You can know the truth as soon as it doesn't matter

October Surprise

WASHINGTON — It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States.

It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent.

His mentor was John B. Connally Jr., a titan of American politics and former Texas governor who had served three presidents and just lost his own bid for the White House. A former Democrat, Mr. Connally had sought the Republican nomination in 1980 only to be swamped by former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. Now Mr. Connally resolved to help Mr. Reagan beat Mr. Carter and in the process, Mr. Barnes said, make his own case for becoming secretary of state or defense in a new administration.

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What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.

Then shortly after returning home, Mr. Barnes said, Mr. Connally reported to William J. Casey, the chairman of Mr. Reagan’s campaign and later director of the Central Intelligence Agency, briefing him about the trip in an airport lounge.

The only part of this kiss and tell story that is shaky is the Connally Connection. If Old Lantern Jaw was really freelancing in international diplomacy for his own personal gain, what the hell did he need Ben Barnes for?

Leaving that question aside, this has been a Conspiracy Theory that was easy to believe but impossible to prove for decades. The New York Times now provides persuasive evidence for it now that it can have no significant consequences, unless the Biden Government decides to prosecute Barnes for his part in the conspiracy. Not likely.

It is a valuable reminder that bullshit is not a 21st Century invention.

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QMS's picture

to get ahead in that game you have to do the dirty work of your superiors
thereby climbing the dirty ladder toward the exalted role of having others
do your dirty work and look clean for the cameras

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question everything

Connally was in the limo at Dallas when Kennedy was shot.
His sleaze and criminal tendencies should never be underestimated.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

karl pearson's picture

I can remember all the yellow ribbons tied around trees during the Iran hostage situation. Each night, the Evening News would post the number of days since the crisis began. It was obvious the main stream media did not want Carter reelected. The Kennedy wing of the Democratic party did not support Carter, either. I can recall some Democratic bigwigs saying that after 4 years of Reagan, people would flock to the Democratic party next election. Instead, people got the start of neoliberal/neocon policies that we are still living with today.

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@karl pearson they were held hostage was a nightly feature of the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. The hostage crisis also was the cause, iirc, of the creation of the show Nightline on ABC w Ted Koppel, who also noted nightly the days held hostage.

Carter and Ted Kennedy: There was some bad blood that developed early on, in Carter's first year, 1977, when iirc word got back to TK that Carter had told aides after the election that he was happy to have gotten elected "without having to kiss Ted Kennedy's ass." More bad blood soon thereafter when Kennedy couldn't get Carter to agree on supporting his strong universal health care proposal in the senate, Carter the moderate preferring more modest legislation. Ds had a large 61-38 senate majority at the time.

Despite Carter's problems with Ted, also his unforced errors in insulting Speaker Tip O'Neill, Jimmy likely would have won against Reagan had his admin's negotiations to resolve the hostage crisis not been thwarted by the Reagan-Bush campaign.

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@wokkamile The other wrinkle in the 1980 election was John Anderson (I), a stalking horse for left leaning Republicans that would never vote for Reagan. My back of the envelope calculation is that he cost Carter 158 electoral college votes. Still far behind Reagan who would have had 331.

Still the mood at the time was that had the hostages been released, enough of those that voted for Reagan would have switched to Carter. Still it's difficult not to recognize Carter's poor performance, particularly in his third and fourth years and the difficulties in the US economy. The latter not attributable to Carter and they worsened under Reagan. The difference is that Reagan did economic "happy talk" and Carter was fact based.

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thanatokephaloides's picture

@Marie

the US economy. The latter not attributable to Carter and they worsened under Reagan. The difference is that Reagan did economic "happy talk" and Carter was fact based.

In other words, Carter was too honest to be President, as I've stated repeatedly ever since.

Bad

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

@Marie nuclear engineering for Carter. All he had to do was stay on decent terms with the most influential liberal Dem in Congress, Ted Kennedy, and maybe throw him a bone or two on his universal health care proposal. But yet he managed to disrespect TK, repeatedly, and so Carter lost significant support from the liberal wing of his party going into a presidential election year and thus opened the door for the liberal-sounding ex-Repub Anderson to run in large part carrying the banner for the defeated TK. All that was on Jimmy.

