61 Collusion With a Hostile Foreign Power 2.0 Reagan and the Ayatollah Delay Release of the Iranian Hostages

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With all the stark, controversial assertions I make in this book, this chapter may well be the most controversial of all.

I almost feel bad in a sense when I think of all the recovering Republicans-Nicole Wallace likes to call herself a ‘nonpraticing Republican.’

Because I often feel it’s them-Wallace, Jennifer Rubin, David Frum, Max Boot, George Will and especially Steve Schmidt, who really get it about Trump. Regarding Trump it’s not about ideology it’s about checking this racist, xenophobic, authoritarian, illegitimate ‘President’ and holding him accountable.

UPDATE: Seeing Will’s absurd comments in response to Bill Barr’s phony ‘exoneration’ of Trump perhaps we should take him off the list.

Often I feel like the recovering GOPers are better able to see the real task at hand rather than go off on sectarian tangents thereby missing the forest for the trees.

Meanwhile as we see in (Chapter A) we have trifling ‘cautious, centrists’ in the Democratic party worrying that somehow legitimate investigations into Trump will backfire after the GOP benefitted from years of illegitimate investigations into Obama, Hillary, etc.

While supposedly these not so sensible ‘Democratic centrists’ don’t want to ‘go too far’ investigating Trump’s corruption, abuse of power, or even his illegitimacy itself-Russia collusion-and who also are pushing Maxine Waters not only not to investigate Trump’s $1 billion dollars in loans from Deutsche Bank-which is of great importance in getting to the bottom of Russian collusion- but to to pull back on Well Fargo, they do seem to want to get tough on somebody? Nancy Pelosi whose House Democrats  now look primed to net 40 or more seats.

UPDATE: I wrote this on December 20, 2018. There is much to be concerned with regarding the Democrats oversight the first three months

they are pursuing Trump’s Deustch Bank ties-both Maxine Waters’ and Adam Schiff’s Committees. 

Somehow Seth Moulton read this Democratic wave not as a rebuke of Trump but of Nancy Pelosi.

While these ‘sensible, yet squeamish’ centrists like Jim Himes and Eldridge Cleaver worry about being too mean to ‘President Trump’ we get the sort of righteous rage from John McCain’s former campaign adviser that the moment simply screams out for when he declares that ‘The Party of Trump Must Be Obliterated. Annihilated. Destroyed’

Damn right it does, and try to imagine a guy like Chuck Schumer ever speaking such truth. Harry Reid-maybe. Schumer? He just looks like he always wants to take Trump out for cocktails  rather than hold his feet to the fire of accountability. You have the sensible centrists demanding that Maxine Waters back off of ‘President Trump.’

Then you have the frank, unambiguous language of Schmidt, Jennifer Rubin, Max Boot. Heck these days I’m even a big fan of Bill Kristol-it sounds like he’s interested in primarying Trump in 2020 and all I can say is GodSpeed.

UPDATE: Of course Schmdit ruined it all by becoming the campaign manager for Howard Schutlz-kind of belying his fire and brimstone denunciations. If Trump is such a clear and present threat-and he is-why would you help him by going third party?

Kristol for his part continues his dogged search for a third party challenger for Trump.

As for Nicole Wallace she is one of the best reporters on all things Russia and Mueller these days.

End of UPDATE:

So I feel bad in a sense for attacking someone who likely remains a sacred cow for most of these recovering Republicans: the Gipper himself.

But I’m not writing about what may be the biggest political crime in American history to be rain on their parade, but because it’s the truth. And look, having said that, I will be real with you. As I noted in (Chapter B) when after Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election the 2016 election the 2016 election was stolen from Hillary Clinton I resolved to do two things:

1. Run for Congress in District NY2

2. To write a comprehensive and exhaustive book not just about the 2016 aka grand theft election-but also about the history of GOP vote corruption, vote rigging, and collusion with foreign powers to win American Presidential elections; ie, this book. 

I got out of the NY2 primary in February of 2018 in a decision I look back on now with some real mixed feelings. I DID learn a valuable lesson: never get out, and next time I run I WONT get out I don’t care if the Suffolk Democratic Chairman, Rich Schaffer, and Governor Andrew Cuomo both personally ask me to get out.

Running,. however, was a lot of fun and one thing that consultants learned about me was that I don’t hedge my bets. I’m not going to equivocate to voters where I stand-my wager being that many feel as I do. They wanted me to talk about ‘local issues’ not Russia but they didn’t seem to get that there are millions of ‘local voters’ across the country who make Maddow the number one show on cable due in large part to her Russia coverage.

