How an ‘October surprise’ could change everything in the US election
It is the name of a sinister covert action that stole the White House more than 40 years ago... or so the story goes. Was Jimmy Carter’s defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980 evidence of dark forces poisoning American democracy, or a compelling conspiracy theory? Craig Unger is in no doubt it’s all too real – and must never happen again
Today, former president Jimmy Carter is in hospice care in Plains, Georgia, where he has just celebrated his 100th birthday. But even now, some 44 years after his presidency ended, he has not gotten his due. Carter was defeated at the polls by Ronald Reagan in 1980, having been wrongfully characterised as a failed leader who allowed America to be humiliated by Iran.
In fact, he was the victim of a traitorous covert operation for which the Republicans were never held accountable. The real story has never been fully told. In 1980, the term “October Surprise” first became widely used in reference to efforts to win the release of 52 American hostages incarcerated at the American embassy in Tehran. Obtaining their freedom became a decisive factor in determining who would win the election – Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter.
At the time, of course, the Republicans were not even in power, so they had no authority to make any kind of deal at all with Iran. Nevertheless, the Republicans secretly sent weapons to Iran, for which they demanded an extraordinary quid pro quo: they wanted the Islamic Republic to keep the Americans in custody until after the presidential election.
That’s right: the Republicans were arming Iran, a terrorist state, in return for which they wanted Iran to prolong the captivity of American hostages.
Transgressive as the Republicans’ position seemed, there was a powerful logic behind it; if the hostages were released before the election, the thinking went, the patriotic fervour that ensued might well put Carter over the top.
But if the hostages were still imprisoned when America voted, Carter would be seen as the man who allowed America to become a pitiful, helpless giant. As a result, the Reagan-Bush campaign induced Iran to keep the hostages until after the elections. Critics have characterised the deal as an act of treason, but however you parsed it, one thing was clear: the Republicans had put party before country.
In 1991, I investigated the October Surprise for Esquire. Immediately after my piece appeared, Newsweek hired me to continue the investigation. But then, the conventional wisdom about the October Surprise made an abrupt U-turn. Suddenly, the hottest story in the country was newly appraised as nothing more than a wacky conspiracy theory.
Newsweek ran three major stories saying the October Surprise never happened. The New Republic, The Washington Post and other organs of the mainstream press piled on. All the sources were sleazy arms dealers and spies, con men and criminals, they said. Anyone who interviewed them – me, for example – was a gullible dupe who had been taken in by the tinfoil-hat brigade.
Reporters who continued to pursue it were discredited or marginalised – even sued, as I was, by former national security adviser Robert “Bud” McFarlane, for $10m. (I was tied up in court for years, but I eventually won.) Two congressional investigations fizzled out. After the 1992 election, the whole subject was relegated to the dustbin of history. And for most Americans, the October Surprise of 1980 never happened.
But I knew otherwise. Even though the October Surprise was dead and buried for most people, I went back to it again and again. I travelled to Israel, Iran and France, where I interviewed high-level Israeli intelligence officials, Iran’s top arms procurement officer, and the former Iranian president Abolhassan Banisadr.
When I started my new book, Den of Spies: Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason that Stole the White House, I found even more material. Robert Parry, an investigative reporter who was similarly fixated on the October Surprise, had discovered a trove of documents that had been discarded by the Congressional taskforce investigating the scandal. After he died, in 2018, his wife shared them with me.
Among other gems, I found invoices of arms sales to Iran from a Republican operative. Then, in April, I finally interviewed Robert Sensi, a political operative who set up secret meetings between Republicans and Iranian officials in Madrid during the campaign, and asked him if the October Surprise had happened. “One hundred million per cent,” he replied. “Absolutely. Unequivocally. And you can print it.”
But 1980 was not the only election in which the Republicans engaged in such malfeasance. During the 1968 presidential campaign, which pitted Richard Nixon against Hubert Humphrey, Nixon operatives intervened in affairs of state in a manner that closely prefigured the October Surprise.
Once dismissed as a bizarre conspiracy theory, the Anna Chennault Affair is now extraordinarily well-documented thanks to tape recordings and memos in the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, and the Miller Centre at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
It has been written about at length in Ken Hughes’s 2014 book, Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate, and Lawrence O’Donnell’s Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics in 2017, among others.
In 1980 the parallels with the heated presidential race between Nixon and Humphrey were striking. At the time, president Lyndon Johnson was desperately trying to end the Vietnam War via negotiations in Paris. Behind the scenes, Nixon brought in Chennault, a leading force in the US-China lobby, to convince the South Vietnamese to withdraw from the Paris peace talks at the last minute.
Thanks to Nixon’s unseen machinations, the Democratic administration couldn’t even get the US’s South Vietnamese allies to the bargaining table. As a result, during this last week of the presidential campaign, the Democrats were humiliated as the Paris negotiations fell apart.
On 5 November, Nixon narrowly won the presidency. For most Americans, however, the consequence of the Anna Chennault Affair was that the Vietnam War continued until 1975, with tens of thousands of additional US casualties. Once again, the Republicans had chosen party over country. Once again, the Republicans had gotten away with it.
By now, the Republicans have shown that when it comes to elections their toolbox includes hijacking American foreign policy, treasonous covert operations, breaking and entering, and physically disrupting the counting of votes, as scores of Republicans did during the so-called Brooks Brothers riot in 2000, when they stopped the hand recount being undertaken in Florida.
And, of course, in 2016 Trump’s campaign was aided at the last minute when a deluge of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s associates were leaked by Wikileaks, with some pointing to the possible help of Russian intelligence.
So you would have to be naive to think the next election will take place with no malfeasance from bad actors. Trump has repeatedly expressed his fondness for Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Kim Jong Un and other authoritarian leaders who would no doubt benefit from Trump returning to office.
Already, the Justice Department has announced its battle against “Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaigns”.
According to deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco, at Putin’s direction, “fabricated influencers and fake profiles” were used to create AI-generated false narratives as part of “a calculated effort to subvert our election”.
As for Israel, there have already been reports by Axios that Trump called on Netanyahu not to make a ceasefire deal in Gaza because it would help the Harris campaign. The Israeli prime minister’s office denied that the call took place, but his continuing reluctance to agree to a ceasefire has certainly been a boon for Trump’s cause.
Whatever machinations may be underway, one thing is clear: Trump’s Republican Party is no stranger to resorting to transgressive measures when it comes to elections. But even when they get called out, it is unlikely that they will stop, because they have almost always gotten away with it in the past. Even when the Republicans got caught in the act – as was the case with Watergate – President Nixon was pardoned.
Republicans have to be held accountable. They have to pay the price. The Anna Chennault Affair, the October Surprise of 1980, and other Republican assaults on democracy have to be understood, and be seen as part of our shared history. Meanwhile, it’s high time to make sure Jimmy Carter is given his due.
Craig Unger is the New York Times bestselling author of six books, including ‘House of Trump’, ‘House of Putin’ and ‘American Kompromat’. His newest book, ‘Den of Spies: Reagan, Cater, and the Secret History of the Treason that Stole the White House’, is being published 1 October in the US and 10 October in the UK
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