The Media & Their Narratives.

[EndtheMadnessNow]

The NY Times "October Surprise" conspiracy...

CIA/FBI Wiki editors appear to be feverishly editing the Wiki page for the "October Surprise conspiracy theory" (Wiki's phrasing, not mine) to downplay new revelations in a recent New York Times article that has only taken them 43 years. LOL.


2023 New York Times revelations (Wiki)

Attacking FAIR mediawatch as unreliable as well:



Also referencing a CIA memo that supports the conclusion of conspiracy, simply an "allegation":



Seems they should just remove "Theory" and be done with it.
The best irony about this is that it was reported literally weeks after it happened, but because it was published by LaRouchist conspiracists, nobody believed it.

A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election | Archived


A prominent Texas politician said he unwittingly took part in a 1980 tour of the Middle East with a clandestine agenda.

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 Mr. 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. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent.

Mr. Barnes said he had no idea of the purpose of the Middle East trip when Mr. 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 Mr. Barnes learn what Mr. Connally was up to, he said.

Mr. 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,’” Mr. 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.”

Make it make sense...

This guy, Robert "Bob" Dreyfuss (wiki) and The Nation broke the story. And had a four-decade career in political journalism afterwards.


The October Surprise story was "discredited" for official Washington in 1991 by a New Republic piece titled:


"The Conspiracy That Wasn't."



This 1991 Newsweek piece practically openly laughs at it:

Making Of A Myth

It is a story that will not die--a dark tale of conspiracy and political intrigue that, if true, would constitute something like an accusation of treason against George Bush, the late William Casey and other members of Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign. Briefly put, the "October Surprise" theory holds that Bush or Casey-or possibly Bush and Casey-cut a secret deal with Iran in the summer or fall of 1980 to delay the release of 52 U.S. hostages until after the November elections. Their objective, or so the theory holds, was to deny Jimmy Carter whatever political advantage the hostages' last-minute release might create-or, in short, to swing the 1980 election toward Reagan and Bush.

The October Surprise theory has been kicking around for the past 11 years, and it has become a mother lode for conspiracy junkies of all political persuasions. It got its biggest boost early this year when Gary Sick, a former member of Jimmy Carter's National Security Council staff, wrote an article on the op-ed page of The New York Times asserting his belief that it could have happened.

Meanwhile...


20 Years On, a Question Lingers About Iraq