From Editor Robert Parry: CNN is broadcasting a six-part series on controversial U.S. presidential elections, but the network shied away from two of the most significant cases – 1968 and 1980 – in which the evidence shows Republicans disrupted crucial foreign negotiations by Democratic presidents.
In 1968, Richard Nixon’s operatives derailed President Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam peace talks which could have brought that bloody conflict to an end that year – rather than four years later and saved millions of lives – but peace might have meant Nixon’s defeat. A sordid tale described in declassified U.S. government records.
In 1980, it was Ronald Reagan’s operatives who went behind President Jimmy Carter’s back to disrupt his negotiations to free 52 American hostages held by Iranian radicals and thus doom Carter’s reelection chances, a story described by more than two dozen sources from a range of different perspectives.
But these two well-documented cases apparently touch too raw a nerve, so they are not on CNN’s roster. Still, you can learn about them at Consortiumnews.com by clicking on the “October Surprise Series” tab and reading the stories there.
PBS Frontline’s: The Election Held Hostage, co-written by Robert Parry.
Or, if you can afford a $125 donation to our tax-exempt non-profit, not only can you support our investigative journalism but we will send you an autographed copy of my book, America’s Stolen Narrative, which includes the latest evidence on the 1968 and 1980 “October surprises,” and a DVD of a PBS documentary that I co-wrote on the 1980 case, called “The Election Held Hostage.”
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Robert Parry is a longtime investigative reporter who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for the Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. He founded Consortiumnews.com in 1995 to create an outlet for well-reported journalism that was being squeezed out of an increasingly trivialized U.S. news media.
On April 10, 2014 Linda Byrd Johnson Robb, daughter of President Lyndon Johnson along with others was on a PBS Newshour interview with Gwen Ifill to discuss the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/gwens-take-arc-history-civil-rights-act/
The transcript is at:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/civil-rights-discussion/
From the transcript at the above site:
Near the start Gwen Ifill spoke to Lynda Bird Johnson Robb went beyond the Civil Rights Act to her father’s attempt to bring peace to Vietnam which was effectively sabotaged by the Nixon Presidential election campaign and their “fellow travelers.”
“LYNDA BIRD JOHNSON ROBB:. And he tried and got us to the peace table in 1968.
And then, as you know, the South Vietnamese were told that they could get a better deal under Richard Nixon, and they left the peace table.
GWEN IFILL: So much drama involving Vietnam, so much drama involving the Civil Rights Act.
Robert Kimball, you were 24 years old…”
Gwen Ifill did the “Jedi Mind Trick” of “nothing to see here, move on.”
The video of this is available and at about 2 minutes 15 seconds into the video Lynda Byrd Johnson Robb raises the issue of Vietnam negotiations. This episode can be seen on Youtube at:
https://youtu.be/6z-y71NtF9Y
Lyndon Johnson recorded phone calls he had with at least some public officials. One such call was between Democratic President Johnson and Republican Senator Dirksen in which President Johnson complains that the South Vietnamese are being told to hold out past the election.
At 8 minutes 56 seconds into the below video President Johnson tells Senator Dirksen “I know this: they’re contacting a foreign power in the middle of a war.” And both Dirksen and Johnson call that a “mistake.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbEPI_9Ju0k
Below is a link to a November 3, 1968 phone call between President Johnson and candidate Richard Nixon in which Nixon denies that he was undercutting Johnson’s efforts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52PQxRMGraA
As for 1968 it seems clear that there was Republican interference in the foreign policy of the United States in a situation of war for the electoral gain of the Republican Party.
If I haven’t read all of Robert Parry’s columns about the 1980 October “Surprise” I have read a good deal of them and am convinced that people favoring the election of Ronald Reagan had cut a deal with those running the Government in Iran to keep the hostages past the election.
I presume that CNN has also not stated that President Jimmy Carter gave Saddam a “green light” to invade Iran, something that I learned from a Robert Parry column indicating that Secretary of State Al Haig had discovered that fact and reported it to ten President Ronald Reagan.
https://consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile5.html
I also don’t think that CNN will be telling the public that President Jimmy Carter began funding Islamic radicals fighting against a Securlar Afghan government 6 months before the Soviets intervened in Afghanistan.
I don’t recall Robert Parry mentioning it, but Carter National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1998 gave an interview with a French magazine in which he verified the fact previously divulged by former CIA Director Robert Gates.
Brzezinski stated the intention of the aid to the rebels was to get the Soviets to intervene to give them their own “Vietnam.”
William Blum did the original translation of the article from French to English. It can be seen at Counter Punch.
http://www.counterpunch.org/1998/01/15/how-jimmy-carter-and-i-started-the-mujahideen/
But why should anyone expect anything from CNN who has as one of its major news people “Woof” Blitzer, lapdog of the established interests
You missed this one:
The day President Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinkley, this rather unbelievable tidbit I received in January 2007.
