Did Ronald Reagan Urge Iranians Not To Release the Hostages?

Not Reagan personally, of course. But his campaign almost certainly did.

I don’t spend a lot of time on this site promoting the writings of other people. Sometimes I publish articles written by other people, but I limit my collar-grabbing to advising readers to read my own pieces, not those by others for other publications.

I make an exception today for a piece by Jonathan Alter, Kai Bird, Gary Sick, and Stuart Eizenstat. For four decades Sick has been claiming that Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, in the person of campaign manager (and subsequent CIA director) Bill Casey, told Iran not to release its American hostages until after the election, because Reagan would give them a better deal. It seemed too contemptible to be true, even of Casey, and initially the evidence seemed thin. Now Alter, Bird, and Eizenstat affirm that Sick was almost certainly right, based on their interview with Stuart Spencer; on some new information published in March by The New York Times; and on an accumulation of other details since the “October Surprise” conspiracy first received public attention in the late 1980s. Some of this evidence was reviewed by Alter and Bird in a published dialog between the two that I arranged a couple of years ago for The Washington Monthly. (The interview contained other surprises about the Carter years, too, and I urge you to read it.)

Did Reagan know? Spencer suggests not, and of course Reagan was sufficiently checked out as early as 1980 that it may be true. Recall that the Gipper deployed a don’t-be-mean-to-a-doddering-old-man defense to successfully dodge responsibility for the Iran-contra scandal six years later. If Reagan didn’t know, some will presume that preserves his legacy. I think it further tarnishes it.

The article appears in The New Republic, where, yes, I’m a staff writer. But I’d be urging you to read this even if it appeared elsewhere. Please do.