Was the October Surprise Treason? Craig Unger’s Den of Spies

The October shock actually occurred.

The shock occurred in 1980, when members of the Reagan/Bush marketing campaign requested Iran to carry the American hostages captive longer. William Casey, who was Ronald Reagan’s marketing campaign supervisor, met with Iranians in Madrid and requested them to not launch the hostages so long as Jimmy Carter was president. Casey promised Iran armaments, which Israel would ship to them. Casey and others promised the Iranians that issues could be a lot better for them as soon as Reagan was elected. Goodbye, Jimmy Carter.

Craig Unger’s new ebook, Den of Spies: Reagan, Carter, and the Secret Historical past of the Treason That Stole the White Home, has me fascinated about the shock yet again.

The Shocking Lengthy Story

Up to now, I believed within the October shock. President Jimmy Carter made it unlawful to provide weapons to Iran after the hostages have been captured. However Reagan’s individuals gave Iran arms via Israel, even earlier than Reagan turned president. The hostages have been launched proper after Ronald Reagan was sworn into the presidency, minutes after he took the oath of workplace. If the hostages had come house whereas Carter was nonetheless president, he may need been reelected.

I believed the story of the shock once I learn Gary Sick’s April 1991 op-ed within the New York Instances, The Election Story of the Decade. I requested my household for a duplicate of Sick’s November 1991 ebook, October Shock: America’s Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan, for Christmas. Truthfully, my household didn’t wish to hear me complain about it, so I saved my mouth shut as I learn the ebook within the again room. Sick, who was Carter’s pure safety advisor and an knowledgeable on Iran, advised us again then that the Reagan/Bush marketing campaign maneuvered to maintain the U.S. hostages in Iran till after Reagan was elected. The hostages ought to have been launched as Jimmy Carter did all the pieces he may to set them free. However Carter didn’t defeat Reagan’s “good” marketing campaign supervisor, William Casey. Casey had Workplace of Strategic Providers [OSS] spy expertise from World Warfare II. He saved his worldwide contacts in place after that. He knew find out how to get the deal achieved that he needed. He needed Reagan elected and Carter dismissed.

That’s what occurred.

A few years later, I posted the March 2023 New York Instances story, sadly entitled A 4-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election, on my web sites. In that essay, former Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes defined how his mentor, Texas Governor John B. Connally, Jr., helped Reagan beat Carter. How? Connally visited the Iranians and requested them to maintain the hostages imprisoned till Reagan was president. Reagan would give them a greater deal, he promised. The Reagan administration gave the Iranians loads of arms, which Carter had denied them. After his journey, Connolly advised Reagan aide Casey what he had achieved.

Ben Barnes got here ahead as a result of President Carter was nonetheless alive, and he needed the historical past made clear. Not too long ago, on Carter’s one centesimal birthday, Craig Unger printed this new ebook, Den of Spies: Reagan, Carter, and the Secret Historical past of the Treason That Stole the White Home. Carter died on December 29, 2024. He was the longest-lived president in American historical past.

The brand new ebook made me take into consideration the shock yet again. Was it treason?

Why Did I Comply with the Story?

Why do I care? In 1991, as as we speak, I adopted the tales as a result of I believed President Jimmy Carter was a really ethical man. He was a dedicated Christian. As a pupil of faith, ethics, and regulation, I puzzled if Carter was too ethical to be a very good president. Way back I wrote an essay about Christian morality and soiled fingers, asking the theoretical query if politicians might be ethical. Different individuals have requested related questions on Carter and morality; these points repeat in tales in regards to the shock. I spent a while within the Carter Library making an attempt to grasp what Carter’s ethical and political file is, and the way these two expertise relate to at least one one other. Typically Carter’s morality seems to have harm his political file.

Unger’s ebook suggests it may need undermined his dealings with the hostages. It was attention-grabbing to contemplate if different politicians would attempt to block Carter, because it’s unlikely that Carter would have secretly fought with enemies to disclaim one other politician election.

Unger notes Carter wouldn’t have traded arms for hostages as a result of “it went in opposition to his international coverage ideas.” In distinction, Casey knew “[s]ometimes you must get your fingers soiled.” He did, and he received.

Unger is bound the shock occurred as a result of the President of Iran in 1980, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, confirms it occurred. Unger interviewed Bani-Sadr. As Unger places it, “Bani-Sadr had the receipts” exhibiting that Casey had met with the Iranians in Madrid. The previous Iranian president made a “repeated insistence that the October shock was actual.” For the file, Bani-Sadr was shortly eradicated as Iranian president. He moved to Versailles. As an alternative, Iran saved the spiritual Islamic chief, Ayatollah Khomeini, and eradicated the secular Bani-Sadr.