This is the extraordinary story of a dinner date. A dinner date that was scheduled to happen on march 31st 1981 – the day of the strange assassination attempt on the life of Ronald Reagan. Reagan was the president. And George Bush Sr, the very ambitious former CIA director from Texas was the Vice President.
What makes this dinner date so special that night was it’s two guests.
“The dinner party was to be held at the home of Neil Bush, the vice president’s son. The guest at the dinner was Scott Hinckley the brother of John Hinckley who just that afternoon fired several shots into Reagan’s chest, coming one half inch from putting his bullet into the heart of the President – a half inch from putting his friend’s father, George Bush, into the White House.”
So far what we have is the son of the Vice President linked to the brother of the guy who just tried to kill the president. Take a moment to absorb that.
“What was the Bush team’s response to this chilling revelation on the planned dinner date? They barricaded themselves behind a wall of the biggest PR Firms in the nation and issued the following statement, “This horrible coincidence has been devastating to the Bush Family.”
“The Bush Team decided to go with the story that it was just a bad “coincidence.” In the days that followed, Washington saw the most intensive whitewash of any news item ever whitewashed. Backroom deals were struck, the spin doctors went into action and an army of PR agents descended into Washington and what should have been the biggest most investigated story of the 80’s — was wiped clean from history.“
“They spun it clear off the front, back and middle pages of all the giant newspapers. The only mention of it EVER to appear on national television was a brief comment by NBC’s John Chancellor who was absolutely floored by the revelation and mentioned it during his newscast against the demands of NBC management. NBC quickly jumped in and censored it.
And the revelation was NEVER MENTIONED ON ANY TELEVISION SHOW EVER AGAIN .”
“It was revealed in the days following the shooting that since 1970 both George Bush Sr. and John Hinckley Sr (the father of the assassin) were friends and fellow oil industrialists in Texas and Colorado. And that Hinckley had given substantial sums of money to the Bush campaign.”
“Here’s another coincidence, in 1978 Neil Bush lived in Lubbock, Texas while managing his brother George Jr’s (our President’s) campaign for congress. Guess who else lived in Lubbock that year? John Hinckley Jr.”
THIS WAS A MEDIA BLACKOUT BY A POLITICAL FAMILY, AND HOW JOURNALISM IN AMERICA SINKS TO A LEVEL CENSORSHIP OF THE TRUTH. OUR MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS LITTLE MORE THAN PROPAGANDISTS FOR THE CIA-MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND THE POWER ELITE WHO FEED THEM THE LIES AND DECEPTIONS OF OUR TIMES.
Please send me an invoice for your DVD of a PBS documentary ‘The Election Held Hostage.’
Another great story from Consortium News proving the Establishment Media has a different agenda than informing the public of the full facts. America’s democracy has been severely compromised, and Americans are living under a sophisticated tyranny.
The history of war profiteering is greatly undercovered. And in that area, the facts about Israel’s role are completely blacked out. Key historical facts on how this tyranny came about are at
http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com
Robert –
Your aggressive reporting, which underlines the true facts in many instances, continues to be extremely important in this day and age. Thank you so much for all that you do . . .
Only when the WHITE WEALTHY .1% ARE STARVING IN THEIR BUNKERS & THE EARTH IS IN ASHES, WILL IT REALIZE THEY HAVE DESTROYED THEIR FUTURE IN THE PRESENT.
THE ROTHSCHILD & WALL STREET TBTF JEWISH BANKERS HAVE BOUGHT KILLARY &
THE PRESIDENCY & U.S. CITIZENS ARE TOO STUPID & COWARDLY TO DO ANYTHING
ABOUT IT DESPITE OWNING 380 MILLION GUNS !
THUS THIS NATION DESERVES FASCIST SLAVERY BECAUSE IT HAS NO CONSCIENCE…
There is also the matter of the 2000 Election.
Al Gore beat Bush by over half-a-MILLION votes nationally. Efforts for a manual recount in Florida were transparently and overtly obstructed and suppressed (Katherine Harris, James Baker, etc.), and for the first time in History the U.S. Supreme Court interfered with a State Election process and halted the recount. And thousands of registered Black voters never got the chance to attempt to vote, as Database fraud classified them incorrectly as “criminals” (ineligible).
This crooked election (Bush-Cheney) destroyed what little remained of our democratic processes and individual liberties. And the U.S. News Media was complicit all the way.
So, basically, every Republican president elected in my lifetime, except for Eisenhower, was put into office through illegal or unconstitutional means. (I’m assuming that Bushdaddy wouldn’t have been in a position to win Reagan’s “third term” except for all the previous cheating.) Not to worry though, we are usually granted an unthreatened life of quiet desperation if we are white and don’t try to interfere with what the elites want.
What an impressive series of news stories about facts of history that mainstream news ignores. Thank you for your October Surprise Series.
You know what is said about how those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Thanks very much for your contribution to our not repeating it.