Book Renews Charges of a Reagan Deal With Iran

A former Jimmy Carter Administration aide renewed charges today that Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign made a secret deal with Iran to hold 52 American hostages until after that year’s presidential election.

Gary Sick, who worked on the 1980 hostage negotiations at the National Security Council, wrote in a new book that after a two-year investigation, he is more convinced than ever that Reagan campaign chairman William J. Casey struck a secret deal with the Iranian regime.

At the time, Iran was holding the hostages after militant students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Then-President Carter was negotiating with the Iranians for the hostages’ release at the same time that he was locked in a tough election campaign with Republican candidate Reagan.

Sick first made the charges public earlier this year. In the book, published today, he lays them out in more detail and with more sourcing material.

Reagan and his aides have denied making any deals with the Iranians, although some aides have acknowledged that they feared Carter might pull The October Surprise--a last-minute deal to free the captive Americans and boost his popularity with voters.

As it turned out, Iran held the hostages through Election Day, and Reagan defeated Carter in a landslide.

“It is still difficult to imagine that an opposition political faction in the United States would employ such tactics, willfully prolonging the imprisonment of 52 American citizens for partisan political gain,” Sick wrote in his book, “October Surprise.” “Nevertheless, that is what occurred: the Reagan-Bush campaign mounted a professionally organized intelligence operation to subvert the American democratic process.”

Sick wrote that he has six sources who confirm that Casey met with Iranian officials in Madrid in July, 1980, to set up a deal: If Iran would hold the hostages until after the election, the new Reagan Administration would authorize secret arms shipments through Israel to the regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

His principal source is Jamshid Hashemi, an Iranian arms dealer who said he was present at the meeting with Casey. Hashemi was also acting as a go-between for the Carter Administration at the time--a “double agent,” Sick wrote.

His other sources, who did not claim to be present at the meeting, included Ahmed Madani, a former Iranian defense minister, and several other arms dealers.

However, a British historian has cast doubt on a key part of Sick’s account by producing records that indicate that Casey was in London during part of the alleged meeting in Madrid.

Sick’s informants told him that Casey was present at meetings in Madrid for two days in July, 1980, probably beginning on Sunday morning, July 27.

But Jonathan Chadwick, a historian at the Imperial War Museum, said his records show that Casey was present at a London conference on World War II beginning at 9:30 a.m. on Monday, July 28, and remained in London at least through the afternoon of Tuesday, July 29.

“I’m quite confident that Casey was there,” said Chadwick, who organized the conference. “He’s someone whose absence would have hit my attention pretty hard.”

Casey died in 1987.

Sick said several of his sources reported that President Bush, who was then Reagan’s running mate, was present at a later meeting in Paris that helped conclude the secret deal with Iran, but Sick added that most of the evidence suggests that Bush was not present.

Bush’s role, he wrote, is “an open question.”

Sick acknowledged that much of his evidence was not conclusive.

“There is not enough evidence at this point to launch a prosecution of any individual, much less to be assured of a conviction,” he wrote. “There is enough evidence, however, to raise serious questions about what happened during 1980 and to justify bringing those questions to public attention.”

Sick’s charges are likely to receive a more thorough airing--and a more rigorous test--if Congress launches a full-scale investigation of the issue.

The House of Representatives is expected to authorize a special committee to begin looking into the charges next week. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has also voted to launch a special investigation, but the full Senate has not acted on the proposal.

Sick was on Capitol Hill Thursday meeting with Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), who is expected to run the House investigation.