Lawmaker Confirms ‘October Surprise’ Plot to Sabotage Jimmy Carter’s Reelection

New York Magazine-Intelligencer – March 19th 2023

By Chas Danner, associate editor at Intelligencer

A former Texas lawmaker, compelled by the news of President Jimmy Carter entering hospice care, has come forward to reveal that there was, in fact, a secret GOP effort in 1980 to prevent Iran from releasing more than 50 Americans hostages until after that year’s presidential election.

Former Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes, 85, has told the New York Times that in the summer of 1980, he accompanied his mentor and one-time business partner, former Texas governor John Connally, on a trip to the Middle East during which Connally asked Arab leaders to communicate to Iranian officials that they should not release the hostages before Election Day because if they waited, Ronald Reagan would offer them a better deal. (Connally, at that point a former Democrat, is also known for being the other person seriously wounded during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.)

The infamous hostage crisis, which began on November 4, 1979, and lasted 444 days, was an open political wound for Carter, who went on to lose his reelection bid to Reagan. After Iran released the hostages on Reagan’s Inauguration Day, there were immediate suspicions among Democrats that the Reagan team had somehow sabotaged the Carter administration’s efforts in order to deny Carter a late-campaign political win — which Reagan advisers famously dubbed a potential “October surprise.” The most prominent theories, like the one put forward by former Carter national security aide Gary Sick in the early 90s, alleged that William Casey, Reagan’s campaign chairman who went on to become the director of the CIA, had orchestrated the sabotage and made a deal with Iran, but as the Times notes, subsequent Congressional investigations never turned up proof.

Barnes, a Democrat who was once the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, told the Times that there was no doubt in his mind that the purpose of Connally’s trip was to get a message to Iran. He also said that they communicated with the Reagan team during the trip, and that after they returned to the U.S., Connally — who wanted to be Reagan’s Secretary of State — briefed Casey on the trip:

Mr. Barnes said he was certain the point of Mr. Connally’s trip was to get a message to the Iranians to hold the hostages until after the election. “I’ll go to my grave believing that it was the purpose of the trip,” he said. “It wasn’t freelancing because Casey was so interested in hearing as soon as we got back to the United States.” Mr. Casey, he added, wanted to know whether “they were going to hold the hostages.”

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https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/03/lawmaker-admits-1980-gop-plot-to-prolong-iran-hostage-crisis.html