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October Surprise

October Surprise is the allegation that representatives of the 1980 Ronald Reagan presidential campaign arranged the Iran-Contra deal well in advance of the 1980 election where Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter. October Surprise is also the title of a book on the subject by Gary Sick. The term is now used in Political Science in almost the exact opposite way, describing a situation where a Presidential incumbent uses his office to do something very popular at the last minute before election day, to increase his chances of getting elected.

The allegations are not vague. They allege that representatives of the Reagan presidential campaign made a deal at a meeting in Madrid with Iranians to delay the release of Americans held hostage in Iran until after the November 1980 presidential elections, so that Reagan's opponent, then President Jimmy Carter, whose team had been negotiating, wouldn't gain a popularity boost (an 'October Surprise') before election day. The allegations included a date-specific allegation that William Casey met with an Iranian cleric in Madrid, Spain, and much of the tardy investigations centered on whether, at the weekend in question he was actually at Bohemian Grove retreat in California.

Carter was at the time dealing with the Iranian hostage crisis and the hostile regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Those who aver that a deal was made allege that certain Republicans with CIA connections, including George H. W. Bush, arranged to have the hostages held through October, until Reagan could defeat Carter in early November, and then be released. The hostages were in fact released on the day of Reagan's inauguration. If the timing was a double-cross that was meant to tip off the public to the game, it failed to elicit much commentary.

A Public Broadcasting System's 'Frontline' documentary in 1990 brought the story unavoidably to the surface in considerable detail.

Separate House and Senate investigations were further delayed until 1992 however, by which time the trail was safely cold. William Casey, the alleged go-between, was dead by then, and it seemed impossible to account for all his moves during the summer of 1980, when he is said to have conferred with agents representing the Ayatollah Khomeini's government.

If this is how events happened, some believe that dealing with a hostile foreign government to achieve the defeat of a domestic administration would have been an act of treason.

According to Sick's analysis, Oliver North was more or less a fall guy, taking the responsibility in order to conceal the treason of Reagan and Bush.

See also: George Bush family conspiracy theory, Iran-Contra, Iranian hostage crisis

References

Robert Parry, Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery, 1993. Robert Parry, The October Surprise X-Files: The Hidden Origins of the Reagan-Bush Era, 1996.

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