So I didn’t equivocate while a candidate and I won’t equivocate now in this very important book about our country who’s democratic legitimacy has never been more imperiled than it is today.

The diagnosis of where we are, recall, is that this is all about the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the modern Republican party. In this reading, Trump is not the cause for the GOP’s sorry state today but rather the logical conclusion. As we saw in the chapters on Kavanaugh (X) the GOP didn’t need the Russians to learn how to hack and weaponize Democratic emails. And they sure didn’t need Trump to teach them how to collude with a hostile foreign power in order to rig an election.

As noted in (Chapter B) Nixon colluded with South Vietnam in 1968 to thwart LBJ”s peace talks and so guarantee his win over Humbert Humphrey.

That chapter in some ways was not so controversial, as even among Republicans today, few are interested in defending Nixon-other than Nixonites like Roger Stone and Patrick Buchanan… It seems like no small piece of serendipity that both of them wrote books about their idol Tricky Dick in 2014-why then? It’s almost as they were clairvoyant and knew one even more corrupt and authoritarian than Nixon would soon be coming to town.

While Stone delivered the Canucks Letter (Chapter C), Buchanan was sort of the brains behind CREEP-he gave them their marching orders-at the Watergate hearings in 1974, Buchanan protested that he never met Segretti, G. Gordon Liddy, etc. No but that’s how it often is in battle. The brains behind the battle plan usually doesn’t ever meet the ground troops that execute his scheme or even know their names.

When you look at CREEP, Segretti, the  Canucks Letter and the rigged 1972 election Roger Stone was the foot solider who hand delivered the final grenade while Buchanan was the general who crafted the overall battle plan.

Truth is, few Republicans have had much interest in defending Nixon in the 44 years since Barry Goldwater warned Nixon it was over and time to resign.

But Reagan! This is controversial to say the least. Even many Democrats these days hold Reagan out as an example of how a Republican President should act in order better to reproach Trump. I understand that urge and in some ways it may even be true-certainly Reagan-and his party-had a much preferable view on immigration than today’s Trumpster Deplorables.

Having said that I wouldn’t be so sure that Reagan had he been alive today-and in his right mind-wouldn’t have supported Trump. I mean Bob Dole for many years was held out as an example of a reasonable, moderate Republican and at the tender age of 95 is a Trump supporter. 

It’s forgotten just how partisan Reagan really was. It was his 11th Commandment that thou shalt never speak ill of another Republican. 

Clearly Trump’s Republican party of today is true to Reagan in that respect at least-Mitch McConnell thinks it applies even in cases of collusion with a hostile foreign power-much of the GOP also applied it in the case of a credible pedophile like Roy Moore-he’s a pedophile which is bad but it could be worse:; Doug Jones is a Democrat. 

If Reagan were alive today would he have broke his own commandment? I see good reason for skepticism.

But at the end of the day, there’s an old African American saying: only the truth hurts.

The truth hurts but it must be said: Reagan in his 1980 campaign committed about as despicably a treasonous act as anyone has ever done in American political history.

Saying this, to be sure, does give me no small measure of schadenfreude. Again, I don’t equivocate. Others may deny that there is some measure of vindication but I don’t shrink from ‘not admitting but just saying’ as Roger Stone puts it.

After all, for years the Reaganites attacked us liberal Democrats as being unpatriotic, as loving Russia-oops-more than our own country. Jeanne Kirkpatrick in 1984 went so far as to declare that we liberals ‘always blame America first’ and that in truth there is no liberal America and conservative America there are only liberals and Americans.

So after all the slanderous and ad hominem attacks on the patriotism of liberal Democrats it turns out that biggest traitor in American history. the American who had committed the most thoroughly disloyal act against his own country in our history was. St. Reagan himself, allegedly the embodiment of the flag, mom, and apple pie. Reagan and Bush wanted it to be a crime to burn the flag yet they were guilty of the most disloyal and treasonous actions in American history.

Think about it. As bad as what Trump is accused-and is quite likely guilty-of, the notion that the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980 negotiated with Iran’s Ayatollah to delay the release of the Iranian hostages until after the election is arguably the most treacherous act of betrayal in American history. The idea that 53 Americans had to stay all those extra days in captivity just to guarantee Reagan’s 1980 election ‘win’ is arguably the worst political crime in American history.

Though I guess Nixon’s treachery in 1968 is a close competitor. Reagan’s treachery in 1980 caused Americans to live captivity for a number of extra months but Nixon’s actions led to the deaths of over 25,000 more American soldiers.

Ok-so the caveat is that while Nixon’s treason is now widely accepted, the accusations against Reagan remain very contested.

