Conspiracy Theory to Conspiracy Fact: The 1980 election

[Jon Banks]

NY Times: A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election

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.

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.

Mr. Carter’s camp has long suspected that Mr. Casey or someone else in Mr. Reagan’s orbit sought to secretly torpedo efforts to liberate the hostages before the election, and books have been written on what came to be called the October surprise. But congressional investigations debunked previous theories of what happened.

Mr. Connally did not figure in those investigations. His involvement, as described by Mr. Barnes, adds a new understanding to what may have happened in that hard-fought, pivotal election year. With Mr. Carter now 98 and in hospice care, Mr. Barnes said he felt compelled to come forward to correct the record.

“History needs to know that this happened,” Mr. Barnes, who turns 85 next month, said in one of several interviews, his first with a news organization about the episode. “I think it’s so significant and I guess knowing that the end is near for President Carter put it on my mind more and more and more. I just feel like we’ve got to get it down some way.”

Mr. Barnes is no shady foreign arms dealer with questionable credibility, like some of the characters who fueled previous iterations of the October surprise theory. He was once one of the most prominent figures in Texas, the youngest speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and later lieutenant governor. He was such an influential figure that he helped a young George W. Bush get into the Texas Air National Guard rather than be exposed to the draft and sent to Vietnam. Lyndon B. Johnson predicted that Mr. Barnes would become president someday.

Confirming Mr. Barnes’s account is problematic after so much time. Mr. Connally, Mr. Casey and other central figures have long since died and Mr. Barnes has no diaries or memos to corroborate his account. But he has no obvious reason to make up the story and indeed expressed trepidation at going public because of the reaction of fellow Democrats.

Mr. Barnes identified four living people he said he had confided in over the years: Mark K. Updegrove, president of the L.B.J. Foundation; Tom Johnson, a former aide to Lyndon Johnson (no relation) who later became publisher of the Los Angeles Times and president of CNN; Larry Temple, a former aide to Mr. Connally and Lyndon Johnson; and H.W. Brands, a University of Texas historian.

All four of them confirmed in recent days that Mr. Barnes shared the story with them years ago. “As far as I know, Ben never has lied to me,” Tom Johnson said, a sentiment the others echoed. Mr. Brands included three paragraphs about Mr. Barnes’s recollections in a 2015 biography of Mr. Reagan, but the account generated little public notice at the time.

Records at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum confirm part of Mr. Barnes’s story. An itinerary found this past week in Mr. Connally’s files indicated that he did, in fact, leave Houston on July 18, 1980, for a trip that would take him to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel before returning to Houston on Aug. 11. Mr. Barnes was listed as accompanying him.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html


The reason why I remain open-minded about conspiracy theories (if there’s reasonable level of circumstantial evidence) is because sometimes they prove to be true.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

NY Times: A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html


The reason why I remain open-minded about conspiracy theories (if there’s reasonable level of circumstantial evidence) is because sometimes they prove to be true.

You really think this alone proves - or is even solid evidence - there was an "October Surprise"? Mr. Barnes is, for me a shaky source. He made claims about Bush and the National Guard that were, if not shown to be false, shown to be very questionable.

What is the evidence this occurred? One source? What is the evidence the supposed message from Connally was delivered? What is the evidence that Khomeini - who, from what I've read, made the decisions on the hostage - received the message? What is the evidence he believed it? I.e., that Reagan would give him a better deal? What is the evidence he made the decision to hold the hostages based on the offer? What is the evidence for the "better deal"? That is the quo for the quid?

You've gone from "A", Connally reportedly telling Arab leaders to tell the Iranians that they'd get a better "deal" (whatever that was) than any deal with the Carter Administration to "B", Khomeini doing just that: agreeing to the deal. You've got to show a heckuva lot more evidence to go from "A" to "B". Maybe there's more there - and I don't reject this out of hand; it certainly sound plausible - but there has to be more than this.

BTW, just a side note: Remember that during the Iran/Iraq war that the Reagan Administration gave help to Iraq/Saddam? Intelligence information, let him purchase munitions to help defeat Iran. I'd think the Iranians would use this supposed deal to prevent that? To blackmail them? And Sy Hersh said he looked into this claim and found no evidence that the Reagan Administration gave weapons to Iran in return for the hostages. He said he talked with Middle East arms merchants (during his investigation into Israel's nuclear program) who said they would have known about any such deal since that was how they made their money.

I don't know anyone who doesn't believe there were/are conspiracies. Why do you uncritically accept them?

[Richard Smith]

Carter was the worst president in modern history until Biden.  Carter didn't have a chance in 1980.  He was elected in 1976 in the aftermath of Watergate by defeating a weak Republican candidate. The hostage situation was just one of his many disasters.  Everything he touched turned into a disaster.  He couldn't delegate and even spent time making the schedule for the WH tennis court.  Paralyzed with indecision.  The only difference between Carter and our current clown show is that Carter was at least a decent person.  He was trying to do the right thing even if constantly failing.  He wouldn't do anything against his religious principles.  The modern politician will say or do anything to get elected while enriching themselves and their families at every turn.

