October surprise: How Carter missed his 1981 re-election

On March 18, 2023 The New York Times published a story “A Four Decade Secret: One man’s story of Carter’s re-election”. The story set off a flurry of reports all over America on the ninety nine-year-old former US President Jimmy Carter who had announced on February 18, 2023 that he would take end-of-life (hospice) care at home instead of hospitalisation. 

When Carter started radiation for brain cancer in 2015 he had told the media: “I would like the last guinea worm to die before I do”. Carter must be a happy man now, since the guinea worm disease cases in rural Africa have come down to 13 in 2022 from 3.3 million in 1986 when he set up the Carter Global Center for the Guinea Worm Eradication Programme. 

The New York Times report about Carter and the 1981 election is the hidden tale of how Ronald Reagan won the elections through William Casey’s deft, not so clean, manoeuvres. Casey, a Second World War veteran OSS officer, was Ronald Reagan’s campaign manager and later CIA director. Surprisingly Casey also appeared in a similarly devious ruse in 1968. 

Carter must be a happy man now, since the guinea worm disease cases in rural Africa have come down to 13 in 2022 from 3.3 million in 1986

This is also what is called the “October Surprise”, an expression attributed to William Casey himself. In other words, causing a surprise twist one month before the Presidential election, which according to the US constitution has to be along with other elections every four years.  “Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November, in every even numbered year”. 

However the victory in 1981 victory was not without its cost due to the use of questionable and unethical methods: Eventually it would trigger a set of side-effects in the form of the “Iran-Contra Affair” in which 13 top officials including two National Security Advisers were indicted and most of them sentenced. 

There have been several “October Surprises” in US history over Presidential elections. “Politico” counted 15 of them starting from 1840 onwards. In 1968 William Casey was Richard Nixon’s aide in his Presidential campaign. Through his intelligence sources he came to know that President Lyndon Johnson wanted to take advantage of a quick peace deal in the Vietnam war. Peace between North and South Vietnam would give a psychological advantage in America, to the Democrat candidate Hubert Humphrey who was opposing Nixon. Humphrey was leading in opinion polls. Johnson had also announced a halt in the US bombing of North Vietnam in order to enable a quick peace accord at the Paris talks. 

As advised by Casey, Richard Nixon outfoxed Johnson by persuading South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu not to agree to the peace deal. He assured him that he would offer him a better deal as the next President. This he conveyed through Anna Chennault, formerly Chen Xiangmei, who was also a Republican fundraiser and wife of World War II American aviator hero General Claire Lee Chennault. As a result, South Vietnam withdrew from the Paris talks, three days before the Presidential elections. 

On 22 March 2013, BBC accessed the declassified Johnson papers and found that President Johnson had come to know about Nixon’s activities through “wiretapping” the Nixon campaign office. Johnson did not do anything although Nixon’s interference into foreign policy had technically amounted to “treason”. Nixon won narrowly. In his campaign he had ridiculed the Democrats saying that they could not even get South Vietnam to join the Paris talks. 

The same scenario played out in the 1981 elections. The most important reason why Carter lost the chance to be re-elected was because he couldn’t get 52 American hostages released in Iran, That, was partly because as an “Ethical President” Carter would not agree with devious solutions to win elections. Carter, it would appear, had turned down the mediation offer of former Senator James Abourezk from South Dakota. Abourezk( 1973-79) who passed away on February 24, 2023 was a Palestinian Christian. He was working as “General Counsel” for Iran after his retirement from the Senate. Abourezk claimed that two weeks after the US embassy takeover, he had travelled to Tehran and “struck a deal” with Banisadr, who was then the Chairman of the Iranian Revolutionary Council. 

However, the Carter administration did not agree. Abourezk had said that Carter sank his own chances for re-election by delaying the release of US hostages till January 20, 1981. “Instead, the hostages would be released just minutes after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated”. If the allegation is true it would only prove Carter’s credentials as an ethical President who would not interfere in elections using underhand dealings. 

On April 15, 1991 New York Times published an article by Gary Sick, Chief White House aide for Iran in Carter’s National Security Council (1976-1981) that in December 1979-January 1980 Cyrus and Jamshid Hashemi, “shady” Iranian arms dealer brothers who had good contacts with the Iranian Revolutionary government had approached the Carter Administration to get US support for their candidate in the Iranian Presidential elections. Carter did not agree. 

However, William Casey, Ronald Reagan’s campaign manager, and who later became CIA director met Jamshid Hashemi at Mayflower Hotel, Washington DC in March 1980 to prevent the hostages being released during the Carter administration so that Carter would not get political advantage in the 1981 elections. In July 1980 Casey met Mehdi Karrubi, later Speaker of Iranian Parliament in Madrid through a renegade US intelligence officer and obtained a promise that the hostages would be released only after Reagan assumed Presidency. The deal was that Reagan would, as President, defreeze millions of dollars of Iranian assets frozen by Carter.

Gary Sick called this the beginning of the notorious “Iran-Contra” scandal which exploded in 1986 and in which top Reagan Administration officials were sentenced in 1992. Casey, by then, had died of cancer in May 1987. Gary Sick said later in his book that Carter would not trade arms for hostages and lost, while Reagan initiated “arms for hostages” and won the elections. 

In 1991 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved an investigation into Casey's activities but it was aborted due to some procedural wrangles. In 1992, a disjointed House of Representatives Task Force did not find any “Credible” evidence. Disjointed because Mervyn Dymally, a member, refused to sign the final report. The mystery still lingers.

(The writer is a former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat. His latest book is ‘Intelligence Over Centuries’. Views are personal)