REGISTRATION: Speakeasy with Craig Unger for ‘Den of Spies’
All Bette paid members are invited to attend our Sunday Speakeasy with New York Times-bestselling author Craig Unger, whose latest book Den of Spies warns of the next October Surprise, 4 pm Pacific
***Registration link for all paid members is below the paywall. To join our community Happy Hour and Speakeasy events, please take out a paid membership. To attend our monthly Founder’s Day events, please consider supporting me at the premium level by upgrading to Founding Member status.***
Bette’s Calendar at a glance:
Sunday, Oct. 13, 11 am PT: Founder’s Day with Gareth Gore on Opus Dei — Founding Members invited
Sunday, Oct. 13, 4 pm PT: Speakeasy with Craig Unger on Den of Spies — all levels of paid members invited
We have a big Sunday coming up on October 13. Our monthly Founder’s Day event with Gareth Gore on his explosive book Opus begins at 11 am Pacific.
I created Founder’s Day as a way to give back to those supporting me at the premium level. If you are not a premium supporter, you can access RadPod’s interview with Gareth. RadPod is always free to all viewers, and you will find the link in the invite above or here.
SPEAKEASY WITH CRAIG UNGER ON DEN OF SPIES
I am thrilled that author Craig Unger will be joining us this Sunday at 4 pm Pacific for a Q&A on his new book: Den of Spies: Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason That Stole the White House.
To attend our Happy Hour and Speakeasy events, please upgrade to a paid membership here.
If you are not able to upgrade at this time, please do watch RadPod’s interview with Unger. I am still coming to terms with the cover ups of the worst crimes at the highest level often including the same cast of characters who are harmful to democracy today. If the US is to survive as a democratic nation, we need to get far better at prosecuting real treason.
Details about Den of Spies:
During the 1980 presidential campaign between Reagan and incumbent President Jimmy Carter, Iran held fifty-two American hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They had been seized during the Islamic Revolution that overthrew the Shah and installed the Ayatollah Khomeini as Iran’s supreme ruler. (“Den of spies” is the term that Iranians used to refer to the embassy because of a long history of American interference in Iranian affairs, including the 1953 coup that overthrew a democratically elected government.)
The fate of those hostages became a national obsession and perhaps the most critical issue of the 1980 election. But as the 1980 presidential campaign neared its end, Republican operatives led by legendary spymaster William Casey did something that was not only illegal, but treasonous, to turn the hostage crisis to their advantage: They made a secret deal to send millions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Iran. In exchange, Iran would delay the release of the hostages until after the election.
If the hostages were released before the election, both the Carter and Reagan camps believed, Carter would get a big bounce in the polls and beat Reagan. But if the hostages were still imprisoned by election day, voters would see Carter as a weak and impotent leader who allowed America to be humiliated.
At the time, the Republicans were out of power and had no authority to make any agreement whatsoever with Iran. Furthermore, the Carter administration had imposed an arms embargo against Iran as a terrorist state, making the deal illegal on multiple grounds. Unger began to write about the October Surprise in 1991, when it first broke as a major national story.
At the time, President George H. W. Bush was preparing to run for a second term, with stratospheric approval ratings that made his reelection look inevitable. But as Reagan's vice-presidential candidate in 1980, Bush was inescapably drawn into investigations of the October Surprise, and the political implications were explosive. An incumbent president who was up for reelection was tied up in a traitorous spy scandal. Yet the implications reached far beyond Bush’s campaign prospects.
“If these charges were true,” Unger writes, “the entire Reagan-Bush era—indeed, modern conservatism in the United States—had been borne out of a treasonous covert operation.”
Craig Unger is the New York Times bestselling author of six books on the Republican Party’s assault on democracy, including House of Bush, House of Saud; House of Trump, House of Putin, American Kompromat, and now Den of Spies, a real life political thriller about how master spy William Casey put together a treasonous covert operation in 1980 that hijacked American foreign policy and stole the election for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.
A graduate of Harvard University, Craig began his career in journalism as an undergraduate editor of The Harvard Crimson. In 1976, he moved to France as co-owner/editor of The Paris Metro, a celebrated biweekly English-language city magazine in the French capital. In the Eighties, as senior editor at New York Magazine, Craig wrote and edited major features on subjects ranging from medicine to pop culture, architecture, and politics. Over the years, his work has appeared in The New Republic, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Esquire, The Independent, and many other publications. He also served as a contributing editor for Vanity Fair where he covered national security and foreign affairs for more than 15 years.
Event Details + book link:
SPEAKEASY: Sunday, October 13, 4 pm Pacific — Craig Unger returns to discuss his latest book, Den of Spies, which is available now. Always grateful to those who support our featured authors by buying their books!
Unlike the people I investigate, I am not funded by compromised billionaires or Russia. I rely on your memberships and donations as I do this work, which I believe adds value to our understanding of the threats we face.
Thank you as always for your support.
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