advance that the rescue mission would “fail.” Iran’s police and military had also been pre-alerted, and were waiting to kill all American hostages, agents and diplomats had the operation gone forward (Rebel, Jan. 1984).

The Rev. Charles Moore, then of Houston, Texas, was in Tehran at a prayer meeting during the Eagleclaw rescue attempt. He reports (personal communication) that when the three helicopters crashed in the desert outside Tehran, sirens immediately went off and the mullah leading the prayer session announced, “Your plane has crashed in the desert.” Moore visited the crash site, the next day on April 26, 1980, with his guide, Josann.

Mrs. Cynthia Dwyer, the “53rd hostage” for whom Richard Allen got Reagan to call Iran on inauguration day to threaten that “the deal’s off” unless she also was released, spoke with Rev. Moore in Tehran just after the failed rescue attempt and told him that she knew the attempt had been sabotaged by the CIA. “You don’t think the helicopter crash was legitimate, do you?”, Moore reports Mrs. Dwyer as saying. “The U.S. engineers made it fail.” (Moore, personal communication). Shortly after the aborted rescue attempt, Mrs. Dwyer was arrested, charged with espionage and jailed in Iran, not to be released until February 9, 1981, shortly before Israel began shipping Reagan-Administration-approved arms to Iran, in February 1981 – probably as a quid pro quo for Khomeini’s delaying release of the 52 hostages until after the election. In his recent book, Witness, former Chief of the Shah’s SAVAK security police, Mansur Rafizadeh, states that after the November 4th election, the CIA influenced the Khomeini government, through Iran’s Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, a secret CIA agent, to further delay the release of the 52 hostages until inauguration day itself (Witness; and Miami Herald, 4/12/87). In her conversation just before being taken hostage in Iran after the failed Eagleclaw rescue attempt, Mrs. Dwyer told Rev. Moore that Iranian Foreign Minister Ghotbzadeh himself “was CIA” – an assessment seconded by Rafizadeh in his recent book.

It should be noted that Carter began preparations for a second desert rescue attempt immediately after failure of the first, but plans were quickly dropped when another helicopter, in one of the rehearsals in a Utah desert simulation area, crashed, killing one serviceman and wounding six others (New York Times, May 13, 1981, “Shah’s Admission to the U.S. Linked to Misinformation”). According to Jack Anderson (syndicated column, June 22, 1987), Carter also planned to invade Iran, but cancelled the preparations when Soviet tanks massed at the Iranian borders in response.

Reagan Campaign Disinformation Designed to Sabotage Unknown Rescue Attempts

The Reagan Campaign not only worked to sabotage Carter’s planned rescue attempt through active measures and strategic press “leaks”, like the Copeland article and the Moore broadcast, where the Campaign had obtained advance knowledge of actual rescue plans and negotiations. In addition, it put out pre-emptive false stories – disinformation – about an “October Surprise” using reporters who were effectively acting as Reagan Campaign agents. In this way, if a genuine surprise rescue materialised, it could be played up after the fact as being motivated by Carter for political ends. A memo from the Reagan Campaign’s Director of Communications, Robert Gray, to Ed Meese stated: “If we leak to news sources our knowledge of Carter-planned events, we can get the press to say Carter is politicising the issue (the hostage crisis)” (Albosta Committee Reports, Vol. I, p. 51). Those relied on most for this purpose were George Will, who later participated in preparing Reagan for his debate with Carter; Evans and Novak; and Jack Anderson (Rebel, Jan. 1984).

On August 18, 1980, the media began increasingly negative coverage of Reagan. Not coincidentally, beginning that very day and running for four days, Jack Anderson ran a series of columns claiming he had received a document showing that Carter had ordered a mid-October invasion of Iran (Rebel, Jan. 1984). This information was totally false (Carter, Keeping Faith; and All Fall Down, by Gary Sick) and designed to interfere with any “October Surprise” about which the Reagan Campaign might not have gained advance intelligence.

On October 15, 1980, a Chicago TV station falsely reported that five U.S. Navy cargo planes loaded with aircraft spare parts were due to arrive within 48 hours in Iran – a claim Carter’s White House and State Department had to repeatedly and emphatically deny. The TV report gave “military reserve pilots” as its source – in all likelihood those military reservists reporting to Admiral Garrick as part of Casey’s campaign “intelligence operation” (Albosta Committee Reports, Vol. I; and All Fall Down, by Gary Sick, p. 371).

On October 31, 1980, George Will, who had just days earlier participated in Reagan’s rehearsal for the debate with Carter, reported during a taping of Agronsky and Company out of Washington, D.C. that U.S. military spare parts had been loaded and were on their way to Iran and that Carter had struck a deal to release the hostages. Finding that the story was completely false, Agronsky did not run that portion of the show’s taping (All Fall Down, by Gary Sick, p. 372).

During the last few days before the November 4, 1980 election, Evans and Novak put out a fake “inside report” of a Carter deal to exchange military spare parts for release of the 52 hostages (Rebel, Jan. 1984).

