In other words, the Times treated Johnson's bombing halt and claim of peace-talk progress as the "October Surprise" to try to influence the election in favor of Humphrey. But the evidence now is clear that a peace agreement was within reach and that the "October Surprise" was Nixon's sabotage of the negotiations by persuading South Vietnamese President Nguyen van Thieu to boycott the Paris meeting.
The Times got the story upside-down and inside-out by failing to reexamine this case in light of convincing evidence now available in the declassified record. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com's "LBJ's 'X-File' on Nixon's 'Treason'" and "The Heinous Crime Behind Watergate."]
Reagan's Victory
The Times botched the 1980 "October Surprise" case even worse. The currently available evidence supports the case that Ronald Reagan's campaign -- mostly through its director (and future CIA Director) William Casey and its vice presidential nominee (and former CIA Director) George H.W. Bush -- went behind President Jimmy Carter's back and undermined his negotiations to free 52 American hostages then held in Iran.
Carter's failure became a central factor in his repudiation for reelection and a core reason for Reagan's landslide victory -- that also carried the Republicans to control of the U.S. Senate. But the later congressional investigation into the 1980 October Surprise case -- a follow-on to the Iran-Contra scandal which exposed the Reagan-Bush secret dealings with Iran -- was stymied in 1992.
Naively, the inquiry trusted President George H.W. Bush's administration to collect the evidence and provide the witnesses for what would amount to Bush's political suicide. Documents from Bush's presidential library reveal that his White House quickly set out to "kill/spike this story" in order to protect his reelection chances.
For instance, a memo by one of Bush's lawyers revealed that the White House had received confirmation of a key October Surprise allegation -- a secret trip by Casey to Madrid -- but then withheld that information from congressional investigators. Documents also show the White House frustrating attempts to interview a key witness.
After I discovered the Madrid confirmation several years ago -- and sent the document to former Rep. Lee Hamilton, who had headed the House inquiry which concluded that there was no credible evidence supporting the allegations -- he was stunned by the apparent betrayal of his trust.
"The [Bush-41] White House did not notify us that he [Casey] did make the trip" to Madrid, Hamilton told me in an interview. Asked if knowledge that Casey had traveled to Madrid might have changed the investigation's dismissive October Surprise conclusion, Hamilton said yes, because the question of the Madrid trip was central to the inquiry.
So, a great deal is now known about the 1980 October Surprise case since the Times accepted the misguided conclusion of Hamilton's inquiry. But none of that is reflected in how the Times recounted the history in its review of past October Surprise cases:
"The Republican nominee, Ronald Reagan, and his aides repeatedly warned that President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, would try an October surprise, probably in the form of winning the release of American hostages held for more than a year in Iran. The Reagan campaign's frequent use of the term helped popularize it. Some people have since charged that Reagan aides actually tried to prevent a hostage release before the election, through back-channel communications with Iran, a claim that has been widely refuted. The hostages were freed in January 1981 -- on the day Reagan was inaugurated."
Yet, rather than being "widely refuted," the most recent evidence tends to confirm the allegations that have been made by some two dozen witnesses including a detailed account of the Reagan campaign's interference by then-Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr. But the Times seems more interested in reinforcing the false conventional wisdom than informing the American people.
[For details, see Robert Parry's America's Stolen Narrative or Trick or Treason: The 1980 October Surprise Mystery or Consortiumnews.com's "Second Thoughts on October Surprise."]
Crazy Deflategate
Even on more trivial matters, the Times simply can't escape its pattern of accepting the word from the powerful, even when those powers-that-be are as disreputable as the executives of National Football League.
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