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Conspiracy Nation Vol. 09 Num. 53
Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 9 Num. 53
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
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OCTOBER SURPRISE
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(From the September 1996 Conspiracy Nation Newsletter)
In 1980, fifty-two American hostages were being held by Iran.
The President at that time was Jimmy Carter. He was being
challenged in his bid for re-election by the Reagan-Bush ticket.
Though Reagan-Bush led in the polls, they secretly feared that
Carter would stage what was called an "October Surprise." The
Republicans feared that if Carter were to bring about the release
of the American hostages in late October, subsequent national
euphoria would boost Carter in the polls and get him re-elected.
So, according to numerous and disparate witnesses and
investigators, the Reagan-Bush faction initiated secret
negotiations with the Iranians. The deal reportedly was that if
the Iranians would ignore Carter administration overtures, the
Republicans would give the Iranians an especially good deal
later, when Reagan-Bush came to power.
Some may say, "Well, Congress looked into these allegations and
found nothing there." But that is like saying that the Columbo
crime family looked into the Genovese mafia and concluded,
"They're not such a bad bunch of guys." Congress has also looked
into the strange death of White House deputy counsel Vincent
Foster -- twice -- and concluded that Foster committed suicide
right where his body was found in Fort Marcy Park. So if
Congress is so infallible, why is Special Prosecutor Kenneth
Starr now also investigating the Foster death? And why do
two-thirds of Americans not believe what the Congress keeps
telling them, vis-a-vis Foster?
Gary Sick served on the National Security Council staff under
Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. Sick was the principal
White House aide for Iran during the hostage crisis of 1979-81.
He was skeptical at first, regarding the October Surprise
allegations, yet gradually found that
A reality that I thought I knew well turned out to be
little more than a facade. I had to utterly reevaluate
whole constellations of events, even those that I had
experienced personally...
[Sick had thought that] The events of 1980 could be
explained adequately without resort to what I considered to
be a conspiracy theory...
[Yet] As time went on, seemingly inexplicable fragments of
information began to appear. My experience was not unlike
that of a medieval scholar discovering traces of a hidden
text beneath the script on an old parchment.
Sick is cautious when he writes, in his book, October Surprise,
that "there is not enough evidence at this point to launch a
prosecution," yet he obviously feels that the October Surprise
story is grounded in fact: "If the evidence presented in this
book means what it seems to mean, we must conclude that in 1980 a
deception was inflicted on the hostages, the government, and the
American people that has few if any parallels in our history.
That evidence is not easily dismissed."
Not so cautious as Sick has been Ari Ben-Menashe, who worked for
the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad, before he surfaced
to write a tell-all book, Profits of War (1991). Ben-Menashe
says he was part of a team which worked with the French to
arrange secret meetings between George Bush, William Casey, and
the Iranians. At one particular meeting in Paris, on October 19,
1980, a final agreement allegedly was concluded: In exchange for
a $40 million bribe and future arms shipments, the Iranians
agreed not to release the American hostages until the January
1981 Presidential inauguration. This, in fact, did happen; the
52 hostages were released on January 20, 1981.
Barbara Honegger worked for the Reagan administration in the
White House Office of Policy Development. She worked there for 3
years before she became "the first resignation of conscience from
the Reagan-Bush Administration." She held off from publishing
her book, October Surprise, until 1989, due to a sense of loyalty
she felt toward Ronald Reagan.
Honegger points out that George Bush had been a Director of CIA
and, as such, had plenty of covert connections and know-how with
which to implement secret dealings between the Republicans and
Iran. Many in CIA hated Jimmy Carter for downsizing the Agency
and were eager for revenge. Honegger, like Gary Sick, is
cautious; throughout her book she refers to the October Surprise
story as "allegations." Yet her evidence leads overwhelmingly to
the reality of the October Surprise conspiracy.
For example, Honegger points to the many witnesses who have gone
public concerning the affair. While some might consider these
CIA contract agents to be shady characters and therefore not
sterling witnesses, she asks: Why didn't this body of witnesses
ever get to tell their stories to the American people? Writes
Honegger: "As an independent journalist, I believe profoundly in
the right of the American public to hear from all parties who
claim to have information on charges as serious as that an
arms-for-hostage-delay deal was made between the Reagan-Bush
campaign and Iran."
