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Behind Carter's 1980 election defeat lies a clandestine trip and a four-decade secret

By Peter Baker NEW YORK TIMES Mar 19, 2023
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WASHINGTON – It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States.

It was 1980, and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Carter's best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent.

His mentor was John Connally Jr., a titan of U.S. politics and former Texas governor who had served three presidents and just lost his own bid for the White House. A former Democrat, Connally had sought the Republican nomination in 1980 only to be swamped by former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. Now Connally resolved to help Reagan beat Carter and in the process, Barnes said, make his own case for becoming secretary of state or defense in a new administration.

What happened next, Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don't release the hostages before the election. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.

Then, shortly after returning home, Barnes said, Connally reported to William J. Casey, the chairman of Reagan's campaign and later director of the CIA, briefing him about the trip in an airport lounge.

Carter's camp has long suspected that Casey or someone else in Reagan's orbit sought to secretly torpedo efforts to liberate the hostages before the election, and books have been written on what came to be called the October surprise. But congressional investigations debunked previous theories.

Connally did not figure in those investigations. His involvement, as described by Barnes, adds a new understanding to what may have happened in that hard-fought, pivotal election year. With Carter now 98 and in hospice care, Barnes said he felt compelled to come forward to correct the record.

"History needs to know that this happened," Barnes, who turns 85 next month, said in one of several interviews. "I think it's so significant, and I guess knowing that the end is near for President Carter put it on my mind more and more and more. I just feel like we've got to get it down someway."

Barnes is no shady foreign arms dealer with questionable credibility, like some of the characters who fueled previous iterations of the October surprise theory. He was once one of the most prominent figures in Texas, the youngest speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and later lieutenant governor. He was such an influential figure that he helped a young George W. Bush get into the Texas Air National Guard rather than be exposed to the draft and sent to Vietnam. Lyndon B. Johnson predicted that Barnes would become president someday.

Confirming Barnes' account is problematic after so much time. Connally, Casey and other central figures have long since died, and Barnes has no diaries or memos to corroborate his account. But he has no obvious reason to make up the story and expressed trepidation at going public because of the reaction of fellow Democrats.

Barnes identified four living people he said he had confided in over the years: Mark K. Updegrove, president of the LBJ Foundation; Tom Johnson, a former aide to Lyndon Johnson (no relation) who later became publisher of the Los Angeles Times and president of CNN; Larry Temple, a former aide to Connally and Lyndon Johnson; and H.W. Brands, a University of Texas historian.

All four of them confirmed in recent days that Barnes shared the story with them years ago. "As far as I know, Ben never has lied to me," Tom Johnson said, a sentiment the others echoed. Brands included three paragraphs about Barnes' recollections in a 2015 biography of Reagan, but the account generated little public notice at the time.

Records at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum confirm part of Barnes' story. An itinerary found this past week in Connally's files indicated that he did, in fact, leave Houston on July 18, 1980, for a trip that would take him to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel before returning on Aug. 11. Barnes was listed as accompanying him.

Brief news accounts reported on some of Connally's stops with scant detail, describing the trip as "strictly private." An intriguing note in Connally's file confirms Barnes' memory that there was contact with the Reagan camp early in the trip. Under the heading "Governor Reagan," a note from an assistant reported to Connally on July 21: "Nancy Reagan called – they are at Ranch he wants to talk to you about being in on strategy meetings." There was no record of his response.

Barnes recalled joining Connally in early September to sit down with Casey to report on their trip during a three-hour meeting in the American Airlines lounge at what was then called the Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport. An entry in Connally's calendar found this past week showed that he traveled to Dallas on Sept. 10. A search of Casey's archives at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University turned up no documents indicating whether he was in Dallas then.

Barnes said he was certain the point of Connally's trip was to get a message to the Iranians to hold the hostages until after the election. "I'll go to my grave believing that it was the purpose of the trip," he said. "It wasn't freelancing because Casey was so interested in hearing as soon as we got back to the United States." Casey, he added, wanted to know whether "they were going to hold the hostages."

None of that establishes whether Reagan knew about the trip, nor could Barnes say that Casey directed Connally to take the journey. Likewise, he does not know if the message transmitted to multiple Middle Eastern leaders got to the Iranians, much less whether it influenced their decision making. But Iran did hold the hostages until after the election, which Reagan won, and did not release them until minutes after noon on Jan. 20, 1981, when Carter left office.

