Today I learned that there actually was an effort to continue the Iran hostage crisis until Ronald Reagan was elected1. A couple fellas from Texas, one of who was in the shot alongside of JFK and then switched parties for Nixon, went on a middle east PR tour to broker a deal with Iran to ship weapons for retaining hostages until Reagan was elected.
The term October surprise2 was coined by William Casey, Reagan's campaign director who became director of the CIA. Ben Barnes3 and John Connally4 undertook the trip as the direction of Casey5. Barnes confessed saying "I just want history to reflect that Carter got a little bit of a bad deal about the hostages,He didn’t have a fighting chance with those hostages still in the embassy in Iran". Casey, although accused, was never proved to have been engaged in any deal making but there has been speculation for a long time prior to this new confession6. The part that's pretty weird to me, aside from the obvious release timing, is that just several years later, the same folks were back at it laundering weapons to Iran7.
- A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html & Expert analyzes new account of GOP deal that used Iran hostage crisis for gain - PBS News - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/expert-analyzes-new-account-of-gop-deal-that-used-iran-hostage-crisis-for-gain
- October surprise - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_surprise
- Ben Barnes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Barnes_(Texas_politician)
- John Connally - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Connally
- William Casey - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Casey
- Iran hostage crisis - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis
- Iran-Contra affair - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Contra_affair