So why didn't we hear all sides of the story? After all, in a
democracy it is supposed that the public can think for itself,
and do not need to be shielded from witnesses which some
self-appointed authority decides are "not credible." By what
right do the few have such control over what the many are allowed
to hear?
Rodney Stich, in his classic and definitive book on government
corruption, Defrauding America (1-800-247-7389), suggests part of
the reason information is withheld, diminished, or twisted -- The
CIA's Media Wurlitzer.
The CIA has many media personnel on its payroll to plant
stories or discredit charges against the CIA. It pays out
large sums of money for articles and books to be written on
the CIA's behalf. Its control over the media is like a
Wurlitzer, orchestrating and manipulating all segments of
the written or broadcast media. It must be remembered that
the CIA has iron-clad control over the establishment media
in the United States, and spends money supporting
journalists and the media.
In light of the July 1996 issue of this newsletter ("The Smiling
Pope"), it is noteworthy that Ms. Honegger goes into the
Propaganda Due, or P-2, connection. You'll recall that P-2 is a
secret, illegal Masonic lodge founded in Italy by Licio Gelli in
1966. Honegger points to Alexander Haig, later to become the
Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, as having been made an
"honorary" (non-Italian) member of P-2 prior to 1980. Honegger
further states that Licio Gelli, finance wizard Michele Sindona,
Alexander Haig, and CIA Director William Casey "were also
reportedly members of the Vatican's military order, the Knights
of Malta, whose initiates must take an oath of allegiance to the
Pope." Furthermore, P-2 is linked to the Mafia, which also seems
to have played a part in the October Surprise plot; writes
Honegger: "A number of press reports, taken together, suggest
that there may have been a P-2 and Gambino Mafia connection to
the release of the fifty-two American hostages from the U.S.
embassy in Tehran."
(By the way, in light of the July issue of this newsletter, "The
Smiling Pope," I recommend the movie, "The Godfather, Part 3.")
Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr was president of Iran during the hostage
crisis. As of 1991, he was living in exile, in Paris. In his
book, My Turn To Speak, Bani-Sadr corroborates the October
Surprise allegations.
While some may wonder why Iran would have negotiated with "the
Great Satan," i.e., the United States, it now appears that this
rhetoric served mainly to help unite a fractious Iran against a
common enemy. (Such techniques are used here in the U.S., where
the government uses the Big Enemy technique to rally support --
for example, Big Enemies such as Russia, narcotics, and now,
increasingly, supposed omnipresent terrorists.) Writes
Bani-Sadr: "The takeover of the U.S. embassy was wholly in line
with [Ayatollah] Khomeini's strategy of focusing hostility
abroad." Remember too that the U.S. had frozen Iranian funds and
had military spare parts desperately needed by the Iranians.
Former-president Bani-Sadr says he has proof of contacts between
Iran and the Reagan-Bush forces as early as the spring of 1980.
He claims that "the sole purpose of [these contacts] was to
handicap Carter's re-election bid by preventing the hostages'
release before the American elections in November 1980."
The late Paul D. Wilcher was a Washington attorney who
investigated the October Surprise charges. In a 100-page letter
addressed to Attorney General Janet Reno and dated May 21, 1993,
Wilcher offered her a comprehensive look at American "deep
politics." (The term "deep politics," comes from Professor Peter
Dale Scott's penetrating look at the assassination of John F.
Kennedy, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993.) One section of Wilcher's
letter to Reno is entitled, "The 'October Surprise' Treason &
Coup D'Etat." (My thanks to a subscriber for sending me this
disturbing document.) Writes Wilcher:
My client here is Gunther Karl Russbacher, a life-long
covert operative for the CIA and the Office of Naval
Intelligence ("ONI") who has operated at the highest levels
of both of these super-secret organizations over the past
30 and 25 years, respectively.
Because of his extremely high intelligence, his exceptional
physical skills, his extensive training, his fluency in 8
languages, his proficiency as one of the CIA's top pilots
and marksmen, and the fact that his father was one of the
original founders (along with William Casey, "Wild Bill"
Donovan, and others) of the Central Intelligence Agency,
back in 1947, Gunther has always operated at the highest
levels of these "intelligence" organizations, and has been
entrusted with carrying out some of their most difficult,
sensitive, and top secret covert operations.
[......]
