Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!enterpoop.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.wpost From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: 'October Surprise' Story Found to Be Unsupported Lines: 125 Post Staff Writer= After an eight-month investigation, the special counsel of a Sen- ate subcommittee concluded yesterday there was "not sufficient credible evidence" to support the allegation that the Reagan-Bush campaign made a secret deal with Iran in 1980 to delay release of American hostages until after the presidential election. Reid Weingarten, a Washington lawyer hired by the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on near Eastern and South Asian affairs to investigate what has become known as the "October Surprise" con- spiracy, said the prime sources for the story "have proven wholly unreliable" and the "great weight of evidence is that there was no such deal." But in a 156-page report, Weingarten said his in- vestigation also found that the director of the Reagan-Bush cam- paign - the late William J. Casey, who went on to become CIA director - "was intensely involved in the hostage crisis" and "conducted informal, clandestine, and potentionally dangerous ef- forts on behalf of the Reagan campaign." The report said GOP cam- paign operatives "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." According to the October Surprise story, campaign aides of then- presidential candidate Ronald Reagan were seeking to deny President Jimmy Carter the boost in reelection prospects that would have come from the release of the 52 American hostages in October 1980, just before the election. If Iran would agree to retain until after the election the Americans taken hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November 1979, so the story goes, the Reagan aides promised that after winning the presidency they would permit a large increase of arms to Iran for its war against Iraq. As things turned out, the hostages were released on Jan. 20, 1981, the day Reagan was inaugurated, and Iran later received shipments of U.S.-made arms via Israel in 1981 and 1982. But the Senate report yesterday said the timing of the hostage release and the subsequent transshipment of U.S. arms "can be fully and reasonably explained without resorting to the theory of a Republican-Iranian deal." While the inquiry found that the Reagan administration "privately acquiesced in some limited Israeli transshipments of American- made weapons to Iran and slightly relaxed" the Carter policy of discouraging Israel's shipment of other weapons to the Tehran re- gime, it found "no credible evidence" that these steps were "in any way a reward to the Khomeini regime in exchange for an agree- ment relating to hostages." Nonetheless, sections of Weingarten's report are bound to provide new fuel to the small group of con- spiracy theorists, including some Democratic members of Congress, who for years have kept alive the October Surprise allegation. The report said numerous questions remain unanswered, including the extent of hostage dealings by Reagan aides between the time of Reagan's election and the inauguration. Suggesting there were intentional efforts to obstruct the efforts of Senate investigators, the report described difficulties en- countered in obtaining Casey's records from his wife and daughter. When Casey's diaries were eventually provided, pages for key dates were lacking. Casey's passport for 1980, when he was supposed to have held secret meetings with Iranians in Paris, Madrid and other overseas cities, was never produced. Senate investigators also encountered difficulties gaining access to 2,000 hours of taped conversations by the FBI of Cyrus Hashemi, an Iranian middleman and arms dealer who in 1980 was proposing deals to Casey as well as to Carter administration of- ficials to help free the hostages. At first the FBI was unable to locate the 548 reels of tapes. When they were discovered, the bureau told Weingarten in Sep- tember, just as his investigation was concluding, that there was an eight-day gap in 1980 - from Nov. 9 to Nov. 17 - when no calls were recorded. Reagan also refused to cooperate with the Senate panel. In June 1991 he denied to reporters that he had been involved in any ef- fort to delay release of the hostages. But he added: "I did some things, actually, the other way to try and be of help in getting those hostages . . . out of there." He refused to say more, not- ing "some of those things are still classified." The Senate re- port said the Reagan Presidential Library delayed access to its records of the 1980 campaign until last August, when it was too late for review and possible inclusion in the report. The Reagan materials, along with the other documents delivered late to the Senate panel, will be turned over to a special House task force that also has been investigating the October Surprise story. That panel, headed by Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), is expected to issue its report late next month, according to a spokesman. Weingarten said he did not believe the report would end speculation about what had occurred prior to the 1980 elec- tion. The report, he wrote, represented his "preliminary conclu- sions" because he worked under several handicaps. He was unable to travel abroad to interview "critical witneses in Europe, Isra- el and Iran," and he had to depend on executive branch agencies "to find, collect and analyze relevant materials pursuant to re- quests." The report contained some new information about why the Iranians waited until just minutes after Reagan was inaugurated to release the hostages. It disclosed that during the Carter-to-Reagan tran- sition period, the incoming president was prepared to cut off negotiations with the Iranians once he took office. According to testimony given by Alexander M. Haig Jr., then secretary of state-designate, Reagan said Iran had committed "an act of war" and agreed there would be "no new negotiations." Reagan, according to Haig, also said to Caspar W. Weinberger, his defense secretary-designate: "I hope you've prepared for air strikes." "Everything we did," Haig said, "was designed not only to put fear into the minds of the Iranians, but more importantly to reinforce the efforts of the Carter administration in succeeding in their negotiations."< 02:23 11-24C9999----- Copyright 1992, The Washington Post. This story is from the Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar- chived or redistributed. For more information, send-email to American Cybercasting Cor- poration (usa@AmeriCast.COM)