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In the 1980s, after all, the Soviet KGB was not without its own sources on a topic as important to Moscow as developments in neighboring Iran. The KGB had penetrated or maintained close relations with many of the intelligence services linked to the October Surprise allegations, including those of France, Spain, Germany, Iran and Israel.
History had shown, too, that the KGB had spies inside the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. So, Soviet intelligence certainly was in a position to know a great deal about what had or had not happened in 1980.
The Supreme Soviet's response was delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow by Nikolay Kuznetsov, secretary of the subcommittee on state security. Kuznetsov apologized for the "lengthy preparation of the response." It was quickly translated by the U.S. embassy and forwarded to Hamilton.
To the shock of the task force, the six-page Russian report stated, as fact, that Casey, Bush and others had met secretly with Iranian officials in Europe during the 1980 presidential campaign. The Russians asserted that the Reagan-Bush team indeed had disrupted Carter's hostage negotiations, the exact opposite of the task force's 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. 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 their own overtures to the Iranians, the Russian report said. "William Casey, in 1980, met three times with representatives of the Iranian leadership," the report said. "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 Russian report 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."
Both the Reagan-Bush Republicans and the Carter Democrats "started from the proposition that Imam Khomeini, having announced a policy of "neither the West nor the East,' and cursing the "American devil,' imperialism and Zionism, was forced to acquire American weapons, spares and military supplies by any and all possible means," the Russian report said. The Republicans just won the bidding war.
"After the victory of R. Reagan in the election, in early 1981, a secret agreement was reached in London in accord with which Iran released the American hostages, and the U.S. continued to supply arms, spares and military supplies for the Iranian army," the Russian report continued.
The deliveries were carried out by Israel, often through private arms dealers, the Russian report said.
What to Do
The matter-of-fact Russian report was stunning. It also matched other information the task force had. The task force had discovered that the Israelis, for example, had shipped U.S. military spares to Iran in 1981, with the secret acquiescence of senior Reagan-Bush administration officials.
Hamilton and his task force faced a quandary about what to do with the explosive Russian report, which -- if accurate -- made the task force report, which was then at the printers, not worth the paper it was being printed on.
Reputations, including Hamilton's, could have been severely damaged. During his days as House Intelligence Committee chairman in the mid-1980s, Hamilton had come under criticism for ignoring early evidence about Oliver North's secret contra-supply operations and getting blindsided by the covert military shipments to Iran in 1985-86.
When the Iran-Contra scandal finally broke in late 1986, Hamilton was named co-chairman of the investigative committee and quickly bought into White House cover stories that were later shattered by Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh.
In January 1993, if Hamilton had to renounce his own October Surprise report, he might have been left with a tattered reputation, known as the Republicans' favorite chump. He might not have built a glittering post-congressional career as a well-regarded senior statesman invited to sit on important panels like the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Group.
