TODAY! Sunday’s Speakeasy with Craig Unger on ‘Den of Spies’ at 4 pm Pacific

Registration reminder for today’s Speakeasy with Craig Unger on his bombshell book, Den of Spies, which documents the October Surprise that tipped the scale for Ronald Reagan’s election

***Reminder for Bette members to register for our event today. You will find registration link 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, 4 pm PT: Speakeasy with Craig Unger on Den of Spies — all levels of paid members invited

  • Tuesday, Oct. 15, Noon PT: Bette’s All-Stars Happy Hour, featuring a bevy of brilliant Bette friends offering last-minute election messaging tips — event open to all levels of paid membership

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We just had a brilliant meeting with Gareth Gore, the UK-based author Opus, who was our featured guest at our monthly Founder’s Day. Thank you to all attendees, and if you are Founding Member who was unable to attend, look for an upcoming post featuring the audio from our Q&A.

***Just zipping a reminder out to all paid members to remember to attend our upcoming Speakeasy, today at 4 pm Pacific, 7 pm Eastern.***

SPEAKEASY WITH CRAIG UNGER ON DEN OF SPIES

I am thrilled that author Craig Unger will be joining us today, 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.

Please do watch RadPod’s interview with Unger here. 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.

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• Book links here:

  • Den of Spies is available now! Always so grateful to those who support our featured authors by buying their books!

A JUST A BRIEF NOTE ABOUT BETTE’S ALL-STAR HAPPY HOUR ON TUESDAY

On Tuesday, October 15, at noon Pacific, we’ll be bringing some of our favorite guests from the past two years to join us with a lightning round of last-minute messaging tips to cut through the noise and help us get to the part where we — who are pro-democracy — celebrate victory together. I will send registration for this event on Sunday evening.

Lastly, 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 to new subscribers, renewing members, and all levels of support!

And a special thank you to those who support my writing by buying a copy of latest ebook — American Monsters: The Book.

Thank you for everything always and see many of you in a few hours.

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Begin each day with a grateful heart.

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