“The October Surprise conspiracy theory refers to an alleged plot to influence the outcome of the 1980 United States presidential election, contested between incumbent president Jimmy Carter (D–GA) and his opponent, former California governor Ronald Reagan (R–CA).

One of the leading national issues during that year was the release of 52 Americans being held hostage in Iran since November 4, 1979.[1] Reagan won the election. On the day of his inauguration—in fact, 20 minutes after he concluded his inaugural address—the Islamic Republic of Iran announced the release of the hostages. The timing gave rise to an allegation that representatives of Reagan’s presidential campaign had conspired with Iran to delay the release until after the election to thwart President Carter from pulling off an “October surprise“.

“According to the allegation, the Reagan Administration rewarded Iran for its participation in the plot by supplying Iran with weapons via Israel and by unblocking Iranian government monetary assets in US banks.”

After twelve years of mixed media attention, both houses of the US Congress held separate inquiries and concluded that the allegations lacked supporting documentation.[2]

Nevertheless, several individuals—most notably former Iranian President Abulhassan Banisadr,[3] former naval intelligence officer and U.S. National Security Council member Gary Sick, and former Reagan/Bush campaign staffer and White House analyst Barbara Honegger—have stood by the allegation.”

The former President of Iran. As for Gary Sick who had such a high ranking role on the Carter foreign policy team for many years he’d discounted the theory himself but later reconsidered.

“Gary Sick who was Carter’s chief aide on the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 and 1980 had initially rejected the ‘conspiracy theory’ that the Reagan campaign had a deal with the Iranian government to delay release.”

“Mr. Sick contends that in March 1980, four months after followers of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had seized the United States Embassy in Teheran and taken the hostages, Casey approached two Iranian-born wheeler-dealers, the brothers Jamshid and Cyrus Hashemi, who had ties to the Khomeini regime. Casey asked them to set up a meeting with representatives of the Iranian Government. Thereafter, the Hashemis purportedly arranged for Casey to attend two meetings in Madrid in the summer of 1980 with Mehdi Karrubi, an Iranian cleric close to the Ayatollah. According to Mr. Sick, Casey subsequently had one last meeting in Paris about two weeks before the election to clinch the deal.”

“Shocking as it seems, is this scenario so far-fetched? First of all, the race at the time looked closer than it turned out. Mr. Reagan’s own poll taker had Mr. Carter leading 41 percent to 39 percent as late as mid-October. Moreover, Mr. Sick says, Casey lived in terror that Mr. Carter would pull off an “October surprise,” freeing the hostages at the last minute and putting himself over the top on election day.”

Very similar to the Nixon 1968 campaign’s paranoia over an October Surprise regarding LBJ getting a peace deal that would win it for Humphrey. This book can in large part be read as a trial of the Republican party itself. One way of assessing guilt or innocence in a criminal trial is pattern-is there a consistent pattern of conduct? With the GOP, believing they would engage in treacherous collusion with a hostile foreign power to win the 1980 election is a lot easier to believe as we now know for a fact they did in fact engage in treacherous collusion with a hostile foreign power to win the 1968 election.

In GOP collusion with a hostile foreign power 3.0-Trump and Russia-there’s been a lot of talk about the ‘deep state’ somehow organizing a coup against Trump. Again with the GOP you always have to consider that their outrageous and slanderous accusations are based on projection-it’s what they themselves would do, and in fact, have done.

In the 1980 election, Gary Sick related in his book that the Reagan campaign had penetrated every agency of defense and intelligence in the Carter Administration.

“Even within the White House, there were individuals who were committed to the defeat of Jimmy Carter and his replacement by Ronald Reagan, Using code names and clandestine reporting channels, they provided information about deliberations within the White House and among national security council staff concerning the hostages and other policy matters.

Pg. 27

See also: Richard Parry’s Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery.

Reagan’s own VP, George Bush, had led the CIA and had all kinds of contacts there. You have the stunning actions of Reagan campaign manager William Casey working with Iran to delay their release until after the election in exchange for arms for Iran in the Iraq war.

Certainly if nothing else, Iran-Reagan campaign collusion would put the the later Iran-Contra scandal in a much clearer light-weapons to Iran had been the rule since the Reagan campaign , Israel, and Iran had conspired to hold back the hostage’s release back in 1980.

Meanwhile, these rogue agents within the Carter Administration put out disinformation with the press-the original fake news:

“The second prong of the Republicans’ strategy  was disinformation. Beginning in early October and rising to a climax in the weeks before the election, mysterious news reports popped up from coast to coast asserting that military equipment was being assembled or was actually on its way to the Middle East as part of a last-minute swap for the release of the hostages. All these reports had one thing in common: they were false.”

