October 29, 2006 at 08:57:08

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Original October Surprise (Part 3)

By Robert Parry (about the author)     Page 2 of 13 page(s)

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'Blond Ghost'

Perhaps most significantly, Bush quietly enlisted Theodore Shackley, the legendary CIA covert operations specialist known as the "blond ghost." During the Cold War, Shackley had run many of the CIA's most controversial paramilitary operations, from Vietnam and Laos to the JMWAVE operations against Fidel Castro's Cuba.

In those operations, Shackley had supervised the works of hundreds of CIA officers and developed powerful bonds of loyalty with many of his subordinates. For instance, Donald Gregg, the CIA liaison to Carter's White House, had served under Shackley's command in Vietnam.

When Bush was CIA director in 1976, he appointed Shackley to a top clandestine job, associate deputy director for operations, laying the foundation for Shackley's possible rise to director and cementing Shackley's loyalty to Bush. Shackley had a falling out with Carter's CIA director, Stansfield Turner, and quit the agency in 1979.

Shackley believed that Turner had devastated the CIA by pushing out hundreds of covert officers, many of them Shackley's former subordinates. The prospect of George H.W. Bush rising to be President or Vice President rekindled speculation that Shackley still might get the top CIA job.

By early 1980, the Republicans also complained that they were being kept in the dark about progress on the Iran hostage negotiations. George Cave, then a top CIA specialist on Iran, told me that the "Democrats never briefed the Republicans" on sensitive developments, creating suspicions among the Republicans.

So, the Republicans sought out their own sources of information. Shackley began monitoring Carter's progress on the hostage negotiations through his contacts with Iranians in London and Hamburg, West Germany.

"Ted, I know, had a couple of contacts in Germany," said Cave. "I know he talked to them. I don't know how far it went. ... Ted was very active on that thing in the winter/spring of 1980."

Author David Corn also got wind of the Shackley-Bush connection when he was researching his biography of Shackley, Blond Ghost.

"Within the spook world the belief spread that Shackley was close to Bush," Corn wrote. "Rafael Quintero [an anti-Castro Cuban with close ties to the CIA] was saying that Shackley met with Bush every week. He told one associate that should Reagan and Bush triumph, Shackley was considered a potential DCI," the abbreviation for CIA director.

Shackley's monitoring of hostage developments for Bush continued at least into the fall of 1980.

According to handwritten notes of Reagan's foreign policy adviser Richard Allen, Bush called on Oct. 27, 1980, after getting an unsettling message from former Texas Gov. John Connally, the ex-Democrat who had switched to the Republican Party during the Nixon administration. Connally said his oil contacts in the Middle East were buzzing with rumors that Carter had achieved the long-elusive breakthrough on the hostages.

Bush ordered Allen to find out what he could about Connally's tip. "Geo Bush," Allen's notes began, "JBC [Connally] -- already made deal. Israelis delivered last wk spare pts. via Amsterdam. Hostages out this wk. Moderate Arabs upset. French have given spares to Iraq and know of JC [Carter] deal w/Iran. JBC [Connally] unsure what we should do. RVA [Allen] to act if true or not."

In a still "secret" 1992 deposition to the House October Surprise Task Force, Allen explained the cryptic notes as meaning Connally had heard that Carter had ransomed the hostages' freedom with an Israeli shipment of military spare parts to Iran. Allen said Bush instructed him, Allen, to get details from Connally. Allen was then to pass on any new details to two of Bush's aides.

According to the notes, Bush ordered Allen to relay the information to "Ted Shacklee [sic] via Jennifer." Allen said the Jennifer was Jennifer Fitzgerald, Bush's longtime assistant including during his year at the CIA. Allen testified that "Shacklee" was Theodore Shackley, the legendary CIA covert operations specialist.

Though various foreign leaders and intelligence operatives have alleged that by mid-October 1980, the Reagan-Bush campaign had struck its own hostage deal with the Iranian government, there apparently continued to be nervousness among the Republicans that whatever arrangements they had with Iran might come unglued.

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