The Consortium
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The Russian ReportOn Jan. 11, 1993, Russia ‘s Supreme Soviet sent a secret cable to the U.S. Congress. The cable claimed that Russian national security files held evidence that two U.S. Presidents and two CIA directors had committed an act of treachery with Iran ‘s radical Islamic government in 1980. Despite its explosive potential, the document was kept from the American people. It was buried in a pile of cardboard boxes, left behind with a host of other unclassified and secret papers in an obscure storage room on Capitol Hill: a real-life “X-Files.”
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October Surprise X-Files (Part 1): Russia ‘s Report By Robert Parry
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WASHINGTON — On Jan. 11, 1993, the nation’s capital was readying itself for the Inauguration of President Bill Clinton, the first Democrat to sit in the Oval Office in a dozen years. Temporary grandstands were going up along Pennsylvania Avenue . The city brimmed with a celebratory air that fills the capital whenever a grand event like an Inauguration takes place. But in an obscure set of offices near the U.S. Capitol, a congressional task force was coping with another problem, one that had seeped out over those same twelve years to stain the Republican victory that had last changed party power at the White House, in 1980.
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The House task force was concluding a year-long investigation into claims that Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign had interfered with President Carter’s negotiations to free 52 Americans held hostage in Iran . A mixed bag of Iranian officials, foreign intelligence agents and international arms dealers had alleged a Republican deal behind Carter’s back. But the task force had decided there was “no credible evidence” to support allegations that the Reagan campaign had blocked Carter’s possible “October Surprise” of an election-eve hostage return.
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Carter’s failure to free those hostages over 444 days had sealed his political doom and boosted Reagan from a neck-and-neck race to a resounding electoral victory. The hostages’ release, as Reagan was completing his Inaugural Address on Jan. 20, 1981, opened a floodgate of patriotic fervor that reshaped the political landscape and made Reagan a hero.
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The possibility that this pivotal moment in modern American history had resulted from a nearly treasonous dirty trick had drawn understandably angry denials from Reagan-Bush loyalists — and even from Democrats who feared that the public would lose faith in politics if the charges proved true.
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So, with a collective sigh of relief, the House task force debunked the charges by adopting an elaborate set of alibis for the key players, particularly the late CIA director William J. Casey, who had run Reagan’s campaign. One of the Casey alibi dates was nailed down, according to the task force, because a Republican operative had written Casey’s home phone number on a piece of paper that day, although the operative admitted that he had no recollection of reaching Casey at home.
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