In 1980, fifty-two American hostages were being held by Iran. The President at that time was Jimmy Carter. He was being challenged in his bid for re-election by the Reagan-Bush ticket.
Though Reagan-Bush led in the polls, they secretly feared that Carter would stage what was called an "October Surprise." The Republicans feared that if Carter were to bring about the release of the American hostages in late October, subsequent national euphoria would boost Carter in the polls and get him re-elected.
So, according to numerous and disparate witnesses and investigators, the Reagan-Bush faction initiated secret negotiations with the Iranians. The deal reportedly was that if the Iranians would ignore Carter administration overtures, the Republicans would give the Iranians an especially good deal later, when Reagan-Bush came to power.
Some may say, "Well, Congress looked into these allegations and found nothing there." But that is like saying that the Columbo crime family looked into the Genovese mafia and concluded, "They're not such a bad bunch of guys." Congress has also looked into the strange death of White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster -- twice -- and concluded that Foster committed suicide right where his body was found in Fort Marcy Park. So if Congress is so infallible, why is Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr now also investigating the Foster death? And why do two-thirds of Americans not believe what the Congress keeps telling them, vis-a-vis Foster?
Gary Sick served on the National Security Council staff under
Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. Sick was the principal
White House aide for Iran during the hostage crisis of 1979-81.
He was skeptical at first, regarding the October Surprise
allegations, yet gradually found that
A reality that I thought I knew well turned out to be little more than a facade. I had to utterly reevaluate whole constellations of events, even those that I had experienced personally... [Sick had thought that] The events of 1980 could be explained adequately without resort to what I considered to be a conspiracy theory... [Yet] As time went on, seemingly inexplicable fragments of information began to appear. My experience was not unlike that of a medieval scholar discovering traces of a hidden text beneath the script on an old parchment.Sick is cautious when he writes, in his book, October Surprise, that "there is not enough evidence at this point to launch a prosecution," yet he obviously feels that the October Surprise story is grounded in fact: "If the evidence presented in this book means what it seems to mean, we must conclude that in 1980 a deception was inflicted on the hostages, the government, and the American people that has few if any parallels in our history. That evidence is not easily dismissed."
Not so cautious as Sick has been Ari Ben-Menashe, who worked for the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad, before he surfaced to write a tell-all book, Profits of War (1991). Ben-Menashe says he was part of a team which worked with the French to arrange secret meetings between George Bush, William Casey, and the Iranians. At one particular meeting in Paris, on October 19, 1980, a final agreement allegedly was concluded: In exchange for a $40 million bribe and future arms shipments, the Iranians agreed not to release the American hostages until the January 1981 Presidential inauguration. This, in fact, did happen; the 52 hostages were released on January 20, 1981.
Barbara Honegger worked for the Reagan administration in the White House Office of Policy Development. She worked there for 3 years before she became "the first resignation of conscience from the Reagan-Bush Administration." She held off from publishing her book, October Surprise, until 1989, due to a sense of loyalty she felt toward Ronald Reagan.
Honegger points out that George Bush had been a Director of CIA and, as such, had plenty of covert connections and know-how with which to implement secret dealings between the Republicans and Iran. Many in CIA hated Jimmy Carter for downsizing the Agency and were eager for revenge. Honegger, like Gary Sick, is cautious; throughout her book she refers to the October Surprise story as "allegations." Yet her evidence leads overwhelmingly to the reality of the October Surprise conspiracy.
For example, Honegger points to the many witnesses who have gone public concerning the affair. While some might consider these CIA contract agents to be shady characters and therefore not sterling witnesses, she asks: Why didn't this body of witnesses ever get to tell their stories to the American people? Writes Honegger: "As an independent journalist, I believe profoundly in the right of the American public to hear from all parties who claim to have information on charges as serious as that an arms-for-hostage-delay deal was made between the Reagan-Bush campaign and Iran."
So why didn't we hear all sides of the story? After all, in a democracy it is supposed that the public can think for itself, and do not need to be shielded from witnesses which some self-appointed authority decides are "not credible." By what right do the few have such control over what the many are allowed to hear?
