[A long-time Republican operative has come forward to spill the
beans about the extensive plotting by Reagan allies to force the
hostages to endure captivity for months so that voters would deny
Carter a second term.]
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THE REAGAN HOSTAGE PLOT THAT DEFEATED JIMMY CARTER  
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David Cay Johnston
March 19, 2023
DCReport
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_ A long-time Republican operative has come forward to spill the
beans about the extensive plotting by Reagan allies to force the
hostages to endure captivity for months so that voters would deny
Carter a second term. _

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Millions of Americans watched on split screen televisions in 1981 as
Ronald Reagan took the oath of office. As Reagan recited a jetliner in
Iran holding 56 American hostages rolled down a Tehran runway, its
wheels lifting just as Reagan finished.

That precise timing fueled widespread—and reasonable— speculation
in major newspapers
[[link removed]] and
elsewhere that  Team Reagan had cut some secret deal with the Iranian
mullahs to further his chances of becoming president by making Jimmy
Carter appear impotent.

The suspicions became known as the October Surprise conspiracy theory
[[link removed]],
generating lots of smoke with at least 14 people charged with
felonies. The core problem was that despite admissions here and there,
and Congressional hearings, no one entirely broke through the
Reaganista code of silence, a testament to the loyalty that the former
actor inspired among his acolytes.

Now a long-time Republican operative has come forward to Peter Baker
of _The New York Times_ to spill the beans
[[link removed]] about
the extensive plotting by Reagan allies to force the hostages to
endure captivity for months so that voters would deny Carter a second
term.

What the Republican operative, Ben Barnes, revealed to the newspaper
shows things were even worse than was widely imagined 42 years ago.

The lawlessness of the Reagan years matters because it shows that it
is reasonable to believe that Ben Barnes’ late in life admissions
about the illicit campaign to keep the American hostages in Iranian
custody will stand up to scrutiny.

In 1980, Barnes flew from “one Middle Eastern capital after another
that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a
blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages
before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better
deal.”

Barnes said he was fessing up at long last because he felt a moral
obligation to do so before Jimmy Carter, now 98 years old and in
hospice care, ran out of time.

Barnes, 85 years old, is no fringe character. He has been Speaker of
the Texas House and played a role in young George W. Bush evading the
Vietnam War era draft by obtaining a coveted slot in the Texas Air
National Guard.

Enduring Months of Extra Captivity

Here’s my takeaway from Baker’s richly detailed piece: Reagan
forced the hostages to endure months of additional city, all to
satiate his lust for power.

That heartless, immoral, and lawless behavior goes to how the Reagan
we all saw on television wasn’t the man himself but a character he
played in politics. Journalist Lou Cannon, who for decades wrote
superbly informed and insightful coverage of Reagan for the _San Jose
Mercury_ and then _The Washington Post_, titled his revealing Reagan
biography “The Role of a Lifetime.”
[[link removed]]

While Reagan sold himself as a folksy man of the people, his cunning
heart had room to be vicious, lawless, selfish, and embrace people who
would lie and deny for him.

Similarly, many people perceived Reagan as a homophobe because of his
years of silence as the mysterious HIV infections killed legions of
gay men as well as hemophiliacs who used contaminated blood products.
But Reagan had gay people on his staff, as I learned decades ago when,
appearing unannounced at a home to pick up some camping gear, I walked
in on an all-male party where I spotted a few Reaganites.

The new revelations printed Sunday are consistent with the immoral and
deceitful conduct of the Reagan White House, which routinely ran
roughshod over American law while polishing an image as champions of
regulatory reform and tax cuts.

Again and again, Reagan and his spokespeople insisted that America
would never negotiate with terrorists even as his administration
swapped arms for hostages in deals involving piles of cocaine in what
became known as the Iran-Contra scandal.

Reagan later fessed up, sort of, on national television, as you can
watch here [[link removed]] and later
here [[link removed]]. But while Reagan
admitted to arms-for-hostages deals between Iran and Nicaragua, he
never confessed to the role of cocaine trafficking from Colombia via
Nicaragua into the United States to facilitate the scheme.

Taxpayer Money to Cocaine Traffickers

A Senate investigation led by then-Sen John Kerry of Massachusetts
issued a 1,180-page report
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that the Reagan administration diverted American taxpayer money from
humanitarian aid to cocaine traffickers. At Page 36, the committee
wrote about:

“Payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds
authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras,
in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law
enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were
under active investigation by these same agencies.

“These activities were conducted in connection with Contra
activities in Costa Rica and Honduras.

“The Subcommittee found that the links forged between the Contras
and the drug traffickers were primarily pragmatic rather than
ideological. The drug traffickers, who had significant financial and
material resources, needed the cover of legitimate activity for their
criminal enterprises.”

