It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent.
Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.
Oh, no, that never happened, pooh-pooh, no evidence, pooh-pooh, Congressional investigations didn’t find anything. Horse hockey! The GOP has been betraying America for decades and people wonder why I am advocating No Mercy on any of the J6 screwheads, Big Fish or Little Fish. We let Nixon slide on Watergate and this is the thanks we get. No More!
I read about this just this morning. So, Republicans indirectly talked Iran into keeping American hostages when they would otherwise have been freed. Conspiracies are one thing, but imprisoning Americans just to help win elections are another.
Anybody back then who thought it was just coincidental that the hostages were released the day after the inauguration had his head up his ass. I’m glad the truth is now out.
I read a good book called Guests of the Ayatollah, but it was many years ago. I don’t recall whether it mentions any efforts by Republicans to prolong their captivity. I got the impression that the release on inauguration day had nothing to do with Reagan, but was because the hostage-takers just hated Carter so much.
The Regan Library has a big exhibit devoted to the Hostage Crisis, and the implication is basically that Carter was such a little girly-man while Regan was such a bit strong macho man that as soon as he came into office the Iranians just knew they better hand off the hostages.
It was transparent bullshit at the time, and it’s transparent bullshit now, but that doesn’t really seem to matter. I’d have been more shocked if they didn’t lie about that.
I was actually more surprised by the fact that Regan’s library has a big exhibit abiut his time as Head Snitch in Hollywood, reporting on his fellow actors to the FBI and HUAC. Even in school where stuff like HUAC was brushed over, it was still presented in a fairly negative light. Until I saw the exhibit I had no idea that anyone today considered HUAC something to brag about, but there you go.
Yes it was at the same time. Sabotaging hostage negotiations for political purposes? Just as bad as Nixon undermining Johnson’s peace negotiations with North Vietnam.
Just you wait until the information about what they are doing right now about Putin’s invasion of Ucraine comes out (in 40 years time). Trump has already said tha he is the only one who can stop WWIII, if that is not a red light for you, it is for me. And DeSantis saying that it is only a territorial dispute, not a vital interest of the USA. Treacherous fools!
The thing here is that Iran already hated Carter more than enough to help sabotage his re-election. They were probably already planning to hold hostages beyond the election just out of the pure spiteful joy of fucking over Carter.
So it seems to me that Reagan’s alleged overtures served no useful purpose other than offering terms for something Reagan was already going to get for free. If Reagan actually did this, he got played.
You make it sound so innocent. The illegal arms sales to Iran that later became known as Iran-Contra began in 1981. Just fucking over Carter would get the Iranians zilch…but along came benefactor. A criminal. A traitor to his nation.
Reagan and the ghouls in his administration got away with a whole lot of criminal behavior. And now, even Democrats who should know better are content to act like he was some pillar of bipartisan statesmanship and not a cynical political operative.
Reagan. (It’s an important distinction because Don Regan was Reagan’s Chief of Staff and Secretary of the Treasury.) Reagan was quite proud of his anti-Communist stance, but then remember that he came to the presidency in a new wave of Cold War fervor, and there has never been any real reconciliation for victims of HUAC such as the “Hollywood Ten” (none of whom except for Dmytryk ever worked again under their own names in any real capacity in the US film studio system), and you will still today find defenders of HUAC and Joe McCarthy on the far right.
Other curious omissions in the Ronald Reagan are any mention of first wife Jane Wyman (despite the fact that he maintain cordial relations with her throughout his life), the fact that there were more people under his administration indicted while in office than Nixon, more criminal scandals than any administration since Harding, and of course, any mention of a little arms-for-hostages scheme that was then used to illegally fund the Contra rebels and incidentally reinvigorate the cocaine smuggling trade known as the Iran-Contra Affair, about which Reagan unambiguously lied to Congress and to the American public and then later acknowledged his deception on national television but somehow was still not impeached. Fortunately, although much about the affair has been shrouded in secrecy and everybody who was indicted or convicted pardoned by Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, we do have this clip from a never-released documentary establishing Reagan’s involvement and culpability.
Bearing in mind that we were also supporting Iraq (led by Saddam Hussein) during that time. Basically, the 80’s were marked by a long war between the two countries, and the US funded both sides.
Sorry, I forgot to add “and Reagan was bad for this” to the end of my post. I felt it was obvious enough.
Assuming the story is accurate, Iran was already going to help Reagan even if he didn’t do anything, but Reagan decided to do some illegal stuff just to make sure it happened. Reagan was bad and dumb for doing this dumb and bad thing.
I hadn’t realized there was any serious doubt. There was that whole Iran contra thing. I must admit, when Reagan testified “i don’t recall” i assumed he was lying, but in retrospect it seems he had pretty advanced dementia by then, so he may have been telling the truth about his failure to recall.
I thought at the time, since MamaPlant was “angry at Bush for delaying the hostage release”, it was possible that as suggested above, the Iranians hated Carter’s guts too much to release them during his Presidency.
I recall “Oliver North” haircuts being requested of barbers. The general opinion in central Arkansas was that bribery was okay if it were done to release the hostages. I don’t recall any specific animosity toward Carter, perhaps because he was a Southerner.