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@wokkamile
wider and deeper than you suggest. Carter's political positions were far more conservative (Republican lite) and out of step with the majority of the Democratic party and Democratic voters at that time (1976). Not all that different from Nixon. The primary calendar gave him a leg up, but first it was his team's clever working of Iowa that put him at the top of national news coverage. (He didn't win Iowa. Was second to "uncommitted" with only 27.6% of the vote and prior to the other candidates having organized campaign teams.)

Thus, Carter started on the wrong foot with Democratic liberals and never self corrected (even seem to take delight in it).

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@Marie starting on the wrong foot with lib Ds. He def started on the wrong foot with Tip and Ted. Carter benefitted from his image as being a modern, enlightened and educated man from the so-called New South (the term I recall being used back in the 70s) so that automatically would score points with lib Ds. And his populist appeal -- small town peanut farmer.

Re "Republican-Lite" on the issues (which might be a highly subjective descriptor), memory isn't too strong on that point, but doubt in 1976 -- when liberalism was still strong in the land -- that he would have openly or assertively advocated R-Lite programs during the D primaries. Carter campaigned more on marketing his personal story to voters -- a man of the New South, from the soil, and not beholden to DC special interests -- rather than an issues-oriented campaign in both the primaries and the general, iirc. He did hold his party together, both wings, so it's unlikely any R-Lite issues were greatly underemphasized in the campaign or were couched in more liberal-appealing language.

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@wokkamile
clearer how messed up the 1976 Democratic primary was for the party and the political positions of the party. Odd considering how well the party had done in the '74 midterms but continued to act spooked by the '72 presidential election. How weird it must be for younger people today to notice that the leading liberal Democratic contenders in 1976 were from AZ, ID, and OK (and IN if we include Birch Bayh) and the conservative was from WA.

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@Marie Carter enormously by wildly playing up his strong showing among a few white caucus goers in Iowa, which I believe was the first time that the IA caucus was put on the political map or made into enormous importance. And he helped himself by announcing early and being organized with a good campaign strategy. Also his profile had great appeal among Ds for being a refreshing change from the usual white southern racist good ole boy type.

By contrast, liberals Frank Church and newly elected gov Jerry Brown, back then a liberal, got in way too late, well after Carter's momentum was almost unstoppable. Note too the absence in the race of two of the leading libs of the time, Ted Kennedy and Walter Mondale.

I liked Church and Fred Harris that year, but the former got in too late and the latter never got close to catching fire.

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@wokkamile
in the D primary that year.

Less than two years in office and Jerry Brown thought he was ready for the big time. He was never liberal -- more quirky. An able enough administrator as the local and state level. He helped to muck up the '76 primary.

Frank Church and Mo Udall were my guys, but Fred Harris was also a decent pick. A stretch to go from the House to the White House for Udall. OTOH the sitting unelected POTUS at that time was a House to WH guy; so, it might not have been such a stretch that year.

The Kennedy wing of the D party were troublesome because they were more focused on electing Teddy instead of policy. Chappaquiddick closed that door.

Mondale was probably waiting to be chosen.

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@Marie in '74 that he wouldn't be a candidate in '76. Said he didn't "have the fire in the belly." TK most likely would have run in '76 had his senate reelect occurred two yrs earlier and not in that pres'l election year.

The bridge wouldn't have been much of an issue in the primaries, but for sure in the general. But on that, it was '76 and the opponent would have been nice guy moderate Gerald Ford, not the far more bareknuckled Nixon or Reagan, and Rove and Atwater weren't running GOP presidentials at that time, so it would have been raised but would not have been a decisive factor in the race in my humble. Likely TK would have won that year as liberal proposals had not been discredited then. And weak opponent. Recall Jimmy barely won as Ford caught up in the final weeks. My 2 cents.

