"A man described as "one of Reagan's closest friends and a major financial contributor to the campaign," who "kept referring to him as Ronnie," contacted Bassam Abu Sharif, who later became chief adviser for Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat. According to Abu Sharif, they met in Beirut in the period after the Republican convention. Reagan's friend "said he wanted the PLO to use its influence to delay the release of the American hostages from the embassy in Tehran until after the election," Abu Sharif recalled, adding that the man asked him to contact Arafat with the request.
"We were told that if the hostages were held, the PLO would be given recognition as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and the White House door would be open for us.'"
On another occasion, Abu Sharif said: "It seems it was important for Reagan not to have the hostages released during the remaining days of President Carter. . . . He was interested in having the hostages released afterwards. Of course, blocking the release of the hostages for Reagan would mean in one way or the other some sort of discredit to Carter." 5
Asking the PLO to act as middleman in the hostage affair was politically risky, but it was not capricious.
The PLO had been received triumphantly in Tehran after the revolution, and its representatives had moved into the former Israeli mission. The PLO had trained many of the Iranian revolutionaries in Lebanon in the years prior to the revolution, and PLO operatives provided communications, security, and other technical services and support for the new regime. After the takeover of the U.S. Embassy, the PLO assisted the captors in organizing security for the sprawling embassy compound. The PLO also sent three of its top officials to Iran for intensive hostage negotiations in November 1979.
This initiative, which had the support and encouragement of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance on behalf of the Carter administration, resulted in the release later that month of thirteen women and blacks who had been taken prisoner in the attack. 6
By the summer of 1980, the PLO no longer enjoyed the close relationship with Iran that it had in the early days of the revolution, but it still had access and credibility. Abu Sharif said that the PLO was still, at that time, interested in trying to help free the hostages, and that all efforts to prolong the hostage crisis were rejected, including the approach from Reagan's friend. "
4. Abbie Hoffman and Jonathan Silvers, "An Election Held Hostage," Playboy, October 1988, p. 152, citing an interview by journalist Morgan Strong with Bassam Abu Sharif. Abu Sharif was interviewed again on this subject in November 1990 by Robert Ross and Robert Parry of the Frontline television program. On that occasioh he again repeated the story in almost exactly the same terms, but he
refused to identify the individual who approached him.
5. Bassam Abu Sharif, interview by Ross and Parry, Tunis, November 1990.
6. Sick, All Fall Down, pp.224, 225.
Cyrus Vance,
Chairman, Board of Trustees, Rockefeller Foundation
1976
"On September 30 [1980] the Iranian Majles named a seven-man commission to deal with the hostage issue.
The commission was headed by Behzad Nabavi, a thirty-eight-year-old leftist revolutionary whose responsibilities included overseeing Komiteh Prison, where the Americans were being held. The Nabavi commission was prohibited from any direct contacts with the United States, but its mandate was to study ways to solve the hostage issue and to report its recommendations to the Majles for approval. A week later, on or about October 8, a crucial strategy meeting was held in Iran, at which Sadegh Tabatabai presented a report to Ayatollah Beheshti, Speaker Rafsanjani, Ahmed Khomeini, and probably Behzad Nabavi on his talks with Warren Christopher almost three weeks earlier. At least three decisions were made at this meeting. First, it was decided that Tabatabai would brief Bani-Sadr on the discussions with the United States. This was the first inkling Bani-Sadr had that a direct initiative was under way with Washington. 3
In addition, two messages were delivered to Washington from Tabatabai through the West Germans. The first arrived on October 9 - coincidentally, the same date that Harold Saunders of the State Department first met with Hushang Lavi and Mitch Rogovin. This message was very reassuring. It was addressed to Christopher and reported that his proposals in Bonn had "fallen on fertile ground." Christopher immediately called President Carter, who was in Winston-Salem on a campaign trip. Carter was encouraged, and directed Christopher to "push for some sort of understanding, no later than early next week.'"
The second message from Iran requested an inventory of all Iranian assets that were being held by the United States. Since Iran had already been informed about the status of its frozen financial assets, Washington understood this message to be a veiled request for an accounting of the military equipment and spare parts that had been seized by the United States at the beginning of the hostage crisis.
No one in Washington was surprised that Iran would be showing renewed interest in military spare parts. Iran was under tremendous military pressure in its war with Iraq.
Two weeks earlier, Iraq had invaded Khuzistan province and had seized a substantial amount of Iranian territory. But Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had made a fatal strategic blunder. If he had concentrated his forces on the key junction city of Dezful, which commanded all of the province's road, rail, and pipeline routes, he could have severed Khuzistan from the rest of the country and conquered it almost at will. Instead, Saddam's armies attacked acrosS a front several hundred miles wide and slowly bogged down as they ran into stubborn, if improvised, resistance. Iran poured reinforcements into Khuzistan through the Dezful gap, and within a few' weeks the front was largely stabilized. On October 10, Bani-Sadr concluded that "Iraq would not win the war," and by the thirteenth Iran was able to launch a modest counterattack.
