by H. W. Brands
The assertion was explosive, suggesting violations of the Logan Act, the eighteenth-century law that forbids private citizens to engage in diplomacy, as well as the prolonging of the misery and jeopardy of the American hostages. Several of the hostages demanded a congressional investigation, and though most Republicans denounced the charges as baseless and politically driven, the Senate and the House conducted inquiries.
The Senate went first. Its investigation was hampered by the inability of the appointed special counsel to question Casey, who had died by then, or Reagan, who in retirement declined to testify. It was also hindered by the counsel’s limited subpoena power and the reluctance of Senate Republicans and the presidential administration of George Bush to cooperate.
Even so, the investigation uncovered evidence, albeit circumstantial, that lent plausibility to the allegations. The counsel sought records from Casey’s widow and daughter that appeared likely to bear on the subject. The two women produced some documents, but others that appeared to be critical were missing, including a file labeled “Hostages,” a schedule book for 1980, and some loose-leaf calendar pages for the period when Casey’s alleged meeting, in Madrid, with the Iranian middlemen was said to have occurred. Casey’s passport, which should have recorded his travels, was also missing. Eventually, the schedule book surfaced along with some of the loose-leaf pages, but other pages remained unaccounted for.
The investigation’s authority and money ran out with many questions still unanswered. Yet the investigators concluded that the existing evidence did not support the allegation that the Reagan campaign had struck a deal with the Iranian government to delay the release of the hostages. In fact, the existing evidence pointed in the opposite direction. “The great weight of the evidence is that there was no such deal,” the report of the Senate committee declared. The report labeled as “wholly unreliable” the testimony of the principal witnesses to the bargain. “Their claims regarding alleged secret meetings are riddled with inconsistencies, and have been contradicted by irrefutable documentary evidence as well as by the testimony of vastly more credible witnesses.”
But the report didn’t let Casey off the hook. “The totality of the evidence does suggest that Casey was ‘fishing in troubled waters’ ”—the report here quoted a witness—“and that he conducted informal, clandestine, and potentially dangerous efforts on behalf of the Reagan campaign to gather intelligence on the volatile and unpredictable course of the hostage negotiations between the Carter Administration and Iran.” The report also chided Casey’s heirs, saying that their refusal to cooperate with the investigation suggested “a willful effort to prevent Special Counsel from getting timely access to the materials.”
A House task force examining what had come to be called the “October Surprise” question—despite the absence of such a surprise—drew the same general conclusion the Senate panel did. Chairman Lee Hamilton, a Democrat of Indiana, reiterated the gravity of the allegations against Casey and the Reagan campaign: “If true, these extraordinarily serious claims would have cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Reagan Presidency.” He added, “If false, it would have been unfair to allow this cloud to linger over the reputations of those accused of being involved.” Hamilton reported that the task force he headed had concluded that the claims were not true. “There was virtually no credible evidence to support the accusation. Specifically, we found little or no credible evidence of communications between the 1980 Reagan campaign and the Government of Iran and no credible evidence that the campaign tried to delay the hostages’ release.” Hamilton acknowledged that some important evidence remained missing. “The task force did not locate Mr. Casey’s 1980 passport, and one of the three Casey 1980 calendars the task force did obtain—a looseleaf version—was missing a few crucial pages.” But the lacuna was not fatal to the investigation. “The absence of these materials did not prevent us from determining the whereabouts of Mr. Casey and others on dates when meetings were claimed to have occurred.” Hamilton declared the case closed: “The overwhelming weight of the evidence should put the controversy to rest after all.”
The controversy did rest for a time, but it didn’t die. New evidence sporadically rekindled interest. In 1996 author Douglas Brinkley, at work on a book about Jimmy Carter as former president, told a conference of diplomatic historians about a comment made to Carter by Yasser Arafat earlier that year. Carter had traveled to Gaza City to meet with Arafat; Brinkley tagged along. “Mr. President, there is something I want to tell you,” Arafat said, according to Brinkley. “You should know that in 1980 the Republicans approached me with an arms deal if I could arrange to keep the hostages in Iran until after the election.” Arafat looked for a reaction from Carter, but Carter merely listened. “I want you to know that I turned them down,” Arafat said. Brinkley, speaking in his own voice to the historians’ group, added, “Arafat kept detailed records, which should soon be made public.”
The records Brinkley referred to never became public. Nor did Carter display interest in seeing them. Asked later about Arafat’s statement, Brinkley said Carter seemed not to want to hear more. Brinkley attributed the lack of interest to Carter’s desire to focus on Middle East peace in 1996 and not on what had happened in 1980.
Other records, however, did become public. In 2011 the presidential library of George (H. W.) Bush, responding to Freedom of Information Act requests, released documents relating to the earlier Senate and House investigations of the October Surprise affair. The documents reflected a debate within the Bush administration as to how fully it should cooperate with the investigations. The Bush team worried that the mere raising of the October Surprise issue would damage Bush’s 1992 reelection chances, in that some of the allegations asserted a Bush role in contacts with the Iranians, in particular at a meeting in Paris in October 1980. The administration preferred that the investigations be kept small and short. But it couldn’t stonewall entirely. Bush indignantly denied the allegations that touched him. “I can categorically assure you that I never was in Paris as claimed by the rumormongers,” he wrote to one of the former hostages. “I can also categorically assure you that I have no information direct or indirect of any contact with Iranians relating to this hostage question.” He said the same thing to reporters. And the administration turned over to the investigators materials corroborating Bush’s denial.