Unger compares Carter and Bani-Sadr, explaining they have been each spiritual, one a Christian and the opposite a Shi’ite Muslim. Neither of them had the “reactionary political baggage” that some of their religion had. As an alternative, they “have been considerate, humane, idealistic, and clever—qualities that had propelled them to such lofty positions. However as soon as they obtained there, they have been each comparatively weak and ineffective when it got here to wielding energy—and their foes went in for the kill.”

Each have been secular leaders. And each misplaced inside their very own international locations.

Unger’s Account

Unger has been trying on the shock story a very long time, greater than thirty years. His profession has suffered due to it. He explains that he, too, thought the 1991 Sick story was dynamic and possibly true. After he wrote one essay in regards to the shock, he was employed by Newsweek and thought he would have nice success with this large story.

However quickly the counter-surprise narrative developed.

The counter-narrative was that Casey was by no means in Madrid. As an alternative, some information confirmed he was at a London convention and couldn’t have been with the Iranians in Madrid.

The counter-narrative held for a very long time. Each the U.S. Home and the Senate had committees overview the occasions. Their conclusion was that the shock was a pretend conspiracy story, invented by loopy and gullible journalists. They downplayed the shock and located no proof of it. “The decision was in stone: there was no October shock.”

Their method matched what occurred within the information media. As an alternative of going with Unger’s story, the media rejected that information. Reagan’s safety advisor, Robert “Bud” McFarlane, sued Unger for libel.

Unger had a tough time remaining targeted on this story. The journalist who stayed with it was Robert Parry, who died in 2018. Parry found congressional paperwork about Iran have been saved in an outdated, deserted lady’s toilet within the Home workplace’s parking storage that was become a storage room. The archive had information that the committees hadn’t talked about.

Parry wrote Trick or Treason in regards to the shock. Unger credit Parry together with his detailed work on the shock. In 2022, Unger requested Diane Duston, Parry’s widow, about his work. Duston gave Unger 23 gigabytes of Parry’s in depth information in regards to the shock. That’s plenty of pages.

It’s superb to learn the ebook and see how a lot work goes into such a narrative. It’s unimaginable to think about the journey, interviews, doc searches and persistence that first led Parry after which Unger to explain how this advanced story, with conferences all around the world, developed. And to verify everybody understands that the shock actually occurred.

Affirmation

Different sources hold telling us the shock actually occurred.

In Could 2003, Jonathan Alter, Gary Sick, Kai Chicken, and Stuart Eizenstat—all consultants about Jimmy Carter—wrote It’s All However Settled: The Reagan Marketing campaign Delayed the Launch of the American Hostages, in The New Republic. Their conclusion? “We predict there’s now sufficient proof to say definitively that Ronald Reagan’s marketing campaign supervisor, the late William Casey, ran a multipronged covert operation to control the 1980 presidential election—and that these acts of betrayal may need affected the result.”

Their conclusion is robust: “Casey’s unpatriotic conduct ought to now be considered by historians as a longtime reality.” They point out that one of many hostages, Barry Rosen, stated these occasions have been “the definition of treason.” Unger additionally known as it treason in his ebook’s title.

Kai Chicken, in The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter, added that Casey’s negotiations “might be deemed a blatant violation of the 1799 Logan Act prohibiting non-public residents from negotiating disputes with international powers.” Chicken additionally says: “By any definition, this was an act of treason. However Republican operatives and Casey himself in all probability regarded it as mere hardball politics.” Chicken says Carter is “studiously agnostic” about Casey’s diplomacy.

Bani-Sadr advised Unger that he had talked about the connections between the Iranians and Casey to Congressman Lee Hamilton, who directed the Home research of the shock. Hamilton discovered the story “so chilling that he didn’t know what to do.” Bani-Sadr agreed with Hamilton that the information was horrible, however advised him “the worth is far heavier for those who don’t inform the reality to Individuals. Then, you actually endanger democracy.”

The Worth

There was an early results of the October shock. Do you keep in mind the Iran-Contra scandal, through which the Reagan administration illegally offered arms to Iran, after which gave the earnings to the Contras in Nicaragua? Unger says that collection of unlawful gross sales of arms began with the shock. The October Shock and Iran Contra “are similar.” The primary inspired the following.

Unger says the shock “solid in stone the notion of Jimmy Carter as a feckless Boy Scout who was so hobbled by his Sunday college morality that he allowed America to be weakened and humiliated by Iran.” He would have been seen otherwise if he had introduced the hostages house. His failure, the ebook notes, was actually his opponents’ treachery.

Certainly our views of failed and profitable politicians could be totally different if there had been no treason within the marketing campaign. Jimmy Carter would have a distinct repute.

After their dialogue, Bani-Sadr advised Unger: “You need to write it,…If not, it is going to occur once more.”

It appears prefer it occurred once more, in Iran Contra. Is there something to study from this expertise?

In line with Unger, “In the long run, Democrats can both study from this darkish, darkish historical past and work out find out how to deploy efficient countermeasures. Or they are going to be destroyed by Republican treachery when it’s too late.”