One Sucker's Saga, Part I: Ebulliant Patriotism
Where were you on January 19, 1981? I can tell you where I was for at least part of the day, easily.
In that year, I was a high school junior. I was a pretty naive kid with good grades, growing up in a rural area near two major military installations. Most everyone around me was politically where I was; tending toward conservative. My own brand of conservatism, however, was probably born of some rebellion. My folks tended toward liberal politics. Heck, they were teachers, very active in the union. For that reason, I suspect, I latched onto the growing conservative movement's disdain toward organized labor, either because of or in ignorant spite held toward my dad's role as the district's contract negotiator for the teachers.
Had I been a month older, I would have been eligible to vote in the 1980 presidential election that seated Ronald Reagan. I would have voted for him. Four years later, I did.
Frankly, folks, as much as I appreciated President Carter's environmental perspective, I lapped up the press's disdain for our 39th president. I, too, was tired of doing without. I, too, was sick of the negative image our country had sprouted, seemingly, during his tenure. And I, too, was amazed the Iran hostage situation had dragged on as long as it had.
So when our high school's principal made a special intercom announcement on January 19, 1981 sharing that the Iranians had agreed to release the hostages, I felt patriotism. I sat in band class and felt that Reagan, with his tough, no-nonsense talk devoid of compromise and full of potential, had cowed those dirty, cowardly Iranians. They released the Embassy hostages on the day of his inauguration rather than face the wrath Ronnie would undoubtedly mete. And it would be no chopper attack failed because of sand. It would surely be a show of force that would shake those bastards in their sandy shoes.
America was rising again, and I was totally on board.
Yes, I was stupid. No argument there. But in my defense, so was -- is -- a vast majority of our country. To understand how this rising nationalism was a stupid act, it really helps to understand what really happened, what key and undisclosed events led to the hostage release.
For that, let's visit 1980. During the campaign, the Carter administration was frantically trying to negotiate the hostage release. That campaign had a third-party candidate, John Anderson. Anderson's campaign contacted the FBI with some interesting and disturbing information. They had been contacted directly by Iranian interests. Since dealing with a foreign power against the established and official government of the United States is treason, Anderson wisely turned over this information to the authorities.
Funny thing, though: When notified about the possibility that they, too, might be contacted, the Reagan campaign team denied they had heard anything. Not a peep. Which, given that Anderson was running third in the polls at the time, is a little weird. One can understand why Iran would want to negotiate not with the guy in power at the time, but with the guys who would be in power in the future. To cover their bases, they would contact all the candidates in the chance that one would emerge victorious . . . and to maybe play one group against another.
Another funny thing. After Carter lost the election, the negotiators noted that the negotiations with Iran were going well . . . until just after the Anderson campaign reported their contact.
You see, after the embassy was seized, the US froze all Iranian assets held in US banks. This pretty much crippled their ability to fund little things like their government and maybe defend themselves against neighbors with whom they had troubles, like Saddam Hussein. Unlocking those assets became, as the crisis dragged on, an urgent priority. If they could do so without seeming like total American puppets, all the better. So to deal with all the candidates would be in their best interests.
The Reagan team, of course, had some players well acquainted with the type of skull-duggery required to secretly do just about anything. Until shortly before his candidacy for Vice President, George H. W. Bush ran the CIA as its director. Reagan's campaign manager was William Casey, another spook with a long career in intelligence, starting with the OSS, the predecessor organization that later became the CIA. So when the Iranians came calling, negotiating directly with them was probably the more likely course of action.
The Carter team needed to get the hostages out by late October, at the latest. They knew such a coup would boost their polling numbers and probably win them the election at the last minute. American voters tend to vote with the most recent scandal or success burned more deeply into their minds than any quibbling details like competency. Pulling off this would be a classic October Surprise.
As the Carter team negotiations soured and stalled, a suspicion grew that the Reagan team, with their intelligence contacts, had essentially cock-blocked them.
(Although, to be fair, a "cock block" is a corny term for one man interrupting another man's amorous advances on a woman. Negotiating with terrorists when you have no authority to do so, especially if those negotiations run counter to official policy, is simple treason. There is a difference.)
When the hostages were released 15 minutes after Reagan took the oath of office, red flags must have been waving as frantically in their heads as the bunting at the inauguration ceremony.
Here I'd like to stress that I'm not simply letting my antipathy for the Reagan administration color my views on this issue so much that I am willing to make derogatory accusations without evidence. Let me show you the evidence.
Yes, after Reagan's team took office, the questions were raised. They were dismissed by the administration and every Republican in congress. After President Clinton won in 1992, however, the question of Reagan's complicity were raised yet again. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind) was appointed by congress to look into the allegations and, hopefully, put the issue to rest. He performed due diligence, to a point, by contacting foreign intelligence officials and asking them to report anything they might have known. What he didn't do, weirdly, was include any information that showed the Reagan team's shenanigans.