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ever raised any objections to the mission to his mentor once he knew what was going on. In any case, so nice of him to come clean 43 yrs later, as Carter is about to pass from the scene and is in no position to give his reaction.

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@wokkamile as he became Speaker of the State House of Representatives at age 27 and got elected Lt. Governor at age 31. Wiki defines him in his 80s as a "real estate magnate, politician and crisis manager" --whatever the hell a "crisis manager" might be. Impossible to imagine a more likely bio for a Texas insider. This is not the kind of person who tells John Connally that he was wrong about anything -- much less about this kind of scam.

-- Speaking as a Texan and a graduate of the University of Texas

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I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.

@fire with fire love to sell themselves to the public on their supposed toughness and rugged individualism, but apparently when in private they are suddenly faced with a tough problem presented by someone with a tough persona, they are suddenly not so tough themselves and become pet poodles.

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Forever ago, in either a magazine or a newspaper, which was all there was, maybe a tv guy such as Dan Rather, reported the whole hostage release was rigged and timed to favor Reagan.
News back then was truth, as this essay shows.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

soryang's picture

I read Gary Sick's book on this a long time ago. He said it was Casey and implicated George HW Bush. He claims a quid pro quo in the arrangement with Iran not to release the hostages until Reagan was inaugurated was the beginning of the Iran-Contra deal. I was very suspicious of the timing of the release when it happened.

The Iraqi invasion of Iran on Sept. 22, 1980, added both urgency and confusion to the various negotiating tracks. Two former Reagan campaign aides told me that this generated new fears within the Reagan-Bush campaign that war pressures would lead Iran to release the hostages before Election Day, thereby improving President Carter's chances.

Adding to the complexity, the Carter Administration secretly had been developing plans for a possible second hostage rescue mission, after the failure of its earlier mission, Desert 1, in April. It became operational in September 1980. Richard V. Allen, Ronald Reagan's first national security adviser and a member of his campaign, told me that one member of the rescue team contacted him and gave him a description of the second rescue plan. Shortly thereafter, the Reagan-Bush campaign launched a major publicity effort warning that President Carter might be planning an `October surprise' to obtain the release of the hostages prior to the election.

From Oct. 15 to Oct. 20, events came to a head in a series of meetings in several hotels in Paris, involving members of the Reagan-Bush campaign and high-level Iranian and Israeli representatives. Accounts of these meetings and the exact number of participants vary considerably among the more than 15 sources who claim direct or indirect knowledge of some aspect of them. There is, however, widespread agreement on three points: William Casey was a key participant: the Iranian representatives agreed that the hostages would not be released prior to the Presidential election on Nov. 4; in return, Israel would serve as a conduit for arms and spare parts to Iran.

At least five of the sources who say they were in Paris in connection with these meetings insist that George Bush was present for at least one meeting. Three of the sources say that they saw him there. In the absence of further information, I have not made up my mind about this allegation.

Immediately after the Paris meetings, things began to happen. On Oct. 21, Iran publicly shifted its position in the negotiations with the Carter Administration, disclaiming any further interest in receiving military equipment. From my position at the N.S.C., I learned that Cyrus Hashemi and another Iranian arms dealer secretly had reported to State Department officials that Iran had decided to hold the hostages until after the elections.

https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_cr/h920205-october-clips.htm

There are quite a few mostly MSM articles at the link on the October Surprise.

Scene outside Japanese Embassy in Seoul Saturday

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語必忠信 行必正直

soryang's picture

@soryang I guess youtube doesn't want anyone to see this video. It revealed the massive disapproval of the South Korean people have for both Yoon and the right wing Japanese administration. Can't have that.

I have to admit this was the best short video on the demonstrations Saturday.

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語必忠信 行必正直

as if the facts uncovered in an abandoned women's restroom never happened.

