Russian Report on 1980 'October Surprise' Case
This document -- a
"confidential" cable from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow -- is a translation
of a report sent on Jan. 11, 1993, from the national security committee of
the Russian legislature to a U.S. House task force that was then
investigating the so-called "October Surprise" controversy.
That case centered on
allegations that, during the summer and fall of 1980, the Reagan-Bush
campaign conducted secret negotiations with Iran's Islamic fundamentalist
government, which was holding 52 Americans hostage. The lingering crisis
sapped President Jimmy Carter's political strength and cleared the way for
Ronald Reagan's historic victory. The hostages were freed immediately
after Reagan became President.
The Russian assistance
was requested on Oct. 21, 1992, by the House task force chairman, Rep. Lee
Hamilton, D-Ind. The Russian report asserted that the allegations of
secret Republican negotiations with Iran were true. But the Russian report
was never released by the task force, whose public findings reached the
opposite conclusion.
Reporter Robert Parry
found the Russian report among files belonging to the House task force in
December 1994 and made these copies on a copier in a Capitol Hill storage
room. For easier reading, we have typed out the contents of the Russian
report, without the Embassy's coding and introduction, in
a separate file. The actual cable is below
-- or view as a higher resolution PDF
file.
[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. For the original Consortiumnews.com story
about this remarkable document, see Consortiumnews.com's "The
Russian Report."]
