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Reagan Ally Worked To Prolong Iran Hostage Crisis: Aging 'Witness'

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html
https://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/research/hostages_and_casualties
https://www.britannica.com/event/Operation-Eagle-Claw
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/15/opinion/the-election-story-of-the-decade.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_presidential_election
https://www.amazon.com/October-Surprise-Gary-Sick/dp/0812920872
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-october-surprise-180960741/

As former President Jimmy Carter nears death, an aging Texas
politician has come forward to get something big off his chest --
claiming that, in 1980, he accompanied former Texas governor John
Connally on a whirlwind Middle East tour aimed at keeping Americans
hostage of Iran until after the presidential election that elevated
Ronald Reagan to power.

“History needs to know that this happened,” 85-year-old Ben Barnes
tells the New York Times. “I think it’s so significant and I guess
knowing that the end is near for President Carter put it on my mind
more and more and more. I just feel like we’ve got to get it down some
way.” Barnes is a former Democratic speaker of the Texas House and
lieutenant governor.
Barnes (left) and Connally with Egypt's President Anwar el-Sadat (Ben
Barnes via New York Times)

The claims that Reagan cronies worked to prolong the Iran hostage
crisis and torpedo President Carter's reelection bid aren't new, but
Barnes is by far the most prominent figure to step forward and claim
to have been a witness to such a conspiracy.

In the wake of the 1979 Iranian revolution, college students
sympathetic with the revolution overran the US embassy in Tehran and
took 66 Americans hostage. The long crisis that ensured dominated the
presidency of Carter, who ordered an April 1980 military rescue
mission that itself turned into a disaster, killing eight
service-members and an Iranian civilian.
The US hostage-rescue mission was aborted after a helicopter crashed
into a C-130 at the "Desert One" staging area in the Iranian desert

Reagan routed Carter by a 489-49 electoral-college margin. The
hostages were released just minutes after President Reagan's January
1981 inauguration -- and after 444 days in captivity. Days later, the
US government began facilitating the flow of weapons to Iran via
Israel.

Barnes tells the Times that Connally, who'd been famously wounded in
the JFK assassination, invited him on a multi-country Middle East trip
in the summer of 1980. He says that it was only after the trip was
underway that he realized its purpose: to ask various regional
officials to pass on a message to Iran.

Here's how Barnes paraphrases the pitch:

    “‘Look, Ronald Reagan’s going to be elected president and you need
to get the word to Iran that they’re going to make a better deal with
Reagan than they are Carter,’ “[Connally] said, ‘It would be very
smart for you to pass the word to the Iranians to wait until after
this general election is over'."

Records at the LBJ museum reflect Connally and Barnes leaving Houston
on July 18, 1980 and returned Aug. 11 after visiting Israel, Jordan,
Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the Times reports. News
accounts at the time characterized Conally's trip as "strictly
private."

Barnes says he next joined Connally in an early-September meeting to
brief William J. Casey -- chairman of the Reagan presidential campaign
and future CIA director -- about the Middle East trip. He says the
session at the Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport spanned three hours.
CIA Director William Casey and President Reagan (Getty via The Intercept)

“I’ll go to my grave believing that it was the purpose of the trip,"
Barnes says. "It wasn’t freelancing because Casey was so interested in
hearing as soon as we got back to the United States.” He says Casey
wanted to know whether “they were going to hold the hostages.”

Although previous Congressional investigations debunked the claim of
Reagan campaign efforts to interfere in the hostage crisis, a possible
Connally role wasn't examined. Barnes doesn't venture to establish
that Reagan had knowledge of the undertaking.

Barnes identified four living people with whom he'd previously shared
his account. The Times says all four confirmed that Barnes had done so
years before.

In 1991, former Carter national security aide Gary Slick fleshed out
the theory of Reagan-crony meddling in the hostage situation, first
with a Times essay and then a book, October Surprise. That term first
came to prominence via Reagan-Bush campaign warnings that Carter might
exploit the crisis by achieving the hostages' release in the final
run-up to the election. The term has been attributed to Casey himself.

“I just want history to reflect that Carter got a little bit of a bad
deal about the hostages,” Barnes tells the Times. “He didn’t have a
fighting chance with those hostages still in the embassy in Iran.”