But the administration declined to share evidence indicating that William Casey had been in Madrid at the time of the alleged meeting between Casey and the Iranian contacts. A memorandum for the record by White House associate counsel Paul Beach recounted a conversation between Beach and Edwin Williamson of the State Department. Williamson explained that the State Department was gathering relevant materials and deciding what to turn over to the investigators. “In this regard,” Beach wrote, “Ed mentioned only a cable from the Madrid embassy indicating that Bill Casey was in town, for purposes unknown.”
The Beach memorandum, when released, surprised Lee Hamilton, by then retired. Hamilton condemned the Bush White House for withholding the evidence. “If the White House knew that Casey was there, they certainly should have shared it with us.” Hamilton stopped short of saying that the new evidence proved the October Surprise allegations, but he reiterated the importance of Casey’s whereabouts to the task force’s dismissal of the charges. “We found no evidence to confirm Casey’s trip to Madrid,” he told journalist Robert Parry. “We couldn’t show that.” And one reason they couldn’t was that the Bush White House was withholding evidence. “The White House did not notify us that he did make the trip. Should they have passed that on to us? They should have because they knew we were interested in that.”
Other evidence continued to surface. In 2013, Ben Barnes, a former lieutenant governor of Texas, told the present author he had accompanied former Texas governor John Connally on a trip to the Middle East in the summer of 1980. Connally had made a run for the Republican nomination that year, but after a slow start he dropped out of the ra
ce, endorsing Reagan over Connally’s Texas rival George Bush. Barnes had handled fund-raising for the Connally campaign. Connally, who had served as Treasury secretary under Richard Nixon and was clearly hoping for an important post in a Reagan administration, was then associated with the Houston-based law firm of Vinson & Elkins, and the purpose of the trip was described for the firm’s records as “personal business for private interests.” But public business was in prospect. Recommendations by Nixon preceded Connally to the Middle East. “I am sure that you will find a talk with him most interesting in view of his enormous experience in government and the likelihood (I hope!) that he will play a major role in the Reagan administration,” Nixon wrote to one foreign interlocutor.
Early in the journey, Connally seems to have spoken by phone with Reagan. A memo to Connally by an aide bore the subject line “Governor Reagan” and read, “Nancy Reagan called—they are at ranch. He wants to talk to you about being in on strategy meetings.” Connally would certainly have returned the call, but just what was said in the conversation is unknown.
Barnes volunteered to the author that the trip had a connection to the American hostages in Iran. Barnes said Connally passed word to the government officials he met with in Israel and several Arab countries that the release of the hostages before the November election would “not be helpful” to the Reagan campaign. When asked by the author whether this message had come from William Casey, Barnes said he wasn’t told and hadn’t inquired.
More than three decades after the fact, the October Surprise story remained puzzling. The evidence demonstrated conclusively that Casey and the campaign team were very worried that Carter would secure the release of the hostages ahead of the election. The evidence demonstrated with equal clarity that the campaign was preparing to make a release politically more difficult by intimating that Carter was opportunistically cutting a deal with the hostage holders. The evidence indicated that Casey was dropping hints, perhaps even making promises, that a Reagan administration would look favorably on those governments and individuals who had helped Reagan win election. And the evidence suggested (in the case of the missing passport and calendar pages) and demonstrated (in the case of the Bush White House memo) that interested parties had consciously covered up pertinent information.
What none of the evidence, with the possible exception of a Reagan-Connally phone call, indicated or even hinted was that Reagan himself had anything directly to do with the efforts made on his behalf. He flatly denied having been involved, calling the allegations “absolute fiction.” By the time the story emerged, Reagan’s detached style of management had become famous—notorious, as it related to the Iran-contra affair. And Casey’s obsession with secrecy was just as well-known. Between Reagan’s detachment and Casey’s secrecy, Reagan’s denial was entirely believable.
All the same, Reagan was responsible for what was done by his campaign to get him elected. If his campaign took measures that offended ethics and even the law, any blame ultimately rested with him.
But his wouldn’t have been the first campaign to stray, if stray it did. And in any event, the efforts to prevent an October surprise were almost certainly superfluous. The Iranians liked Jimmy Carter less in October 1980 than ever. Iraq had just invaded Iran, and Iranian leaders thought Carter was behind the invasion. They had no reason to give him the satisfaction of winning the hostages’ freedom, especially if it meant he might thereby win the American election. To the Iranian leaders, Carter was a known and detested quantity. Reagan was an unknown quantity, but he couldn’t be worse than Carter. Whether or not Reagan’s campaign had promised weapons in exchange for hostages, the Iranians determined to wait Carter out.
