(1) I wrote the entry on the "October Surprise" theory for the recently-published, two-volume Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia and in it I asserted that the Lyndon LaRouche-Gary Sick claim about a Reagan-Khomeini deal "endured for over a decade, from 1980-93, but has since disappeared."
Well, not so fast. A sharp-eyed reader, Ronald Wieck, points out in a comment on my encyclopedia entry that the conspiracy theory does in fact live on in one authoritative source.
The sixth revised edition of Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938 (Penguin Books, 1991), by Stephen E. Ambrose, contains the following description of the closing days of Jimmy Carter's administration:
On November 4, [1980,] Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in the presidential election, thereby putting additional pressure on Khomeini, who could hardly expect the incoming Reagan administration to offer as favorable a deal as the outgoing Carter administration. (Reagan was denouncing the Iranians as "barbarians" and "common criminals" and hinting that he would take strong and direct military action against them.) Therefore, Iran, on December 21, demanded a specific ransom for the captives—$24 billion—deposited in Algeria.
The eighth revised edition (1997) removes the parentheses and adds the phrase, "In public," before "Reagan." Three additional sentences materialize right before the one about the ransom demand:
Actually, Reagan had made a private deal with Khomeini. If the Iranians would hold the hostages until after the election, the new Reagan administration would pay ransom for them in the form of arms for Iran. Khomeini badly needed the weapons for his war with Iraq, so the deal was struck.
Douglas G. Brinkley's name appears on the cover as co-author, suggesting some sort of ransom deal as the amount of new material over the previous seven editions is minimal. Here then is a book written for students and lay readers presenting a discredited conspiracy theory as historical fact.
Have any reviewers noted the ideological tendentiousness supplied to a well-respected textbook by the current chronicler of John Kerry's exploits in Vietnam? Did Brinkley discuss the change with Ambrose? If a conservative co-author, allowed to rampage through a standard text on American history, inserted a passage averring that Bill Clinton sold military secrets to the Chinese in order to swell his campaign coffers, would the reviewers notice? You think?
Mr. Wieck has shown me the pages in question and they are precisely as he describes them.
It is a scandal that a major publisher like Penguin would publish a textbook with such contents.
Penguin does not make it easy to comment on its publications, but contacting Dan Lundy, its vice president and director for Academic Marketing & Sales at Dan.Lundy@us.penguingroup.com would be a good place to make known what you think of this outrage.
(2) In its March 15, 2004 issue, Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily published an analysis by the pseudonymous "Alan Peters" under the title "Role of US Former Pres. Carter Emerging in Illegal Financial Demands on Shah of Iran" which – to my amazement – reverses the "October Surprise" thesis and claims that Jimmy Carter was in collusion with Ayatollah Khomeini. In brief: Carter made various demands on Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (kickbacks to a favored contractor, a guaranteed cheap price for Iranian oil over fifty years) which the shah turned down, infuriating Carter and causing him to help Ayatollah Khomeini come to power. These two buddies then jointly planned the November 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
The mostly rent-a-crowd group of students organized to climb the US Embassy walls was spearheaded by a mullah on top of a Volkswagen van, who with a two-way radio in one hand and a bullhorn in the other, controlled the speed of the march on the Embassy according to instructions he received over the radio. He would slow it down, hurry it up and slow it down again in spurts and starts, triggering the curiosity of an educated pro-Khomeini vigilante, who later told the story to a friend in London.
When asked by the vigilante for the reason of this irregular movement, the stressed cleric replied that he had instructions to provide the US Embassy staff with enough time to destroy their most sensitive documents and to give the three most senior US diplomats adequate opportunity to then take refuge at the Islamic Republic Foreign Ministry rather than be taken with the other hostages. Someone at the Embassy was informing the Foreign Ministry as to progress over the telephone and the cleric was being told what to do over his radio.
The vigilante then asked why the Islamic Government would bother to be so accommodating to the Great Satan and was told that the whole operation was planned in advance by Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan's revolutionary Government with Pres. Carter in return for Carter having helped depose the Shah and that this was being done to ensure Carter got re-elected. He helped us, now we help him was the matter-of-fact comment from the cleric.
