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The Original October Surprise

RedIbis

Philosopher
RedIbis
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Jul 22, 2007
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I've begun to read some of the available info on the original October Surprise during the fall of 1980. It's been alledged that Regan's people and the CIA orchestrated a deal to sell arms to Iran if they waited to release the hostages until after the election.

I tried a search and didn't come up with threads discussing this specific event. If such a thread exists, I apologize and would appreciate the link so I can take a look.

FTR, I have no opinion on this since I haven't done much research. Such a plan certainly seems plausible, but obviously I'm interested in the debunking of such a claim.
 
Well maybe they did. Oliver North is a convicted felon. The claim that Khomeini was a puppet of Reagan was made by former president of Iran Abolhassan Banisadr. Banisadr still has no proof to support his claims. If Khomeini was somekind of a puppet that would mean that so is Ahmadinejad.
 
That would be silly, we already had a puppet government installed in Iran under the Shah.

Why dispose of our puppet to put another one in power?
 
Alareth said:
That would be silly, we already had a puppet government installed in Iran under the Shah.

Why dispose of our puppet to put another one in power?
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So that no one would know who's hand was up it's ass?


[/twoofer]
 
I remember seeing these allegations ages ago in a magazine called "The Rebel" or some such back in the early 1980's. It never really explained how Reagan got the CIA to do his bidding before he actually got elected.

Actually, I don't remember if it had the selling arms part in there. If it did, it wasn't the early 80s, but the late 80's. I'm going from memory here, so apologizes.

As a gauge of the accuracy of this publication, it's publisher was Larry Flynt. Other articles that ran in the magazine were about Reagan's involvement with the death of Vicki Morgan and all sorts of other completely debunked crap.

You might be able to find a hard copy of the magazine in a library somewhere, but I didn't find an online source. It might be worth tracking down, if only to see if the author wrote anything else on the topic.

Good luck with your research. I suspect you won't find any hard facts to back this up.
 
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The two arms deals should not be confused. The Reagan/Bush/CIA pre-election arms deal to Iran to undercut Carter's attempts at negotiating the hostage release is not the same arms deal as Iran-Contra.
 
Ya to be honest I haven't researched this one myself but my gut feeling tells me its plausible.

WHat is not plausible is that Khomeini was a "puppet" of North. Maybe their interests coincided temporarily in a narrow way, but to say that he was a "puppet" is pretty far-fetched.
 
Two books worth reading are Gary Sick's 'All Fall Down,' which explains the convoluted and complicated mess in Iran up through the hostage crisis. Much can be learned about Iran's history by reading this book.

Another is (also) Gary Sick's 'October Surprise.' In this one, he talks about the arms-for-hostages deal. If I remember right, he points the finger right smack at George H.W. Bush as the main negotiator at the meetings in France.

I believe Sick was in the State Department under several Presidents from both parties. Not sure what his title was.
 
skepticalcriticalguy said:
Two books worth reading are Gary Sick's 'All Fall Down,' which explains the convoluted and complicated mess in Iran up through the hostage crisis. Much can be learned about Iran's history by reading this book.

Another is (also) Gary Sick's 'October Surprise.' In this one, he talks about the arms-for-hostages deal. If I remember right, he points the finger right smack at George H.W. Bush as the main negotiator at the meetings in France.

I believe Sick was in the State Department under several Presidents from both parties. Not sure what his title was.
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Correct. It's Sick's article that I link to in the OP.
 
I didn't think this was any kind of secret. I vaguely recall that it was pretty widely reported at the time. Maybe the US media didn't say much about it, but it was a big news story down here in the early Eighties.
 
RedIbis, if you want some good "woo-ish" reading on October Surprise, Google "Sherman Skolnick October Surprise."

For a more researched and footnoted take on it, read Webster Tarpley's "The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush."

No need for anybody to post here that those two are just filthy lying scum. It's already been done many times. ;)
 
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