Like with Nixon the Reagan campaign was obsessed with the idea that there would be a last minute deal to release the hostages-an October surprise. Note that just like with Nixon, the Reagan campaign lived in mortal fear of an October surprise and went on to commit treason to forestall it.

Is treason to strong a word? I don’t think so when you consider that all these actions by the Reagan campaign were made to prevent the hostages from being released too soon. 

As for the Congressional investigations in 1992, it comes down to wether you are willing to give them the final word or not-wether you believe they were fair and thorough.

If nothing else it demonstrates that there was at least probable cause for an investigation of Reagan-Iran collusion.

The Republicans on the Committee-as usual-were more interested in shutting the proceedings down than making sure they were thorough and fair.

Party of collusion, party of obstruction.

“The House October Surprise Task Force followed investigation of related matters in the Iran-Contra affair by the Tower Commission, in which the October Surprise allegations had already been aired, and rejected.[4] Media investigations of the October Surprise allegations took off in 1991 following the publication in April of a New York Times editorial by Gary Sick and a PBS Frontline documentary, and there were calls for a Congressional investigation.[citation needed]”

“In October 1991 the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee approved an investigation; but the bill for the $600,000 budget was filibustered by Republicans.[5] Some hearings were held by the Sen. For. Relations Subcmte on Near East and South Asian Affairs (then chaired by Terry Sanford) in November 1991[6] until an unnamed Republican senator, invoking a rarely used rule requiring Senate permission for committees to hold formal hearings, filed an objection, bringing the hearing to a close whilst Gary Sick was testifying.[7] In December 1991 Senators Terry Sanford and James M. Jeffords appointed a special counsel to investigate.[5] This report, published on 19 November 1992, concluded that there was probably no Republican deal to delay hostage release, but that William Casey (Reagan’s campaign director) “probably ‘conducted informal, clandestine and potentially dangerous efforts’ on the campaign’s behalf to monitor the hostage situation.”[8]

“In early February 1992 the House of Representatives voted to launch an investigation, with no Republican support and 34 Democrats opposing.[5] This became the House October Surprise Task Force.”

Note, again, the Greg Sargent’s hardball gap: if this had been of a Democratic President, you’d have unanimous Republican support with 34 Democrats also supporting.

Ok, so I’ve caveated this one. We know Nixon-South Vietnam1968 collusion happened for a fact. Reagan-Iran 1980 is still a contested theory-which many dismiss as a ‘mere conspiracy theory.’

So why do I presume it to be fact? For a few reasons. First of all, again, this book is meant to be a trial of the modern Republican party. A major aspect of proving innocence or guilt is pattern-is there or is there not a pattern of behavior. As noted above, the fact that the GOP colluded with South Vietnam to win the 1968 election makes it much more plausible that they also colluded with Iran to win in 1980. We also have their conduct in 2016-keep it in the family-Mitch McConnell threatening to smear Brennan if Brennan spoke out on the truth about Russia’s interference. We have the myriad outrageous cases of GOP obstruction the last two years since where Nunes and friends not only prematurely closed the Russia probe but opened up an investigation into the investigators.

Then there’s the Brooks Brothers’ riots of 2000 and Lee Atwater’s confession to setting up Gary Hart in 1987. There’s a great deal of pattern in terms of the GOP’s capacity for treachery right up to and including collusion and treason which make the allegations of Gary Sick and the former Iranian President not outrageous on its face.

Then there’s the fact that it was awfully convenient for Iran to release the hostages the very day of Reagan’s inauguration. As I explained in (Chapter B) what first led me to suspect that Russia and Wikileaks was up to something on behalf of the Trump campaign was when the DNC emails were timed with exquisite perfection to the second where it would do the most damage-the morning of the start of the Dem Convention, their Chairwoman was forced to step down.

Malcom Nance argues that coincidences take a lot of planning, Catherine Vance, former DA in Georgia argues that there ‘really aren’t any coincidences in law enforcement’; my own premise after Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s forced resignation was that while coincidences do happen you have to be suspicious of those that are too convenient. 

Just like the DNC emails forcing out DWS or Wikileaks beginning to release the Podesta emails a couple hours after the Hollywood Access tape goes public.

Similarly the timing on the release of the hostages-the day of Reagan’s inauguration-was too perfect, too convenient not to make me highly suspicious of a conspiracy.

FN: Which is not to say Reagan-Iran Collusion can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt-though who knows what a rigorous investigation could do?’but certainly enough for reasonable suspicion and probable cause.

