OCTOBER SURPRISES: My Latest ‘HOT TYPE’ Column in Byline
My weekly Hot Type column in Byline Supplement reports on lies, spies, and October Surprises in a Q&A with Craig Unger on his latest book, Den of Spies
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Today’s Hot Type column just dropped in Byline Supplement, and it features a Q&A with recent RadPod and Bette guest, Craig Unger.
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Below is an excerpt from today’s Hot Type:
Hot Type: Lies, Spies, and October Surprises
In her latest exclusive column, Heidi Siegmund Cuda interviews New York Times bestselling author Craig Unger about the 'October Surprises' that threw US elections and shook the world.
“I don't know exactly what will happen, but I will say, ‘Does anyone think there will be an election with no malfeasance?’”—Craig Unger, author, Den of Spies
The ‘October Surprise’ — a headline-grabbing event that can change the trajectory of a November Presidential Election — has become a part of American political campaigning. First coined in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter failed to get American hostages released from Tehran, and Ronald Reagan rode to victory, it’s a strategy that has been repeated often since.
On President Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday, investigative reporter Craig Unger released his latest book, Den of Spies: Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History That Stole the White House. The first recipient was Carter. Unger sent him a signed copy of Den of Spies, the nickname of the now shuttered American embassy in Iran, and just days later, Carter cast his ballot for Kamala Harris.
As each day brings new October Surprises — more revelations of Russian-paid operatives, more filings from Special Counsel Jack Smith, and more armed arrests and general weirdness from the Trump rallies — is America even capable of being shocked by sabotage?
In a Q&A with Unger, who is also the author of American Kompromat and House of Trump, House of Putin, I ask him to offer us a history of the October Surprises that threw elections for Republicans and what we can anticipate this October.
Heidi Siegmund Cuda: Why did you release Den of Spies on Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday?
Craig Unger: It's long past due for history to be honest to him. He went out and lost his reelection campaign in 1980 and was basically characterized as a weak president that allowed the United States to be humiliated. And what I write about in Den of Spiesis a covert operation run by the Republicans that sabotaged Carter's attempts to bring home the hostages, and they really hijacked American foreign policy, and I believe it was a treasonous covert operation by the Reagan-Bush campaign.”
HSC: We would be living in a very different America if we could go back in time and change the outcome to that election, and can you speak on what was set in motion when this occurred to basically steal the reelection from Carter and install Reagan?
CU: This was a critical moment in American history. It was a watershed in so many ways. For one thing, this was the start of the so-called Reagan revolution. This was the birth of American conservatism, and I think it's extremely important, in that what I show is they got into office thanks to a treasonous covert operation that sabotaged an American Presidential Election.
And this is a critical time in terms of American foreign policy, the Shah of Iran — long, an American puppet — has just been overthrown, and when he was in charge, America, and in fact the entire West, had access to Iranian oil reserves at very reasonable prices. So suddenly, that all changed, and Iran also went from being a very close ally and friend of both America and Israel to an enemy, as it became an Islamist theocracy…
HSC: “…what do you see on the horizon for America?
CU: I thought about this a lot, because it’s October. Now there's another election. Will it happen again? That's the obvious question. And with Trump, you have a candidate who's very close to Vladimir Putin, he's close to Bibi Netanyahu, and he’s close to MBS, [Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud] who gave $2 billion to his son-in-law. So these are serious relationships, and they're all players on the world stage. So the big question is, will it happen again? And, you know, I don't know exactly what will happen, but I will say, “Does anyone think there will be an election with no malfeasance?”
HSC: Can you take us through the history of October Surprises?
CU: I try to put it all in some historical context, and I go back to when Lyndon Johnson was President and signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in 1964 and 1965. The very next election was Nixon’s, and it was known as a Southern Strategy.
And basically, if you look at the electoral map, the red and blue map, for almost every election, there are a couple of anomalies, but in almost every election since 1968, the red states sure look a lot like the Confederate States of America.
And in my view that means, that’s what happened after the Voting Rights Act — all the racist right-wing Democrats joined the Republican Party, and that gave birth to what we have today.