John Connally III, the former governor's eldest son, said in an interview Friday that he remembered his father taking the Middle East trip but never heard about any message to Iran. While he did not join the trip, the younger Connally said he accompanied his father to a meeting with Reagan to discuss it without Barnes, and the conversation centered on the ArabIsraeli conflict and other issues.

"No mention was made in any meeting I was in about any message being sent to the Iranians," said Connally. "It doesn't sound like my dad." He added, "I can't challenge Ben's memory about it, but it's not consistent with my memory of the trip."

Suspicions about the Reagan camp's interactions with Iran circulated quietly for years until Gary Sick, a former national security aide to Carter, published a guest essay in the New York Times in April 1991 advancing the theory, followed by a book, "October Surprise," published that November.

The term "October surprise" was originally used by the Reagan camp to describe its fears that Carter would manipulate the hostage crisis to effect a release just before the election.

To forestall such a scenario, Casey was alleged to have met with representatives of Iran in July and August 1980 in Madrid leading to a deal supposedly finalized in Paris in October in which a future Reagan administration would ship arms to Tehran, Iran, through Israel in exchange for the hostages being held until after the election.

The House and Senate separately authorized investigations, and both ultimately rejected the claims. The bipartisan House task force, led by a Democrat, Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, and controlled by Democrats 8 to 5, concluded in a 968-page report that Casey was not in Madrid at the time and that stories of covert dealings were not backed by credible testimony, documents or intelligence reports.

Still, a White House memo produced in November 1991 by a lawyer for President George H.W. Bush reported the existence of "a cable from the Madrid embassy indicating that Bill Casey was in town, for purposes unknown." That memo was not turned over to Hamilton's task force and was discovered two decades later by Robert Parry, a journalist who helped produce a "Frontline" documentary on the October surprise.

News of Barnes' account came as validation to some of Carter's remaining advisers. Gerald Rafshoon, who was his White House communications director, said any interference may have changed history. "If we had gotten the hostages home, we'd have won; I really believe that," he said. "It's pretty damn outrageous."

Barnes said he had no idea of the purpose of the Middle East trip when Connally invited him. They traveled to the region on a Gulfstream jet owned by Superior Oil. Only when they sat down with the first Arab leader did Barnes learn what Connally was up to, he said.

Connally said, "'Look, Ronald Reagan's going to be elected president, and you need to get the word to Iran that they're going to make a better deal with Reagan than they are Carter,'" Barnes recalled. "He said, 'It would be very smart for you to pass the word to the Iranians to wait until after this general election is over.' And boy, I tell you, I'm sitting there, and I heard it, and so now it dawns on me, I realize why we're there."

Barnes said that, except for Israel, Connally repeated the same message at every stop in the region to leaders such as President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt. He thought his friend's motive was clear: "It became very clear to me that Connally was running for secretary of state or secretary of defense," Barnes said. (Connally was later offered energy secretary but declined.)

Barnes said he did not reveal the real story at the time to avoid blowback from his own party. "I don't want to look like Benedict Arnold to the Democratic Party by participating in this," he recalled explaining to a friend. The headlines, he imagined, would have been scandalous. "I did not want that to be on my obituary at all."

But as the years have passed, he said, he has often thought an injustice had been done to Carter. Discussing the trip now, he indicated, was his way of making amends.

"I just want history to reflect that Carter got a little bit of a bad deal about the hostages," he said. "He didn't have a fighting chance with those hostages still in the embassy in Iran."

The crooked right have been stealing America away for years. This is what they want back. This is their country and they’ll take it by hook or crook.

While the left continues to be their willing accomplice.

How so?

So, nobody really cared about obscene inflation, an energy crisis, massive cost-of-living increases and incessant oil price hikes? They were all-in on a presidency made famous for coining the word "stagflation" until 'those meddling republicans'?

BTW... I was there... all of the media had already framed Jimmy as a dumb peanut farmer who was in way over his head. And had all but declared Reagan as the winner well before the election. I guess they are responsible for helping to "steal" the election as well.



⬇️ This wasn't changing because hostages (who were held captive for 444 days) got home a few days earlier...

I was mostly referring to Barnes (a democrat) staying silent when he knew what was happening was wrong in the article. It seems that many on the left (and right) still ignore/stay silent about anything that may cause them any speck of inconvenience.