...
The rescue team had completed its training and had been declared combat-ready more than a month earlier, but no action could be taken so long as the hostages were dispersed throughout Iran. In fact, by this date most of the hostages had been reassembled in Komiteh Prison just outside Tehran, but the mission planners were unaware of this and continued to believe that many were still being held in remote locations.
It had been a frustrating time for those associated with the rescue mission. They were poised for deployment at a moment's notice, operating on the assumption that the order to launch would come quickly once the administration had reliable information about the location of the hostages. What they heard in the intelligence briefing on October 9 gave them reason to believe that perhaps their long-awaited moment had arrived.
The hostages, they were told, had now been reassembled back at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Years later, those who were present at the briefing would remember the shock of that moment. It appeared that the final piece had fallen into place.
From their perspective, this was nothing less than a green light to launch the rescue mission that they had been planning since April.
The mission planners would later refer to this dramatic piece of newS as the ""Eureka" briefing. 13 The original source of the newS about the hostages was never disclosed, but on October 5, 1980, only a few days before the CIA briefing, Iranian expatriate journalist Amir Taheri had written an article in the Sunday Times of London that claimed that all fifty-two U.S. hostages had been moved back to Tehran.I ' Obviously, rumors of hostage movement were circulating at the time within the Iranian exile community. But the commanders of the rescue mission were skeptical. An elaborate intelligence operation had been mounted to locate and track the locations of the hostages, and these sources had not reported any movement back to the embassy. The mission planners also had painful memories of the attempted rescue of POWs in Vietnam in the 1970s. That operation was perfectly executed from a military point of view, but the prison camp was empty when the rescue team arrived. Before taking any action on the "Eureka" briefing, they decided to double-check their own sources. A premature launch of the massive strike they had planned could be disastrous. Not long after, once they had reviewed all the available intelligence, the commanders of the rescue operation concluded that the evidence was insufficient to justify an attack.
As we now know, they were correct; the hostages were never transferred back to the embassy after their dispersal in April.
The rescue operation was again put on hold.
Although this was an exceptionally tense moment for the commanders of the rescue mission, in fact there was almost no chance that President Carter would have authorized the mission even if the contents of the "Eureka" briefing had been true. On October 10, at his regular Friday breakfast meeting with his foreign-policy advisers-including Zbigniew Brzezinski, the godfather of the second rescue mission-there was no discussion of a rescue, though Carter did note with some satisfaction that "we received word that all the hostages were back in the embassy compound, in good condition."15
Instead, as discussed earlier, all attention was focused on the encouraging nature of the two messages from Tabatabai and the nature of the U.S. response that would be sent the following day.16
Carter was fully aware that a rescue mission had been prepared, but in his view it was an instrument to be used only in extremis, if the lives of the hostages appeared to be in imminent danger. It was important and proper that the mission commanders should be poised and leaning forward, ready to respond at a moment's notice if required. That was their military responsibility. But the political reality was different. During the last two months before the election, the President and his top advisers focused on the negotiating track and never seriously considered launching a rescue mission. A military rescue would have been enormously risky-for the hostages, for the attacking force, and for the future of U.S. relations with Iran and the region. Given what appeared to be encouraging progress in direct talks with Iran, the only possible justification for launching an attack would be the very reason the Republican campaign feared: to create an artificial crisis that could upset the election. That was never considered as an option.
The Republicans' fears of an "October surprise," however, were aggravated by the constant flow of insider information generated by their elaborate inteIJigence network. Much of the information passed along by their sources within the U.S. government seemed to be alarming. It stoked the paranoia that was already omnipresent in the campaign and encouraged risk-taking and radical measures of self-defense that were wholly unnecessary. The way the network functioned also raises questions about how classified security information was handled during the 1980 presidential campaign. Richard Allen, who later became Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, was certainly aware of these concerns. In 1984, in his sworn affidavit to the House committee investigating the disappearance oj Carter's briefing book, Allen stated: "To the best of my knowledge, I did not receive, at any time during the 1980 campaign, Federal Governmenl information or documents that were classified or not duly authorized foz public release."7
What follows are some fully documented examples oj information that flowed to Allen from the Reagan-Bush intelligence penetration operation over a period of only a few days in October 1980. On October 10, Seymour Weiss, a conservative who was a former under secretary of state and U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas, passed to Richard Allen information concerning plans for a second hostage-rescue attempt.8
On October 13, Richard Allen made the following notation in his telephone log:
lISl Angelo Codevilla-938-9702. DIA-Hostages-all back in compound, last week. Admin embargoed intelligence.
Confirmed!9
Angelo Codevilla, a former intelligence officer and a committed Reagan supporter, was on the staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 1980. The note says thai the Defense Intelligence Agency had information that the hostages were all back in the embassy and that the Carter administration had restricted dissemination of this information?
