Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!enterpoop.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Reagan-Bush officials cleared in 'Surprise' Date: Tue, 24 Nov 92 14:12:10 EST Message-ID: Lines: 126 \SE A \HD Reagan-Bush officials cleared in 'Surprise' \SH 'No evidence' of Iran deal \BY Paul M. Rodriguez \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES A Senate special counsel has debunked allegations that the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign connived with Iran to delay the release of American Embassy hostages in Tehran until after the November election that year. The investigation of whether Republicans had tried to head off an "October Surprise" by the Carter administration in the 1980 presidential campaign was ordered at Democratic insistence at the beginning of the 1992 campaign. Republicans accused the Democrats of trying to make the allegation an issue in the '92 campaign. In a 156-page report released yesterday, special counsel Reid Weingarten concluded that "by any standard, the credible evidence now known falls far short of supporting the allegation of an agreement between the Reagan campaign and Iran to delay the release of the hostages." While finding that "there is not sufficient credible evidence to support this allegation," Mr. Weingarten raised several other issues for further review, notably that some witnesses may have sought to impede his eight-month, $75,000 investigation. Mr. Weingarten said he found nothing to support allegations that the late William A. Casey, chairman of the Reagan-Bush campaign and later CIA director, was secretly involved with Iranian middlemen on a hostage deal. "There is no credible evidence that Casey . . . concluded any infamous agreement or understanding intended to delay the release of the hostages," Mr. Weingarten wrote. He said various witnesses who claimed that were not credible. At the same time, however, the special counsel said there was evidence that Mr. Casey had been involved in some dubious activities. "The totality of the evidence does suggest that Casey was 'fishing in troubled waters' 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," Mr. Weingarten said. "In so doing," he wrote, Mr. Casey and others in the Reagan-Bush campaign "were operating on the outer limits of propriety, considering their status as private citizens without authority to interfere in the conduct of the foreign relations of the United States." But the special counsel did not say any laws were violated. Overall, the special counsel said, "the great weight of the evidence is that there was no . . . deal" to delay the release of the 52 embassy personnel who where held for 444 days and released minutes after President Reagan was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 1981. In fact, consistent with earlier inquiries by congressional committees, lengthy media stories and first-hand accounts by the former hostages, the report says delays in releasing the Americans were directly tied to the Iranian government's dislike of President Carter. In his report, Mr. Weingarten said U.S. intelligence officers and national security records suggested that Iran's rulers not only refused to release the hostages until after the election, but delayed the release of the Americans until after noon on Inauguration Day "simply to humiliate President Carter." Mr. Weingarten lifted the wraps on some of Mr. Carter's failed attempts to get the American hostages released before the November election, including a $500,000 payment to two brothers, Jamshid and Cyrus Hashemi. The brothers, one of whom died in 1987 and had been the subject of an undercover FBI surveillance operation for several months in 1980, purported to be middlemen for Iran's government in secret dealings with Mr. Carter and in a series of unusual meetings with Mr. Casey before and after the 1980 U.S. election. Mr. Weingarten said that while Mr. Carter's CIA paid the money to the Hashemis to try to influence Iran's own presidential election in 1980, the "sensitive covert operation" failed and some of the money was later returned. The Hashemi brothers, particularly Cyrus, subsequently sought to contact Mr. Casey after Ronald Reagan won the Republican nomination in the summer of 1980. The links between Cyrus Hashemi and Mr. Casey are crucial to the many theories surrounding the October Surprise allegations and ironically form the basis of Mr. Weingarten's decision that most if not all of the allegations are groundless. The special counsel said that, thanks to the secret FBI surveillance of Cyrus Hashemi, investigators were able to disprove testimony that Mr. Casey and George Bush attended secret meetings in Paris and Madrid in the summer and fall of 1980 to arrange the hostage-release delay. Mr. Weingarten concluded that FBI records showed Cyrus Hashemi was in the United States at the time of the supposed meetings, while records maintained by the Secret Service showed that Mr. Bush never left the country. The latest Senate investigation, which was separate but coordinated with a much broader House probe of the same allegations, began in March 1992 under the auspices of the Committee on Foreign Relations. More than 150 witnesses were contacted. Mr. Weingarten said there remains a large cache of evidence still to be uncovered, including Mr. Casey's "missing" passport, as well as hundreds of hours of FBI surveillance tapes on Cyrus Hashemi still to be transcribed. In his conclusion, Mr. Weingarten, joined by Sens. Terry Sanford, North Carolina Democrat, and James Jeffords, Vermont Republican, urged the House committee to locate and review such evidence and to continue efforts to interview witnesses in Israel and elsewhere who may shed further light on lingering suspicions. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM