-Caveat Lector-
from;
http://www.consortiumnews.com/051499a.html
Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.consortiumnews.com/051499a.html">The
Consortium</A>
-----
May 15, 1999
Russia's Prime Minister and October Surprise
By Robert Parry
On May 12, U.S. reporters rushed out stories about Russia's new
prime
minister-designate Sergey V. Stepashin and the new crisis
confronting
Russia's democracy.
But the reporters didn’t mention Stepashin's role in a troubling
chapter of American
"lost history," an omission suggesting that Russia's is not the
only democracy in
trouble.
In 1992-93, as chairman of the Supreme Soviet's Committee on
Defense and Security
Issues, Stepashin oversaw an official investigation into what
Moscow's intelligence
files revealed about Republican secret activities in 1980 aimed
at undercutting
President Carter's desperate efforts to free 52 American hostages
held in Iran.
The long-simmering allegations of Republican sabotage were known
as the "October
Surprise" controversy, named after GOP suspicions that Carter was
hoping to free the
hostages right before the November elections.
Instead, according to a variety of Iranian officials and foreign
intelligence operatives,
Republican emissaries, led by Ronald Reagan’s campaign director
William J. Casey,
negotiated a secret deal to delay the hostages' freedom. The
hostages were freed on
Jan. 20, 1981, minutes after Reagan was sworn in.
Stepashin undertook the review of Russia's intelligence files at
the request of Rep. Lee
Hamilton, D-Ind., who was head of a congressional task force
assigned to examine the
controversy in 1992. Hamilton sent Stepashin the request on Oct.
21, 1992, presumably
because some members of the bipartisan House task force suspected
that the
October Surprise story might have originated as Soviet
"disinformation."
By fall 1992, under pressure from then-President George Bush and
other Republicans,
Hamilton already had settled on a finding that there was "no
credible evidence" to
support the charges that the Reagan-Bush campaign had sabotaged
Carter's hostage
negotiations.
But on Jan. 11, 1993 -- just two days before Hamilton was
scheduled to announce his
conclusions -- Stepashin reported back with the results of his
internal Russian
investigation.
Translated by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and forwarded to
Congress, Stepashin's
six-page report stated that Moscow possessed detailed information
about secret
initiatives undertaken by the Reagan-Bush campaign to negotiate a
delay in the
hostages’ freedom.
Stepashin’s findings implicated George Bush, Ronald Reagan,
William Casey and
Robert Gates in the pre-election machinations. "William Casey, in
1980, met three
times with representatives of the Iranian leadership," Stepashin's
report read. "The
meetings took place in Madrid and Paris."
At the Paris meeting in October 1980, "R[obert] Gates, at that
time a staffer of the
National Security Council in the administration of Jimmy Carter,
and former CIA director
George Bush also took part. … In Madrid and Paris, the
representatives of Ronald
Reagan and the Iranian leadership discussed the question of
possibly delaying the
release of 52 hostages from the staff of the U.S. Embassy in
Teheran."
Stepashin's report also described President Carter's secret
offers to Iran. One key
meeting occurred in Athens in July 1980 with Pentagon
representatives agreeing "in
principle" to deliver "a significant quantity of spare parts for
F-4 and F-5 aircraft and also
M-60 tanks … via Turkey," according to Stepashin's report.
In return, Iranians "discussed a possible step-by-step
normalization of
Iranian-American relations [and] the provision of support for
President Carter in the
election campaign via the release of American hostages."
Stepashin wrote matter of factly about this geopolitical
bartering. He observed that both
the Reagan campaign and the Carter administration "started with
the proposition that
[Iran's leader] Imam [Ruhollah] Khomeini, having announced a
policy of 'neither the
West nor the East,' and cursing the 'American devil,' imperialism
and Zionism, was
forced to acquire American weapons, spares and military supplies
by any and all
possible means."
The Republicans just won the bidding war. Nevertheless, President
Carter had the
constitutional authority to conduct negotiations with foreign
powers. The Republican
campaign did not.
Stepashin also described how the Reagan administration fulfilled
its debt to Iran. "After
the victory of R. Reagan in the election, in early 1981, a secret
agreement was reached
in London in accord with which Iran released the American
hostages, and the U.S.
continued to supply arms, spares and military supplies for the
Iranian army," Stepashin
wrote.
The deliveries were carried out by Israel, often through private
arms dealers, his report
said. Spares for F-14 fighters and other military equipment went
to Iran from Israel in
March-April 1981 and the arms pipeline stayed open into the
mid-1980s.
"Through the Israeli conduit, Iran in 1983 brought
surface-to-surface missiles of the
'Lance' class plus artillery of a total value of $135 million,"
Stepashin's report stated. "In
July 1983, a group of specialists from the firm, Lockheed, went
to Iran on English
passports to repair the navigation systems and other electronic
components on
American-produced planes."
The tap for Iranian-bound arms opened wider in 1985, with the
Iran-contra shipments.
Stepashin's report matched other information that the House task
force possessed.
The Israelis, indeed, had shipped U.S. military spares to Iran in
the early 1980s, with
the acquiescence of senior Reagan administration officials.
But the task force finessed the evidence of secret
Reagan-approved arms shipments in
the early 1980s by arguing that the deliveries did not prove a
"quid pro quo" dating back
to 1980.
Hamilton’s task force also had received multiple corroboration
about October Surprise
meetings from senior Iranian officials, French intelligence
officers and intelligence
operatives from Israel and other Middle East nations.
[Since then, Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat has admitted to
former President Carter that
Republicans also approached the Palestine Liberation Organization
with a plan to
delay the hostages' release.]
Still, the House task force rejected the October Surprise
charges, accepting the denials
-- and strained alibis -- of senior Republicans, including
President Bush, who was
running for vice president in 1980 and was seeking reelection as
president during the
task force investigation.
By early January 1993, Hamilton had shipped the dismissive
findings to the
government printing office. The task force report was slated for
release on Jan. 13.
So, the arrival of Stepashin's report on Jan. 11 added a new
complication. The two days
offered inadequate time for any serious examination of the
Russian material. The
record shows only that a U.S. Embassy political officer was
dispatched to press the
Russians for more details.
The Russians stood by their report, but would not divulge the
intelligence sources and
methods. They simply declared that the information came from
Stepashin's Committee
on Defense and Security Issues, roughly the equivalent of the
Senate Intelligence
Committee.
Offering Hamilton a possible way out, the U.S. Embassy officer
speculated that
Moscow's report might be "based largely on material that has
previously appeared in
the Western media."
Though supported by no evidence, the embassy speculation was
included in the
"confidential" cable to Hamilton. The suggestion was quietly
accepted by the task force.
Still, nearly as serious as the October Surprise charge was the
fact that the Russians
were claiming that they held sensitive evidence implicating two
U.S. presidents
[Reagan and Bush] and two CIA directors [Casey and Gates] in
serious crimes of state.
If true, the Soviets were in a position to blackmail top U.S.
officials for 12 years. The full
October Surprise story also remains politically sensitive today
given the status of
Bush’s son, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, as the Republican
front-runner for the 2000
election.
But Stepashin’s report did not change Hamilton’s plans. On Jan.
13, 1993, Hamilton
and other task force officials announced the "debunking" of the
October Surprise story.
No one made any mention of Stepashin's report or the other
evidence that contradicted
the official findings.
The task force simply stuck Stepashin's report into a box that
was stored away with
other documents from the October Surprise investigation.
In late 1994, nearly two years later, I received permission to
review the unclassified
records from the task force.
I was led to dozens of boxes stored in a former Ladies Room of an
obscure office off
the Rayburn House Office Building parking garage. In the boxes, I
found not only the
unclassified records, but a number of secret documents that
apparently had been left
behind by accident. One of the classified records was the
"confidential" embassy cable
containing the translation of Stepashin's report.
While a stunning example of secret U.S.-Russian cooperation in
the post-Cold War era,
the Stepashin report still begged the larger question of whether
it was based on solid
intelligence from the KGB’s own sources in Europe, North America
and the Middle
East, or whether it was simply "blow back" from Western media
reports as the U.S.
Embassy speculated.
In the weeks after discovering Stepashin's report, I contacted a
well-placed government
source in Europe who had close ties to senior Russian officials.
At my request, the
source inquired through his Moscow contacts about the basis for
Stepashin's report.
Later, the source called me back. He said the Russians were
insisting that the
intelligence was their own and that the information was reliable.
The source chuckled
at the notion that the Russians would just repackage some Western
news clips and
palm them off on Congress.
Noting the Russian need for U.S. financial assistance in early
1993, the source added
that the Russians "would not send something like this to the U.S.
Congress at that time
if it was bullshit." Instead, the Russians considered the
Stepashin report "a bomb" and
"couldn't believe it was ignored."
Little did the Russians know that not only did the House task
force ignore the Stepashin
report, but actually stuck it in a box that was piled
unceremoniously on the floor of a
former Ladies Room off a congressional parking garage.
With President Boris Yeltsin's decision to appoint Stepashin as
Russian prime
minister, the Stepashin report is relevant again today. The
questions now are twofold:
--Did the House task force behave irresponsibly in 1993 by
ignoring an
important piece of evidence in a major federal crime -- a
conspiracy
between senior Republicans and Iranians to prolong the
captivity of
kidnapped American diplomats, a move intended to fix the
outcome of a
presidential election?
--Or did the now-designated prime minister of Russia
unfairly lodge
false allegations against presidents Reagan and Bush as
well as CIA
directors Casey and Gates?
The answers could be important not only as a test for the health
of the Russia's
democratic institutions but those of America as well.
[For details on the House task force report and its unusual
logic, see Robert Parry’s Trick or Treason.
For the full text of Stepashin’s report, see Parry’s The October
Surprise X-Files.]
------
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
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