From: sdavis@laforge.ksc.nasa.gov (Steve Davis)
Subject: Re: THE OCTOBER SURPRISE -- "The Verdict is Treason": THE VERDICT
Organization: NASA
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 21:09:55 GMT

Michael Edelman writes
> sdavis@laforge.ksc.nasa.gov (Steve Davis) writes:
> >        1.  The first arms shipment to Iran was made six weeks after Reagan
> >            took office.
> >        2.  Reagan won the 1980 election, in part, because of the public's
> >            perception that he would be more militant in his dealings with
> >            Iran. [...]
> >     Is there no apparent conflict between these two points?
>  
> The point is that my scenario is far more logical and in keeping with the
> stated aims of the Iranian revolutionaries. [...]

  Maybe I should change the subject line of this thread, because you seem to be  
responding to that rather than to my posts.  I'll repeat myself:  I don't  
necessarily buy the October Surprise theory.

  I don't expect the Iranians to ever come clean on the exact circumstances  
surrounding the hostages' release.  But I would like to hear a sound  
explanation of why arms were shipped to Iran in the first place.  The only  
justification that has been offered by Reagan & Co. sounds, again, like it was  
concocted after the fact.
  
> >  [...]  And it bothers me that the public is allowed to know who
> >the "moderate" Iranian contacts were, but not when they were made.
> >
> You mean, your difficulty rests with the fact that exact dates were not  
>given?

  Partially.  That question came up in one of the Iran/Contra trials, but the  
answer was suppressed by the National Security watchdogs.
  
>   History is being rewritten with Carter as the greatest of
> the modern presidents- after his economic and international screwups and
> humiliations- and Reagan's 10 year boom as a great failure.

  I think Lloyd Bentsen summed it up best in 1988 when he said, "If you let me  
write $200 billion in hot checks every year, I could provide an illusion of  
prosperity, too."  Claiming that the Reagan years constituted an economic boom  
is like saying that a spendthrift's net worth is increasing-- as long as you  
don't count his credit card balances.

>								Reading the
> newspapers of the 1980 and 84 elections yeild a very different picture from
> the one pictured by the revisionists and "surprise" buffs.

  You're making two assumptions here that I don't think you want to make:

	1.  The issues that received attention in the 1980 and 1984 elections
	    were much more relevant to the election than those of the current 
	    one.

	2.  The press efficiently and objectively reports all facts as they 
	    occur, even those that are associated with covert operations  
	    currently underway.

The picture is often clearer with the benefit of hindsight; don't label  
historians as "revisionists" just because their writings do not agree with the  
"facts" as they were reported at the time.

> No we *don't* know that there was a deal. The charge has been made, but never
> substantiated.

  The deal I was referring to was the arrangement to ship arms to Iran.  We  
know that it was made, but we still don't know its terms or when it was made.

> It was arms for hostages, all right. The other talk was a way of getting
> around the fact that we were doing something we said we'd never do- pay
> ransom. The problem was that as long as the ransom was secret it didn't
> have an affect on policy. Once it became known, we had to deny it was ransom
> or other governments and insurrectionists and whatnot would realize that
> yould could indeed get the US to pay ransom. What the publicity did was to
> keep the hostages in Lebanon longer as we couldn't ransom them out anymore.

  Well, we're now back to the original subject of this thread.  What you're  
saying, if I read you correctly, is that Reagan is guilty of violating the  
long-standing U.S. policy prohibiting the payment of ransom.  You clearly  
described the national security risks of these actions in the above paragraph.   
So do Reagan's actions here not constitute treason?

Regards,

Steve
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