One difference between Democrats and Republicans: too many of the former hyped their Khomeini-collusion conspiracy theory, whereas the latter will not touch the above nonsense with a ten-foot pole. (March 22, 2004)
Apr. 3, 2004 update: Douglas Brinkley wrote me a note, distancing himself from the text in the eighth revised edition:
Subject: October Surprise
Date: 03-Apr-04 11:43:16 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: Douglas Brinkley
To: Daniel PipesMr. Pipes-
You're quite right that the October Surprise statement in Rise to Globalism is unprovable/incorrect. Ambrose must have added it. This is the first time it's been brought to my attention. My thinking on the so-called "October Surprise" can be found in my book The Unfinished Presidency. Rest assured it will be fixed in the next edition due out in early 2005.
Most Sincerely,
Douglas Brinkley
How reassuring to know that Professor Brinkley did not add the October Surprise conspiracy theory – but conversely, how dismaying to know that Stephen E. Ambrose had.
Sep. 13, 2004 update: A reader informs me that Robert Parry, someone I characterized as one of the "handful of conspiracy theorists in the United States" who originated the whole October Surprise thesis in the first place, was still peddling this nonsense, complete with an elaborate Soviet subplot, in 1999.
June 21, 2005 update: And another of that "handful of conspiracy theorists in the United States" who promulgated the October Surprise fraud confesses he still can't give up on it. That would be Christopher Hitchens, whom some say has given up his foolish leftist ways, but he still hangs on to too many of them to change my opinion about his character and purpose. Here is what he wrote today:
I am not one of those who uses the term "conspiracy theory" as an automatic sneer of dismissal. Conspiracies do occur. I spent a lot of my life at one point trying to show that William Casey of the Reagan-era CIA had made a private deal with the Iranian hostage-takers in 1979, inducing them to keep their prisoners until the Carter administration had been defeated, and I still firmly believe that something of the sort (which eventually culminated in the Iran-Contra underworld) was at least attempted. So do many senior members of both parties in Washington, with whom I am still in touch.
If one were to believe Hitchens – ever a step to be taken cautiously – a whole underground of October Surprise theorists still lurks in the American capital. Well, we shall reveal them here, one by one, as they make themselves known.
Dec. 22, 2010 update: The 9th edition of Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938 (Penguin Books, 2011) is published and the offending passage remains in it, on p. 301:
Actually, Reagan had made a private deal with Khomeini. If the Iranians would hold the hostages until after the election, the new Reagan administration would pay ransom for them in the form of arms for Iran. Khomeini badly needed the weapons for his war with Iraq, so the deal was struck.
I aksed Douglas Brinkley about this. He informs me "That edition was long in the bag and we'll ensure the change is in the next edition."
Comment: Given that I wrote Brinkley about this problem in 2004 and his book covers the election of Barack Obama, I am dismayed that the change was not already made. But I look forward to the next edition including it.
Dec. 22, 2020 update: Ten years have passed and no new edition of Rise to Globalism has appeared, so the October Surprise remains as though an established fact.
Mar. 19, 2023 update: The New York Times returns to this embarrassing topic 43 years after the alleged conspiracy took place, more absurd than ever. It dug up an aging Texas politician, Ben Barnes, who claims he took a trip with John Connally on July 18 to Aug. 11, 1980, to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel, to tell leaders of those countries, according to Barnes:
Look, Ronald Reagan's going to be elected president and you need to get the word to Iran that they're going to make a better deal with Reagan than they are Carter. It would be very smart for you to pass the word to the Iranians to wait until after this general election is over.
For the real history of what happened then, I refer back to my 2004 article on how Reagan scared the Iranians into letting go their American hostages:
as president-elect, Ronald Reagan took a bold stance. He called the Iranian captors "criminals and kidnappers" and he called the political leaders "kidnappers." If they understood from his insults, he added, "that they shouldn't be waiting for me [to take office], I'd be very happy."
Reagan and his aides adopted a threatening tone. "We'll just have to do something to bring [the hostages] home," he warned. Edwin Meese III, his transition chief, spoke more explicitly: "the Iranians should be prepared that this country will take whatever action is appropriate" and they "ought to think over very carefully the fact that it would certainly be to their advantage to get the hostages back now."
Reagan's tough words and tough reputation won the United States a rare bloodless victory over militant Islam. Even a senior Carter administration official, though preferring to emphasize his boss's mistakes over Reagan's strengths, grudgingly acknowledged that "we probably would not be getting the hostages out now if Carter had been reelected."
Further, after Reagan took office, he did not "make a better deal" with Tehran than Carter would have done. To the contrary, the initial years saw a tougher policy than Carter's - though, admittedly, the Iran/Contra scandal did muddy the waters.