From Robert Parry's report on the issue:
After its release on Jan. 13, 1993, the House task force report on the October Surprise controversy quickly hardened into historical concrete. Its conclusion that there was "no credible evidence" to support the allegations of Republican sabotage in the 1980 Iran hostage crisis won acclaim across the political spectrum. . . .
But in the months following the task force's findings, more foreign leaders in positions to know told other Americans that there was more to the October Surprise story than the task force found.
And what information it was! Parry was granted access to some of the declassified documents the committee had stored in a ladies' restroom in an un-used government building. Have a peek at what he found!
I obtained permission from the House International Relations Committee to examine the task force's unclassified papers. I was told that there had not been a single prior request for these records that had been collecting dust in an obscure office off the Rayburn House Office Building's parking garage, across from the U.S. Capitol.
To reach the files required taking the Rayburn building's elevator to a sub-basement floor and then winding through the musty underground garage almost to the car exit at the building's south side. To the right, behind venetian-blind-covered windows was a small locked office. Inside were a few desks, cloth-covered partitions, phones and a rumbling old copying machine.
At the rear of the office was a converted Ladies' Room, now used for storage. The task force's taped boxes sat against the wall, under an empty tampon dispenser which still hung from the salmon-colored tiles. I began pulling the tape off the boxes and poring through the files. Not only did I find unclassified notes and documents about the task force's work, but also "secret" and even "top secret" papers that had been left behind, apparently in the haste to wrap up the investigation. (Emphasis added.)
That emboldened phrase strikes me. After all the controversy, no member of the media had even asked to look at the committee docs?!? Amazing. In another chapter of his series, Parry notes a cable from the Russian embassy that arrived two days after Hamilton's task force finalized and presented its report:
To the shock of the task force, the six-page 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.
As described by the Russians, the Carter administration offered the Iranians supplies of arms and unfreezing of assets for a pre-election release of the hostages. One important meeting had occurred in Athens in July 1980 with Pentagon representatives agreeing "in principle" to deliver "a significant quantity of spare parts for F-4 and F-5 aircraft and also M-60 tanks ... via Turkey," according to the Russian report. The Iranians "discussed a possible step-by-step normalization of Iranian-American relations [and] the provision of support for President Carter in the election campaign via the release of American hostages."
But the Republicans were making separate overtures to the Iranians, also in Europe, the Russians claimed. "William Casey, in 1980, met three times with representatives of the Iranian leadership," the Russians wrote. "The meetings took place in Madrid and Paris."
At the Paris meeting in October 1980, "R[obert] Gates, at that time a staffer of the National Security Council in the administration of Jimmy Carter and former CIA director George Bush also took part," the Russians said. "In Madrid and Paris, the representatives of Ronald Reagan and the Iranian leadership discussed the question of possibly delaying the release of 52 hostages from the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Teheran."
For this post, I've only noted the Russian documents. There was other evidence ignored by Hamilton's task force, including sworn testimony by French and Israeli officials. Please, read. Don't take my word for this. And perhaps when you're finished reading, you might want to look at the text of the Russian cable, or, perhaps for the more skeptical amongst you, the digitized copies of that cable (pdf).
Knock yourself out.
I have become, over the years, a big believer in evidence. Opinions are cheap. Anyone can hold an opinion. What forms the basis for that opinion, for me, separates the gold and the bullshit. So if one chooses to regale me with their opinions, I for starters ask for references.
It has become fashionable to hold unsupported -- and unsupportable -- opinions. In my opinion, this must end.
We are never going to get anywhere as a culture, as a race, as the denizens of a planet if we do not from time to time check our opinions at the door and at least seek to support or dismiss those opinions with verifiable evidence. Our every action can, yes, be guided by opinion. We've proven that to be golden truth. But unless those opinions rest at least partially on some bedrock of fact those guided actions will undo our very ability to survive, let alone cope, on this globe.
I'm sharing here one man's disillusionment, mine. It gets worse. In coming sporatic posts I will outline what I have discovered very recently that has dumped me in a perma-funk, a mood more dire than my most dark moments of youth where darkness is cool. What's worse, it wasn't prompted by my feelings for this or that girl, or the enticing thought of a world devoid of meaning, but by a list of verifiable evidence that shows conclusively that we are in the power and thrall of people who would do this country and this planet No Good Whatsoever on a scale never perhaps seen in recorded history.
Some of them were involved in the Treason of 1980. Some of them are still in positions of authority. Robert Gates, for example, mentioned by that Russian memo as a participant of the secret Iran meetings, is now the Secretary of Defense.
I don't want to go down this road, this hyper-agitated state that I have seen leads to mental impairments and obvious insanity. I've seen folks visit this shit before, and it never ends well. I don't want to be yet another of "those guys."