Political Motives

Surely, there can be no doubt that Ronald Reagan has proven himself capable of initiating secret and illegal deals with Iran. It is common knowledge that he authorised secret and probably illegal arms-for-hostages deals with Iran in 1985 and 1986, when stakes were far lower than they were before the 1980 election. Much of the Irangate dealing as the 1986 Congressional elections approached, in fact, was for motives as political as those that guided Reagan’s strategy during the 1980 election – to bring the hostages held in Lebanon home before the elections in an attempt to retain the Senate for the Republicans (“Larry King Live“, with Tip O’Neil, February 1987). In his testimony before the Irangate hearings, Iranian-American arms dealer, Albert Hakim, said that North was “extremely eager for all the U.S. hostages to be released before the November congressional elections to enhance the position of the President” (Time, June 15, 1987, p. 18). Adnan Khashoggi, interviewed by the Washington Times (March 19, 1987, p. 5B), said that when he met with Israeli Nir and Iranian go-between Ghorbanifar at the Churchill Hotel in London in the early period of the development of the Irangate deals of 1985 and 1986, Nir said that the deals were because “The Americans are in such a hurry to get these guys out before the congressional elections.” To which Ghorbanifar responded, “You’re telling me that this whole thing hinges on the American elections?! This is madness!” (above cite).

Administration actions in Irangate ruled by transparently political motives include:

• The 26-day Reagan?-Poindexter-Meese-Webster delay, beginning on October 20, 1986, of investigations into arms shipments to Iran and the Contras by Southern Air Transport, conveniently moving any revelations until after election day (San Francisco Chronicle, 3/4/87; Los Angeles Times/A.P. Wire, 1/14/87). It is significant that the Administration expected more than Jacobsen’s freedom in time for the election (San Jose Mercury News, 1/31/87).
• The desperate, last-minute trip by Oliver North to Beirut four days before the November 4th election, on October 31, 1986, in an attempt to arrange freedom for all three American hostages prior to the vote (Washington Post), during which 5-day pre-election period Lebanese Ambassador John Kelley’s conversations with North and Secord were kept secret even from Secretary of State Shultz, his superior (Time, 12/22/86, p. 17).
• Oliver North’s interventions in two Custom’s Service investigations of Contra/Iran arms supply flights shortly before the 1986 elections.
• And reports, still unverified but not disproven, that profits from the Iranian arms deals were channelled into a political slush fund set up to influence the 1986 Congressional elections (Time 12/22/86, p. 14).

Reagan has thus clearly shown that he is capable of arranging secret deals with Iran for transparent political motives. He did it in 1986, when far less was at stake than before the 1980 elections. He has therefore shown himself morally capable of having wilfully taken similar action in the 1980 presidential election campaign.

Implications for Understanding Irangate

The real possibility therefore exists that the Reagan Administration continued to ship arms to Iran, both through Israel and “direct”, because of six years of effective blackmail by the Khomeini government – i.e. “If you stop the arms sales, we’ll talk.” This explanation provides the missing motive for both the origin and the continuation of the 1985-86 arms shipments despite their clear lack of efficacy in producing the repeatedly promised release of our hostages in Lebanon. Recently, it has been revealed (The London Observer) that Robert McFarlane met with Rafsanjani during his May 1986 trip with North to Tehran, and that one of the deals they discussed was a promise by Iran not to reveal the information it had obtained about the CIA’s Middle East network extracted from hostage William Buckley under torture in exchange for Reagan’s providing arms and sensitive U. S. intelligence (San Jose Mercury News, May 4, 1987). The further possibility exists that a second purpose for the May trip and for the meeting between McFarlane and Rafsanjani was to agree on the price for Iran’s continued silence about a 1980 deal with the Reagan Campaign. After all, it was McFarlane himself who had arranged the October 1980 meeting between Khomeini’s representative and the Reagan Campaign, according to Bani-Sadr with the input of Rafsanjani from the Iranian side (Miami Herald, April 12, 1987). In this light, it may be no coincidence that many of the Iranians involved in the original 1979 hostage taking and negotiations also participated in the May 1986 meetings with McFarlane and North in Tehran: Khomeini’s son-in-law, Sadegh Tabatabaei (San Francisco Examiner, Nov. 15, 1986), who was a key figure in the 1980-81 negotiations for release of the 52 hostages; and Hossein Sheikholeslam, in 1986 Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran but during 1980 a leader of the student group which overtook the American Embassy and took the original 52 hostages captive (Houston Post, Nov. 28, 1986, p. 23A).

Who Were Reagan’s Moles?

