Richard Allen's Notes on Bush 'October Surprise' Call
Notes written in 1980 by Ronald Reagan's foreign policy adviser
Richard Allen represent the first documentary evidence that then-vice
presidential nominee George H.W. Bush was working with legendary CIA
officer Ted Shackley to keep track of President Jimmy Carter's
progress on negotiations to free 52 American hostages then held in
Iran.
According to Allen's
handwritten notes for Oct. 27, 1980, Bush called Allen at 2:12 p.m. as
Bush was heading off to campaign in Pittsburgh. Bush had gotten an
unsettling message from former Texas Gov. John Connally, the
ex-Democrat who had switched to the Republican Party during the Nixon
administration. Connally said his oil contacts in the Middle East were
buzzing with rumors that Carter had achieved the long-elusive
breakthrough on the hostages.
Bush ordered Allen to find
out what he could about Connally's tip. "Geo Bush," Allen's notes
began, "JBC [Connally] -- already made deal. Israelis delivered last
wk spare pts. via Amsterdam. Hostages out this wk. Moderate Arabs
upset. French have given spares to Iraq and know of JC [Carter] deal
w/Iran. JBC [Connally] unsure what we should do. RVA [Allen] to act if
true or not."
In a still "secret" 1992 deposition to the House October Surprise Task
Force, Allen explained the cryptic notes as meaning Connally had heard
that President Carter had ransomed the hostages' freedom with an
Israeli shipment of military spare parts to Iran. Allen said Bush then
instructed him, Allen, to query Connally, who was at the influential
Vinson & Elkins law firm in Houston. Allen was then to pass on any new
details to two of Bush's aides.
According to the notes, Allen was to relay the information to "Ted
Shacklee [sic] via Jennifer." Allen said the Jennifer was Jennifer
Fitzgerald, Bush's longtime assistant including during his year as
director of the CIA. Allen testified that "Shacklee" was Theodore
Shackley, the famous CIA covert operations specialist known inside the
spy agency as the "blond ghost." [To see Allen's notes, click
here.]
During the Cold War, Shackley had run many of the CIA's most
controversial paramilitary operations, from
Vietnam and Laos to the
JMWAVE operations against Fidel Castro's
Cuba. When Bush
was CIA director in 1976, he appointed Shackley to a top clandestine
job, associate deputy director for operations.
But Shackley's CIA career ended in 1979, after three years of battling
Carter's CIA director, Stansfield Turner. Shackley believed that
Turner, by cleaning out hundreds of covert officers was destroying the
agency – as well as Shackley's career. After retiring, Shackley went
into business with another ex-CIA man, Thomas Clines, a partner with
Edwin Wilson, the rogue spy who later would go to prison over
shipments of terrorist materials to Libya. Clines himself would be
convicted of tax fraud in the Iran-Contra scandal, another controversy
in which Shackley's pale specter would hover in the background.
But in 1980, Shackley was working to put his former boss, George Bush,
into the White House and possibly securing the CIA directorship for
himself. Biographer David Corn said Shackley approached Bush for a
position in the campaign in August 1980, after Reagan had picked Bush
as his vice presidential nominee. But other sources have said
Shackley’s informal assistance to Bush’s campaign dates back earlier
and was more frequent.
“Within the spook world the
belief spread that Shackley was close to Bush,” Corn wrote in Blond
Ghost. “Rafael Quintero [an anti-Castro Cuban with close ties to
the CIA] was saying that Shackley met with Bush every week. He told
one associate that should Reagan and Bush triumph, Shackley was
considered a potential DCI,” director of the Central Intelligence
Agency.
The Allen notes, however, were the first piece of documentary
evidence that Bush and Shackley were working together on the Iranian
hostage crisis, a relationship that makes more credible other claims
of October Surprise involvement by CIA personnel who were close to
Shackley during his long CIA career. For instance, Donald Gregg, a CIA
officer alleged to have participated in Republican meetings with
Iranians, served under Shackley's command in
Vietnam.
[For the latest and most detailed account of the "October Surprise"
mystery, see
Robert Parry's book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from
Watergate to Iraq.
To see Allen's notes,
click here.]
