Iran Hostage Figure Honors Carter By Reminding Us That Ronald Reagan Was Really, Really Bad

Things are getting worse for sure. But they were always kinda shit.

It's hard not to see today as the nadir of American civic life. The American body politic has become so thoroughly degraded in the last decade that elected members of Congress now discuss civil war so often that it barely raises an eyebrow. Even school boards are descending into warring camps, sometimes armed, where the sides don't merely disagree — they think the others are evil. (Although only one side is accusing the other of pedophilia.)

And then of course, there's Donald Trump.

As a member of Gen X, I routinely argue with my (extremely politically savvy!) college-age children about whether we are living through a uniquely ugly period.

"You don't understand," I tell them. "Republicans were always bad. But not like this ."

My working theory is that Newt Gingrich's unholy alliance with Frank Luntz and the Koch brothers, wherein they agreed to rig the system against the powerless by branding Democrats as "sick," "degenerate," and "traitors," was the kick-off for this nightmare era. But my kids point out that the country was founded in slavery; that lynchings were treated as public celebrations; that Joe McCarthy had a pretty good run; that LGBTQ+ Americans were always branded as "degenerates;" that my own grandfather changed his name to sound less Jewish so he could get a job in the State Department.

I just think it's worse now because the target of conservative ire is middle-class white ladies like me, they say. And of course they're right: The brutality was always baked into the system.

Case in point: a story in the New York Times this weekend by Texas politician Ben Barnes, who says he toured the Middle East in 1980 on behalf of the Ronald Reagan campaign urging the Iranian government not to release American hostages being held in Tehran until after the election to avoid giving then-President Jimmy Carter a political win. Because Ronald Reagan, patron saint of the Republican Party, was more than happy to let 52 Americans rot in captivity through January if it ensured his political victory in November.

In 1980, Barnes was just 41, but he was already a seasoned Democratic politician. He'd been speaker of the Texas House and lieutenant governor of Texas when he flew to the Middle East in the company of his mentor, former Texas Governor John Connally Jr. Connally, a former Democrat who switched parties, had unsuccessfully challenged Reagan for the Republican nomination. According to Barnes, Connally wanted to be secretary of state and was willing to leave the hostages in danger to torpedo Carter's chances of holding the White House.

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.

Then shortly after returning home, Mr. Barnes said, Mr. Connally reported to William J. Casey, the chairman of Mr. Reagan’s campaign and later director of the Central Intelligence Agency, briefing him about the trip in an airport lounge.

There's long been speculation that Reagan convinced the Iranian government to hold the hostages until the duration of Carter's term. Indeed, they were released shortly after Reagan's inauguration on January 20, 1981 — timing that seems unlikely to be coincidental. In 1992, former national security advisor Gary Sick published an editorial in the Times suggesting that Reagan and Casey had promised to ship the Iranian government arms via Israel if it would hold the hostages a few months longer.

This would certainly have been on brand for Reagan and Casey, who later went on to mastermind the Iran-Contra affair in 1986, wherein Hezbollah agreed to release American hostages in Lebanon in exchange for illegal arms sales from Israel to Iran. That deal had the benefit of getting American hostages out , although it did have the extra fillip of funding the proceeds to illegally support anti-government militants in Nicaragua.

With so many of the players long-dead, we'll probably never be able to fully verify Barnes's account. It is true that Barnes and Connally boarded a Gulfstream jet owned by Superior Oil in Houston on July 18, 1980 and spent a month flying to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel. And Barnes has told the story to other people since then, although he concedes that he has no idea if it was Connally's intercession that persuaded the Iranians to hang on to the hostages until Reagan was inaugurated. But Barnes, who kept largely quiet about the deal for four decades, says that the news that Carter has entered hospice care prompted him to go public.

“History needs to know that this happened,” he told Times reporter Peter Baker. “I think it’s so significant and I guess knowing that the end is near for President Carter put it on my mind more and more and more. I just feel like we’ve got to get it down some way.”

Well, better late than never.

And to my kids: yeah, you're right. The Republican Party was always disgusting and vile‚ although they did used to try to hide it a little bit. But, I still say it's worse today, so, uh, sorry about that. Good luck cleaning up our mess. Love, Mom.

[ NYT ]

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