On October 13, Richard Allen made the following notation in his telephone log:
lISl Angelo Codevilla-938-9702. DIA-Hostages-all back in compound, last week. Admin embargoed intelligence.
Confirmed!9
Angelo Codevilla, a former intelligence officer and a committed Reagan supporter, was on the staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 1980. The note says thai the Defense Intelligence Agency had information that the hostages were all back in the embassy and that the Carter administration had restricted dissemination of this information?
The "Eureka" briefing was one of the most sensitive intelligence items in the U.S. government at the time. Apart from the mission commanders, no one but a tiny handful of the highest officials in the government had any knowledge of its contents. Yet Richard Allen, the foreign-policy director of the Republican campaign, had it on his desk only four days after it was reported to the President, an achievement that would have been the envy of the KGB.
Allen, of course, was already aware of the rescue plan, so the significance of the "Eureka" briefing was unlikely to have escaped him. He would have had every reason to believe, as the mission commanders believed, that the location of the hostages was the necessary trigger to start the rescue operation. If the information was true, as asserted by this telephone message, then the Carter administration was in a position to launch a dramatic rescue mission at any moment.
Of course, by the time Allen received this disturbing bit of news, it had already proved to be false. There is no evidence, however, that Allen was ever informed that the report was untrue. As frequently happens, the second report probably never caught up with the first.
Of course, by the time Allen received this disturbing bit of news, it had already proved to be false. There is no evidence, however, that Allen was ever informed that the report was untrue. As frequently happens, the second report probably never caught up with the first.
There were other bits of intelligence data. On October 10, Richard Allen entered a note in his telephone log that said, "F.C.!.-partial release of hostages for parts."2l
The initials F.C.!. stood for Fred C. Ikle. Ikle was a Reagan loyalist and one of the inner circle of foreign-policy advisers in the campaign. Months later, during the transition period after the election, Ikle was designated as the only person on the Reagan team authorized to be briefed on the Iranian situation. 22
The Ikle message is particularly interesting. Rafsanjani, in a private meeting in Iran at about this time, apparently raised the possibility of a four-stage release of the hostages. Iran would demand a demonstration of U.S. good faith at each stage, such as the release of some military spare parts. Four of the hostages, those most suspected of espionage, would be held until the very end.
This information was picked up by Hushang Lavi in the course of his frequent telephone calls to Iran, but it was not reported to the Carter administration until October 14, when it caused quite a stir.
When President Carter learned of it, he instructed Warren Christopher to object strongly and to work urgently through the Germans to leave no doubt that such an arrangement would be unacceptable.
7. INDIAN SUMMER
1. Associated Press, October 1, 1980.
2. See ''The Election Held Hostage," a PBS-TV Frontline special, April 16,
1991.
3. Bani-Sadr, My Turn to Speak, pp. 30-31.
4. Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 560; Sick, All Fall Down, pp. 311-12.
5. Bani-Sadr, My Turn to Speak, p. 83; also CRS Chronology, pp. 301-2 and
O'Bailance, The Gulf War, pp. 47-49.
6. Interview with a fonner senior Iranian official who asked not to be identified,
Washington, D.C., June 12, 1991.
7. Ibid.
8. Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 504.
9. Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 560.
10. "The Hostage Seizure in Tehran: Notes of the Federal Republic of Germany's Ambassador in Tehran," by Gerhard Ritzel, February 5, 1981. This paper, a lengthy description of Ritzel's actions and observations during the hostage crisis, was written for the Gennan Foreign Ministry. I am obliged to Steven M. de Vogel of the Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland for drawing it to my attention. It was translated by Eve Schaenen.
11. The text of Ritzel's leUer to Khomeini was provided by Steven M. de Vogel.
12. CRS Chronology, pp. 137-41, 147; Sick, All Fall Down, pp. 271-73.
13. Interview with a member of the rescue mission team who asked not to be identified, Washington, D.C., December 6, 1989.
14. CRS Chronology, p. 324.
15. Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 560.
16. Personal communication from Jimmy Carter, September 19, 1990.
17. Albosta Report, p. 1079.
18. This conversation, which reportedly occurred during a meeting of campaign advisers, was noted in Allen's personal log. Affidavit of Richard V. Allen, April 13, 1984, Albosta Report, pp. 1078-79.
19. Albosta Report, p. 1498. Emphasis in original.
20. Ibid., p. lIl3. Codevilla later declared that he did not recall speaking to
Richard Allen on this subject.
21. Ibid., p. 1939.
22. Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 591.
23. Personal communication from Jimmy Carter, September 19, 1990.
24. As reported by John Wallach in tbe Los Angeles Herald Examiner, October 16, 1980. Reproduced in the Albosta Report, pp. 1494-%.
25. Tbis memo is reproduced in the Albosta Report, pp. 1490-91. Also interviews
with Richard V. Allen, November 24, 1989, and John Wallacb, July 18, 1991. Edmund Muskie, in an interview with me on January 8, 1990, had no specific recollection of his meeting with Wallach but had no reason to doubt the accuracy of the account.
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