#October Surprise
9 entries tagged October Surprise.
People (8)
- Ari Ben-Menashe Ari Ben-Menashe is a self-proclaimed Israeli military intelligence officer who submitted affidavits to the House Judiciary Committee alleging Earl Brian sold PROMIS to Israeli intelligence and Singapore, then recanted to the Bua Report, admitting he had allowed investigators to assume he was referring to INSLAW's PROMIS to promote his book.
- E. Lawrence Barcella, Jr. E. Lawrence Barcella, Jr. served as chief counsel for the House October Surprise Task Force from 1992 to 1993, reportedly urging a three-month extension of the investigation when substantial new evidence arrived in the final weeks, a request that Task Force co-chair Lee Hamilton declined.
- Gary Sick Gary Sick was the principal White House aide for Iran on the Carter National Security Council during the 1979-1981 hostage crisis, and subsequently authored October Surprise (1991), the book that launched congressional investigations into allegations that Reagan's campaign secretly negotiated with Iran to delay the hostages' release.
- John Connally John Connally was Governor of Texas and Treasury Secretary who in July-August 1980, accompanied by Ben Barnes, allegedly toured the Middle East carrying a message from the Reagan campaign to Arab intermediaries: Iran would receive better terms for hostage release with Reagan than with Carter, so they should counsel the Iranians to wait.
- Lee Hamilton Lee Hamilton served as a Democratic congressman from Indiana from 1965 to 1999 and co-chaired both the House October Surprise Task Force (1992-1993) and the 9/11 Commission (2002-2004); his decision to decline a three-month extension of the October Surprise investigation, despite new evidence arriving in the final weeks, has been cited as a significant limitation on that inquiry.
- Manucher Ghorbanifar Manucher Ghorbanifar was a former SAVAK officer and Iranian exile arms dealer whom the CIA formally burned as a 'fabricator' in 1984, yet who became the primary Iranian intermediary in the 1985-1986 Iran-Contra arms deals brokered through the NSC, and who was named in the May 1985 Reynolds-Weld letter as a broker for the covert distribution of PROMIS software.
- Robert Parry Robert Parry (1949-2018) was an investigative journalist who broke early Iran-Contra and Contra drug stories at the AP and Newsweek, founded Consortium News in 1995 after being sidelined by mainstream outlets, and produced the most sustained documentary case for the October Surprise allegation, obtaining the withheld Madrid embassy cable reference and discovering the buried Russian intelligence report.
- William J. Casey William J. Casey was Reagan's 1980 campaign manager and CIA Director from 1981 to 1987 who, among other disputed roles, is alleged to have secretly negotiated with Iranian representatives in Madrid and Paris in 1980 to delay the release of American hostages past Election Day -- the core allegation of the October Surprise -- and who died of a brain tumor in May 1987 as the Iran-Contra scandal unfolded.
Events (1)
- October Surprise The October Surprise allegation holds that William J. Casey and other figures in Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign secretly negotiated with Iranian representatives to delay the release of 52 American hostages past Election Day in exchange for promises of arms and release of frozen Iranian assets, with the hostages released minutes after Reagan was sworn in on January 20, 1981.