For the moment, however, I want to focus on one pivotal
event in Gunther's career -- the fact that he was the CIA
pilot who flew George Bush and others (listed below) to and
from Paris on this "October Surprise" weekend, and then
flew George Bush back to America on the CIA's hypersonic
spy plane, the SR-71 -- to get him back home before anyone
would notice that he was gone.
Russbacher says his passengers on the flight to Paris during the
October 19, 1980 weekend, included George Bush, William Casey,
Donald Gregg (later to become Ambassador to South Korea), Robert
Gates (later to become Director of CIA), Robert McFarlane
(President Reagan's National Security Advisor), Robert Allen
(President Reagan's first National Security advisor), Earl Brian
(of later INSLAW notoriety), Jennifer Fitzgerald (reportedly one
of George Bush's mistresses), Congressman Daniel Rostenkowski
(a.k.a. "Rosty," now in jail), Congressman Dan Burton, Senator
Robert Byrd, Senator John Tower, Senator John Heinz, and other
prominent Members of Congress.
Wilcher's letter describes who got what:
The gist of these negotiations (and deal) was that Bush and
Casey delivered to the Iranians $40 million in cash (it
started out as $62 million, but by the time many of the
Americans had dipped their hands into the till, only about
$35 million was left to give to the Iranians), basically as
bribe money, plus the promise of $5 billion more in illegal
arms sales and spare parts... in exchange for the Iranians'
agreement not to release the 52 American hostages captured
in Tehran on November 4th, 1979, until after the November
4th, 1980, U.S. Presidential election -- in order to
guarantee the humiliation and defeat of then-President
Jimmy Carter, and the victory of Ronald Reagan and George
Bush.
The important point to remember about this flight, and all
those who were participating in it, is that the entire
exercise was a carefully planned, and well executed CIA
covert operation -- which had been ordered and sanctioned
at the highest levels of the "Shadow Government" --
specifically for the purpose of taking back control of the
federal government from the Democrats, and returning it to
the CIA and the "Shadow Government."
In other words, this entire operation was -- and was
specifically designed to be -- a treasonous coup d'etat, to
take back control of the federal government from Jimmy
Carter and the Democrats...
Paul Wilcher, by the way, is numbered among the so-called
"Clinton Body Count" -- persons connected to Bill Clinton who
have died mysteriously and/or violently. The story of the
Clinton Body Count was first brought to light by Indianapolis
attorney Linda Thompson. She described how the information was
first intimated to her, by a purported CIA agent, on the February
3rd, 1994 broadcast of Chuck Harder's "For the People" radio
show:
CHUCK HARDER: Now, Linda, you were talking [about]... The
Clinton Body Count. You say 25 people that have surrounded
Bill Clinton, with some type of a personal relationship
with him.....
LINDA THOMPSON: Uh-huh. [Affirmative]
CHUCK HARDER: .....have turned up dead within
approximately the last 12 months.
LINDA THOMPSON: Right.
CHUCK HARDER: Can you name them "off the top of your
head," to the best of your ability?
LINDA THOMPSON: Sure.
CHUCK HARDER: And who were they, and how come, and that
sort of thing.
LINDA THOMPSON: C. Victor Raiser was Bill Clinton's
campaign finance chairman, and his son, who was also very
active in the campaign, Victor Raiser, Jr., were killed in
a plane crash, enroute to Alaska, in July of '92. Now
that's where the body count begins. And it begins there...
I almost didn't include them because I was going to divide
it up into post-Presidency and pre-Presidency. The fellow
that had called me and suggested that I do this was CIA.
And he said, you know, "Do a body count around Clinton."
And I said, "What?!" [He answered,] "Just do one. Do one
before he became President and do one after he became
President." Because I would not have thought of this on my
own. I really... It would never have occurred to me to
even think of doing this.
Besides Wilcher and Raiser, other names amongst the still-growing
Clinton Body Count are: Paul Tully, DNC political director,
heart attack; Paula Gober, worked as Clinton's interpreter for
the hearing-impaired, car crash; Jim Wilhite, friends with Mack
McLarty and Bill Clinton, skiing accident; Vincent Foster, Jr.,
deputy White House counsel, "suicide"; Luther "Jerry" Parks,
owner of a security service which supplied guards for Clinton
during his 1992 presidential campaign, murdered by multiple
gunshots; Jon Parnell Walker, RTC Senior Investigation Specialist
looking into wrongdoing at Madison Guaranty S&L, supposedly
jumped to his death while apartment hunting; Kathy Ferguson, wife
of Danny Ferguson who said he brought sex-accuser Paula Jones to
Bill Clinton's hotel room at which time Clinton is alleged to
have sexually harassed Jones, "suicide" by pistol; Herschel
Friday, a member of C. Victor Raiser's (see above) finance
committee, plane crash; Ed Willey, manager of Clinton's
presidential campaign finance committee, supposedly shot himself
on November 30, 1993; John A. Wilson, a Washington, D.C. city
councilman about to go public with information on Bill Clinton,
"suicide" by hanging; Ron Brown, the late Commerce Secretary,
killed in a suspicious plane crash.