Rodney Stich, in his classic and definitive book on government corruption, Defrauding America (1-800-247-7389), suggests part of the reason information is withheld, diminished, or twisted -- The CIA's Media Wurlitzer.
The CIA has many media personnel on its payroll to plant stories or discredit charges against the CIA. It pays out large sums of money for articles and books to be written on the CIA's behalf. Its control over the media is like a Wurlitzer, orchestrating and manipulating all segments of the written or broadcast media. It must be remembered that the CIA has iron-clad control over the establishment media in the United States, and spends money supporting journalists and the media.In light of the July 1996 issue of this newsletter ("The Smiling Pope"), it is noteworthy that Ms. Honegger goes into the Propaganda Due, or P-2, connection. You'll recall that P-2 is a secret, illegal Masonic lodge founded in Italy by Licio Gelli in 1966. Honegger points to Alexander Haig, later to become the Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, as having been made an "honorary" (non-Italian) member of P-2 prior to 1980. Honegger further states that Licio Gelli, finance wizard Michele Sindona, Alexander Haig, and CIA Director William Casey "were also reportedly members of the Vatican's military order, the Knights of Malta, whose initiates must take an oath of allegiance to the Pope." Furthermore, P-2 is linked to the Mafia, which also seems to have played a part in the October Surprise plot; writes Honegger: "A number of press reports, taken together, suggest that there may have been a P-2 and Gambino Mafia connection to the release of the fifty-two American hostages from the U.S. embassy in Tehran."
(By the way, in light of the July issue of this newsletter, "The Smiling Pope," I recommend the movie, "The Godfather, Part 3.")
Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr was president of Iran during the hostage crisis. As of 1991, he was living in exile, in Paris. In his book, My Turn To Speak, Bani-Sadr corroborates the October Surprise allegations.
While some may wonder why Iran would have negotiated with "the Great Satan," i.e., the United States, it now appears that this rhetoric served mainly to help unite a fractious Iran against a common enemy. (Such techniques are used here in the U.S., where the government uses the Big Enemy technique to rally support -- for example, Big Enemies such as Russia, narcotics, and now, increasingly, supposed omnipresent terrorists.) Writes Bani-Sadr: "The takeover of the U.S. embassy was wholly in line with [Ayatollah] Khomeini's strategy of focusing hostility abroad." Remember too that the U.S. had frozen Iranian funds and had military spare parts desperately needed by the Iranians.
Former-president Bani-Sadr says he has proof of contacts between Iran and the Reagan-Bush forces as early as the spring of 1980. He claims that "the sole purpose of [these contacts] was to handicap Carter's re-election bid by preventing the hostages' release before the American elections in November 1980."
The late Paul D. Wilcher was a Washington attorney who investigated the October Surprise charges. In a 100-page letter addressed to Attorney General Janet Reno and dated May 21, 1993, Wilcher offered her a comprehensive look at American "deep politics." (The term "deep politics," comes from Professor Peter Dale Scott's penetrating look at the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.) One section of Wilcher's letter to Reno is entitled, "The 'October Surprise' Treason & Coup D'Etat." (My thanks to a subscriber for sending me this disturbing document.) Writes Wilcher:
My client here is Gunther Karl Russbacher, a life-long
covert operative for the CIA and the Office of Naval
Intelligence ("ONI") who has operated at the highest levels
of both of these super-secret organizations over the past
30 and 25 years, respectively.
Because of his extremely high intelligence, his exceptional
physical skills, his extensive training, his fluency in 8
languages, his proficiency as one of the CIA's top pilots
and marksmen, and the fact that his father was one of the
original founders (along with William Casey, "Wild Bill"
Donovan, and others) of the Central Intelligence Agency,
back in 1947, Gunther has always operated at the highest
levels of these "intelligence" organizations, and has been
entrusted with carrying out some of their most difficult,
sensitive, and top secret covert operations.
[......]
For the moment, however, I want to focus on one pivotal
event in Gunther's career -- the fact that he was the CIA
pilot who flew George Bush and others (listed below) to and
from Paris on this "October Surprise" weekend, and then
flew George Bush back to America on the CIA's hypersonic
spy plane, the SR-71 -- to get him back home before anyone
would notice that he was gone.