To be sure, as Ryan Goodman has pointed out regarding Trump-Russia such treachery is very difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt-and for counterintelligence purposes can be substantiated well enough for us to be confident of a conclusion even if it can’t meet beyond reasonable doubt-which is the standard of criminal cases. A civil case can be proved based merely on preponderance to open an investigation you need only probable cause.

Since Sick wrote his book, the theory has been hand waved away by most of conventional opinion. The linked to NYT review of his book ultimately dismissed the ‘conspiracy theory.’

“Mr. Sick has no doubt that this “political treachery” took place. He provides dates; names places, participants and witnesses; cites conversations and agreements. He describes the puzzlement in the Carter camp when its own negotiating lines to Iran went dead shortly after Casey’s alleged October meeting in Paris. Then there is the exquisite timing of the hostages’ release. Though the Carter Administration and Iran resumed negotiations after the election and completed them by 8:04 A.M. Washington time on Inauguration Day, Iran waited until 12:05 P.M. to acknowledge the agreement, minutes after Ronald Reagan had been sworn in as President. Thus the satisfaction of announcing the hostages’ freedom fell on Mr. Reagan’s watch, not Mr. Carter’s.”

“So why not embrace Mr. Sick’s account? Because for all the closely reasoned arguments, the seeming accretion of evidence, his case is ultimately circumstantial and is not conclusive. He produces only one eyewitness, Jamshid Hashemi, who actually claims to have seen Casey perform at the two Madrid meetings, and none, at least none whom Mr. Sick himself believes, for the Paris meeting. He does refer to five other sources who “have independently confirmed” the first Madrid meeting. But this evidence is secondhand corroboration — hearsay. He also cites foreign operatives who say they saw French and Israeli intelligence reports placing Casey in Paris with the Iranians. But Mr. Sick apparently has not seen such reports himself. The only self-proclaimed eyewitness to the Paris meeting is Richard Brenneke, an Oregon businessman who claims to have worked for the C.I.A. but who has a Munchau senesque reputation for improving on the truth. Mr. Sick himself says Mr. Brenneke’s claims “simply did not check out.”

Brenneke has been wholly dismissed as lacking in credibility. Yet, here a closer look at his story is pretty interesting. A federal judge slapped Bernnke with a perjury charge for claiming to be in Paris as an eyewitness for the conspiracy between the Reagan campaign and Iran:

“Still, in this bizarre drama, the pendulum of persuasion keeps swinging back and forth. At the sentencing hearing of a friend convicted of fraud, Mr. Brenneke swore before a Federal judge that he had indeed been in Paris, and that he had seen Casey deal with the Iranians on arms and hostages. For his pains Mr. Brenneke was slapped by the judge with a five-count perjury indictment.”

Here the NYT writer, Joseph Perisco does concede this is notable: would you continue to conjure up pure fantasies if you are under oath before a federal judge with the threat of perjury hanging over your head? If I knew I was just making it up I might consider dropping it at that point. Still, to paraphrase Mitch McConnell,  Brennke persisted. 

Even a world-class fantasist, when faced with a stretch in a Federal penitentiary, is likely to see the attraction of truth and back off.

What happened then is very interesting:

“Instead, Mr. Brenneke turned down a plea-bargaining offer, stuck by his story and was acquitted by the unanimous vote of a jury.”

This is very notable and ought to give those happy to use Brenneke as the pretext to hand wave the entire story away: while the entire GOP in Congress and much of the Dems as well as much of the MSM was happy to dismiss all this as the imaginations of a criminal fantasist the jury didn’t find him guilty of perjury. Why is that? Not on some sort of technical or procedural grounds but:

“On 4 May 1990, after only five hours of deliberation, the jury found Brenneke “not guilty” on all five counts. Following the trial, jury foreman Mark Kristoff stated, “We were convinced that, yes, there was a meeting, and he was there and the other people listed in the indictment were there…. There never was a guilty vote…. It was 100 percent.”[6]

The jury of 12 ordinary Americans was 100% convinced that Brenneke was not a liar and that a collusion meeting in Paris between the Reagan campaign and the Iranians did happen. 

Much had been made of the fact that the CIA had stated it had no employment records of Brenneke. But ,of course, in many cases the CIA won’t have such records. 

