From: MEDELMA@cms.cc.wayne.edu (Michael Edelman)
Subject: Re: THE OCTOBER SURPRISE -- "The Verdict is Treason": THE VERDICT
Organization: Wayne State University, C&IT
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 15:31:36 GMT

In article <1992Sep10.210955.8855@dale.ksc.nasa.gov>
sdavis@laforge.ksc.nasa.gov (Steve Davis) writes:
 
>
>  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.
 
Which does not constitute proof or even evidence, right? Those who have
claimed to have evidence and testimony have been refuted. The source it
all rested on was Ari Ben Menashe, supposedly a Mossad agent who had Seymour
Hersh convinced he was a Mossad Agent. Ben Menashe has also claimed he
was a commando on the Entebbe raid, that he planted a homing device at
Osirak to guide the attacking Israeli aircraft in (!), and that he declined
an offer to be head of the Mossad. He also made a variety of claims related
to the October story.
 
In fact, Ben Menashe was a low-level translator who had been denied a
security clearance and who had been deemed delusional according to his
personal file, according to his employers. He made extended trips abroad
on unpaid leave, paid for by his mother, during which he played secret
agent, apparently. He was told be his employers that he would be fired
if he continued this, and resigned.
 
Newsweek's national security correspondant, John Barry, said on CNN on
Nov. 8th 1991 that Ben Menache's story didn't check out and that he
was a "fabricator".
 
Recall that Ben Menasche is *the* crucial witness who claims to have seen
Bush in a Paris hotel, as well as being the person who leaked the story to
the Beruit magazine Al-Shirra, where the story first appeared. (Al Shirrah
claims they got the story from an Iranian cleric)
 
Hersh's other main source was supposedly a British detective who was in
actuality a British con man named Joe Flynn who admitted hoaxing Hersh
in return for 1,290 pound sterling he recieved in payment for telephone
logs he promised to deliver. The logs never were delivered, of course.
 
That's the background. There is no proof, no evidence. All that remains
is a conjecture. You can come up with an infinite number of conjectures
that are consistant with a given set of events. I could conjecture that
the arms deal was actually part of a deal arranged by Carter, and that the
Reagan administration was simply following up on it...but that lacks two
features that would make it appeal to the conspiricy buffs- an illegal act,
and a Republican culprit ;-)
>
>> >  [...]  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.
 
That's reasonable. From a few dates an opponant can construct timelines that
enable them to relate other information, verify events and in general infer
a heck of a lot about your agents, your intentions and so forth. It's not
unreasonable to withold the dates. If you actually had the dates, what could
you do with them? You can't go to Iran and start interrogating the principles.
The Iraquis are not going to do anything that would benifit the US. Their
interest is in doing what they can to act against US interests in general.
>
>>   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
 
But that's nonsense. I dealt with that in my posting previous to this one.
Read it.
 
>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.
No. I'm saying that the issues are the same, and that the press and politicos
are conveniently ignoring the issues and stats that were obvious in 1976.
>
>        2.  The press efficiently and objectively reports all facts as they
>            occur, even those that are associated with covert operations
>            currently underway.
 
What gave you *that* idea? Of course, to buy into the October Paranoia you
have toi believe in the accuracy of Ben Menasche's and Flynn's stories, and
that the easily deluded Hersh is a good source ;-)
>
>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.
>
Hardly historians. I'm talking about reporters and politicians.
 
They are revisionists in that they misrepresent the economy of the 70s and
the 80s as well as the levels of government spending, the tax rate, the
famous "misery index" and other factors. They are also, in general, ignorant
people. They missed the coming S&L debacle that the financial press had
been reporting since the 70s high inflation rates triggered the collapse
in the value of S&L assets. They think Reagan signed the first dereg bill...
in 1980! They can't understand that you can't talk about absolute numbers
in comparing economic figures over a 20 or 40 year span. But luckily for
them, most of the public is as ignorant as they are- but more trusting.
 
>> 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?
>
 
Violating policy is treason? Is that the heart of your argument? I
guess Carter was a traitor for violating the US policy of acting
in the best inetrests of the people of the US.
 
Not the best argument I've ever heard. And I've already discussed the
difference between public and private diplomacy. In fact, Carter was the
first to try to ransom the hostages....and Kennedy *did* ransom the
hostages of the Cuban invasion fiasco, which is perhaps an event in
history that should be examined in light of the current frenzy...
 
>Regards,
>
>Steve
>--
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>| Steve Davis                      | sdavis@laforge.ksc.nasa.gov |
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>| Kennedy Space Center, FL  32899  |                             |
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Ditto.
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 Michael Joseph Edelman           Wayne State University
 medelma@cms.cc.wayne.edu         Computing & Information Technology
 mje@pookie.pass.wayne.edu        Detroit, Michigan
 medelma@waynest1.bitnet          (313) 577-0742
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