A SHORT HISTORY OF EVERYONE WHO CONFIRMED REAGAN’S OCTOBER SURPRISE BEFORE THE NEW YORK TIMES

A lot of people beyond Ben Barnes have said that Reagan’s 1980 election campaign conspired to keep American hostages in Iran.

by Jon Schwarz
The Intercept, March 24 2023

ON SATURDAY, THE New York Times published a blockbuster story that said two prominent Texas Republicans flew across the Mideast in the summer of 1980 for secret meetings with regional leaders to urge them to tell Iran to keep the U.S. hostages in Tehran until after the election that pitted GOP candidate Ronald Reagan against then-President Jimmy Carter.

The Times reported that Ben Barnes, a key figure in Texas politics, said he made the trip with former Texas Gov. John Connally, a major supporter of Reagan’s campaign, and that when they returned home, Connally met in an airport lounge with William Casey, who’d been a top U.S. spy during World War II and was then Reagan’s campaign manager. Connally and Casey discussed the trip, according to Barnes, who The Times quoted as saying, “History needs to know that this happened.” After Reagan beat Carter in a landslide, Reagan appointed Casey head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Snip…

This memo from Beach and the mysterious cable from the Madrid embassy were somehow never turned over to the House investigation. Lee Hamilton, an Indiana Democrat who’d led the inquiry, wrote a letter to then-Secretary of State John Kerry in 2016 asking for the cable. He did not receive it. For Kai Bird’s book “The Outlier,” which includes a chapter of additional evidence about an October Surprise, Bird submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the cable. The State Department likewise has not produced it for Bird — even after he filed a lawsuit in 2019 — informing him that they can’t find it.

At this point, even James Baker, first Reagan’s chief of staff and later his treasury secretary (and then Bush’s secretary of state), won’t say Casey wasn’t in Madrid. Asked about it by one-time Carter staffer Stuart Eizenstat, he responded: “Would I be surprised if Casey did it? There is nothing about Casey that would surprise me. He is a piece of work.”

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https://theintercept.com/2023/03/24/october-surprise-ben-barnes/

Nixon in the Jungle

by Jim Hougan

Excerpt…

The story surfaced, briefly, some 20 years later, when the New York Times reported that Nixon, "while on a private trip to Vietnam in 1964, met secretly with the Vietcong and ransomed five American prisoners of war for bars of gold. : . ." [5] In reporting this, the Times relied upon a report published in the catalog of a Massachusetts autograph dealer. The dealer was selling a handwritten note that Nixon had given to one of his bodyguards. The note read, “To Hollis Kimmons with appreciation for his protection for my helicopter ride in Vietnam, from Richard Nixon."

The value of the note was increased by the circumstances that generated it, circumstances that Sergeant Kimmons described in the catalog:

When Nixon arrived at Ton Son Nhut Airport in Saigon, Sergeant Kimmons was assigned to security detail and was accompanying Nixon on all excursions away from the 145th Aviation Battalion where Nixon was staying. On the second day, Nixon dressed in Army fatigues with no identification and climbed aboard a helicopter with Sergeant Kimmons and a crew of four. [6]

They proceeded to Phuoc Binh, a village northwest of Saigon, where they met with Father Wa, a go-between that arranged the exchange of the gold for U. S. prisoners. The following day, Nixon and his party departed for An Loc, a village south of Phuoc Binh, where in a clearing somewhere in this area Nixon met with a Vietcong lieutenant who established a price for the return of five U.S. prisoners.

A location for the exchange was arranged and the crew departed for Saigon. Later the same day, the crew, this time without Nixon because of the extreme danger, departed for Phumi Kriek, a village across the border in Cambodia. A box loaded with gold bars so heavy it took three men to lift it on the helicopter accompanied the crew.

At the exchange point, five U.S. servicemen were rustled out of the jungle accompanied by several armed soldiers. The box of gold was unloaded and checked by the Vietcong lieutenant and the exchange was made without incident. The crew and rescued prisoners immediately departed for Saigon, and they were sent to the hospital upon their arrival.

Sergeant Kimmons's mission was secret, and there were no written orders for his duty during this period. His clothes were destroyed as well as the film in his camera, and he signed an agreement not to reveal this incident for 20 years. Nixon's note to him was hurriedly written at the conclusion of his assignment to guard Nixon on the following day. [7]

That Nixon traveled to Vietnam in 1964 is a matter of fact. He departed the United States in late March on a round-the-world trip that took him, first, to Beirut, and then to Karachi, Calcutta, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Saigon. There, he dined with the American Ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge, who had been his running mate in the 1960 Presidential race. In the days that followed, Nixon helicoptered into the countryside, [8] and then continued on to Hong Kong, Manila, Taiwan, and Tokyo before returning home. [9] Nixon later wrote that the purpose of the trip was to meet with Mudge, Rose clients and foreign leaders. Contemporary reports make it obvious, however, that the real purpose of the trip was to drum up international support for what was about to become America's massive intervention in Vietnam. [10]

There is nothing in the Times' account to suggest that the exchange of gold on April 3 was in any way relevant to the impending escalation of the war, but the possibility is an intriguing one. The Times' article is anything but conclusive. On the contrary, it simply parrots the cover story that Sergeant Kimmons had been given, while at the same time neglecting to identify the mission's middleman, the so-called “Father Wa.”

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http://www.jimhougan.com/NixonInTheJungle.html