Russbacher says his passengers on the flight to Paris during the
October 19, 1980 weekend, included George Bush, William Casey,
Donald Gregg (later to become Ambassador to South Korea), Robert
Gates (later to become Director of CIA), Robert McFarlane
(President Reagan's National Security Advisor), Robert Allen
(President Reagan's first National Security advisor), Earl Brian
(of later INSLAW notoriety), Jennifer Fitzgerald (reportedly one
of George Bush's mistresses), Congressman Daniel Rostenkowski
(a.k.a. "Rosty," now in jail), Congressman Dan Burton, Senator
Robert Byrd, Senator John Tower, Senator John Heinz, and other
prominent Members of Congress.Wilcher's letter describes who got what: The gist of these negotiations (and deal) was that Bush and Casey delivered to the Iranians $40 million in cash (it started out as $62 million, but by the time many of the Americans had dipped their hands into the till, only about $35 million was left to give to the Iranians), basically as bribe money, plus the promise of $5 billion more in illegal arms sales and spare parts... in exchange for the Iranians' agreement not to release the 52 American hostages captured in Tehran on November 4th, 1979, until after the November 4th, 1980, U.S. Presidential election -- in order to guarantee the humiliation and defeat of then-President Jimmy Carter, and the victory of Ronald Reagan and George Bush. The important point to remember about this flight, and all those who were participating in it, is that the entire exercise was a carefully planned, and well executed CIA covert operation -- which had been ordered and sanctioned at the highest levels of the "Shadow Government" -- specifically for the purpose of taking back control of the federal government from the Democrats, and returning it to the CIA and the "Shadow Government." In other words, this entire operation was -- and was specifically designed to be -- a treasonous coup d'etat, to take back control of the federal government from Jimmy Carter and the Democrats... Paul Wilcher, by the way, is numbered among the so-called "Clinton Body Count" -- persons connected to Bill Clinton who have died mysteriously and/or violently. The story of the Clinton Body Count was first brought to light by Indianapolis attorney Linda Thompson. She described how the information was first intimated to her, by a purported CIA agent, on the February 3rd, 1994 broadcast of Chuck Harder's "For the People" radio show:
CHUCK HARDER: Now, Linda, you were talking [about]... The Clinton Body Count. You say 25 people that have surrounded Bill Clinton, with some type of a personal relationship with him..... LINDA THOMPSON: Uh-huh. [Affirmative] CHUCK HARDER: .....have turned up dead within approximately the last 12 months. LINDA THOMPSON: Right. CHUCK HARDER: Can you name them "off the top of your head," to the best of your ability? LINDA THOMPSON: Sure. CHUCK HARDER: And who were they, and how come, and that sort of thing. LINDA THOMPSON: C. Victor Raiser was Bill Clinton's campaign finance chairman, and his son, who was also very active in the campaign, Victor Raiser, Jr., were killed in a plane crash, enroute to Alaska, in July of '92. Now that's where the body count begins. And it begins there... I almost didn't include them because I was going to divide it up into post-Presidency and pre-Presidency. The fellow that had called me and suggested that I do this was CIA. And he said, you know, "Do a body count around Clinton." And I said, "What?!" [He answered,] "Just do one. Do one before he became President and do one after he became President." Because I would not have thought of this on my own. I really... It would never have occurred to me to even think of doing this.Besides Wilcher and Raiser, other names amongst the still-growing Clinton Body Count are: Paul Tully, DNC political director, heart attack; Paula Gober, worked as Clinton's interpreter for the hearing-impaired, car crash; Jim Wilhite, friends with Mack McLarty and Bill Clinton, skiing accident; Vincent Foster, Jr., deputy White House counsel, "suicide"; Luther "Jerry" Parks, owner of a security service which supplied guards for Clinton during his 1992 presidential campaign, murdered by multiple gunshots; Jon Parnell Walker, RTC Senior Investigation Specialist looking into wrongdoing at Madison Guaranty S&L, supposedly jumped to his death while apartment hunting; Kathy Ferguson, wife of Danny Ferguson who said he brought sex-accuser Paula Jones to Bill Clinton's hotel room at which time Clinton is alleged to have sexually harassed Jones, "suicide" by pistol; Herschel Friday, a member of C. Victor Raiser's (see above) finance committee, plane crash; Ed Willey, manager of Clinton's presidential campaign finance committee, supposedly shot himself on November 30, 1993; John A. Wilson, a Washington, D.C. city councilman about to go public with information on Bill Clinton, "suicide" by hanging; Ron Brown, the late Commerce Secretary, killed in a suspicious plane crash.
