A Clandestine Trip and a Four-Decade Secret: An Untold Story Behind Jimmy Carter’s Defeat

[WellPreserved]

"It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent.

His mentor was John B. Connally Jr., a titan of American politics and former Texas governor who had served three presidents and just lost his own bid for the White House. A former Democrat, Mr. Connally had sought the Republican nomination in 1980 only to be swamped by former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. Now Mr. Connally resolved to help Mr. Reagan beat Mr. Carter and in the process, Mr. Barnes said, make his own case for becoming secretary of state or defense in a new administration.

What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. 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."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/p ... tages.html

[Lemons]

From the article…

“ Mr. Connally said, “‘Look, Ronald Reagan’s going to be elected president and you need to get the word to Iran that they’re going to make a better deal with Reagan than they are Carter,’” Mr. Barnes recalled. “He said, ‘It would be very smart for you to pass the word to the Iranians to wait until after this general election is over.’ And boy, I tell you, I’m sitting there and I heard it and so now it dawns on me, I realize why we’re there.””

On January 19, 1981, under Carter the US and Iran signed the Algiers Accords, an agreement brokered by the Algerian government that secured the hostages' release in exchange for concessions by the US, including sanctions relief, the release of frozen Iranian assets, and the creation of the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal that would remove cases against Iran from US courts.

Also Reagan claimed that he would never negotiate with terrorists. It didn’t take him long to trade weapons to terrorists for hostages in Lebanon. Or trade weapons to Iran for hostages in Lebanon even though American law did not allow sales of weapons to Iran. Also Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

I don’t think Reagan could have negotiated a deal with Iran with out selling them weapons. It’s what he did.


https://www.history.com/topics/1980s/iran-contra-affair

[hotspice58]

I’ve heard that before. So Ronnie really wanted to be president?! And he wasn’t that good.