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@kelly Read his book "Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery" back in the 90s. It's been 25 yrs, so memory, but I recall Parry noted how the story was confirmed by the ex-head of French intel, Russian intel, and a member of Israel's intel service. The Russian and French confirmations were sent towards the end of the House committee's investigation into the scandal, and the head of that committee, an establishment-protecting member Lee Hamilton (D-OH) said the info couldn't be confirmed/it arrived too late to confirm, so, conveniently, it was a non-factor in his whitewashing report which Hamilton seemed determined to wrap up quickly in late 1992 with a no-solid evidence conclusion.

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@wokkamile just thinking about Theresa Heinz Kerry and her replacement spouse, passed off as a medal tossing outsider, who knew full well all that was involved and covered it up, despite the body count. Now this dust devil story looks more like a clean up operation pushing the public back into mysterious fog, despite revealing work that predated technological censorship, much like the Dark Alliance. It got around on radio and the internet back when. Today a different perspective of ignorance is being layered on history like a coat of camo. Seeing the display of fabricated naivete pushed by should be political junkies hiding beneath the small tent of the Demohypocritic faithful brigade just sickens me. Not enough that we were all made war criminals and terrorists by the drug lords running our country and others, now these information trolls make us all traitors by relaying bullshit that covers for the crimes of all parties involved. Hard to believe there are deeper depths to plumb in the pursuit of disgrace. Bush/Reagan/Clinton/Obama succeeded with a little help from their friends. Frog soup is served.

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less as too honest than as too naive and inexperienced in the ways of Beltway politics. He brought too many of his Georgia Mafia with him to Washington, and they didn't know how things worked up north, and how rough it could get.

They didn't even know how to properly, respectfully deal with the Speaker of the House, a Dem whose help would be vital in shepherding legislation thru Congress, and with the leading senate Dem, Ted Kennedy, who apparently felt betrayed by Carter on private assurances about backing his bold health care legislation.

Honest guy, yes, but he may have put too much faith in his honesty carrying the day with the public which by '78-79 was being bombarded daily with stories of the peanut farmer's ineffectiveness and incompetence.

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@wokkamile
inexperienced as a politician, naive, and surrounded with those of his ilk. Also poor political instincts which exasperate the inexperience.

How the hell did he reject his SoS, Cyrus Vance, in favor of that war mongering Zbigniew Brzezinski? An immigrant that only Allen Dulles could love.

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@wokkamile @wokkamile
Another honest man who seems to have worked more for the benefit of others than for himself. If he were to jump in the race I’d be in a bit of a quandary as to whether I would vote for him. Not because of any reservation I might have about the man, but because I would fear he would follow the well worn fate of both his uncle and his father if he were to win, and perhaps even just for running.

DC insiders would be apoplectic at the possibility of an actual populist do-gooder in the Oval Office, and are capable of just about anything. It could spoil their whole plan to rule the world and control every aspect of their subjects existence.

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“ …and when we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine,and understand who God is, and what our own potential is and duties are as human beings.- RFK jr. 8/26/2024

@ovals49 decided years ago not to let that danger you mention dictate his life's path. And he can take some small comfort from the fact that another kinda populist appeal guy, DJT, who advocated for friendlier relations w Russia in the 2016 campaign, did manage to avoid the danger and was able to take office.

And the fact that RFK Jr -- refreshingly for a member of the Kennedy family -- has openly talked about how a conspiracy of roughly the same forces killed both his father and uncle probably helps give him some added protection against such a similar event.

If he runs, he's got my vote..

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snoopydawg's picture

was just a patsy after all? He’s calling for his supporters to protest if he gets arrested, but i5% of them think it’s a trap to get more people locked up. They are saying that he has done nothing to help those who have been locked into solitary confinement or offered to help others with their legal bills. I don’t think trump has even been talking about this, but I haven’t listened to him so maybe I missed it. Most republicans have ignored this too or even called out that it was Obama who made it so they could be locked up before trial.

But for me it’s that no arrest warrants has been released and rumors are that the case has fallen apart. Just too many things that don’t add up in my mind to not consider this as being possible.

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Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?

TheOtherMaven's picture

@snoopydawg

I guess we find out tomorrow.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.