“The prosecution produced a CIA personnel specialist who testified that he could not find Brenneke or Rupp in the Agency’s employment records, but under cross-examination admitted that Rupp had been trained by the CIA’s Intermountain Aviation, and that the Agency had “files” on both Rupp and Brenneke. Frank Snepp testified that CIA contract agents were often not listed in employment records where the agents were involved in sensitive operations.[6] Two intelligence operatives from Texas testified to collaborating with Brenneke.[10] Donald Gregg testified that on 18 October 1980 he was not in Paris but on holiday in Delaware, providing in evidence family photographs he said were taken that weekend. A meteorologist testified that the sunny weather conditions made it highly unlikely that they had been taken that weekend in that location.[6] The prosecution failed to prove that Casey and Bush could not have attended the Paris meetings.[6]Defense witnesses included William Northrop, an Israeli intelligence agent indicted in the Brokers of Death arms case, which had been dropped in January 1989 on the grounds that the prosecution could not disprove the defendants’ claims that they believed the planned arms shipments to Iran were or could be government-sanctioned. Northrop testified that Israeli arms shipments to Iran began “within a fortnight” of the Paris meeting.[6]

Indeed, with all the legitimate concerns of Trump abusing his power to protect himself from the Mueller probe there’s reason to suspect the George Bush Sr. Administration-who according to Brenenke was at the Paris meeting he alleged-abused his own executive power to save Donald Gregg embarrassment at his Senate confirmation.

For his role in the Rupp trial, Brenneke was charged with five counts of making false declarations to a federal judge, a charge slightly stronger than perjury.[8] He was indicted on 12 May 1989, accused of lying about his and Rupp’s CIA connections and about the October Surprise meetings.[6] The timing caused some speculation that the charges were intended to avoid political embarrassment for Donald Gregg, whose Senate confirmation hearings for his appointment as Ambassador to South Korea began the same day: the charges prevented senators from raising accusations Brenneke had made in 1988 that Gregg had directed the Iran-Contra affair out of the Vice-President’s office.[6][9] The prosecution offered Brenneke a deal that would keep him out of prison if he pleaded guilty; he refused.[6]

It’s fascinating: a judge basically threatened Brenneke to admit there was no collusion between Reagan and Iran 1980 under pain of perjury. Brenneke persisted-and a jury found him wholly credible-completely opposite of what conventional elite opinion held.

Indeed, until then, Sick himself had seen Brenneke as not so reliable though he did state it’s clear Brenneke  did have access to ‘at certain times exceptional access to sensitive information.’  Sick, Pg. 210

Like he knew about arm shipments to Iran well before it became public knowledge in 1986.

Again it should be emphasized that Sick was a skeptic of Reagan-Iran collusion for many years. The book he wrote in 1991 was initially supposed to be about Iran-Contra but he began to feel that he couldn’t write about Iran-Contra without decisively settling the question if Iran-Contra was just one episode in a much larger deal.

But he himself was very surprised that the government was unable to prove that Donald Gregg and George Bush Sr weren’t at the alleged Paris meeting. As Sick says, while the jury verdict doesn’t prove the October Surprise theory it does show the government was unable to rebut it to the satisfaction of 12 ordinary Americans-who were quite adamant that they were convinced the Paris meeting did happen. 

Sick relates how prior to that trial he himself felt was absolutely impossible that Donald Gregg was at this meeting with the Iranians in Paris; after the verdict, he no longer knew what to think.

I speculated above what Reagan would make of Trump today ‘if he were alive and in his right mind.’

With all the talk of Trump’s own cabinet discussing the 25th, this is another thing he has in common with Reagan: James Baker refused to replace Don Regan as Chief of Staff before doing a stealth investigation verifying Reagan was still in his right mind.

Bob Woodward quoted Reagan at a court hearing in 1990 regarding all his legal troubles with Iran-Contra declaring ‘It’s almost like I was never President at all’-ie, he was stating he couldn’t remember anything of his Presidential days.

One of the ambiguities with Reagan and his state of mind-Bill O’Reilly and George Will got into a major, and very funny, Holy War over wether or not Reagan’s mental powers had diminished post when he was shot by that nut back in 1981-is that there is one rather uncharitable theory that he already had Alzheimers before he left office-is that why he was always saying  I don’t remember when asked about Iran-Contra?

But another equally uncharitable theory was that he was exaggerating his mental lapse out of necessity. By 1990 with the legal issues over his actions in Iran-Contra still swirling around his head it was even more important to insist he didn’t remember-and chalking up his memory loss to Alzheimers was helpful for him to avoid being found culpable.

While in 1990, based on Woodward’s depiction, his mind seems to have been well on its way to lapsing, in 1991 he sounded quite lucid regarding the subject of wether he colluded with Iran in 1980.

“Former President Ronald Reagan on Saturday labeled as “absolute fiction” charges that he or his campaign staff conducted talks with Iran to prevent the freeing of American hostages held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran before the 1980 election.

On the contrary, “I did some things actually the other way, to try and be of help in getting those hostages–I felt very sorry for them–of getting them out of there,” Reagan told reporters who were trailing him as he played golf with President Bush at the exclusive Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks.