The list contains many more names than the above. I may write a
more detailed account in the future. Readers familiar with the
many violent and/or mysterious deaths of potential witnesses
connected to the JFK assassination will be familiar with the
pattern suggested by the Clinton Body Count. For now, add one
more name to the list of suspicious deaths connected to Bill
Clinton: Susann Coleman. As documented in the book, Clinton
Confidential (by George Carpozi), Ms. Coleman, said to be
pregnant by Bill Clinton, died by "suicide" on February 15, 1977.
Writes Carpozi, "Coleman is purported to have put the muzzle of a
shotgun into her mouth and pulled the trigger."
But how does October Surprise lead to the Clinton Body Count?
The October Surprise coup d'etat led to the 12-year Reagan-Bush
Administration. During that time, the illegal Contra war in
Nicaragua was funded in part by CIA gun- and drug-smuggling via
Arkansas, condoned by then-Governor Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton,
according to Roger Morris, author of Partners in Power, is a
long-time CIA agent. The Arkansas smuggling operation was under
the command of George Bush, himself a former Director of CIA and
long-time agent of that roach hotel. So how does October
Surprise lead to the Clinton Body Count? Well, as we all know,
roaches multiply.
Robert Parry has worked for Associated Press, Newsweek magazine,
and the PBS program, "Frontline." He has been an investigative
reporter for over 20 years. Parry has continued to look into the
October Surprise story, has had a book published on the subject
(Trick or Treason), and recently came up with some startling
information which he published on Internet.
Following a Congressional task force report which debunked the
October Surprise allegations (a report which, writes Parry, rests
on "an elaborate set of alibis"), Parry sought access to the task
force's files. He obtained permission to examine unclassified
papers, stored in a Rayburn building sub-basement, in a converted
Ladies' washroom now used for storage. To Parry's surprise, "Not
only did I find unclassified notes and documents about the task
force's work, but also 'secret' and even 'top secret' papers..."
Parry's study of these documents led him to believe, more firmly
than ever, that the October Surprise plot had indeed occured.
Among the confidential documents that Parry lucked onto was a
six-page Russian report, sent in response to a query by Rep. Lee
Hamilton (D-Ind.) According to Parry, the "Russian report
stated, as fact, that Casey, George Bush and other Republicans
had met secretly with Iranian officials in Europe during the 1980
presidential campaign. The Russians depicted the hostage
negotiations that year as a two-way competition between the
Carter White House and the Reagan campaign to outbid one another
for Iran's cooperation on the hostages. The Russians asserted
that the Reagan team had disrupted Carter's hostage negotiations
after all, the exact opposite of the task force conclusion."
Still don't believe the October Surprise machinations occured?
Tell that to former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir who,
when asked in May of 1993 if there had been an October Surprise,
responded, "of course, it was." Tell that to senior
representatives of Iran's current government, who, writes Parry,
are "amused at how wrong the House task force had been." Tell
that to veteran White House correspondent Sarah McClendon, who,
when I stated to her in late August of 1995, "So you agree with
the story of the 'October Surprise,'" responded:
Oh definitely. There definitely was. And Bush has denied
it all along. And people have seen him in Paris at the
time he claims he wasn't there. They saw him there and
they know he went to the meeting. And I definitely think
the agreement was made there.
An "October Surprise" has also come to have a generic meaning.
According to William Safire, writing in the New York Times on or
about August 20, 1996, "An 'October Surprise,' in political
parlance, is the making of big news to affect a November
election." Safire points to two events which, he says, are "in
the pipeline" -- a possible indictment of Hillary Clinton for
perjury and obstruction of justice, and a possible punitive
strike against Iran in retaliation for allegedly masterminding
the recent bomb attack against a military barracks in Saudi
Arabia.
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Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et
pauperem. -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9