[Jon Banks]

What is the evidence this occurred? One source? What is the evidence the supposed message from Connally was delivered? What is the evidence that Khomeini - who, from what I've read, made the decisions on the hostage - received the message? What is the evidence he believed it? I.e., that Reagan would give him a better deal? What is the evidence he made the decision to hold the hostages based on the offer? What is the evidence for the "better deal"? That is the quo for the quid?

Maybe the "better deal" that was promised after Reagan became President wasn't accepted by the Iranians.

If you're looking for a "smoking gun", you're never going to find one for most real conspiracies. A handshake deal doesn't leave a paper trail.

The only thing the Press can do is try to corroborate the claims that can be corroborated and it appears the NY Times did in fact corroborate at least parts of Mr. Barnes' story. I encourage you to read the whole article.

My question to you is, what incentive does Barnes have for lying about this 40 year old scandal? To me it seems like he wants to come clean before President Carter passes away. He could have come clean in the 1980s during the Iran-Contra scandal when there was more public interest. Surely he would've been offered lucrative book deals and movie deals. Instead, he waited 40 years until Carter is on his death bed.

I don't know anyone who doesn't believe there were/are conspiracies. Why do you uncritically accept them?

I'm skeptical about every conspiracy theory and do not uncritically accept 99% of them. But I keep an open-mind because sometimes there is partial truth in conspiracy theories and occasionally the theory is proven to be true.

In the case of the 1980 election, I think there's enough circumstantial evidence to conclude that a deal was made by Reagan or people associated with his campaign (with or without Reagan's knowledge). I think Barnes is probably telling the truth due to the lack of incentives for lying about it...

[Jon Banks]

The Intercept: Others who corroborated the 1980 October Surprise before Ben Barnes

The [NY]Times reported that Ben Barnes, a key figure in Texas politics, said he made the trip with former Texas Gov. John Connally, a major supporter of Reagan’s campaign, and that when they returned home, Connally met in an airport lounge with William Casey, who’d been a top U.S. spy during World War II and was then Reagan’s campaign manager. Connally and Casey discussed the trip, according to Barnes, who The Times quoted as saying, “History needs to know that this happened.” After Reagan beat Carter in a landslide, Reagan appointed Casey head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

All this is powerful evidence that the Reagan campaign did — as has been alleged for decades — strike a deal with the Iranian government to prevent the hostages from being released. While that has never been proven, what’s known beyond a shadow of a doubt is that the Reagan campaign was deeply worried that Carter might get the hostages out before November and thereby give a big boost to his prospects.

You might understandably ask: If this actually happened, how could it have been kept secret? Why hasn’t anyone with knowledge of it spoken up before? The answer is that it hasn’t been kept secret, and many, many people have said it occurred. But most of the people doing so have been foreigners. Barnes is merely the most important American to finally come out and support the story.

Abolhassan Bani-Sadr

Bani-Sadr was the president of post-revolutionary Iran from January 1980 until June 1981, when he was impeached and fled the country.

In Bani-Sadr’s 1991 memoir, “My Turn to Speak,” he wrote that:

In late October 1980, everyone was openly discussing the agreement with the Americans on the Reagan team. In the October 27 issue of Enghelab Eslami [“Islamic Revolution,” Bani-Sadr’s newspaper] I published an editorial saying that Carter was no longer in control of U.S. foreign policy and had yielded the real power to those who … had negotiated with the mullahs on the hostage affair.

Yitzhak Shamir

Shamir served two terms as Israel’s prime minister in the 1980s and early 1990s. At the time of the 1980 U.S. presidential campaign, he was Israel’s minister of foreign affairs.

The subject of the October Surprise came up when Shamir was interviewed by several reporters in 1993, after Shamir had left office. When one asked Shamir whether it had happened, Shamir immediately responded, “Of course. … I know in America, they know it.”

Yasser Arafat

Arafat was head of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian National Authority. In 1996, he met with Carter in the Gaza Strip. According to historian Douglas Brinkley, Arafat told Carter, “You should know that in 1980 the Republicans approached me with an arms deal if I could arrange to keep the hostages in Iran until after the election. I want you to know that I turned them down.”

Alexandre de Marenches

In 1980, de Marenches was the head of France’s external intelligence agency, the Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage. The 1993 House investigation spoke with David Andelman, a journalist who had co-written de Marenches’s memoirs.

Andelman said de Marenches had told him off the record that he was involved in “setting up a meeting in Paris between Casey and some Iranians in late October of 1980.”

https://theintercept.com/2023/03/24/october-surprise-ben-barnes/


Fascinating stuff.