‘October Surprise’ Inquiry Hits Obstacle : Congress: Democrat says the GOP is blocking Senate investigation into the alleged 1980 hostage scheme. Work may not begin until next year.

A Senate Democrat charged Friday that Republicans are blocking investigation of an alleged 1980 GOP hostage scheme with Iran because they are afraid of what it will uncover.

“If I were a Republican with nothing to hide and nothing to fear, I’d be screaming for an investigation as fast as it could take place” to clear anyone alleged to have been involved with such a scheme, said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.).

Instead, Republicans are seeking to impede the inquiry at every step, Kerry said as a hearing on the allegations was abruptly halted because of a GOP objection to the meeting.

“I’m asking why. What are they frightened about?” he asked. Waving at the vacant seats of Republican panel members in the Foreign Relations Committee meeting room, he said there is “a vacancy of morality” among Republicans. “It represents a lack of spine and a lack of moral gumption, and a lack of responsibility.”

The full Senate was expected to take up a resolution authorizing $600,000 to help pay for the investigation, but Republicans have threatened to filibuster, meaning the effort may not get under way until next year. A similar resolution authorizing a parallel House investigation is expected to be approved before Congress adjourns next week.

GOP lawmakers fear that the Democrats will try to use the investigations as weapons against President Bush’s reelection campaign.

Before Republicans ended Friday’s hearing, former National Security Council aide Gary Sick had outlined a series of dangling mysteries in the decade-old story.

Since the 1980 Ronald Reagan-Jimmy Carter presidential campaign, rumors have persisted that members of the Reagan-Bush campaign conspired with Iran to delay the release of 52 American hostages and head off an “October Surprise” that would free the captives and salvage Carter’s reelection chances.

“Based on my research, I believe there is substantial evidence that a secret deal was carried out during the election of 1980,” Sick told members of the panel.

Sick, who served in the Carter, Gerald R. Ford and Reagan administrations, noted that a key figure in the alleged scheme was under federal surveillance at the time and that sealed records of this person’s movements could shed new light.

Cyrus Hashemi, a New York businessman whom Sick said acted as an intermediary with Iran for both Carter and Reagan, was under FBI and Customs Service surveillance in October, 1980.

Hashemi has since died. But sealed records from a telephone tap and a surveillance camera in his office could confirm or disprove allegations others have made about his activities, Sick said. Those records could be made available to an official investigation with subpoena power, he suggested.