The list contains many more names than the above. I may write a more detailed account in the future. Readers familiar with the many violent and/or mysterious deaths of potential witnesses connected to the JFK assassination will be familiar with the pattern suggested by the Clinton Body Count. For now, add one more name to the list of suspicious deaths connected to Bill Clinton: Susann Coleman. As documented in the book, Clinton Confidential (by George Carpozi), Ms. Coleman, said to be pregnant by Bill Clinton, died by "suicide" on February 15, 1977. Writes Carpozi, "Coleman is purported to have put the muzzle of a shotgun into her mouth and pulled the trigger."
But how does October Surprise lead to the Clinton Body Count? The October Surprise coup d'etat led to the 12-year Reagan-Bush Administration. During that time, the illegal Contra war in Nicaragua was funded in part by CIA gun- and drug-smuggling via Arkansas, condoned by then-Governor Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton, according to Roger Morris, author of Partners in Power, is a long-time CIA agent. The Arkansas smuggling operation was under the command of George Bush, himself a former Director of CIA and long-time agent of that roach hotel. So how does October Surprise lead to the Clinton Body Count? Well, as we all know, roaches multiply.
Robert Parry has worked for Associated Press, Newsweek magazine, and the PBS program, "Frontline." He has been an investigative reporter for over 20 years. Parry has continued to look into the October Surprise story, has had a book published on the subject (Trick or Treason), and recently came up with some startling information which he published on Internet.
Following a Congressional task force report which debunked the October Surprise allegations (a report which, writes Parry, rests on "an elaborate set of alibis"), Parry sought access to the task force's files. He obtained permission to examine unclassified papers, stored in a Rayburn building sub-basement, in a converted Ladies' washroom now used for storage. To Parry's surprise, "Not only did I find unclassified notes and documents about the task force's work, but also 'secret' and even 'top secret' papers..." Parry's study of these documents led him to believe, more firmly than ever, that the October Surprise plot had indeed occured.
Among the confidential documents that Parry lucked onto was a six-page Russian report, sent in response to a query by Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) According to Parry, the "Russian report stated, as fact, that Casey, George Bush and other Republicans had met secretly with Iranian officials in Europe during the 1980 presidential campaign. The Russians depicted the hostage negotiations that year as a two-way competition between the Carter White House and the Reagan campaign to outbid one another for Iran's cooperation on the hostages. The Russians asserted that the Reagan team had disrupted Carter's hostage negotiations after all, the exact opposite of the task force conclusion."
Still don't believe the October Surprise machinations occured? Tell that to former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir who, when asked in May of 1993 if there had been an October Surprise, responded, "of course, it was." Tell that to senior representatives of Iran's current government, who, writes Parry, are "amused at how wrong the House task force had been." Tell that to veteran White House correspondent Sarah McClendon, who, when I stated to her in late August of 1995, "So you agree with the story of the 'October Surprise,'" responded:
Oh definitely. There definitely was. And Bush has denied it all along. And people have seen him in Paris at the time he claims he wasn't there. They saw him there and they know he went to the meeting. And I definitely think the agreement was made there.An "October Surprise" has also come to have a generic meaning. According to William Safire, writing in the New York Times on or about August 20, 1996, "An 'October Surprise,' in political parlance, is the making of big news to affect a November election." Safire points to two events which, he says, are "in the pipeline" -- a possible indictment of Hillary Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice, and a possible punitive strike against Iran in retaliation for allegedly masterminding the recent bomb attack against a military barracks in Saudi Arabia.
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