So I'll take it slow. But go I will.
Wish me luck.
In that year, I was a high school junior. I was a pretty naive kid with good grades, growing up in a rural area near two major military installations. Most everyone around me was politically where I was; tending toward conservative. My own brand of conservatism, however, was probably born of some rebellion. My folks tended toward liberal politics. Heck, they were teachers, very active in the union. For that reason, I suspect, I latched onto the growing conservative movement's disdain toward organized labor, either because of or in ignorant spite held toward my dad's role as the district's contract negotiator for the teachers.
Had I been a month older, I would have been eligible to vote in the 1980 presidential election that seated Ronald Reagan. I would have voted for him. Four years later, I did.
Frankly, folks, as much as I appreciated President Carter's environmental perspective, I lapped up the press's disdain for our 39th president. I, too, was tired of doing without. I, too, was sick of the negative image our country had sprouted, seemingly, during his tenure. And I, too, was amazed the Iran hostage situation had dragged on as long as it had.
So when our high school's principal made a special intercom announcement on January 19, 1981 sharing that the Iranians had agreed to release the hostages, I felt patriotism. I sat in band class and felt that Reagan, with his tough, no-nonsense talk devoid of compromise and full of potential, had cowed those dirty, cowardly Iranians. They released the Embassy hostages on the day of his inauguration rather than face the wrath Ronnie would undoubtedly mete. And it would be no chopper attack failed because of sand. It would surely be a show of force that would shake those bastards in their sandy shoes.
America was rising again, and I was totally on board.
Yes, I was stupid. No argument there. But in my defense, so was -- is -- a vast majority of our country. To understand how this rising nationalism was a stupid act, it really helps to understand what really happened, what key and undisclosed events led to the hostage release.
For that, let's visit 1980. During the campaign, the Carter administration was frantically trying to negotiate the hostage release. That campaign had a third-party candidate, John Anderson. Anderson's campaign contacted the FBI with some interesting and disturbing information. They had been contacted directly by Iranian interests. Since dealing with a foreign power against the established and official government of the United States is treason, Anderson wisely turned over this information to the authorities.
Funny thing, though: When notified about the possibility that they, too, might be contacted, the Reagan campaign team denied they had heard anything. Not a peep. Which, given that Anderson was running third in the polls at the time, is a little weird. One can understand why Iran would want to negotiate not with the guy in power at the time, but with the guys who would be in power in the future. To cover their bases, they would contact all the candidates in the chance that one would emerge victorious . . . and to maybe play one group against another.
Another funny thing. After Carter lost the election, the negotiators noted that the negotiations with Iran were going well . . . until just after the Anderson campaign reported their contact.
You see, after the embassy was seized, the US froze all Iranian assets held in US banks. This pretty much crippled their ability to fund little things like their government and maybe defend themselves against neighbors with whom they had troubles, like Saddam Hussein. Unlocking those assets became, as the crisis dragged on, an urgent priority. If they could do so without seeming like total American puppets, all the better. So to deal with all the candidates would be in their best interests.
The Reagan team, of course, had some players well acquainted with the type of skull-duggery required to secretly do just about anything. Until shortly before his candidacy for Vice President, George H. W. Bush ran the CIA as its director. Reagan's campaign manager was William Casey, another spook with a long career in intelligence, starting with the OSS, the predecessor organization that later became the CIA. So when the Iranians came calling, negotiating directly with them was probably the more likely course of action.
The Carter team needed to get the hostages out by late October, at the latest. They knew such a coup would boost their polling numbers and probably win them the election at the last minute. American voters tend to vote with the most recent scandal or success burned more deeply into their minds than any quibbling details like competency. Pulling off this would be a classic October Surprise.
As the Carter team negotiations soured and stalled, a suspicion grew that the Reagan team, with their intelligence contacts, had essentially cock-blocked them.
(Although, to be fair, a "cock block" is a corny term for one man interrupting another man's amorous advances on a woman. Negotiating with terrorists when you have no authority to do so, especially if those negotiations run counter to official policy, is simple treason. There is a difference.)
When the hostages were released 15 minutes after Reagan took the oath of office, red flags must have been waving as frantically in their heads as the bunting at the inauguration ceremony.
Here I'd like to stress that I'm not simply letting my antipathy for the Reagan administration color my views on this issue so much that I am willing to make derogatory accusations without evidence. Let me show you the evidence.
Yes, after Reagan's team took office, the questions were raised. They were dismissed by the administration and every Republican in congress. After President Clinton won in 1992, however, the question of Reagan's complicity were raised yet again. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind) was appointed by congress to look into the allegations and, hopefully, put the issue to rest. He performed due diligence, to a point, by contacting foreign intelligence officials and asking them to report anything they might have known. What he didn't do, weirdly, was include any information that showed the Reagan team's shenanigans.