IN THE ABSENCE of an October surprise, November was predictable. Americans cast their ballots on November 4 and awarded Reagan an overwhelming victory. He beat Carter by more than eight million votes, winning 51 percent of the popular vote to Carter’s 41 percent (and Anderson’s 7 percent). Reagan carried forty-four states to Carter’s six and tallied 489 electoral votes to Carter’s 49.
Reagan watched the returns in the house he and Nancy had purchased in Pacific Palisades. Carter telephoned him there to concede the election. Reagan drove to the Century Plaza Hotel to address his supporters. “You know,” he said, “Abe Lincoln, the day after his election to the presidency, gathered in his office the newsmen who had been covering his campaign, and he said to them, ‘Well, boys, your troubles are over now, but mine have just begun.’ ” Reagan said he thought he knew how Lincoln felt. “Lincoln may have been concerned in the troubled times in which he became president, but I don’t think he was afraid. He was ready to confront the problems and the troubles of a still youthful country, determined to seize the historic opportunity to change things.” Reagan said he shared the feeling and the hope. “I am not frightened by what lies ahead, and I don’t believe the American people are frightened by what lies ahead. Together, we’re going to do what has to be done.”
PART FOUR
HEROIC DREAMS
1980–1983
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JAMES BAKER WAS nothing if not flexible. Having led two campaigns to deny Reagan the Republican nomination, he had jumped to the winning side after the failure of the second and helped Reagan become president. And two days after Reagan beat Carter, Baker was tapped to run Reagan’s White House.
Baker’s appointment as chief of staff vexed some of those who had battled longer at Reagan’s side. Edwin Meese thought he should have the job. Meese had been with Reagan since the 1960s, serving variously as legal adviser to the governor, executive secretary, and chief of staff. Meese was smart, hardworking, and astute on policy, and he was a committed conservative. But he wasn’t much for organization. “He’s got a briefcase that has never been emptied,” Lyn Nofziger suggested decades later. “I suppose you go to the bottom of it, and you can find stuff back in 1967–8.” Nor was he as stern as a chief of staff often had to be. “It’s a good thing Ed was not born a woman because he can’t say no,” Nofziger continued. “I mean that in the nicest way. Ed will do anything in the world for you. He is one of the sweetest, nicest men in the whole damn world. But when you can’t say no, you take on more things than you can handle.” And he simply liked to do things himself. “He’s not a very good distributor of jobs and missions.” Stuart Spencer agreed. Spencer was a pioneer of political consulting, one of the first professional campaign managers. No one besides Reagan was more responsible for Reagan’s victories. Spencer knew Meese well. “There was absolutely nothing wrong with Ed Meese except he couldn’t organize a two-car funeral,” he said. “You went in his desk and the papers were here, there, down on the floor, across the room. One of the jobs of a chief of staff is to make the paper move in the White House and go to the right corners and the right boxes. It’s a terrible job. We knew that Ed couldn’t do that.”
He might have gotten the job anyway. Reagan didn’t like to disappoint people, especially those who had worked their hearts out for him. And he felt more comfortable philosophically with Meese than with anyone else. “If you were sitting in this room and you asked Ed about an issue,” Spencer later told an interviewer, “he could give you the precise answer that Ronald Reagan would give you. He totally understood Ronald Reagan ideologically, because they’re so much alike ideologically.”
But Michael Deaver, who was closer to the Reagans personally than anyone else, and Spencer thought Meese would serve the president better in another position. For chief of staff they wanted someone sterner and better organized. They also wanted someone better versed in the ways of Washington. None of the longtime Reagan loyalists qualified; they were Californians through and through. Some of them saw this as their strength: they hadn’t been infected by the capital’s liberal culture. But Deaver and Spencer relied on Reagan’s own resistance to the noxious airs off the Potomac, and they urged the president-elect to choose Baker as chief of staff. Deaver broached the subject with Reagan, who expressed surprise that the question of who
should be chief of staff even came up. “I’ve always assumed Ed Meese would fill that,” Reagan said. Deaver nodded that he understood, before observing, “Ed may be more valuable in another role. As chief of staff, you need to think about someone who knows Washington, knows the way the town works. We’re about to embark on something, Governor, that we don’t know a lot about.” Reagan asked him if he had anyone in mind. “Yes,” Deaver responded, “Jim Baker.” Reagan repeated the name. “Jim Baker,” he said. “That’s an interesting thought.”
Spencer remembered things differently. According to him, he and Deaver agreed that Spencer should raise the matter of staff chief with Reagan and Nancy. “Everyone assumed that Ed Meese was going to be chief of staff,” Spencer recalled. “I thought, ‘This can’t be. I’ll give it my shot.’ ” He went to speak to the Reagans. “I brought up Ed Meese. Before I said one word, both the Reagans said, ‘Oh no, not Ed.’ They understood. They wanted Ed around, and they wanted Ed to do something, but they understood this single organizational problem that he had.”
Baker himself credited the appointment to Nancy Reagan. “She was the reason I was there,” Baker said. Nancy knew Meese’s strengths and liabilities; more important, she knew her husband’s. She had utter faith in Reagan’s ability to steer a true course philosophically, but she judged he needed help avoiding the shoals of Washington. Baker was just the man for the job.