October 29, 2006 at 08:57:08

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Original October Surprise (Part 3)

By Robert Parry (about the author)     Page 7 of 13 page(s)

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Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr said he first learned of the Republican "secret deal" with the Iranian radicals in July after Reza Passendideh, a nephew of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, attended a meeting with Cyrus Hashemi and Republican lawyer Stanley Pottinger in Madrid on July 2, 1980.

Bani-Sadr said Passendideh carried a plan back to Teheran "from the Reagan camp," according to a letter that Bani-Sadr sent to the House October Surprise Task Force on Dec. 17, 1992.

"Passendideh told me that if I do not accept this proposal, they [the Republicans] would make the same offer to my [radical Iranian] rivals. He further said that they [the Republicans] have enormous influence in the CIA," Bani-Sadr wrote. "Lastly, he told me my refusal of their offer would result in my elimination."

Bani-Sadr said he resisted the threats and sought an immediate release of the American hostages, but it was clear to him that the wily Khomeini was playing both sides of the U.S. political street.

Reagan's Victory

On July 14, 1980, the Republican National Convention opened in Detroit. After a brief flirtation with the possibility of enlisting former President Gerald Ford as the vice presidential nominee, Reagan settled on George H.W. Bush.

After accepting the No. 2 spot, Bush began merging his CIA-heavy campaign apparatus with Reagan's.

The united Reagan-Bush campaign created a strategy group, known as the "October Surprise Group," to prepare for "any last-minute foreign policy or defense-related event, including the release of the hostages, that might favorably impact President Carter in the November election," according a draft report of the House October Surprise Task Force.

"Originally referred to as the 'Gang of Ten,'" the draft report said the "October Surprise Group" consisted of Richard V. Allen, Charles M. Kupperman, Thomas H. Moorer, Eugene V. Rostow, William R. Van Cleave, Fred C. Ikle, John R. Lehman Jr., Robert G. Neumann, Laurence Silberman and Seymour Weiss.

While that part of the draft made it into the Task Force's final report in January 1993, another part was deleted, saying: "According to members of the 'October Surprise' group, the following individuals also participated in meetings although they were not considered 'members' of the group: Michael Ledeen, Richard Stillwell, William Middendorf, Richard Perle, General Louis Walt and Admiral James Holloway."

Deleted from the final report also was a section describing how the ex-CIA personnel who had worked for Bush's campaign became the nucleus of the Republican intelligence operation that monitored Carter's Iran-hostage negotiations for the Reagan-Bush team.

"The Reagan-Bush campaign maintained a 24-hour Operations Center, which monitored press wires and reports, gave daily press briefings and maintained telephone and telefax contact with the candidate's plane," the draft report read. "Many of the staff members were former CIA employees who had previously worked on the Bush campaign or were otherwise loyal to George Bush."

Though post-convention polls showed Reagan leading Carter, Reagan's campaign chief Casey remained fixated on the Iran-hostage crisis.

Since March, Jamshid Hashemi said he had given the Mayflower Hotel meeting little thought. But in summer 1980, Jamshid said his brother, Cyrus, confided that his role in the hostage negotiations had taken another turn.

"I was asked by my brother, since he thought the Republicans had the possibility of winning the election, that we should not play only in the hands of the Democrats," Jamshid Hashemi told me. He quoted his brother as saying "it was the wish of Mr. Casey to meet with someone from Iran."

"That's when I started getting on this work of inviting both Mehdi [Karrubi, a politically powerful Iranian cleric], to come directly, and Hassan [Karrubi, the cleric's brother], to come indirectly to Madrid," Jamshid Hashemi said.

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