From Robert Parry's report on the issue:
After its release on Jan. 13, 1993, the House task force report on the October Surprise controversy quickly hardened into historical concrete. Its conclusion that there was "no credible evidence" to support the allegations of Republican sabotage in the 1980 Iran hostage crisis won acclaim across the political spectrum. . . .
But in the months following the task force's findings, more foreign leaders in positions to know told other Americans that there was more to the October Surprise story than the task force found.
And what information it was! Parry was granted access to some of the declassified documents the committee had stored in a ladies' restroom in an un-used government building. Have a peek at what he found!
I obtained permission from the House International Relations Committee to examine the task force's unclassified papers. I was told that there had not been a single prior request for these records that had been collecting dust in an obscure office off the Rayburn House Office Building's parking garage, across from the U.S. Capitol.
To reach the files required taking the Rayburn building's elevator to a sub-basement floor and then winding through the musty underground garage almost to the car exit at the building's south side. To the right, behind venetian-blind-covered windows was a small locked office. Inside were a few desks, cloth-covered partitions, phones and a rumbling old copying machine.
At the rear of the office was a converted Ladies' Room, now used for storage. The task force's taped boxes sat against the wall, under an empty tampon dispenser which still hung from the salmon-colored tiles. I began pulling the tape off the boxes and poring through the files. Not only did I find unclassified notes and documents about the task force's work, but also "secret" and even "top secret" papers that had been left behind, apparently in the haste to wrap up the investigation. (Emphasis added.)
That emboldened phrase strikes me. After all the controversy, no member of the media had even asked to look at the committee docs?!? Amazing. In another chapter of his series, Parry notes a cable from the Russian embassy that arrived two days after Hamilton's task force finalized and presented its report:
To the shock of the task force, the six-page 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.
As described by the Russians, the Carter administration offered the Iranians supplies of arms and unfreezing of assets for a pre-election release of the hostages. One important meeting had occurred in Athens in July 1980 with Pentagon representatives agreeing "in principle" to deliver "a significant quantity of spare parts for F-4 and F-5 aircraft and also M-60 tanks ... via Turkey," according to the Russian report. The Iranians "discussed a possible step-by-step normalization of Iranian-American relations [and] the provision of support for President Carter in the election campaign via the release of American hostages."
But the Republicans were making separate overtures to the Iranians, also in Europe, the Russians claimed. "William Casey, in 1980, met three times with representatives of the Iranian leadership," the Russians wrote. "The meetings took place in Madrid and Paris."
At the Paris meeting in October 1980, "R[obert] Gates, at that time a staffer of the National Security Council in the administration of Jimmy Carter and former CIA director George Bush also took part," the Russians said. "In Madrid and Paris, the representatives of Ronald Reagan and the Iranian leadership discussed the question of possibly delaying the release of 52 hostages from the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Teheran."
For this post, I've only noted the Russian documents. There was other evidence ignored by Hamilton's task force, including sworn testimony by French and Israeli officials. Please, read. Don't take my word for this. And perhaps when you're finished reading, you might want to look at the text of the Russian cable, or, perhaps for the more skeptical amongst you, the digitized copies of that cable (pdf).
Knock yourself out.
I have become, over the years, a big believer in evidence. Opinions are cheap. Anyone can hold an opinion. What forms the basis for that opinion, for me, separates the gold and the bullshit. So if one chooses to regale me with their opinions, I for starters ask for references.
It has become fashionable to hold unsupported -- and unsupportable -- opinions. In my opinion, this must end.
We are never going to get anywhere as a culture, as a race, as the denizens of a planet if we do not from time to time check our opinions at the door and at least seek to support or dismiss those opinions with verifiable evidence. Our every action can, yes, be guided by opinion. We've proven that to be golden truth. But unless those opinions rest at least partially on some bedrock of fact those guided actions will undo our very ability to survive, let alone cope, on this globe.
I'm sharing here one man's disillusionment, mine. It gets worse. In coming sporatic posts I will outline what I have discovered very recently that has dumped me in a perma-funk, a mood more dire than my most dark moments of youth where darkness is cool. What's worse, it wasn't prompted by my feelings for this or that girl, or the enticing thought of a world devoid of meaning, but by a list of verifiable evidence that shows conclusively that we are in the power and thrall of people who would do this country and this planet No Good Whatsoever on a scale never perhaps seen in recorded history.
Some of them were involved in the Treason of 1980. Some of them are still in positions of authority. Robert Gates, for example, mentioned by that Russian memo as a participant of the secret Iran meetings, is now the Secretary of Defense.
I don't want to go down this road, this hyper-agitated state that I have seen leads to mental impairments and obvious insanity. I've seen folks visit this shit before, and it never ends well. I don't want to be yet another of "those guys."
So I'll take it slow. But go I will.
Wish me luck.