Reagan was responding for the first time to recently renewed charges that his campaign had sought to block President Jimmy Carter, his 1980 election opponent, from springing an “October surprise”–the freeing of the hostages–and emerging as a hero only days before the vote.

“I can only assure you there was never any concern on my part that they shouldn’t get out because of the effect on the contest, the elections,” Reagan said.

Looking at what he said 27 years later it’s striking how:

1. Lucid he sounded then

2. How much like Trump he sounded. Then you remember: Trump pilfered everything from him, right down to Make America Great Again. 

So maybe we should say Trump sounds like him.

This is exactly what Trump would say, even the phrasing is strikingly similar: ‘I did some things actually the other way, to try and be of help in getting those hostages-I felt very sorry for them…’

Like with Trump what he actually was saying was subject to parsing-it wasn’t precisely worded so that it could be taking in a number of different ways. It’s like Trump, a vague denial that actually might give a way a lot more than he meant to-so he’s saying that the Reagan campaign did speak to Iran about the hostages? 

Reagan declined to say yes or no.

“Asked if his comment meant that he or his aides had talked with Iranian officials during the campaign, Reagan said he had no personal discussions with the Iranian government. And, when pressed further about his staff’s involvement, he declined to elaborate. “I can’t go into details,” Reagan said. “Some of these things are still classified.”

Just like with the Mueller Report today he fell back on ‘sources and methods’ as a catchall pretext to escape sunlight and transparency.

“Meanwhile, Bush, in an earlier interview Saturday, said neither he nor Reagan would have sacrificed the hostages’ freedom to nudge their political careers into the White House. Acknowledging charges by some of the former hostages that the Reagan-Bush campaign interfered with their release, Bush angrily challenged Congress to investigate.”

Just like you can’t dismiss what Brenneke said about the Paris Iran Collusion meeting out of hand in light of what that jury found, it’s very hard to dismiss Iran Collusion when some of the former hostages themselves believe it happened.

Ok finding family resemblances between Reagan and Trump is child’s play-both always seemed to believe that something could be shown to be true simply by vehement assertion. But it turns out that Trump didn’t only steal from Ronnie he also stole for Bush:

“If there’s evidence . . . let them go forward,” Bush said during an interview with local television reporters. “To assign to me the motive that for political gain I would assign an American to captivity one minute longer than necessary, I think is a vicious, personal assault on my integrity and my character as President. I don’t think I’d deserve to be in this office if for one minute I suggested a person be held hostage so I could get political gain. And I know the same is true of President Reagan.”

During his interview, Bush complained bitterly of political “rumor mongering and hate mongering” directed at him over the hostages and complained that an investigation would be costly, spending “taxpayers’ dollars based on rumors. . . . I don’t think that’s good.”

But he said a congressional investigation may be the only way to clear his name. Congress “can’t just go out there and have a billion-dollar witch hunt,” he said. “So I’d love to get it cleared, and I’ve (said) it as emphatically as possible because this gets to the heart of character. This gets to your soul. This gets to what’s decent and right in the world.”

Turns out even witch hunt isn’t a Trump original.

UPDATE: So I just came across this passage in Robert Parry’s book on Reagan-Iran in his first meeting with Ben-Menashe, a former member of Israel’s military intelligence-Ben-Menashe had just stated that it was he who had first leaked about Iran-Contra at the direction of his superiors; Ben-Menashe:

“My brows furrowed over his unlikely reinterpretation of the series of events that had unlocked the secrets of the Iran-contra scandal. How could the Israelis had planted the Al-Shiraa story in Lebanon, I wondered? How could even the talented Israeli intelligence services finagle that?”

“Yet, I thought, why was Ben-Menashe giving me a revisionist account of the Iran-Contra history? Normally when people lie, they embroider on a fabric of information that their listener already accepts as true. If Ben-Menashe wanted Newsweek’s help in bringing attention to his plight, why wasn’t he giving me a version of events I would be inclined to believe? The arrogant Ben-Menashe was not a witness who pandered to a listener’s preconceptions. Rather, he seemed to delight in doing the opposite.”

Pgs: 8-9.

If many find it hard to believe in the notion of Reagan-Iran collusion it’s because it totally contradicts their preconceptions-misconceptions? While 50 years after Nixon-South Vietnam Nixon’s treachery is widely understood, many today aren’t even aware of the Reagan-Iran theory. While Reagan has a lot of admirers, very few-other than Roger Stone-are interested in defending Nixon these days. On the other hand, Reagan is seen by many as an almost mythical figure. Here’s the thing though-assuming you believe the Nixon campaign colluded with South Vietnam to rig the 1968 election, are you aware that many of the NIxon 1968 campaign figures were on the 1980 Reagan campaign , starting with William Casey who as Reagan’s campaign manager was alleged to have had a major role in Iran-Reagan collusion.

