No. of Recommendations: 7
Since the Carter family has announced that former president Jimmy Carter is in hospice care, Ben Barnes has decided to reveal that his mentor, former Texas governor John B. Connally, and William Casey, the chairman of candidate Ronald Reagan's campaign (who would later become director of the CIA) devised a secret mission to sabotage the re-election campaign of the then president of the United States, Carter, in an 'October Surprise'.
The term 'October surprise' was originally used by the Reagan camp to describe its fears that Mr. Carter would manipulate the hostage crisis to effect a release just before the election.
To forestall such a scenario, Mr. Casey was alleged to have met with representatives of Iran in July and August 1980 in Madrid leading to a deal supposedly finalized in Paris in October in which a future Reagan administration would ship arms to Tehran through Israel in exchange for the hostages being held until after the election.Barnes and Connally travelled throughout the Middle East to communicate the message that 'It would be very smart for you to pass the word to the Iranians to wait until after this general election is over' to release the hostages.
Over the years, Barnes shared details of his mission with four individuals who corroborated Barnes' account of the events. There is no evidence that Reagan knew of the plan.
So Nixon fashioned 'the Chennault Affair' to sabotage Johnson, and now we have confirmation that the Reagan campaign collaborated with adversaries to win his election. Fast forward to the Trump campaign getting help from the Russians and you have to wonder why republicans think it's fine and dandy to keep making deals with our adversaries to win presidential elections.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jim... 