And then you can see that in 1968, you had Richard Nixon — he got a woman named Anna Chennault to intervene with the Paris Peace Talks. Lyndon Johnson was trying to end the Vietnam War with peace talks in Paris, and Richard Nixon's gopher got the South Vietnamese to back out at the last minute and make the Democrats look ridiculous. And Nixon won in a squeaker.
Nixon, by the way, believed all those conversations he had with LBJ were taped, and he was worried about what documents the Democrats had, so he dispatched a group of burglars to break into the Brookings Institute and Watergate Hotel. And boom, in 1972 you have Watergate.
In 1980, you have the October Surprise I write about. In 2000, you have the Brooks Brothers Riot. In 2016, you have Trump Russia. So you've had it again and again. And what the Republicans have done is — they will stop at nothing. They will do covert operations, align with hostile foreign powers, whether it's Russia or Iran, and it's played a role in changing the outcome of quite a few elections…
And I think part of what I'm saying in this book is we don't like to come to terms with the dark, dirty parts of our American history.
So when I started investigating this in 1991, I did a major story for Esquire magazine, about 10,000 words. That was a fleshed out narrative of how this took place, how the Republicans made a secret deal with Iran and delayed the release of the hostages, and I was immediately hired by Newsweek magazine.
I was led to believe we would be leading a full bore investigation with the substantial resources of Newsweek and its correspondents all over the world. But when I got there, the experience was almost like a catch and kill operation — they brought me on board so that I couldn't write it.
And Newsweek ended up doing three stories in a row saying “the October Surprise didn't happen. The October surprise didn't happen. It didn't happen.”
And I don't know if you know how unusual that is — you maybe have to be a reporter, but when things happen, that's news. When things don't happen, that's not news.
And you don't keep reporting that it didn't happen. But Newsweek and the New Republic and, suddenly, there was a wave of journalism characterizing investigative reporters, including me, as conspiracy nuts, tin foil hat-wearing conspiracy nuts, and the story was just killed…
HSC: You describe William Casey as a mix of James Bond and Mr. Magoo, the kind of guy who spit when he talked. Can you tell us about him?
CU: He's a wonderful character, because he was sort of all over the place, and he was dazzlingly brilliant, but he mumbled when he talked to people. His nickname was Mumbles. It was often said that of all the people in the CIA, most people needed a scrambler on their phone, but not Bill Casey. No one could understand him anyway. And in fact, people often ask, “Well, what did Ronald Reagan know about the October Surprise?” And Reagan's response is typically Reagan, he said, “You know, I couldn't understand a word Bill Casey said, and I could ask him to repeat once. I could ask him twice, but you can't ask three times. You just sound rude. So I would just nod.”
The Onion, the satirical magazine, had a book at the end of the century, and they saluted the day of the hostage release-Reagan Inauguration split screen with a fake headline from the New York Times saying, “Reagan Inaugurated, Urges America Not To Put Two and Two Together.”
And that's one of the things that's so intriguing about the whole story on some level — it seems obvious on its face, and yet when you tried to nail it down, it was very hard to do so, but part of it is that Casey was a truly great spy, and I think he would go in a dozen different directions at once. No one knew everything he was doing.
HSC: You opened the book with a brilliant quote from Edward R Murrow, and it reads: “The obscure we see eventually, the completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.”
And I think that we are living that exact thing right now. And one of the things that your book does is it makes the past seem so current, it seems so fresh and relevant. And perhaps it's because so many of the same people are still involved.
CU: Well, in many ways, I do see it as a prequel to what we're going through now. I mean, the big, big difference is Trump does things in plain sight.
… If there's any goal I have for this book it is this: I would like the story to become accepted as part of American history.
He goes on to remind us that we who are pro-democracy have to become Fighting Democrats.
I keep thinking about what Julie DeLaurier begged us to do in our Bette’s All-Star Happy Hour — she asked us not wait to hit the streets until after the election.
Thank you to those of you who already support my writing here and at Byline. As I noted today when I republished my report from May on the ‘Executed Renaissance’, independent reporters are dangerous to reality assassins.
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‘DESTABILIZING DEMOCRACIES’: Canadian PM Names Tucker Carlson and Jordan Peterson as Paid By Russia
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