October Surprise

There could still be an "October surprise," though it probably not going to be the "Bin Laden in China" one.  But some major manipulation of the "war on terror" is certainly not out of character for the Bush dynasty. 

The phrase "October surprise" gained currency during the 1980 presidential campaign, when Ronald Reagan's campaign feared that Jimmy Carter would make some last-minute deal with the new revolutionary regime in Iran to free the American hostages they were holding.  It was not to be.  Iran released the hostages on Inauguration Day, but after Reagan had been sworn in as president.

In 1991, Gary Sick, a National Security Council official who had also been the principal White House aide during the hostage crisis, published October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan.  He argued that the Reagan campaign had, in fact, pulled their own version of the "October surprise," using unofficial channels to persuade the regime in Teheran not to release the hostages before the election.

There was a desultory congressional investigation of the charges, after which they were largely neglected.  But they received a new public airing this year with the publication of Kevin Phillips' American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush (2004).  Phillips discusses the incident in that book, and, though noting that there is a dearth of documentary evidence, finds the heavily circumstantial case persuasive.  He writes:

Indeed, the 1980s played out much the way Sick's scenario would have suggested.  The CIA budget soared; the Middle East became a veritable Covertistan.  Whatever other geopolitical hand George Bush [senior] might have preferred, his cards for 1981 to 1992 [as vice-president and president] had essentially been dealt: crisis management, covert operations, and a reindulged CIA; multibillion-dollar guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan; the byzantine Iran-Israel relationship and the bitter Iraq-Iran War; the clandestine but flagrant U.S. arming of Saddam Hussein; the tranformation of parts of the Middle East into insect colonies of arms dealers, corrupt banks, and drug dealers; and a gathering blowback against U.S. policies and activities from Palestine to Peshawar.  On to of this came the near fatal Iran-Contra scandal, to which we will shortly return.

That one paragraph quoted by itself might be misleading.  So I should add that Phillips, right or wrong in his conclusion, seems to be cautious in handling the evidence on the 1980 "October surprise."  And in the paragraph I've just quoted, he's not suggesting that every one of those events somehow directly flowed from the "October surprise."  His point is that former CIA director George Bush senior was very much at home in these sorts of operations, and those subsequent events are consistent with what Gary Sick argued about the manuverings around the "October surprise."

And regardless of the 1980 events, Phillips notes, as I've mentioned several times on this blog, "Once [George W. Bush] was elected [sic], officials who had helped his father cover up in Iran-Contra and other scandals received new jobs in Bush II."  So this crew is certainly capable of pulling off an "October surprise" in 2004, at least in terms of their willingness to do shady deals.  Whether they are competent to pull it off is a whole different question.

Phillips talked about the 1980 "October surprise" events in an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! 02/17/04.

The Bush administration's defenders responded to Phillips' book by singling out the "October surprise" section as a frivolous conspiracy theory.  David Neiwert responds to that in a thoughtful post on Conspiracies and conspiracy theories 01/18/04.  He says of the 1980 "October surprise":

If you consider all these criteria, it becomes clear that events such as Iran-Contra or, in this case, October Surprise rather clearly fit into the category of being genuine conspiracies. The question then becomes a matter of their factual grounding. The former has been established beyond much reasonable doubt. The latter has not, but the evidence about it remains substantial, and the alleged debunkings of it (especially Stephen Emerson's work in The New Republic) have proven in fact badly flawed.

Neiwert also comments in a separate post on Phillips' book and the "October surprise" element Kevin Phillips and the October Surprise 01/18/04:

Phillips not only resurrects the story, he examines the evidence and finds that it is almost certainly substantial, despite the all-too-eager earlier dismissals of its substance. More to the point, he compiles a wealth of subsequent evidence, most of it having emerged since 1992, pointing to his conclusion that "Bill Casey -- a born schemer and true buccaneer -- and his associates probably were involved in machinations akin to those Sick alleged." This evidence includes intelligence material from the French, the Soviet Union, Israel and Iran, as well as material that has been ignored by the House investigators.

All of this ties in with Phillips' theses that the October Surprise was a precursor to Iran-Contra (in fact, he argues, the latter was actually a confirmation that the former had occurred) as well as Iraqgate -- the consequences of which, he ably demonstrates, have come home to roost in the current war in Iraq.

Neiwert also expands on the theme in History That Matters 01/18/04.