I was there as well. In the Navy on a carrier, ready for war with Iran. Simply brushing this away with “It didn’t matter, Carter would have lost anyways is telling. If true, American Hostages suffered longer than needed just for political gain. pfffft Goper’s. Stealing America. It is the way.

I agree ! And while this isn't limited to just politics and public office - I think the issue is exasperated by the two party system and having any politician no matter how well intended when starting their career, being broken and corrupted by their party to tow the party line or else not be a viable candidate.

Never heard of Barnes. The trump brigade up on Capitol Hill have been silent for 7 years bowing on their knees to the King.. Not sure what the dems have to be silent about lately?

I agree. Carter was doomed with or without this meeting. There was no chance he would win. You would had to have run a pretty despicable character for Carter to have won and Reagan certainly gave no appearance of being that.

So it wasn’t a deal that American hostages suffered in Iran longer just for political gain? And really nobody knows If Carter had gotten them out it would have been different. What really hurt Carter was the failed attempt to rescue the hostages imo.

What it seems to fail to in addressing if the message they attempted to send was even delivered in the first place and secondly if the Iranians even gave any gravity to the message if they did receive it. I mean why would they take anything John Connally said as being credible? Much of this is conjecture at best.

At the time John Connally had no power to insure anything. He was not a part of any administration nor was it insured he would be. I see nothing here that indicates the hostages actually spent a day longer in captivity due to this meeting.

That'd kind of be part of the issue, wouldn't it? If they're staying silent, you wouldn't hear about it.

You don't hear Democrats considering the potential downsides of any of Biden's grand plans much do you?

Fair enough. Being covered up for so long, I have a hard time saying “nothing to see here”. Anyways as I said the failed attempt to rescue the hostages was Carter’s biggest failure. I remember the feeling that day to loose faith in a leader.

Where is the republicans grand plans on the economy, the border, crime? You know all the things they ran on in the midterms? Nope so far now the grand
plan is war on women rights, lbgtq rights, just trash all equal rights.

We do see it differently. While you see it as "being covered up for so long" I see it more as the political divide has grown to be so wide and vitriol being the norm that up until now nobody thought it was worth even mentioning for the very reasons I mentioned. At one point in time people understood the difference between there is actually nothing to see here and trying to make everything a political conspiracy. Not so much anymore. So now we see things that really had no impact from forty years ago being brought to the forefront.

And yes, that's just my opinion. I understand why you may see it differently.

But we really shouldn't be having this discussion. Haven't you heard? People such as ourselves are supposed to agree about everything.

What do you want me to say? I know that side is lousy, too.

Sadly, it's a predictable result from a system stuck in binary thinking, which isn't that surprising considering the essentially binary (Left/Right) system it sprouted out of.

You brought up Biden’s grand plans. Then when faced with a question on the opposing view and plans. We get they’re both lousy. Nice talk.

You say you get that they're both lousy, but you don't act like it.

You asked "what the Dems have done to be silent about?" I brought up Biden's plans and the left's complete silence as far as any trouble spots in response.

I never implied that the right was innocent as your question about the left seemed to. In fact, I said the right had the same issues in my post at 10:52.

My issue is not so much with the Plan so much as the unwillingness to step away from the party line. Instead they stay silent which tied back to the article that started the thread.

You seem to turn to whataboutism because you, too, seem to have chosen a side in the left/right paradigm. I just think the whole left/right paradigm is a large part of the problem. In the article that started the thread, a facet of that problem just happened to be expressed on the democrat side.

No you said they’re both lousy. That’s all we get from you when asked about opposing views and grand plans. It’s a cop out imo.

If someone is unhappy with "both" sides it is a cop out? Gotta squad up! Pick a side! The esteemed leaders are counting on your obedience.

Yes, I also said they are both lousy. Are you now trying to argue that isn't true?

Present me with a "grand plan" of the Republicans that's not hyperbolic nonsense from a left-leaning partisan view and it might be worth commenting on. The President's Management Agenda (AKA "Biden's Grand Plan") is published right on Whitehouse.gov.

It's not a cop out so much as trying to avoid letting you try to change the topic, as you seem to do every time someone doesn't agree with your one-sided approach. We can't talk about the things your side could do better. We have to talk about what the people that aren't on your side could do better. It's the classic whataboutism that you tend to complain about. Don't try to gaslight me into believing that's not what you're doing.

Ok bro. Lol. Nice talk.