14 Charged With Felonies

Iran-Contra resulted in at least 14 felony charges, with most accused
being convicted or pleading guilty. They included three ex-military
officers who served on Reagan’s National Security Staff. George H.
W. Bush, Reagan’s vice president, became president in 1989 and
poardeoned one of the three. Convictions of the other two were
overturned on appeal.

[[link removed]]

Reagan White House National Security Staff Charged in Iran-Contra
Scandal, Credit: Brown University.

The eight Reagan years were marred by more corruption than any other
administration in the 20th century, counting even Calvin Coolidge of
Teapot Dome infamy.

At least 138 Reagan allies were investigated, indicted, or convicted,
according to a tally by Haynes Johnson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning
Washington Post politics journalist, in his smart 1991
bestseller _Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years
[[link removed]]._

In contrast, no Obama-era official was indicted until the Trump
administration prosecuted one Obama aide in what appeared to be a
strategy to draw attention from Trump’s failed extortion of Ukraine
for political gain. After a 13-day trial, a jury quickly acquitted
[[link removed]] lawyer
Greg Craig on charges of lying to the FBI about Ukraine, charges that
struck many as incredibly flimsy.

And then there was Reagan’s dishonesty in telling voters he would
eliminate the federal debt (then less than $1 trillion) and cut their
taxes. Instead, Reagan multiplied the debt while overseeing a massive
downward shifting of tax obligations. The rich know what Reagan did
for them, but few others recall his 11 federal tax hikes, which fell
hard on the 90%, because Reagan successfully pawned them off on the
White House press corps as mere “revenue enhancers.”

Reason to Believe

The lawlessness of the Reagan years matters because it shows that it
is reasonable to believe that Ben Barnes’ late-in-life admissions
about the illicit campaign to keep the American hostages in Iranian
custody will stand up to scrutiny. The story Barnes tells fits the
tenor of the Reagan era. And Barnes has plenty to lose for opening up.
Reporter Baker’s reputation as arguably the most informed and clear
eyed White House reporter ever combined with his solid reputation for
checking out sources and their assertions also adds to credibility.

Baker’s Page One piece is written in classically cautious _New York
Times_ style. For example, Baker invokes the word “may” rather
than “did” in writing that his source’s confession “adds a new
understanding to what may have happened in that hard-fought, pivotal
election year.”

Baker describes past Congressional investigations as having
“debunked” various theories of what Team Reagan did during the
1980 election.

It would be just as accurate to say that Congressional hearings
debunked some and failed to resolve others aming powerful indications
that big things wer taking place in secret.

Why did this stay secret until now? Because the wrongdoers didn’t
fear the Justice Department with Reagan’s trusted allies as
Attorneys General: Californians William French Smith
[[link removed]] and Edwin
Meese III [[link removed]] followed
by former Pennsylvania governor Richard Thornburgh
[[link removed]].

Hostage Taking Today

The Sunday Times scoop can be read as a follow to Baker’s December
piece
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the Biden Administration winning the release of Britney Griner from
Putin’s jails. Baker framed it as the story of one woman devoted to
raising the profile of Americans held abroad on dubious charges. That
woman, Diane Foley, created the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation
after Middle East radicals murdered her son James.

“More than ever, the hostage-takers are no longer terrorist
groups,” Baker wrote then, “but foreign governments intent on
making a point or a trade. While only four countries held Americans
wrongfully from 2001 to 2005, 19 countries currently do
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according to the [James W. Foley Legacy] foundation’s research,
including not just Russia but China, Iran, Venezuela and Syria.”

Ms. Foley is right to focus on state-controlled hostage-taking. During
Trump’s one term, I circled the globe several times speaking
critically about him and other issues. Still, I made it a point never
to set foot in authoritarian countries seeking to curry favor with
Trump: Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

In February, our State Department advised all Americans to leave
Russia
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of concern that Putin’s minions would fabricate bogus charges to
arrest them.

Read Peter Baker’s _New York Times_ piece. Set it aside and reread
it later in the week. And think about what it tells us about how
easily we, the voters, get played by operatives of the
win-at-all-costs school politics and the politicians who embrace and
employ them.

_IF YOU WANT MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE FROM DAVID CAY JOHNSTON ON
THE IRAN HOSTAGES, PLEASE CONSIDER A RECURRING DONATION TODAY _
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David Cay Johnston
[[link removed]] co-founded DCReport. He
is a best-selling author and investigative journalist who for 13 years
reported for The New York Times. Johnston is a specialist in economics
and tax issues. He won a 2001 Pulitzer Prize. He teaches at Syracuse
University College of Law.

* Ronald Reagan
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* Iran
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* hostage takers
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* iran contra affair
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* October Surprise
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