The question remains, who was or were the Reagan Campaign’s “moles” inside the Carter White House and Administration? It is clear that Reagan’s “October Surprise” intelligence operation had agents high enough in the Carter White House to smuggle out his debate briefing book. Mole(s) at that high a level would also have had knowledge of Carter’s hostage rescue plans and negotiations with Iran for release of the hostages. There are a number of candidates for the mole(s) and informer(s) who worked with the Reagan Campaign’s “October Surprise” intelligence operation to sabotage the Carter campaign:

1. Officers of Carter’s National Security Council, possibly including Robert Owen and/or Gary Sick.Carter’s Iran “Core Group”, under the direction of then-Deputy Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, from September 20, 1980 on, included Captain Gary Sick, Carter’s Iran expert at the NSC, and Robert Owen, legal adviser to the State Department at the time. Sick later authored a key book on the crisis, All Fall Down, in which he notes on page 422 that he was aware of an attempted hostage deal between representatives of one of the presidential campaigns and the Iranians before the election. To have known this, Sick had to have had lines of communication inside the Reagan Campaign organisation, flowing in one direction or the other. A “Robert Owen” later worked with Secord, Gadd and Hakim on Reagan’s private aid network to the Contras and arms sales to Iran in 1985-86. It should be determined whether this is the same Robert Owen who served on Carter’s Iran “core group” during the 1980 hostage crisis.

   Herbert Cohen of the Hoover Institution, a member of the Carter Administration’s Hostage Task Force and a consultant to the FBI and Justice Departments on the hostage negotiations in 1980, met with Reagan Campaign Manager William Casey in the New York City Plaza Hotel in September 1980 and provided him with 4 to 5 reports and assessments on the hostage crisis. The documents were prepared for Carter’s National Security Council, probably in close cooperation with Carter’s NSC Iran Desk expert, Captain Gary Sick (Albosta Reports, Vol. I, p. 56). Cohen had met with Sick in May of 1980 (Albosta Committee Reports, Vol. 1, p. 56). Cohen also gave George Bush’s brother, Prescott Bush, sensitive hostage-crisis information over lunch, which was relayed to the Reagan Campaign (Albosta Committee Reports, Vol. I, p. 55). Prescott Bush told Reagan Campaign official Jim Baker that Cohen had a “reliable source” on Carter’s National Security Council; and Cohen told the FBI that he did work for the NSC (Albosta Committee Reports, Vol. I, pp. 55-56).

   The Reagan campaign’s national security adviser, Richard V. Allen, on ABC’s “Nightline” on July 6, 1983, confirmed receiving Carter White House materials from an “NSC source.” And a former high-level Reagan Campaign adviser told the Washington Post, reported on July 1, 1983, that Richard Allen received copies of portions of Carter National Security Adviser Brzezinski’s daily NSC staff reports prepared by senior NSC aides. Brzezinski described these daily reports as “sometimes extraordinarily sensitive” (Albosta Committee Reports).

2. Active Carter CIA agents working for the Reagan Campaign.A staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Angelo Coderilla, told the Albosta Committee investigating the Carter Debate briefing book matter that he had been told that Reagan’s moles included active-duty CIA agents. Reagan’s “October Surprise” team head, Richard Allen, kept a campaign phone log which included references to Coderilla’s intelligence about the hostage situation (Albosta Committee Reports, Vol. I, p. 52). It is therefore likely that Coderilla’s source for his information about Reagan’s active-duty CIA-agent moles was Richard Allen himself, who later met with the Iranian emissary about a hostage-delay deal (Miami Herald, 4/12/87).
3. The Carter State Department.At some point in the 1980 Campaign, probably in October, Carter’s top State Department officials began informing the Reagan Campaign directly about details of hostage negotiations and possibly also rescue plans. In his book All Fall Down, Captain Gary Sick notes that on November 2, 1980, Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher called both President Carter and Reagan Campaign official Ed Meese to inform them of the latest developments in the hostage negotiations in Iran (All Fall Down, by Gary Sick, p. 373). This policy may have commenced considerably earlier than November 2.
4. H. Ross Perot. Carter’s top-secret group that met with NSC Adviser Brzezinski to plan the sabotaged April 1980 desert rescue attempt, called the “Military Committee”, consulted regularly with H. Ross Perot, who had worked closely over the years with Reagan’s Campaign manager, William Casey (The Rebel Magazine, January 1984, “A Question of Treason”).In light of what we now know, statements made by Reagan and Bush during the 1980 presidential campaign take on new meaning and irony. In his debate with President Carter, Reagan said, “No-one wants to say anything that would inadvertently delay, in any way, the return of those hostages” (All Fall Down, by Gary Sick, p. 377). In response to a question from Barbara Walters in the Carter-Reagan debate of October 28, 1980, Reagan said, “I have been accused lately of having a secret plan with regard to the hostages … My ideas require quiet diplomacy, where you don’t say in advance what it is you’re thinking of doing” (All Fall Down, by Gary Sick, p. 377). And on election day, November 4, 1980, a reporter quoted George Bush to Reagan at Reagan’s polling place in Pacific Palisades: “George Bush says you’re in like a burglar” (Hidden Power, by Roland Perry, p. 162).