I also think Ben-Menashe sounds like a skilled spook in that he loves to shock a listener’s preconceptions. As I’ve touched on elsewhere, the skill set of someone in intel couldn’t be more different than that of a MSM journalist. MSM pundits-from Jay Rosen’s ‘View From Nowhere’ resist anything that upsets the conventional wisdom. But intelligence types love to have knowledge that upsets it. And that’s the trouble with the whole notion of ‘conspiracy theories’ as there’s a case to make that to be a quality intel analyst-much less a criminal investigator-you have be something of a conspiracy theorist. 

I was watching Chris Cuomo’s-Gov. Cuomo’s brother-do his CNN show just last night. There was nothing he said that I disagreed with in this segment-it was actually very interesting and I often find his analysis quite worth the watch. But he said something that I found notable. He was talking to a Trump supporting guest and was arguing with him saying ‘I’m prefer to use Occam’s Razor making as few assumptions as possible.’

Yet, interestingly enough, Occam’s Razor while useful in many casual contexts-when we have immediate tasks, need to take immediate action-can be misleading in complex political debates. 

Isn’t it the case that in a criminal investigation by definition you have to make assumptions assuming you don’t just want to lock the body away and forget it? In many political contexts then, Occam’s Razor can actually be quite misleading-and allows people to hold onto their comforting preconceptions-like that everyone hates Hillary Clinton because she’s hatable. 

Occam’s Razor in many cases then simply allows folks to enjoy their confirmation bias and this tendency has done no little mischief in American politics going back at least to Reagan. Indeed, Reagan-apart from wether or not he’s a traitor-was someone who always found a useful excuse close to hand to believe his own preconceptions.

Similarly as I looked at previously, Josh Marshall is probably displaying the congenital attitude of most MSM journalists in always believing the best of people even Trump-though with Clinton much of the media violated this premise.

UPDATE: After October 7 I actually reread Menasche’s book again to provide more light on the history of the US-Israeli relationship the importance  of which has come into sharper relief. It’s very notable that Israel had a role in Iranian Collusion-just as they would in Russian Collusion Circa 2016. In both episodes the colluding Israel officials were from the revisionist Likud party.

FN: Seth Abramson’s Proof of Conspiracy

Regarding 1980 as Menasche documents, then Israel PM Meachem Begin-the first revisionist Israeli PM-had a major animus against Jimmy Carter for making him come to an agreement with Egypt President Sadat and give back the Sinai Peninsula.

FN: For Sadat’s trouble, of course, he was murdered as was Israel’s Rabin for his role in the Oslo Accords in the 1990s kind of putting a fine point on the idea that it’s pretty dangerous for anyone on either side of the long Israel-Palestine conflict to attempt to negotiate. See Chapter Israel-American history for more.

How Jimmy Carter Brokered a Hard-Won Peace Deal Between Israel and Egypt | HISTORY

The role of Begin’s Israel in Iran Collusion was to supply the arms in the quid pro quo-the hostages in exchange for arms for Iran in its war against Iraq. In that sense Begin’s benefit was twofold-he got to help defeat Carter and make some big money on the arm sales to Iran-who Israel despite the fall of the Shah still wanted to help-unlike today back then Israel considered Saddam Hussein their biggest enemy.

FN: Today, of course Iran has taken over that place, Ironically the US’ cataclysmically disastrous invasion of Iraq left Iran’s position much improved-which is why the Saudis were quite appalled by it despite the long warm ties between the Bush family and the House of Saud.

CF: Kevin Phillips book by same name.

Indeed, pace Menashe it was Iraq that ultimately led Israel to dox Reagan-Bush and spill the beans on Iran-Contra: a parallel pipeline in the Reagan WH was sending arms to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the war against Iran thereby cancelling out Israel’s agenda of arming Iran vs Iraq.

FN: Notably VP Bush was leading that parallel pipeline and according to Menashe’s account he personally was sent to speak to Bush Sr about this and was quite blunt in demanding the US stopped arming Iraq. Indeed, ultimately Menashe himself was doxed and ended up in prison for his role and it seems quite plausible that his awkward discussion with Bush where he rather highhandedly demanded the VP of the US to stop arming Iraq had been the exact moment Menashe’s days as a free man were numbered.

UPDATE: Find page number.

So that adds yet another layer of irony in the current furor over Iran-it was Bush-Cheney’s Cheney-Bush’s fatally misconceived war that empowered Iran to this extent.

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