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Evidence from Reagan-Bush campaign files also points to undisclosed contacts between the Rockefeller group and Casey during this phase of the hostage crisis.
According to a campaign visitor log for Sept. 11, 1980, David Rockefeller and several of his aides who were dealing with the Iranian issue signed in to see Casey at Reagan-Bush campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.
With Rockefeller were Joseph Reed, whom Rockefeller had assigned to coordinate U.S. policy toward the Shah, and Archibald Roosevelt, the former CIA officer who was monitoring events in the Persian Gulf for Chase Manhattan and who had collaborated with Miles Copeland on the Iran hostage-rescue plan. The fourth member of the party was Owen Frisbie, Rockefeller's chief lobbyist in Washington.
In the early 1990s, all the surviving the participants � ��" Rockefeller, Reed and Frisbie � ��" declined to be interviewed about the Casey meeting. Rockefeller made no mention of the meeting in Memoirs.
Kissinger, another Rockefeller associate, also was in discreet contact with campaign director Casey during this period, according to Casey's personal chauffeur whom I interviewed.
The chauffeur, who asked not to be identified by name, said he was sent twice to Kissinger's Georgetown home to pick up the former Secretary of State and bring him to the Arlington headquarters for private meetings with Casey, meetings that were not recorded on the official visitor logs.
On Sept. 16, 1980, five days after the Rockefeller visit to Casey's office, Iran's acting foreign minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh spoke publicly again about Republican interference.
� ���"Reagan, supported by Kissinger and others, has no intention of resolving the problem,� �� � Ghotbzadeh said. � ���"They will do everything in their power to block it.� �� �
Six days later, on Sept. 22, Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army invaded Iran, intensifying Iran's need for U.S.-made military equipment but also adding another complexity to the crisis.
Wiretaps
In the final weeks before Election 1980, FBI wiretaps picked up other evidence that connected Rockefeller associates with two of the key suspects in the October Surprise mystery, Iranian banker Cyrus Hashemi and longtime Casey business associate John Shaheen.
According to the FBI wiretaps hidden in Hashemi's New York offices in September 1980, Hashemi and Shaheen were involved in the intrigue surrounding the Iran hostage crisis while simultaneously promoting murky financial schemes.
On the surface, Hashemi had been acting as an intermediary for President Carter for secret approaches to Iranian officials about getting the hostages released. But Hashemi also appears to have been serving as a backchannel for the Reagan-Bush campaign, working with Shaheen, who had known Casey since their World War II days together in the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA's forerunner.
The FBI wiretaps revealed that Hashemi and Shaheen also were trying to establish a bank with Philippine interests in either the Caribbean or in Hong Kong. In mid-October 1980, Hashemi deposited � ���"a large sum of money� �� � in a Philippine bank and planned to meet with Philippine representatives in Europe, an FBI intercept discovered.
The negotiations led Shaheen to an agreement with Herminio Disini, an in-law of Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos, to establish the Hong Kong Deposit and Guaranty Company. Disini also was a top moneyman for Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos.
The $20 million used as starting capital for the bank came through Jean A. Patry, David Rockefeller's lawyer in Geneva, Switzerland. But the original source of the money, according to two Shaheen associates I interviewed, was Princess Ashraf, the Shah's twin sister.
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