Israel's Looming Catastrophe

More Evidence

Since then, additional evidence has emerged linking the senior Bush to the clandestine Republican contacts with Iran during the 1980 campaign. Chicago Tribune reporter John Maclean said he was informed by a well-placed Republican Party source in mid-October 1980 that Bush was heading to Paris for a meeting with Iranians about the hostage crisis.

David Andelman, a former New York Times correspondent who was assisting French intelligence chief Alexandre deMarenches on his memoir, said deMarenches described arranging meetings between Republicans and Iranians in Paris but insisted that be left out of the book for fear it would hurt his friend, George H.W. Bush.

After checking its intelligence files at the request of the U.S. Congress, the Russian government submitted an extraordinary report in January 1993 that identified the senior George Bush as one of several Republicans who negotiated with the Iranians in Paris during the 1980 campaign.

The congressional task force that requested the Russian report as part of its “October Surprise” investigation in 1992 never made the report public or even disclosed its existence.

I discovered the Russian document in a storage box left behind by the task force, which – by the time the Russian report arrived – had already decided to “debunk” the allegations of a Republican-Iranian hostage deal. The task force cleared Bush without ever questioning him.

In 1993, former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who followed Begin to power in Israel, became another voice endorsing the allegations of a Republican-Iranian “October Surprise” deal back in 1980.

When asked in an interview whether there had been a Republican “October Surprise” operation, Shamir responded, “Of course, it was.” [For details on this mystery, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

The 52 American hostages were released on Jan. 20, 1981, just as Ronald Reagan was beginning his inaugural address.

Though the allegations of a Republican-Iranian deal have remained in dispute, investigations into the controversy confirmed that Israel did resume military shipments to Iran in 1981 with the knowledge of Reagan-Bush officials who permitted the secret deliveries to go forward.

By the mid-1980s, the Reagan-Bush administration was playing both sides of the Iran-Iraq war, funneling financial and some military support to Iraq while also selling missiles to Iran, both through third countries such as Israel and directly from U.S. stockpiles.

Rise of the Neoconservatives

The election of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in 1980 also coincided with the emergence of a political movement known as neoconservatism.

Many neoconservatives had been liberals or even leftists but broke with the Democratic Party in the 1970s to favor a more aggressive policy toward the Soviet Union. The neoconservatives also wanted a more staunchly pro-Israeli position in the Middle East.

The Reagan-Bush administration rewarded the neocons for their support in the 1980 campaign with their first taste of executive power, giving them credentials that would prove crucial more than two decades later in their ability to push through the Iraq War.

Elliott Abrams and Paul Wolfowitz became assistant secretaries of state in the Reagan-Bush administration. Abrams now handles Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, and Wolfowitz was an architect of the Iraq policy as deputy secretary of defense. One of Wolfowitz’s protégés from the Reagan-Bush era, I. Lewis Libby Jr., became Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff and a leading hawk on Iraq.

 1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5